What do you do when everything you knew changes overnight? When the people you love most are suddenly gone — and you're left standing in the middle of a life you didn't choose?
Award-winning author and immersion journalist Lauren Kessler joins Georgette on the Junk to Jewels Podcast for one of the most tender, honest, and profoundly moving conversations we've ever had. Lauren's memoir, Everything Changes Everything: Love, Loss, and a Really Long Walk, is a book that doesn't just tell a story — it holds your hand through the hardest ones.
Lauren shares the deeply personal journey of watching her husband Tom choose to legally end his life after a terminal cancer diagnosis — and then, while still in the shadow of that grief, losing her beloved daughter Lizzie to a drug overdose. Two losses. Two different kinds of goodbye. Both saturated in love.
Rather than breaking under the weight of it, Lauren did what her body and soul demanded — she moved. She laced up her boots and walked 500 miles alone across northern Spain on the ancient Camino de Santiago — a pilgrimage that became the path back to herself.
In this episode, we talk about:
- What it truly means to love someone through their dying
- The unique grief of losing a child to addiction — and the stigma no family should have to carry alone
- Why movement can be medicine for a shattered heart
- What the Camino teaches you that nothing else can
- How grief and beauty can live inside the same breath
- And the profound truth that everything changes everything — including us
Whether you are walking through loss right now, supporting someone who is, or simply hungry for a conversation that doesn't flinch from the hard and holy parts of life — this episode is for you.
Pull up a chair. This one goes deep.
🎧 Listen, share, and leave a review if this episode touched you. Every share puts this conversation in the hands of someone who needs it.
📖 Find Lauren's book Everything Changes Everything on Amazon (Link: https://a.co/d/0dmJwLAT) and wherever books are sold.
🌐 Learn more about Lauren at www.laurenkessler.com
https://www.facebook.com/lauren.kessler.7oaks
https://www.instagram.com/laurenjkess/
About Georgette Beck
Georgette Beck is the author of the award-winning memoir Junk to Jewels: A Journey from Brokenness & Despair to Beauty & Delight — winner of the International Impact Book Awards (Inspirational/Transformational category) and Semi-Finalist in the 2025 Royal Palm Literary Award Competition with the Florida Writers Association. She is a speaker, lay minister, mentor, podcast host, and founder of Bella Healing Hearts Foundation.
Connect with Georgette
📖 Book: https://a.co/d/0etqV85U
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/georgette.beck/
👥 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GeorgetteBeckWriter
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgette-beck-7a659387/
🐦 Twitter/X: https://x.com/GeorgetteMBeck
🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@georgette2038
▶️ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@georgettebeck9168
Subscribe, share, and leave a review — it means the world!
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