Finding Hope After Loss: A Mother's Journey Through Grief, Faith, and Encouragement

Like, I had so many of my favorite things today.

Like, don't beat yourself up.

This was great.

And then he said, Will you be my favorite thing for the rest of our lives?

And he had a ring in a felt cheeseburger that his friend had made for him.

And do you know what I said to him, Kevin?

I said, I'm in my jammies.

SPEAKER_00: What's up, my friend?

And welcome to Grit Grace and Inspiration.

I'm your host, Kevin Lowe.

Twenty years ago, I awoke from a life-saving surgery only to find that I was left completely blind.

And since that day, I've learned a lot about life, a lot about living, and a lot about myself.

And here on this podcast, I want to share those insights with you.

Because, friend, if you are still searching for your purpose, still trying to understand why, or still left searching for that next right path to take, well, consider this to be your stepping stone to get you from where you are to where you want to be.

What's happening, my friend?

Welcome back into the podcast.

How are you today?

It is episode number 238, and I am beyond excited to have you here with me.

I don't know at what point in your journey you're in, but if you are somebody who are ready for a change in life, you would love to start your own business, have a new lifestyle, something that fits you a little bit better.

Well, friend, isn't the new year a perfect opportunity for it?

2024 is a month away, and I would love to help you get clear on your life's purpose and align that with the lifestyle and business of your dreams.

You can sign up for my two-week coaching package called the purpose-driven business breakthrough.

Sign up today by visiting gritgraceinspiration.com slash business.

That is gritgraceinspiration.com slash business.

So my friend, today I am excited to get to introduce you to a woman who is gonna have us feeling the feels.

We are getting ready to be taken on what I'm just simply going to say is a roller coaster of life.

The roller coaster, well, it's named Bevan Farron.

Bevan is our featured guest today.

And Bevan's story is one that I promise you is going to have you gasping.

You are going to be in disbelief right off the bat because Bevan has experienced the highs and the lows of life and all the messiness in between, just like you and me.

I encourage you, as you listen to Bevan's story today, to stay tuned in, though.

Because towards the end of today's episode, we really switch from Bevan sharing her story to really offering up some truly valuable insights on life.

Things that are quite possibly game changers, things that give you a little bit better thought process about your own life.

And that's exactly what I want to happen in this podcast today is for you to be entertained, for you to feel the feels, but more so for it to be able to make an impact on your own life.

So if you're ready for it, if you're ready for a woman who has been through a lot, and she stands strong today, but she's not afraid to share the good times and the bad.

This is today's episode.

It's a love story.

It's about love and loss, it's about heartbreak and gifts.

It is episode number 238.

My friend, I introduce you to Bevan Farron.

SPEAKER_01: I tell my story of how I got to here, and I I always start in 2019.

And I think that things actually, if I'm honest, started further back than that.

So when we talk about the spark, what's kind of funny is truly the spark was my house burned down.

And that's why I was like, well, I kind of have to say that because you said spark.

So I'm gonna tell that a little bit of that story and then jump into more of what got me where I am now.

But my house burned down in 2010 in Chicago.

And that ended up bringing me to Ohio because it took three years for that to be rebuilt, and I couldn't afford rent and a mortgage at the same time.

So I came to Ohio to spend time with my family.

But the reason I bring that part up is that that was looking back on it, that was when I really saw, and it was the first time I remember saying to somebody, I said this to the contractors, we can't choose what happens to us.

We can only choose how we respond.

And throughout everything, and I've had a lot of ups and downs, as I know you have.

We can't choose what happens.

And and we can choose to like stay, stay stuck or stay feeling like, why is this happening to me?

Why feeling like a bit of a victim to circumstance?

Or we can choose how we respond differently.

So where my current story really started was in 2019, my husband Mark surprised me on Mother's Day saying that he was going to take us to France for my 40th birthday, which would be six months later.

Two weeks after that, I lost my job.

And it was the third time that I had lost my job in under 10 years.

I said to Mark at that point, I am tired of putting the financial health of our family into the hands of any one person, and I don't want to do it anymore.

I I think I started that conversation by saying, babe, I'm not gonna look for a job, which in his my he was an engineer.

So he was probably like breaks screeching to a halt in his head because we had a two-year-old and a four-month-old, and we were not prepared to be a one-income family at all.

But I said, I, you know, I don't want to keep doing this and putting it into one person's hands.

And so I want to start my own company.

I want to work doing what I've been doing for the past 10 years as a launch manager and a coach and a brand strategist.

And I want to use that with small businesses and entrepreneurs to help them grow their businesses.

And I said, let's just try this as a proof of concept.

And if I can make$5,000 by the end of August, we'll consider this a viable concept.

So that was May.

So June, I made zero dollars.

July, I made$1,000, August, I did hit my$5,000 mark.

And by the time we were about to leave for France, I had made $35,000 in my business.

So it was growing and it was growing quickly, which felt really, really good.

It still felt a little crazy to go on this trip to France, though, with two young kiddos.

We were leaving home.

We were going to be gone for I think all of like 39 hours or something.

It was so fast and furious.

But we went, we ended up going, had this beautiful trip, the two of us just exploring Bordeaux together, celebrating my 40th birthday, drinking delicious wine, eating fantastic food, and just being together is who we were before we had these crazy, stressful careers and our kids, and even before we were married.

And Mark looked at me at one point and he said, I feel like I'm reconnecting to the real you, which felt so true.

Like it was breaking through all of these things we had built up over the time we'd been together.

We came home and it was the week of Thanksgiving, which is my very favorite holiday, not just because it also usually is my birthday, but we got ready around the house.

Mark took the whole week off work.

We took our daughter to her first movie theater show.

It was pre-pandemic.

So we were having 25 people come.

Mark's parents drove in, my family, our best friends, and we celebrated Thanksgiving with our two little kiddos running around and just being with the people we loved the most.

The next morning, I went upstairs to wake up Mark and he wasn't breathing.

He had passed away in the middle of the night completely unexpectedly.

He had undiagnosed heart disease.

One of his arteries was 95% blocked, and the other was 50% blocked.

He weighed the same that he did in high school.

We had no idea that this was even in the realm of possibility.

And now all of a sudden, I was the solo parent to two kids under the age of three.

I had this brand new business that yes, had been growing, but had not really stood any sort of test of time yet.

And I'm doing all of it without the love of my life and my best friend and my biggest cheerleader by my side.

About a month after that, I made a post on Facebook talking about losing Mark and the trip that we had taken and my birthday.

I ended that post by saying, whenever you're faced with a choice, just take the damn trip.

That really resonated with people.

And I was getting a lot of messages from people saying that the trip they had taken with their dad before he passed away was so special, or they were gonna say no to go on this family adventure, but now they were gonna say yes because they saw how important it could be.

And more importantly, what I started to talk to people about was that we can't keep pushing our dreams to the side.

We need to see that it, that now is the time to take the chance on ourselves, which is why the movement that I that I lead is called the take the damn chance movement.

Because I started to look at the hardest things that I've been through in my life.

I told you my house burned down.

I lost my husband, I became a widow at 40.

My kiddos are IVF babies.

So I I've been through years of fertility treatments and a miscarriage.

I lost my dad to cancer at when I was 24.

So I looked at all those hard things and then I looked at the most amazing things that I've done.

So growing my business successfully, having those kiddos, having a really connected, intentional relationship with Mark.

And I asked myself, what is it that I do differently than other people?

I'm not saying better, I'm saying differently, in order to navigate these situations with some grace and some creativity.

And that is when I started the damn framework.

So it's it does stands for something, Kevin.

I don't just like swear a lot.

SPEAKER_00: I was I was thinking to myself, man, my nana ain't gonna look at it.

SPEAKER_01: Oh, my my daughter, my daughter who's six and a half, goes to school and she's like, hey, Miss Jasmine, I got my damn t-shirt in my back.

So it does stand for something.

It stands for decide and declare, attend your own party, moments, not minutes, and now is the time.

And everything that I do, the every amazing thing in my life that I've ever created has been because of that.

So, you know, like that's when when Mark and I were building our relationship, it was like we decided we were on the same team and we would declare that to each other.

You know, when I decided to grow my business, I knew that now is the time.

We can't just keep pushing things off to the side.

And I used this same framework because once I started to see it, I couldn't unsee it.

And so I started to use it intentionally to create things going forward.

I used it to write my book.

I used it to begin my speaking career, and I used it for my biggest dream to date, which was that when Mark passed away, we were about 60 days away from starting our next round of IVF.

And I've always wanted to be the mom of three.

And knowing that I was losing the dream of being a mom of three at the same instant that I lost the love of my life, didn't it felt unfathomable.

And so in July of 2021, I gave birth to Marks and my third child 20 months after he passed away using embryos that we had frozen in a previous IVF attempt.

So I knew that was my dream.

That was that was my damn manifesto.

It was a thing I wanted more than anything else in my life.

And I brought it to literal life using this framework.

SPEAKER_00: Wow.

Wow, wow, wow.

Okay.

Crazy, crazy story.

Take me back though.

I wanna wanna unpack a little bit more about even your relationship.

When when in this journey you talked about about the house burning down, about moving.

When though did you meet your husband?

SPEAKER_01: So I met him in August of 2011.

So I had moved my house burned down in October of 2010.

So actually, we I just passed my fire anniversary.

It was October 16th of 2010.

And so it was the next summer when I said, okay, I can't, I can't keep staying.

Here's the crazy thing, Kevin.

So not just did my house burn down.

So on September 25th of 2010, I found out that my company was being sold.

So basically I was losing my job.

So October 1st, I lost my job.

October 12th, my car got broken into.

And at that point, I said to a friend of mine, like, I feel I don't believe in signs, but I feel like maybe there is kind of a sign here.

Like, you, it's time for you to take a break from Chicago.

And then four days later, my home burned down.

And so I was kind of ready for a potential change.

And so I went back to Ohio.

I came back to Ohio, it's where I live now, and was just gonna spend some time with my mom.

And during that time, all my friends were married and starting families, and I was still single.

So I was like, well, I'll just get on eHarmony and like get out of the house.

And that's when I met Mark.

So we met August 31st.

I was still fully planning on moving back to Chicago, but by Christmas that year, we were living together.

And then the next Thanksgiving we got engaged and then we got married, and you know, the rest is history.

SPEAKER_00: Wow.

Wow, oh my goodness.

So that happened quick.

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, it's I guess it depends on how you like how you define quick.

But yeah, I mean, we so the house burned down the next year I met Mark, and then we were married in 2013, so about two years after we met.

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.

I'd call that a pretty quick.

Yeah.

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: The reason I'd laughed about that is I remember before Mark proposed, it was probably like a month or so before Mark proposed, two months.

And I was asking him, like, so like, when are we getting married, basically?

And he was like, he was an engineer, so he was very thoughtful about things.

And he was like, Drew, he we were sitting at a sushi restaurant, and he took a chopstick wrapper and he had a pencil, and he was like, Okay, so here's where we are.

And then it was, I guess it was like August of that year.

And he's like, I feel like next year, like a year from then, I'll propose, and then we'll get married, and then we'll have a kid, and then we'll buy a new house, whatever.

And I like grabbed the pencil from him and I was like, Does this thing have an eraser?

I was like, eeer, ee er.

Let's talk about what if you were to propose like here.

And so I was just like, I don't, it sounds so funny because it sounds like totally the girl with the biological clock ticking.

But for me, it was like we knew, we knew that we were meant to be together.

And I was a little bit like, why wait?

So I didn't know he was actually just saying that because he had already planned the proposal and was going to propose on my birthday, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00: Wow.

Okay, so tell me about that then.

You you you you alluded to it.

Let's hear what was the proposal.

SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh.

These are stories I have never told on a podcast interview before.

So this is so fun.

Okay, so the funny story, all right.

So we'll talk about my birthday.

So when I, when Mark and I were dating and I thought we were gonna get engaged, I was actually working for a company doing work around love and relationships.

So I started in the digital marketing space producing summits, and I was producing a summit called The Art of Love.

And it was supported by the soulmate secret.

So it was like I was surrounded by like love and relationships.

And I was doing research on the most romantic proposals ever.

And so I was, I don't know if you remember back in that time.

So that was 2011, some guy had like hired a marching band to propose to his fiance and like all these flash mobs were a big thing at that time.

Yes, yes.

So I would send Mark these uh videos.

He'd be like, hey, babe, look what I found today.

No pressure.

So he it was my birthday, it was the day after Thanksgiving, and he told me, because I was I had a big launch going on at the time, and he's like, Well, you can't work on that day.

And I was like, What?

I have to, it's Black Friday.

And he was like, Okay, you can work between seven and nine, between 11 and 1, and like three to five.

There was like, there were like two, two-hour sections.

Like, you're giving me four hours.

And he was like, Yes.

And I told my boss that, and she told me later, she's like, I knew something was up.

And I was like, I mean, I guess I did too.

So he had said when he proposed, he was gonna give me, he wanted me to have as many of my favorite things as possible.

And at that point, my five favorite things were board games, cheeseburgers, wine, oh my gosh, cupcakes, fireworks, and sometimes baseball.

Like, so there was like, I was like, how do I not know these anymore?

And so we got up and he has he had decorated the entire first floor of the house with balloons, which happened to have fireworks on them.

I saw later.

His mom, oh, pancakes.

How did I forget fancy pancakes?

Okay.

His mom was making like a pancake breakfast, and he had bought this gazebo, and he was gonna get up and put it together and propose under the gazebo.

Well, the temperature dropped 20 degrees that night and the wind kicked up, so he couldn't do it.

When we finally put it together, it took the two of us eight hours.

So I don't know what he thought was thinking.

But that was supposed to be the first proposal.

Well, that fell through.

So then we were go, I did my whatever 90 minutes of work.

He's like, it's time to go.

We went, we were meeting, we went to lunch at our favorite cheeseburger restaurant, cheeseburgers.

And my sister was there.

Surprise, my sister was there, and but it was they didn't take reservations, and the wait was gonna be like two hours.

So I was like, oh, babe, it's fine.

Let's just go down to the street to the next this other restaurant that smelled kind of funny and did not have cheeseburgers.

And I he was like getting visibly agitated.

And so I'm like, okay, babe, it's fine.

Like, this is a great birthday.

Good job.

Because I told myself the night before, like, if he doesn't propose, you can't, you can't ruin your birthday by being disappointed.

Like he's clearly put a lot of thought and effort into this.

So we are driving home, and he says, Man, I just wanted you to have a cheeseburger today.

And he's like, What do you want to do now?

I was like, honestly, I just want to go home and take a nap.

And he was like, Okay.

So we go home and I change out of my cute little dress into my pajamas, and I lay down on the couch.

And I'm like, babe, it's fine.

Like, I had so many of my favorite things today.

Like, don't, don't beat yourself up.

This was great.

And then he said, Will you be my favorite thing for the rest of our lives?

And he had a ring in a felt cheeseburger that his friend had made for him.

And do you know what I said to him, Kevin?

I said, I'm in my jammies.

But then I said, You didn't actually ask me to marry.

I was like, Are you trying?

I was like, you didn't ask.

And so, you know, whatever.

We I said yes.

Our friends came over.

We had champagne.

It was, it was wonderful.

But it is kind of this funny comedy of errors of like how hard he tried so many times.

It's one of my favorite stories about our.

SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.

That is so adorable.

I love that.

Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_01: The funny thing too was the night before, there were supposed to be like six of us at things at my Thanksgiving.

And he was unpacking everything into the refrigerator.

He had like six bottles of champagne.

I was like, babe, what are you doing?

And he's like, we like mimosas.

I'm like, legit.

Okay.

But yeah, that was great.

SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.

No, no, no.

That is absolutely adorable.

I love it.

All the way down to the ring holder, the felt little cheese.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, with little like stitched sesame seeds on top.

It's incredible.

Yeah.

I still have it.

SPEAKER_00: That is oh my gosh, that is so cute.

So cute.

So you guys, you got engaged.

Did you get married soon after?

SPEAKER_01: It was a year later that we got married.

So um we had a Christmas wedding basically, three days after.

But you know, one of the things that I think is interesting kind of to talk about, and you didn't ask this, but I'm gonna answer it.

You know, I talk a lot about our fertility journey.

And there's so many people listening who've probably been on some kind of fertility journey.

But I knew, like on our third date, that we were gonna have to do that because Mark told me, so he had lupus, he had systemic lupus, and he had chemotherapy when he was younger to help basically restart his immune system.

And so he had been told, and his mom had the forethought for them to like save five vials of sperm in case he wanted to be a parent in the future, which was incredible forethought.

But so he had been told, and he knew his entire life that he was probably gonna have to have assisted reproductive help.

And so he told me that early on in our relationship because he was like, look, if you want kids, which he knew that I did, he's like, I just want to be honest with you that we're probably gonna have to go down this path.

And and I was okay with that.

Like he and I both wanted kids.

I knew it was a journey we were gonna have to go on.

And it was almost for me, because I talked to a lot of people who go down the fertility journey.

We kind of skipped over the what's wrong phase, which I think actually made it a little bit easier for me because I knew what was wrong.

I wasn't, we weren't trying to get pregnant for five years not knowing what was happening.

SPEAKER_02: Yes.

SPEAKER_01: So I think, yeah, that was, but it was it was such a testament to our communication where we were just really direct and open with each other about what was going on.

And I think that helped us create a really strong relationship.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely.

Now, how long were you guys married before you took the trip and everything kind of changed?

SPEAKER_01: We got married in 2013 and then Mark passed away in 2019.

So we're married just over six years, not long enough.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: Just under six, yeah, just six years.

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: So this trip that you guys took that you told us about, it was to France.

Yes.

Why France?

SPEAKER_01: The better question is why Bordeaux?

So because I truly, I don't know why Mark picked Bordeaux.

I don't know why he picked France.

He knew that I spoke French.

He knew that I loved French.

He picked Bordeaux because he wanted it to be a place that neither of us had ever been to before.

He wanted us to explore it together.

Because when he gave me the itinerary and I saw it, I was like, babe, we have to fly from here to Detroit to Amsterdam to Bordeaux.

That's a lot of play time for a very short period of walking around a city.

And I said, wouldn't it be like, wouldn't Paris make more sense?

And he was like, Paris is a cop out.

Nobody's ever said that ever.

But yeah, so he picked that.

And it was so cute because he had like written out an entire walking tour itinerary, which went like hotel to wine bar.

And he like was like 0.7 miles in 15 minutes or something.

Like he had marked out every distance and amount of time.

And he was like, and then from the wine bar, we're gonna go to this monument.

And from the monument, we're gonna go to this bakery.

From the bakery, we're gonna go to this cathedral.

From the cathedral, we're gonna go to this brew pub.

Like we were very much like sight drink, sight drink, like as we walk through, which is the best way to see a place, I believe.

SPEAKER_00: Yes.

Absolutely.

So so I'm kind of curious on this.

Is this how you would kind of summarize y'all's entire relationship of adventure?

Was there a lot of downtime?

Like I guess I'm kind of wondering like, what brought up to do this spur of the moment, like this surprise trip to France?

What led up to that?

SPEAKER_01: Oh, good question.

No, we had a lot of downtime.

I mean, I say downtime in that we, you know, we at by the end we had two kids, and so we didn't have a lot of downtime for anything.

But I think the trip came.

So Mark worked for Honda, and Honda always had what they call shutdown twice a year, always around 4th of July and always around Christmas.

And our first full year.

So, you know, we we got together in August, and so that I don't count this Christmas as like our first full Christmas, but in 2012, we decided to spend Christmas in Jamaica.

And we said, look, we're single.

Well, we weren't single, we were married, we were in a relationship, we were not married.

What I meant by that was we don't have kids.

SPEAKER_02: Yes.

SPEAKER_01: We were engaged, we didn't have kids.

And so we, for a couple of years, we called it our white sandy Christmases.

And so we would just go spend a couple of days laying by the pool.

And people would always say, Oh, did you go see this waterfall or this ruins?

I'm like, no, we literally all we wanted to do was sit by a pool, read books, play card games together, have some cocktails.

That actually, I think was more the definition of our relationship was that we just enjoyed being together.

Yeah.

And that meant a lot of times it was playing games together or playing games with our friends, going to a beer festival, but just as often like sitting on our back deck.

SPEAKER_00: Yes.

Yeah.

I love that.

I love that so much.

Yeah.

At the time that that Mark passed away, how old were your daughters?

SPEAKER_01: So my my oldest daughter was two, and my son was 10 months old.

And so Guinevere, my she was almost three.

She was two and a half.

She really remembers Mark more than Jonathan does, and definitely more than Miristella, because Miristella wasn't even born yet.

And I've said to her, she's now six and a half, and I say, you know, Guinevere, you and I have a really important job.

It's our job to tell the stories, to tell the stories about Daddy and let Jonathan and Miristella know about him.

And it's it's really cool now to see, because Jonathan talks a lot about daddy too.

And I think he remembers him, but I don't I think he remembers him through Guinevere and I.

SPEAKER_00: Yes.

Which is fun.

Yeah.

So remind me what you said at the beginning.

How long after your husband passed away did you decide to go for having a third child?

SPEAKER_01: Oh, I mean, I knew right away.

I didn't talk about it right away because it did seem completely crazy.

For me, the decision was so easy.

The the execution took work, but I knew pretty quickly, like, I'm not going to give this up.

I knew that it was an option because I knew we had the embryo frozen.

And I knew I wanted, you know, obviously I wasn't like the next day calling the doctor.

I actually spent a lot of time stuck in fear around whether or not I could do it.

Because so when you do IVF or do any kind of fertility stuff, you have to sign a bunch of paperwork that you don't think you're ever gonna need to worry about.

I remember when Mark and I signed it, you have to answer things like, well, if you get divorced, what happens to the embryo?

If somebody dies, what happens?

If both of you die, what happens?

And I remember us sitting there, we were like 35 or 36 at the time.

And so we didn't even cross our minds.

We were, I was like, okay, babe, I guess like if I die, you can have the embryo.

Like, not even thinking, you know, like it was like such allows humor to say that to each other at the time.

But I remember it, and but I couldn't remember what we had said.

So I couldn't remember like which box we had checked.

And so I was terrified that I was gonna call the doctor's office and they're gonna be like, oh, well, sorry, you guys said no.

And I was in my mind, like mentally preparing for a fight, like a legal fight, if I needed to.

But that was one of the things actually, and I talk about this a lot when I think about.

So I teach something called the pad method, which is when we're spun up in our thoughts and we're anxious and we're nervous and overwhelmed, a lot of times that's just our thinking.

And the way you can know the difference between anxiety and fear is if there's actually action to take.

And so to get out of that, you pause and get present in your body, you acknowledge how you're feeling, and then you do something.

So I spent a lot of time just stuck up in my head.

But when I finally was like, okay, let me get back into the present.

I don't know whether or not I can use these embryos or not, but I do know that the doctor knows.

And so I would like get present and I would say how I was feeling.

And then I would say, okay, the thing I need to do is call the doctor.

I'm like, nope, not ready yet.

So then I would try it again.

And so eventually I called the doctor and I told them what happened.

And they said, okay, you know, you are allowed to use these.

And then we kind of started down that path.

And I started, I'm I'm working on the memoir of this story.

So I know these dates now, and it's so eerie.

The first appointment with the doctor about this particular birth was at the end of September, which just lines up really weird with my fire.

And my when I went, because I was looking at my calendar and they said, okay, come back on October 1st to get your first blood test done.

Well, that was the day I lost my job back in 2010.

And it's also Mark's birthday.

And I was like, oh, that's weird.

And then we did the embryo transfer on November 16th, which meant that I found out that I was pregnant just a few days before the anniversary of Mark's passing.

So within that first year, I had gotten pregnant.

And then, yeah, in July of 2021 is when I gave birth to my youngest daughter, Mirastella.

SPEAKER_00: Wow, wow, wow, wow.

Being pregnant was um was, I mean, I'm sitting here thinking to myself, like, that already messes with emotions and in in life.

How was that with what you're processing?

Yeah and now you're pregnant on top of it with your husband's child who's no longer with you.

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: There were a couple of moments that were really surreal.

So, first was, you know, not only was I doing this, but it was also the middle of the pandemic.

And so when I went for the first couple of appointments to the doctor, there were no men in the waiting room because at that time they weren't letting you bring anyone to an appointment.

And so even though there might have been a husband or a partner or even just another female partner, right?

The only person who was allowed to go to the appointments was just the woman who was going to be pregnant.

And that was both weird.

It kind of normalized my experience in a way, but it also broke my heart for the women going through it.

And I had friends who were who were going through it at the time, and I was like, oh my gosh, this Mark would have hated this.

Mark would have hated to not be able to be there holding my hand.

So there were definitely some surreal moments, things that were hard.

I mean, obviously, I was also 40.

So my body was older than my previous two pregnancies.

And I also had two young children.

So all of those things just made the pregnancy different.

But the things that were really weird were like when I had to decide who was going to be in the operating room with me during my C-section.

Because that's a weird thing to have to think about if your husband has passed away.

It's the same thing I had to think about who was going to walk me down the aisle because my dad had passed away.

And it's just there's things that we don't think about culturally of, you know, it's just like, oh, well, if you have a good relationship with your dad, your dad's gonna walk you down the aisle.

If you're if you are giving birth to your husband's child, then probably he's gonna be there, unless there's, you know, he's caught in Nevada.

I don't know.

Like so that was weird.

And then the I've had in each of my, I've had three C-sections, and in each of those operations, I've had a panic attack under the anesthesia.

And the first time we didn't know it was happening.

And Mark was still out in the hallway and he was like, let me in.

I I know what to do to help her.

And he came in and he got me through it.

And and he is amazing, he was amazing.

And then the with Jonathan, we told the anesthesiologist, hey, here's what happened last time.

Here's what's probably gonna happen again.

Here's my trigger phrase.

Don't say things like, if you can talk, you can breathe.

Because when you're having a panic attack, that's like the worst thing you can say to somebody.

Now imagine you're also numb from the armpits down.

And so, and it happened again.

And so with my my third C-section, my sister, my oldest sister was actually the one in the operating room with me.

And I said to her, here's what's probably gonna happen.

And here's what you need to do in order to get me through it.

And it happened again, and she got me through it.

The thing that kind of set it off was that it was like all women in the operating room and one doc one male doctor who was assisting, and he like popped his head up and it caught me so off guard because he looked a little bit like Mark that it just started me like hyperventilating.

So yeah, that was hard.

I mean, there were definitely there's still moments of just hardness.

Like birthdays are hard because it's like I'm so excited for my kids, but I miss Mark.

This time of year, from August 31st to February 23rd, we have a birthday or an anniversary like every two weeks.

And so it's just um I feel like these six months I navigate this minefield of emotions every year.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

Yeah.

Wow, wow, wow.

Talk to me about just being a mom.

I when it when I say that about being a mom as now a single parent and as a woman going through the loss of her husband, yeah, while at the same time having children to care for.

Yeah.

And now raising uh another child that she's pregnant with.

Yeah.

What what was life like during those first few years and even today?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, it's only been four years.

So it it really still feels like it's in those first few years still.

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, I think that we as we as parents have to remember that we're never perfect parents.

And I always say I'm not a perfect parent, but I am the perfect parent for my kids.

And I'm really proud of that because I think I'm a really good mom for them.

I may not be a good mom for everybody, but I'm a really good mom for them.

The what it showed me, so my oldest daughter is the what has this level of empathy that I have actually rarely seen in a human being.

When I was putting them to bed shortly after Mark had passed away, so she was two and a half, and I was reading them a story and I started crying.

And she came up and she put her hands, one on each side of my face, and she's like, Don't cry, mommy.

Daddy loves you so much.

And I don't know that she really truly got it, because I think there's still times where she's like, When is daddy coming home?

I mean, she does that in a way of like, it's not fair that daddy didn't get to see me when I was bigger.

And but she it just rang so strongly for me.

First of all, I was like, oh my gosh, my two-year-old is comforting me.

And but she she just has this level of of the ability to like feel for people.

And so it's taught me about emotions a lot.

And that, and it's it's again, it's something I do in my work all the time.

I talk about there are there's no such thing as a bad emotion.

There are just emotions, and then we attach connotations to them and we think being sad or being angry is bad, and being happy and excited is good.

But that's not true.

Like, I so I tell my kids all the time, like, it's okay to be sad, and it's okay to be happy.

And when they're sad, we can talk about it and we can talk about daddy and we can I can say to them, Well, what do you want to do?

Do you want to look at photos?

Do you want to watch a video?

Do you want to blow kisses to the moon?

And so I think that as a mom and as the solo parent and a widow raising kids, that it has just showed me the power of being present, not to fix things.

Like I can't, I can't lie to my kids and say, well, maybe daddy will come back next month.

So I'm not trying to fix it, but I can just be present and say, well, what can we do right now?

And that has been just really, I don't know, it's it's definitely been the biggest lessons of my life.

And I use these same things.

Like I talked about the pad method earlier, right?

My daughter Guinevere and her brother Jonathan, my son, were fighting, as they do, because they're brother and sister.

And she was just so upset.

And I said, What is wrong?

And she like ran into one of the bedrooms and I followed her.

I'm like, what is wrong?

She goes, Jonathan almost tripped me and I almost fell on the bed and hit my face.

And I was like, Okay, did you do any of those things?

She's like, No, but it almost happened.

And so I walked her through that same pad method.

I was like, okay, honey, let's just take a couple of breaths and like get here in the moment and tell me what happened.

And, you know, she told me again.

I said, Okay, so can you name all the things you're feeling?

Like you're probably feeling a little angry.

She's like, Yeah, I'm angry.

He almost tripped me.

Like, okay, heard.

And are you like frustrated and were you scared?

And like we walked through all those things.

And then I said, Okay, what can we do about it?

Like, is there anything to do about the fact that you almost tripped?

And she said, no.

And I said, Okay, well, would you like a hug?

She said, Yes.

I said, Do you want to have a little dance party?

And that just shifted her out of that, which what could have been a 45 minute meltdown?

It got her out of it in less than five minutes.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

Powerful.

Powerful.

That is awesome.

Your your profession that you you talk about.

Is this the same thing that you started back before you guys went on your trip?

SPEAKER_01: No, what I started then was just basically like business strategy, launch strategy.

Like, how do you get a promotion out into the world?

Because I I'm really good at getting stuff done.

And so that was that was what I did back then.

And I did that, I continued to do that through 2020.

The end of 2020 is when this take the damn chance movement really started to be something.

I was thinking it would happen in 2021, but in 2020, in September of again, these like September, October is like a big, big two months for me.

But September, I found out that the restaurant where Mark and I had met was going to close down because of the pandemic.

And so Mark and I were ridiculously cheesy.

And every year on our the anniversary of our first date, we would go back to the same restaurant, sit in the same two seats, which were like the worst seats in the bar.

He didn't know this on our first anniversary, but I wore the same clothes.

So then after that, we like always wore the same clothes.

And we took the same, I know, ridiculously cheesy.

But we went for it.

Like we were all in with each other.

It's like, oh, you're gonna be cheesy?

Well, here, let me like throw some cheddar on top of that.

Like, um, and so we took the same selfie in front of the sign.

And when I heard that the restaurant was closing, I was like, I really want that sign.

And I put out another post on social media and said, Does anyone know the owners of this restaurant?

And that like it got shared like 70 times.

People were reaching out to the owners, these poor owners were like, I don't know what's happening.

All we know is our restaurant is closing down and you're talking to us about this sign and asked if I could get the sign and they couldn't.

They were like, it's everything has already been sent to auction.

And so people were reaching out and they were like, How can we help you?

Can we start a go fund me?

I was like, no, guys, this is a sign.

Like people started to go fund me after my house burned down, different situation.

This is a sign.

And but I but people were really wanting to be involved and participate.

And so I started the take the day, it was then called the take the damn trip community.

I hadn't changed it yet.

And started this community.

I said, look, we're gonna pre-sell t-shirts.

I don't know what they look like because you can come into this community, you can submit a design, we'll vote on the design.

If I hopefully I'll make enough money to get the sign.

And if we have anything left over, then we're gonna donate it to this adoption fund for this couple who that's like their big dream that they're going after.

And NBC came out and interviewed me about it.

And so it really took off.

We raised$6,000 selling t-shirts.

I got the sign.

And in fact, somebody, my friend just texted me yesterday and he was like, hey, happy got the sign anniversary.

It was just yesterday that we that we got the sign back in 2020.

And it's hanging on my front porch.

It fits perfectly.

It's just so crazy.

So that started the take the damn chance movement into what it was.

And so in then 2021, I started shifting everything that I do into this do the damn thing, take the damn chance movement.

So now whether I'm working with a business client or somebody who wants to write a book or somebody who wants to expand their family, we go through the same process, which is you craft your damn manifesto, you find your damn people, and you get your damn results.

And it fits for everything.

It fits for your health, it fits for your relationships, it fits for side projects, everything.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that is powerful.

Oh my gosh.

And I love the story about the sign.

SPEAKER_01: My daughter asked me to plug it in the other day.

I was like, I never plug it in and turn it on because I don't want people to think I'm like an Airbnb or a restaurant and then it comes knocking on the door.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

So so describe to me what the sign looks like or what it says.

SPEAKER_01: It says Brazenhead Pub.

It's about five or six feet across.

And it looks like just an old Irish pub sign.

I mean, it lights up.

So it's like a it's like a rectangle with a circle behind it.

And it just says Brazenhead Pub.

And it, yeah, it fits.

My friend is an artist, and she helped me hang the sign on my porch.

And she said, if you had asked me to design you a sign for this space, I couldn't have done something better.

It's hilarious.

SPEAKER_00: I love it.

Oh my gosh.

I love it so much.

I love your story.

I love your outlook on life.

And I love the way that you literally have not stopped moving forward.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

Kind of.

SPEAKER_00: You know, I feel kind of like that.

SPEAKER_01: Well, I want to the reason the reason I say that is because I think sometimes people do hear me say, like, talk about my story and think that I just like popped up out of bed the next day and was like, I'm gonna find the silver lining and start a movement.

And that's just not true.

And I want to honor that for people because there were so many days.

There are still many, many days where I just feel completely bowled over by grief.

You know, when especially right after Mark passed away, there were so many days where I was just curled up on the floor of the closet sobbing.

And even now, like these last few months have felt really, really hard.

And even just because of, you know, just stuff going on.

And when somebody asks me, like, why does this feel especially hard?

I'm like, because now I'm dealing with this without Mark.

And he was such a grounding force to me.

And we really worked well with each other.

And so one of the things I teach in the micro, in now is the time is microactions.

And microactions are the smallest possible action that you will actually take.

And in the days that Mark, right after Mark passed away, my microactions consisted of opening my eyes, pushing the covers back.

You know, it was it was just that was all I could do without feeling completely paralyzed.

Now I don't think about things in that same micro, micro action, because over time microactions do get bigger and they come faster and easier.

And so, but when I still find that, like when I find myself frustrated with my business because I feel like, oh, I'm not hitting my numbers or things aren't going as easily, then I go back to my damn manifesto and I go back to micro actions.

So I definitely agree that I have I continue to move, hopefully forward.

I know I'm moving.

Hopefully it's in the right direction.

And I I do believe that we still cannot choose what happens to us and we can always choose how we respond.

And I partially believe that because if I wanted to create additional suffering for myself, I would stay stuck in the, I want Mark back.

And when is he coming back and why can't he come back?

And of course I want Mark back, and I don't understand why he can't come back.

But that's me fighting reality.

So instead I have to say, is Dell kind of a crappy hand by losing my husband?

And my response is to share the stories with my kids so that they still feel loved by him and share the stories with the world so that I can do what you kind of talked about of like inspire people to navigate their own deeply challenging experiences.

SPEAKER_00: Thank you for sharing that.

I I feel as though that doesn't get spoken about enough.

Is is it so easy for us to get stuck on the highlights?

I didn't lose somebody, but I lost a part of it.

And that was my eyesight.

And at the time of me and you recording this interview, I'm a week away from my 20th anniversary.

Wow.

And I can tell you that 20 years later, it's so much easier.

But there's still a part of me at this time of year, it wouldn't take a calendar to tell me.

But there's a part of me that knows it.

And there's a part of me that starts to reflect back on things.

And I I have had so many blessings, but it's still a piece of your heart that's missing.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: And it's hard sometimes.

And sometimes, like you said, sometimes you just want to be able to cry.

And you just want to do that.

And and I feel it's so important for it to be said that there's nothing wrong with that.

Right.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: You know, that that it's important for us to to move forward, but it's also important for us to just let ourselves feel the feels.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

Yeah.

So I just had an interview recently where I talked about this.

I I really struggle with people who, especially if you're in some kind of public eye where you feel like you can't show your vulnerability, you can't sh feel you can't show that things are hard.

You know, just because I understand these mindsets doesn't mean things aren't hard.

I just know how to navigate them.

And I can do it a little faster because I've had practice at it.

But I do think that if we allow ourselves to feel all the feelings, they tend to pass faster.

And I compare it to a riptide.

So I call it your emotional riptides.

So if you were out swimming in the ocean and you got caught in a riptide, the natural inclination, I would imagine I've never been in this situation, but my natural inclination, I think, would be to like fight against it and try to get out of it.

And the truth is that'll help you drown because you won't be able to get out of it and you'll be so exhausted that you can't keep fighting it.

And so you'll drown.

If instead you were to relax into it, the riptide itself will pull you into calmer waters.

And I think about that when I'm feeling really sad of if I can just dive into this, I call it being deliciously sad.

If I can dive into it, it'll pass.

But if I fight it and I pretend I'm not sad or I pretend I'm not angry or frustrated, and I try to push it down like a beach ball, then it's just gonna burst out at the most inopportune time.

And so I think we have to feel all of our feelings.

And I don't know about you, but like I get real riled up when Suzy Sunshine comes to me and is like, oh, wait a find the silver lining in your situation.

I'm like, listen, Suze, you and I can't have a long conversation.

Because I tell people, I'm like, you're never gonna convince me that my dad, or my dad or my husband, you're never gonna convince me that my husband died for a good reason, right?

You're never gonna convince me that there's a reason he did it.

And I don't think for you, I mean, like, I think there's lessons I could have learned without him dying.

And if I feel like I had to, he had to die for me to learn a lesson, wow, how self-important would I be.

I think he died.

And I hate it.

And I'm not trying to turn that into a silver lining and I'm not trying to like make it in like I don't know.

Like it drives me crazy when people say that kind of stuff to me.

Because I'm like, no, I'm not trying to turn this into something, but I am sharing my story because I think that when we share our stories, we feel a little less alone.

Because somebody else who's listening to us right now is going through something hard.

And what you just said about how sometimes we just want to let ourselves cry is gonna let that person cry without beating themselves up, without hiding it.

And they're gonna feel a little less alone because you and I were willing to have this conversation.

SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.

Absolutely.

For the person who is like me, they're like, I love this one.

And they're and they are thinking to themselves, like, how do I have more of her in my life?

How can they plug into your world outside of this podcast?

SPEAKER_01: Well, first of all, thank you.

Thank you for the love.

I so appreciate that.

Well, obviously, you know, if you're listening to this, you love podcasts.

So you can go check out my podcast, which is called All the Damn Things.

And I just share in it how you can apply the do the damn thing method to all the different areas of your life.

I tell my own stories, I tell other people's stories.

And then my book came out this year.

It's called my first book.

It's called Your Damn Manifesto.

And it is the first step in the do the damn thing method, and it's the most foundational of discovering your yes, so the thing that you want more than anything else right now, and your six-dimensional why.

And that is a critical piece that most people jump right over.

So you can get that book and you can listen to my podcast.

SPEAKER_00: Amazing.

Where is the best place to go for your book?

SPEAKER_01: You can get it on Amazon or you can go to your damnmanifesto.com.

SPEAKER_00: Amazing.

Amazing.

You are absolutely incredible.

You have brightened my day.

Thank you for just being here, for for sharing your story, for being so open and honest and allowing such a just heartfelt conversation that I truly hope can just impact somebody's life.

Uh, just thank you so much, Bevan, for for being a part of it.

SPEAKER_01: Thank you for having me.

And truly, these are stories I have not told on any other podcast.

So I am so excited that we went different places.

So thank you for what you're doing, and I'm honored to be a part of it.

SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.

Well, well, thank you.

And for you and my listener, I hope you're smiling as big as I am.

But even more so, I hope that you're thinking to yourself, wow, what profound things that I just heard.

And maybe you're thinking to yourself, you know what?

They just gave me the permission I need to cry if I want to cry, to laugh if I want to laugh.

I don't have to be dictated by what society tells me anymore.

That's what I want for you right now in this moment, is to realize that you are the only person that matters right now.

And I want the best for you.

And this podcast is here to inspire you to get what you need.

That's what it's here for.

My name is Kevin Lowe.

I'm your host as well as transformational life and business coach.

This is Grace of Inspiration.

Get out there and take on the day.