Tamsen Fadal

So I really felt it was important to talk about this.

And we've talked a lot about moms and we've talked about grief on this show, but I just felt like with Mother's Day around the corner, sometimes I don't sit with it all the time and I just try to get through it and not think about it.

But I don't know, this year, maybe I'm getting older, I don't know.

So I lost my mom when I was 20.

And there are women listening to this right now whose mother is alive, but who grieve her just as much as I grieve mine who's gone because maybe she was never really there or because a relationship caused more hurt than it ever gave comfort.

Or maybe you've had to create a distance just to take care of yourself.

Whatever it is, I know grief is real and that grief counts.

And there's no ceremony for it, which can make it even harder to carry.

So this episode is one for all of us.

I wanna share what I've learned over the years about grief, about loss, about finding your way through a day when the world tells you you should be feeling one way,

but you feel completely different.

So pull up a chair, maybe you're going for a walk, whatever it is, we're gonna sit together with this for a little bit.

Again, my mom died when I was 20 years old from breast cancer.

It came back very aggressively after years of her being treated, after two mastectomies,

it metabolized to her liver and her lungs and it moved fast.

As a family, it was my mom, my dad, my brother, my younger brother, myself.

We had just relocated to Tampa, four of us, brand new city, still getting our footing.

We were actually in a temporary apartment trying to figure out where we were gonna live.

And within the second month of us being there, she relapsed.

And before we could even understand what was happening and what was going on, she was diagnosed again, and then she was gone.