Latest / AHA Podcast / What My Daughter Taught Me About Love | Grief, Oneness & the Ripple Effect (ep 21)
Transcript
- riverside edit ali — take 02 alicia andrus's stu: Hi, my name is Ali Andrus Welcome to the Aha podcast Awaken, Heal and Align. So just me today. I don't have a guest, so I'm just gonna talk. I'm feeling a lot of gratitude, a lot of love. I just had a lovely phone call with another mom who has a child on the other side of the veil. And it's definitely very healing. Just being someone who's listening when someone's going through something hard. kindness goes a long way. A long way. So today I just kind of wanted to talk about some of my own aha moments. And lately that theme has been around making others feel loved. It's a big lesson that I know. McKel absolutely did for others. My daughter McKel passed January of last year, 2025. There's something that we put in McKel's obituary. Not we, actually, her dad. He's the writer. And I'm gonna read it because I think it's really beautiful how he put this into words. And I mean, I'm not quite two years in to her transition date. To the other side, but it's still really weird to say McKel's obituary. Those are words that no mom ever thinks they're gonna say. So here's what he wrote. At five years old, McKel watched a public safety announcement which said, If you love someone, tell them to buckle up. McKel laughed and retorted, Why wouldn't you just tell them you love them? The comical assertion from the mind of a five-year-old was emblematic of McKel's innermost value. People deserved to be loved. Ironically, McKel rarely said the phrase I love you. She didn't need to. McKel found ways to make each person know they were loved individually and unconditionally. She often reflected on the love languages of her friends, analyzing the ways in which she could demonstrate her love. McKel showered her older sister with affection, closely. Constantly cuddling with her and playing with her hair. Her younger brother was loved through time spent jumping on the trampoline and chess lessons. McKel actively loved me by leaving notes around the house and by joining in spontaneous dance. McKel was lovingly sarcastic with her father, once suggesting in a birthday letter he should improve on dad jokes. They're not that good. Just kidding. McKel did not reserve love for those who were fortunate enough to know her. It extended to people she hadn't met, including those who weren't even born. Though she was only in eighth grade, she left countless notes and sketches about ways in which bioengineering could be used to improve the prognosis of high-risk pregnancies. She often brainstormed about ways in which she could offer her technology freely to the public. Of all the superlatives used to describe McKel, authenticity has been used most often. That's a superpower, is being able to be authentic. McKel was that. She showed no hesitation advocating for those who couldn't advocate for themselves and no reluctance. Informing people when they were making bad decisions. Her authenticity, even when holding someone accountable, accomplished her ambitious, philanthropic mission to improve the world. Maya Angelou wrote, People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget the way that you made them feel. While McKel's expressions of love were varied in appearance, she left each of us with the same immortal gifts, assurance of her love, and the way her love made each of us feel. In the iconic words of McKel's sixth grade persuasive essay after she met the minimum word requirement. In conclusion, the end. So I'm wearing my daughter's Batman hoodie, by the way. She this was her favorite hoodie. And interestingly enough, I was just watching the documentary with Matthew Perry. so good. If you haven't seen it, it definitely was a tearjerker. Love that guy. He shared a lot of things in common with McKel actually, with their humor, their ability to be super witty, just on the fly, and very deep love, compassion for others and just wanting to do good in the world. Big ideas of wanting to change the world. But yeah, interestingly enough, I remember that Batman since Matthew Perry was a child was a big, big deal. I think he resonated with a lot of things in the Batman story they talked about. And same as McKel. She loved Batman. So what I've been thinking about what my aha moment has been lately has to do with the idea that separateness is an illusion. I've heard it said. I think Chase Hughes said that it's the biggest lie ever told in humanity is that we're separate. And going back to that quote with Maya Angelou, it's how you make people feel that matters. And people can feel your energy, people can feel your love, and when you are expressing these feelings and being kind to others, it goes a long way. And it's really like you're being kind to yourself. So why not do it to other people? Because it's the same thing as doing it to you because we're all the same. I've watched a lot of NDEs like I think I could probably get a PhD in near death experiences. They were one of the very most helpful things early on my grief and still I know that I binge watched a million of them on YouTube. So if you are someone who's had a near-death experience, thank you so so so much for sharing. You have no idea how much it helps people who are in grief to understand what it's like for their loved ones on the other side and to give them hope that our consciousness remains. is so so so helpful. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. But in a lot of NDEs that I watched, there was a theme. Not everyone has this, but it seems like in a lot of them they get to experience their life in the form of a life review. And it's sort of like this movie experience. But what's interesting about it is that they experience not only from their perspective But they actually get to experience the impact of their actions and things that they did in their life and how that impacted other people, whether it be for good or bad. So let's say you were kind to a little boy and smiled at him like the tiniest little thing, or there was a cat that you were petting, how much that actually meant to the cat, and how that made them feel loved, how that little boy, maybe the smile and the kind gesture, helped that boy to go to school and be nice to the kid in his classroom. You never know how the smallest things can affect people. I think back to after I went through the hardest thing in my life and the shock and pain of losing my daughter. I remember the first time I was able to step foot in a grocery store and how odd that felt that everyone was just shopping and life was just going on normal, like the world didn't understand that there's this person that their whole life has been shattered and can barely function and how I'm in just the the most intense pain and grief imaginable and it feels like I'm gonna have a heart attack. My heart is broken and shattered into a million pieces. And people are just going about their days just shopping. You never know who the the lady in the shopping cart next to you could be going through the death of a loved one. They could be going through a new diagnosis of cancer. They could be going through a divorce. You you never know. And so I try and remember that a lot more often than I used to because I think of myself in that grocery store that first time and I do remember one thing I do remember from that first time in the grocery store was that I was learning all this new stuff about energy and like everything being energy and love and How you can just imagine sending love and the energy of love and people can feel that. People can feel your energy. And I remember testing it. I was really sad. And that first time I went in the grocery store and I saw this little cute, adorable little baby girl sitting in the in front of this grocery cart. And I remember just thinking that little miracle child was on the other side not long ago. they're fresh, they're new to this world, and how would that feel to be so recently in that place of pure love and bliss? And I I remember smiling at that little baby and just imagining this beam of love care, just shooting all this love in that baby. I wanted to see if the baby would notice if I sent all my love I can muster up and send that over to this little baby and it it worked. I remember looking over to see that that baby just lit up and looked at me and smiled and kinda giggled and I could see in her face that it worked. I got through to that baby. She just absolutely lit up with the biggest smile. So that made me happy. That was something that uplifted me. And hopefully in my life review I get to experience that from that baby. But I always think about that. One day when it's my turn to be on the other side and I'm watching the movie of my life, I wanna be like, this is a really amazing movie. This person lived so much life and touched the lives of so many others. And I want to get to experience how that little thing that I did, I I had no idea that that would impact so many people. That's so cool. So you know, will I feel will I feel the relief of someone because I Sat and listened to them and was present with them, will I discover that something I don't even remember saying helped someone to get through a really hard time or uplifted their spirits and made them feel good about themselves? What kind of ripple am I leaving behind? Beneath our different identities, beliefs, and experiences, we are far less different than you think. That has been a huge aha moment for me. I've heard it described like God, the universe, source, spirit is all this big ocean, and we are the waves. So the ocean forms into a wave and comes back down. And while we're in this earthly body, we are in that waveform. And so we come here to feel this separateness, to have the ego and to be in that waveform and then When we die we go back into that love and we're all made up of that same love, that same source, that ocean, and we get to experience the separateness, even though it feels like it kind of sucks a lot. And it feels like we're all different and you're like, How can that person be the same as me? But really at the core, we all want the same things. The wave has its own shape, its own movement, its own brief expression as a wave, as this experience here on earth. But It remains part of the ocean. So we're each a unique expression of something shared. So we come from the same love, experience life through different eyes, and then ultimately return to that same love. I believe that love continues after we die. Love continues beyond what we can see with just our senses. It's so much more than our human brains can possibly comprehend. I think like if in this sea of darkness, if you just pin prick and this little light shines through, that's like what we're sh able to see. And it's so much bigger than that. One reason near death experiences move me so deeply is the way that people describe the love that's felt and how it's impossible to even put into words that it's beyond anything that you could possibly imagine. And They get to have a glimpse of that. And I love the thought that that's where my daughter is. And that's where our loved ones are on the other side. They're getting to experience that. A sense of belonging to something greater than we can understand, of being completely known, completely seen, and completely loved. When I hear about these things, I think of how we are all expressions of that love. We are all fractals of that source. We're each experiencing a different expression in our unique way, experiencing this human life from a different perspective. I think of it like we're in a human school. We're in a place where we come to know ourselves through experience to have relationships, to grow, to evolve and make choices. And you know, you're always taught Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And knowing that separateness is an illusion and we really are all connected in this big, beautiful web, and we're all connected to that big ocean and we're fractals of that. Knowing that anything you do unto others, you are truly actually doing to yourself. So it really makes you rethink the way that you treat others. We may never even know the full impact of what we put out into the world. Maybe not until our life review. But I do know what it feels like to be carrying something that feels unbearable while the world keeps moving around you and to experience kindness from others. after my daughter passed the outpouring of love, just a steady flow of people coming by with meals, with kind notes with hugs, just coming to take my son to do something, the compassion that was felt and continues. I still get kind, thoughtful texts from people and it means more than they'll probably ever know. Just in the right moment, that little act of kindness, that little text that made me feel love and made me feel like maybe my daughter had something to do with that. Maybe my daughter nudged that person. To say just the right thing that I needed in that really hard moment. You can't see everything that someone else is carrying. If you remember that, it will give you reason to pause before you react in maybe an unkind way. If you just remember you never know what that other person is carrying, and they are you. Underneath all of our differences, so many of us are longing for the same things. We wanna feel loved, we wanna feel accepted, we wanna feel safe, feel seen, feel understood, and feel like we're okay to be the authentic version of ourselves, like fully authentic and we wanna have the chance to Be the highest, fullest expression of ourselves. It's so easy to confuse who we are with the identity that we've built for ourselves. The roles, the accomplishments, the approvals, the version that we've built to try and make ourselves look good to the world, which requires putting all these extra layers on that cover up who we really are. We think we have to maintain these roles to exist in this world. Because so many of us are walking around blindly, asleep. I know that I was before I had this life quake. And that forced me into an awakening. Grief has made me question so many things. It's led me to so many aha moments. What matters to me? What do I want to give when I'm here? How do I want to live my life so when I'm watching the movie, it's a good one? And how do I want to make people feel in my presence? Going back to that quote. Maybe becoming the highest version of ourselves happens in those ordinary moments. We listen a little longer. We soften an assumption. We apologize. We send the message that says, I'm thinking of you. And we mean it. And we send them some love with that. And we extend some of that compassion inward as well. If we believe everyone belongs to this love, we have to therefore include ourselves. This is where that idea of oneness becomes a practice. So I hope that there are moments where someone feels less alone because of an act of kindness I did. I hope this can be a reminder to people to be that. Kind person to show that compassion. I hope there are ripples of kindness that come from a little thing that you do today. And I hope that through how I live and love, that McKel's love and bright light will continue to shine and keep reaching people. So here's the question for the day. If you could experience your next interaction with someone from their perspective, what feeling would you want to be there? Maybe start there. Thanks for listening. Have an amazing day. Signing off Ali Andrus with the Aha podcast, Awaken, Heal and Align.