Episode 204: How to deal with grief while running a small business
Trigger Warning: If you're not in the headspace to deal with loss and grief, then please feel free skip this episode. Also, if you are in a space where potentially you will need help for dealing with grief, please reach out to your GP and create a mental health plan.
In this coaching episode, Fiona shares her experience in dealing with the death of her parents and the steps she went through to move forward with her business through the use of the Buyer’s Cycle analogy.
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
On losing her father
On losing her mother
Dealing with grief (Buyer Cycle Analogy)
Awareness
Research
Evaluation
Purchase/Commitment
Advocacy/Sharing
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business Coach
Resources and Recommendations mentioned in this episode:
Eugene Rivero
Frank Killackey
Owen
Catherine
Laurinda and Fatuma
Nietzsche
Young
Dustyesky
Carmel Killackey
It was almost like, do I wanna be a victim and be like, this has happened to me. The whole rest of my life is just gonna be defined by this. Or am I going to be the victo? And I guess there's not a winner or a loser in this situation, but I had to go I'm in the evaluation stage. What work am I going to commit to doing in business? It's a similar thing. You can sort of think, our businesses have this gigantic thing happen to it. And of course some businesses really there's no getting back and my heart goes out to those people, but sometimes in some businesses, things will happen and we focus so much on that as opposed to what can I rebuild? How can I start building this thing back up?
Hello and welcome to episode 204 of the My Daily Business Coach podcast. I’m Fiona Killackey and today is a special coaching episode. In fact, it is one that we actually ran about a year and a half ago now, and I wanted to play it again today because it is all about grief. It is all about dealing with grief as a small business owner. Now in my own life, I have unfortunately lost my mom and my dad. And now my father-in-law as of last week in the last five years. And I expressed my gratitude to my amazing father-in-law Eugene Rivero last week in my Sunday email. And I had so many beautiful responses from people, some just saying, he sounded like a wonderful person and some telling me about their own experiences with losing somebody really close to them in the last year or so, and how hard it is to run a business while also dealing with grief.
So I thought that today I would bring back that episode. And at the time when we put out that episode as well, we had so many responses and I think grief is something we don't talk about enough as a society in general. Death is something we don't talk about. It's very taboo still, which is ridiculous because it's the only thing that is absolutely certain for all of us. And I think when you're running a small business, certain things, whether it's a grief of losing a loved one, or whether it's grief over something else or some other major thing that's happened in your life that has a massive impact. And you're sort of left thinking, well, how do I run a business and work through these feelings at the same time? And so today I thought it was really important given what's going on in the world, given the grief that happens to all of us.
And in honor of my dear father-in-law Eugene Rivero's recent passing. I wanted to replay this episode. Now, before we get into this episode, I of course want to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of this beautiful land on which I live and play and record this podcast. And that is the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. And I pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. If you don't wanna listen to this, if you are going through something really hard right now, and perhaps listening to a whole episode about grief, isn't going to necessarily help please check out the resources that are available to you. If you're in Australia, it may be a lifeline, which is 131114. It could be 1-800-RESPECT or Beyond Blue. We will link to those in the show notes, which you'll find at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/204. Thank you so much for listening here. It is my episode on how to deal with grief as a small business owner.
So this coming Sunday, if you're listening to this in real-time, the 10th of the 10th is, or would've been is I guess would've been, I'm not really sure of the molecular my dad's birthday. So, my dad, Frank, Frank Killackey was an incredible dad. He was an incredible man. So why, so? Just beautiful. And he left us in 2019 and I thought as kind of an honoring his birthday and honoring just what a deep thinker he was and what an incredible philosophy he had about life and living, and change and permanence and spirituality that I thought I would dedicate this episode to him. But in this episode, I will be talking about grief and I will be talking about loss. So I just wanted to put out a trigger warning. If that is something that for whatever reason, you don't need to hear 40 minutes about, and you're not in the headspace to deal with that right now, then please feel free to switch off, and come back to this at another time.
Also, if you are in a space where potentially you'll need help for dealing with grief that you are going through or a loss of some kind, please reach out to your GP and create a mental health plan and see a grief psychologist. I am neither of those things. Another great place to start. If you're in Australia is beyondblue.org.au, and they have grief and lost fact sheets that you may want to work through. So I just wanted to put that out. The other thing I want to say is this is obviously my story, and I'm going through it. And I'm talking about things as they happened in my life, which may be very different, the way that I've been brought up my belief system, my culture, everything may be very different to yours. So I want to keep in mind that I know that in different cultures, different religions, and different philosophies that people have on life, they will deal with grief and loss and death in a certain way that may or may not differ from the way that I have dealt with it.
So I wanted to put out that trigger warning. And of course, if you are thick in it, right this second, and you are like, I need someone to talk to. There is always a lifeline if you're in Australia on 131114, I would absolutely recommend going and speaking to somebody, don't keep grief bottled up. And these are the sorts of things that I'm gonna get into today. And so I want to put out this warning first and the kind of disclaimer, I guess as well that I am not a psychologist. I'm not a psychiatrist. I'm not someone who specializes in mental health or grief or loss. I'm not a grief or bereavement counselor. I'm just gonna talk about my experience and how I dealt with grief as a person, but also as a small business owner, someone running a business, and how loss and grief have impacted my business, but also how I've worked through things.
And in the off chance that somebody's listening, who needs to hear this right now? So let's get on with this episode then. So like I mentioned, it is my dad's birthday on the 10th of the 10th, which I think is also world mental health day, which is actually really aligned because my dad was somebody who just had such a great outlook on life and someone that you could turn to and ask virtually any question. He always had this beautiful Irish storytelling answer to give you and just was a very calm person, very calm. And when he left us at the end of 2019, he had ill health for quite some time. So it wasn't necessarily surprising, but it was unexpected and unexpected in that he was up that morning, having coffee, reading the newspaper, doing the crossword, and talking to everyone as usual.
He was living in a nursing home at the time. And I got a phone call and I was down at the beach. I'd literally just gone on holidays. And I got a phone call from my sister saying the nursing homes called us. We should get back there. And I said, is it serious? And they were like, well, they've asked us to come back. So, better safe than sorry. Even if we go up there and nothing's wrong, better to have gone there and not had any regrets. So we left and we went up and we sat with my father for about eight hours until he passed. And I had called a priest because I was raised Catholic. My parents are very Catholic, that sort of, they had very strong faith. And it was very important for them to have like last rights and stuff.
So I'd called a family priest and he is a lovely man. And he went and sat with my father and talked to my father and he was the last person to talk to my father because, by the time we got up there, dad was sort of, he was sort of like resting, I guess, and non-communicative, but I remember always that the priest said he was so calm. He was so calm. He was so ready to go. And he was so at peace with his life, he'd lived an incredible life. And he said that just before dad passed, he and dad were looking at photos of the family and the grandkids and everything. And dad was sort of smiling and looking at everything that he had helped create. And so I guess that brings me back to that. Dad was a really wise man and really calm and taught me so much.
But his loss was not the first loss that I have gone through in the last few years whilst I've been running a business as well. So we went through many losses, my husband and I, and my family as well from the loss of a much-wanted child in pregnancy, through to my mother who passed away in 2017. And again, that was very sudden, it was sudden and unexpected. She was kind of not feeling well decided, I'm fine, but let me just get checked out. And she passed away in the ambulance between my parents' house and the hospital. And so it was very unexpected. I'd had other family members pass away and extended family and had gone through this pregnancy loss. But when my mother died, it was like a bomb going off.
My mother and I were incredibly close. We weren't so much when I was growing up, I was like such a cow. Horrible. When I look back, I'm like, oh my God. But we had become very close as I'd become an adult. And as I'd become a mom, especially, and we'd moved back from London after having my child and we lived with mum and dad, and we lived with them before we went to London as well. And I had just created this wonderful relationship with my mum where I called her pretty much every day, if not twice a day, sometimes anything I saw on the news, anything that happened in my business, I would just share it instantly with mump. She was like my go-to, and they live around the corner. Part of the reason that we live, where we live in North Warrandyte is because it was around the corner from where I grew up.
And so I would just go there all the time, so much so that my husband actually said, you think your mom's sick of seeing you like all the time? And I was like, no, because I'd call her about everything. I'd go over there all the time. Like, it wasn't uncommon for me to be there three or four times a week, just sitting, chatting, making coffee. And I just, and it was like this sudden friend, but also deeper than a friend, because they know you from literally birth. Like you were in them had just instantly gone. It was just this instant vanishing. And I had never experienced anything like that. And I think, I know I'm incredibly lucky and fortunate to have had that relationship with my mother. I know lots of people don't, but I feel like if you are lucky enough to have somebody like that in your corner, who is your biggest cheerleader, who is your go-to for sorting out everything from how do I make a pavlova through to really deep things like how do I get past a miscarriage?
Just that person that accepts you 100% and is completely unconditional to have that taken away from you is out of this world hard. And that was the first and to this point now in my life, the hardest thing that I have ever had to go through and to pull this back to kind of the podcast is that I was running a business. And so my mother passed away at the start of 2017. I started this business at the very end of 2015 and kind of properly started at the start of 2016. So I had sort of been, I was coming up to a point. I know I'd only been kind of like a year and a half in business, but I'd coming up to a point where the clients were starting to come in. I had systems set up, I was making good money.
And I actually remember just before she passed, in that week before she passed circling, like the date in my diary and being like, life is really good right now, it is really good. I have this beautiful son, I have a great business that's working. I really enjoy meeting all these different people. And then this happened and I literally had booked in so many clients. And at that point, I was doing a lot more consulting. So I was work going into like physical space and working with digital agencies and big corporates and all of that. And I sort of had to go like, I can't just carry on. Like, I can't be that person. And it's totally fine for some people to be that, but for me, it was not, I couldn't see how I would start working again.
I also couldn't even see things like how I'm gonna update Instagram. And I remember looking at my phone and thinking, man, social media is just a completely useless thing. I don't think that now, but I remember in that headspace, just thinking, what is this all for? Like, what are we doing with our lives? And it kind of spun me into this, what's going on? And so I knew I had to take time out. And so I guess when I'm talking about grief today to put it into some sort of framework or way that I can package up all this emotion and present it in some way that may be useful for you. I am going to kind of use the buyer cycle, which I know seems really crazy. So the buyer cycle is sort of the five stages that people will go through to transact with a business.
So you've got the awareness, you've got research, you've got evaluation purchase, and then post-purchase, which becomes advocacy if it's done well. So I guess that first point of awareness was I was utterly aware, acutely aware of the fact that I would not be able to run my business with this having just happened. Like I just wouldn't. And so I had to take time out and that was the first thing I had to take time out. And I had to decide that it was fine if I lost all my followers. If I lost a whole lot of income that was coming in, I just had to think at this moment, right now, I need to stop. Everything just needs to stop. And I need to grieve and I need to sit with my father and other family members and my husband, and I just need to process what has gone on.
So I guess if you are facing grief or loss, and again, I'm not an expert, please seek out an expert in psychology psychiatry, a GP, or a bereavement counselor. But I guess the first thing to think about is what legacy do you wanna have and where are your values? So for me, my number one value always is freedom. And so I needed the freedom to dissect my feelings. I needed the freedom to process what it was that had just happened. I needed the freedom to not think about updating social media. I needed the freedom to not have to get up and get dressed and get in the car and drive 45 minutes to perform work. Now I have to say, we didn't have a whole lot of savings. I didn't have like, that's easy for you to stop work because you've got all this money sitting in the bank or something.
I didn't, I literally was taking a chance of going, wow, I've just locked in all this work, all these great paying clients. And I need to tell them what's gone on and I need to suggest, or maybe ask if they could wait. But if they can't wait, I'm happy to recommend a whole bunch of other people that could do it. And so that's what I did. I sat down and I thought, I looked at all the work that I had coming up for the next sort of eight weeks, really? And I contacted every single client and I said, I'm really sorry. This is what's happened. I totally understand. You're a business you need to keep going with your marketing strategy and your brand strategy. And you're launching this thing, here, there, and everywhere. And I totally understand if you can't press pause right now and I fully expected to lose most of them and I thought, it's fine.
Right now what's really important is to sit a lot of the time with my dad, just sitting at their house, having cups of tea, going through things, sorting out my mother's clothes, all those things with my sister and other siblings. And so I contacted, I wrote to every single client and I said, this is the situation. I don't know how much time I need, but right now I'm going back to those values of freedom. And I absolutely need to align to that value of freedom. I need the freedom and space to just try and think straight. And so unbelievably, all of them waited and quite a few of them wrote back and said, I have been in your position. My father died or I've been in your position, my mom died, or I have been there with you take all the time that you need.
So I think that awareness was a big part of it. It was that first stage of what do I need right now? So if you are going through this and you run a business, look at your business structures and look at where, maybe it's not that you can take five weeks off, six weeks off. I think I ended up taking about five or six weeks. Perhaps it's not, that's just not possible. Perhaps you run a cafe or you run something else that's physical. So you might look at it and think, well, where could I cut down? Where could I close the shop for half a day here and there? Where could I bring somebody else in to work with me? Where could I ask friends and family, could somebody else take on this load right now? Maybe it's asking for meals to be cooked.
Maybe it's asking for someone to come and clean the house. Maybe it's asking someone to take your kids out for a bit. And I know depending on where you are situated in the world, maybe we're in lockdowns right now, but it's about getting aware of what you need right now. What do you need? And what are your values? What do you want to do with my son as well? I didn't want to be showing, okay, this heartbreaking thing had happened and I need to cry. It's okay to cry. And my mother has just passed away and I needed to be the example that I want him to know that if at some point I will die, everyone does that. It's okay to stop that the world outside can just rest for a minute while you find your feet again.
And so that was the first stage. If I think about it in terms of buyer cycle awareness. So no matter what you're going through, what kind of loss or grief, really sitting down and getting aware of what do I need right now? And it might seem really selfish, but what do I need? Because these things can impact people differently. And some people, they want to work. They want to have that distraction. Nothing is good or bad. It's just what you need. So that is the first thing, the awareness part. What do I need? What is the legacy that I wanna leave? And what is gonna help in this situation right now? What do you most want? And yes, for me, I know that at the time I think I lost about 400 followers and I just thought, who cares, like really who cares?
I really important things. And I will always great that I took that time and that's me again, this is not good or bad. This is just my situation with my father passing. And that loss, it was over summer. He passed literally a couple of days after Christmas and it was much calmer. We knew it was coming. We had time with him. We had time to say goodbye. We had time to have these beautiful conversations. Whether he could hear us or not. It was a completely different type of grief. And also because he'd had so many health issues, it was, we knew that if he had continued to live, there would be even more dense in his quality of life. So it wasn't any less heartbreaking, he's my dad, he was an incredible role model, but it was his time to go.
And it felt like that. And my mother's death was very different circumstances. She was younger, she was fit and healthy, playing golf, loving life, not super-duper healthy. She was older, but yeah, it was just different. So I think if you're in that situation, or maybe you're a friend of somebody, or maybe there's someone at your work in your business, maybe one of your staff, that's going through this really stop and think, what do they need right now? Like right now, what do they need? What's something practical or maybe it's, they need some time off and really just be there because these are the moments in life that we will never forget ever. These are the milestones and the kind of markers of the before and after situations. So that's the first thing, the awareness. I think the second thing that has really helped me with my journey through grief and loss, and it's not a journey, I think that ever ends like you, it gets easier in some parts, but you can get a reminder out of the blue, maybe you're in the supermarket and you suddenly see a brand that this person in your life always had, or maybe if it's a loss of a different kind, maybe something else reminds you and triggers you.
And you're back in that space. So in my grief journey, which is continuing the second thing, I'd go back to the kind of buyer cycle was the stage of research. So I am by nature a researcher. That's what I do. I was studying. I majored in sociology and I really did think about becoming a professor in sociology. I loved to research and all of that. And so I went into a stage of research. I went into, how can I get through this? What's been written about it. What podcasts are out there who are experts in grief? What do different personalities and religions say about different things? So I was brought up Catholic, but I would very much say my parents were very spiritual rather than religious in inverted commerce. And so I had that and I'd read so many books on Buddhism and all these sorts of different philosophers.
And so I sought refuge in that. And I went into a research stage. So similar to the buyer cycle, you've got awareness. Then you've got research. And I dove into that stage. I literally read. So I looked up grief forums and all sorts of things. And I found so much help in that. And one of the things that I came across was a woman who had written a few books on grief, and she'd actually lost both of her parents in her early twenties. And so after my mom died, I was reading her books. And I somehow ended up on YouTube with this kind of person who was talking about grief. And she said that the best thing that she did was to see a psychologist. And so I thought, okay, maybe that's something that I need to do. And so in that research stage, I guess I was looking for answers.
I was looking for this monumental thing that has just happened. How have other people dealt with it? Because nothing is new, death in particular and loss has been around since the dawn of time. And whilst we may think that our loss is unique and different. And of course, it is because we have that relationship that has no longer here earthside, there have been philosophers and ancient has people and writers and authors and playwrights and people creating theater and so much creativity that comes as a result of loss and grief and people working through that journey. And so that's why I read everything. I read anything I could get my hands on. And so I went into that and like I said, that YouTuber had said, the best thing she did was see a grief psychologist.
So I guess I went into this point of evaluation, which is the next stage. So in the research, I've been really thinking, how can I get through this? How can I move through this? Who else has successfully done that? And how have they done that? And then I guess the next part was the evaluation. So I was really at this point, confronting reality and thinking I have a business to run. I can't be away from that business forever. I can't just take like two years off. I've spent time building it up. And, I did think at that time, do I continue with this business or do I just go back to getting a job? I, there was so much going through my mind at that stage. And of course as well, my mother in the eulogy that my eldest brother Owen wrote, it was just so beautifully written and it summed up her life in just really a beautiful way.
And I'll always be thankful for him for doing that for both of my parents, actually, he's a great writer and he put that together. And I remember just listening to it and the feedback as well. So, my mother, we had the funeral for my mother and hundreds of people turned up and so many people said, wow, she really lived. And she did. She had this incredibly full life. And I guess at that point I was thinking, she'd traveled all over the world. She'd rallied against racism in New York, in the sixties, in San Francisco, and she'd been very much a huge feminist and she hitches type crossed Europe. And she was proposed to numerous times. And she said, no, cuz she was like, I've got my life to live. I'm having too much fun. She went back to uni in her late forties, even though she had four kids that she was looking after with my dad, she worked as a psychiatric nurse.
So she worked with women, predominantly women in maternity roles that were really finding it difficult to adjust to motherhood. She worked as a bereavement counselor. So she worked with parents of terminally ill children at The Royal Children's Hospital. Just so many things. She was a golfer. She'd got holes in one, she was the president of the local golf club, the women's division, just so many things she'd traveled extensively. And she had this incredible life. She had lots of friends. She had lots of different groups that she was socializing with. She'd loved sports. She'd always be yelling at the TV when she was watching sports. She just had a great life. And I think that also at that point of kind of the evaluation, so we've gone from awareness research evaluation. I had to think, what do I want my life to live to look like?
What do I want my family to be like, and what kind of values do I want to guide my children? All of these things came up, where do I wanna live? all this stuff. And I think that happens when you have a life-changing moment like that, whether it's grief or loss or completely something else that happens. So I guess the next stage is the evaluation. And that's really where I had to confront reality and think, am I going to stop and deal with this, regardless of what kind of impact it has on my business or career, am I gonna make time for processing this stuff? And also looking at, my mother's life, my dad also had an incredibly full life, amazing eulogy, a beautiful funeral, and lived a very full life as well. And so I guess in that evaluation, I had to think, really, I know this sounds so cold, but really think about the pros and cons of all the different parts of my life, including my business.
What are the pros of continuing this business? What are the cons, and what sort of work do I wanna do? And this is really where I guess it changed. It shifted from my business was cold originally, Fiona Killackey consulting, proprietary limited. And that's still the company name, but I shifted quite a bit too, I wanna do more business coaching. I wanna do more stuff than I can work remotely. I'm not traveling in and outta the city. I want to have a lot more time with my dad whilst he's still here. We had to sell the family home. All of these things were going on. And so in that evaluation stage, I had to really sit down and go again, what are my values?
What do I want right now? And am I gonna deal with this now or later? And so I decided to find a grief psychologist. I found an incredible one. She really helped me. And I worked with her on and off for a couple of years and she was an incredible woman. And when I remember the first session that I had with her and I was literally like, okay, she's gonna give me the answers. I'm gonna get through this. I'll be like fine in a couple of months. Like how long does this take? And I remember literally saying that I don’t know if I said it, that bluntly, but I kind of was like, I'm crying. I'm upset all the time. How long does this last, tell me so I know exactly.
It's kinda like lockdown, tell me a date and then I can work around that. And she said, this is gonna last, as long as it's gonna last and you might be crying in another year, she's like the intensity might reduce, but the pain and the loss that you have gone through, isn't necessarily going to leave you. It's not a quick fix overnight, but I also remember her saying, you'll either deal with this now or later, it's not now or never it's now or later, because what you're going through and she's somebody who specializes in this area and has done for 20 years. She said, what you're going through will either come out. Now, if you choose to deal with it or it'll come out in two years or it'll come out in five years or you'll be coming to see me in 10 years because you've never dealt with this.
She's like grief has to be worked through, It can't be something that you put on the shelf I'll deal with it later. So I guess in that evaluation stage, I had to think, am I going to be, and I guess, I can't think of other words to use. I'm just riffing here. There are no real notes, but I can't think of any other word, but it was almost like, do I wanna be a victim and be like, this has happened to me. The whole rest of my life is just gonna be defined by this. Or am I going to be the victo? And I guess there's not a winner or a loser in this situation, but I had to go I'm in the evaluation stage. What work am I going to commit to doing? And in business, it's a similar thing.
You can sort of think, our businesses have this gigantic thing happen to it. And of course some businesses really there's no getting back. And my heart goes out to those people, but sometimes in some businesses, things will happen and we focus so much on that as opposed to what can I rebuild? How can I start building this thing back up? And in my case, I was thinking my best friend has died. My mom. And of course, it's a natural progression. Our parents will usually die before us, but I had to think, am I just gonna sit in this really horrible state of life? Or am I going to find ways to work through it? And like I said before, my mom was someone who lived life. She lived it, she traveled, she's the kind of person like I remember her telling me and she had a beautiful Irish accent as well.
I was standing behind this man with a mohawk today and at the ATM. And I just went into a great conversation with him. And I was like, why? Like how? And she's like, cuz I just was fascinated by his mom. And I asked him how he puts it together every day. And she's like, and we ended up talking for a good 15 minutes about life. And so she was that type of person. She wasn't someone to be like, I'm a woman in my sixties. There's a guy with a mohawk in front of me. I'm not gonna talk to him for whatever reason. She was somebody who never judged people on their appearance or she really did teach us massively that everybody is equal every single person and that you should never judge or have prejudice or whatever.
And so she had lived her life fully. And the other thing that the kind of psychologist works with me is what would your mother think? Would she want you to sit here and be crying all the time and or would she want you to get on and live? And I'm like 120%. She would be wanting me to get on and live my best life. That is what she would want. And so that was the point of evaluation. If we kind of come back to this sort of buyer cycle, it was, what am I going to do now? What are the pros and cons of different situations with my business? So if I shift things and I become more of a business coach, less consulting, if I produce things like eBooks and, and courses, how could that help me come back to that value of freedom, and what do I want from life?
And so the evaluation was really where I kind of decided this is the step forward. This is what I'm gonna do. So if you are going through a period of change, in which grief inevitably changes everything or loss in some kind you wanna get to the point of evaluation and really confront reality and think, am I gonna deal with this now? Or am I going to deal with it later? And sometimes it's fine to deal with it later, but know that it has to be dealt with either way. So then I guess it's kind of going to the purchase decision or the kind of purchase in the buyer cycle framework. So we've gone through awareness, we've gone through research, we've gone through evaluation, I guess the purchase was in this framework, which I know sort of sounds so weird to think about grief and loss in terms of the buyer cycle.
But in terms of that purchase is really when the commitment happens. So I had to get buy-in from others. So I had to sit down and kind of map out my revenue streams, what would happen if I reduced the consulting? What would happen if I worked from home, what sort of office would we need to set up? What sort of website would I need to create? If I was gonna go into the business coaching much more and what sort of activity would I need to do to drum up more of that business, I was already doing business coaching, but it wasn't maybe as big a pie in the financial, like as big a slice of pie in the financials than like consulting, which is often paid very well. And so I had to sit in that kind of purchase stage and think I need buying.
I need to say to my husband, I need to see a grief psychologist, and I'm gonna be out of the house one night, a week, or one night a fortnight, and it's gonna cost this much. And I also need to spend heaps of time with my dad because my dad was moving into a nursing home. And I had to say that this is really important. We have young children, anyone that is in a relationship with someone who has young children, or if you're raising them yourself, like massive hats off, that time is very precious. You don't get much time to yourself. So I had to think and, and really get buy-in from everyone around me and say, this is what I need. This is what I need right now. And I had to take that leap.
I had to think, I am not gonna do so much consulting. I'm gonna change up some stuff. I'm going to change up. How many days my son's in childcare, I'm gonna do all of these things. I'm gonna change the way that I worked as well because my son was going into school. The next year he started in 2018 and my eldest and I had to really sit and think, okay, how do I change my business? So it's going to work. So then I'm there, most days to pick him up and every day to drop him off like I had to rearrange things. And it came from that evaluation of like, what is most important to me? What am I gonna commit to? And the purchase was really where I committed to that change. And I committed to maybe putting my family in higher priority.
I mean, they'd always been a high priority, but I'd lived overseas for years. I'd sort of done whatever I wanted. And I had to bank my dad, particularly cuz he was now by himself a top priority, absolutely top. So that is kind of the purchase part of really putting all this stuff that you've worked through into some sort of action, really taking action and deciding that this is important to me. I've gone through and I'm going through this grief loss journey. And so what do I need, what support do I need from everyone around me to make these changes that have come as a result of asking myself what's important in my life, what kind of legacy do I wanna have? What are the values that I wanna live by? So that was really the purchase stage. And then the post-purchase or kind of advocacy stage was where I had to be willing to talk about this stuff openly.
And I guess this was really part of the reason that I'm doing this podcast episode. It's not talked about enough. It really is not. I had friends who I would see them say like three months after my mama died and they would not mention it. They would never bring it up. We would meet for hours at a time like dinner and they would never say, how are you going? How's your dad going? Anything like that. And it's the same with like pregnancy loss. I know that we lost a child very early and people think, well it's so early, they have all sorts of, things like, well at least you can get pregnant and these other things, which I guess they think helps at the time.
But I think the post-purchase was really sharing. This has happened to me and it's really painful I've gone through it and I'm there for somebody else if they are going through it as well because this has been my journey. This is what's helped me. And of course, it's just my journey. It's not, I'm not like this is the blueprint for everyone, but it was really sharing this knowledge and deciding that it was okay to have like a pivot party. I know when I worked at digital agency ages ago, we used to always say pivot party because you'd be switching gears all the time. and now obviously pivot has such a different meaning with COVID 19, but that post-purchase stage was really the post commitment stage was really about sharing with people and, and opening up a safe space to have these conversations and saying, this happens and it's really awful.
And this is what's helped, or this may help you. And one of the most beautiful things that came out of this was my relationships with other people who I didn't know, a lot of them before this telling me about what had helped them. And I'll always remember this beautiful woman, Catherine. She knows who she is. I don't know if she listens to this podcast. And she contacted me and said, this has happened to me. And I'd love to have a coffee with you. And we met and she gave me the most beautiful children's book, she's like, I understand that you have a young child. This is a book that explains loss and grief. And I was just flawed with how beautiful this woman was to go out of her way to contact me, someone she didn't know, and get a coffee and buy a book and come and give me her time and her space to say, I've been there, I've walked that path.
Here's what's worked for me. And I had that from all sorts of people from strangers. I remember the beautiful Laurinda and Fatuma from Collective Closets. I remember we met for a drink and they brought this beautiful plant, this beautiful orchid, and they talked about their own, their own grief journey. And that's what comes out of this. If we can talk about these things and not hide them and think that they need to all be behind closed doors because everyone on the planet will go through some sort of grief or loss, no matter who you are, no matter what your relationship is with your family, it could be, you don't talk to your family, but maybe your best friend passes away or your pet, the animal that has brought you so much joy leaves you and there's a huge gaping hole in your life.
And so I wanted to, in that part, in that kind of process, really share my knowledge and share what has happened. And so in 2017, I created a website called whenyourmotherdies.com, and on that website are books that people have suggested that helped as well as the books that I've read. There are also podcast episodes, also just stories. But the big thing, I guess, that I found really helpful from other people and that I know so many people have found helpful from this site is the letters. So what I did was that I kind of put a call out and said, if anyone has gone through the passing of their mother and would like to write a letter to somebody who is just going through it, please get in touch. And I had a number of people write beautiful letters. Some people whose mother had died very recently.
Some people there was one person. I think her mother had died 20 years ago. And there were people that had really tight relationships with their mothers. And there were people who had strained relationships with their mothers. And I think that's the thing. The more people can open up, maybe my story isn't right for somebody because they had a very different relationship with their mother. Whereas somebody else's letter who maybe had a strained or different relationship with their mother is the right thing that they need to hear right now. So I think in that post-purchase was really about, okay, I've gone through this and I'm still going through it, but I'm not as intensely sad, I guess about it as much. I can see it as a point at which I've changed. My life has changed because of this.
And a lot of the things that I've learned about myself and the empathy, more empathy that I have now for other people who have gone through this have made me maybe a nicer person because I've seen things now that I can't unsee and I've felt things that I can't unfeel. And so I would hope that I would be more empathetic and, and open to other people's journeys in this space. The other thing that it's allowed me to do is cultivate more resilience. I mean, I often think about when I used to imagine my parents passing away and I would be just so sad and I'd be, it would be the quickest thing to bring me to tears. And I heard from quite a few people after they died saying, Fi the thought of my parents dying just makes me feel sick.
And I feel like I wanna vomit. So I don't even know how you're going through this. And I think we can get used to anything and years and years ago when I studied sociology at uni, like 20 years ago. We had to read all these books like Nietzsche and all these different philosophers and Young and Dustyesky. And I remember in a Dustyesky book at the start of it, I can't remember which book it is, but it, it talks about men can get used to men and women and all genders can get used to any situation. And I feel that's the same. And obviously losing my parents is, is really hard and horrible, but it's nothing in comparison to a lot of horrible situations that people have lived through. I know my privilege, but it was still really hard, but it has taught me resilience.
It's taught me, that I'm stronger than I think I am. I can get through things. And also it's put things in perspective. It's like, really, do I care if I lose a few hundred followers on Instagram? Because reality, what is that versus this is my life. My mother has died, very different, very big perspective there, but it also made me really be more present with people and be like, you don't know what's gonna happen. And I have also had like, my best friend died when I was 21 in a car accident. So it's not, all of these parts of life are teaching us things. They are all lessons. And one of the podcasts that I actually mentioned on whenyourmotherdies.com and I've mentioned before, I'm sure is the on being podcast with John O Donohue, the late great Irish poet.
And in that he talks about how, when these things happen to us, it's like our world is torn and we have to go into that other side, like imagine a page chairing and you have to go into like one part of it and you can no longer ever see that the page has not torn, but it's like by passing through that into the other side, we feel things more deeply. We empathize more and we have this fuller life, even though this horrible thing has happened. So I know that's a lot and very different for a podcast about a marketing framework. But I mean, obviously, I used a marketing framework in this, but I think the grief and loss journey is one that every single person has to travel alone. I remember writing lunch lady asked me to write an article about grief because they'd seen me talking about it.
And I wrote this thing saying that grief is like a train and we all have our own ticket to get on the train. So we don't know how long we're gonna be on there. We don't know when we're getting off. Our journey is very different from the person sitting next to us on the grief train, but no less meaningful or important or sad or hopeful or resilience building. So I hope that if you're listening to this and you run a small business, or you don't run a small business, anyone listening to this, who's going through grief and loss right now, or maybe has gone through it in the past. And haven't felt like they've dealt with it. I hope that what I've talked about today is helpful and useful for you. And also that it gives you some hope.
I can almost feel my dad in my ears, as I say this because he used to always say, you have to have hope you have to have faith. He had a really crappy kind of challenging childhood and or teenagehood. And he had many things happen to him that could have got him down, but he always used to say, I have hope and I have faith. And those things have carried me through. So I hope that they carry you through. Thank you for listening to this episode. If you know someone who may find some use in it, please share it with them. And of course, if there was something that really resonated with you, or if you would like to contribute to the letters on whenyourmotherdies.com or contribute a book that you've read that you thought was really useful, not just when your mother died, but for any other grief or loss, please get in touch. The best way to do it is either through email, at hello@mydailybusinesscoach.com, or you can just hit me up on Instagram at @mydailybusinesscoach. So that is it. And I guess just, honoring my beautiful parents, Frank and Carmel, who are no longer with us but taught me so much. And through their teachings were also part of the reason that I could get through this grief journey that I guess I'm still on, but thanks, mom and dad.
So I hope that this episode was helpful for you, whether it's the second time you've heard it or the first time you've had it. I know that for me, going through everything I am right now, and obviously my beautiful husband and his family are as well. So I just know that I need to go through these lessons myself as well. So I really hope it helped if you need help, please reach out to your GP, reach out to a loved one or a friend, or look for therapy, opportunities, and resources near you. We will link to those in the show notes, and you will find the full show notes for this episode at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/ 204. I'm sending you massive love and massive hugs wherever you are.
Thanks for listening to the My Daily Business Coach podcast. If you wanna get in touch, you can do that at mydailybusinesscoach.com or hit me up on Instagram at @mydailybusinesscoach.
