What Must Be Carried (eBook)

Living a Beautiful Life Beyond Loss

Whitney Lyn Allen Gadecki (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025
157 Seiten
Jossey-Bass (Verlag)
978-1-394-31200-9 (ISBN)

Infos

A guide to start living again for those who have lost a loved one, written by a mother and widow

What Must Be Carried: Living a Beautiful Life Beyond Loss is an empathetic guidebook that walks readers through the grieving process, giving them the tools they need to carry the pain of their loss and start truly living again. With relatable personal narratives from Whitney Lyn Allen Gadecki, mother of two boys, Jackson and Leo, certified grief educator and coach, and a widow whose life has been forever altered by the loss of her husband, as well as actionable advice for those grieving, this book is a perfect, steady companion for anyone impacted by a devastating loss.

This book explores ideas including:

• The emotional range of processing grief, from numbness, to agony and rage, to cascading waterfalls of tears and beyond
• Patience, experimentation, time, curiosity, and practice as difficult but essential foundations of living with and healing from grief
• How to discover contentment, peace, love, and beauty anew, even when it often feels like life is all downhill from here
• Grief's hidden gifts of helping you live more authentically, ambitiously, purposefully, and fearlessly despite its heavy burden

What Must Be Carried: Living a Beautiful Life Beyond Loss is an important, helpful, and cathartic read for widows and all those who have lost someone precious to them seeking to once again shine brightly in the face of darkness.

WHITNEY LYN ALLEN GADECKI is a mother of two boys, a certified grief educator, and an attorney. She was a medical malpractice attorney for 10 years before her late husband, Ryan, suffered anaphylactic shock from a bee sting, resulting in his death. Whitney wrote about her grieving journey in her memoir Running in Trauma Stilettos. She is currently a full-time grief coach.

Textauszug

Introduction

There is life before your person dies and there is life after. This abrupt shift feels like falling head‐first into a deep, dark hole with no bottom. I'm here because I've lost someone precious to me, my husband of eight years, Ryan. I carry a lot with me each day; the weight of Ryan's death is palpable. Ryan was my best friend, the father of my two children, my protector, my sounding board, my entertainment, and my comedian. His soul was larger than life. He was so much of what made my life beautiful and worth living in my “before,” and now he is dead. If you're reading this, you've probably lost someone very precious to you too. You may be feeling like you're aimlessly going through the motions of life because the death of your person weighs so heavily that it is all you can feel and think about. You're likely devastated, overwhelmed, and anxious about moving forward in life without the person you love. You may be feeling guilty and confused about how advancing in life is even possible because it feels like grief has put up a huge wall in front of you that you can't tear down. Building a new life around your grief may even be inconceivable for you at the moment. Maybe you've lost hope that happiness and peace are even something you can possess after you've been through the gauntlet of tragedy and trauma. You are apathetic that there is life happening around you because the person you love isn't here to share it with you. This is what a life‐altering loss feels like. It is all‐ consuming and it is the type of loss that has no finality or fixing. Your person is dead and there is no mending that harsh reality. There is no putting a pretty bow around the traumas that are associated with that loss. If you're like me, you've likely seen and experienced things that have brought you to your knees and will forever haunt your soul. There is no silver lining for the fallout that occurs when someone dies and you have to figure out how to pick up the pieces and somehow make pieces of your old life make sense in an entirely different one.

There are things in life (thankfully very few) that cannot be made whole by money, time, platitudes, therapy, flowers, self‐care, or sympathy cards. The death of the person you built a life with and wanted to grow old with, or another beloved person in your life, cannot be made whole because there is no suitable substitute or remedy for this. This is a truth that we are tasked to live with and an actuality that will not be OK forever. And it is OK that this terrible reality will never be OK, because it shouldn't be. You may be thinking at this point that this is some depressing and dark shit this girl is talking about and “Great, I am reading this book to feel better and it just sounds like I am screwed here.” And yes, this is some really sad shit I am talking about, but you are not doomed. You may have experienced the most devastating loss, but you are not doomed to live out the rest of your days in misery. The best days of your life are not over if you don't want them to be. In fact, more “best” days are within your reach and possible for you.

The trauma from the experiences I have lived since my husband's accident in October 2021 cannot be disposed of or eliminated. It is part of what has molded me into the woman I am today. It is part of every cell of my being. The memories of these experiences cannot be taken up by anyone else but me; they are mine to hold and bear. They must be carried. My grief used to feel like I was carrying a boulder with me everywhere I went. Ryan's absence from this world was my singular focus because the weight was so great, the crushing nature of it all was so palpable. It was debilitating and destabilizing. But I've learned to hold my grief as I go through life and have discovered how to survive this inconceivable loss. Since Ryan's death, I have experienced new things, created new memories, found new purpose and meaning from my loss, formed new relationships and ended others that didn't serve me, set boundaries, and formed a new identity as someone who is now living as a person who has suffered a life‐altering loss. After Ryan's death, I felt a calling to help guide and navigate others who have suffered a life‐altering loss. I became a certified grief educator, and now I work one‐on‐one with other widows and grievers and help them discover how to hold their pain in a way that feels manageable so they can start living a life they love while tending to their grief authentically, given their unique experience. I have traveled, I launched my first book, I have celebrated holidays with Anthony's family, who now feel like family to me and my sons, I have started new traditions, I have weathered several intense waves of grief, I have mothered by myself and have learned to co‐parent with Anthony. I have made mistakes and I have triumphed. I have fallen and have picked myself up countless times. I have coped in healthy and unhealthy ways. I have cried, screamed, cursed, laughed, and loved. It has felt like I have lived a hundred years in just over two. That's the thing about living through grief and trauma. Grief, trauma, and death change you indelibly and profoundly. They age your soul and your spirit. They force you to learn lessons and be transformed in a manner that does not equate to the amount of time in days, hours, or minutes that have gone by. You cannot count your worst days on a calendar or clock. I am a different Whitney than the one that was married to Ryan. I have been changed in both beautiful and ugly ways, in ways that only can occur when you completely break, unravel, and build anew from the ashes of a life that no longer exists.

And because of all of this, the weight of my loss has lessened, softened, and quieted. Now my grief feels like I'm carrying around small pebbles in my pocket instead of a boulder. I can feel them jiggle as I go throughout life and sometimes I take them out to hold, but I am truly able to live again. That doesn't mean I don't miss or long for Ryan. It doesn't mean that I don't get filled with rage at how unfair Ryan's accident and death is. At times I still feel deep longing, pain, anger, frustration, and a multitude of other emotions because grief is forever evolving and changing. Grief ebbs and flows with the seasons and with dates that hold significance to your specific loss. For me that is Ryan's and my wedding anniversary (October 12), the day of Ryan's accident (October 14), the day he went home on hospice, and also our anniversary of meeting (St. Patrick's Day, March 17), the day he died (April 7), his birthday (May 21), and many other milestones throughout the year that are a reminder of his absence.

But my grief no longer controls my world. And if you're reading this, I want that for you too. I want you to be able to honor your loss and be able to lean into the pain when you need to feel it, but I also want you to take intentional steps forward to build a beautiful life. I want the weight that you're feeling on your chest to lift. I want the lump in your throat to dissipate and a calmness, contentment, and feeling of safety to return to your world. And it is possible. More importantly, you deserve to live a meaningful life filled with joy after all the suffering you've endured, although you may feel completely undeserving of these things at the moment.

I want to solidify that if you're reading this that you're in the right place. You're reading these words at the exact moment in time that you need to. This I am certain of. This book is for those individuals living and breathing a reality that they didn't ask for, where their beloved was ripped away from them. This book is for those that live within the confines of a world, after having suffered a life‐altering loss that is irreconcilable, but still want to find a way to move forward with this truth and build a beautiful life. It is for those who want to learn to carry a weight that can never be thrown away, but can be carried with more ease as your world becomes less consumed by grief.

This book is not a “how‐to,” but it will take you through a journey of many experiences, emotions, challenges, and triumphs I went through after my husband's death that I have found are common among other widows and those who have lost someone precious to them. I will add insight and include tools and strategies that I have used myself in my own lived experience as well as learned through becoming a certified grief educator, to build a life around my grief. It will give you permission to feel whatever you are feeling and encourage and empower you to take steps forward even if you're afraid. It will perhaps make you feel better about doing things that you want to do but are hesitant to do because you're nervous that people will judge you. It will allow you to see that starting over isn't about getting it all right or always doing the “healthy” thing, but rather that the process of healing is really messy, imperfect, and comes with a lot of pain. I promise to be real and transparent about what this experience has been like. I certainly don't have all the answers, but if this book can make you feel less alone or you can take some lessons I have learned along the way and implement them into your own life in your own grief journey to help you move forward, then this book is doing exactly what it is intended to do. It is a privilege to be part of this journey with you and my promise to you is that...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 24.2.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Christentum
• Schlagworte: brother death • death depression • death trauma • family death • friend death • Grief • grief emotions • grieving • husband death • loss depression • loss loved one • loss trauma • move forward after loss • sister death • widow • wife death
• ISBN-10: 1-394-31200-8 / 1394312008
• ISBN-13: 978-1-394-31200-9 / 9781394312009