Gone

Some endings arrive slowly. Ours did not.

In this final episode of Season 1, my sisters and I share the most personal part of our story—the goodbye. After years of surviving our mom’s untreated mental illness and addiction, and then finding our way back to her during her recovery, we were finally in a good place. A healthy place. A place where laughter came easy and trust was being rebuilt. And then, in 2017, we lost her.

Diagnosed with terminal lung cancer just two months before she passed, our mom’s final chapter was fast, devastating, and unexpectedly filled with grace. Two weeks after her diagnosis, our beloved Aunt Terry was diagnosed with the same illness. And within ten months, our dad passed away too, leaving us grappling with wave after wave of loss.

This episode is about those final months with our mom. The hospital visits and hospice care. The late-night humor that kept us going when there were no more answers left to find. The tension between wanting to save her and learning, finally, how to just be with her. It’s about what it means to love someone fiercely—even when that love was hard-won and complicated.

And it’s also about the legacy she left behind. About the strength we found in each other, and how grief shaped us into something softer, stronger, and more honest.

All season long, we’ve been pulling back the curtain on what it means to grow up in the shadow of mental illness and addiction—and how, even in the aftermath, healing is possible. This final chapter closes that story for now, but it also opens the door to what comes next.

Thank you for walking with us through the messy middle of our lives. Thank you for holding space for these conversations. And thank you for reminding us that even in the hardest endings, love remains.

Host & Producer: Jenn St John
Editor: Andrew Schiller
Website: www.jennstjohn.ca
Follow along:
Instagram: @jenn_stjohn
TikTok: @jenn.st.john
LinkedIn: Jenn St John
BlueSky: @jennstjohn.bsky.social

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