Sometimes love doesn’t come easy, but it does arrive.
Sometimes you have to fight for it and it takes blood, sweat and tears, but it does survive.
And it’s so, so worth it.
This was how Bettina and Jean-Pierre managed to take this love and make it theirs.
But destiny, as we all know, has a mind of its own.
And sometimes the future is set in stone.
Here is the second part of Bettina and Jean-Pierre’s true love story which Bettina has so kindly and openly shared with us.
If you haven’t read the first part, please click here, and catch this delicious tale in its entirety.
You will hear how Bettina’s lonely childhood shaped her identity, making her a loving woman whose default focus was to please everyone. Everyone except herself, that is. What followed was deep, clinical depression which catapulted her to a life of authenticity, change on every single level of absolutely everything, including a difficult divorce, followed by deep, deep love with her true soulmate.
In the continuation of her story, we will hear about how love carries us through, keeping us as strong as can be through much difficulty.
And if difficulty does turn into tragedy, then what? How did this sweet woman find the courage and the strength to embrace her pain, honor it and still remain in a place of light and peace?
Carry on to listen to the second and final part of this deeply moving love story to hear how love is timeless and knows no boundaries, earthly or otherworldly.
(To hear the audio version of this story, click here.)
Names: Bettina & Jean-Pierre
Status: Married
Been together since: 2007
The light of our love and the darkness of our luck.
Our life was magical and beautiful, but I have to say there was an ever-present dark energy in our lives because of the incessant hatred coming from his ex-wife and children. We both felt its undeniable heaviness and we constantly felt the need to be defending ourselves. It took a lot of effort and we always felt it sucking away at our energy.
I intuitively felt the need to protect us with prayers and such and I also wanted Jean-Pierre to do it and taught him how but he kept putting it on the back burner. He always said that he just wanted to protect me and this haven of peace and love that our union was surrounding us with but I don’t believe he ever got around to trying this spiritual protection.
I did meet his kids, who were young adults by his time, and tried to form a relationship with them, but to them I was the bad woman who had stolen their father away from their mother, the cause of all of their mother’s misery, and they didn’t want to pursue a relationship with me. Things just didn’t get any better and they didn’t attend our wedding.
We tried to focus on our new life together and loved each other deeply but we had one challenge after the other.
On its own, one problem would have been easy to handle however we had so many other things going wrong and for so long, that it felt like this was a case of something more than just bad luck. Jean-Pierre was not used to this kind of thing. On the contrary, he’d always had full control of every aspect of his life and had always managed to miraculously make impossible things possible.
**
Jean-Pierre had been in the oil business for decades in Nigeria. When laws and regulations had changed making it impossible for him to continue there, which somewhat coincided with it getting too dangerous even to his liking, he’d moved to Lebanon. He claimed living in Lebanon enabled him to start a new venture whilst still maintaining a safe distance from his wife.
So by the time we’d gotten together, the adrenalin-filled, Indiana Jones phase of his life had now taken its place like a well-deserved trophy in his personal history and his turbo-powered pace had calmed down considerably.
Another thing that had slowed him down whether he wanted to or not was acquiring a disease he really had to attend to—cancer. When I met him, he’d already beat one bout of cancer and was dealing with the residual effects of chemotherapy.
Moving to Switzerland slowed him down even further and he was now at home behind his desk most of the time.
This was a huge change for me too—a man that remained at home, this was such an alien concept for me. I always assumed he would travel a lot but he was always home. I’d always had my own interests, studies and hobbies and at that time I was studying for my life coaching certification and every time I came home, he was there. I finally had a husband who was present in all senses.
It was great for him at the beginning. He had a few businesses but his main business was a biotech start-up which he was heavily invested in that was developing new medication.
Everything was very promising at first and he was in talks with the likes of Pfizer and Novartis. Success had always come easy for him and he was certain that he was going to sell that company for the exact price that he had in mind. But this time things were unfolding very differently and all his efforts were only able to generate a big zero. Absolutely nothing was moving.
In addition to his biotech company, he was a trader and was very active on the stock market. He had five big screens on his desk and would be glued to them for hours everyday. At least that gave him a little bit of the adrenalin rush that he was so used to.
Jean-Pierre had also bought a beautiful house on the lake for us and got into renovating it to make it our home. He was always a perfectionist and kept insisting that he wanted to make it absolutely exquisite for me, although I kept telling him I didn’t need any of that.
The house renovation took a monstrous life of its own and dragged us from one challenge to the next. Whenever one problem was about to be solved, it would be blocked because of something else that popped up which would suddenly need to be fixed first. Things that appeared to be small little issues just expanded in the strangest of ways and transformed into a cluster of problems.
At least his health was much better but the stress and disappointments in the other areas of his life was making him latch onto his one relief valve a little too much and as a result he was smoking a lot. Thankfully, his usual six-month post-cancer check-ups hadn’t given us any bad news and everything seemed to be under control.
Years of difficulty didn’t lessen my love for him.
The months turned into years but there was hardly any progress on anything.
Nothing was moving forward and our problems just kept breeding other problems.
Jean-Pierre was still unable to sell the company and this was a constant contributor to his spiking stress levels.
The house had continued to birth one issue after another but was at long last completed. The renovation which was to take only one year had ended up taking six whole years. The result was quite stunning but it had come at a very high emotional toll on us. We had paid for it with big chunks of our energy and received a lot of frustration in return. It was not a very lucrative exchange.
Jean-Pierre always had a very manly, protective air about himself, especially when it came to me. He wanted to provide for me, show me his manliness and what he was capable of. He was this great adventurer who had excelled at achieving the impossible his whole life. But I felt that with all these unending, inexplicable setbacks that hit us one after the other, his faith in himself was somewhat dwindling.
Every route he wanted to take was giving him a stop sign and every passage he confidently charged into turned out to be a dead-end.
And of late, I had noticed one tiny, barely visible bit at a time, a gray cloud was forming over him and it was slowly getting thicker and heavier. This was a very gradual thing which had spread out over a period of those four to five years, secretly knitted into the folds of the innumerable challenges he had been facing.
~ ~ ~
Inevitably, the stress caught up with him. He was now smoking about three packs of cigarettes a day and kept questioning himself—what had happened? Where had he gone wrong? Why had absolutely everything taken a turn for the worse for so many years? He kept wondering if it was all the bad energy coming from his ex wife that was creating this terrible reality for him.
I could feel that he was slowly losing the sense of joy and delight that he had for life. I could see what was coming and I was doing everything I possibly could to help him. But I felt like he was standing underneath this huge avalanche of sadness that was about to swallow him and I only had my own two arms to keep it at bay.
One day he said he felt some swelling on the root of his tongue. He was wondering if he’d accidentally bit it at some point but something was telling him that it would be a good idea to get it checked out by a doctor. The doctor told him it was most likely minor inflammation and not to worry.
But Jean-Pierre knew how stressed he’d been and how many cigarettes he was sucking down per day. Plus, his intuition told him it was more than just that.
He demanded that the doctor preform a biopsy. Although the doctor tried to persuade him otherwise and told him to come back in one month and that all would be fine by then, Jean-Pierre insisted.
They preformed the biopsy.
Jean-Pierre’s intuition was right—it was the early stages of a very aggressive type of tongue cancer and it had already spread to his glands. Quick action was imperative. Had he listened to the doctor he would have already been in stage two.
He started his treatments as soon as possible since there was no time to waste. What followed was six months of chemotherapy, radiotherapy and a few swings like a pendulum between life and death.
Jean-Pierre was a very tall man, very fit and trim. But now because of his tongue cancer, he couldn’t eat and had to be fed through a tube connected to his stomach. He hated that. He lost a lot of weight. I couldn’t believe all that was unfolding but I was by his side, doing everything in my capacity and giving him as much love as I could.
He came out of the clutches of cancer but those terrible side effects of chemotherapy, which affect absolutely everything in your body, lasted almost one whole year. It was an intense challenge for him and he was not doing well at all.
He still wasn’t able to eat through his mouth and was getting weaker and weaker. One day it got so bad that he wasn’t even able to walk. I took him to the hospital where they kept him for ten whole days and refueled his depleted body. This tall, handsome adventurer was now at 62 kilos. I remember sitting in a daze in the hospital thinking, “He’s not going to make it.” It was terrifying.
He did manage to pull through but only barely and only physically. He continued getting radiotherapy everyday where they would treat his tongue, right next to the brain. I always wonder about the extent of damage that did to his brain chemistry and how much of a role it played in what was to follow.
He was home again. But instead of getting better and better, he was in every sense and every level exhausted. Thoroughly exhausted! He was literally spending any energy he had on trying to remain alive just one more day. Of course, this affected everything else in his life and he didn’t have anything left in him that he could direct towards work or play to distract his mind and add a bit of joy to his day, even just a little.
This man who was by nature always exerted careful and diligent control on every aspect of his life, relationships, surroundings and businesses had now fully lost control of absolutely everything. His children, his faith in himself, his career, his health, his joy of living, his basic bodily functions, his income… Everything.
It was very overpowering. That monster of depression was gulping him down deeper and deeper. It was coming for his soul and finally it swallowed him whole and he went free-falling into the abyss very quickly, very deeply.
Fully dedicating my life to my love.
I dedicated myself fully to being his healer, his protector. That’s all I wanted to do.
With my own deep clinical depression still fresh in my memory, I knew exactly where he was at. I tried to discuss this with him, but he adamantly refused to accept it. What I saw was that he was very strong when it came to dealing with anything physical but the thought of there being something wrong with his brain, with his soul—now that was something he simply could not accept.
He just kept resisting it, “No, this can’t happen to me. I can’t be suffering from something psychological.”
Unfortunately, his soul was getting buried even deeper. I took him to all the doctors and healers I trusted, to specialists in other countries, but nothing seemed to be working.
I meanwhile kept trying to motivate him; “If I could come out of this, then you, with all of your strength, grit and knowledge, you can snap out of it, you can! We can win this battle together! You have already overcome cancer, not once but twice! You are so powerful! You are stronger than you ever were. You can do this!”
Still, my words were not able to boost his spirit.
He also couldn’t open himself up to a dimension that could have perhaps given him that spiritual relief, that deep breath of fresh air that lights you up from the inside. He was too earthly for that.
The accompanying anxiety that he felt was crippling him mentally and he kept saying that it was not allowing him to form a single straight thought in his head. This man who had single-handedly conquered the impossible and achieved so many things felt that he wasn’t a man anymore. His belief in himself had crumbled.
He kept saying, “I don’t know who I am anymore. I don’t like myself.”
“Why do you say that?”I always told him. “You are wonderful and I love you. And you are still so handsome to me.”
“I’m just skin and bones now, look at me…”
No matter what I said or did, I just could not get him to see himself the way I still saw him, mentally or physically. It was so painful for him and I felt so helpless. It shattered my heart into many pieces every single day.
See, people see things differently when they have risen from the ashes after having experienced deep depression. When you have been to the edge and back you have a different appreciation for life that is very profound. Having been there myself, I felt incredibly lucky to be given a second chance at life! It was such a precious, precious gift to live and every moment is to be cherished and treasured.
I tried to share this with him, I kept saying, “We’re here, we’re alive! Let’s live this life.”
But every time I tried to reawaken his joy of living, he just did not have it in his heart to follow my lead and consequently just got worse. It was a vicious circle.
Depression is contagious and destructive.
The first few years of his depression I was full strength ahead, supporting him and I had a lot of power to do so. I have to admit though, after a few years, the weight of his illness started to have an effect on me.
I got very scared and worried when I finally admitted to myself that I had started to feel very tired quite regularly. It terrified me to think that I might end up back in that dark place I was in just before we got together over a decade ago. Without one of us holding the light, how would we ever find the way out? There was no way we could survive if both of us were sinking.
I kept asking him, “How was it possible to have so many awful things pile on top each other like this? Why, why did all this happen to us? After all the things we’ve been through, why all this again? It is just not possible, it makes no sense.”
I still had to be very careful of my own mental health. Trying to find the balance between protecting myself best as I could and being there for him the best that I could fully was a heart-wrenching paradox.
I ended up having to do a lot of things on my own. I went to an art exhibition or met up with close friends for coffee—I knew I had to do things that nourished my soul in order to remain on the sunny side of my psyche.
But Jean-Pierre was still struggling.
He was going through a very confusing range of emotions and reactions. He was in constant emotional anguish and physical discomfort. Chain smoking and alcohol was what he turned to as he tried to find some relief which he so desperately needed. When in the right mood, a nice glass of wine can add a sweet touch to a romantic evening. But when in the wrong mood, alcohol can really allow your demons to imprison you in your very own mind and agonize you mercilessly.
At times, he would beg me to leave him, telling me I deserved so much better and he’d not been able to give me the life he promised he would. He was so distressed by that. I kept assuring him of my love for him and telling him we would come out of the other side stronger than before, just like I had.
But then at other times, if he was going through a particularly bad spell, especially when he’d been drinking, he would push me to my limits.
He’d started to say things like, “I know how much you’re suffering. You should just leave! Go—the door is right there!” He would do everything he could think of trying to get me to leave him.
I always told him, “Listen Jean-Pierre, I know where the exit is. I have walked out of a door before but it was the right door to walk out of. Don’t you ever tell me to leave again and stop pushing me. I love you and I’m not going anywhere!”
These were the kind of conversations our communication was degrading into.
He was so destructive—towards his own life, towards me… When you’re seeing life through the eyes of depression, you lose all self esteem and you can’t think straight and it was influencing absolutely everything.
I also knew that in all this jumble of emotions, a good portion of it was also coming from a place of love. He didn’t find himself lovable at all and really didn’t want to put me through living with someone who he thought was so unlovable.
It really tore me up a lot further along into his illness, when I sometimes started getting the feeling that he just didn’t love me anymore.
It was very, very difficult. But I was very, very decided. I was going to hold on to this, hold on to him and see it through no matter where it took us.
But then slowly, he stopped communicating with me. I begged him to talk to me, to tell me what was going on inside his head.
“How can I help you, how can I understand you if you don’t talk to me?! Please say something.”
But he just didn’t have any words left anymore.
And just like that, Jean-Pierre withdrew and that incredible, soul shifting connection crumbled into silence and emptiness. I couldn’t see the divine bright light that had connected us anywhere. It was devastating.
Meanwhile, I could still hear my soul, as well as my body warning me, be careful, be mindful, you don’t want to slip into that black hole again and this still really scared me.
With no communication, he perceived the divide between us as getting bigger and he felt I was taking a step back emotionally. Perhaps my defense mechanism manifested in this way and this is what he was sensing.
An attempt to change things up.
It was in January 2019. I decided to try a different approach to push him out of this.
I told Jean-Pierre, “I am here for you and I am giving you my hand to pull you up. I am not giving you my hand so you can drag me down with you. I can’t be of any help to you if I go also down. It took so much strength for me to come out of that black hole and I owe it to myself to remain in the light.”
I begged him to please, please make an effort to fight this with all that he had. We couldn’t survive like this…
I was trying all this to motivate him but I think that is when he got the impression that I might be walking away from him and that he finally might really be losing me.
Despite all that he’d said and done before, this really wasn’t something he could live with.
When I look back now I can see that I had already started grieving. It was an ominous, premature reaction but I just couldn’t help it. I saw this amazing, divine love that we had withering and dying and felt every pained breath it was taking. And I was grieving the death of this beautiful union.
Tragedy’s unexpected strike.
It was around April 2019. I had just bought him a puppy, Ally, as his birthday gift in one of my efforts to add a bit of joy to his days and also to give him a sense of responsibility to a small little life that was dependent on him . I hoped this would reconnect him even just a little back to living himself.
We were supposed to go to London together for my brother’s birthday. I also had some business meetings and a conference that I had lined up so it was quite an important trip. The day before our trip, he declared that he wasn’t going to be coming along. He said that he wasn’t feeling up to it at all and that it would suit him much better stay and look after Ally.
I tried to persuade him—even if you don’t feel well, it’ll be better for you to come than to stay here with Ally. Better for you to be with me than to stay here alone without me. Plus, it’ll be so nice. My brother will be there, why miss out on this?
He was adamant and kept assuring me.
“I don’t really like London anyway and there is no reason for you to worry. Just go.”
I told him I could cancel everything and stay with him but he insisted that it would be just fine. I said okay and left the next day as planned.
That night, he went out for dinner with a close friend of his. He was sending me photos of them dining together, saying they were having a good time. He seemed to be in good spirits. After dinner, shortly before midnight, he told his friend he had to head home to look after Ally and bid him goodbye.
Meanwhile, I was out for dinner to celebrate my brother’s birthday with him, his wife, my son and his girlfriend. When I came home I saw that he’d called me but I didn’t want to call him back and wake him up as it was quite late by that time and he would have been asleep.
I had a conference to attend to the next day. I started trying to reach Jean-Pierre early in the morning. I already had a bit of a bad feeling for some reason. I kept calling him but his phone was still switched off. He did that sometimes when he wanted to have a lie-in. By ten in the morning, I was really starting to worry. This was not like him, especially when he had little Ally to attend to.
I finally got hold of the lady who helps us out around the house and she went over as soon as she could to check in on him. For some reason, her access into the house had been disabled and she was unable to get in. It was a very tough situation having to contact the security company and convince them that there was a very urgent situation and that they had make their way into he house and check on Jean-Pierre.
They finally managed to get into the house.
They found him in the garage.
He was in his car.
The windows were rolled down.
And he was not breathing.
We put the pieces together afterwards.
It seems that after he said goodbye to his friend, he didn’t head home but went to a bar where he drank heavily until around 4 or 5 am. Then he drove to our home and into the garage and that is where they found him…
Finding my light again.
The first ten days of his passing, I had many signs from him and felt his presence really powerfully. Regardless, I was thoroughly crippled.
This was the dominant feeling the first few months, it was horrendous. You are in deep shock and feeling very dazed. Nothing makes sense at all. I was beyond exhausted and could stay in bed all day, for days on end. I didn’t have the smallest desire to even open my eyes.
And I don’t know if it is a blessing or a curse but the process of all that needs to be done and organized when someone suddenly passes away forces you to get up in the morning and actually take the actions of a human that still has all their faculties working—getting out of bed, dressing yourself, using words to form sentences, reading documents and signing papers.
But this didn’t stop me from spending many weeks torturing myself and driving myself crazy replaying the same terrible thoughts and asking the same questions over and over again. I kept playing the ‘what if’ game—what if I hadn’t left that weekend, what if he hadn’t drank that much that night, what if I called him back, what if, what if, what if… Thankfully somewhere along the line, I somehow found the clarity to tell myself to stop! Just stop! If it wasn’t that weekend, it would have been another weekend or another day and another way.
Although words just cannot express the brutality of what I was feeling, the seeds of understanding Jean-Pierre, which had always been deeply embedded in my soul, started to bloom, giving me the ability to slowly make sense of this terrible tragedy. Gently, I started to process this in different ways.
From beneath my pain emerged a very deep knowing of his state of mind. This death was the result of many, many years of unending suffering that Jean-Pierre had been going through. Every single moment of every single day for years and years and years of his life, he had felt nothing but suffering. His children, his business, his career, his health, his house, his body—nothing had been working, nothing! And now the love of his life… he knew I would never leave him physically but he couldn’t handle the thought of me slipping away from him emotionally.
I still think though that the major reason that made him feel he had no choice in the matter anymore was when he saw that I was starting to absorb his depression. This was the final straw that crushed his will to try to carry on. He loved me so much that he would protect me to his last breath… which is what happened. It was a paradox, to die for the survival of your love. And that is so very sad for him, for me, for our love… so sad.
Meanwhile, I continued to get more insights and thoughts that made their way through the painful blur that my mind was.
Acceptance was a big part of my recovery. It propped me up ever so slightly when I accepted that his soul was called and he simply had to go. How I would have loved to experience my whole life with him but divine plan is something so much bigger than this life we witness down here and I accepted that this is what the universe had deemed should happen and I knew that it happened this way for a reason.
When I think back and consider his actions, it was almost like he was following a pre-set plan. See, despite recovering from cancer he still smoked, he still drank, he always pushed his luck to the limit, just like he did with everything else in his life. But this was not a business deal, it was not a game. It was his health, a life and death situation.
You have cancer once, you probably really would reconsider your habits and lifestyle. But then when you get it the second time, and then add a huge heap of deep depression on top of that, and you still keep on doing what you had been doing when all of this happened in the first place, then you are very clearly going to continue heading in the very same direction. Would that be considered bad luck or a subconscious choice? What would determine the distinction?
I believe that the strongest force one can feel is love. And the opposite? It’s not hate, it’s fear! I’d heard it before and it had never made sense to me but I really understand it now. Love feeds life and fear takes away from it. I can say that it was not the cancer or the illness that took him away—it was the fear of life that took him away from life. He wasn’t afraid of dying, he was afraid of living. The only antidote to this is to open yourself to the healing power of love.
I am a big believer in the afterlife and was brought together with a medium in a way that I could really say that she was meant to cross my path. I did a session with her. She was able to connect with Jean-Pierre and tell me things that only he and I would know. She was also able to confirm to me that he was meant to take his exit from this world and it was indeed his soul’s plan and destiny that everything turned out the way it did. She was able to tell me that he said he was in a good place and he finally felt comfortable and free.
I was also told at some point that we’d had a previous life and we had been in love but were forced to marry other people. This was what had probably triggered his very first thought on seeing me the very first time about wanting to make me his wife. I was told that his soul had to repair from a marriage he didn’t want and for us to unite and he’d gotten to fulfill his heart’s desire in this life. I thought that was really quite beautiful and I loved to hear that.
Getting answers like that also contributed bits and pieces to my understanding of the whole picture.
It is a very difficult thing to try to express this next concept but the best I can describe it is that this parting also provided me the air to breathe again. I know this is a very bizarre concept for people to actually understand—especially people who know the love that I have for Jean-Pierre, but anyone who has to watch someone they love suffer will get it. Like I said before, depression is contagious and you also suffer alongside them everyday. I know now that he is liberated from that torment and at least he has no earthly suffering anymore. That gave me an openness and it liberated me from my own suffering.
I don’t fight the deal that the universe has handed to me and I don’t torture my mind anymore. It was meant to be that we parted this way in this life, just like it was meant to be that we were meant to go through all this pain to even get together in the first place. That was just the way it was.
I didn’t say ah poor me, why did life turn out like this? If I went there, I would have fallen into the darkness right after him.
You have to respect the full length and depth of your grieving process. Don’t shortcut this part. Shortcuts leave you hungover. So I embraced it the best that I could.
So I took this horrible thing, and tried very hard to make sense of it with all the wisdom that I managed to harvest from everything and that is what helped me get through.
I really miss him, I miss what we had, but I do not miss the end of our story. It was a very rare and beautiful gift to feel love like that and also to get it in return but it was so hard, so traumatic for both of us at the end and I do have to say I don’t miss that.
What remains is an incredible amount of gratitude for this very rare kind of love. I had this amazing gift of having been loved like no one had ever loved me before in my whole life. I had tasted that and felt it in my heart. Not a lot of people can say that.
~ ~ ~
Speaking of which, a lot of people did find many other things to say and some of it was very hurtful. Hearing the stories and comments going around really stabbed me.
But I guess I had to go through that because today I can say that people are free to make up as much as they want about me and I really, really don’t care. I am so much stronger about what people say or don’t say. I know who I am and I know that at the end of the day, truth will always shine through. Always!
The wide range of reactions I got started from surprise to judgement and went all the way to compassion and being genuinely happy and inspired that I’m still standing.
Sometimes I come across people and they say things like, “Oh, you’re actually doing well?”
So I tell them, “Yes, I actually am still standing and I’m in a place of light.”
This peace comes from knowing deep in my soul I know that I did everything for him, everything! Otherwise I couldn’t have been in so much peace.
Peace follows…
Jean-Pierre’s children and I have had to interact very frequently recently to deal with the legal aspect of his passing and I feel that their attitude towards me now is quite a bit different from before. I think they feel my dedication to their father, my sincerity towards them and they can also see that I have a lot of empathy for how things unfolded between them and their father.
See, when you have a mother who is very strong in her opinions, there is no way that you can be immune to that. It’s a very strong instinct to protect your mother, especially when you’re the son. And especially when you’re Jean-Pierre’s son.
And I believe that the truth will always be unearthed and revealed one sunny day. And perhaps when they’re a little older, they might see things differently.
But getting to that point takes awareness and consciousness, which only comes when someone is ready. I’m not aggressive or one to hold grudges, even towards their mother, and the one thing I told them was if they ever feel ready for it—in one, ten or twenty years, anytime—and want to talk about anything or need my help in any way, that as long as I am alive, I would always be here for them with open arms. This promise is one that is very close to my heart.
I also know that Jean-Pierre is watching over us and loving how we are cooperating with civility and calmness now. This is what he’d always wanted, that we all act in unison, and I know that his soul smiles warmly on us because of it.
~ ~ ~
I don’t cry every single day anymore. I don’t lock myself in the house everyday feeling sorry for myself.
I can easily sit here saying I’m fifty-two and I lost my deeply beloved husband after going through all of this but instead I choose to count my blessings. I have two wonderful kids. I have immense gratitude to mother earth and all that she selflessly gives all of us and being in nature heals me endlessly. I feel very grateful for being cognizant of these blessings. I am also very grateful for being able to connect to people, the beauty of the friends that I have and the incredible love and support that I have received.
Life gave me the chance to actually be in the receiving end of this help and with this came the other thing I am very grateful for and that is that now I am in a position to actually help other people through their own pain myself.
This is how I always describe my rise from the ashes: I found my inner star through struggle, through pain. I didn’t find it through joy. It was struggle which led me to my mission and started my journey into becoming a life coach. It was my pain that transmuted itself into power and strength and joy.
And now I can carry this forward and help people find their own personal inner star. We all have our inner star within us, it is our life mission to find it. This realization inspired me so much that it felt very right to christen my business by turning it into the name of my consultancy practice. All these life experiences have created an inner understanding and this really helps me connect to people who are also feeling lost. Helping them gives me the kind of joy that is generated from deep within, the one that arises from doing something that resonates deeply with your mission in life, your true purpose for being here. And that, to me, is true happiness.
Slipping into victimhood is very easy and can be a great excuse to hide behind for anything you don’t want to face. Just cast the blame to someone or something else. That’s the easy way out. But that simply will not get you anywhere in terms of your personal growth.
I choose to say thank you to all the difficulties in my life, even to my parents. If it wasn’t for them I wouldn’t be standing with such strength as the person that I am today.
I still thank my mother. She gave me the gift of life. My life would have been completely different if she had been different but she simply couldn’t be. That’s just who she was.
Thanks to the childhood that I had, I learnt to figure things out myself. I found ways to self-generate the love that was missing from my parents and give that love, from me to me. I learnt how to be a loving mother and father to myself and today I parent myself.
That gives me a lot of strength.
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It is still quite early, and I do get caught in an upheaval sometimes, but I have to say that I am coping better than I would have expected. I’m able to process my sadness yet still be walking towards the light.
I’m still not in the kind of place emotionally to make any big decisions. I have been through a lot and I am going to allow myself the kindness of a gentle pace for the unfolding of my next chapter.
I like this house but I know I can’t stay here. Yet, I also know that putting the events to rest as I process them under this roof is a part of my journey. My kids are here to support me but I also know that I will have to handle being alone in this house soon when they leave. I know that I need honor each step that needs to be taken, each feeling that needs to be felt and that’s why it feels wrong to move out just yet.
Travel has been my therapy. Courses and studies have also been a great thing to focus on in the interim. I have taken a break from my life coaching business for a while until I am in an emotionally healthy, energetically vital state myself before I continue counseling people for their own grief.
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Every single day is a new beginning and every day I count my blessings and this helps me a lot. I count my blessings so that my heart is focused on what I have rather than what I don’t have. Or what I don’t have anymore.
There’s so much more to this earthly life and there’s something that’s so much bigger than us. The universe is so grand and we are so small. If you aren’t humble with life you will always struggle and say that is unfair. But if you are humble, you say the universe puts on my path only the things that I need to become the person that I am supposed to be and you accept your destiny. Trust that the universe will always give you that light if you are open to it and ask for it.
This also sets you on the path that will eventually bring you to your mission.
Being so close to someone who has died makes me appreciate life even more. I still love life so much.
If I had one message to give to people who have lost someone that they love, it is to always continue to choose love, always hold on to love, open yourself up to love, never let go of it because life is so beautiful.
I chose love and it blessed my life but it also challenged me and put me in situations that were very difficult. The price I paid was incredibly high but I don’t have a single regret because everything that happened came to pass because I chose to walk the path of love.
