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Navigating the Night of Loss: Ashley's Path of Grieving, Healing, and Embracing the Depths of Love
When the earth-shattering moment of losing a loved one strikes, it can feel like navigating through an endless night. Join me, Portia Chambers, as we journey with Ashley from the Filled Up Podcast, through the shadows of grief into the light of healing. Together, we traverse the heart-wrenching experience of Ashley losing her mother at a tender age, the seismic shifts within a family built on matriarchal foundations, and the labyrinth of legal woes that can follow when a will is absent. This episode promises to be an honest exploration of the intimate intricacies of mourning, offering solidarity to those who have felt the cold touch of loss.
Ashley's courage in discussing her path shines a light on the diverse ways we process pain and the judgements that sometimes accompany our most vulnerable moments. We reflect on the delicate dance of parenting through the prism of grief and the unexpected role spiritual guidance can play in the quest for solace. The conversation weaves through the fabric of multi-generational bonds, the sometimes surprising sources of resilience, and how healing can be found in uncharted territories. This dialogue serves as a beacon for anyone grappling with the aftermath of a loss, affirming the profound need for a community that nurtures and understands the complex human heart.
As we proceed, we underscore the potent lessons that parenting in the wake of tragedy can teach us—about forgiveness, growth, and the art of living with intention. Our chat illuminates the wisdom gained from raising teenagers, the deep reflections on our own upbringing, and the value of preparing for life's inevitable uncertainties. Listen to our shared experiences, including the practical steps toward securing a family's future and the courage it takes to remove toxicity from our lives. This episode isn't just a testament to the power of recovery; it's an invitation to embrace the full spectrum of existence, with all its pain, beauty, and transformative potential.
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Join me, Portia Chambers, as I sit down with women just like you, sharing moments in their lives that shaped them into who they are today Stories of motherhood, betrayal, transformation, love and loss, vulnerable conversations, deep connection and collective healing. Welcome to the this Is we podcast. I am so excited to have our next guest here with us. Ashley is the host of Filled Up Podcast and we met, I want to say, late last year. You reached out to me to talk a little bit more about the we experience and I'm so happy that our paths have crossed again and you are here to share your story with us, so welcome.
Speaker 2:Ashley, thank you so much. I will admit it's a little bit weird being the guest instead of the host, so bear with me a little bit.
Speaker 1:It's a nice change sometimes, yes. So I know that you are going to be talking a little bit about your story of grief and it being about the passing, the unexpected passing, of your mother and your experience with all of it. So let's get started and, you know, take us back in time to that moment.
Speaker 2:Sounds good. So to make a lot of it make sense in a sense, I was raised by a single mom. I did have a half sister, but we were eight years apart, so it was almost like we were single children just having to be living in the same house in a sense. And I came from a very strong matriarchy. So all of the heads of households whether it was my grandparents, my great grandparents, aunts and uncles for the most part we were all like women led. So there was sort of this power struggle of like who was going to be the boss and who was going to make all these decisions. And I feel like leading up to that and sort of being raised in that environment made my mom's passing that much more shocking and that much more hard, because there was always that push and pull between us.
Speaker 2:I was 24 when my mom passed. She had a sudden brain aneurysm, so she was literally fine one minute and gone the next. The night that it happened I had actually store-bought dyed my hair, so naturally I have really dark brown hair. So, for whatever reason, I thought in one session I could bleach blonde and it would turn out like I prefer it, but instead I dyed my hair orange. So I remember that night my mom had actually come to my house and was helping me try to fix my hair, come to my house and was helping me try to fix my hair. So I felt a lot of grief, for if she had only been there an extra hour, if things were different than we could have had a completely different outcome. So I owned a lot of what had happened, which is so irrational at the time and so unnecessary because, again, even if she had had the aneurysm at my house, there's nothing to say that I would have been able to call 911 fast enough or that it would have actually changed the outcome, aside from where she had actually passed. But I know, even at that point. So I had a two-year-old daughter. I didn't really feel like a grownup, like my parents still kind of did all of the things for me and I really was the type of person that I was calling my mom on the phone like five or six times a day or my grandmother and that it was. We were so tight knit and so close that it was kind of like overnight I went from somebody who had this safety and security blanket to somebody who's my whole life changed in that you know 24 hour period yeah, we also had it.
Speaker 2:So my mom was living with her boyfriend at the time, um, somebody who seems like a nice enough person, but after she died and he saw that he could potentially inherit money or he could get other things like Like, his personality really came to light. He was never somebody that was like my favorite, but never somebody that I thought was so incredibly cold and disgusting until after she had died. So he was home at the time and I don't know where he was in the house and I don't know where he was in the house. He was an alcoholic and she was in the office like playing a computer game or something and had passed away. The coroner figures that it was about three hours before he had actually called 911. So it also seems like a long time for something to happen in your house and you to just not even care enough to notice or go check and things like that. So there was also a lot of frustration in like blaming him or directing our anger at him whether it was valid or not valid. So that was sort of what had kind of happened with her passing.
Speaker 2:She didn't have a will when she died, which, in my opinion as parents, is so selfish. That document is so important and you really don't realize how important it is. This is sort of where he was able to be a little bit more of a pest, because, um, there wasn't a will to prove that we were supposed to inherit things, um, but so when she passed there left us with a lot of questions and a lot of uh, just a longer like probate period, um, going back, though, I know in that 24 hours. So my mom's boyfriend had called my grandmother as well as like 911 in the corner and things like that. So I know my grandmother and her sister had been at the house when my mom passed. I did have the opportunity to go there, but I really didn't want to see her after, like, her physical body after she had passed away, um, something that still to this day, I'm very confident in my decision not to do that. I have no regrets of not doing that, but so that first 24 hours it was my grandmother that had called to let me know that my mom had passed away.
Speaker 2:My first instinct I was like sick to my stomach, started throwing up right away. I also do have a two-year-old daughter. So I really was like trying not to wake her up and trying not to have to like deal with the immediate shock plus, you know, dealing with the toddler, and then, yeah, it was sort of a haze of not knowing what to do. We all kind of went and stayed. So my daughter myself, my half-s, kind of went and stayed, so my daughter myself and my half sister all went and stayed at my grandmother's basically for the next week afterwards just laying in bed. But my grandmother being there made it so that I had the little space of being able to grieve, um, and watch my daughter and keep things as normal as possible for her, because it was very confusing that all of the grown-ups in her life went from being like very happy and playful to like crying constantly.
Speaker 2:Um, I know, for me too, as much as my family pretended to be close, like we would gather for like our outside of, our like nuclear home, um, we'd rather for birthdays and christmas. But I think being a matriarchy kind of led into more gossipy and more passive aggressiveness with like aunts and and other family members, cousins and things. So I know I was so shocked when my mom died that I basically internalized my feelings and I was accused of not caring that she died because I wasn't outwardly crying. I wasn't. You know, my sister was screaming at the top of her lungs and things like that that a lot of them really judged the way that I grieved and made assumptions because I didn't necessarily feel safe enough with these people to really let my guard down, let them know how I was feeling, and really I didn't, even in the immediate aftermath, had no idea what I was feeling.
Speaker 2:I basically went into move forward mode.
Speaker 2:What do we need to do?
Speaker 2:How do I keep this together? What does this look like? And it's like they didn't see me break down in my kitchen random times or like really how upset I was and it caused basically our family to crack in a lot of ways and them just jump to different things. That that was really really hard and really confusing and things that when I look back on it with the lens that I can see now to that, I just think like how selfish and horrible and how unknowledgeable you are to think that grief has to be like the movies. It's like we're not all you know, sobbing immediately or you know we really go into that trauma response Like some people freeze, some people fight some people.
Speaker 2:You know, our brain just works differently and there was no grace in that, which was really frustrating and really, really hard. And then, you know, jumped to about six months later. My grandmother actually ended up, we all ended up living together, ended up, we all ended up living together, and my grandmother actually still, 14 years later, lives with us today. So in some ways, my mom was the glue that held our family together and in some ways, that completely shattered in a good way, and in some ways her death made the people that really mattered. We realized how valuable that relationship is and how valuable just like being around people that you love is, and it strengthened the relationships that needed to be strengthened.
Speaker 1:That's wild, like I'm sitting here just trying to digest it all, cause I couldn't imagine at 24 losing your mother, especially having a young child and being young yourself. I can relate to that and I know how much of a role that my mother played when I had my daughter young and when I needed something she was there, because, like you had said, it's hard to lean on all these different types, all these different people and family members and things like that. And so I want to kind of take a step back a little bit where you were talking about your mom coming to your place helping you with your hair and then leaving and then passing away shortly after that. And you know the what ifs that were kind of entangled in your in your mind, and do you still play that game, the what if game, to this day? You know, being 14 years later, that you still kind of go back and be like if she just stayed, maybe something would be different, or have you come to the conclusion that it was completely out of your control?
Speaker 2:I don't own the guilt of it anymore, but I definitely still play the like what if?
Speaker 2:Game, but more in like different scenarios. So my daughter is 16 and it was things like she never got to experience even taking my daughter to like a movie. So I think in in some ways it's not like I wish she was here so I could have this conversation that it's like I wonder if she was here, would my relationship with my daughter be the same? Would my daughter be as close to my mom as she is to my other grandmother? Would if my mom was at this like birthday party, what would that be like? So it's more situationally based than this feeling of being able to save her. Like I just almost like you know those random questions of like if you could just have dinner with that person one more time, what would that look like? I think that comes up and I think to some degree it always will that wonder of like what that would look like or things like that. But yeah, letting go of the guilt of that was definitely huge and healing and something I don't carry.
Speaker 1:And when you are kind of, you know, playing the what if game, like what if she was still here? Had a relationship with my daughter, do you find that you grieve again in those moments that it almost brings stuff back up, or do you find that it's just a reminder that you know you wish that she was here?
Speaker 2:Both. I feel like grief is really funny and sometimes it like is this like guttural pain and it knocks you on your knees and then sometimes it is kind of just like a nice thought. I know, for me I think, just her not being able to have that relationship with my daughter. When I really think about how much of that we lost out on like it definitely does still cause pain and hurt and in some years it gets easier and then in some years it'll just randomly hit you. So I'd love to say like the farther that you get away from it, that it's easier, but that really isn't necessarily the case. No, Grief.
Speaker 1:Grief is like I was thinking about this this week and I've been thinking about it a lot, but grief is just one of those. I was having a conversation with somebody else and we were talking about grief and it was on the podcast. This was after we recorded the podcast. It would have been great to have this conversation on, but we were just talking about how grief is. Like every emotion, it's all of the emotions in one.
Speaker 1:You can grieve and feel happy. You can grieve and feel sad, angry, shameful, whatever it may be, and when it comes back up, it's never just that one, it's never just grief like in air quotes. It can be just an element of all these different emotions that are kind of compiling together and and like you had said, it never really does go away. It is like it kind of drills a hole in your heart and your being and kind of just lives there and sometimes it grows and festers and then sometimes it shrinks, but you always know that it's there and I kind of want to talk about that a little bit.
Speaker 1:And you talked a little bit about having shame or how your family, you know, made you feel shame around not crying, and I think that is such a huge topic because when we think of someone being sad or someone passing, the immediate thought is like they should be crying, they should be unconsolable, they should be on their knees weeping. There should never be a moment that they are not crying. And if they're not crying, something is wrong with them. They are heartless and I would love to kind of talk about that and that inner dialogue with yourself of being like. These people are coming at me, telling me that I should be acting a certain way, but I know internally that I just can't, for a variety of different reasons, like you had said, being safe.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love what you said about it being all the different emotions. It's almost like that movie inside out where it's like grief really should be lined up there and controlling. But yeah, it was so hurtful in the moment to constantly being told like why are you okay, why don't you feel this way? And it's like on top of everything that I was feeling to be like why are you okay, why don't you feel this way? And it's like on top of everything that I was feeling to be like I like I don't know that I kind of just kept saying, like I'm doing this, my daughter's name is Ireland and it's like I'm doing this for Ireland, Like I need to hold it together.
Speaker 2:And some of the people I think that were the most harsh, like some of my cousins, also weren't parents, so it's maybe not understanding that you don't get to let it all fall apart. I didn't have that luxury of being able to, you know, really lean into my grief and I think to some degree, the shock is there, but it's also this is the worst feeling that I've ever felt in my whole life. Also, this is the worst feeling that I've ever felt in my whole life. Let's not go near that feeling let's avoid and see how we can just get up in the morning that I think there's so many things like you said, there's so much shock, there's so much like she was really the only person. So my grandfather had passed away about six months prior to my mom, but he had terminal lung cancer, so we kind of knew that it was coming aside from him. She was the only person that I ever knew that had died really, so it was a completely brand new experience that I had never, ever experienced. Um, so that was also really hard. There was no like playbook of like. This is how I'm supposed to act, this is what we do.
Speaker 2:All of us were kind of blind, leading blind, but there wasn't a lot of grace and love in that, and the only thing that, looking back, that I'm so happy about that is, is that I really realized that your life can change in an absolute instant.
Speaker 2:You can think things are good and then all of a sudden they're just different. But for the people that don't lift you up and don't give you grace and don't say like I'm in this if we are, you know, laughing in the moment because that's what's presenting and you need to destruct yourself or if you know you need a babysitter so that you can go sob in your bed, like for those people that were around and available but weren't like pushing what their belief was. Those people, I think, saved my life in that time, and the other people that really proved to be so fake and so judgmental and so heartless. I haven't seen them in over a decade. So I think the really great thing is that they all showed me who they were and then I got to kind of make that decision of whether I wanted to carry that relationship forward or if I was able to really cut off the toxicness.
Speaker 1:It's sad sometimes that that that is what has to happen, especially in moments that are so hard and where you are just wanting community, even if you don't know how to ask for it.
Speaker 1:At that time, just knowing that it's there and that there is a safety net there to catch you is so much more, is so much more beneficial than being around people that are like you should be this certain way or whatever it may be, and really showing those true colors, because I know that happened with us, like when we went through something I've talked about it in your podcast, talked about it on my own podcast. It was kind of shocking to me because, for the same as you, like, it was the first time experiencing grief, so it was hard to really know how people would react to that certain circumstance, and it was shocking to see people acting in such a negative context because I'd be like I could never. I could never do that. And so how was your relationship with your grandmother? I know that she kind of almost turned out to be not turned out to be that should not say that but like um stepped in for your mom in a way and in our even when my mom was alive.
Speaker 2:Like my grandma and my mom were so close that my grandmother really was somebody who babysat us as kids. She took us on vacation, she took us to outings all the time. So she was a mother figure growing up. She took us to outings all the time. So she was a mother figure growing up even when my mom was still there.
Speaker 2:I think in the immediate, like the first couple of years, I think it bothered her more because people would just assume, especially because she lived with us, that she was my mom. But I I'm so grateful that we have been able to live together for so long and she'll live with us until she's no longer here. I do think that multi-generational living is challenging at times. There's definitely been a power dynamic of her in, I think, in her mind I'm always going to be like this small child. So there was like don't fold that way, don't put groceries away that she wouldn't even touch. Let me touch the lawnmower when we actually have like just things like that.
Speaker 2:But as a single parent, she was college educated to be an early childhood educator. So she went to college late in life. She had her career late in life and then when my grandfather got sick, she retired so I had free daycare from somebody who was actually trained in that industry, which was valuable for my daughter. I didn't have to worry about paying those astronomical daycare fees as a single parent and then she really got that relationship of like being, you know, the one that we could focus our attention on and having that one-on-one care that you know, not all kids get the opportunity.
Speaker 2:I stayed home until my daughter was in elementary school so she also got that transition of like not having mom home but still having the same you know playroom that she could go to after school and still being allowed to have playdates and didn't have to worry about any of that stuff. So that has always been great, that my daughter got to be raised in this two parent household, even though it wasn't a traditional mom and dad. But yeah, no, I think it's been great because I think, had my mom still been alive, I wouldn't have necessarily lived with my grandparent, I wouldn't have necessarily stayed close to home or stayed in this province. So it really strengthened our relationship and, even though there's been like ups and downs and power struggles and just like with any relationship with people that you live with, just it's not always great. I wouldn't change anything for the world.
Speaker 1:Um, I want to take a step back a little bit.
Speaker 1:So I'm like looking at my notes and you talked about holding it together and I feel like this is it's one of those things where, when I hear it, it makes me ache, like it makes my heart ache when I have to hear somebody saying like I have to hold it together for so-and-so, because part of me just wants to be like let it go, like just immerse yourself in it, knowing that that is crazy in itself too, because that is a lot of emotions to be facing all at once.
Speaker 1:But there's something about holding it together where it provides you of this knowing of your own strength. But sometimes we hold on to it too much and I want to talk about that a little bit, about you talking about having to hold it together for your daughter, especially being two. It's like you had said it's hard to explain that this is what happened, that this is. This is a huge adult like situation and we can't bear it all on you. You're two, you wouldn't even know, but holding it together, and so what was that like? Holding it together and then moving into a point where you weren't holding it together anymore, if that ever came.
Speaker 2:I feel like in the moment I was so naive and I'm like we're just going to power through, everything's going to be fine and if I fully avoid feeling all this pain, I'm just going to be able to bypass it. And it almost makes me laugh now, because we can't hold in emotions and feelings. We really have to go through them to heal. I think in my situation I basically went from my mom's passing and then I went into a decade long, very nasty custody battle. So my feelings about my mom really got divided and pushed away and leaned into different stress and different like situations. So it took me a really long time to deal with that or to look at it or really to acknowledge what it was, because it's not like as somebody who's gone through grief, like you get it. It's like when you're holding it together, you don't even necessarily know that you're holding it together or that you're avoiding it or that you're processing it or not processing it. You really are kind of like I'm just going to put it in a box and I'm sure that I'll deal with this or I'm sure I've dealt with it and I'm good and I'm fine. Um, but it really was like years later and I don't think to this day that I've fully like opened up that compartment and like fully dealt with it. Um, it'll sound kind of silly, but I found one of the things that was most healing was seeing psychics and mediums and having conversations with people that there's no way that they would know some of the things that they knew without having some sort of skills. I know it can be kind of like seemed as woo-woo, but I found that kind of helped.
Speaker 2:And then so I'm in BC and there is a workshop that I went to in Sunshine Valley, which is about 90 minutes away from where I am, and it was called the Peace of Mind Workshop and one of the exercises that she did is there was about four participants in this workshop and you had to sit across from them and you had to tell them all the things that you felt guilty about, or all the things that were like build, uh, bringing shame and like making you feel a certain way, and you had to look at them. They were not allowed to react. They had to be basically look you in the eye but had to be a blank face so that they weren't, you know, justifying, I guess, your guilt or your validness or whatever, and you had to do that for about a half an hour where you had to like for 10 minutes just spill it everything from like, if you felt guilty, that you said something mean to somebody in elementary school, like as far back as you could think of. And then all the way forward.
Speaker 2:And the very first time I went to that workshop, I literally remember leaving there feeling like I was 30 pounds heavier, 30 pounds lighter, like I just felt like all this heaviness had been removed from my body. And I think sometimes, when we think of healing, that it has to be this whole process. But sometimes it's just having those conversations of like saying all the things that you want to say, whether they're the same experience as other people, whether they seem so silly or whether you even realize the impact that they're holding in your body, by just having those thoughts, and that was something. Just letting it all out really was healing in a way that I didn't expect it to be.
Speaker 1:I love how you brought up psychics, because I found this to be incredibly healing. For my own grief, I did a lot of Reiki after and I never went in kind of the same as you Like. You kind of, obviously, if anybody has seen a psychic, you don't you zip your lips, you don't say anything. But it was kind of the same thing. This person like for me losing my son was kind of a secret. It was a big secret at the time. Now it's a little bit more open, but at the time it was, it was a massive secret that no one, very maybe 20 people, knew at the time. And so I was going to get Reiki done and I knew the Reiki practitioner and you know every, if anybody has had Reiki done before. They're all different. Every practitioner is different. Some are intuitive led, some just, you know, help you cleanse your chakras, whatever it may be.
Speaker 1:But this person was like an intuitive led, very could sense, you know spirits and different things, and I remember it was in one thing. She was over my abdomen and she said you had a loss and I'm like, oh my God. And she talked about it and I kind of just didn't really say anything. I didn't know what to say, because it was shocking to me. I shouldn't have been shocked, but of course you get shocked regardless. And then she moved somewhere else else, maybe closer to my head, I think. She started at my feet and she said I see your son with an older man.
Speaker 1:And in that moment it gave me so much hope and it took away so much worry because, even though he was so small and it was so early on in our pregnancy, to me he was still a being, he was still a life.
Speaker 1:Um, whether you know, the life didn't make it to the earth's side, it was still a life at the end of the day. And so to know that he is safe and content and somewhere and someone's with him, it just brought me so much peace and in that moment, like, okay, I can breathe a little bit easier about this, I know that I don't need to worry anymore. So I love that you brought that up, because I think sometimes when we have loss, we don't know where to go. It's great to see a therapist and talk, you know, through the feelings and the emotions that are happening and what had happened and the what ifs and the scenarios, but sometimes that doesn't give you that same sense of peace that you are looking for, and when you go to somebody that you know is a medium that talks to you, know spirits that have passed on or ones that are, you know, around you, your, your spirit guides. It's such a nice feeling, would you agree?
Speaker 2:or yeah, I definitely agree, cause it does does. It gives you a piece of them like, a feeling like they actually know, so you can be like I don't, and whether they know or they don't know, but it does. It gives you that piece of like of knowing that they're in love and that they're not suffering and that that they're still there. I think is the thing too that it's like we aren't religious, so we never grew up thinking that, like, when you die, you automatically go to heaven and when everybody dies, you just magically get joined together. So there was really this, this question of like will we ever feel the soul again? Will like what is?
Speaker 2:And I definitely appreciated knowing that there wasn't suffering and that there was peace and that, um, potentially my parents and my grandparents were, you know, connected again and I definitely agree with you that it's a lot of peace. And I think in in some ways, I tried to go to grief therapy after my mom had passed and it made me feel worse because they were like, oh, you just don't have to feel this way or whatever, and it's like okay, but I do so, like help me get to the point where I don't. And I felt like talk therapy wasn't helpful in my immediate shock and pain for things. Sometimes, the avenues that we think are going to be helpful, that we really think of in the mental health space, they they're helpful when we're ready for them to be helpful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I'm so happy that you brought that up because I can really resonate with that. We went to bereavement, um counseling after my husband and I grew up, bereavement and it was very I was. It was very apparent after, like our second one that I was like this isn't for me, I'm not, I'm not ready to be in this. To me it was too much sadness because it was a group of people and everyone was sharing their stories and and grief was a new emotion for me. It was something that I never experienced before. And hearing their grief and me immediately was like I started comparing myself to being like, oh, I should feel that way or oh I'm, I'm clearly not sane or, you know, I'm clearly dead inside or whatever it may be. Because I was kind of the same, like at the time of my passing. I wasn't an emotional person Like it, I wasn't a sad person.
Speaker 1:I want to say like crying wasn't something that I did, often only in frustration. Did I ever cry? Now I'm a little bit more open and I'm like, oh my God, and I cry and everything, but I can't help it now. But I feel like at the time, like it was just you have to grow as a person through your grief, and I love how you brought it up, as what you think should be done Isn't always what ultimately is right for you, and it was the same. I'm sure people had told you like after your mother's passing, you should go to counseling, you should go to therapy, it will help. But I think there's so much shock in that that it really does need to settle in before it becomes a reality, because it almost can feel like a dream.
Speaker 2:It can, and because she didn't have a will there wasn't like a she passed. We got to solve her estate and then it was over. So she passed. Her boyfriend fought us for a year for her stuff that he wasn't legally entitled to and tried to lie and say that he had lived with her longer to qualify for common law. And then we had to go to probate court and then we had to do all of this stuff Like we um, we were fined because we didn't do her taxes but we legally couldn't have filed on her behalf or things like she had RSPs and she died before retirement, so then taking essentially a third of her RRSP away for fees because she was a certain age.
Speaker 2:So we really had to deal for three years with probate and lawyers and selling her stuff and documenting what we were selling and we were kind of stuck in this umbrella of the immediate aftermath for such a long time that I think that also delayed it. So I cannot stress to people and I've heard the opposite of people who had had a will and their family kind of tossed it out and ignored it and there was issues that way. But yeah, from my experience I just I cannot stress how important it is to have that documentation, or to have those conversations with your loved ones of like. When I die, I either want to be buried, or I want to be cremated, or this is what I want to do, cause that was one thing that also was so healing after my mom is that we knew what she wanted. We didn't have to, you know, guess that we were doing the right thing and worry that she would feel a certain way about it.
Speaker 1:Yes, and those conversations are really hard. They're not easy to have. My husband and I have these conversations all the time about having a will. Like we have our only, like we have one daughter. So for us we feel like it's important to have a will because now that she's older it seems a little bit easier, like she's 16. But if she was younger it was very important for us to have clear understanding of who would take care of her, where she would go, where everything would fall. But even now, like we start to have these conversations and then we're like you kind of don't want to, because you're like you don't want to see, you don't want to ever think about your loved ones leaving, and so but I do agree, I think you know, having that in place and I couldn't imagine having it drawn out for three years of battling and and yeah, like you had said, it probably really did delay the whole healing process.
Speaker 1:And I kind of want to dive into that a little bit of what your healing process looked like, did it? You know, after the three years, did you feel like it started from there? I know you had mentioned, you know, previously it seemed like a little bit later in life and you're still. Obviously I feel like it's never, it's never ending. There's never like a definitive time where you're like and I'm done, I've now fully, you know, I've come to terms with my grief and you know it's never like that, because I find there's so many things in life that trigger us, that remind us, that bring us back, and it could be just somebody else passing, right, like when I hear a child passing, doesn't matter of what age, I immediately go back into that place.
Speaker 1:I immediately go back into that place. I immediately go back into that, that mother of not having control and not knowing what to do and questioning everything and asking myself these hard questions, and it brings me right back to that place and you know, and it's just, it was one situation so I would love to talk about. You know what your healing journey looked like afterwards.
Speaker 2:So I think that it really I went from like being devastated to angry right away because there was like, and some of that anger was like it's still like guilt and shame of like the I wish things were different. But then there was it was easy to then direct, you know, at the boyfriend at the time because he was such a human garbage person Like he wouldn't even pay for her her cremation. My dad did this also was a man that like if my dad came to the house to see my daughter, um, that he would be petty and like whatever about it, even though they had been broken up for over, you know, 22 years. So it was easy to kind of direct my outward anger at other people, I guess. And then, yeah, I basically two months after my mom had died, my ex at the time had served me with custody papers. So I really went into my brain basically divided into the stress of that and the like probate guilt of it all. So I think in that sense I basically got like rerouted. So all of my pain and guilt and grief and everything I was feeling about my mom I basically had to switch it to dealing with like family court and everything else. And it wasn't until and I really don't even, I can't even pinpoint like this is when I started veering back into both sides of my brain with it. But I feel like so grief therapy did not work. I basically didn't do any sort of like counseling or anything like that until years later, like probably I'm trying to think of what grade my daughter was in. She was probably in fourth grade, so that was a good like six, seven, eight years after my mom had died, and really kind of delving into self-help and mental health, because I didn't really have a lot of those conversations growing up and that really wasn't normalized until sort of the last like 10 years or so.
Speaker 2:Um, so I started leaning into things like that. So I did floating in a float house a fair amount and I would make that sort of my monthly. Well, I try to go to eat every two weeks, but I would make that part of my self-care routine. So I kind of had to lock myself in a box and like just have my thoughts. That started to really help. I also so pretty much immediately after my mom died her first birthday. So she died in February, her birthday was in June.
Speaker 2:I basically took my daughter, we got in the car and we started driving just to see where we would end up, and we went to Disneyland California, which my family was not impressed when they realized that we solo decided to go to a different country and go by ourselves somewhere. But it ended up being really freeing and healing and just kind of like escaping what was locally known to me and getting out of that space helped me think clearly. So California has routinely become somewhere that we go often and has become like this comfort place for us. So just sort of getting out of my own head and being able to see different people in different perspectives helped a ton. I also think it changed the way that I parented my daughter.
Speaker 2:After my mom died, Like I the things that she was so passive, aggressive or like harsh on me, I tried actively to flip it in my head. So I tried to stay more present in the sense that like, if I'm going through this experience, how would I want somebody to deal with it for me? And giving my daughter that grace a little bit, it has been much easier now that she's a teenager. Like the stuff that I would have, you know, been harped on for like six to eight months now isn't like a conversation for her. It's like, okay, you did this dumb thing, let's move on, instead of it changing the course of our relationship or leading to future resentments.
Speaker 2:So I think for us it has made us so insanely close and I'm sure that I don't know everything that goes on in her life, but I want to say that I probably get 75 to 80% of the story and I almost laugh or the like she tells me the gossip, or she tells me you know what happened at parties and things that I would have really filtered when talking to my parents because I just didn't want to hear it. Um, I think that has made the biggest impact and I think has been incredibly healing, because in when I let her off the hook, I'm almost letting like my inner child or myself off the hook for things too, which has just been a great way to like forgive and not hold on to things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that, I really like that.
Speaker 1:I never would have thought that, to be honest, how it would just translate into how you, you know, parented your daughter.
Speaker 1:But I think that's when it was funny as having this conversation yesterday with somebody they shared a post in their story saying, like you know, I never thought the day would come where I'm having sushi with my 12 year old binge watching Gilmore Girls.
Speaker 1:My life is so complete. And I looked at that and I was like, oh my God, I never thought that as a parent either, like my daughter's 16. Like I'm not going to say we're best friends because ultimately I'm still her mother, I am her mother first, her friend second in anything. But I just never thought I would have a relationship like that with my own daughter because I never had that relationship with my mom. And so, like when you're speaking, it's like really hitting home for me, where how healing that was, taking something that was so tragic in your life and then translating into something that was so healing for not only you but for your daughter in this unconscious way, is amazing, to say the least. It really is just changing the path and it takes a lot of courage to do that and a lot of self-awareness to do that, and so I commend you on that.
Speaker 2:So the whole other bag, especially as teenagers, as you know it's it's definitely it pushes you, but I think that we just have to be open and just remember that you know that they are going to make really, really dumb mistakes and just not to know that, for the most part, it isn't the end of the world and that it doesn't have to be something that's like a core memory from them of like, oh, my parents are going to do this and it's going to make it worse, but it's like we need to be their safe space. That it's not always easy to do by all means. Like teenagers can be very difficult and very hard, and so it's not a perfect like scenario, but it's just knowing that that dumb things are going to happen.
Speaker 1:Basically, yes, they are, it's going to happen. I always look, go back and think to myself. My husband's fairly, and it's funny because my mom says that I'm strict, and I am strict Like I have rules. There's few rules. Just abide by the few rules I have and life will be easy, for basically that's what it is, cause I grew up in a house that I didn't have a lot of rules, but I always felt like I had more rules than my brothers and I never loved that.
Speaker 1:Um and so, um, I forgot where I was going with it. But anyway, it's just the rules and and different things like that. I can't remember. I lost it, that's okay. Are you the oldest? I'm the middle, ah, only girl, though, only girl. I have an older brother and a younger brother, and so, yeah, I was, there was always more rules for me, but I was, I was always in trouble, and now I get. Now I'm going back to where I was, but I always reflect on who I was when I was her age and what I was getting into, and I look at her and my husband's like you know, she shouldn't be doing this, she shouldn't be doing that. I did worse, yeah, and you know what? My worst was bad, so if she's just doing like 2% of what I was doing, it's not that bad yeah.
Speaker 2:She will recover.
Speaker 1:Like it could be a core memory, like that's what teenagers do and it not meaning it, like to let you know, let them off on it. Like we would still have discussions when she was kind of doing things. We're like, okay, you know, keep off on it. Like we still have discussions when she was kind of doing things. We're like, okay, you know, keep in mind, like your own health and your own mental health and your own well-being physical and mental is far more important than somebody else's. Like, yeah, she's a huge people pleaser, um, but in the same time, like if she's on the phone all night, like she's a teenager, like it's gonna happen, um, but yes, are going to remind her in the morning that maybe you napping from 4 to 6 pm is not the best every night. Like maybe you should stop the conversation at midnight and then just go to bed, like type of thing. So, but yeah, like it's interesting.
Speaker 1:Teenagers are funny and I've learned the most lessons being a mother and um, I don't I don't know if you're in astrology, but my daughter is a Leo and I'm a Scorpio and we, if you look us up, like every time, it's like who's your most challenging sign? Like Leo, to me. It's my most challenging side and I was like yep had to be that way because she is the biggest lesson that I have learned. In everything that I've done, um has been through her.
Speaker 2:Well, and it's sort of the same for me. So I'm an Aries and both my mom and my daughter Gemini, so it almost like it almost is like a weird connection on their end of like different sides of the lesson that I had to learn through those relationships.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, that's crazy, it's so, it's. Being a parent is funny to me sometimes, just like I don't know. It's just there's so many lessons within it and then there's so many lessons outside of it too, which is crazy. So now that you know I don't want to say you're on the other side of grief, because it never necessarily goes away, but now that you are kind of outside of it in a way, look at it at a different lens you have moved through some of it. When you ever find yourself kind of going back into you know where grief starts to take a hold a little bit more, where it starts to actually affect your mental state, maybe your physical state as well, what are the things that you do that help you kind of move through you, or move through it or pull you out of it?
Speaker 2:I am very lucky, in the sense that I have had a best friend since high school, that we still are very close and talk multiple times every single day. So it's like if I'm having a rough day, I can be like today sucks and I can vent to her or I can make plans to go see her Um, not that my daughter is my therapist in any way, but we do have a really close conversation if we are ever feeling certain things or I can just be like this moment sucks, or this is how I'm feeling, so that I can either have it so that we'll go watch a movie together or that she knows like I'm in a headspace where you're probably just going to want to keep your distance and I need to feel this by myself. So I'm really able to communicate my feelings in a much clearer way than I was 14 years ago. I do find that when grief hits, it's almost like a pang. In a sense. It'll kind of hit you for a moment, but I don't live in it where the whole day is hard. I find some years Christmas can be really hard and the anniversary that she passed can be really hard, and then other years not so much, so I never know which one I'm going to get. So I do try to prepare myself. I won't make a ton of appointments on those days. I'll try to set myself up to leave room for those emotions, whether they come or they don't.
Speaker 2:Um, we again, when financially possible, we do go back to California fairly often. We pretty much go every two years. The pandemic obviously threw that off a little bit, but that something about being there and being near the ocean and the sunshine feels healing in itself. And I think also still being able to see the my relationship with my grandmother, still see that she's, you know, with us, seeing my daughter's relationship with her, I think also helps the grief a little bit, because we've got to. We've got to how do I say it with my mom. I guess there was like a lot of what ifs, what if she had lived? What if we had had this conversation, what if this had been different or whatever, and those what ifs will kind of live in the unknown forever. But at least with my grandmother it's like we don't have that in the same way, which is healing. It's like we've gotten to have all these memories.
Speaker 2:There were certain things like she really wanted to go to paris. We didn't make that happen before. She was probably physically unable to, but for the most part there's not a lot of um unknowns there. When she passes we'll know that she lived a full life and that um, we got to experience all the things with her where my mom, when she died and she was so young, she still had one of those oh, one day I do this. And it was kind of hard to know that those one day things that she kept putting off weren't there. So for me, if I wanted to go and do something, I made like possible for myself to do that Um, I really leaned into the fact that life is so short. So I, if it really is important to me, I don't want to put it off for like in five years I'll go on this trip, or in five years I'll prioritize that. It's like if that was something important to me, I changed the way that I looked at prioritizing it.
Speaker 1:I like that, I really do. Do you ever look at, like do you ever go back and think about, like, your mom's bucket list and try to do the things that were on it to kind of, um, you know in her memory? Or do you're like, no, I'm just gonna do mine?
Speaker 2:kind of mine, I guess in some ways. So my grandmother and her mother had gone on this big European vacation that they really loved and they had always wanted to recreate it with other women in the family. So my mom and my grandmother were actually planning this trip to take together and they didn't get to take it because my mom had passed away before. Now my grandmother and myself my daughter haven't gone, but I went by myself. So I did a 10 day trip and I went to London and Paris. So maybe subconsciously it had something to do with her and that's why it was important to go there. At the time I had just found a really good deal. So it kind of like me in my mind at that time it didn't have anything to do with it. But looking back, maybe that's why it was so important to actually choose there or why the universe had sent me there. But no, I don't really try to follow her list because at the same time her wants and needs weren't necessarily my wants and needs, so I really didn't factor that in.
Speaker 2:I know things like for me, ashes once somebody has passed don't hold not significance, because absolutely like I wouldn't just throw them in the garbage or anything, but I don't believe that the person is in ashes, if that makes sense. So I know for my mom. She really wanted um to be scattered on a beach somewhere. It was really important for my grandmother for my mom's ashes and my grandfather's ashes to stay together. So potentially, once my grandmother passes, maybe that'll be something that I do for my mom. But it hasn't ever like been held against my head of like, oh my gosh, I have to do that. I don't have those feelings.
Speaker 1:That's cool. I like the ashes thing, but I know what you mean about. I kind of can relate to that when you see the ashes like. But I know what you mean about. I kind of can relate to that when you see the ashes like cause I see everything as like a soul. I think that's how I see you know humans, I guess, or people as individuals. I see their soul rather than their being of their their, their body.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to think of what people call it their meat, their flesh shell or like you know. I'm trying to remember like people have the different terminology for our bodies. But yeah, like I just see the soul, like I never really see, like I just look into their eyes and I feel like I could just see the soul and that's what I do, what I feel. So I can totally relate to that and I never even thought of it that way.
Speaker 2:So I love that you brought that up because it just to me, I see it and yeah, I'm just like kind of processing it as I'm rambling about it well, and I think in some ways like going to a psychic in a medium, because the the psychic has talked about like that, she's essentially like an orb of love and she's in like this other place that I know she's not in the like cabinet that my grandmother keeps her in, do you know what I mean? So I think that conversation kind of has the divide on it. But I think just knowing that I really one, I don't think that she necessarily cares that she's in a cabinet with my grandfather but also knowing that we have those conversations oh, I always loved, she always loved Hawaii. She was like I would love if I could be scattered there or things like that. Just having those conversations let me off the hook of knowing is this the right decision? That she's sitting here, is this going to be a big thing?
Speaker 2:That I was very thankful both of my parents, although they had very different directives of what they wanted done afterwards that I knew so when they had passed I didn't have to be like what do I do here and worry about making the wrong decision?
Speaker 2:And for my daughter, before my mom had passed, I had made a will. I have a card in my wallet so if I was to drop dead right in front of you. You literally would call this card and they'd come up and scoop me away, do all the things, and then they would bring my daughter like an urn with my ashes, like all of that is already done and paid for. I told her like I really don't care what you do with me. If you wanted to take me to this place, this is somewhere that I liked and kind of had that one sort of uncomfortable, icky conversation, but then never have to have it again. And now she knows and it's taken care of her and I don't have to create the same situation my mom created for us with her, which was really important for me, yeah.
Speaker 1:Now I'm like thinking, I'm like, okay, now I've got to go have this tough conversation. It's not tough, just an icky, Like you said. It's just like, oh, I don't want to have this conversation.
Speaker 2:But now I'm thinking maybe I need to our parents are the ones that are going to pass away, and so, like for my grandmother, looking back, I couldn't imagine it being the other way, like I was grieving a mom that I knew at some point I was going to have to.
Speaker 2:Granted, it happened earlier than any what you would have thought, but for my grandmother grieving a daughter, I just hope that when the time comes, that I am the one to go first and and not the other way around. But it nobody likes to think about the fact that. You know, every day we get closer to not being here and it is kind of an icky, uncomfortable feeling because nobody wants to think about that. Like it's not fun, it's kind of scary. Nobody really knows, you know, whether it's that you're going to fall asleep or, you know, have one of those long drawn out illnesses which I think in some ways has also been healing, like I. Obviously my mom's death was very shocking, but I didn't have to see her suffer at all and her death would have been relatively quick. That that also brought me a lot of peace in the fact that there wasn't pain for her, that she probably had a headache. It would have sucked for a minute and then she was gone.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I feel like we could talk about this all day, but I do have one more question for you. Yes, and I ask everybody this. So what is one piece of advice that you would like to leave here with everybody?
Speaker 2:today, I would say do your estate planning, have those tough conversations. That legal document, especially if you are a parent, can be so important. My half sister was 16 when my mom had died, so she was at the point where, legally, she had a little bit of say of saying, like, whether she wanted to live with my grandmother or whether she wanted to live wherever. If you're in a situation, though, and you have young children and say, battling grandparents or battling family members that want that specific child, that child could technically be put in foster care and adopted out. If you don't have legal documents saying this is what I want with them, this is what is what the situation like and, granted, that's a worst case scenario, but that is a scenario that could happen that it's like you want to give yourself and your family the power to make the decisions that you would have wanted and not leave it up to a judge or the government.
Speaker 2:Dying is a big business, and I think spending that I think it's like three hundred dollars a person, or six hundred dollars if you're married for a will um can save your family years of time that they don't have to grieve for you, but could also save them like thousands and thousands of dollars of you know, fighting to make sure that they can do your taxes, or paying fees for not doing your taxes, or being able to sell your house, if you have it, or your vehicles, or having to pay to do all those things.
Speaker 2:That a will is so much more important than we think it is. So I think that would be my best advice and really, if you go through a tough situation and people show you who they are, it's okay to believe them and it's okay that just because, like, say, in my situation, just because they're family and I got a lot of flack for this, um but it's okay that, if they don't continue on in your life like, it's okay to cut toxic people off, if that's for your well-being or your family's well-being, and that you don't have to feel like you're the bad person, um, and that it's okay to question if you're in a rough place, like why those people aren't there for you, and if you're okay with that, um, and to really just let yourself off the hook.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great advice, thank you, thank you. Well, thank you so much, ashley, for sharing your story with us, and I really appreciate your vulnerability and courage. I know you know sometimes talking about these things can bring up a lot of things as well, so I do appreciate, you know, you opening up and sharing your story with us, so thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me on. It has been a great discussion, thank you.
