Michelle Hord, author of 'The Other Side of Yet,’ recounts the devastating loss of her daughter, Gabrielle, who was murdered by her ex-husband. The conversation delves into how Michelle navigated her grief and transformed it into action, hope, and resilience. She reflects on her faith, the support of her community, and how starting the nonprofit Gabrielle's Wings has helped pain into action. Michelle also discusses the personal impact of other significant losses in her life and the importance of allowing oneself to feel joy again.
Find Michelle’s book at: https://michelledhord.com/the-other-side-of-yet
This podcast is produced by Larj Media.
Transcript:
Sarah: [00:00:00] Hi, I'm Sarah Kavanagh, and this is Peaceful Exit. Every episode, we explore death, dying, and grief through stories by authors familiar with the topic. Writers are our translators. They take what is inexpressible, impossible to explain, and they translate it into words on a page.
Sarah: My guest today is Michelle Hoard. Michelle is the author of The Other Side of Yet. This is a memoir about the most horrific tragedy a mother could ever experience. Michelle's daughter, Gabrielle, was murdered by her former husband. The story is a compelling and transformative one, one that reveals how resilience and unwavering faith can ignite profound change, even in our darkest moments.
Sarah: In this conversation, we'll learn about how Michelle transformed her grief into action.[00:01:00]
Sarah: Well, hi, welcome to Peaceful Exit. Thank you so much for having me. I loved your memoir. Oh, thank you. Tell me more about the title. I know the other side of Yet comes from a verse in Job, Though he slay me, yet do I trust him. When did you know that you wanted to use this verse as an inspiration for your title?
Michelle: Well, it's funny because it was my battle cry from day one, from leaving a crime scene where I wasn't the journalist, but I was the mother. And I looked it up on my phone because I wanted to make sure I had it right. And as early as that evening, through tears, much more aspirational than actual at the time, was this plea to somehow still find hope and trust through my faith.
Michelle: And when I was pitching my book, actually, I used the phrase that I wanted the book to be about how you get to [00:02:00] the other side of that yet. And the editor said, that's our title. I was like, really? But the further along we got, it just speaks so much to the life experience of getting to the other side. The book is divided into before, yet, and after.
Michelle: And so yet becomes a literal and figurative pivot. When we are facing crises, when we are facing grief, that moment where things will not look the same again. And then there's that yet that says, if we hold on, there can still be something else.
Sarah: Yeah. So do you think your being a journalist and a writer contributed to your ability to kind of step back and see this crisis and write about it?
Michelle: Well, you know, more than being a journalist or a writer, I am the granddaughter of a Baptist minister. And so I've often talked about faith as a good insurance [00:03:00] policy. You know, you don't know how good it is until you need it, right? I lost my mother when I was in my 20s and she was 50 and it was a sudden death.
Michelle: She had an aneurysm. And her mother died three months later of cancer. And so in my early to mid twenties, I learned that the songs I sang, my Sunday school lessons, everything that I was raised to believe was all I had. in that moment, and it held me. Now, obviously, that is a very different type of loss than losing a child, especially through violence.
Michelle: It was enough to make me wonder, okay, God, what do you want from me? What is this? How am I supposed to keep
Sarah: going? Yeah, fair. And looking for the answer to that question through your faith. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. That had to be [00:04:00] tough, losing your mother and grandmother around the same time. Yes.
Sarah: Especially being so young. You said you were in
Michelle: your 20s? Yes, my grandmother had lung cancer and I knew she was dying and I was watching my own mother struggle with the fact that she was losing her mom and it was actually a point When you're enough into adulthood, you realize you may not actually know everything like you thought when you were 16 or 17.
Michelle: And so we really were connecting as women for the first time. And I went with my mother on a few occasions for my grandmother's chemo and treatment. And ironically, two days before my mom died, She received a card from me saying, I know you're dealing with an aging parent and if I can be there for you, I want to be there for you.
Michelle: And then a couple of days later, I received a phone call from my father with this very small, still voice [00:05:00] saying, she's gone. And my first thought was, oh my gosh, I wonder how mom is doing. And then he told me, in fact, it was my mom. And It was beyond comprehension. But one of the most important things I learned in that experience, I have a brother who's three years younger than me, and we lost something different, even though we both lost our mother.
Michelle: We coped differently. Her sisters coped differently. My father coped differently. And so having that grace of understanding that what works for you may work for others, but it may not. And that In grief, we all have to find our own roads. There are elements of it that you can share, memories, um, reaching out a hand for help, but it is a very singular journey in terms of how you cope.
Sarah: Yeah, yeah. I felt like I lost two parents when my [00:06:00] mother died because I look like my mother and it was almost like it was too hard for him to see me in a way.
Michelle: Absolutely. From my father, from family members who said, I looked like her, I sounded like her, my mannerisms. And to this day, some 30 years later, I will have moments where people say, Gosh, you just remind me so much of your mother.
Michelle: I've now lived longer than my mother lived, which is a whole different type of, you benchmark and thing to grapple with. But yes, I, I did realize that. And, you know, I spent my entire childhood wishing I looked like her because she was beautiful. Between my buck teeth and, you know, whatever else awkward stuff I was going through, I didn't see it at all.
Michelle: So the fact that she was gone before I was able to see it was ironic, but also kind of symbolic. My husband [00:07:00] says that good things happen for a reason, you know, not just everything happens for a reason, which I love. But, uh, I do think there are things to contemplate, even with darkness. And I'm a very different woman than my mother was.
Michelle: How I operate in the world, the type of career I chose, and because she was my path to being a woman, There were things I adopted because they were her, but I don't think they were ever me. Being shy, being quiet, being fearful. And I do wonder sometimes, if I had not lost her then, if I would be a different type of woman now.
Michelle: And so, While obviously I wish, I wish she was still here, I also recognized that there was something about that loss at that time in my life that gave me resilience and strength and made it clear to me who my real friends were and made [00:08:00] it clear to me that this faith was a great insurance policy and also allowed me to explore my womanhood unencumbered by my idol.
Michelle: It gave you some
Sarah: freedom to be yourself. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Beautifully said. So when you turned 50 and outlived your mother, you said that was a inflection point. I'm super curious because I'm soon going to pass the same anniversary for my mother. She died at 67, a little later than yours, but still too early, too young.
Michelle: I was very aware, as I got closer and closer, of this mark that I was going to cross. And my mother turned 50 in October and died the following February. So my brain worked as such that I was like, okay, once I've been 50 for five months, I've lived longer than she did. And there was a point of [00:09:00] me that realized how young she was, you know, when you're in your twenties, 50 seems old, made me realize how young 50 actually was.
Michelle: I looked at my godson and other, young people who were in their early 20s and said, my goodness, I can't imagine them having to deal with something like this, let alone their mother and grandmother. And so I think it helped me give myself some compassion, but I was at such a personal inflection point.
Michelle: This was three years after I'd lost my daughter and just coming off of a criminal murder trial and a divorce. that took years after Gabrielle's father was incarcerated for her murder. And so I walked into 50 saying, this is a new chapter. This is my 2. 0. I don't know what it's going to look like, but I'm [00:10:00] declaring it.
Michelle: I had a big party with a lot of friends that went with me to Mexico, and it was just really joyous. It was a bit of I've survived, literally and figuratively, that I had survived.
Sarah: So I loved some of the. language you're using in your book, one of the terms defiant faith. Can you talk a little bit about why defiant
Michelle: faith? From the moment I arrived at the crime scene, this was worse than my worst nightmare. You know, your worst nightmare is you drop your kid off to school and you hear there's a shooting or an accident happens or they get sick.
Michelle: There was nothing about my life or her father that would have gotten me to this conclusion. And that's coming from someone who worked at America's Most Wanted, who worked in national news. There was nothing to see. [00:11:00] And so whatever evil forces there are out there that we don't understand, clearly somebody, it, they, he, is trying to destroy me.
Michelle: is trying to ensure I don't make it. And the defiant faith was, I will be damned if I let them get away with it. And so, there was part of my faith that was fight, that fought through writing Gabrielle's obituary, that fought through wearing a white dress and putting Gabrielle in a white dress at her funeral, fought through speaking at her funeral, fought through speaking and doing the victim impact statement later after the sentencing for her father.
Michelle: And so for me, the Defiant Faith was, it's one thing to be hopeful for good [00:12:00] things. It's one thing to dream, envision, and imagine something that you want to happen. It's something entirely different when what has happened is irreversible, unbelievable. And having the faith to say, despite what this is, despite what it looks like, despite the fact that all I see is darkness, I'm going to extend a foot and know that somehow something is going to meet me there to support my weight.
Michelle: And so that, for me, was a defiant faith.
Sarah: I love what you say about, you sort of contradict the Bible verse, faith, hope, love. It's not about love, it's about hope. In those days, those early days of darkness, when did you start feeling like there might be hope? Because I can't imagine in those first days.
Michelle: No, no, I mean, you [00:13:00] know, there is.
Michelle: loss. There is loss of a child. There is trauma around a violent loss. All of the logistical criminal things that come with it. So no, not at all. The first thing that happened was probably a week or so in. where I had girlfriends come over from my sorority that were part of my pledge class, and they were trying to give instructions to the rest of our line sisters about the service.
Michelle: And one of them shared with me, gosh, they're trying to figure out what to wear. Nobody's going to care what they wear. I don't know why this is a big deal. And I said, to be snarky, because that's my personality, well tell them that I want everyone in red dresses with white pillbox hats. So not only is that wacky, they're also the colors of a sorority that's not ours.
Michelle: And I [00:14:00] said, let's see who falls for it. And in that moment, I realized that even though everything had changed, everything had burned to the ground, I was still here. You know, I may feel guilty about it, I may not understand it, but that Michelle, I was able to be a smartass ten days later. And so, even though I would feel guilty through it, even though I may not even want to be there, I realized that I was still me.
Michelle: And I think that was the beginning of having some hope that if I can do this, what else can I do? And that's the step by step when you're in grief. You can't look down a long path. There's no project plan. You take a step and then miraculously there's ground underneath you and you take another. And by the way, sometimes you fall flat on your [00:15:00] butt or you feel like you're 10 steps back, but you're on the road and you're the only one that defines what that road looks like.
Michelle: And you give yourself grace on the turns and the U turns and the slips and fall. But that, to me, is what hope is in the midst of grief.
Sarah: Yeah, giving yourself grace. That feels huge. And also curiosity about what the next step is, not looking out in the long term, but looking at what, what is that next one step?
Sarah: So what did you do when you lost
Michelle: hope? I mean, to say I never lost hope probably sounds crazy. I was so determined that I had to survive, that I had to keep going for Gabrielle, for her memory, for my other loved ones, that I wouldn't allow myself to dwell there too long. Now, were there [00:16:00] things I did that weren't healthy at times?
Michelle: Absolutely. And there was certainly darkness, and frankly can continue to be at times. I don't think I ever felt hopeless, because I felt like as long as I was here, and as long as I believed that this was the same God that had gotten me through so much, that had gotten my ancestors through so much, that if I chose to, I might be okay.
Michelle: Thank you.
Sarah: Who did you look for for support? And do you recall, like, what was most helpful?
Michelle: The first most helpful thing was finding an amazing trauma therapist. I knew enough from losing my mother that having a grief therapist was not going to do. That this was something other than grief and that I needed someone [00:17:00] equipped to walk with me.
Michelle: And my trauma therapist had worked in the DA office in Manhattan at one point. And so the knowledge that she had to help me understand my trauma and how it would impact me, even through the trial and having to see my ex husband again, it was incredibly important. And I have An unbelievable village of friends and family.
Michelle: They showed up in ways I had never needed them to show up before, but they were there. You know, I have invested. in dear relationships. And if you invest in that, you'll get the return. You don't do it for the return, but being a friend and being there for people and creating community, when [00:18:00] I needed it, they showed up.
Michelle: And so knowing that I had someone I could call and say, I need someone to spend the night every night with me in this rental house for the foreseeable future. And then there was a dry erase board with a chart in my kitchen after. Not only did I know they were there for me, I had faith that they could figure things out.
Michelle: How do I cancel this monthly subscription for little girls clothes? How do I cancel summer camp for the summer? They would figure it out. So I think that combination of an amazing therapist and just an unbelievable, courageous community is how I kept going.
Sarah: Yeah, the support shows up in your book so profoundly.
Sarah: Is there something you would say to someone who feels isolated in their grief.
Michelle: What makes you feel alone and isolated is feeling like [00:19:00] you can't really share it with anybody, that you can't explain it to anyone, no one will understand. And while no loss is the same, there are Resources, there are things that can help lighten the load a bit as you go.
Michelle: And so, I think the worst thing we can do is just completely insulate ourselves from other people, from information, from support. And so, I would challenge folks that are feeling that to find an outlet.
Sarah: So, I don't know if you've read this, there's a wonderful book by James Nestor called Breath. What role can breath play when you have moments of anxiety or emotion, you're dysregulated, what role did breath play for you?
Michelle: You know, it's funny, I, uh, did prenatal yoga [00:20:00] and after I had my daughter, continued to use breathing as a way to calm myself down, to get back in my body. Especially in moments of anxiety, where things are are happening at such a speed that you can't even predict. You know, that really forceful release and slow inhale go a long way.
Michelle: There is so little you feel like you have control over. when you're in the depths of grief. And the literal ability to control your breath and to be able to settle your own body down is empowering. And sometimes that's all you have. All you have is that quiet breath in the dark. Life can feel like you're at the deep end of a pool and that's the peace that you can own and control.[00:21:00]
Michelle: And so that's something I hold on to even today.
Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. You've said that allowing yourself to experience joy has helped continue to move forward. So what do you mean by allowing, the word allowing is an interesting choice.
Michelle: Because I think that when you go through a very traumatic loss, um, there is that emotional grieving period.
Michelle: There's some sort of timeline that. Am I doing a disservice or disrespecting the person that died? If I don't remember the minute my eyes open that this would have been their birthday, or the minute goes by and I'm able to laugh. I went to a comedic concert probably three months after Gabrielle died with some friends and I was there and I felt my breath getting short and that I was overwhelmed and I realized I wasn't [00:22:00] ready.
Michelle: And it was because I wasn't ready to allow laughter into my space and joy and dancing. I wasn't ready. And because of that, I felt guilty. I felt like I'm not supposed to be here. How can I be here? And so we do all have our own paths, but at some point, Someone has to push us or we have to push ourselves to say, two things can be true.
Michelle: I will miss Gabrielle for the rest of my life and I can find love and joy and hope in things that are new.
Sarah: Yeah, I've talked to a lot of authors who feel like because they've metabolized some pretty significant loss, it's like it expands your whole range of emotion and you're not sort of existing in a narrow space anymore.
Sarah: Like, it just expands your world. Did that feel like that happened for you too?
Michelle: You know, it's funny, my [00:23:00] mother, who thought I was a very dramatic child, used to say to me, nothing is life and death, but life and death. You know, it's a little bit like a Yogi Berra expression, right? Yeah, that's definitely got a mark in your book for me.
Michelle: And, you know, there it was. She was gone and her mother was gone. And what it did do was level the playing field of perspective, right? Yeah. It helped me be calm in crazy situations because it's like, it's dealt with crazier. So that grew exponentially when I lost my daughter, how I lost her, because it makes you unbreakable because I know that bad things happen.
Michelle: I know things worse than what I imagined can happen. And I'm still here. That doesn't mean I don't fear bad things or grieve losses anymore, but it does mean that I have confidence in my hope and my faith and my community to know that [00:24:00] even I'm In the dark, I have found a way to scrap my way back to the light.
Michelle: And if I've done it before, I could do it again, and will have to do it again.
Sarah: Yeah. You've accepted what is. That faith is still so strong in you, and I understand you recently lost a dear friend? Yes.
Michelle: Yes. I lost the mother of my childhood best friend. And what I will say, While it was devastating, there was a gift in it for me because she was in her 80s.
Michelle: She lived a wonderful life and in the end she wound up in hospice at home and I was with her. I went and stayed with my friend and tried to be helpful and we knew this was happening. It's never a good time. It's never long enough, right? You never have enough time with people [00:25:00] you love. But for me This was the first time I got to say goodbye to someone, to watch them transition and to know that they were leaving pain for peace, and to be able to say I love you, thank you, have a few laughs with her while she could still laugh, and so does it take away from the burden of grief, no.
Michelle: What it did allow me to have was a more normalized sense of life and death. You know, in our culture, death has become this quiet, dark thing that we try to keep in the corners, right? And not talk about, not even acknowledge. And in other cultures, whether it's a body [00:26:00] displayed for a length of time, or People having an all out party after a funeral, they go from just crying and crying to dancing and eating and drinking.
Michelle: There is something to be said for celebrating a life, for honoring pain and celebrating a life. And to be able to watch someone walk into the unknown is a gift. If you have not. had the opportunity to experience that in previous losses.
Sarah: Absolutely a gift. It's a sacred time. You know, I think about Gabrielle and you thought very consciously about a beautiful legacy for your daughter so that she would not be remembered as a victim.
Sarah: And shortly after you lost her, you started a nonprofit, Gabrielle's Wings. The organization is dedicated to providing educational opportunities to young people of color in vulnerable [00:27:00] communities. How did that experience help you heal?
Michelle: If you feel that you've been a victim, doing something empowering is really important.
Michelle: In any grief process or even just a dark chapter in life where you're not feeling a lot of hope, getting outside of yourself is really important. It's another place of perspective. And so, Twofold, Gabrielle's Wings, the mission came from me as a Black mother of a bit of privilege relative to most people that look like me.
Michelle: To have been able to send my daughter to good schools and good camps and to have her be exposed to travel and all sorts of opportunities that a lot of children that look like her would not have, and so. My heart was to give that to other [00:28:00] children. But what I didn't realize until I really got in the work was the joy that these children would give me.
Michelle: I spent my first Christmas away from everyone I knew in Belize on a mission trip and seeing the joy of the children, the laughter, the energy, the vibrancy, was both painful but healing and beautiful. And so for me, Gabrielle's Wings started as just a place of legacy and has evolved into a place of impact where we're trying to offer hope and a future and opportunity to
Sarah: children.
Sarah: It's so true that if we're in action around those things that we're devastated about, it
Michelle: brings us hope. It [00:29:00] absolutely does. It absolutely does.
Sarah: Yeah. Thank you for doing that work. Do you still talk to her?
Michelle: Yes, I do. I do. I, I find myself most comfortable talking to her or being able to hear her when I'm in the ocean because that was our place.
Michelle: And I will hear her little voice talking to me and encouraging me. I'm grateful for that connection to my heart and my soul that I can still find her.
Sarah: You say that as a writer, I always wrote backward from the end. And now you say, there's freedom to not being tied to the end of the story. And my producer says, there's some news.
Michelle: Well, you know, a news girl loves breaking news. So, in the vein of two things can be true. Yes. I will [00:30:00] carry my daughter with me for the rest of my life. And I've allowed myself to find love again. And I am happily married. to a man who I met in the Bahamas on a beach where my daughter and I spent a lot of time.
Michelle: He's Bahamian. We got married on that same beach and God willing this fall we're expecting a little boy. Congratulations. And we have a surrogate who was my daughter's nanny, so someone who I'm very close to. And there's a duality, right? My daughter should be 15. I never would have imagined at 54 having a newborn.
Michelle: And yesterday we had a shower and it was lovely, but I found myself looking at the pictures when I was pregnant with Gabrielle and my first shower. And so two things can be true, right? I can be heartbroken that my life changed so dramatically that the story will not end the way I would have imagined, and [00:31:00] I can be hopeful and excited and dare to try to build something new.
Michelle: So will your son know about your daughter? Absolutely. That's his sister. It's his big sister. I grapple with what that will look like as well as realize that it will be all he knows is that he has a big sister who's an angel. That will always be his story. The details of the story as he gets older, I pray through wisdom and good advice and good therapist's guidance that we will tell him what he needs to know when he needs to know it.
Michelle: But the most important thing is how hard his mommy and daddy worked to get him here.
Sarah: That's beautiful. Do you feel like you've forgiven all that needs to be forgiven at this stage?
Michelle: I do. I truly believe that if something [00:32:00] is eating away at you, you're giving your power away. And for me, it has been less about a tactical, I forgive her murderer for what he did because he hasn't asked for, he hasn't even admitted that he did it.
Michelle: He is unwell to say the least. And so. For me, it has looked like reconnecting with Gabrielle's grandmother, his mother, making her a part of my life, not blaming her for what her only child did to her only grandchild. Just having, having grace for her and her struggle. and her pain that is very different than mine.
Michelle: And so for me, just trying to create peace and still water where I can has been [00:33:00] how I've dealt with it.
Sarah: I love the image of still water. So before I ask you the last question, Is there anything you'd like to share that you haven't shared already?
Michelle: You know, I'm often asked how do I deal with a friend that's going through trauma or grief?
Michelle: And while I don't think there's a rule book or a right thing to say, I think the most important thing someone can say who's next to grief is I don't know what to say. There are no words. I'm so sorry. How do you feel right now? How do you feel today? Because that puts them in a place of vulnerability.
Michelle: Really our ego wants us to be able to solve things, fix things, have the right words, have the perfect escape for that person. And what they really need is your vulnerability because their heart is outside of [00:34:00] their body. And so the best thing you can do is listen more than you talk and admit that you have no idea how to deal with this.
Michelle: Don't compare it to something you've seen or heard or read or, or bring faith or religion into it. Just admit that as we all are, you're at a loss about this mystical process. of grief and death.
Sarah: So what does a peaceful exit mean to you?
Michelle: A peaceful exit to me is realizing that sometimes we don't get an explanation, sometimes we don't get the ending we've asked for, or the story takes a turn we wouldn't have expected, and [00:35:00] yet it can still be beautiful.
Michelle: It can still be beautiful. And sometimes giving up that need to be in charge and in control, that faux sense of independence from others in the world. To me, that's what peaceful looks like.
Sarah: Thank you so much for your time today. It was such a pleasure to meet you. Thank you. I've enjoyed it. Thank you so much.
Sarah: Thank you for listening to Peaceful Exit. I'm your host, Sarah Kavanaugh. You can learn more about this podcast@peacefulexit.net, and you can find me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram at a peaceful exit. If you enjoyed this episode, please let us know. You can rate and review this show on Spotify and [00:36:00] Apple Podcasts.
Sarah: This episode was produced by the amazing team at Large Media. You can find them@ajmedia.com. The Peaceful Exit team includes my producer Katie Klein, and editor Kareem Kow. Our sound engineer is Sean Simmons. Tina Noll is our senior producer, and Sid Gladue provides additional production and social media support.
Sarah: Special thanks to Ricardo Russell for the original music throughout this podcast. As always, thanks for listening. I'm Sarah Kavanagh, and this is Peaceful Exit.