Running From Grief to Healing

Hello everyone and welcome back to the unhealthy podcast where we get honest about the messy complicated parts of life that most people skip over and today we are leaning in to the idea what if in the middle of all our confusion all of our pain or bad decisions we are actually right where we're supposed to be. That is where we are starting today. This is actually part three of my conversation with Nancy Henriquez one of my tech friends and we have we have given dove in delved into a lot of topics that weren't planned but that's the way life is, right? Okay, so when we last spoke we actually had started off with the concept of you know how do you keep moving on professionally when you're dealing with grief and stuff and that turned into a whole nother discussion on our spirituality what actually keeps us going as opposed to just simply powering through and we ended the last episode where I was getting ready to talk about the concept of you're right where you're supposed to be and let me go ahead and flesh out that story. 

So my brother-in-law, my wife's husband or my wife's brother they have a cabin in the mountains of Georgia and that is where we go spend the first part of December up there as the family Christmas for her side of the family and that cabin has become a big deal. It is going to be a legacy place for everybody and there are times where as they're all talking about the cabin. I will say the words you're welcome and it's kind of a running joke but at the same time it's a little nod to the fact of that cabin wouldn't be there had it not been for the fact that I met my wife.

Now the way that I met my wife is one of the most ridiculous stories most people have ever heard. I met her in a bar and if you know me that's not the way you would have expected the story to begin both from my side and from hers. She was on vacation with a friend that she did not want to be on vacation with. 

Not that she didn't want to be with a friend but she didn't want to be on vacation. She was in the middle of a divorce. I on the other hand single live in my life in Florida happy as can be and the way we met was they had a friend that was already down here that they were going to be staying with who during their trip I believe it was a 12 or 14 day trip was going to leave and said oh I know the person that you can hang with while I'm gone.

Turns out that person was me and the only reason that was the case is because I was attending this bar on a regular basis. It started out as a Monday night football place for me and then of course I would start to go on the weekends because I knew the bartenders. And this was the type of place where I knew the bartender so well I could go behind the bar get my own drinks help out when needed.

And they would have parties at my house in what they call the you know after the after biz night when you know when the bars close at 2 a.m. or 4 a.m. the bartenders and stuff they usually have to go somewhere to drink or whatever well sometimes that was my place. It was like your cheers. Yes my cheers so much to the point where if there was a gal there that was too drunk to drive home this was back before they would call the cab for you.

I would drive the girl home mainly because I was the safe guy in the bar. Everybody knew me I wouldn't take advantage so this girl who was a friend of the friend of you know that whole thing she's like oh yeah Marvin will he'll show you around he's great. There's a bunch of stuff that happened but the bottom line that that's how we met.

And it took several years for us to get together for her to come down here for us to get married. Kim took a job in Georgia which opened up at the door for her brother's wife at the time to come down run one of the centers they got divorced he got remarried. It's a whole whirlwind of stuff but the bottom line is I always tell them thank you because I'm the reason you guys have this cabinet Georgia.

There you go. You know because they do they're like this is this is where we're supposed to be and before her dad died that was that was his favorite place was that cabin. And it brought the family back together there's a ton a ton of family memories now I believe it's been.

10 or 12 years that that camp that cabins been there so it's been a big deal. So when you look back on stuff a. The fact that I went to go watch Monday night football. At a bar down the street that's right where I was supposed to be.

That's right that's right well that that is amazing and you know that's it's incredibly interesting because my. Right before my grandmother passed one of the when she could still speak one of the things that she told me was that she had to apologize to me and. I was baffled and taken aback by like what where is this coming what on God's green earth could you have to apologize to me about.

And what she told me was you needed to go through your divorce. In order for you to be able to be here with me today and I was like what. But it was one of those moments where.

And I guess she must have seen the confusion in my face because she repeated it and said. I m sorry that you had to go through your divorce. But it was necessary for you to be here today.

And I took a moment, I said, you know what I you're right and I have said this myself to my mother. And my grandmother said yeah and the reason why is because you needed to detach in order to be here. If you were still in that relationship you would not be here in the same way and it was again it goes back to everything you know you are where you're at because you're supposed to be there and sometimes we don't understand.

Why or what we're going through something but. Some sometime hopefully someday it would make sense and for me it's making it made a lot of sense. Everything that had happened up until that moment literally gave way for me to be able to be there in the capacity that I was.

For my grandmother and for my family as a whole. And honestly for myself because it was also. Something that my soul needed as well.

What was your relationship like with your grandmother before that marriage. We were we were very close. So, when I was when I was growing up she actually lived in El Salvador.

And so there was a couple of times where I got to go to El Salvador and spend time with her there before she eventually moved here to the States. When I got a little older. She was an incredible role model in the sense that she did not know how to read or write.

She never attended school. She didn't own a pair of shoes until she was 12. And despite all of her challenges she opened a little store in El Salvador.

She became a businesswoman and central to her community. And that was something that I learned from her in that sense that it's always important to give back to your community. And I realized the power of that as you know when she was put in hospice the droves of people from El Salvador that hadn't seen her in 40 years would come and visit.

And just to pay their final respects to say goodbye to see her for one last time to have final words of wisdom ultimately speaking is what I what I kept hearing and what I kept observing during that time as well. So she was she was my role model. My very one of my very first role models.

Everything that had to do with resilience and strength. Perseverance. Very much a part of that.

And then I lost some of that connection after I got married and it made me incredibly sad as I was going through the pictures for her funeral where I realized that gap. And because of some of that distance my children didn't get to grow up with her get to know her in the exact same way until later in life which later in her life which was also you know magical in the sense that we got that time with her since then as well and I was able to take her and my mother to El Salvador. Just the three of us and then another trip with my kids and things like that.

So in these last few years I definitely made up I tried to make up as much as possible for that last time. You made a comment in between the break that I wanted to ask you about where you're doing what she wanted you to do. Can you explain that? Yeah.

She always in Latino households where a lot of the time children are meant to be seen not heard. My grandmother always wanted me to use my voice. She always wanted to make sure that I felt safe enough to use my voice where possible.

And between everything that she taught and how much she encouraged me I know that this is what she would want me to do. She would want me to continue forward that as she would say take what I've what I have taught you and multiply it just as I took the blessings that the small blessings that I received and multiplied them with what I could. She used to tell me it is your turn to amplify that.

And so that that's why I know like yes it's only been three weeks and grief is something that is a beast because some days you're fine and some days are harder than others as you go into a new reality ultimately. And but I I'm okay with continuing forward knowing that I'm doing what she would want me to do. I think I had mentioned before that in the middle of all this I was writing a book and she was she's very much a part of it.

And when the worst part of the final moments of her life were happening that's when I received the books and I could not bring myself to open the box. As a matter of fact they're still sitting there. I still can't really bring myself to open the box.

And I know eventually I'll get to it because I want to honor her in that way as well. But it is it's one of those where it's that's tough. It's tough to do while you're going through it.

So of course one of the questions that often gets asked when we talk about a concept of you know being right where you're supposed to be. Do you think that's something that you recognize at the time or can it only be recognized in hindsight? That's a funny question. Yeah it is.

You know maybe some people have an extreme gift to be able to see the storm while they're in the middle of it while they're sitting in the eye of the storm. But from my experience a lot of the times we don't recognize that until the storm has passed. And when the waters are calm and you realize I made it through that and the reason why I did was because of everything else that I've gone through.

Did you watch the Denzel movies The Equalizer? I yeah. Did you watch the last one the number three? No. Okay.

So without giving away too much of the story there's a very I don't want to say critical but pivotal scene where he is being confronted. And the confrontation so let's go ahead and I'll say it's overseas. So he's in a foreign land with foreign people.

He has been there quite a while and he's starting to feel comfortable. With his life he's like I think this is a place where I could settle down. But yet.

Stuff steep stuff keeps happening to him and he keeps finding himself doing that that stuff that he does where he has to confront evil. And he's being confronted and they're like you're a long way from home. And he makes the comment right where I'm supposed to be.

Yeah. So that's the only reason I have for some reason that I that phrase from that movie at that time comes to me sometimes where I'm like he was in a situation where he knew that's where he was supposed to be or he felt it. It's probably a better way to explain it.

Yeah. Yeah. That's powerful.

And you know it takes it takes a kind of confidence almost to be able to know that and sit in it and not try to fight it in in a lot of ways. Right. Just to know I'm going to write it out because this is where I'm supposed to be.

Okay well so now another question pops up because of you saying that the question then becomes have you ever made a decision or have you ever just simply you know stayed there because that's what was expected or what other people thought was the right decision for you. Yeah I'm sure I'm sure I go back to I go back to my marriage and I one of the things that I realized along the way was that I probably stayed longer than I should have. And for other people's reasons beyond my own, you know, it was a decision of like it's better for the kids to stay it's better for the family, because everybody you know if we were to split up the family as we know it will change.

You know so there's there was so many different factors going into that that yeah of course I made certain decisions based off of others, protecting other people's feelings protecting other people, protecting the status quo. A lot of the times, more so than what was right for me at the time, and I saw this also with my grandmother towards the very end of her life. And if you talk to hospice nurses, a lot of them will tell you there's there is not only the physical aspect of letting go but there's also a mental aspect of letting go.

And if the family isn't in a place where they can give that person permission to let go, they will hang on, and they will suffer a probably a lot longer than they should just to stay for the family. And that for me, seeing that was, it was incredibly powerful because I had, I had to ask myself the question of how much are you willing to suffer for others, how much, how much more are you willing. And I kept the analogy of how, how badly will you let your hand get burned holding on to a rope, as it is being pulled, you know, like, just let go.

And it's easier said than done. But a lot of the times I think that we do that, just because we don't want to disrupt what we know, and that's not necessarily the right decision for us, because a lot of the times we are with, we carry that suffering and we're not meant to suffer in that way. So obviously you did not stay in the marriage for the kids, because most people stay until they graduate or whatever. 

What was the wake up call for you? Can I ask? Yeah, no, I've, my, my life felt out of control. I was, I was drinking heavily. I was coping in so many unhealthy ways, just to get by.

And at some point in time, I reached a point of, this isn't okay. This isn't okay for me, this isn't okay for my kids to witness. When I got to a point of, I may be repeating childhood patterns without, unintentionally, that's when, for me, it was like, okay, I'm, it is time to let go.

And not cause any more suffering for him, for myself, and for our kids at the end of the day. What I've come to realize since then was that we were all silently suffering in one way or another. You, you kind of answered this, but I want to find a way for us to land this plane.

Yeah. Because I, I, I know that there's going to be people that are listening that have their own things that they're dealing with. So, you know, for somebody who's listening, that is stuck, whether it is, you know, wrong job, wrong relationship, wrong habits.

You've, you know, mentioned how you, you know, kind of awakened, but can you think of any, like, small decisions or habits that can help to move somebody toward where they're supposed to be? Yeah. I think that the, I had mentioned earlier, reconnecting to my roots. And I think that that's something that's incredibly important. 

You know, asking yourself the question before you were in this situation, who were you? What did you want? What, what can you recall from a time where you felt the closest to yourself? And that's, I think that's a great place to start. And, you know, then asking yourself the difficult questions of what are you avoiding? Because a lot of the times that's exactly what is keeping us stuck is what we are avoiding, what we don't want to face, because it's going to be hard because it's going to change our world. And a lot of the times that's, it is those very exact same difficult moments or challenges in life that actually move us to where we are meant to be.

Very nice. So I want to give you the opportunity to, once again, gather your thoughts. And this discussion went in a much different direction than I thought it would, but obviously it was supposed to happen. 

You feel good with what we talked about? I do. I do. How about you? I don't know.

I'm good. I'm good. Like I said, I want to find a way to land this plane, but I also wanted, you know, make sure that if there's something, you know, burning that you, you want to say, I want you to have that opportunity, even if I'm not asking the right questions, if that makes sense.

Yeah. You know, I think that, you know, I'm going to go back to what I heard, which was be still. I think so many of us in our professional lives, in our personal lives, we're constantly moving. 

We're constantly trying to distract ourselves, ultimately speaking, from so many different things. But when we get to a point of, because eventually sometimes life hits us in the face, it forces us to ask the question of what is important now. And when you are faced with that, a lot of the times, a lot of things will surface.

And that's when you have no choice but to deal with it. And sometimes that means being still and being okay with that. And knowing that you're not alone, that's the other part to it. 

Like we're all going through this very human experience, and there's not a right or wrong way to go about it. Nobody gives us an instruction manual. But yet there are some, there's hope out there, and there's ways to be able to go through all of these things without being completely alone.

Psalms 4610, by the way. If anybody wants to go and look up some scripture around the be still concept, you can go look at that. Nancy, thank you so very much for being vulnerable and sharing, and look forward to chatting with you again soon.

Likewise. And literally, if there's anyone out there that this helps, great. And if anyone wants some words of encouragement or needs to talk to someone, share what you've gone through and things like that, I'm more than happy to be a listening ear, a shoulder to cry on, or anything that's needed.

All right. Nancy and Rick is my friend. Thank you for sharing. 

And if any of you have found her journey, something that inspires you or stirs up something in you, feel free to reach out. I will have her contact information in the show notes. Of course, you can reach out to me and give your feedback on the show.

Share this episode with somebody who needs a lift from somebody that has definitely been there, done that, and that's going to do it for this show. So one thing to remember folks is to let's de-stigmatize the grind. You don't have to keep pushing through personally or professionally just because that's what everybody expects. 

Do what's best for you. And figure out a way to go from being unhealthy to healthy. That's what this show's all about. 

So Nancy, thanks again. And folks, that'll do it. And the only thing I can say is keep on keeping on, live healthy, and be happy.

Thank you.