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From the Archives: Learning to Live With What You Didn't Plan For. · We Didn't Plan for This Podcast

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Hi, and welcome to We Didn't Plan for This, a special series from How Yoga Changed My Life, a podcast.
0:08
SPEAKER_00: This is episode two.
0:11
SPEAKER_00: If you've listened to How Yoga Changed My Life, episode 164 and 166, you already know what happened with my husband Brian.
0:24
SPEAKER_00: Today isn't about retelling that story, though.
0:27
SPEAKER_00: It's about something different.
0:30
SPEAKER_00: It's really about where I am right now.
0:36
SPEAKER_00: On How Yoga Changed My Life, a podcast, we usually explore how practices like yoga, meditation, breath work, journaling, and movement have changed people's lives.
0:51
SPEAKER_00: But this series asks a different question.
0:56
SPEAKER_00: What practices stay, evolve, or become essential when life takes a turn you never planned for?
1:10
SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes life doesn't slowly shift.
1:15
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it turns overnight.
1:18
SPEAKER_00: And suddenly you're living a life you never imagined.
1:26
SPEAKER_00: And that's where I am now.
1:31
SPEAKER_00: So here's a quick recap.
1:35
SPEAKER_00: About nine years ago, Brian was diagnosed with a pituitary adenoma.
1:40
SPEAKER_00: It was the size of a tennis ball, and we had no idea until it began bleeding.
1:46
SPEAKER_00: He went through a nine-hour emergency surgeries, and doctors were able to remove most of it.
1:54
SPEAKER_00: About six months after that, Brian suffered a widowmaker heart attack with a 95% blockage in his artery.
2:02
SPEAKER_00: Again, emergency surgery, a stint, and recovery.
2:09
SPEAKER_00: Then this past fall of 2025, we learned that the tumor had returned.
2:15
SPEAKER_00: This time it's about the size of a golf ball.
2:19
SPEAKER_00: He had surgery in December, and the plan was to go to the University of Virginia this spring for gamma knife radiation to remove the remaining tumor, because where it was located was kind of tricky and could be life-altering if they moved too quickly into that area.
2:44
SPEAKER_00: Then after the surgery in early January, we both got the flu.
2:53
SPEAKER_00: What started as something we thought might just be a rough illness escalated really quickly.
3:01
SPEAKER_00: By Tuesday, I took him to the hospital.
3:07
SPEAKER_00: From that moment forward, everything moved faster than any of us could process.
3:13
SPEAKER_00: Doctors, machines, decisions, and a lot of waiting in between.
3:28
SPEAKER_00: Our whole family gathered around him.
3:35
SPEAKER_00: By Saturday night, Brian passed away with all of us there.
3:41
SPEAKER_00: This was all sudden so overwhelming.
3:49
SPEAKER_00: And honestly, something none of us were prepared for.
8:14
SPEAKER_00: Meditation isn't fixing anything.
8:18
SPEAKER_00: It's simply giving my mind a place to rest, which is way better than where it wants to spiral to.
8:29
SPEAKER_00: Without my breath work practice, I'm honestly not sure how I would have made it through the last few months.
8:36
SPEAKER_00: My breath carried me through every night in that hospital.
8:42
SPEAKER_00: Through the alarms and the sounds of the ECMO machines, the ventilator, the dialysis, the feeding tubes, all of those noises.
8:54
SPEAKER_00: My breath was there when Brian took his final breaths.
9:08
SPEAKER_00: I'm also really surprised by practices of box breathing.
9:14
SPEAKER_00: I hated box breathing in the past.
9:16
SPEAKER_00: It never calmed me down.
9:17
SPEAKER_00: It always made me feel really anxious.
9:19
SPEAKER_00: But during my grief, it's actually been really grounding.
9:23
SPEAKER_00: And I'm surprised by that.
9:24
SPEAKER_00: It's very simple.
9:26
SPEAKER_00: You inhale for the count of four.
9:28
SPEAKER_00: You hold for the count of four.
9:31
SPEAKER_00: Exhale for a count of four.
9:34
SPEAKER_00: And hold the exhale for a count of four.
9:39
SPEAKER_00: I've always been using simple, long exhale breathing practices whenever my anxiety would spike.
9:46
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I'll even visualize my breath as a color moving through my body.
9:54
SPEAKER_00: Because really, when everything feels so overwhelming, breathing is the only thing I can always return to.
10:01
SPEAKER_00: It's the only thing I can control right now.
10:08
SPEAKER_00: I've had to really lower my expectations on myself.
10:16
SPEAKER_00: Losing Brian has forced me to do so.
10:20
SPEAKER_00: Forced me to not operate at the same level that I used to.
10:29
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not expecting myself to operate at the same level that I used to right now.
10:35
SPEAKER_00: I can't.
10:36
SPEAKER_00: Things are different.
10:38
SPEAKER_00: I'm different.
10:43
SPEAKER_00: Some things can wait, some things don't matter anymore.
10:46
SPEAKER_00: I went to class today and I wore two different socks.
10:50
SPEAKER_00: I know that's stupid, but for me in the past, that used to give me great anxiety.
10:55
SPEAKER_00: I hated it.
10:57
SPEAKER_00: Today when I took my shoes off and I looked down and I was horrified.
11:00
SPEAKER_00: I have two different socks on.
11:03
SPEAKER_00: It was like, what the fuck big deal is that?
11:06
SPEAKER_00: Who cares?
11:07
SPEAKER_00: No one cares.
11:08
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter.
11:11
SPEAKER_00: Grief rearranges your priorities, whether you're ready or not.
11:19
SPEAKER_00: Family and friends.
11:23
SPEAKER_00: The people that have been showing up for me, the unexpected support I've gotten.
11:29
SPEAKER_00: And the hardest thing is letting people help.
11:36
SPEAKER_00: One of the things that has surprised me the most in this season is how people show up for me and the girls.
11:43
SPEAKER_00: Some people you expect to be there, and they are.
11:47
SPEAKER_00: But some of the most meaningful support has also come from places I didn't expect.
11:54
SPEAKER_00: I have a friend that texts me a daily joke every day.
11:59
SPEAKER_00: I've had my friends bring me meals because they know I'm not a great cook.
12:05
SPEAKER_00: And food is the last thing on my mind.
12:10
SPEAKER_00: The donations that have gone to our give, send, go fundraiser, my friend Shelly set up a while back for us.
12:19
SPEAKER_00: It's unbelievable the generosity of people.
12:25
SPEAKER_00: Or just my close friends coming over to my house and getting in bed with me to watch a rom-com movie, or just hold my hand in silence.
12:39
SPEAKER_00: I get a lovely text sometimes from friends that simply say, I'm thinking about you today.
12:47
SPEAKER_00: That means so much.
12:50
SPEAKER_00: Words cannot express the support.
12:55
SPEAKER_00: And I'll be honest with you, letting people help hasn't always been easy for me.
13:02
SPEAKER_00: I'm used to being the one that's the helper.
13:05
SPEAKER_00: I drop anything for my friends in my family.
13:09
SPEAKER_00: I'm like the local handyman and the IT support for our family.
13:13
SPEAKER_00: And I pride myself on being able to handle anything that comes my way.
13:18
SPEAKER_00: This reminds me of a moment years ago in Chicago, Brian traveled a lot for work and a roof started leaking during a freezing rainstorm.
13:28
SPEAKER_00: I Googled how to fix a roof from the inside out, which the internet said was basically impossible.
13:34
SPEAKER_00: But six hours later, covered in tar and insulation, I'd patched that thing well enough to survive the entire winter, November through May.
13:44
SPEAKER_00: It was the polar vortex winter in Chicago, first winter there.
13:48
SPEAKER_00: Crazy.
13:49
SPEAKER_00: I always believed if I worked hard enough, I could fix anything.
13:58
SPEAKER_00: But grief, that's a whole other ballgame.
14:03
SPEAKER_00: I can't fix that.
14:10
SPEAKER_00: Grief really does have a way of humbling you.
14:22
SPEAKER_00: We think we're independent.
14:24
SPEAKER_00: We think we can handle everything ourselves.
14:29
SPEAKER_00: But we aren't designed to carry life's hardest moments alone.
14:33
SPEAKER_00: We're human.
14:39
SPEAKER_00: This past weekend, one of my oldest and dearest friends, Jill, and her husband, Timmer, used their frequent flyer miles to fly me down to see them in Panama City Beach.
14:50
SPEAKER_00: And to be honest, at first I felt super guilty leaving the girls and going to the beach alone with my friends after their father died.
15:02
SPEAKER_00: And of course, Jill, she knew I would feel that way.
15:05
SPEAKER_00: I mean, when you've been friends with someone over half of your life, they can see right through your bullshit.
15:13
SPEAKER_00: So Jill and Timmer took me to their farm in Bona Fay, Florida, and introduced me to some of their tribe.
15:20
SPEAKER_00: Jeff and Jirley and Pam.
15:23
SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, Pam and I are in the same club, the widow's club.
15:27
SPEAKER_00: Her husband passed away about three years ago.
15:32
SPEAKER_00: These three wonderful humans embraced me just like I was an old friend.
15:38
SPEAKER_00: We spent the evening outside by the fire and the next day out riding buggies and shooting guns on their gun range.
15:45
SPEAKER_00: Hey, I haven't shot a gun in a very long time.
15:47
SPEAKER_00: I was super safe about it, but I really like a little gun.
15:52
SPEAKER_00: Not a big gun.
15:52
SPEAKER_00: Didn't do the rifle.
15:54
SPEAKER_00: They did some clay shooting.
15:55
SPEAKER_00: I think that's what clay pigeon shooting.
15:57
SPEAKER_00: I think that's what it's called.
15:58
SPEAKER_00: I shot a little handgun 22.
16:01
SPEAKER_00: That wasn't a bad shot.
16:03
SPEAKER_00: I was pretty proud of myself.
16:07
SPEAKER_00: After that night, we came back to Panama City and spent the rest of the weekend relaxing.
16:11
SPEAKER_00: And we finished off the weekend with a sunset boat ride.
16:16
SPEAKER_00: I couldn't have asked for better people in my life.
16:21
SPEAKER_00: I am truly humbled by their love and support.
16:28
SPEAKER_00: And when people show up for you in those moments, it's one of the most beautiful parts of being human.
16:36
SPEAKER_00: Community, tribe, coven, village, they all matter more than we realize until we really need it.
16:52
SPEAKER_00: Now movement.
16:55
SPEAKER_00: Movement has always been important to me.
16:58
SPEAKER_00: But like I said earlier, after Brian died, it took me a long time to return to any kind of physical practice.
17:09
SPEAKER_00: Three weeks, actually.
17:13
SPEAKER_00: Not because I didn't believe in it.
17:18
SPEAKER_00: Not because I didn't know it would help.
17:21
SPEAKER_00: I think in my work I see over and over again how movement helps to move through emotions, feelings, and memories.
17:30
SPEAKER_00: I've had clients sob during a hip opening pose and weep in shavasana.
17:36
SPEAKER_00: I even had a client throw a yoga block at me when I tried to offer her ease.
17:42
SPEAKER_00: I think I was afraid it would happen to me.
17:48
SPEAKER_00: But because grief is heavy, even the simplest things can feel hard.
17:57
SPEAKER_00: So as I've come back to movement, I've kept it really simple with Pilates, yoga, and gyratonic.
18:05
SPEAKER_00: I have no big goals.
18:07
SPEAKER_00: These are not intense workouts.
18:09
SPEAKER_00: It's just moving my body again.
18:15
SPEAKER_00: Some days it's just 20 minutes, and some days it's just breathing and stretching, meditating.
18:24
SPEAKER_00: But what I've noticed is that movement creates little pockets of relief.
18:31
SPEAKER_00: Not because it fixes anything, but because it reminds your body that you're still alive.
18:42
SPEAKER_00: And in seasons like this, sometimes that's enough.
18:46
SPEAKER_00: Not pushing performance or personal records, but just moving gently and reconnecting my body and my breath.
18:59
SPEAKER_00: Movement reminds me that I'm still here.
19:05
SPEAKER_00: None of these things fix what happened.
19:10
SPEAKER_00: But they help me to keep showing up.
19:17
SPEAKER_00: So those are a few things that are helping me right now.
19:21
SPEAKER_00: Meditation, breath work, lowering my expectations, moving, most importantly, community.
19:33
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the bravest thing we do is take one breath, open the door, and walk back into life.
19:40
SPEAKER_00: So before we continue our day, let's pause before you get out of your car.
19:46
SPEAKER_00: Take a deep breath in through your nose.
19:49
SPEAKER_00: And as you inhale, lift and squeeze your shoulders tightly up towards your ears, almost like you're trying to hide your ears with your shoulders.
20:00
SPEAKER_00: Hold this squeeze at the top of your inhalation.
20:04
SPEAKER_00: Now slowly exhale and let everything melt.
20:09
SPEAKER_00: The tension in your face, your jaw, your neck, and your shoulders.
20:19
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you notice a little tingling energy move through your body.
20:24
SPEAKER_00: Just pause here for a moment and notice you're here.
20:31
SPEAKER_00: You made it to today.
20:35
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to repeat today.
20:41
SPEAKER_00: Now when you're ready, blink your eyes open and open the door.
20:52
SPEAKER_00: If you ever see someone sitting in their car for a minute before they go inside, they might not be procrastinating.
21:00
SPEAKER_00: They might just be taking a breath, gathering themselves before they open the door and step back into the life they didn't plan for.
21:10
SPEAKER_00: We didn't plan for this, but we're here.
21:14
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening.
21:16
SPEAKER_00: Please share this episode with someone who may resonate with what I'm going through.
21:22
SPEAKER_00: The more that we share our experiences, the more we can impact and help others.
21:29
SPEAKER_00: Thanks again.