In this episode of Peaceful Exit, host Sarah Cavanaugh interviews Gabi Lowe, author of Get Me to 21: The Jenna Lowe Story. Gabi shares her deeply personal journey of love, loss, and resilience. Following the devastating diagnosis and eventual loss of her daughter Jenna to a rare lung condition, Gabi discusses how writing her book became both a mission to save lives and a profound act of healing. From battling South Africa’s healthcare system to becoming an advocate for pulmonary hypertension and organ donation, Gabi’s story is one of courage, strength, and the enduring impact of love. She also opens up about her husband’s current battle with cancer and reflects on the meaning of authentic resilience, offering listeners insight into coping with unimaginable challenges.
Find more of Gabi’s work at:: https://thecoachingnest.co.za/about-gabi/
The Jenna Lowe Trust : www.jennalowe.org
This podcast is produced by Larj Media.
Transcript:
Sarah: [00:00:00] Hi, I'm Sarah Cavanaugh, 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 Gabby Lowe. She's the author of Get Me to 21, The Jenna Lowe Story. Her book is a memoir about Jenna, Gabby's daughter, who was diagnosed with pulmonary arterial hypertension, an extremely rare illness that after a double lung transplant ultimately led to her untimely death. Jenna died four months before her 21st birthday.
Sarah: But that death was not in vain, because before she died, she launched a campaign to sign up fellow South Africans for organ donation. All while she was terminally [00:01:00] ill.
Sarah: Welcome to Peaceful Exit. Thank you. Your book chronicles deeply personal experiences, and I wonder when you, when you realized you wanted to share your story publicly?
Gabi: Well, it was three years after Jen died, and um, Bizarrely enough, six months after we lost her, my husband told me he had bone marrow cancer, which came as a real shock.
Gabi: And the reason I tell you that is that he was the one who really pushed me to write the book. He had an absolute belief that I could do it, having never written a book before, and I suppose it always has to be a first time. But also, I had this absolute need to share her story because of many reasons. Um, first and foremost, I [00:02:00] think that sharing the story will help to save other lives and that the more people read about Jenna's story and learn what happened to her, the more people will be diagnosed earlier.
Gabi: That was one of her driving, driving passions, but Also, what I hadn't expected is that it turned out to be a deeply cathartic experience. Very, very difficult. Um, possibly there were moments there of writing it that were very traumatizing because I was reliving the entire experience. But at the same time, It is exactly that.
Gabi: The going back, the reliving it, the processing of those emotions, and then because of the trauma of what we went through, it was such a long, drawn out process. I found that the memories of it were very scattered and very fragmented, and I had, thank goodness, kept diaries. [00:03:00] And so going back through those diaries, those memories came flooding back in minute detail.
Gabi: But what it helped me do was to make sense of it and to put it in order, in chronical order. And I don't think I realized at the time of writing it that it was helping me to process the trauma and the grief in such a way. I had no idea that when I finished the last word of the last chapter, I would have this.
Gabi: deep sense of relief of something being lifted from me. It was extraordinary actually.
Sarah: Thank you so much for sharing that because I was going to ask you, your memory of the details of even the dosages of medication, it's just, it is extraordinary the way you tell this story. Diving into your book a little bit, because we are in the United States, you are in South Africa.
Sarah: It's one thing to have a [00:04:00] diagnosis, then you have to navigate the medical system. You moved mountains.
Gabi: We did. We moved mountains. We literally moved mountains. In fact, um, Professor David Badesh, who's from the States, who we eventually got here to help us, in his language, we changed the landscape of pulmonary hypertension.
Gabi: which was Jenna's condition in South Africa in order to help her. So it became clear to me as we went along on this journey that not only did we have to deal with the horror of her being diagnosed with an extremely rare disease, which when I started to do the reading, it became clear, Wow, Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension, Category 1.
Gabi: already stage two or three, she had three to five years to live. I mean, when the first time I read that, I actually couldn't take it in. It was, it was unbelievable to me. And then not [00:05:00] only are you, you coping with that, but you're also coping with the fact that very little is known about the disease. But by the time she was diagnosed, it had taken 18 months to nearly two years to get So she was very far gone.
Gabi: And then. Of all of the things that we needed for her, of the 18 different treatments that were available on the market at the time, only one entry level drug was available in South Africa. So it's less about the doctors and the expertise and more about, because we had some brilliant doctors, but there just wasn't much taught about this illness at universities and through, through, whilst people were doing their doctorates.
Gabi: And there's a big problem with big pharma in that drugs are not equal. You know, you, you, you, in many underdeveloped countries, you don't have access to the same drugs that you have access to in first world countries. And that's a problem. That is a big problem. So I guess what you're saying and what is correct is that as I started this [00:06:00] journey, I realized like, hold on, I thought you would imagine that if your child has is given a very rare disease diagnosis and you know that the prognosis is not good, that horror is enough to have to try and cope with.
Gabi: But then to realize that you actually have to become her case manager, her momcologist, as they call it. Not that she had cancer, but we actually now call mothers with children with rare diseases, momcologists, because that's what you become. You become their case manager. And so, yeah, I needed to educate myself about the disease.
Gabi: I remember sitting for long nights, reading medical journals with a dictionary because every third word I couldn't understand, um, and really educating myself so that I could go to the doctors and say, Um, why? Why can't we get this? Oh, it's not registered here. Okay, what does that mean? How [00:07:00] does one overcome that?
Gabi: Oh, well, there is a way you can get section 21a approval. Right, how do I do that? No, you need medical control council to go. Okay, how, and so we went, you know, we just kept knocking down walls, asking the questions and forcing everybody To come along on the journey of going the next step, and the next step, and the next step.
Gabi: Getting everyone to collaborate. was one of the hardest parts, getting them to agree to collaborate. Yeah.
Sarah: Doing what seemed impossible.
Gabi: Yeah, I guess that's one way to put it, doing what seemed impossible. And although she didn't benefit from that, ultimately, because we did lose her, it did extend her life.
Gabi: It did improve the quality of her life. And everybody else has benefited from that fight, because now we have a clinic at Kroederskeer hospital, one of the biggest hospitals in South Africa, the home of the heart transplant, [00:08:00] where Chris Barnard did the first ever heart transplant. And we now have a clinic for pulmonary hypertension at Kroederskeer.
Gabi: Um, for pulmonary hypertension patients. So what was, you know, there was no home for these patients, there's now a home.
Sarah: That's incredible what you've done, what your family has done. It's really incredible. Tell us a little bit about pulmonary hypertension. What is the disease?
Gabi: So the disease is a degenerative, extremely rare lung condition.
Gabi: And I know pulmonary hypertension sounds innocuous. It sounds like, how can that be serious? Because we think of hypertension, right? But it's actually completely different. So, um, did she have high blood pressure? No, her blood pressure was completely normal. What it is, is extremely high blood pressure in the veins and arteries of the lungs only.
Gabi: Why? Because the arteries and the veins in the lungs [00:09:00] are shutting down. Literally, they are shutting down, closing down, so that those vessels can absorb the oxygen from the blood. So the heart pumps harder and harder, so it slowly over time becomes very weak because it's pumping harder and harder and harder, to try and get the blood through the lungs because those vessels are closing.
Gabi: And then Even though it's getting some blood through the lungs, even though it's getting the oxygen through the lungs, the, the vessels can't absorb the oxygen from the air. So Jane used to explain it as a traffic jam in the lungs. I suppose that's a very simple way to look at it. But really what it is, is extremely high blood pressure in the veins and arteries of the lungs caused by We don't know what.
Gabi: They still don't know. We still don't know what causes it.
Sarah: There's a beautiful quote on page 273. There is nothing quite like the imminent threat of death to make the [00:10:00] present moment have a ferocity that is difficult to explain.
Gabi: Absolutely true. It is absolutely true, and I can see looking at your face that you know that you understand that you've been there.
Gabi: I mean, we all know we're going to die. It's the only thing that's certain in our lives, right? And yet it's the one thing that we don't want to look at, and we don't want to talk about, and we don't want to think about. Why? Because it can be overwhelming and scary and frightening. But what I've learned now, having been through so much death in the last 15 years, from my niece Age 13, which was really desperately painful.
Gabi: We lost her whilst Jane was fighting for her life. To my child, age 20, to now my husband fighting for his life. What I've, what I've learned is exactly that, that it galvanizes you around what's important, around what matters. [00:11:00] It's not even what's important, I don't even like that word, what matters. We had this heightened experience of being so present with Jen in the fight because we didn't want to lose one moment, one second, that.
Gabi: It's hard to explain, but the joy, when there was joy, it was so pronounced. And the depth to which you feel the pain is the depth to which you feel the joy. That's the, that's, I don't know how to describe it other than that. If you don't allow yourself to feel pain, how are you going to feel joy? The depth to which you will allow yourself to feel is the depth to which you will feel because you can't selectively numb.
Gabi: Dr. Brené Brown talks about that. You can't selectively numb emotion. And it's true. You can't say, Oh, I don't want to feel, you know, disgust, jealousy, pain, heartache, grief, shame, embarrassment, but I do want to feel [00:12:00] passion, love, adventure, joy. It doesn't work like that. So weirdly enough, if you allow yourself to feel whilst in the process of loss, because it's easy to shut down.
Gabi: Whoa, it's very tempting. There were moments there that's all I wanted to do was shut down, disappear, not feel. Biggest learning has been to allow yourself to feel, even if it's brutally painful, because then you will have these exquisite moments of presence and joy that are inexplicably
Sarah: beautiful. Thank you for sharing that because it's so true.
Sarah: Many, many guests on this podcast expanded their ability to feel in all directions. I'm going to ask us to drop back into the moment when Jenna died. [00:13:00] And oftentimes people die in hospitals, but you had been, as you said, 181 days in the ICU next to her, with her at all times, um, fighting for the medications and the, the, the care.
Sarah: And when the nurse made a mistake, you were there, you caught the mistake. And you had promised her that you would be with her and she would not be alone. One of the hardest things to read. was that they were working on her till the very end and that they wouldn't let you in the room. How was that for you?
Gabi: It's still one of the hardest things for me to work with and it's still something that comes up in therapy. It's been the hardest thing because [00:14:00] I just can't get my head around the fact that I was not in the room at the moment that she passed. It um, it haunts me to this day. And I had been with her the entire weekend.
Gabi: Um, I'd left on Sunday morning at like two in the morning, but there are two things that I get comfort from. The one is that that night that I left at two in the morning, she put her hand on my forehead when she thought I was sleeping. I was resting my head on the steel bars of the bed and she picked up her little hand and put it on my forehead.
Gabi: And she was so skeletal. And she said, thank you, mommy. So I think part of her knew that she was going to go soon. And then the other thing is that the doctor says to me that when he was [00:15:00] in the room and he was working on her, because they got there before I got there in the morning and things were going pear shaped, she looked up at him and she said, mommy's coming.
Gabi: So I hold onto that in the hope that. She knew I was on my way. She never had a sense of being abandoned. She had a sense of I was coming and that's all I can hold on to, you know. But what it has helped me with is now, just yesterday, I made a decision. I'm going to speak to Stuart's doctor and say to him, I know we're in a different phase and here's something you need to know.
Gabi: This is how it was for me with my daughter and one of the hardest things for me to recover one from was that I was not in the room. Do not let that happen again. I [00:16:00] want to be there. No matter how it looks. No matter how ugly it is. I want to be there. So if he can't die at home, I need to know that the doctor knows I'm gonna be there.
Sarah: One theme in Get Me to 21 is navigating that loss and finding hope. And can you share a story from the book that it kind of encapsulates that? There were so many along the way losses and then you regained hope and losses and you regained hope. Maybe share one experience and how you move through that.
Gabi: Well, I don't know what to pick because as you say, that was just, it was actually daily, for instance, something that was very hard in the beginning stages of the disease was watching her go from being this healthy dancer, swimmer, head of her class [00:17:00] to somebody who within eight, not 18 months, within a year, Went from that to being on a mobility scooter, not being able to walk without a mobility scooter, to being on full time oxygen, like a big oxygen machine at home and then a small little mobile oxygen machine, to not being able to carry or pick up heavy things, to not being able to play sport with her friends, to dance at a party, to walk fast with her friends.
Gabi: She lost more and more and more physical ability, but the extraordinary thing that I witnessed You know, and looking back on it, I suppose it's easier to see than when you're in it, but I did feel it when I was in it, was how she never, ever, ever became less of herself. She, in fact, became more of herself.
Gabi: And I don't know [00:18:00] how to describe that other than to say, I was witnessing someone become more powerful, not less powerful. And it was such a huge lesson from me that our physical ability, is not who we are. What we can do is not who we are. Who we are is who we are. It's not in the doing, it's in the being.
Gabi: And for me, that's a huge lesson. I'm a doer, and I'm sure you picked that up in the book. I'm a doer, you know, give me a task, I'm at it. And I'm still working on that. I'm still working on trying to find Jenna's grace of being able to, you know, Let go of such important things as a teenager and yet not ever feel like a victim.
Gabi: How she did that, how did she suffer those losses all the time, lose the ability to do these things. Every day there was another loss. And yet there was always the focus was on what [00:19:00] can we do? Okay, so we can't go out today, it's a particularly bad day. What can we do? Right, Camilla and Julieta can come and visit you.
Gabi: They can have, we can set up a tea party in your room at your bed. That's how we hold on to hope all of the time. And it was a moving target, a constantly moving target. And I think that holding onto hope is an active thing. You can't expect it to land in your lap. It's actually a practice. It's a practice.
Gabi: You've got to force yourself to hold on to hope, even in the face of death.
Sarah: You wrote about your amazing community of support in your grief. How important was that for you?
Gabi: Wow. That was everything. I think that isolating yourself, there's a big difference between spending time on your own so you can process grief and pain.
Gabi: And I think that's very important. We have to do that. And isolating yourself. You know, there's a very big difference. Shutting [00:20:00] down and isolating is a way to flatline. It's a way to, to deny life. And I think that, Human connection is the most important thing on this earth. It's, it's, we don't lie on our deathbed and think about, I wish I'd got that stuff done in my entry.
Gabi: We lie on our deathbed and we think about the people that we love. It's the only thing that matters in the end, is connection. So, having that empathy, having people who genuinely cared about how we felt. Apart from logistically, we needed the support desperately because we had to move from Cape Town to Johannesburg, it's a two hour flight, we had to leave our house, we didn't have a place to stay, we didn't have a car up there, I wasn't earning, suddenly Stuart was hard for him to earn, you know, there was lots of logistical stuff that we needed help with.
Gabi: Beyond that the care and the love. [00:21:00] Let me put it this way. It, it buoys you up like you're floating on an ocean, you know, uh, uh. I don't know how I would have done it without them, to be honest.
Sarah: You talk about authentic resilience in your work. And does this differ from traditional understanding of resilience?
Sarah: Why is it important?
Gabi: Very much so. And it's deeply, deeply important. And I'm glad that you asked that question. So after all of the suffering and the loss of Jen, I started to really think about resilience. Why is it that Some people cope and others don't. Why is it that some people thrive in the face of after challenge, that they get to a place of what we call post traumatic growth?
Gabi: I mean, so few people have heard of PTG, post traumatic growth, but everybody knows about PTSD, post traumatic stress disorder, or, you know, so actually, The big difference is that the 50% of people who get [00:22:00] to a place of post-traumatic growth are the ones who are willing to do what we were talking about earlier, to feel, to be vulnerable, to lean in, to ask for help, to do all the things that are really difficult to do.
Gabi: So I started doing a whole lot of reading. I met up with another woman, lost and life coach. We've created this model called the 10 hours of authentic resilience, and we've created a roadmap, one that I wish I had had whilst going through all of this. But let me not get lost in that. The important thing is this.
Gabi: Most people think of resilience. If you were to Google resilience, what are you going to get? You're going to get bouncing back, bouncing back, being strong, toughing it out, grits and perseverance. That's what you're going to get. Head up, hold your head up straight and just keep going. So I'll continue this.
Gabi: Anyone, [00:23:00] any single person on earth who's been through any sort of trauma will tell you, you don't bounce from trauma. It's not possible to bounce and neither should you. Because if you're bouncing, I know you are not doing the emotional processing that you need to do in order to put down that pain, that trauma, in order to work with it and through it and to move through it.
Gabi: You can't bounce. If you bounce, it's going to come back and take you out at the knees later when you least expect it, without a doubt. And the other part is, you don't go back. And in some ways, that really is another loss. I can tell you that for free. It's another loss. I'm not the same person I was before Jenna died.
Gabi: I never will be. So authentic resilience is not about bouncing back and trying to be who you were before you experienced what you experienced, because you can't unsee what you've seen and you can't unexperience what you've experienced and you can't unfeel it. But what you [00:24:00] can do is you can learn to live with it and to live with it in a way that is realistically optimistic, that holds onto the facts.
Gabi: This is true. This happened to me. And. I am still alive. I still have hope. There's hope around me. There are other connections. There are other people. There is life. There's life and there's death, and both of these are true. There's brutality and there's beauty, and both of these are true. There's ugliness and meanness in the world, and there's kindness and empathy.
Gabi: Both of these are true. So, so much of authentic resilience is about being able to hold paradox all of the time. The this and the that. But it's a whole lot more than that. But I think what's important about it is to be authentically resilient as a practice. It's a bit like going to the gym. You can work out, but the minute you stop lifting weights, guess what happens to those muscles?
Gabi: You've got to practice it. Just like you've got to practice finding hope. You've got to [00:25:00] practice tracking down joy when you're in the midst of pain. You've got to practice being authentically resilient. Resilient in a way that looks after you, that honors you, that honors your grief, that honors your trauma, and that keeps on deepening your capacity.
Gabi: to cope and in fact
Sarah: to thrive. And part of that's finding purpose. So what does authentic resilience look like in practice? Is there a specific example?
Gabi: Let me give you a very real example. Right now, Stuart, my beloved, 33 years married, coming up for 34, is in hospital. He's not well. What does authentic resilience look like?
Gabi: Authentic resilience looks like this. Number one, I hold on to reality. I don't go into denial and pretend everything's going to be okay because that is not true and I need to be [00:26:00] realistic about what the risks are and where we're at and what stage we're at. I have to be able to face the facts and if I can't stare down the facts and if I can't look the truth in the eye.
Gabi: Not a single cell in my body is going to be resilient, that's for sure. And at the very same time, and that's why I call it realistic optimism, I have to hold on to hope. And that, as I said before, is a practice. So how do I stay in reality and hold on to hope? That's the first part, okay? That means for me right now, knowing everything, speaking to the doctor, holding on to the information.
Gabi: Right now, I'm back where I was with Jen. We're bringing in yet another expensive drug from the states. It's not available in the country. We're fighting with medical insurance to get it in. We're doing it all over again, and we have been for four years, been doing it all over again. But right now, you know, we're in a different phase.[00:27:00]
Gabi: So, the next thing is for me to honor how it feels. So firstly face the facts but do it with realistic optimism. Then I need to honor how I'm feeling. So what does that mean? That means not putting on rose tinted glasses and pretending to be fine. That means allowing myself time To reflect, to journal maybe, to sit with how I'm feeling, and to cry if I need to, and to be strong when I need to, allowing myself to feel and noticing my vulnerabilities because trust me, I'm terrified of losing it.
Gabi: So sitting with that every day and not pretending that I'm not scared. I am scared. And at the same time, I know that eventually I will be okay, but I'm scared. And then the next part is Reaching [00:28:00] out, speaking to people, gathering my circle around me, the ones that I really trust, that I trust deeply. That for me is the hardest part, I have to be honest.
Gabi: I've had to learn it. I think for me, giving help is a whole lot easier than asking for help. And yet I really genuinely have learned that giving and receiving are one and the same thing. So I might not give back to exactly the person who gave to me, but it comes back and around and back and around. It is, it's part of the same circle, giving and receiving.
Gabi: The other part is knowing that it's my responsibility. To look after my own mental, physical, and emotional well being, even whilst looking after Stuart and helping him. It's my responsibility, it's no one else's. So staying empowered in that and not [00:29:00] becoming a victim. Not feeling sorry for myself and becoming a victim and thinking this is all happening to me.
Gabi: I'm cursed or I don't know, or whatever. I've had people say to me again and again, you know, what have you done in a past life to deserve this? I don't think I deserve this. It's not about that. This is random. This is life. Life is like this. There are people down the road living in the Cape Flats with, you know, in a shack, without a roof over their head, without a job, without education, without parents who love them.
Gabi: Do they deserve that? No. This is not about being handed something. It's just life. And so staying out of that victim mentality and being able to find perspective. That's the hard part because when you're really in something deep in it, being able to step back and find perspective. Another part of that is being able to think creatively, even whilst [00:30:00] you are terrified.
Gabi: So if I wasn't able to do that, we would have lost Stuart years ago if Stuart and I weren't constantly innovating and finding the next drug and doing the research and joining forces with our doctors and doing what we did with Jen, which is find a way for as long as you can, not just shutting down, but remaining empowered.
Sarah: Thank you. Um, what really moved me in your book was your ability to hold both, to hold both, to take. You know, once you recover from a shock of a diagnosis or, uh, or a setback, you jumped into action and Jenna exemplifies that beautifully by jumping into action for the entire country around organ donation, really incredible things she did in advocating for organ donors, you know, all the while knowing she didn't have [00:31:00] long to live.
Sarah: It's really about holding both those, the dialectics. Um, really incredible. My cousin had a liver transplant and, uh, saved her life and she's written a letter to her organ donor. I don't know if it was delivered to the family. of the family that donated her liver or not, but I know she feels so much gratitude for that life saving surgery.
Sarah: How do you thank the donor for the lungs that Jenna was able to breathe into? Like she had a, she had a moment when she went off her oxygen and she was, you know, she was free and breathing on her own. How do you think about thanking the donor of a life saving organ?
Gabi: I did thank the donor. It took me a long time after she died because of [00:32:00] Because of the trauma of ICU, so what your listeners don't know yet is that I literally spent 187 days in ICU with her after she had a lung transplant, and that is a very long time.
Gabi: Anyone who's been in ICU knows it's a very brutal environment. So to be in isolation in ICU for six months with, with challenge after challenge after challenge, and some of them deep, deep suffering. was really hard. That was the hardest part for me to work through was the suffering. Why, why did she have to suffer so much?
Gabi: So it took me a while because I had to get to a place of getting over that. Not that that had anything to do with the donor, of course it didn't, but I needed to be in a well enough place, a whole enough place to write and I eventually did write to the donor. And I can tell you this, that without them, she didn't [00:33:00] have a chance.
Gabi: She was busy dying without those parents saying, we will donate. She would not have had a chance. And with every person who says we will donate, one body can save seven lives, up to seven lives, which is just extraordinary. And we live here in a country where there's so much crime and so much senseless death.
Gabi: That I genuinely wish that our organ donation rate was through the roof. It should be. It should be. Because it's such a beautiful way actually to make sense out of a senseless death. The pain of losing someone is so hard. But to know that their loss saved another life must be a beautiful thing to live with.
Gabi: Hard, but beautiful. And so, you know, in a moment of, of deep honesty, I'll share with you that when she did pass, it was such a public death because of [00:34:00] the fact that she had literally invited the entire nation to her 21st birthday. That's how she ran this campaign. Get me to 21 was her in her bed, inviting the entire nation to her 21st birthday and her looking in the camera with her oxygen and saying, I'm 20 and I'm not going to make it to my 21st if you don't sign up.
Gabi: So she was inviting the whole nation and saying, the only thing you have to do to come to my 21st is sign up to be an organ donor. And it literally went viral. And within three months, she single handedly increased the organ donation rate by 287%. That's one child who couldn't leave her bedroom. It's extraordinary.
Gabi: So it was very public and people were deeply invested in her surviving. And when she didn't, the entire nation mourned. The whole country came to a standstill. And I was deeply worried that the donor, because I don't know [00:35:00] if they know who they donated to, you know, because in this country it's illegal. You don't find out who, who is your donor.
Gabi: So I don't know if they know that the lungs went to Jenna, but if they did, I hope they didn't have a second loss. I would have liked to have protected them from that, but I couldn't.
Sarah: How was it grieving with the whole country?
Gabi: It was hard. Initially, um, I hit a lot. Um, I needed to not be public. Um, but three months later, it was what would have been her 21st birthday.
Gabi: And so we had a small thing here at home and we launched the Genelo Trust as a not for profit organization. Um, but it took me a while, a good couple of years to really get back into the world of primary hypertension and to do the work that I wanted to do on her [00:36:00] behalf, because I needed to take a minute, you know, it was hard, but it was also.
Gabi: deeply encouraging because so many people loved her and so many people were supporting her and supporting us. And that was very help, helpful. I know that sounds like such a pathetic word, but it was, it was deeply helpful to know how loved she was. And one of the, one of the traditions that I've kept up that have really helped me in my grief, is remembering her.
Gabi: We talk about her all the time. We light candles on her birthday, we light candles on her death day. We have traditions that we stick to and I believe that losing somebody physically is hard enough. You don't have to now pretend they don't exist in your world. They do. Your relationship with them carries on.
Gabi: [00:37:00] She's still my child, she's still my daughter, she always will be. And so when people ask me, how many children do you have? I say two, because I do. I have one in heaven and one on earth.
Sarah: What advice do you have for those struggling to find their purpose among challenging circumstances?
Gabi: Sure. So that's a big question.
Gabi: Um, and it's an important one because purpose can be found in the tiniest of things. And so often people think of purpose as this enormous, big, daunting thing. So, yeah, some people are born with a calling. a doctor, a nurse, a preacher, and that's their purpose. Wonderful. That's amazing. Guess what? Very few of us are born knowing exactly what our purpose is.
Gabi: And it doesn't have to be one big unbelievable thing. You can find purpose. in the smallest of things. So what made such beautiful sense for me is this little story I'm going to tell you. And I can't remember where I read it, but I read, I did read it. [00:38:00] The story of a janitor. So janitor of a big building.
Gabi: And he was always the most joyous person in this building. And one day this, uh, gentleman sat down with him and he said to him, Please tell me what is your secret? How can you be so happy? From where I stand, I see you doing a boring job, cleaning up other people's mess, all day every day, and yet you are so happy.
Gabi: And he looked at me and said, that's not what I do. That's not what I do. What I do is I connect with every single person in this building. I can tell you about Sylvia on floor number three, and she went for Asperpub yesterday, and she's feeling much better. And I can tell you about Bob is living on floor number one, and that's how he found purpose.
Gabi: He mattered to every single person in that building and they mattered to him and he knew their life story and what their [00:39:00] needs were and that connection was his purpose. He didn't see himself as a janitor, he saw himself as the connector and he was. For the old lady on floor number six who never left her room, he was the one person he saw, she saw every day.
Gabi: Purpose can be found in anything. It's about looking for what matters to you. And seeking that out every day.
Sarah: One of the things that really, uh, stood out to me in your writing was about your family communication, your meetings. I think they were weekly, and you sat with someone who taught you how to authentically share what was actually going on, which is such a brilliant way of managing a long term relationship.
Sarah: challenge or long term illness in the family. What was that like for you? That [00:40:00] constant sort of vulnerability through the, throughout the family over time. That had to inform how you're dealing now with your husband's illness and, and, and Christy's empathy. You mentioned that.
Gabi: Absolutely it did. And I think, thank you for bringing that up because I think it's a vital, vital, vital part of holding it together and being okay through terrible challenge.
Gabi: And it's what, the opposite of what most people want to do. Most people don't want to talk about the difficult stuff. And. There's, there's often an assumption that everybody in the family feels like you do, and they don't. We all experience things differently. We might be going through the same thing, but we are experiencing it differently.
Gabi: And that was the big learning for me through that. So what we did was we had an amazing woman come to the house. It was every two weeks. She, is a clinical psychologist, but she's also an absolute guru in meditation. [00:41:00] So she would come to the house, we would sit, Jane would be on the couch lying there with her oxygen, Christy, myself, Stuart.
Gabi: And Christy was really young at the time, the thought of meditating was abhorrent to her. She was like, you mean I have to sit here with my, you know. So initially she was a bit resistant, but actually what the meditation was, was a moment of reflection. a moment of time to go inwards and really interact with your inner landscape.
Gabi: And then we would do what we called a talking or a listening. Actually, it was a listening meditation. What is that? All that was, was each person got, we went around the room and each person got to talk about where they were at in that moment in time. What was going on for them? And there were rules of engagement.
Gabi: You were not allowed to interact. You did not ask questions. You did not interrupt. You just let the person share. And at the end of their sharing, you also were not allowed to say, well, why didn't you think about this? [00:42:00] And why didn't you do that? And what about this? You literally just heard them. And what was extraordinary was as we started to get more and more used to it and everyone started to get more and more into it and realized that it was a safe space.
Gabi: So we built more and more trust and. Then it became clear to me as the mom that each of us was experiencing this completely differently. So what might be going on for Stuart at any moment in time was completely different to what was going on for me, was completely different to what was going on for Christy and of course for Jenna.
Gabi: So knowing that and listening to each other and then having to hold that. Hold everybody's pain, which was showing up differently, and challenges, which were showing up differently gave us an insight into each other's world that we could then hold with empathy and treat each other [00:43:00] with kindness because we understood what was going on for that person.
Gabi: The critical part was without judgment. Listen without judgment. That's the critical part. And that's the hard part because you want to go, no, but I want you to do it like this. Or no, but don't you see it like this? Uh uh. Just listen. It's powerful. Hard, hard and very, very powerful. And now we are doing it again.
Gabi: Yeah, we are doing it again.
Sarah: Do you think after time you're so accustomed to that trusting, then that just permeates? your relationships on a regular basis, on a daily basis. You don't need as much of that set aside time. And that, you know, whenever we start a new ritual, you know, there's a time when it [00:44:00] feels a little artificial at first.
Sarah: And like you said, she was resistant to it at first, but then once it becomes just part of the way you communicate as a family, it's really, really beautiful. What does a peaceful exit mean to you? It means
Gabi: I've said, All the things I want to say to my loved one who's dying, or if I'm dying, the same thing.
Gabi: I have said the things I need to say. I've put in place what I need to put in place. I have honored my life and the lives of those that I love, and I accept that it's time to go.
Sarah: It has been a distinct pleasure to have a conversation with you today.
Gabi: Oh, thank you, Sarah. And you.[00:45:00]
Sarah: Thank you for listening to Peaceful Exit. I'm your host, Sarah Cavanaugh. You can learn more about this podcast at peacefulexit. net. And you can find me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram at uppeacefulexit. If you enjoyed this episode, please let us know. You can rate and review this show on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Sarah: This episode was produced by the amazing team at Larj Media. You can find them at larjmedia. com. The Peaceful Exit team includes my producer, Katy Klein, and editor, Corine Kuehlthau. Our sound engineer is Shawn Simmons. Tina Nole is our senior producer, and Syd Gladu 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 Cavanaugh, and this is Peaceful [00:46:00] Exit.