Today, Emily Meyers of The Freckled Fox, will share her story of grief, motherhood, and talk about sharing her life – the good, bad, and ugly on the internet. We’ll tackle the taboo subject that so many of us deal with and hopefully shine a light on a dark thing in life. This is one of my favorite episodes!

SHOWNOTES

Emily shares that her blog has always been about trying to uplift people and inspire them to just do more and try to do better in life (1:24).

When her husband Martin was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, she was 8 months pregnant at the time (1:30).

“We didn’t know what to do; all the sudden we were thrown into this whole new world I had never really experienced before” (2:14).

She adds that although her whole life had changed, she tried to be as positive as possible and not give up (2:40).

It was a tough balancing act with being open with her community, but private at the same time (4:39). Emily says that she didn’t really know what to do or say to the people that had followed her online for years (6:20).

“I felt like I owed it to the people that really cared about me and loved me (to open up about her husband’s illness)” (7:14)

Even though the subject matter was tough to talk about, Emily says she felt so much love from others (8:12).

There’s not a lot of places for widows to turn to for resources, but she says she really did try to find someone that she could connect with who was in a similar situation as she was (10:30).

“I just wanted somebody to tell me how to do it and to tell me how to feel, and cope” (10:50)

Emily admits that she didn’t think about the word “widow” for a very long time, as it took awhile to process everything she was facing (12:00).

A lot of people have been worried about the children and how they’re coping, as they are all such a young age. Emily notes that she tried to involve them in the process as much as possible, as they had noticed that their dad was sick and not getting better, as well as hearing things from classmates in school about his health (14:02).

Emily shares that her children were her only reason for living, and that when Martin passed away he took much of her with him (19:15). After he passed, she focused on doing things with her children since they had missed out on so much during the sickness. This distracted Emily just enough to help her through the worst times (20:00).

Unless, she’s in a good mood, Emily tends not to write (26:24). Even if you think you’re doing fine, she feels that you never get over a loss like this (29:15).

“I feel so broken, but at the same time I feel so strong” (30:45)

She scheduled regular times when she could sneak away every day to have what she calls a “private grieving session.” (31:30).

Emily realized that she had to try to be happy and move forward with life (39:05).

She admits feeling frustrated watching the trivial posts that about every day life that people were putting on social media (41:45).

“I wanted back that sweet little fairy tale life that I had” (42:41)

Emily is proud that she has changed people’s perspective and lives because of her story and what she has shared about cancer (43:10).

“I would be that resource online that I couldn’t find” (49:39)

She has come to understand how fragile the human spirit can be, but also how strong we can all be (53:20).

Emily now wants to break a lot of the fear around grief and she feels that the subject needs to be talked about more (55:24).

LINKS: 

http://www.freckled-fox.com/

https://www.facebook.com/thefreckledfoxblog

https://www.instagram.com/thefreckledfox/

https://www.youtube.com/user/thefreckledfoxblog