Shell Here!

Only two more hurdles to get through and the six-week roller coaster ride will come to an end! To say I am excited for it to be over is an understatement. This time of year is not only challenging, it is quite exhausting. This year has proven one more thing: grief, holidays, birthdays, death dates and epiphanies are exhausting!

Last year at this time, I was not only struggling with our crazy six-week roller coaster ride; I was also struggling with the coming new year. I kept telling Jay that I was extremely afraid of 2020. My gut was speaking to me loudly, and my mind was in fear of the year.

To be clear, I only feared it on a personal level and I felt bad things were coming into our lives. The last time I felt this horrible about an approaching new year was in 2012. My gut was not wrong. In 2013, my husband was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. My gut knew! My intuition knew!

The same thing happened in December of 2019; my gut and intuition were screaming at me!

My mind kept saying there was no way it could be worse than 2013-2014. I survived the unimaginable, so we could handle whatever was coming. We got this! Sure, my mind wasn’t wrong, but my intuition and gut still screamed that 2020 was going to be rough!

January of 2020, I was busy going to class four days a week and everything felt fine. I told myself that this time my gut and intuition were wrong. Nothing bad was coming!

February 3^rd, I woke up to my roof shingles swimming in my pool. After my heart sank, I told myself, “Oh, this is what my gut and intuition were talking about.” I figured we would get the roof fixed and, although it was inconvenient personally and financially, we have been through worse. We got this!

But that horrible bad feeling in my gut and intuition still lingered! I learned a long time ago to never, ever ask, “What’s next?” So, I didn’t. I just waited.

Then, as the saying goes, the stuff hits the fan and goes everywhere. That became March!

March of 2020, the pandemic was raging and everyone was freaking out. Then Disneyland shut down, and everyone was put on lockdown. Was this what my gut and intuition were trying to tell me?

As we all tried to find our way through this pandemic, masks, no masks, lockdown, open, closed again, and let’s not forget the toilet paper debacle; Jay and I just rode the wave.

Then came the riots, protests, finding out which of our friends were racists and having our eyes opened to the extreme inequality of this world. Jay and I took this opportunity to educate ourselves and grow from this scenario.

We grounded ourselves and took a long look at our surroundings and how we wanted our lives to be.

Who do we want in our lives? What will we accept and not accept around us? How will we protect our energy? How can the two of us  become better humans for the world we live in? It was quite the eye opener and a huge learning experience for us.

As time went on, we just kept learning, growing, changing and riding the wave of 2020.

We know 2020 has been extremely hard for everyone. Our hearts go out to those who have lost loved ones this year. We know your pain. Our hearts go out to those who have lost jobs, lost income and have no idea where the next meal is coming from or how to keep the roof over your head. I know your pain!

Everything everyone is experiencing in 2020 was our reality in 2013-2014. The pandemic in our life was cancer. The fear, the pain, and the isolation we lived with during my husband’s cancer journey and death was our 2020.

As hard as 2020 has been, we have already lived through this. It’s as if 2013-2014 prepped us for 2020. I’m not saying 2020 has been a cake walk, but I will say we understand everything that everyone is feeling.

We know your pain, and I cannot express enough how much our hearts want to reach out and hug everyone and to tell you that you are not alone. We get it! Isolation sucks! Death sucks! The loss of a job sucks! Losing your business sucks! Fear of where your next meal is coming from sucks! Fear of losing a home sucks! As bleak as things feel right now, I promise you from my own experience this will not last forever. When we are so wrapped up into the dark side of things, our human nature neglects to see the good.

In my darkest days where I couldn’t even imagine living one more second, where thoughts of ending it all washed over me, fearing the unknown, the desperation of ending the pain, the loss of hope and living in extreme fear; I somehow survived it. I am here to say, you will too! Even when you feel so isolated and alone and it feels like there is no one to reach out to, I promise you there is always that one person you can reach out to. Even if it’s a suicide hotline! (1-800-273-8255)

My biggest fear in life was ending up alone. When Art died, that fear manifested in ways I never thought possible. I shut everyone out of my life, because in my mind they were going to leave or die anyways. So, my biggest fear of being alone became my reality. Jay and I have each other, thank goodness, but in my darkest hours I couldn’t see that.

 For me, trying to live one moment at a time and addressing my fears has helped me survive my darkest days. It’s a process, that’s for sure. It’s never easy, but it is doable.

I believe that because of these experiences in my life, 2020 was more like Fasten your seatbelts! We are going for a ride, but it will come to an end. Although this has not been an easy year for anyone, I can look back on 2020 as my biggest year of growth yet! For that, I am grateful.

Our next hurdle is my Dad’s death date, January 30, and of course New Years. I am happy to say I will be getting off this roller coaster ride January 1! I will take my seat belt off, grab my belongings that I want to keep such as grief wellness, growth, joy, love, inner peace and kindness and take them with me into 2021. I am leaving behind my fears, pain, isolation, hardened heart, negative thoughts because they no longer serve me.

I am happy to report that my gut and intuition have no negative or bad feelings walking into 2021. I only feel love, joy, peace, serenity, happiness, and acceptance of myself and others!

Phew! What a ride this has been. Even though the six weeks is always challenging for us, I have seen huge growth for the two of us. We have had a lot of great moments that have seemed to outweigh the negative this time around. I will take that as a win! Change is always hard, but if we are willing to do the work, I have found it is always rewarding.

Jay and I are going to be spending the rest of the December focused on our healing. We are working on our intentions for the new year. Homing in on our manifestations, working on our abandonment issues and learning to trust the process. We are also deeply working on opening up our hearts and learning how to stop pushing people out of our lives.

If you have been following our six-week roller coaster ride, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for going on this journey with us. We can promise you that in 2021, we will be bringing our more authentic selves to you, filled with love, peace and joy! We will share our grief growth, grief wellness and how we have changed, as well as the things we have done to change.

To all of you beautiful readers, please be safe out there for the remainder of the year. Take some time to practice self-care. Allow yourself some time to breathe, relax and just really absorb what 2020 has meant to you. Remember, whatever hurdles you had to jump this year, better days are coming; we promise! 😘

Jay here!

Hi everyone! I think we can all agree that 2020 has been a crazy year. It’s been crazy for us too, but it’s also been a year of healing and growth.

We continue to grow, even as this year comes to a close.

My mom told me earlier this year that I need to stop pushing people away. The idea that I push people away was new to me, mostly because I’d never heard it said so blatantly before, but it made sense. If you’ve read our post Grief Gave Us Abandonment Issues, then you know what I mean.

I realized that I’ve had these huge walls around my heart since my dad died.

That shouldn’t be too big of a realization. After all, I’ve known I have high walls and trust issues since… Well, I don’t know exactly. I’ve known since age thirteen at least, maybe sooner.

However, I never knew they stem from abandonment issues. That one term, abandonment issues, shifts my entire perspective on it.

So that’s why I put up so many walls.

When my dad died, there was so much pain in my little heart. Then some family members on my dad’s side did some pretty horrible things, and that was salt in the already massive wound.

I didn’t know how to deal with that sort of pain; I was twelve! So, I didn’t. I shut down everything, including my heart. If I froze my heart and put walls up around it, then maybe I could avoid the pain.

Part of being so icy cold is that my immense compassion, kindness and empathy have been muted (though not nonexistent) for the last six years. This made it easier to push people away. If they made a mistake, or were even just mildly annoying, I could push them away without a second thought.

I’ve seen how disastrous this is though. I really am a sweet, kind, caring person with a lot of love to give. I push people away because I don’t want to get hurt, but that tactic hurts me and is therefore counterproductive to my original objective.

As 2020 ends, I know I need to work on thawing my frozen heart and tearing down the walls I put up. And draining the mote. And removing the traps…

It’s apparent I have a lot of work to do. Nevertheless, these epiphanies were huge for me because now I know what I need to work on.

The work is going to be hard. I don’t really know what I’m doing, but I’ll figure it out as I go. The nice thing is that I have my mom to help me, and she’s the nicest, kindest, sweetest, most compassionate and empathetic person I know.

Even though I have work to do in 2021, I’m proud of what I’ve already accomplished in 2020. Just having these massive epiphanies were exhausting, difficult and wonderful. Finding the root cause of these destructive behaviors was huge! Exhausting, but huge!

Additionally, we also improved ourselves in other ways.

I was on Broadway on Demand in a play centered around activism. I rediscovered the joy in musical theatre, which I’ve loved since I was seven. I’ve been singing since I was seven, but I felt like I’d just started to really sing this spring. If 2020 hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have gotten to sing “Speechless”, a song I connect with so deeply, and rediscover the magic that made me love singing in the first place.  

If not for 2020, I definitely would not have grounded myself in nature like I’ve been doing. I’ve been an indoors person, for better or worse, throughout all my teen years. There were entire days where I never went outside. Thanks to 2020, I spend more time enjoying the great outdoors than I ever used to!

Between the epiphanies, rediscovering my passion and evolving as a human, 2020 has been a productive year. We even started this very blog in 2020!

Take a moment and think about your 2020, all the way back to January. I know it feels like that was forever ago, but just try. Is there anything you can congratulate yourself for, even if it’s just gratitude for not going totally crazy in quarantine?

Did you learn a new skill? Reconnect with an old joy? Have any epiphanies? Do something that made you happy? Practice self-care? Connect with your feelings? Reevaluate what brings you joy in life? Actively try to maintain your sanity?

Any one of those things is huge! Even if there’s not something on this list for you, find something. Give yourself due credit for one good thing in 2020.

For me, 2020 has been a year of growth, learning, expanding horizons, reconnecting with old joys and finding new ones. I know I have my work cut out for me in 2021 as I learn to open my heart and work on myself, but I’m excited!

If I can get through 2013 and 2014, and 2020, I can handle whatever 2021 throws my way. If you survived 2020, then you’ve already survived so much. You’ve displayed the strength to survive. That’s all any of us can hope for; to survive the worst, learn from it, and bring that knowledge into our futures.

May 2021 bring you all peace, love, joy and good health.

Aloha and gratitude,

Jay and Shell