This is probably going to read as a diary entry. I have a lot to say (not unusual). Might be a bit longer of a read. You've been warned. Also-CW: addiction, death, grief. Keeping it easy breezy as usual over here.

It's probably going to start (and stay) a bit intense but it ends with hope-I promise! Hope lives here. Also sharing a ridiculous playlist at the bottom so feel free to just grab that if want. No judgment.

In this email you'll find:

• a few life updates/airing of the grievances (LOLOL)
• a tribute to my sister in law Keir who died and lots of thoughts and feelings about grief and loss
• an exploration of hope and taking it day by day
• the most ridiculous playlist

It's 20 days into a new year and I am only a short amount of time into really feeling like myself again for the first time in ohhhhhh (checks watch) about 8.5 months. I counted with my fingers.

I have shared over on insta that much of 2022 was incredibly difficult. From the springtime on, things felt like they were careening downhill and to be honest, I was pissed and really sad about it. I also felt quite lost and confused. Like many of you, the last several years have been hard. If I'm being honest, some part of me felt owed (maybe even entitled-yikes but it's true) to a season of some peace and ease and just a break from upheaval. But my personal understanding of life, the Universe, Spirit, God and the cosmos is that it doesn't work like that. While we certainly aren't here to be punished, we also aren't owed shit and certainly not what I want, when I want it, my way and on my timeline. Doesn't work like that. Things happen. Life happens.

And last year...life happened. Hard.

It was a year of major growing up (where are my Saturn return folks at and r u ok??), a call into deeper emotional maturation, in navigating my own anger differently than I would have even a year ago, a year of getting really quiet so I could hear myself, and a year of asking for a lot of help and support-not always comfortable for me.

Life Updates/Airing of the Grievances

While many wonderful things happened this year, by October/November I was fried. I had been navigating (this is my list of grievances, gotta air them out a bit):

• health things
  • being chronically ill and monitoring for cancer is always a part time job and sometimes full on-there's just something about regularly facing your own death and mortality that gets the heart rate going! Especially as you begin pondering and exploring family planning.
• professional difficulty
  • difficulty is a euphemism here, entrepreneurship is hard and lonely, I wish some folks treated other people like actual human beings AND I'm very thankful for my clients and client work-that was one of the best parts of 2022-I worked with and continue to get to meet and support wonderful humans. I truly love the work I do and that feels like a major blessing.
• the hardest year of addiction and sobriety that I have had since I got alcohol sober almost 8 years ago
  • want to share more about that and will this year-it was just not something I had capacity to talk about publicly while I was holding on for dear life. But I got what I call "whole life sober" and I swear to you that's how I made it through the end of 2022. That and telling on myself to a handful of trusted confidantes and accountability partners. And going over the guidelines of AA with my coach and being like, "Oh. Okay, I'm doing lots of these things. Good good." At the end of each day, I would send out the text: Sober. Made it.
• fatigue and burnout
  • I was hitting the absolute wall with pandemic fatigue, the major exhaustion of living so far from family and friends and the weight of carrying most of the household responsibilities while also working. Equitable division of household labor is incredibly difficult to do with a partner in residency. Highly recommend: honest conversations and professional support. And a robo vacuum-holy shit. Game changer. More to say on all of this as well because it's an incredibly nuanced conversation.
• the good good shit
  • I spent more time with loved ones this last year than I was able to for the last few years. My healthy, regenerative, loving relationships with people were my anchors and helped me come home to myself when I felt especially lost. Chris and I also took a trip and stuffed ourselves with french food and I got to be nude quite a bit. That was excellent. My little sister got married to her lovely wife. Also excellent.

Death, Loss & Grief

By the fall, Chris and I were both just struggling with absolute exhaustion and varying levels of burnout. And then Chris' incredible, smart, talented, funny, beautiful, full of life younger sister Keir died. She just turned 24 in September. She was hit and killed by a drunk driver who was driving on the wrong side of the highway. She was 30 minutes from home, driving to spend the holidays with her family. She is a Virgo woman just like me. I loved her. I love her. The world stopped.

I watched my husband's heart shatter into a million pieces and understood he would never be the same. That we would be forever changed. I stood next to him at her viewing while he looked at his sister for the last time and at the funeral where he gave a beautiful speech and said, "Here are all the things I was going to say at your wedding. But I will say them today instead." And my heart broke again and again and again. I'm not sure I can ever put words to my own heart shattering immediately alongside and through Chris' heartbreak. I love him with my whole body and soul. His joys are my joys and I've been alongside him in some serious lows. But I've never experienced simultaneous and all consuming grief like this. Through him. Alongside my own grief.

Grief like this does not roll slowly in like a fog. It shatters all around you all at once, smashes against you, knocks the wind out of your body and you are left reeling. Wondering what the fuck has happened. How could this happen. The animal urge to wail and to never stop. I would wish this kind of pain on no one.

Before going full time into entrepreneurship and coaching, I worked for several years as a grief therapist. I specialized in working with parents whose children died. Two weeks before Keir died, I had just started up again facilitating a support group for grieving parents after a several year hiatus from the work (it can be intense). And then this happened. And I was so incredibly mad that this wonderful family I married into would have to experience grief like that. No parent ever imagines losing a child. It feels incredibly wrong and I believe it to be the worst thing a parent can experience.

We spent November and December going back and forth to North Carolina. Being with family and loved ones as much as we were able. To be honest, so much of this loss still doesn't feel real. I know that it takes time to settle in and everyone navigates their grief in their own way. Much of my grief in losing Keir is grieving an entire future with her as my sister in law. We had plans. I thought we had all the time in the world. I sit with this bitter feeling sometimes (often) that this is all so incredibly wrong. That it cannot be real. That it is wildly unfair. And that I will never understand it.

I am so incredibly sad to watch the man I love so much lose his little and only sister. Their relationship was incredibly loving and beautiful. Keir is one of the main reasons Chris is such a wonderful partner to me. That is not lost on me.

So where do you go from here? Well, one hour at a time for a while. Then a half day. And then one full day at a time. You cling to your loved ones. You get painfully clear on what shit actually matters. Somehow you find ways to laugh because we need to laugh and still feel like people, even for 15 seconds at a time. And you live in ways to honor the person's life as much as possible. You talk about them every day. You feel the grief because it is part of loving people. And on the days that feel really hard, you reach for your village and say, "Today is so hard. Need some extra love and support" and you let people show up for you.

While 2022 was really hard in so many ways, it also brought the sweetest reminders that I have so much love and support in my life. And in the last few months in particular, I practiced again and again reaching for support. Letting people know I was struggling. And it is my relationships that bring me the most joy. That are the most important things to me. Who shows up when your whole world is crumbling? Who can you call at 3 am when you feel lost or like you're one decision away from a bender that could blow up your entire life?

Where is Hope in This?

So where is hope in all of this? To me, hope lives in the sweet ending of each day when you feel cradled in bed during the night. In the promise of morning, light streaming through the window. In my unconscious reaching for Chris' warm body, pulling him close and announcing that I am the big spoon right now. In a delicious meal that we had delivered because people who love us got us gift cards for food delivery. In phone calls and text messages that say "I love you. Thinking of you. How are you?" In watching TV where you can get lost in another world for 28 minutes. In sex and moments of ecstasy that remind you why you want to be alive and here for it all.

And hope lives in laughter. I feel it bubble up in my belly whenever I hear Chris laugh. When we see or hear something ridiculous and can't stop laughing. And the thing about hope, much like many things, is you have to cultivate it. Sometimes it will just arrive and that is fucking lovely. And in other moments you have to practice cultivating it, even when it feels pointless or hard. It's never pointless. It also doesn't mean you gloss over the really painful feelings. It lives alongside of them. And maybe it's naive of me and honestly it goes against my sometimes pessimistic nature, but I feel hopeful for this year. I feel that there is so much good to come. And a big part of that is because I'm going to mine for the good. Everywhere I can.

What's making me laugh this week:

​Chris created a playlist for me and named it "Alyssa's Ancestral Playlist". He put on "Cotton Eyed Joe Radio" -no I am not joking and starting playing random songs on shuffle. As I subconsciously began boppin along to some of the songs of my childhood, Chris said the music is obviously moving my ancestral bones and we laughed so hard at the songs that were moving my spirit. The playlist was born and I'm sharing it with you if you need a laugh. Who knows, it might move your ancestral bones as well.

WHEW! If you made it to the end of this, bless you. I mean that. Not in the southern "bless your heart" way but in the genuine, thank you for being here way. So many people have reached out to check on Chris and I and to send love. I will always be grateful. Looking forward to writing more this year, sharing about all kinds of things that are part of being human and connecting with you all.

Love love love,

Alyssa

PS-I LOVE when people respond to these newsletters so please know I welcome it. And if you are in a season of grief, I'm sending extra love, care and tenderness your way.

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