Our Journey
We are a mother-daughter-team Shell and Jay and together we are navigating our journey with grief, science and sustainable living! We are two geology and marine science students learning about the human impact on the environment, and embarking on our own journey of limiting the damage. We equally share a deep passion to unite the world in protecting nature. We are not perfect, but we are learning more about sustainability every day. As we always say: “Perfection is an ideal, not a reality.” Plus, the fun part of life is that there is always more to learn! We are simply growing our knowledge together and sharing what we do know with the world.💚
Through it all, we are also on our journey with grief. We call it our “journey with grief,” because we realize that grief never goes away completely. We have had to accept that grief is a part of our lives now. We are continuously learning how to not only navigate this journey with grief, but how to thrive together even after everything we have been through! We are learning to love ourselves, turn our dreams into goals and passions into careers, and pursue the life of our dreams in sustainability while becoming women in science. As Shell says, “Art died; I did not.”
September of 2013, our forty-six-year-old husband and daddio Art was diagnosed with stage 3 pancreatic cancer. He was given three months to live at most. Doctors looked at him like a dead man walking and told him to get his affairs in order. However, he defied the odds and fought cancer for fifteen months after getting diagnosed.
On December 15 of 2014, we held his hand as he took his last breath, making us as his forty-three-year-old widow (Shell) and twelve-year-old fatherless child (Jay). Then two weeks later, Shell’s father and Jay’s Papa dropped dead of a massive stroke due to heart disease. This left us with compounded grief, right on time for Christmas and the New Year. If that wasn’t enough, Shell’s mother and Jay’s Nana died from colon cancer two years after we lost our father/Papa!
We were left alone to figure out our lives. Half our family was dead, and for reasons we will never understand, the other half of our family walked out. How were we supposed to move on?
We’ve learned that the only answer is to live one day at a time. Step by step, we’ve come so far. In this journey, we have embraced our emotions, both negative and positive. We learned how to identify and address our fears. We are currently opening ourselves up to new friendships, new careers, new concepts of self and infinite possibilities for our futures.
We are still navigating life after loss together. After everyone died, Shell enrolled in college with Jay and now we are both full-time students! Our education has allowed us to discover our passion for marine science and geology. We both love the beach and ocean, and plan to pursue further education in these sciences.
We are also passionate about sustainability! Walking along the beach one day, we realized how much trash and waste was polluting the shoreline. We couldn’t walk a few steps without seeing a disposable mask, plastic drink cup, straws and other garbage – it was disheartening and gross! We both thought that someone should do something about this. Then we realized, hey, we’re someone!
On the third Sunday of every month, we go to the beach and clean up the trash. The beach has been a big part of our grief journey. When Art first died, we fled to a local beach and stayed there for 28 days. The beach heals our grieving souls, so we figured we could give back and help heal the beach in return 💕
You’re more than welcome to join us! Go to the beach, a local park, a river or lake, neighborhood, or anywhere local to you where you’ve noticed some trash. Pick up the trash, laugh, play some music… Make it fun! The earth and your spirits will thank you. Take pictures of your fun day cleaning the environment and post them to social media using #jayandshellsvirtualbeachcleanup or #alohabeachhealing and tag us. It’s so much fun!
Our tab Beach Clean Up/Sustainability provides information on how to do this, as well as how to adopt some simple sustainable lifestyle choices into your daily life. Our shop also provides links to sustainable products we personally use. As our blog evolves, we will also write blog posts reviewing different sustainable products!
While we still grieve, we are also learning how to embrace life after loss and create the lives we want to live. We are excited about truly living our lives again as we evolve, thrive and succeed! This blog is all about sharing what we have learned on this crazy journey and helping others along the way.
Contact Us
Feel free to contact us at our email jayandshellsjourney@gmail.com. You can also message us on our social media!
We look forward to hearing from you!💕
Aloha and gratitude,
Jay and Shell🌺
