CHAPTER 16
What I Know to Be True
Toward the tail-end of finishing this book, I flew home to San Diego to visit friends and stopped to see my dad. I had lunch with him, it was a good visit, and everything was great and normal.
Nearly three months later my stepmother let me know he was in the hospital for severe anemia, that he was receiving blood transfusions, and doctors were doing tests. Soon after, it was confirmed he had a rare form of leukemia and had only a few months to live. As I tried to wrap my head around the fact that my dad was terminally ill, I also knew I had never lost anyone I was close to and was completely unprepared for what was to come.
I flew home and helped care for him for several days, which both warmed my heart and shattered it at the same time. He died on October 16, 2016, as I sat alone with him at his bedside while he was in hospice care at a beautiful facility near the beach in my hometown.
I was devastated. It was one of those moments when things fell apart, and I had to decide what to do every day. It was ironic, really. Here I was writing this book on the habits we do that ultimately make us feel like shit when life is hard, and I was faced with the ultimate challenge. Would I eat my own words?
I could have chosen to fall back on so many of the habits in this book. I could have spent days beating myself up for not being a better daughter and for moving out of the state I grew up in. I could have isolated and not leaned on anyone or run straight for control and perfectionism in order to have something certain to hold onto. I could have been “the strong one” and just let everyone else fall apart while I was stoic. I could have lashed out and blamed.
My old favorite and ultimate go-to, of course, was numbing. I could have started drinking again, or put on my running shoes and run until my legs felt like they would break from under me. I could have gone to the mall with a credit card. Anything to get out of the panic, sorrow, and sheer excruciating devastation I was feeling.
And you know what? I did some of those. I thought regretfully on how I could have been a better daughter. There were a few days where I isolated and told no one I was slipping away. I over-functioned. I got angry at people that didn’t deserve it. When I first got word he was terminal, that same day in a panic, I drove to the mall in search of the perfect funeral dress because I couldn’t imagine not having the perfect dress to wear to my father’s funeral and ended up spending entirely too much money on a dress and pair of shoes that I will only wear once. I walked out of the store feeling relief for about five minutes.
But all of that is okay.
Pain brings out the rawest part of our humanity. All our emotions connect us. The joy we feel, the love we have for each other, the agony we feel when we lose someone. We all know these feelings. We all have them. We’re all messy humans stumbling our way through, falling back on habits and behaviors that don’t make us feel good simply because we’re afraid and doing the best we can, day after day.
It’s fine to fall apart sometimes. My hope is that you’ll know where you’re at and know what’s important to you and make conscious choices. That you trust yourself enough to know that even if you fall back on these habits, it’ll be short-lived and you’ll come out okay on the other side of the fire. That you’ll treat yourself with grace and tenderness and do your best. Because that’s all we can ever do.
You’re now equipped with countless tools and, hopefully, substantial self-awareness to know that you can get through the good times and the most challenging.
Having never lost anyone like this and staring at my father’s mortality for the first time, I developed a new perspective on what I know to be true about life.
I truly believe we are all here to learn, to serve, and to love others and ourselves. You are responsible for all three of those. All three are equally hard to do and scary to commit to. But when we pledge to do them, learning, serving, and loving can be the most beautiful things you’ll ever do.
I truly believe that our happiness is measured by the health of the relationships we have with the people we care the most about.
I truly believe we are all trying to find ourselves, find each other, and make our way back to each other.
I also believe that if we walked toward our pain and our joy instead of away from them and talked openly about our pain and joy more, we would heal and grow and be more connected to one another. By having these connections, it would feel like everything you’ve ever wanted.
And I truly believe that in this life we are all just walking each other home.