What Remains When Everything Falls Apart

Ever wonder what happens when the person who holds everyone else together loses their own foundation? That's the story I'm sharing in this deeply personal episode of She Suite Society.

While I've spent countless hours creating space for women to share their authentic stories, I realized I've been asking for vulnerability while keeping my own deepest experiences hidden. That changes today with the launch of "Stories from My Life" - a raw, unfiltered look at the moments that shaped who I am.

This first personal story takes you through the most devastating loss of my life - my mother, my person, my rock. The woman who taught me what unconditional love feels like, taken by cancer just days after my birthday. I share the moment my world split into "before" and "after," and how I found myself completely shattered, with no idea how to move forward.

The turning point came from an unexpected source - a photograph of my five-year-old self. Looking at this joyful little girl with disheveled pigtails and a rainbow shirt forced me to ask: if she met me today, would she be proud of who she became? That question became my north star as I rebuilt my life brick by brick, through divorce, single parenthood, and professional challenges.

What I discovered through grief's strange alchemy is that when everything is stripped away - all the labels, titles, and external markers of identity - what remains is our essential self. The same curious, mischievous spirit that existed before life's complications. And that discovery contains immense power.

If you're walking through darkness, questioning your strength, or wondering how you'll ever feel whole again, this story is for you. Because sometimes our greatest empowerment doesn't come from avoiding pain, but from learning to navigate it and discovering what we're truly made of. Let me be your guide through that darkness.

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Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
Welcome to a special episode of She Suite Society.
I'm your host, Dahlia, and todayI'm doing something different.
While this podcast has alwaysbeen about creating space for
women to share their authenticstories, I've realized that I've
been asking you to be vulnerablewhile keeping my own deepest
experiences close to the chest.
So I'm starting a new serieswoven throughout our regular

(00:22):
episodes called Stories from MyLife, where I'll share the
moments that shaped who I amtoday.
These aren't the highlight realmoments or the carefully curated
versions of my journey.
They're the raw, unfilteredexperiences that force me to
grow, often when I least wantedto.
Today's story is about the mostdifficult chapter of my life,
losing my mother.
For those of you who'veexperienced the death of a

(00:45):
parent or your person, you knowthere's no preparing for that
moment when your world splits intwo before and after.
But what I want to share withyou isn't just about grief.
It's about how the mostdevastating loss can also become
the birthplace of your deepestempowerment.
This is the story of how losingmy person, my anchor, my teacher
of unconditional love ultimatelytaught me how to find my own

(01:08):
power.
It's about the strange alchemyof grief that can transform the
deepest pain into the strongestfoundation you'll ever build.
If you're currently walkingthrough loss, questioning your
strength or wondering how you'llever be whole again, this story
is for you.
Sometimes our greatestempowerment comes not from
avoiding the darkness, but fromlearning to navigate it and

(01:29):
discovering what we're trulymade of.
So settle in for more personalconversation, one where I'm not
the interviewer, but simply awoman, sharing how life broke me
open and taught me to rebuildmyself from the inside out.
So I'm gonna tell you a littlebit of my story so that you have

(01:54):
um that sprinkled in as promisedin one of the earlier episodes.
Uh I am that person, I am thatrock.
They call me the helper, thefixture.
Literally, my title is VP ofstuff at my job.
I'm I'm the person, the go-toperson for a lot of people,
whether it be at work orpersonal.

(02:16):
Um I'm my kids' safe space, I'mmy friend's confident, I am that
rock.
Um, your one phone call.
Hopefully not from jail, but ifyou, you know, I'm there for
you, there too.
Um what's funny about peoplelike us, because I know I'm not
the only rock out there.
In fact, a lot of these womenthat I've had on this podcast

(02:37):
are the rocks of their familiestoo and their circles.
Um I also have a rock.
Every rock has a rock.
And my rock was my mom, but shewas more than my rock.
She was my person.
Um, she was she was my person.
We we were, for lack of betterwords, we'll it's not.

(03:04):
She was my person, and she shewas the type of person for me
that I would call, we could talkabout nothing or everything in
between, and just literally thatthat comfort that you get from
being with your person.
I was hers, she was mine.
We equally went through a wholeheck of things that I'll I'll

(03:25):
tell you some extra stories insome other episodes.
Um, but for this one, I justwant to explain if you have your
person out there and they'restill with you, I hope you hug
them so tight.
Because once you lose them,especially their life, um, it's
gone forever.
I mean, you have bits andpieces.
So she was diagnosed with stagefour breast cancer.

(03:48):
And two years to the date of herdiagnosis, she passed away.
That also happened to be sevendays after my birthday.
Um, and anybody that's lostanybody to a debilitating
disease typically knows that umright before they pass, they get
this rally, this like last burstof energy.

(04:09):
And you think like, oh, they'regonna get better, it's gonna
change, they're gonna do great.
Uh, but really, it's just thatthat last big energy before they
pass.
And her last big rally was rightbefore uh right on my birthday.
Um, she got her last big hurrahjust to sing me happy birthday.
That's how much of my person shewas.

(04:30):
Um, and I could talk foreverabout the coincidences and the
synchronicities of the dates andall things like that, but that's
not for that episode.
So she passed, and I had no ideahow I was going to move on.
I didn't know who I was, I hadno foundation anymore, I had no

(04:54):
sense of reality, I had nothing.
I was broken, really broken.
And I looked to my husbandbecause you know, that's why
what a lot of people would do isyou look to the partner you
chose in life, and um we werenot equal.
He could not, could not meet meat the level or the depth of

(05:17):
grief that I was in.
And I don't fault him for that.
Uh, it was it was something thathe just couldn't touch, and I'm
not sure he'll ever be able to.
Um, and that's okay, but itwasn't okay for me.
I needed support and I didn'tknow what to do.
I still have these two littlekids, and they're looking to me,
and I had nobody to turn to.

(05:40):
Um, so you really have a fewchoices then.
What do you do?
What do you do?
So as I'm sitting there tryingto figure out what the meaning
of my life is, having lost theone person that helped me make
sense of both our lives, uh tosay I was lonely is an

(06:02):
understatement.
So I went through some oldpictures because, you know, I
was reminiscing about old timesand what it was like when she
was here, and I ended up findingthis five-year-old picture of

(06:27):
myself.
You kind of see it.
How can I look at this littlegirl and not recognize me?
My mom taught me a lot ofthings, one of which she loved
me so profoundly, sounconditionally.
I didn't have to do anything, Ijust had to exist to be loved.

(06:47):
And likewise, it's all she hadto do when she was with me.
That's, I think, a good telltalesign of that's your person is
you just sit with one anotherand you don't have to do
anything, be anything, sayanything.
Just the fact that you exist isall you need.
That's the love.
That's that love, so profound.
How can I look at this littlegirl?

(07:08):
Look at her.
She has these disheveled hair,pigtails, braids, rainbow shirt.
She's so excited for life.
She's so happy with who she is.
She's she's just this littlegirl.
And if I'm looking at her, andthen I looked in the mirror, and

(07:28):
I and I just thought, if she ifI met her today, if she met me
today, if she was like, Oh,that's how I turned out to be,
would she be proud?
Would she look at me and think,yeah, I'm gonna do great?
And it took me a moment toreally sit with that thought.

(07:49):
And uh, I knew without a shadowof a doubt that she would.
She would be proud of all thestuff that we would go through
together, of all the things thatwe would get to.
And at the end of it all, I'mstill her, I'm still me, and I'm
still here.
Yes, I lost my person.
Yes, that was shattering anddevastating, but I'm still here.

(08:14):
I didn't go.
So if I'm still here, I bettermake her proud.
I better make me proud, and Ibetter do something with it.
Because I'm still here.
So I started rebuilding my lifebrick by brick, piece by piece.
Marriage was gone, that's okay.
I had to heal from that grieftoo.

(08:35):
Uh becoming a single parent, noteasy, but I could do that too.
Because it in reality, and thismight not be great for people to
hear, but in reality, losing myperson, losing my mom was to
date the hardest thing I've evergone through.
It wasn't the divorce, it's notbeing a single mom, it's losing

(08:59):
my person.
Because once you understandthat, you can't get that back,
you can't get back the time thatyou have, you start to
understand how precious time is.
And you don't want to waste amoment of it.
Not with the wrong people, notin the wrong spaces, not at the
wrong companies, not anywhere.

(09:20):
You don't want to waste amoment.
And I understood that.
Like I just said, single mom,uh, VP, director, wife, friend,
all these labels, all theselabels mean absolutely nothing.

(09:45):
I know some people workedreally, really, really hard for
these labels that they got.
Obviously, like PhD, doctor.
It's all feeding your ego.
You are still you.
You are still a human.
You can still and are capable ofcaring about one another and
lifting one another up.

(10:06):
I had a network of people at thetime, but they were they were
sprinkles of people, right?
Sprinkles of friends that weretrying to lend a helping hand to
try to lift me up.
And I'm forever grateful forthose people.
I am forever eternally gratefulfor my mother for teaching me
how to love so unconditionally.

(10:27):
Because now I love myself justas hard.
And when you learn to do thatfor yourself, when you learn to
wipe away all the labels, andyou are just you, that kind of
power, that kind of strength isimmovable.
It's immovable.

(10:52):
I am who I am today.
Still that five-year-old littlegirl, curious and mischievous,
still up for a good bit oftrouble.
But I really do love that Iexist right now to teach people
how to do this too.
That no matter what you've gonethrough, I promise you're still

(11:14):
here.
And you can empower yourselftoo.
Sometimes it just takes thatremembering.
It really does.
I don't know a five-year-old atall that's like, yeah, I want to
be a VP of XYZ, or I would liketo work in finance.
Nobody says that, nobody talkslike that.

(11:36):
Not when they're five.
Just remember who you are.
Remember who you are.
So face yourself, face thedarkness, walk through it.
Because I'm still Dahlia.
I'm still here.

(11:59):
So if you've ever lost your rockor your anchor, I see you.
I hear you.
You are not alone.
You feel alone, but you are notalone.
I finally see me, and I refuseto hide under labels again.

(12:23):
Minus I like that I call myselfthe empowerment sherpa because
that's what I'm doing.
I'm guiding you to find youthere, but I'm just telling you,
you are still here.
Not you as a mom, not you as aCEO, not as a VP, not as a
manager, not as a director, notas a wife, not as a daughter,
not as a friend, not any ofthose labels.
You are here, and you are justyou, and all you need to do is

(12:48):
exist.
And I challenge you to seeyourself that way.
I challenge you to go find thatfive-year-old version of you,
sit with that person for just amoment, and then look in the
mirror.
Look in the mirror and realizeyou're still there.

(13:10):
To this day, it's you withoutthe labels.
So thanks, mom.
Because I carry the girl that Iwas, the woman she raised, and

(13:30):
the legacy she left.
She might not have been amillionaire, she might not have
been a name that's taught aboutin history books, but she was
more than that because sheunderstood that the impact you
have on those closest to youwith the time you have is all

(13:51):
that really matters.
And that love coming from love,people can't take that from you.
They can try, they can takeeverything else away, they can
try to break you down, but theycan't take that from you.
And darn it, you shouldn't bethe one doing it to you either.
So go find yourself, go findyour picture.

(14:12):
And if you need help, if you'regoing through a dark time, call
me.
That's my specialty.
Walking you through the darknessbecause you're not gonna get
there hiding, hiding from it.
You're not gonna get thereescaping using whatever excuse
you have.
You don't have to live that way.
And we really can support oneanother.

(14:34):
We really can be here for oneanother.
So that's a little bit about mystory.
I'll tell you more later.
Till then, just remember thatyour life is yours to live.
Why not make it extraordinary?