Latest / She Rises with Ashy & Tijana / 159. Losing a Child, Luna 🌈 Jess’s Story of Heartbreak & Healing❤️‍🩹

Transcript

159. Losing a Child, Luna 🌈 Jess’s Story of Heartbreak & Healing❤️‍🩹 · She Rises with Ashy & Tijana

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Apogey Production. Trigger warning.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: This episode today includes a deep, long conversation that covers
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: grief loss of a child.
• 0:16
  Speaker 3: It contains graphic descriptions of the series of events.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: This may be triggering for anyone who has past trauma
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: or has experienced any of the above. Listener discretion is advised.
• 0:28
  Speaker 4: Welcome to the She Rises Podcast. I'm Ashy and I'm Tiana.
• 0:31
  Speaker 4: This podcast is about female empowerment.
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: And encouraging you to be your biggest, boldest, and most
• 0:36
  Speaker 3: authentic version of yourself.
• 0:38
  Speaker 4: We help you shed the shame, grow to a new level.
• 0:40
  Speaker 4: We're gonna laugh, cry, and talk about the topics everyone
• 0:43
  Speaker 4: else is too afraid to talk about.
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: Get ready for your next level of self.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: Hello everybody, Welcome back to She Rises Podcast.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: We have a very beautiful special guest on today and
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: I've actually been trying to get you on the podcast
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: for quite a while. We have You're one incredible woman
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: who I have looked up to for a very long time,
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: and I think what you're doing with your story and
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: the impact you're making on the world is so beautiful.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: I've had a huge impact on my life, So welcome
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: to the podcast.
• 1:07
  Speaker 5: Jess. Thanks for being here today. Thank you so much
• 1:09
  Speaker 5: for having me. Both of you, I really appreciate being
• 1:11
  Speaker 5: here today.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: We're going to be diving into a lot about your
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: story and about your beautiful little girl, Luna. So can
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: you take us back and tell us about your daughter Luna,
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: her light, her energy, what she loved.
• 1:22
  Speaker 6: Of course, I would love to tell you all about Lou.
• 1:24
  Speaker 5: Lou was three and a half years old when she
• 1:26
  Speaker 5: was Earth'side, and she was absolute magic. She had poor
• 1:30
  Speaker 5: some white skin, right red hair, and beautiful blue eyes,
• 1:34
  Speaker 5: so freaking cute, gorgeous, very different. And it's funny actually
• 1:37
  Speaker 5: because my partner is Maury Cook Island, so I was
• 1:40
  Speaker 5: assuming that.
• 1:41
  Speaker 6: I was going to have like this caramel baby.
• 1:42
  Speaker 5: True, I have fake tan's my entire life. So I'm like,
• 1:45
  Speaker 5: surely when I have children, they've got to be ten.
• 1:47
  Speaker 5: They're never going to have to worry about fake tan.
• 1:49
  Speaker 5: Absolutely not. Lou was like white as a ghost when
• 1:51
  Speaker 5: she came out. I thought she was legit albino. She
• 1:56
  Speaker 5: had this bright red hair. It was always quite funny
• 1:58
  Speaker 5: because when we're out and about, I'm fair with blonde hair,
• 2:01
  Speaker 5: and Timmy's got dark features everywhere. So when he used
• 2:04
  Speaker 5: to carry around was quite funny because like she wasn't
• 2:07
  Speaker 5: he but Lou, like most three and a half year old,
• 2:11
  Speaker 5: she had this real magic about her. She loved like
• 2:13
  Speaker 5: fairies and unicorns, beautiful rainbows.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: Also known as lunicorns.
• 2:18
  Speaker 5: Now, yeah, she had this really great magic. And I
• 2:21
  Speaker 5: feel like she's also one of those children. We had
• 2:24
  Speaker 5: friends that never wanted children, and they were quite happy
• 2:26
  Speaker 5: with that, and then whenever they'd spend say a couple
• 2:28
  Speaker 5: of days with us with Lou, they would turn around
• 2:31
  Speaker 5: and say, you know what, Jess, if we have children
• 2:33
  Speaker 5: like Lou, we want to have kids. And our friends
• 2:35
  Speaker 5: have had kids since Lou, which is really nice, and
• 2:39
  Speaker 5: like we would be invited to adult only events and
• 2:42
  Speaker 5: it would be like no children allowed, but you guys
• 2:44
  Speaker 5: can bring loot. Everyone loved her, which was nice. She
• 2:48
  Speaker 5: was into dancing, singing, all of them.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: Normal three and a half year old yes, which was
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: so lovely. I love that. So is it coming on
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: three years since she grew home?
• 2:59
  Speaker 5: It's what are we now? We're twenty five? So she
• 3:01
  Speaker 5: left in December twenty twenty twenty, so I think it's
• 3:05
  Speaker 5: all years this year, this year, So if we take
• 3:08
  Speaker 5: her back a little bit in December twenty twenty, which
• 3:11
  Speaker 5: was peak COVID times on the seventeenth of December. It
• 3:15
  Speaker 5: was really strange. Actually, I've never had issues with my
• 3:17
  Speaker 5: heart before. I had really bad heart palpitations, and as
• 3:23
  Speaker 5: women are, we don't really think about it too much.
• 3:25
  Speaker 5: I was just like getting on with my day and
• 3:27
  Speaker 5: my left hand started getting tingly. It fully went numb.
• 3:31
  Speaker 5: It was numb for almost a day, and then I
• 3:33
  Speaker 5: went and had a big sleep, and then Tim got home.
• 3:36
  Speaker 6: He's like, what's going on. I'm like, I just don't
• 3:37
  Speaker 6: feel good. Something's not right.
• 3:39
  Speaker 5: I got on with it, and the next day I
• 3:41
  Speaker 5: went and got my hair done and I was literally
• 3:44
  Speaker 5: dragging my arm around because it was so numb. And
• 3:47
  Speaker 5: there was a paramedic that was in the chair next
• 3:49
  Speaker 5: to me and she's like, yes, it sounds like you're
• 3:51
  Speaker 5: having like a stroke, almost like a heart attack.
• 3:53
  Speaker 6: I think you should go to the doctors.
• 3:55
  Speaker 5: And because it was so close to Christmas, I was like, oh,
• 3:57
  Speaker 5: I don't, like, I'm sure I'll be fine.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: I went to the doctors.
• 4:01
  Speaker 5: My resting heart was at one hundred and eighty eight,
• 4:03
  Speaker 5: which is super high.
• 4:05
  Speaker 6: It's about sixty generally.
• 4:07
  Speaker 5: I was rushed straight to hospital and I was in
• 4:09
  Speaker 5: hospital for three days. So with this was really tough
• 4:12
  Speaker 5: for me because I missed out on the last three
• 4:14
  Speaker 5: days of Lou's life, so I was in hospital for
• 4:17
  Speaker 5: those three days. Lou was coming up to visit me
• 4:19
  Speaker 5: with Timmy and we had a seven month old baby
• 4:21
  Speaker 5: at the time as well, and they had no idea
• 4:24
  Speaker 5: what happened to my heart. And it has been totally
• 4:27
  Speaker 5: fine ever since. The morning of the twentieth. I woke
• 4:32
  Speaker 5: up to six miss calls from my partner on my
• 4:34
  Speaker 5: mobile when I was in hospital.
• 4:36
  Speaker 6: And when I called him back, he told me.
• 4:38
  Speaker 5: In total panic, obviously, that Lou had been struck by
• 4:41
  Speaker 5: a car outside our house. She was put into an
• 4:44
  Speaker 5: induced coma on the side of the road, and from
• 4:47
  Speaker 5: that phone call, my life has never been the same
• 4:50
  Speaker 5: ever since. Lou was rushed to the Gold Coast University
• 4:54
  Speaker 5: Hospital because that's where I was, and from then on in.
• 4:58
  Speaker 6: It was crazy. It was boom, boom boom.
• 5:01
  Speaker 5: I was on an ECG at the time, so I'd
• 5:03
  Speaker 5: had to rip everything off run down to emergency to
• 5:06
  Speaker 5: try and meet Lou there. When she arrived, my whole
• 5:10
  Speaker 5: world was like warped. Time stood still. Everything you kind
• 5:13
  Speaker 5: of imagine like in a movie. That's what it was like.
• 5:16
  Speaker 5: It was like watching from an outside, like a horror
• 5:19
  Speaker 5: movie bit you and your family are the main characters.
• 5:23
  Speaker 5: And Lou was in a coma for three days and
• 5:27
  Speaker 5: her injuries were so significant there was no recovery or
• 5:32
  Speaker 5: comeback from that, so unfortunately we had to turn her
• 5:34
  Speaker 5: life support off three days before Christmas. It's been a
• 5:39
  Speaker 5: devastating loss to try live with the last four and
• 5:42
  Speaker 5: a half years since.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: I cannot even imagine.
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: It's something no parent should ever ever have to endure
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: that kind of pain.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: Yep, yeah, yeah, it was awful.
• 5:52
  Speaker 5: My partner. We both grieve over the exact same child,
• 5:56
  Speaker 5: but grief so differently.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: That's interesting. I'd love you to talk about that for.
• 6:00
  Speaker 6: Me because I wasn't there at the time of the accident.
• 6:02
  Speaker 5: Tim was home at the time, so his grief is
• 6:04
  Speaker 5: an his trauma is so different to mine. Even at
• 6:08
  Speaker 5: the hospital, for example, he was very traumatized, very emotional.
• 6:12
  Speaker 5: I remember at one point in the hospital Timmy was
• 6:15
  Speaker 5: like breaking down and screaming and it was really full on,
• 6:18
  Speaker 5: and I remember shaking his shoulders saying like snap out
• 6:22
  Speaker 5: of it, like this isn't about us. We have our
• 6:24
  Speaker 5: whole life to grieve Lou or to grieve whatever this
• 6:27
  Speaker 5: situation may be.
• 6:28
  Speaker 6: We need to lock in, you know, we're her parents.
• 6:30
  Speaker 5: We need to make sure we can like have clarity
• 6:33
  Speaker 5: here and do what we can to support Lou the
• 6:35
  Speaker 5: best way we know how. And it was really quite
• 6:39
  Speaker 5: powerful doing that because when we went I made the
• 6:42
  Speaker 5: rule that you know, anyone that was in that room
• 6:44
  Speaker 5: with Lou, we were positive everything we spoke about. The
• 6:48
  Speaker 5: doctors and the nurses weren't allowed to discuss any of
• 6:51
  Speaker 5: Lou's injuries or any sort of medical terms in the
• 6:55
  Speaker 5: presence of Luna. Everything was to be spoken outside. And
• 6:59
  Speaker 5: I feel like that really started a positive healing journey,
• 7:02
  Speaker 5: if you can say that, and inverted Commas positive healing
• 7:05
  Speaker 5: journey for us and our community because we knew that
• 7:08
  Speaker 5: we were there for Lou and anything we were doing
• 7:12
  Speaker 5: was to try bring out a positive outcome or even
• 7:15
  Speaker 5: just to ensure that her life was celebrated in the
• 7:17
  Speaker 5: best way that we could.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you've done a beautiful job of that. I've
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: heard there's seven stages of grief. Do you agree with that?
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: Have you heard of that? Did you find you went
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: through a multitude of stages. He's still going through that. Yeah,
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: I've read a lot of books on grief.
• 7:34
  Speaker 6: I saw a therapist a month after Lou passed.
• 7:37
  Speaker 5: It was funny. Actually, I used to listen to a
• 7:39
  Speaker 5: lot of like deep trauma podcasts, and I remember listening
• 7:43
  Speaker 5: to one and she spoke about how a therapist on
• 7:46
  Speaker 5: the Gold Coast saved her life.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 7:48
  Speaker 5: So when we lost Lou, I said to Timmy, we
• 7:51
  Speaker 5: need to reach out to this therapist because I knew
• 7:53
  Speaker 5: she'd saved Ash's life. And I reached out to her.
• 7:56
  Speaker 5: And it's so funny because I can say I was
• 7:59
  Speaker 5: thirty when this happened with Lou, and my first thirty
• 8:03
  Speaker 5: years of life was great. I had like a beautiful childhood.
• 8:07
  Speaker 5: My parents were amazing. I've got three siblings that we
• 8:10
  Speaker 5: all have a lovely relationship. I never had any loss
• 8:13
  Speaker 5: or any trauma in my life, and so when this happened,
• 8:17
  Speaker 5: the worst that ever happened to me was like our
• 8:19
  Speaker 5: family dog had passed away. My first love broke my
• 8:22
  Speaker 5: heart and I could never get over it. You know,
• 8:24
  Speaker 5: there was never I never had to overcome anything. And
• 8:28
  Speaker 5: so when I lost Lou, I was like, oh my God, Like,
• 8:30
  Speaker 5: how am I actually going to do this? How can
• 8:32
  Speaker 5: I physically survive this sort of unfathomable loss? And so
• 8:37
  Speaker 5: I thought, I need to go to a therapist, because
• 8:39
  Speaker 5: surely they're just going to give me this magic conversation
• 8:42
  Speaker 5: or maybe this magic pill, and I'm going to walk
• 8:44
  Speaker 5: out of there and feel.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: A million bucks.
• 8:47
  Speaker 5: So I booked us in to see my therapist, and
• 8:50
  Speaker 5: when I walked out or pretty much crawled out, I
• 8:53
  Speaker 5: still felt the same as what I felt like when
• 8:56
  Speaker 5: I walked in, and I think that was like a
• 8:59
  Speaker 5: real not a rude shock for me, but I realized, like, wow,
• 9:02
  Speaker 5: I'm going to actually have to do the work here.
• 9:05
  Speaker 6: There's no quick fix to this.
• 9:06
  Speaker 5: Grief is so different for everybody, even in that first
• 9:10
  Speaker 5: month it's quite early.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: It's your shock, right, Yeah, you're.
• 9:14
  Speaker 5: Living off nothing, You're in survival mode, minimal sleep, no
• 9:17
  Speaker 5: new truth, drenaline, adrenaline one hundred percent. And I think,
• 9:21
  Speaker 5: you know, people say, you know, minute by minute, hour
• 9:24
  Speaker 5: by hour, and it sounds cliche, but it's actually true.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: Ye.
• 9:27
  Speaker 5: You know, even the thought I remember in those really
• 9:29
  Speaker 5: early stages, the thought of waking up another day without
• 9:34
  Speaker 5: her was really horrifying, like a night wake up from
• 9:38
  Speaker 5: no way. And to add to the mix, I had
• 9:40
  Speaker 5: a seven month old newborn that needed me. We were
• 9:44
  Speaker 5: breastfeeding at the time. It was a lot of weight
• 9:46
  Speaker 5: to carry. And then we started therapy a lot and
• 9:51
  Speaker 5: things change, you know, in the early stages it's about
• 9:54
  Speaker 5: survival and then it changes to anger. Even like, say,
• 9:59
  Speaker 5: twelve months afterwards, I was still googling stem research in
• 10:02
  Speaker 5: the brain. So Luna had severe brain damage and she
• 10:06
  Speaker 5: had a civid spinal cord, which are the only two
• 10:10
  Speaker 5: things that you can't fix on a human body, which
• 10:12
  Speaker 5: is wild. Lou had no other injuries, She didn't have
• 10:15
  Speaker 5: any broken bones. She had a couple of phrases on
• 10:18
  Speaker 5: her knees, on her elbows, and that's it, which is
• 10:21
  Speaker 5: wild because when you think of an impact on a
• 10:23
  Speaker 5: car in a three and a half hour, you would
• 10:26
  Speaker 5: assume that it would be a lot worse. So I
• 10:28
  Speaker 5: feel like for me that was quite hard to comprehend
• 10:31
  Speaker 5: as well, because when I was looking at my daughter,
• 10:34
  Speaker 5: she looked okay. And when they're telling me, Jess, we
• 10:38
  Speaker 5: can't do anything, we can't help anymore, I'm thinking, well,
• 10:40
  Speaker 5: this is weird, Like you know, I've heard people being
• 10:43
  Speaker 5: in a coma for three weeks and then they come
• 10:45
  Speaker 5: out of it and they're fine. Or she's only three
• 10:48
  Speaker 5: years old. Can teach her how to walk and talk again? Yes,
• 10:51
  Speaker 5: you know, surely there's ways. Our brains, especially in our children,
• 10:54
  Speaker 5: they're constantly growing. Surely there's ways we can help. Yeah.
• 10:57
  Speaker 5: So even twelve months afterwards, I was still researching STEM
• 11:01
  Speaker 5: research and how to fix her. There was physically no
• 11:04
  Speaker 5: way to get her back anymore. So I feel like
• 11:07
  Speaker 5: that's a part of the grief process because you're in
• 11:10
  Speaker 5: survival mode. You've got this devastating loss, and then you're thinking,
• 11:14
  Speaker 5: hold on, I'll try help this way. There is no help,
• 11:17
  Speaker 5: there's no way. But I always like to look at
• 11:19
  Speaker 5: it as like an analogy, where grief is like I
• 11:23
  Speaker 5: look at it as waves instead of stages. So for me,
• 11:26
  Speaker 5: there's times where I'm like, I'm drowning in grief and
• 11:29
  Speaker 5: it feels so heavy and I'm so overwhelmed and i
• 11:32
  Speaker 5: don't know how I'm going to get through this day
• 11:34
  Speaker 5: or this week, and then I think, hold on a
• 11:36
  Speaker 5: sec all I have to do is focus on today Tomorrow.
• 11:39
  Speaker 5: When I wake up, it's a new day. I'll focus
• 11:42
  Speaker 5: on tomorrow when it comes. I'm not worrying about the future.
• 11:45
  Speaker 5: I'm worrying about just working on today and making sure
• 11:47
  Speaker 5: I'm okay.
• 11:49
  Speaker 6: I look at it, it's like I'm swimming to the shore.
• 11:51
  Speaker 5: The waves are hitting me really hard at the moment,
• 11:53
  Speaker 5: and then when I feel better, I'm going to swim
• 11:55
  Speaker 5: to the shore and I'm going to get a break.
• 11:57
  Speaker 5: Because you can't physically feel that much pain forever.
• 12:01
  Speaker 6: There has to be a way out.
• 12:02
  Speaker 5: And I remember in the early stages, and I feel
• 12:05
  Speaker 5: like this is such a like terrible thing. If anyone's
• 12:08
  Speaker 5: listening to say to someone, you know, I'd be like,
• 12:10
  Speaker 5: am I ever going to feel happiness again? And people
• 12:12
  Speaker 5: were like, I don't know. I feel like you're going
• 12:14
  Speaker 5: to feel this heavy forever. It's like, no, You're not
• 12:17
  Speaker 5: going to feel this heavy forever. It's so cruel. How
• 12:19
  Speaker 5: can we feel that for our whole life? That's not
• 12:22
  Speaker 5: the way life goes.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 12:24
  Speaker 5: There came a time for me where my mentality really shifted,
• 12:28
  Speaker 5: and that was one night I was laying on the couch.
• 12:31
  Speaker 6: I didn't have much sleep for the first like six months.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: I could imagine I.
• 12:34
  Speaker 6: Was lucky that I had my community. My sister and
• 12:37
  Speaker 6: my twin.
• 12:37
  Speaker 5: Brother moved in with us to the first six months,
• 12:40
  Speaker 5: Timmy's cousin Uppy lived with us as well. My best
• 12:42
  Speaker 5: friend Ash also lived with us, so the house was full,
• 12:45
  Speaker 5: which was lovely. I used to call it the invisible roster.
• 12:49
  Speaker 5: So my friends would be coming and going. They had
• 12:51
  Speaker 5: like a secret chat, dropping off meals, and my mom
• 12:54
  Speaker 5: would come once a week and clean my house, and
• 12:57
  Speaker 5: my son was always looked after. Two of my girlfriend's
• 12:59
  Speaker 5: breastfed my son for the first three weeks, which was amazing,
• 13:03
  Speaker 5: so beautiful. And when we're in hospital with Lou, I
• 13:06
  Speaker 5: would look over and my girlfriend's feeding my son and
• 13:10
  Speaker 5: I love it. There was no it was just like, yes, yes,
• 13:17
  Speaker 5: we say it takes a village to raise a baby,
• 13:19
  Speaker 5: do we mean that in all ass boxs of our
• 13:21
  Speaker 5: life right? If there's a way that you can jump in,
• 13:24
  Speaker 5: jump in. I feel like with this invisible roster, our
• 13:28
  Speaker 5: community is what lifted us through and carried us through.
• 13:32
  Speaker 5: So one night I was laying on the couch and
• 13:34
  Speaker 5: I couldn't sleep. Timmy was asleep, Mars was asleep, and
• 13:38
  Speaker 5: I remember feeling so uncomfortable in my own skin because
• 13:42
  Speaker 5: the grief. I felt like it was truly eating me
• 13:44
  Speaker 5: from the inside out, and I couldn't escape it. I
• 13:47
  Speaker 5: remember my skin feeling so itchy. I was like itching
• 13:50
  Speaker 5: my skin and like pulling my hair almost to feel
• 13:54
  Speaker 5: a bit of pain on the outside because my pain
• 13:57
  Speaker 5: was so bad in the inside. I remember laying there
• 14:01
  Speaker 5: and just like screaming to the universe, and Timmy ran
• 14:04
  Speaker 5: out and I was like, I cannot physically feel like
• 14:07
  Speaker 5: this forever, I said. I was having this conversation with Timmy,
• 14:10
  Speaker 5: and I was like, I don't want to live anymore.
• 14:12
  Speaker 5: I can't handle this pain for one day longer. And
• 14:15
  Speaker 5: I remember saying to him, I cannot survive this. I
• 14:19
  Speaker 5: was begging him. I was saying to him, I want
• 14:21
  Speaker 5: to have a pack here. I want you to stay
• 14:23
  Speaker 5: with Marzie, and I want you to look after him
• 14:25
  Speaker 5: and give him the life that he deserves. And I
• 14:28
  Speaker 5: want you to let me go and me be with
• 14:30
  Speaker 5: Luna so I can parent her up there and you
• 14:33
  Speaker 5: can parent him down here. And of course, like it
• 14:36
  Speaker 5: sounds like such a wild conversation, it was so true.
• 14:40
  Speaker 5: We're a team. You stay with Marzie, I'll stay with Luna.
• 14:44
  Speaker 5: We have had these conversations on how you know we
• 14:46
  Speaker 5: want our life to unfold for our children. I trust
• 14:49
  Speaker 5: you with him, I'm going to go with lou Let
• 14:51
  Speaker 5: me be with her, and I'll take the reins up there.
• 14:54
  Speaker 5: And he was obviously in panic station. He's like, Jess,
• 14:57
  Speaker 5: you can't give up. We need to work on this together.
• 14:59
  Speaker 5: Within like I reckon half an hour, my whole family's
• 15:03
  Speaker 5: at the house. He's obviously sent the y SA tex
• 15:05
  Speaker 5: saying like help. I knew back up. It was so
• 15:08
  Speaker 5: bizarre because I've never struggled with mental health in my life,
• 15:12
  Speaker 5: and I just felt like there was no way out.
• 15:15
  Speaker 5: I couldn't see any happiness in the horizon at all.
• 15:18
  Speaker 5: And my sister came over and we're best friends, my
• 15:22
  Speaker 5: sister and I, and she was saying to me, Jess,
• 15:25
  Speaker 5: I want you to give me twenty four hours. She said,
• 15:27
  Speaker 5: I'm going to book you an appointment with a medium,
• 15:29
  Speaker 5: which is a phone call to heaven. And if this
• 15:31
  Speaker 5: doesn't change your outlook, she goes, I promise, I'll let
• 15:35
  Speaker 5: you do what you got to do, which is crazy
• 15:37
  Speaker 5: for a sister to say that, right, but I think
• 15:40
  Speaker 5: she had so much confidence that she could help even
• 15:43
  Speaker 5: actually when my family were having these conversations, it was
• 15:46
  Speaker 5: going in one ear and straight out the other.
• 15:48
  Speaker 6: I was off. I was switched off. I was totally numb.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: You're there, but you weren't there exactly right, lights on,
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: but no one's home.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: No one was home.
• 15:55
  Speaker 5: And I'd already made my mind up. I was like,
• 15:57
  Speaker 5: I physically cannot continue this life anymore. I don't believe
• 16:01
  Speaker 5: in a god as such, but I've always been quite spiritual. Yeah,
• 16:06
  Speaker 5: I believe in a higher power and a bit of magic.
• 16:08
  Speaker 5: And I used to always say to Tim, you know,
• 16:11
  Speaker 5: green tree frogs are really great. You know, they're like
• 16:13
  Speaker 5: a positive energy and they like a spirit guide and
• 16:15
  Speaker 5: things like that. And I remember sitting on the couch
• 16:18
  Speaker 5: and there was this green tree frog.
• 16:20
  Speaker 6: It was literally like the size of a possum.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: It was huge. What it wanted to be seen by? Yeah?
• 16:26
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it was bigger than a toad, you know how
• 16:27
  Speaker 5: told Yeah, it was like double your massive toad that
• 16:31
  Speaker 5: you've ever seen.
• 16:33
  Speaker 6: And it was sitting on our glass door right in
• 16:35
  Speaker 6: front of us.
• 16:36
  Speaker 5: I've always like tried to give it my bit of
• 16:38
  Speaker 5: my woo woo, and I feel like it's always never
• 16:40
  Speaker 5: really catched where this moment, he's like, babe, look, He's like,
• 16:44
  Speaker 5: look at the green tree frog. He's like, lun his here,
• 16:46
  Speaker 5: Loun is here, and in the same breath. It kind
• 16:48
  Speaker 5: of brought a bit of light because I was like one,
• 16:50
  Speaker 5: I was like impressed because I'm like he's listening.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: Magic gets catching on. You know.
• 16:55
  Speaker 5: Timmy is from New Zealand, where there's no insects, there's
• 16:59
  Speaker 5: no like snakes, there's New Zealand. Yeah, so he gets
• 17:02
  Speaker 5: frightened over a grasshopper, so he will never touch a frog.
• 17:06
  Speaker 5: And he's like, I'll pick the frog up, you can
• 17:08
  Speaker 5: sid it on the couch. He's like really in on
• 17:10
  Speaker 5: it because he's like desperate at the moment alive. Yeah,
• 17:13
  Speaker 5: He's like I need to do if I need to
• 17:14
  Speaker 5: pick up this frog toad looking thing, I'm going to
• 17:17
  Speaker 5: pick it up and put it on her lap. And
• 17:20
  Speaker 5: I'll never forget that frog because it gave me a
• 17:23
  Speaker 5: bit of thought that like Lou's like, I'm right here, mum,
• 17:26
  Speaker 5: I don't have to go anywhere. Yeah, I'm right here.
• 17:28
  Speaker 5: I know that life is different for us now, but
• 17:31
  Speaker 5: we're still here. And I went to bed that night
• 17:34
  Speaker 5: and tim slept with me with his legs wrapped around
• 17:37
  Speaker 5: my legs like he was not letting go all night.
• 17:40
  Speaker 5: And I woke up in the morning and my sister
• 17:42
  Speaker 5: had called at six am, which it's so random for her.
• 17:47
  Speaker 5: I'm like, it's almost like she'd shit the bed because
• 17:49
  Speaker 5: she does not wake up early. She is a night out.
• 17:53
  Speaker 5: Everyone was on lookout, everyone was nervous about what's going down.
• 17:56
  Speaker 5: So she called me early and said, I've got a
• 18:00
  Speaker 5: phone call to Heaven for you tonight at eight o'clock
• 18:02
  Speaker 5: with a lady named Hayley, And she honestly saved my life.
• 18:06
  Speaker 6: Her name is Haley the Medium online and I.
• 18:09
  Speaker 5: Turned up at her house and she was this beautiful
• 18:11
  Speaker 5: Kiwi lady as well. It was meant to me for
• 18:14
  Speaker 5: an hour. She sat with me for three hours. She
• 18:16
  Speaker 5: knew everything about Luna's accident. She knew everything about Luna's injuries,
• 18:20
  Speaker 5: about the driver, about my family, how we reathing. She
• 18:24
  Speaker 5: knew absolutely everything. And she taught me about soul contracts.
• 18:28
  Speaker 5: Do you guys know much?
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah about them?
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: Yeahah, I'd love to hearing your words and for anyone
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: who's listening.
• 18:33
  Speaker 5: Yes, So this is what she said to me, and
• 18:35
  Speaker 5: it changed my life. My Luna Bear had a lisp,
• 18:38
  Speaker 5: and she was talking to me with a lisp. So
• 18:41
  Speaker 5: she's saying, Luna's saying this, and she was talking like
• 18:44
  Speaker 5: her normal voice, and then when she would say what
• 18:47
  Speaker 5: Luna's saying.
• 18:48
  Speaker 6: She would say it with a lisp.
• 18:49
  Speaker 5: Wow. I was like, oh wild, no one would know that.
• 18:52
  Speaker 5: And I've never met this woman in my life. And
• 18:55
  Speaker 5: she said to me, Luna's nudging you, saying, Mama, Mama,
• 18:59
  Speaker 5: you knew this was going to happen. This was part
• 19:01
  Speaker 5: of the plan. Remember you signed the contract. And I'm like,
• 19:04
  Speaker 5: I'm like in my head, I'm like, I didn't sign
• 19:06
  Speaker 5: no contract, Like why would I sign this contract? And
• 19:09
  Speaker 5: then she was telling me that Luna and I were
• 19:11
  Speaker 5: twin sisters in our previous life, mother and daughter in
• 19:14
  Speaker 5: this life, and then we have one more life together
• 19:16
  Speaker 5: after this Wow, like wow. And she told me all
• 19:21
  Speaker 5: about soul contracts and then when we come to Earth,
• 19:24
  Speaker 5: we get a contract and our life is already planned out.
• 19:27
  Speaker 5: When they say like everything happens for a reason, it
• 19:30
  Speaker 5: truly does. With lose accident, if it wasn't going to
• 19:33
  Speaker 5: happen that day, it would have happened another day, or
• 19:36
  Speaker 5: maybe it would have happened. We used to go to
• 19:37
  Speaker 5: Wett and Wild three times a week after Kindie. It's like,
• 19:40
  Speaker 5: would it have happened then in front of the whole
• 19:42
  Speaker 5: of the Gold Coast and it would have been more
• 19:44
  Speaker 5: traumatizing for everybody else. It's like, when it's your time,
• 19:47
  Speaker 5: it's your time, and you can't change that.
• 19:50
  Speaker 6: You've already signed that contract.
• 19:52
  Speaker 5: We come in and we leave and we just don't
• 19:54
  Speaker 5: know when, and all of us it's the same.
• 19:56
  Speaker 6: Like for me, I'm a twin so I've got a
• 19:58
  Speaker 6: twin brother, so wow.
• 19:59
  Speaker 5: I always say like I came in with a buddy,
• 20:02
  Speaker 5: but nine times out of ten, I'm leaving alone.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 20:05
  Speaker 5: I talk about like time is borrowed, it's not promised,
• 20:08
  Speaker 5: and it's so true. And I think when I left
• 20:11
  Speaker 5: that night, I felt like I had a little bit
• 20:14
  Speaker 5: of life in me again, because I was like, Okay, well,
• 20:17
  Speaker 5: I can kind of comprehend what's going on here. I
• 20:20
  Speaker 5: can think about this as women, we are trying to
• 20:23
  Speaker 5: piece all these puzzle together. And because I wasn't there
• 20:26
  Speaker 5: on the day, there were so many unanswered questions for me,
• 20:30
  Speaker 5: and because my partner was so traumatized when I would
• 20:33
  Speaker 5: ask him things. It was always one word replies or
• 20:36
  Speaker 5: like as females, I need to play.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: By pales every day. Detail.
• 20:42
  Speaker 6: Tell me what she ate in the morning, what was
• 20:43
  Speaker 6: she wearing, this, this, and that?
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: Where were you? Where was this person? What was happening?
• 20:48
  Speaker 5: Tell me what they said to you, Like I really
• 20:50
  Speaker 5: need but I didn't have that, So that was really
• 20:53
  Speaker 5: hard for me to comprehend what.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: Was happening, like I need more, I need more. I
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: do Yeah.
• 20:59
  Speaker 5: I felt like after that conversation with Haley, it changed
• 21:02
  Speaker 5: my whole perspective of life as a whole. So what
• 21:05
  Speaker 5: I did was I came back to my house that
• 21:07
  Speaker 5: night and I thought, I've got two options here. I
• 21:10
  Speaker 5: give up, and then I have a little boy that
• 21:13
  Speaker 5: forever is going to think that he wasn't loved enough
• 21:15
  Speaker 5: to keep his mommy, which was too much for me
• 21:18
  Speaker 5: to carry. And he deserved his mum there, he deserved
• 21:22
  Speaker 5: the best version of me. So the only other option
• 21:25
  Speaker 5: to that was to dig deep and fine purpose. So
• 21:28
  Speaker 5: I sat there until about three in the morning and
• 21:31
  Speaker 5: wrote a bucket list. And I thought, I'm going to
• 21:33
  Speaker 5: write a bucket list of everything I want to do
• 21:36
  Speaker 5: in this lifetime. I also wrote an end date because
• 21:40
  Speaker 5: I thought I wasn't out of the clear. I was
• 21:42
  Speaker 5: still struggling, right, but I thought, I'm going to give
• 21:45
  Speaker 5: myself ten years. I'm an angel numbers.
• 21:47
  Speaker 6: Person, so I said, I feel like it's in my
• 21:49
  Speaker 6: phone somewhere.
• 21:50
  Speaker 5: It's like eleven eleven thirty three, twenty thirty three, and
• 21:53
  Speaker 5: I'm like, that's my end date.
• 21:54
  Speaker 6: That's what I'm going to go to.
• 21:56
  Speaker 5: And it's so funny because I wrote this bucket list
• 21:59
  Speaker 5: and I thought, I'm going to set my son up
• 22:02
  Speaker 5: for the best life.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: So he's okay, I'm.
• 22:03
  Speaker 5: Going to give him everything that I've got, and I'm
• 22:05
  Speaker 5: going to promise Lou that I'm going to get to
• 22:07
  Speaker 5: her when the time is right. And I went to
• 22:10
  Speaker 5: my therapist a couple of days later and I told
• 22:13
  Speaker 5: her about what i'd done. But I'd also told my
• 22:15
  Speaker 5: mum prior that I wrote this end date and stuff,
• 22:17
  Speaker 5: and she was crying and she was like, oh my god,
• 22:20
  Speaker 5: this is terrible, Like what do you mean you wrote
• 22:22
  Speaker 5: an end date? When I told my therapist, she goes
• 22:25
  Speaker 5: to me, that's amazing, and I said, pardon.
• 22:27
  Speaker 6: She's like thank you.
• 22:28
  Speaker 5: She's like, that means I've got ten years to work
• 22:30
  Speaker 5: with you to get your head space in the right way.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: And I was like, yeah, that's why we have therapists.
• 22:36
  Speaker 5: And I was like, Yo, what a great acun deal
• 22:39
  Speaker 5: where my family's like, oh my god, this is awful again. Yeah,
• 22:43
  Speaker 5: ten years, we need a value intervention. Yeah.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, everyone's phone's going off.
• 22:47
  Speaker 5: But for my therapist, mon she's like, no, no, I've
• 22:51
  Speaker 5: got ten years. I can work with this.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 22:53
  Speaker 5: And I feel like Haley saved my life with that
• 22:56
  Speaker 5: one conversation. And then I went and saw Monique weekly,
• 23:00
  Speaker 5: sometimes twice a week. We had couples counseling, individual counseling,
• 23:04
  Speaker 5: and it was exactly what I needed. But I also
• 23:07
  Speaker 5: needed to realize that there was no quick fixed to grief.
• 23:11
  Speaker 5: No one was going to give me this magic wand
• 23:13
  Speaker 5: and heal me. I had to do the physical work,
• 23:16
  Speaker 5: and that work sometimes was really hard, when other days
• 23:20
  Speaker 5: it was just waking up and having a shower. And
• 23:24
  Speaker 5: I feel like that's really important because you don't need
• 23:27
  Speaker 5: to just keep going and going. And life is about
• 23:30
  Speaker 5: being in this constant rat race.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 23:32
  Speaker 5: We're always in a rush. We're always what's next, what's next?
• 23:35
  Speaker 5: This is coming up? We have to be ready by
• 23:36
  Speaker 5: this time, and I felt like for me, it's like
• 23:39
  Speaker 5: was such a reminder that time is borrowed and now
• 23:42
  Speaker 5: I just run my own race. Sometimes I'm late nine
• 23:45
  Speaker 5: times out of dead.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: I'm just really late.
• 23:47
  Speaker 5: But that's as well because I'm like, I don't want
• 23:49
  Speaker 5: to start my day like in a negative sort of emotion,
• 23:52
  Speaker 5: or I don't want to feel stressed, because really all
• 23:55
  Speaker 5: this extra stuff it means nothing, you know. And I
• 23:58
  Speaker 5: think even there was times where I was like begging
• 24:01
  Speaker 5: the universe for Lunar back. I'm like, you can have everything,
• 24:04
  Speaker 5: take my car, take my house, shave my head. You know,
• 24:06
  Speaker 5: for us women to say like shave our head, it
• 24:08
  Speaker 5: sounds funny, but it's like, take our whole identity, give
• 24:11
  Speaker 5: me lou back. I'd rather live under a bridge and
• 24:13
  Speaker 5: a tent than live this life if I have my
• 24:16
  Speaker 5: family with me and everyone's safe. And I think that's
• 24:19
  Speaker 5: what really prospective and purpose comes hand in hand, because
• 24:23
  Speaker 5: you can have everything, but if you lose someone so precious,
• 24:26
  Speaker 5: like your child, you would give anything to have them back.
• 24:29
  Speaker 6: And I think that's really important.
• 24:31
  Speaker 5: As everyday people to realize that don't sweat the small stuff.
• 24:36
  Speaker 6: It's really nothing.
• 24:37
  Speaker 5: If you're going home every night and you know, I'll
• 24:39
  Speaker 5: say to him, there's times now, you know, where business
• 24:42
  Speaker 5: is stressful or life is stressful, and I'll say to him,
• 24:45
  Speaker 5: we are so much more rich than what we think.
• 24:48
  Speaker 5: We've got a roof over our head, we have food
• 24:50
  Speaker 5: in the cupboard, we have our son here on the
• 24:52
  Speaker 5: couch with us, and we have fuel in the car
• 24:54
  Speaker 5: to get to work. Like how lucky are we were
• 24:56
  Speaker 5: one step up then everybody else. You know, there's other
• 24:59
  Speaker 5: people that are dealing with life a lot worse. And
• 25:02
  Speaker 5: I think if we look at life like that, it's
• 25:05
  Speaker 5: just a journey and we have to just sometimes take
• 25:08
  Speaker 5: some really dark cards, and within that darkness, happiness will
• 25:12
  Speaker 5: always come back. If you're digging for purpose, happiness has
• 25:16
  Speaker 5: to come back. It's so cruel not to write yes.
• 25:19
  Speaker 5: And I would look at myself. I'm like, why me.
• 25:21
  Speaker 5: I'm a good mum, I'm a good partner, you know,
• 25:24
  Speaker 5: I do things for the community.
• 25:25
  Speaker 6: I'm a good person.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: Why me?
• 25:27
  Speaker 5: But that's just a part of life. We sign that
• 25:30
  Speaker 5: soul contract something I like to think of it as.
• 25:33
  Speaker 5: And it might be a little bit wild. Say the
• 25:35
  Speaker 5: army came in here, right and three of us, we're
• 25:37
  Speaker 5: familiar with each other, right, so we're like, would form
• 25:40
  Speaker 5: an alliance because it'd be like us three keeping together,
• 25:43
  Speaker 5: be like girl code.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: If someone ships as if someone steals this, we're.
• 25:47
  Speaker 5: Together, right, We're like, we'll pick up an action plan
• 25:49
  Speaker 5: to escape.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: Then motherfucker's gone.
• 25:54
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I said, because we'd form an alliance. And I
• 25:57
  Speaker 5: feel like with life, I feel like when I was
• 26:01
  Speaker 5: up in say Heaven, for argument's sake, maybe I was
• 26:03
  Speaker 5: up there for like five hundred years, living my best life,
• 26:07
  Speaker 5: and then someone walks around God or whoever you may think,
• 26:10
  Speaker 5: maybe in charge with his folder.
• 26:11
  Speaker 6: He's like, right, Jess, your turn, You're coming on down.
• 26:15
  Speaker 5: I'm like, no way, you ready. I'm in the mal Dives, Baby,
• 26:19
  Speaker 5: I'm not going down there. And they've said, nah, you
• 26:21
  Speaker 5: need to come. And I'm up there with my twin sister, Luna,
• 26:24
  Speaker 5: and we have an alliance. So they've said you've got
• 26:27
  Speaker 5: to come down, and I'm like, all right, well is
• 26:29
  Speaker 5: Luna coming? And they said no, Na, no, You've already
• 26:32
  Speaker 5: got your new life here. This is it. And I
• 26:34
  Speaker 5: would have bartered to have her on my life contract
• 26:37
  Speaker 5: because I was said, nah.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: That's my right or die. That's my girl.
• 26:40
  Speaker 5: She needs to come and maybe I've swindled my way
• 26:43
  Speaker 5: in and I've said, all right, I'll go down there
• 26:45
  Speaker 5: and I'll accept all these challenges that you've got for
• 26:48
  Speaker 5: me only if I take her. And they would have said,
• 26:50
  Speaker 5: all right, you can have her, but you can only
• 26:52
  Speaker 5: have her for three and a half years, and when
• 26:55
  Speaker 5: we take her back, don't complain about it.
• 26:57
  Speaker 6: And I think I would have said, yeah, I'll do it.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: I'll take that over not having her one percent.
• 27:02
  Speaker 5: I would one hundred percent take those three and a
• 27:04
  Speaker 5: half years and have no years. I've got three siblings,
• 27:07
  Speaker 5: don't have any children. Luna was our first grandchild in
• 27:10
  Speaker 5: our family. My parents have four kids, two grandchildren, Luna
• 27:13
  Speaker 5: and Mars. And I feel like, of course I would
• 27:17
  Speaker 5: take that. People say to me now, they say, Jess,
• 27:20
  Speaker 5: if you could rewind the clock, would.
• 27:22
  Speaker 6: You go back to that time? And I say absolutely not.
• 27:25
  Speaker 5: And that's because I felt like I was naive when
• 27:28
  Speaker 5: I lost lou because I didn't know what I was
• 27:29
  Speaker 5: in for, Whereas now I know, I know what the
• 27:32
  Speaker 5: last four and a half years has taken me to
• 27:34
  Speaker 5: get through, and I think every day forward is one
• 27:37
  Speaker 5: day closer to giving her back to me. So I'm
• 27:40
  Speaker 5: happy for that. I'm four and a half years ahead
• 27:42
  Speaker 5: than I was four years ago, and that's a really
• 27:46
  Speaker 5: great way to look at it. It's like I'm moving
• 27:48
  Speaker 5: forward every single day, and while I'm here, I make
• 27:51
  Speaker 5: sure that I have the most beautiful life. I do
• 27:54
  Speaker 5: the absolute best that I can for myself, for my family,
• 27:57
  Speaker 5: for my son, and when death knocks me on the shoulder,
• 28:00
  Speaker 5: which one day it will, like all of us, I'll
• 28:02
  Speaker 5: be ready. And when I'm sitting up there with Luna Bear,
• 28:04
  Speaker 5: I have no regrets because I will be like I've
• 28:07
  Speaker 5: done everything I can, like I've set my family up,
• 28:10
  Speaker 5: and that doesn't mean financially or it doesn't mean in
• 28:13
  Speaker 5: the physical terms of I've given them the best of me.
• 28:16
  Speaker 5: And that's my time, my presence, my love, my laughter.
• 28:20
  Speaker 5: That's what we all need with human connection, right.
• 28:24
  Speaker 6: Yeah, Oh my gosh, it's incredible everything you've said.
• 28:27
  Speaker 5: When we got told that lou wasn't going to make
• 28:29
  Speaker 5: it anymore, I said to my girlfriends, you need to
• 28:33
  Speaker 5: go to Spotlight and get a heap of balloons.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: We need music.
• 28:37
  Speaker 5: I want my girlfriend Lizzie, who flew up from Melbourne.
• 28:39
  Speaker 5: I said, you need to go to my house. Bring
• 28:41
  Speaker 5: a douner up, bring all her teddies and a dancing
• 28:43
  Speaker 5: shoes and a dancing dresses. We're going to deck this
• 28:45
  Speaker 5: room out like it's her bedroom. And everyone was kind
• 28:48
  Speaker 5: of looking like, is she serious. I'm like, if this
• 28:51
  Speaker 5: is Loo's like place, we need to make sure it
• 28:54
  Speaker 5: exactly looks like her and it feels like home. So
• 28:58
  Speaker 5: within maybe two hours, the room was covered in balloons.
• 29:01
  Speaker 5: It was like a paradise. It was beautiful. Her douna
• 29:04
  Speaker 5: was there, her dresses and her dancing medals are around.
• 29:08
  Speaker 5: It really felt like a beautiful place that lou would love.
• 29:11
  Speaker 5: Her teddies were everywhere, so beautiful.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: She had a night light. I forgot about that.
• 29:15
  Speaker 5: She had a little lion night light that she used
• 29:18
  Speaker 5: to sleep with, and we actually used that to go
• 29:20
  Speaker 5: under her tubes to lean, so she had her little
• 29:23
  Speaker 5: lion bed with her all the time. We painted her nails,
• 29:26
  Speaker 5: we brushed her hair, We made her ready so when
• 29:29
  Speaker 5: she went off she was looking her best. She was feeling.
• 29:33
  Speaker 5: But yeah, I think that was really lovely. We had
• 29:37
  Speaker 5: one of Tim's uncles coming in.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: It was lovely.
• 29:40
  Speaker 5: Yeah, this is the thing, it's right. We celebrate birthdays.
• 29:44
  Speaker 5: We celebrate when we come here, but we don't celebrate
• 29:47
  Speaker 5: when we leave. Why not. It's like, why don't we
• 29:49
  Speaker 5: celebrate death. It's so taboo, no one talks about it.
• 29:53
  Speaker 5: But for me, it's like, if this is my baby's
• 29:55
  Speaker 5: time and she's leaving, let's celebrate her time here. Why
• 29:59
  Speaker 5: she's here, Let's have a party. Most three and a
• 30:02
  Speaker 5: half year olds, they're all about parties. Luna, she used
• 30:06
  Speaker 5: to say, the attention on me, and she used to
• 30:10
  Speaker 5: say to me as well, you know, say, if she
• 30:12
  Speaker 5: didn't get something, she'd say, well, you're not my best
• 30:14
  Speaker 5: friend anymore. You're not invited to my party. And I've
• 30:18
  Speaker 5: been like, hold on a second, I'm organizing.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: I'm fucking party.
• 30:22
  Speaker 5: But so I knew she needed a party. Yeah, So
• 30:26
  Speaker 5: little things like that for me were a no brainer,
• 30:29
  Speaker 5: because it's like Bo's mum. I need it on her
• 30:32
  Speaker 5: the right way.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: I know what she needs.
• 30:33
  Speaker 5: She needs a party. He wants a party, you know.
• 30:37
  Speaker 5: And so Tim's uncle came in with a guitar and
• 30:39
  Speaker 5: we were singing lots of songs, and we brought a
• 30:42
  Speaker 5: lot of picture books in him. We were reading to her.
• 30:44
  Speaker 5: Even I don't know if you know this. But even
• 30:46
  Speaker 5: when the brain stops, it still absorbs information. I think
• 30:50
  Speaker 5: for five days after so my partner being Mary, we actually.
• 30:54
  Speaker 6: Bought Lou home to our house, so she came home.
• 30:57
  Speaker 5: I think it was for about eight days because of
• 30:59
  Speaker 5: the Christmas New Year time. That's part of Mauric culture,
• 31:02
  Speaker 5: isn't it is, Yeah, you bring them back to the house.
• 31:05
  Speaker 5: So she was embalmed and then brought back to our house.
• 31:08
  Speaker 5: And I remember at the start, I'm Australian, so we
• 31:12
  Speaker 5: don't do anything like that, and I was actually quite fearful.
• 31:15
  Speaker 5: We till go back to my parents' house, which is
• 31:17
  Speaker 5: actually my childhood home. There was a couple of reasons
• 31:20
  Speaker 5: around that too, because obviously Timmy was traumatized to go
• 31:24
  Speaker 5: back to that house yea, and also lunus things were everywhere,
• 31:28
  Speaker 5: so we didn't want anyone to go there and move
• 31:30
  Speaker 5: any of her things, and I wanted.
• 31:32
  Speaker 6: That to be sacred.
• 31:34
  Speaker 5: It was like it almost turned into like our church
• 31:36
  Speaker 5: because it was her safe place. So he brought her
• 31:39
  Speaker 5: back to Mum and dads and I remember saying to Timmy,
• 31:42
  Speaker 5: I don't actually know if I can handle bringing her
• 31:45
  Speaker 5: back home, And he said to me, how about we
• 31:48
  Speaker 5: just try it out and if you feel uncomfortable about it,
• 31:50
  Speaker 5: we'll take her.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: Allay?
• 31:52
  Speaker 5: And I said all right, And honestly, it was the
• 31:54
  Speaker 5: most beautiful thing of my life. And if anyone ever
• 31:58
  Speaker 5: loses a family member or someone special to them, bring
• 32:02
  Speaker 5: them home.
• 32:02
  Speaker 6: You don't have to have a culture. They're your person, right.
• 32:05
  Speaker 5: There was a lot of times where the hospital like, okay,
• 32:08
  Speaker 5: we do it this way.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no thanks.
• 32:11
  Speaker 5: That's my daughter, you know. For example, just to round
• 32:13
  Speaker 5: the clock a little bit. When I turned the life
• 32:15
  Speaker 5: support off for lou it was at nine oh three
• 32:18
  Speaker 5: at night, and I said to them, okay, so what
• 32:21
  Speaker 5: happens now? And they said, all right, well we'll take
• 32:24
  Speaker 5: her to the morgue and then we'll do an autopsy.
• 32:26
  Speaker 6: Tomorrow and blah blah blah. And I'm like, nah, you're
• 32:28
  Speaker 6: not doing that.
• 32:29
  Speaker 5: They're like pardon, and I'm like, if the morgue's closed,
• 32:31
  Speaker 5: there's no one working there.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: My girl's staying with me. And they were like huh.
• 32:35
  Speaker 5: And so I said, okay, so what I need you
• 32:37
  Speaker 5: guys to do? I said, we need a couple of
• 32:38
  Speaker 5: beds because me, my partner my brother and my sister.
• 32:42
  Speaker 5: We're going to stay here tonight and we're going to
• 32:44
  Speaker 5: stay with Luna for her last night, and we're going
• 32:46
  Speaker 5: to have a slumber party. And I see you and
• 32:48
  Speaker 5: she was like, oh, we've never really done this before.
• 32:51
  Speaker 5: I'm like, well, no, we have welcome.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: I'm like, go speak to who have you got to
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: speak to?
• 32:54
  Speaker 5: Because I ain't leaving. Leaving Yeah, my partner's got a van,
• 32:58
  Speaker 5: and we always have a joke, you know, we're saying
• 33:00
  Speaker 5: to them, We're like, there's little things that we want
• 33:02
  Speaker 5: to do. If we can't do it, we'll throw in
• 33:03
  Speaker 5: the van and we'll take it home. Just because your
• 33:06
  Speaker 5: child has passed or a family member's pass the hospital don't.
• 33:09
  Speaker 6: Own them, the government don't own them.
• 33:10
  Speaker 5: They're still our babies, they're still our person we call
• 33:14
  Speaker 5: the shots. Right.
• 33:15
  Speaker 6: So I said, no, no, we're going to stay here.
• 33:17
  Speaker 5: But it ended up being really beautiful because we got
• 33:19
  Speaker 5: lou changed. I got to sleep with her in my
• 33:21
  Speaker 5: arms all night. My siblings were there, the nurses were beautiful.
• 33:26
  Speaker 5: We built this really like family unit with the nurses
• 33:30
  Speaker 5: as well, Like they're in there with us sleeping because.
• 33:32
  Speaker 6: They're on night shifts.
• 33:33
  Speaker 5: So they're like talking, we're telling stories, showing videos, and
• 33:36
  Speaker 5: it was just really beautiful to have that.
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: And then in the morning, we washed.
• 33:41
  Speaker 5: Her, combed her hair, painted her nails, put a new
• 33:44
  Speaker 5: outfit on for her, fresh nickers, all of that sort
• 33:46
  Speaker 5: of stuff. And I remember the nurses just standing there
• 33:49
  Speaker 5: with tears down their face and they're like, we've never
• 33:52
  Speaker 5: seen a family advocate for their child quite like you have,
• 33:55
  Speaker 5: which I thought was really lovely. But for me, I
• 33:58
  Speaker 5: was like, this is so normal. I would any other way.
• 34:01
  Speaker 6: This is what we have to do. That's my child.
• 34:03
  Speaker 5: And when it was time for her to go to
• 34:06
  Speaker 5: the morgue, they said, all right, Jess, what we're going
• 34:09
  Speaker 5: to do is we're going to put a sheet over her.
• 34:11
  Speaker 5: And then two people come and they walk her down.
• 34:13
  Speaker 5: I said no, no, no, I said no. She goes
• 34:14
  Speaker 5: over Loo's face and I walk her down and they're like, oh,
• 34:18
  Speaker 5: we've never had a family walk their child to the morgue.
• 34:20
  Speaker 5: I said, well, now you have the day. Yeah, I said,
• 34:23
  Speaker 5: I brought my baby in and I'll take my baby out.
• 34:25
  Speaker 5: I said, she comes with me and we take her down.
• 34:28
  Speaker 5: So they're like same thing there, like, oh, we haven't
• 34:30
  Speaker 5: done this before. I'm like, okay, go chat to your boss,
• 34:32
  Speaker 5: let him know what's going on.
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: Is happening.
• 34:34
  Speaker 5: Yeah, And so they said, you know, with a child,
• 34:39
  Speaker 5: we normally cover them because if anyone else sees them
• 34:42
  Speaker 5: in the hospital. I'm like, well, it's not really my
• 34:44
  Speaker 5: issue if it God sees her and you're not putting
• 34:47
  Speaker 5: anything over her face. So let's see how this can work.
• 34:49
  Speaker 5: And they were so great. They ended up taking us
• 34:52
  Speaker 5: through the staff way, and you know how like in
• 34:54
  Speaker 5: the movies you see all.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: The staff line up in the corridors. Yeah, they all
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: lined up for.
• 34:59
  Speaker 5: Her and we put all the balloons around her bed,
• 35:02
  Speaker 5: so it was like a chariot and we had a
• 35:04
  Speaker 5: blanket there.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: And she just looked perfect.
• 35:06
  Speaker 6: She looked absolutely lovely.
• 35:07
  Speaker 5: And I remember the two wateries came to get her,
• 35:10
  Speaker 5: and obviously they weren't allowed to touch her because we're like,
• 35:12
  Speaker 5: it's all right, we'll take her down, and they just
• 35:14
  Speaker 5: stood there, but I remember them just having tears coming down,
• 35:17
  Speaker 5: and the lady was sobbing, and she was saying to
• 35:19
  Speaker 5: me like, this is really powerful what you guys are doing,
• 35:22
  Speaker 5: because how beautiful for her to feel so supported the
• 35:25
  Speaker 5: whole way through the hospital was so amazing. They actually
• 35:28
  Speaker 5: shut the walk down for three hours so it was
• 35:31
  Speaker 5: only lunar. So we got her in and got her out.
• 35:33
  Speaker 5: There was lots of little things that I'm like, so
• 35:36
  Speaker 5: proud of me for thinking, like she was never to
• 35:39
  Speaker 5: have anything over a face. She's never to be put
• 35:41
  Speaker 5: in the mark, so she was never put in a
• 35:42
  Speaker 5: freezer or anything. A tag that normally goes around the foot,
• 35:46
  Speaker 5: I said it needs to go under her back because
• 35:48
  Speaker 5: I didn't want any of that to touch her or
• 35:50
  Speaker 5: be on her. I feel like it kind of has
• 35:52
  Speaker 5: like a bit of a yucky stigma to it.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't really like that. Yeah, and little.
• 35:56
  Speaker 5: Things like that, they're like, wow, I can't believe you're
• 35:58
  Speaker 5: like so on to think of these things. And we
• 36:01
  Speaker 5: stayed with her the whole time, which I think is
• 36:04
  Speaker 5: really lovely, left on our own, and then she came
• 36:06
  Speaker 5: back to our house and.
• 36:08
  Speaker 6: I felt like we had the whole of New Zealand
• 36:09
  Speaker 6: at our house.
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: Mars families.
• 36:12
  Speaker 5: Yeah, there's a lot together, and a lot and a
• 36:15
  Speaker 5: lot and a lot.
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: They all multiply, very family orientated. Yeah, it was really cool.
• 36:19
  Speaker 5: They went to our house and I think my mum
• 36:22
  Speaker 5: and Dad got a bit of a rood shot because
• 36:23
  Speaker 5: they just like cleared everything out and it was so beautiful.
• 36:26
  Speaker 5: They were like making all the food, and when we
• 36:29
  Speaker 5: brought Lou home, a lot of the elderly women were doing,
• 36:32
  Speaker 5: you know, like a song for Lou, like to welcome
• 36:34
  Speaker 5: herrin in the spirit world, because the Maoris are quite
• 36:37
  Speaker 5: spiritual as well. They have this really beautiful way of
• 36:41
  Speaker 5: celebrating death, which I think is something in Australia we
• 36:44
  Speaker 5: don't actually learn it from. Yeah, so that was really
• 36:47
  Speaker 5: lovely for us to experience that. And I'm so grateful
• 36:49
  Speaker 5: that Timmy's culture played a massive role in Lou, Like
• 36:53
  Speaker 5: in Lou's passing, and we just had everyone there and
• 36:56
  Speaker 5: we celebrated her. And then when it was time for
• 36:58
  Speaker 5: her service, my sisters like we need to have like
• 37:02
  Speaker 5: a Disneyland service, and my sisters. She's one of those people.
• 37:06
  Speaker 5: She's like a big dreamer. When she's on, she's on
• 37:08
  Speaker 5: and she like fixates on things. And I remember like
• 37:11
  Speaker 5: awkwardly laughing on the deck. I'm like, as if we're
• 37:14
  Speaker 5: going to be able to pull that off in a week.
• 37:15
  Speaker 5: And it's peak COVID, it's Christmas and New year's like
• 37:18
  Speaker 5: this is wild. We had loose service on the twenty
• 37:21
  Speaker 5: eighth of December, six days after we actually hired the
• 37:25
  Speaker 5: Madruba showgrounds. I don't know if you've seen it online before, Ash,
• 37:28
  Speaker 5: but we had two and a half thousand people attend,
• 37:30
  Speaker 5: so I felt like the whole of the gold Coaster
• 37:32
  Speaker 5: was there. We had a fun fair, so we had
• 37:34
  Speaker 5: ice cream trucks, balloon twisters, dance performers, we had three
• 37:39
  Speaker 5: jumping castles, food trucks, fire twirlers, you name it. We
• 37:43
  Speaker 5: called it lou Cella instead of Coachella, and it was
• 37:48
  Speaker 5: absolutely beautiful. We told everybody to dress up and we
• 37:51
  Speaker 5: had Disney characters, We had Poor Patrol characters turn up.
• 37:53
  Speaker 5: The people attending were all dressed up as well, which
• 37:56
  Speaker 5: was just magical. And it would have been the most
• 37:58
  Speaker 5: beautiful celebration for her. And she's like all of this
• 38:03
  Speaker 5: for me.
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, I could see. I could feel her sad.
• 38:07
  Speaker 5: Holy smokes, mom, this is all there, just like, oh
• 38:11
  Speaker 5: my god.
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: She's like, you just get me, yes, you know me.
• 38:14
  Speaker 5: Even before that, my partner rides Harley's and so we
• 38:18
  Speaker 5: put a call out to get some Harley's to give
• 38:21
  Speaker 5: her like an escort and normally you to show maybe
• 38:24
  Speaker 5: like a couple of people would, yeah, like fifty of them. Yeah,
• 38:27
  Speaker 5: we had six hundred bikes show up outside my parents' house.
• 38:31
  Speaker 5: A lot of motorikes went ahead and they shot off
• 38:33
  Speaker 5: all the exits on the highway, so they just like
• 38:35
  Speaker 5: crossed the bike over the lane and just like do
• 38:38
  Speaker 5: the stop and then our cars could all go through.
• 38:41
  Speaker 6: It was wild. It was highway was closed. They all
• 38:44
  Speaker 6: put pink ribbons.
• 38:45
  Speaker 5: On their bikes, like on their on their candles, and
• 38:48
  Speaker 5: it was just amazing. And I feel like I have
• 38:51
  Speaker 5: no regrets with the way we like celebrated Lou. Everything
• 38:56
  Speaker 5: we've done since Lou, I feel like she would have
• 38:58
  Speaker 5: just felt so magical. And in saying that as well,
• 39:01
  Speaker 5: I think sharing our story and like I've seen other
• 39:04
  Speaker 5: people within you know, my online community that they've unfortunately
• 39:07
  Speaker 5: lost a child and they're celebrating their child the same
• 39:10
  Speaker 5: way Lou or their message in me, you know, saying
• 39:13
  Speaker 5: how did you organize Luceella, I want to do this
• 39:15
  Speaker 5: or how did you how did you do that? And
• 39:17
  Speaker 5: I think Luna has such a beautiful legacy. You know,
• 39:21
  Speaker 5: I sometimes say, like as a joke, if I passed away.
• 39:24
  Speaker 5: You get a couple of lousy Facebook messages, right.
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: And they're like, oh, re some peace. Yes, But with Lou,
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: it's like the whole world stopped.
• 39:31
  Speaker 5: She had like thousands of people all over the world
• 39:34
  Speaker 5: like praying for her, and then when we lost her
• 39:36
  Speaker 5: reaching out like showering us with love and like saying
• 39:39
  Speaker 5: her name. There's children all around the world that call
• 39:42
  Speaker 5: unicorns lunicorns now and like I'll get photos of rainbows
• 39:45
  Speaker 5: and they're thinking of Lou. And that's a really beautiful
• 39:49
  Speaker 5: legacy to have at such a short age.
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the impact she's making.
• 39:53
  Speaker 5: Yeah, And maybe that was as a part of her
• 39:56
  Speaker 5: soul contract. She was going to change the world. And
• 39:59
  Speaker 5: I think it was her mission. It was her mission,
• 40:01
  Speaker 5: and she's done. It would work, Luna bits, she's done it.
• 40:04
  Speaker 5: She's teaching to be more present. She's teaching people not
• 40:07
  Speaker 5: to talk on their phones while driving, not to slow
• 40:11
  Speaker 5: down in residential areas. You know, even you know, if
• 40:14
  Speaker 5: we touch on road safety, it's like my lunar. She
• 40:17
  Speaker 5: knew road safety. She never ran out on the road
• 40:19
  Speaker 5: in her entire life. She had never hurt herself. She
• 40:22
  Speaker 5: was born in a hospital and died in a hospital.
• 40:24
  Speaker 5: She never got stitches, never had a broken bone, she
• 40:27
  Speaker 5: never had any accidents, and the one accident she had
• 40:30
  Speaker 5: cost her entire life. And I think it's important for
• 40:33
  Speaker 5: other people to realize that you can teach your children
• 40:36
  Speaker 5: all of these things on how to play safely in
• 40:39
  Speaker 5: road safety, but one thing you can't teach your children
• 40:42
  Speaker 5: is unpredictability. And I think that is where us as adults,
• 40:47
  Speaker 5: while we're driving, it's our duty to put the phone down,
• 40:50
  Speaker 5: to slow down. If you're in a residential area or
• 40:53
  Speaker 5: a school zone, slow down. There's kids around, and children
• 40:56
  Speaker 5: can be unpredictable, and I think that's a really important thing.
• 40:59
  Speaker 5: I also find like even online, a lot of people
• 41:02
  Speaker 5: will like film when they're physically driving, and I'm like,
• 41:05
  Speaker 5: you like messaging saying get off your phone, like pull
• 41:08
  Speaker 5: over or just wait, it can wait, Yeah, it can wait.
• 41:11
  Speaker 5: It's really like, until something really horrific happens in your life,
• 41:15
  Speaker 5: you never really understand the gravity of just one little mistake,
• 41:19
  Speaker 5: how it has a ripple effect in your entire life.
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: And how quickly something like that can happen.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, anyone listening out there that is navigating this, or
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: maybe they know someone that because I mean, you were
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: the first person I reached out to when my friend
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: lost her baby. I didn't know who to turn to.
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: I was just like I thought, away, sorry, okay, is
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: there something?
• 41:38
  Speaker 5: And I'm so glad you did. It was really nice
• 41:40
  Speaker 5: to be able to help support MEGS when that as well.
• 41:44
  Speaker 6: Sorry, okay, your grief is valid too.
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: Is there something that you would say that helped you?
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: Was there certain words or phrases or gestures or favors
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: or just things the people around you did.
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: They just helped you get through another day.
• 42:05
  Speaker 5: That's the best thing you could do is reach out
• 42:07
  Speaker 5: to someone that's had a familiar situation. You're like, tell
• 42:10
  Speaker 5: me what I can do, how I can support you?
• 42:13
  Speaker 5: And I really loved that you did do that because
• 42:15
  Speaker 5: you took the initiative to go, all right, I need
• 42:17
  Speaker 5: to be on here.
• 42:18
  Speaker 6: How can I best support my friend?
• 42:19
  Speaker 5: And I'm going to reach out to someone who has
• 42:21
  Speaker 5: walked this path or please give me the top tips.
• 42:24
  Speaker 5: And I feel like just showing up and without expectation.
• 42:28
  Speaker 5: So it's like do a door drop where you drop
• 42:32
  Speaker 5: some groceries off at the door, but don't knock, just disappear,
• 42:36
  Speaker 5: reach out and say I'm thinking of you without expecting
• 42:39
  Speaker 5: anything back, and do that every single day.
• 42:42
  Speaker 6: Not the door drop, but just reach out, call them.
• 42:45
  Speaker 5: Or if you're a really close friend like you are
• 42:47
  Speaker 5: with Megs, it's like show up at their house, do
• 42:50
  Speaker 5: the dishes, put a load of washing on, take the
• 42:53
  Speaker 5: baby for a walk in the stroller, do something to
• 42:56
  Speaker 5: alleviate some weight of normal life. And I think that's
• 42:59
  Speaker 5: really important even when you're having these conversations. Don't compare losses.
• 43:04
  Speaker 5: Don't compare green I don't pretend like you understand what.
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: Your girl's back because, don't say life's going to get
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: better again.
• 43:09
  Speaker 5: Don't do the silver lining.
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, don't do that.
• 43:13
  Speaker 5: Do not do that.
• 43:14
  Speaker 6: Yeah, that's a gut punch itself.
• 43:17
  Speaker 5: Your life is just full of such darkness and someone
• 43:20
  Speaker 5: says to you, you'll be all right, get fus yes,
• 43:24
  Speaker 5: shut up. Yeah, it's like no, no, no, do not
• 43:28
  Speaker 5: do that. And do not compare the loss of cat
• 43:31
  Speaker 5: I had that I've had, like, yeah, I've had a lot,
• 43:34
  Speaker 5: like I've had people like I know exactly how you
• 43:36
  Speaker 5: feel when I lost my dog or when I had
• 43:38
  Speaker 5: a miscarriage and all this. It's like I appreciate that's
• 43:41
  Speaker 5: your worst loss, but please do not compare that with
• 43:43
  Speaker 5: my living child and my baby. Please please know. But
• 43:47
  Speaker 5: I think for me, I realized that that was a
• 43:49
  Speaker 5: me issue as well. When we have triggers on loss,
• 43:52
  Speaker 5: which is something that is a forever thing. Triggers are
• 43:55
  Speaker 5: something that we hold and that is not an expectation
• 43:58
  Speaker 5: maybe an experience that we have that's no one else's
• 44:02
  Speaker 5: to carry, which I think for people that are listening
• 44:04
  Speaker 5: that you know, walking this lonely path of grief, keep
• 44:08
  Speaker 5: that in mind too, because sometimes you'll think, oh, that
• 44:11
  Speaker 5: was insensitive, But everyone's just doing the best that they can.
• 44:15
  Speaker 5: If they compare their dog or whatever they compare, it's
• 44:18
  Speaker 5: like they're just trying to be relatable and I get it,
• 44:20
  Speaker 5: it's not right and please don't do it, but they're
• 44:22
  Speaker 5: also just trying to be there and show up. And
• 44:25
  Speaker 5: sometimes people don't know what to say, so they just
• 44:27
  Speaker 5: kind of labble, and you know, it's like, just remember that,
• 44:31
  Speaker 5: like that's an.
• 44:31
  Speaker 6: Ours issue and they're just trying their best.
• 44:33
  Speaker 5: And I think that's really important because I've dealt with
• 44:37
  Speaker 5: a lot of losses since Luna. I feel like I'm
• 44:39
  Speaker 5: almost like the poster girl for grief. Now and been
• 44:43
  Speaker 5: through a lot I have, Yeah.
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: I feel like maybe we can even touch on that.
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: It's a little bit.
• 44:48
  Speaker 5: Two years after we lost Loup, we were actually really
• 44:50
  Speaker 5: frightened to have any more.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: Children because Ballad.
• 44:53
  Speaker 5: I was so nervous to feel like, Okay, well if
• 44:56
  Speaker 5: we love again, are they going to get taken from
• 44:58
  Speaker 5: us too? I feel like when you have such sudden loss,
• 45:02
  Speaker 5: you almost lose hope in you think that maybe it's
• 45:07
  Speaker 5: like one, it's never going to get better again, or
• 45:09
  Speaker 5: but how fragile life is. What if they take Marsie,
• 45:12
  Speaker 5: or what if I have a child and it doesn't
• 45:13
  Speaker 5: work out again? Or I think the more things you have,
• 45:16
  Speaker 5: the harder it is to escape too, because you've got
• 45:19
  Speaker 5: so many things keeping you here. Right And two years
• 45:23
  Speaker 5: after so in twenty twenty three, we decided to have
• 45:25
  Speaker 5: another child, and we were pregnant, and then we got
• 45:30
  Speaker 5: super excited and everything was really great, and then we
• 45:33
  Speaker 5: had a late miscarriage at sixteen and a half weeks,
• 45:35
  Speaker 5: which was like another gut punch for me because I
• 45:38
  Speaker 5: thought I was finally feeling like maybe I'll get a
• 45:41
  Speaker 5: little bit more like happiness in my life and maybe
• 45:44
  Speaker 5: i'd have another child that you know, could be bestias
• 45:46
  Speaker 5: with Marsie, and it didn't work out that way, so
• 45:49
  Speaker 5: that was really hard.
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: And then last year.
• 45:53
  Speaker 5: I was pregnant again and we had our beautiful boy, Naalu,
• 45:56
  Speaker 5: and he was actually born at twenty six weeks and
• 46:01
  Speaker 5: he was born forever sleeping, so I had a still
• 46:03
  Speaker 5: birth with him, which was wild for me because I'm like,
• 46:08
  Speaker 5: hold on a second, like, why do I keep getting
• 46:10
  Speaker 5: all these black cards. I've lost my precious lou. Then
• 46:14
  Speaker 5: I've had a late miscarriage. Then when I was pregnant
• 46:17
  Speaker 5: with Nalo, I'm like, this is it. We're gonna have this,
• 46:19
  Speaker 5: you know. And then when I had a steel birth,
• 46:21
  Speaker 5: it like cracked me open all over again because I
• 46:24
  Speaker 5: was like, oh my god.
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: I never knew anything about steel births.
• 46:27
  Speaker 5: I feel like it's also like a super taboo topic
• 46:30
  Speaker 5: where no one really touches on. And I always had
• 46:33
  Speaker 5: like this joke where it was like, there's two things
• 46:36
  Speaker 5: in my life I'll never have, and that's a six
• 46:38
  Speaker 5: pack and a vaginal birth.
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 46:40
  Speaker 5: I've had two cesareans with Lui mars and I always
• 46:43
  Speaker 5: laughed about that. I'm like, when I see women like
• 46:46
  Speaker 5: with vaginal births. I'm like, you're a hero. Like that
• 46:48
  Speaker 5: really frightens me. Right, I have really big babies. Luna
• 46:52
  Speaker 5: was nine pound four and Marzi was nine point eight
• 46:56
  Speaker 5: and they came out like three month olds. So I
• 46:58
  Speaker 5: was like, thank goodness I had cesaraans otherwise I would
• 47:00
  Speaker 5: have ended up in like a wheelchair or like some crab.
• 47:04
  Speaker 5: And so the fear of vaginal birth is huge for me,
• 47:06
  Speaker 5: and I've always openly said like, I'll never have a
• 47:08
  Speaker 5: vagina birth if I can get a Sarah and I'm
• 47:10
  Speaker 5: taking it. Yeah, And when I had Nahlou, I had
• 47:13
  Speaker 5: a vaginal birth. For me, it was like really crazy
• 47:18
  Speaker 5: because in my mind I thought that, you know, I
• 47:22
  Speaker 5: can do this.
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: I'm okay.
• 47:23
  Speaker 5: And then the aftermath of seeing my son and he
• 47:26
  Speaker 5: was like a fully formed baby. I was actually born
• 47:28
  Speaker 5: at twenty seven weeks, so Nahlou was a week shy
• 47:32
  Speaker 5: of that, and he looked perfect. He was like a
• 47:35
  Speaker 5: full blown baby. He could have survived at that gestation.
• 47:39
  Speaker 5: That was a really crazy time for me to have that,
• 47:42
  Speaker 5: and it also brought up a lot of trauma from
• 47:45
  Speaker 5: losing Lou because it was in the exact same hospital.
• 47:48
  Speaker 5: Walking my son to the Morgue again having to talk
• 47:51
  Speaker 5: about a service, cremation, whatever it may be. I'm like,
• 47:56
  Speaker 5: how am I back here again? How am I back
• 47:58
  Speaker 5: here experiencing this?
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: What?
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: Like?
• 48:00
  Speaker 5: I felt like life is just giving me all these
• 48:04
  Speaker 5: black cards? And when was I ever coming up for air?
• 48:06
  Speaker 5: When was I ever going to get my life? He ever?
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: After bad?
• 48:11
  Speaker 5: Yeah that I felt really like getting punished, Yeah, yeah,
• 48:15
  Speaker 5: and kicked in the guts over again. Yeah.
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: It was too much.
• 48:19
  Speaker 5: And I gave myself like three weeks, which sounds like nothing, right.
• 48:24
  Speaker 5: I gave myself three weeks at home. Grief was very
• 48:27
  Speaker 5: different this time around with Nahlou as opposed to Luna.
• 48:29
  Speaker 5: With Luna, I wanted everyone around and it was very
• 48:32
  Speaker 5: you know, like a community feel, where with Nahlou, I
• 48:35
  Speaker 5: was very like wanted to be alone. I wanted to
• 48:38
  Speaker 5: digest everything. My body was still healing. And I feel
• 48:42
  Speaker 5: like as well, no one truly understood the loss of
• 48:45
  Speaker 5: a still birth. Not that I didn't have the same support,
• 48:48
  Speaker 5: but I didn't really have the same support as I
• 48:49
  Speaker 5: did when I lost Loub. I get that the circumstances
• 48:52
  Speaker 5: were different, but I also felt like maybe people had
• 48:55
  Speaker 5: put me onto this, like not pedestal, but like you've
• 48:58
  Speaker 5: got through Lou, Like she'll be okay, Like this isn't
• 49:01
  Speaker 5: as bad, you know. And that's where the comparative brief
• 49:04
  Speaker 5: comes through, because I felt like I didn't receive the
• 49:07
  Speaker 5: same support and I was kind of like dealing with
• 49:11
  Speaker 5: it on my own.
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: In space did to just get through this. I've gone
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: through something.
• 49:14
  Speaker 5: You've been through something worse, Commas, You'll be fine. And
• 49:18
  Speaker 5: even for Timmy, it was a different sort of approach
• 49:21
  Speaker 5: because for men, they don't carry the baby, they have
• 49:23
  Speaker 5: a different feeling and emotional attachment, whereas for me it
• 49:27
  Speaker 5: was really wild. I had a full belly and I
• 49:30
  Speaker 5: gave birth to my son and who was like a
• 49:32
  Speaker 5: full blown baby. And I feel like when you have
• 49:35
  Speaker 5: a still birth and even a miscarriage, your grief is
• 49:37
  Speaker 5: different because it's the what ifs.
• 49:40
  Speaker 6: You know, what should have been and who were they?
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: What would they have been?
• 49:44
  Speaker 5: Like I had envisioned him being a part of our
• 49:46
  Speaker 5: family dynamic, and now he's not there anymore, and it
• 49:50
  Speaker 5: was just a very different road of grief. And I
• 49:54
  Speaker 5: gave myself three weeks to sit at home and just Bedrod,
• 49:58
  Speaker 5: and then I was like, Okay, this isn't serving me anymore.
• 50:00
  Speaker 5: I need to get back to work and I need
• 50:02
  Speaker 5: to keep my mind busy. And I think what happened
• 50:05
  Speaker 5: there was I didn't give myself any grace. And then
• 50:09
  Speaker 5: what happened was six months later, to the start of
• 50:12
  Speaker 5: this year, I went down a really slippery slope of
• 50:16
  Speaker 5: my mental health. I was crying a lot when I
• 50:19
  Speaker 5: was driving to work. I didn't find any happiness anymore.
• 50:22
  Speaker 5: There was a video actually where we're at bowling with
• 50:25
  Speaker 5: my son and my partner, and he was playing this
• 50:28
  Speaker 5: gun game which most of the boys they like love guns, right,
• 50:31
  Speaker 5: and he's like squealing like I love this, I love that,
• 50:34
  Speaker 5: And I was smiling, but tears were just running down
• 50:37
  Speaker 5: my face. And I feel really sad for that Jess
• 50:40
  Speaker 5: in that moment, because I couldn't see any happiness in
• 50:43
  Speaker 5: my life anymore. And I think I got to a
• 50:46
  Speaker 5: point where I was like sick of being strong. I'm like,
• 50:49
  Speaker 5: why do I just have to keep accepting these things?
• 50:52
  Speaker 5: I know?
• 50:53
  Speaker 6: Like sometimes I feel like it's human nature.
• 50:56
  Speaker 5: I feel like online or like within my circle of friends,
• 50:59
  Speaker 5: like I see people having babies, healthy pregnancies, like I
• 51:03
  Speaker 5: keep seeing this everywhere, Like I'm not getting it, and
• 51:06
  Speaker 5: I feel like I'm so deserving of it. It's like,
• 51:09
  Speaker 5: come on, universe, whoever it is, just like, surely I'm
• 51:12
  Speaker 5: on the top of the list here, like yeah, like
• 51:15
  Speaker 5: come on, guys, like I deserve a happy ending. And
• 51:18
  Speaker 5: I wasn't seeing any sunshine. I was sobbing on the
• 51:20
  Speaker 5: way to work. I was not finding happiness and normal
• 51:23
  Speaker 5: things like spending time with my family that I normally did.
• 51:26
  Speaker 6: I was there, but I wasn't on.
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: I wasn't there.
• 51:30
  Speaker 5: And I remember I went to a friend's baby shower,
• 51:33
  Speaker 5: which might have been like the tip of the iceberg,
• 51:35
  Speaker 5: and I remember leaving just like sobbing, and I was like,
• 51:39
  Speaker 5: I'm really not good at the moment.
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: I'm not in a good space.
• 51:42
  Speaker 5: And I went out to dinner with my girlfriends that
• 51:44
  Speaker 5: night and I said to them like, I'm really struggling
• 51:47
  Speaker 5: at the moment, and I feel like dark thoughts are
• 51:50
  Speaker 5: starting to come into my mind again, and I think
• 51:52
  Speaker 5: I need help. I need to like spend some time
• 51:55
  Speaker 5: with some monks, or I need like I need something
• 51:57
  Speaker 5: more than this. And so I remember going home to
• 52:00
  Speaker 5: my partner and I'm like I was super honest with
• 52:02
  Speaker 5: him and said like, I'm really struggling at the moment.
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: I'm not in a good space.
• 52:06
  Speaker 5: And Timmy is so great and so hands on, and
• 52:09
  Speaker 5: he's like, whatever you need, we're doing it. He's like,
• 52:12
  Speaker 5: you're not going back to work. He's like, I'm calling
• 52:14
  Speaker 5: my boss. He took a week off work, and he's like,
• 52:17
  Speaker 5: I'm doing whatever it takes to get this sunshine back.
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: My sister and my mum were.
• 52:23
  Speaker 5: Actually in Vietnam at the time, and I feel like,
• 52:26
  Speaker 5: just for argument sake, this is like on Monday.
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: On Wednesday, we're on a flight to Vietnam.
• 52:30
  Speaker 5: So he's like, let's go over there, let's be with
• 52:33
  Speaker 5: your sister, and let's see what we can do. And
• 52:36
  Speaker 5: I put a thing up online like a question box,
• 52:38
  Speaker 5: like what's the best healing retreat you've ever been? So
• 52:41
  Speaker 5: if you're like to that post, I'm like, I need it.
• 52:43
  Speaker 5: And I don't think anyone knew from the outside to
• 52:46
  Speaker 5: set my girlfriends who i'd shared with, how internally I
• 52:50
  Speaker 5: was struggling so bad. And I think I was so
• 52:52
  Speaker 5: used to just putting on this front like I'm okay,
• 52:54
  Speaker 5: but really I was like drowning in grief and things
• 52:58
  Speaker 5: were just not helping, and we went to Vietnam for
• 53:01
  Speaker 5: a week and it was Luna's birthday as well, which
• 53:04
  Speaker 5: is always a time course. And then I booked him
• 53:07
  Speaker 5: and I into a retreat in Cambodia. We were there
• 53:10
  Speaker 5: for a week and it literally just like gave me
• 53:13
  Speaker 5: life again. It was we got to surround ourselves with monks.
• 53:17
  Speaker 5: The gentleman that ran it, Joel, was just like you
• 53:20
  Speaker 5: know when you meet people in there like a breath
• 53:22
  Speaker 5: of fresh air and you're like, I just want to
• 53:24
  Speaker 5: sit here for hours and listen to your wisdom. And
• 53:26
  Speaker 5: he's like, I'm like, so tell me what you think
• 53:28
  Speaker 5: about this, what you think about that? And he was
• 53:30
  Speaker 5: just like this incredible man. And we had a full
• 53:34
  Speaker 5: day of silence, which is hard for me because I
• 53:36
  Speaker 5: feel like I can talk underwater. What I came away
• 53:39
  Speaker 5: from that was the importance of human connection, conversations, meeting
• 53:43
  Speaker 5: people from all over the world with all different backgrounds,
• 53:46
  Speaker 5: learning from their experiences how they've overcome things.
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: And I remember, actually.
• 53:51
  Speaker 5: I'll tell you, when we first got to the retreat,
• 53:54
  Speaker 5: they greet you and it's like really lovely. They put
• 53:56
  Speaker 5: a thing over your like a what would you call
• 53:58
  Speaker 5: like a scarf over you and they're like sit down.
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: It was very awesome.
• 54:01
  Speaker 5: And then we're sitting there and me and Tim kind
• 54:03
  Speaker 5: of felt like out of place, like, but I was
• 54:08
  Speaker 5: also thinking in my head like a people going to
• 54:10
  Speaker 5: be as like fucked up as I am, because this
• 54:12
  Speaker 5: here is to save my life, because this is like
• 54:15
  Speaker 5: my last resort. I've just spent so much money to
• 54:17
  Speaker 5: get over here, to pay for this retreat, Like, I
• 54:20
  Speaker 5: hope you guys are ready.
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: For what I've got.
• 54:22
  Speaker 5: I remember a lady came over to me and they
• 54:25
  Speaker 5: give you this form and it's like from one to ten,
• 54:27
  Speaker 5: what's your mental health? Like how do you feel from this?
• 54:29
  Speaker 5: It's like a survey. I'm like two, and I was
• 54:32
  Speaker 5: like putting twos because I didn't want to put one
• 54:34
  Speaker 5: or zero because then they might have got that SOS
• 54:36
  Speaker 5: call out right, So I'm like two. Some of it's
• 54:39
  Speaker 5: like five. They're like how much happiness is in your life?
• 54:41
  Speaker 5: I'm like three, Like everything was very low, So I
• 54:44
  Speaker 5: knew when they picked my folder up they would have
• 54:46
  Speaker 5: been like, Okay, what's going on here? And the lady
• 54:49
  Speaker 5: took me for a walk and she's like I just
• 54:50
  Speaker 5: wanted to know what brought you here today, and I
• 54:53
  Speaker 5: burst into tears and I said, I lost my daughter
• 54:56
  Speaker 5: four years ago. I'm at a crossroad, like I can't
• 54:59
  Speaker 5: find any happiness in my life anymore. This is kind
• 55:02
  Speaker 5: of like my last resort. I'm here to find finess
• 55:05
  Speaker 5: and meaning to life again, and I really need your help.
• 55:08
  Speaker 5: And I was sobbing, and she didn't really know how
• 55:11
  Speaker 5: to hold space for me and didn't really know what
• 55:13
  Speaker 5: to say, and I think I kind of like stumbled
• 55:16
  Speaker 5: her a bit and she was like, Okay, well you're
• 55:18
  Speaker 5: at the right place. And then she's like, okay, so
• 55:20
  Speaker 5: this is how it works, and she kind of brushed
• 55:22
  Speaker 5: off like the intensity of what I just shared. And
• 55:27
  Speaker 5: so I went back to Tim and he came back
• 55:29
  Speaker 5: and he was sobbing too. So I was like, okay,
• 55:31
  Speaker 5: they know that this couple we need to work with
• 55:34
  Speaker 5: a little bit. And we went into the hall and
• 55:36
  Speaker 5: we sat down in a big circle and they said,
• 55:39
  Speaker 5: I want you to share what brought you here today,
• 55:42
  Speaker 5: and so everyone was sharing.
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: But it was like, I've got two weeks off work,
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: so I thought.
• 55:47
  Speaker 5: I'd come, Oh, Tad, and I'm looking at Tim and
• 55:49
  Speaker 5: you know when you've been sobbing so much, like, yeah,
• 55:52
  Speaker 5: can't breathe.
• 55:53
  Speaker 6: I'm like, this is going to go one way or
• 55:55
  Speaker 6: the other.
• 55:56
  Speaker 5: And everything was kind of just like they're here fore
• 55:58
  Speaker 5: over a treet or fluffy yeah, and I'm thinking I'm
• 56:00
  Speaker 5: looking at Tim, I'm like We've picked the wrong one.
• 56:03
  Speaker 5: There was a really beautiful gentleman. He shared that he
• 56:06
  Speaker 5: had a drug addiction and he was here to help
• 56:08
  Speaker 5: with that, and I was like, okay, this is cool.
• 56:10
  Speaker 6: He came from the UK. Everyone has a story, Yeah.
• 56:13
  Speaker 5: Everyone has something going on in their life, whether it's
• 56:16
  Speaker 5: as heavy as someone else. There's a reason why people
• 56:18
  Speaker 5: are going to a retreat, and it's generally the same
• 56:21
  Speaker 5: outcome of finding some inner peace, yes, and a little
• 56:24
  Speaker 5: bit of freedom from a busy mind. So then when
• 56:27
  Speaker 5: it got to me, I told my story and I
• 56:30
  Speaker 5: was crying and everybody else was crying, and then it's
• 56:34
  Speaker 5: really shifted the whole atmosphere of the retreat.
• 56:37
  Speaker 6: And then afterwards people are like, Chess, I'm so glad
• 56:40
  Speaker 6: you opened up.
• 56:40
  Speaker 5: I'm actually here because my friend committed suicide three months ago,
• 56:44
  Speaker 5: or I've just lost my mum, or and I was like, yes,
• 56:47
  Speaker 5: sometimes it takes just one person to be brave for
• 56:50
  Speaker 5: people to go to.
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: People are scared to talk about it.
• 56:54
  Speaker 3: People they want to be known for that, or they
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: don't want to bring it up, be the first one
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: to go first.
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: It's scary. Which how sad is that.
• 57:00
  Speaker 5: I know, it's so sad that we feel like we
• 57:02
  Speaker 5: have to bury our own emotions and thoughts to make
• 57:05
  Speaker 5: other people feel comfortable. Yes, that retreat, after I shared that,
• 57:10
  Speaker 5: it changed my whole perspective of life, and it taught
• 57:13
  Speaker 5: me that, you know, depression is where we worry about
• 57:16
  Speaker 5: the past. Anxiety is where we worry about the future,
• 57:20
  Speaker 5: and we never just live in the now, which is
• 57:23
  Speaker 5: really something that I wasn't doing. I was worrying about
• 57:26
  Speaker 5: why I wasn't having another healthy baby, or why this
• 57:30
  Speaker 5: was kept happening to me, and how I was missing
• 57:32
  Speaker 5: Luna so much. But I wasn't living in the now
• 57:34
  Speaker 5: and doing what I initially did at the start, which
• 57:37
  Speaker 5: was digging deep to fine purpose and to live a
• 57:41
  Speaker 5: beautiful life. So when it was my time, I'd have
• 57:43
  Speaker 5: no regrets up there, and I think it was just
• 57:46
  Speaker 5: like the human shape that I needed to be. Like Jess,
• 57:49
  Speaker 5: come on, you're venturing off the track A little bit.
• 57:51
  Speaker 5: You know that dirt road's not safe. We need to
• 57:53
  Speaker 5: go back and do what we're meant to do, and
• 57:56
  Speaker 5: that's live a fulfilling life with purpose and gratitude, even
• 58:00
  Speaker 5: when there's lots of yucky cards that have thrown our way.
• 58:03
  Speaker 6: Yeah, that really helped.
• 58:04
  Speaker 5: That was in April May this year, and then I
• 58:07
  Speaker 5: had a really great couple of months and life was
• 58:09
  Speaker 5: feeling really lovely. And then six weeks ago, actually I
• 58:12
  Speaker 5: lost my dad, which has just like really cracked open
• 58:17
  Speaker 5: grief all over again. And now I'm.
• 58:20
  Speaker 6: Kind of back to scare one again, trying.
• 58:22
  Speaker 5: To figure out how I'm going to survive without him,
• 58:26
  Speaker 5: which is really hard. And then in the same breath,
• 58:30
  Speaker 5: I feel like I have a little bit of peace
• 58:33
  Speaker 5: knowing that Dad's.
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: With Luke Lunah, yeah, where she's not on her own.
• 58:38
  Speaker 5: My dad died of a broken heart, and I think
• 58:42
  Speaker 5: when someone takes their own life, it brings off a
• 58:45
  Speaker 5: lot of like what if should have, could have?
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: Would have? Why didn't I do this?
• 58:52
  Speaker 5: And that's where we kind of circle back to communities
• 58:56
  Speaker 5: feeling grief. My dad lost his only granddaughter. He waited
• 59:02
  Speaker 5: sixty five years to have Luna, and then she was
• 59:06
  Speaker 5: stolen from him. My dad had a lot of loss
• 59:08
  Speaker 5: in his life. He lost two sisters, he lost his
• 59:11
  Speaker 5: dad three weeks before we lost Lou. I lost my
• 59:15
  Speaker 5: grandmother on the Wednesday, and my dad took his life
• 59:18
  Speaker 5: on the Sunday. So I felt like my dad was
• 59:21
  Speaker 5: carrying so much loss and grief and emotion and was
• 59:27
  Speaker 5: too much him to carry anymore. We've had so many
• 59:30
  Speaker 5: conversations about like the afterlife and where we thought Luna was.
• 59:33
  Speaker 5: And it's like, not that he's let me down, because
• 59:37
  Speaker 5: I'm not angry at Dad. I understand why he's done it,
• 59:39
  Speaker 5: and I feel so sorry that he was feeling so
• 59:43
  Speaker 5: heavy in that moment that he felt like that was
• 59:45
  Speaker 5: his only option. But I feel like it also adds
• 59:48
  Speaker 5: just another black cart that I have to carry now
• 59:51
  Speaker 5: for the rest of my life. I now have a
• 59:53
  Speaker 5: different form of loss. And whereas my son is five now,
• 59:58
  Speaker 5: he has a beautiful relationship. He only sees my parents,
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 5: so his grandparents and my mum and dad, and they
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 5: play such a pivotal role in Mars's life. And Marzi's
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 5: at an age now where he understands what's going on.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 5: When we lost Lou, he was only seven months old,
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 5: so his grief journey has been very different, and we've
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 5: sprinkled him with a lot of love and magic and
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 5: he's so happy all the time, and I feel like
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 5: we've kind of not sheltered him, but he hasn't had
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 5: to absorb it, which I'm so grateful for. That's mine
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 5: to carry in, not his. But now it's very different
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 5: for me because I have to talk to him about
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 5: his poppy and poppies with Luna now, and I don't
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 5: want him to have this kind of thing where like
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 5: Lou's taken his favorite person, his best friend's gone, and
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 5: you have to really make sure we don't like glamorize
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 5: the afterlife, right, because did we glamorize it too much?
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 5: Where Dad thought that that was so great and that's
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 5: you know, where he wanted to go. Where now he's
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 5: left his whole family to pick up the pieces. So
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 5: that's like a really fine line which now I have
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 5: to balance because I have to ensure that Marzi has
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 5: the tools and the strategies in place where he feels supported.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 5: He knows that mental health is a real life thing.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 5: Men's mental health is massive. I mean females is as well,
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 5: but I feel like that's on Men are way higher
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 5: one hundred percent. But I feel for women, we call
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 5: our girlfriends, we talk, we do things like this, we chat,
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 5: we hold yes, we hold space. Where for men, like
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 5: my dad was sixty eight when he passed, which is
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 5: very young, and I think it's like, you don't really
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 5: hear that for older gentlemen. It's normally men that are
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 5: in their forties or thirties that have marriage breakdowns or
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 5: the financial issues. And for a grown man that has
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 5: four kids, has been in marriage, he's married to my
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 5: mom for.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 6: Fifty years, it's like, that's really heavy.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 5: We need to focus on men's mental health as a whole,
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 5: from teenagers to grown adult.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 6: Men that are, you know, in retirement age.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: My dad was at that age.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 5: And then he felt like it was too heavy and
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 5: that he couldn't communicate, which I think, how sad is that? Yeah?
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: Really is that. I was sad that he's.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 5: Got four children, two grandchildren, and a wife of fifty
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 5: years and he still felt like he couldn't find the
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 5: shore grew up.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: In a generation where they didn't know how to speak
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: up exactly about their emotions, and they thought it was
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: a burden and everyone.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: Yep, yeah, which is terrible, so fucking sad. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 5: I think even like mental health is such a it's
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 5: so big at the moment, and a lot of people
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 5: are talking about it and the awareness is there, but
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 5: there's nothing actually pushing it forward.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 6: The government have said you get a ten pass type, which.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 5: Is nothing really because it costs you say, two hundred
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 5: and twenty dollars to see a therapist and you get
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 5: sixty seven dollars back. You've still got to be able
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 5: to pay free.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 6: It's not free. Yeah, it's not free.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 5: So we want to also bring that in throughout that
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 5: brievement leave where you get say ten packs for free. Yeah,
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 5: because even that, if I didn't have a therapist, god
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 5: knows which way Tim and I would have went. You know,
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 5: we were lucky to be able to financially afford to
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 5: do that, but most families can't, and that's a lot.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: I think funeral funerals are expensive, so expensive.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 5: And like even like well we've done too now with
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 5: Lou and Dad, and older people generally have like life
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 5: insurance or something like that, or funeral cover, but when
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 5: you lose a child, you've got to come up with
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 5: what fifteen.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 6: Thousand adults straight off the bat.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a lot.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: Maybe people have that sitting in the bank account ready
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: to go, like yeah.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 6: So I think something like that will help.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: What we also do is.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 5: We have a thing called Luna's Army, So my partner
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 5: to do with men's mental health. He does marathons, triathlons
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 5: in honor of Luna. But he actually has a heap
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 5: of friends which started off as friends. So we lost
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 5: Lou in the December. In March, he signed up to
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 5: a the Malulaba triathlon and he had never done that
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 5: in his life. He was a football player, so he
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 5: was fit, but he never had like rode a bike
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 5: or swam in the like, nothing like that. And within
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 5: three months he had I think it was about twelve
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 5: of his friends. Some of the boys couldn't even swim.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 5: They literally had swimming lessons like at the pool because
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 5: they couldn't swim as men, and they did an ocean swim.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 5: He started this kind of like a movement where mental
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 5: health is important for men.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 6: But they were also training together.
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 5: They were talking about it, and they were doing this
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 5: like massive Like some of his triflons take like three hours.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 6: He did any man last week it was five hours.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: It's like wow.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 5: He says that when he's training that hard and he's
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 5: pushing his body to the brink, it makes him feel
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 5: closer to Luna because all of his thoughts are clear,
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 5: so he doesn't have a busy brain anymore. He's fighting
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 5: to complete this race, but he's also feeling really connected
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 5: to his daughter. And I think for a man to
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 5: talk about mental health and to open up a space
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 5: where like even the first Malulabar trie we did, there
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 5: was no islanders there, which was wild. Timmy was like
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 5: the first islander on the course and everyone's like this
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 5: foke's one hundred kilos on a road bike, Like what's
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 5: going on? And then every year he's got all of
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 5: his friends on board and his cousins are on board,
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 5: and now we see there's like diverse cultures there now
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 5: and it's like really opened up. It's like if we
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 5: can do it, you can do it. And I think
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 5: that's important. And with Luna's army, we just bring the vibe.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 5: You know, my role is I'm not the athlete. Tim's
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 5: the athlete, but my role is to bring the support
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 5: and the pipe, so we bring the positivity where we're
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 5: cheering everyone on the energy and I think that's really cool.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: It brings community together.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 5: But within that time we have some of the most
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 5: amazing connections and conversations with our community there. So there's
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 5: people coming to support their friends and family that might
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 5: come up and we chat about grief and we chat
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 5: about loss, and I think those conversations that just pop up.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: They're the most meaningful.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 5: Yeah, because true, Yeah, I feel like sometimes people just
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 5: want to come have a chat, and I'm like an
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 5: open book and happy to chat, and it opens up
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 5: an avenue where people feel safe and they feel heard,
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 5: and I think that's important. I actually go out to
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 5: childcare centers and schools and do story times, so we
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 5: would read books, We chant Lose mantra, We talk about
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 5: the importance of positive empowerment, and not only is it
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 5: keeping Lose Legacy alive, but I think it's also planning
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 5: that seed of empowerment within our meetings too.
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: Which is really osolutely. Everything you do is incredible. Thank
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 2: you so much for being here today. I've been so
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: open for sharing her story, her light, her legacy.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: If anyone listening who wants to get involved in support
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: the foundation, like, how can our community help you?
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 5: Yeah?
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: Help.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 5: Every year at Christmas time we do a Build a
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 5: Bear appeal. So this December we hold a in house
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 5: Build a Bear where the Build a Bear team come
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 5: out to Luna's old dance studio and we build the
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 5: bears in house for six children. So we started off
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 5: with two hospitals. We now have five hospitals. We're venturing
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 5: out this year into Melbourne as well. We do Sydney
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 5: Gold Coast Brisbane and we deliver hundreds of bears to
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 5: children over Christmas Week, so when they wake up on
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 5: Christmas Day in hospital, they've got some lunar magic and
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 5: a little bear for a safe keeping. Everything is done
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 5: on donations, so it's twenty five dollars for a US
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 5: standard bear. It's fifty dollars for a bear with a
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 5: costume which children love and it is a genuine Build
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 5: a Bear product and we get Luna's helpers to deliver
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 5: them over Christmas Week and children. It brings a bit
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 5: of light and magic to children over the Christmas period.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 5: It's a tradition we do for lou because that was
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 5: over that time we were in hospital as well, and
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 5: my dad actually he started that because he was looking
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 5: for a bear for Luna when she was in hospital
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 5: and there was nothing around. There was no teddies for
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 5: him to purchase. So that was another initiative that came
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 5: up where it's like, how do we not have teddies
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 5: around children? Let's bring some you know, some childhood memories
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 5: and now we do the build a bear. We started
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 5: with one hundred bears and now we're doing hundreds upon hundreds.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 3: That's incredible. So honestly, thank you so much for sharing everything.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 3: I know, even anyone who was going through grief of
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 3: their own, like sharing your story and sharing in the outs,
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 3: the depths, the things that no one wants to talk
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 3: about and the shame that comes with grief that you
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 3: travel and go through on your own, will be so
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 3: helpful for anybody or even anybody who hasn't gone through
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 3: grief and they want to know how to support somebody
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 3: who's going through grief. This has been even helpful for
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 3: me as somebody who can support the people around me
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 3: who go through that too.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: So thank you so much, Thank you me do you. Thanks.
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: We'll leave all of your details in our show notes,
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: and yeah, we'd love to support you this year as
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: well anyway we can you let us know you much.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: Thank you,