#260 "She Has Taught Me How To Live And Love In Grief"

"Hi there, Ken and Nancy.

I found your podcast while driving 11 hours one way to an event for my job and felt prompted to send you my story.

You are welcome to share it if you think it would be helpful to your commu- your community.

I have had two of the most profound losses of my life recently that occurred only eight and a half months apart.

April 27th, 2026, was the first anniversary of the first of those losses.

They occurred at completely opposite ends of things.

One was young and one was old.

One passed traumatically, suddenly, and without intervention.

The other was planned mercy after deteriorization, deteriorization and over several months.

One left offspring that I see echoes of them in, and the other never reproduced.

When one passed, I felt like I was in a dream or like I had fallen into some alternative universe, but I was not in reality.

And when the other passed, I felt like our time and life together was the dream and questioned if it had really happened or not." Understood.

"These two losses are different species, different genders, but for all the differences, they are intertwined and extrip- and inextricably linked in their connection to me, to each other, and how they saved me from myself and gave me the ability to live on after they left me.

Sparkle officially came into my life in June 2023, but the story starts long before that.

I have been chronically ill since 2010.

What I mistook for mental illness was actually severe neural inflammation caused by an immune system response.

My condition, left undiagnosed properly until April of 2023, led to brain atrophy and a multi-system, multi-symptom illness.

Chronic pain, fatigue, muscle weakness, and a host of other challenges overtook my life.

My physical disabilities led to me needing to use a wheelchair full-time with crutches for short distances.

I tried hard to maintain my active lifestyle and was a proud adaptive outdoor athlete.

I specialized in a particular style of rock climbing that required a lot of heavy gear.

My husband would carry my gear that I couldn't, which was most of it, but it was starting to get too heavy even for him.He suggested I get pack goats to carry my gear on trails.

At first, I resisted.

I grew up being told that goats were evil.

But my desire to keep pushing my adaptive outdoor adventures motivated me to look deeper.