October 26, 2024 • 38 mins
*This episode contains content that maybe distressing to some listeners*
This episode of Slow It Down is a little heavier than we usually go, but it's an important and inspiring story. Janelle Brunton-Rennie is one of the strongest people I know, and she speaks to me this week about navigating losing a partner and how important resilience is when we hit periods of grief in our life.
Grief isn't openly discussed in western culture, and this episode shines a light on what it's like on the inside, and I’m so grateful to be able to share it. Janelle also has some amazing rituals that she has developed to find moments of bliss which she still uses today.
I hope you enjoy the episode and don't forget you can follow along on Instagram where I have an epic Slow It Down giveaway 😉
About the show:
Life is fast. Information is overwhelming. We seem busier and more anxious than ever. Introducing ‘Slow It Down’. A time to chill, wind down and join a space that inspires people to live authentically and slow it down. A hub for living more consciously and incorporating mindful practices and rituals in an achievable way. The aim is to showcase guests who have chosen to live a more balanced lifestyle mixed in with experts who offer tangible tips and tricks to feel a little more zen.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
With the Heads Podcast Network.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Hello and welcome back to another week of Slow It Down.
I am your host p J Harding and this week's
episode get your tshoes Ready. It is powerful and very
moving and puts life into perspective like nothing else. I
am joined by Janelle Brunton Rinnie, who not only founded
(00:29):
a very successful PR company called Media Jam here in
New Zealand, she has tackled marathons, triathlons, been a competitive bodybuilder,
and when she was thirty six years old, her husband
died of blood cancer. At the time he was diagnosed,
they had a four month old daughter together. She was
suffering from postnatal depression. There was a lot going on,
(00:53):
and in this episode we talk about how she survived
those incredible tough days, how she navigated being a solo
mum with postpartum depression, trying to run her own business
seemingly impossible conditions. Janelle is so resilient, so strong, and
(01:16):
also this is a tale of hope because she has
now found love again and she has engaged. And I
got so much out of this chat. I think often
we are guilty of taking for granted what we have
and pretty much every second.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
I was talking to Janelle, I was like, life is good.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
I need to appreciate everything I have right here right now.
It makes you stop listen, feel a heck of a
lot of empathy, and also feel really inspired as well,
just the absolute resilience that she showed through some of
the most unimaginable circumstances. I really hope you enjoy this
week's episode with Janelle Brunton. Ready, Janelle, it is so
(01:59):
nice to have you with me this morning and slow
it down. Thank you so much for taking the time
out of your day to have a little chairs Ah.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Honestly, I'm so excited to be here. Thanks so much
for asking me.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
I think I connected with you.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
There were sitting brands that you had under your PR company,
and then I don't know, I've just known you from
afar over Instagram over the years.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
Sure, and then I would have sent you stuff to
do with whatever life cycle you.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Were in, so more recently like yay than that sort
of stuff.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
How we work, Yeah, speaks of all Lea's go back
to the beginning of media jam.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
How did you get into all of that?
Speaker 4 (02:32):
It was like the coin of botox at twenty four
years old, and I was the marketing manager for the
Casey Group. And it was before everyone did the botox thing.
So I'm like trying to get everyone to understand botox
and it's amazing now, and whatever was everyone these days
talks about it was still a dirty word back then.
Fast forward and then I was in PR for Pandora
Jewelry and I thought to myself, I love PR. I could,
(02:54):
but if I had a number of brands, I could
share them all love and talk to everyone more often.
So I started Media Jam, thinking it'd be really great.
If I could get like three, four or five brands
on board, I would love it. And then Media Jam
did well, yours have to work super hard.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
And then I went to Bali and I don't know
when that was.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
It might have been maybe three years into Media Jam,
and Bali impacted me a lot the first time I
went there, and I came back and I thought about
it and I thought about it, and it was before
ethical business was really even a thing, and I decided
that I really wanted to use my voice for good
and I wanted to share. I ordered to focus on
(03:36):
sharing brands, people and products that were trying to make
a positive impact or positive difference in the world. So
I repositioned media Jam as an ethical PR company, which
was very groundbreaking at the time, and it really took
off and I was just so blessed to work with
so many incredible green eco brands and it's just.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Gone from there.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
So when you jumped into that you like, full on boss?
Did you go into that full boss role? Did you
have much experience like or were you winging it?
Speaker 3 (04:08):
Nah?
Speaker 4 (04:08):
I think having done all the marketing stuff, yeah, and
got all the business now and then realizing that PR
was where.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
My my what do you call it?
Speaker 4 (04:18):
My authentic set is very aligned with PR. I remember
all the most random things about everyone. I know their
dog's names, their children's names, whether they wear silver, gold,
rose gold. I remember what I gifted them like fifteen
years ago, and I've been doing it for twenty years now.
I moved to Auckland twenty years ago to work in
beauty and lifestyle and do what I'm doing so.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Now it just felt like a natural progression.
Speaker 4 (04:41):
I do remember they were Media Jam turned two and
I stood in the shower and ugly cried because when
you start a company, it's all these naysayers and everyone
says to you, I make it so hard and what
does it? Eighty percent of small businesses fail within the
first two years, and then I I think I was
twenty eight when I started it.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Man, did I hustle hard?
Speaker 4 (05:05):
And I stood and cried out of honestly genuine pride
because after two years I was established media jam was
doing well.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
I had a.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
Couple of really good brands by that stage I was
so proud of and slightly wepped in the shower.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
So do you put it down to being really authentic
with your business, Masha?
Speaker 4 (05:27):
I'm for farm in North Canterbury, so farm girl by nature.
Oh yeah, I can like drench your mob sheep like
I could actually do all the farm stuff bag.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
I wouldn't believe that I've been brought up on a
farm my whole.
Speaker 4 (05:38):
Life, and I think it gave me a really good
grounding around with ethics and ethos and ensuring I'm a
bit of a people pleaser as well by nature, which
is quite a good thing in pr So I think.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
I've got this work ethos where I love to over deliver.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
I've got my dad brought me up very like salt
of the earth, hard walking, good can tab family.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Whereabout North Canterbrec.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
Yeah, North Camber, Oh, White Brah.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
White bra also wine region.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Wine region.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
Yeah, they're mostly beef actually now beig farmers that back
in the day was all sheep and beaf. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
I think it gave me a good cift effects and ethos.
And combine that with the fact that I love to talk.
I remember all the random stuff about people because I'm
quite interested in people, and I'm a people pleaser who
likes to make everyone, like all parties happy.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
It makes me really good at it.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
That's amazing.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
What a skill to have though, That's such a beautiful
trait to have. So with slot down, I guess I
want to talk to people about how they stay sane
in the chaos and find peace in the mundane as well.
But jeepers, you have absolutely walked through fire over the
(06:53):
last five years is it seven seven years?
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (06:59):
And I don't I don't want to make you relive
all of the trauma that you've been through, but you
have openly Okay, we can chat about it.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
I'm good with chatting about it.
Speaker 4 (07:09):
I've done so much processing of it all, and as
you know, I have shared the journey so openly online
because it's helped me so much that I'm good with
talking about it.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
We can totally go there.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
It's okay because I often I often think about my situation,
life is so hard, and then I will literally think
about what you've been.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Through, and I'm like jeepers. It just puts everything into perspective.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
And I know everyone's hard as relative to their own situation,
and everyone at some point will go through a really
hard time. But you were your daughter was four months old,
and that's when you discovered that your husband Kurt, had
been diagnosed with blood cancer.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
I remember I worked the day before stage came out.
I knew that when it's you're the business owner.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
You don't get tunity leave, but I did have two
weeks off, and then I was running the company again
with a small child in a vesinette and next to
my desk, and that I don't want to glorify that.
I don't in hindsight, that's not a good idea. That
was a huge amount of pressure, and combined that with
all everything else, I had a really hard time as
a new mum. I was never diagnosed with postnatal depression,
(08:20):
but I definitely had a severe case of the baby
blues and I saved just born on the September, and
I remember on the third of January, I went to
Auckland Domain one tree hell, and I like sat under
this tree and I was like, I've made it. I've
got through that really hard time. I feel like I'm.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Really I've got this. I'm a good mum.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
My business is not crumbled underneath me, because it's what
I was terrified about.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
I've got this.
Speaker 4 (08:47):
And I wrote all this incredible stuff in my journal
and honestly thought I was holier than there and good
for me. And it was like that moment is so
burned into my memory because I remember thinking it and
then very quickly it's like I was taken by an avalanche. Basically,
we celebrated our wedding anniversary on the tenth of January.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
On the eleventh of January, Kurt, my late husband.
Speaker 4 (09:11):
Got out of the shower and just really nonchalantly went
to me, hey, j dreck and this feels a bit hard,
and prodded.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Around his upper abdomen.
Speaker 4 (09:19):
And Kurt was the most healthy guy I'd ever met,
never had a cough, cold, flu.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
The guy was seemingly like Superman. And I went, yeah, back,
maybe should go to the doctor. Never thought anything about it,
not even kedding didn't even cross my mind.
Speaker 4 (09:33):
Kurt, being very proactive about his health, went straight to
the doctor, and that afternoon life just unraveled at breakneck speed.
It's incredibly humbling to experience something where like literally within
a moment, life can completely unrevel And I got a
call from Kurt to say, been to the doctor. Doctor
(09:55):
sent me straight to an ultrasound. On my way to
the ultram ultrasound, got a call from Kurt after the
ultrasound on his way back to the doctor.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Lady at the ulch seon wouldn't tell me anything. I'm
going straight back to the doctor for the results. Now
we know that normally we go the uch side and
they go, oh, it's all good.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
That was when we thought, oh, and then read me
straight away to say I have a large growth on
my spleen and we need to do biopsas immediately to
find out what it is. You automatically jump on doctor
Google and life goes from the air. And the next
the next three or four weeks quite a blur because
you don't know what you're dealing with. You keep telling
yourself that it'll be benign. It's not benign, and Kurt's
(10:35):
blood cans had turned out to be very hyper aggressive.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
It would have killed him within four weeks without intervention.
Speaker 4 (10:41):
We did not have that small tumor was the size
of an American football in four weeks, and we did
not have time at all to really get anything done.
And he was in hospital, and we were very fortunate
that he responded initially very well to chemo.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
Otherwise that would have been the end of it, very rapidly.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
I can't even imagine being in your body in that situation,
like you're, as I said, like you're your new mum,
You're trying to still got your business, like you're still
trying to balance there, and then you're blown this earth
shattering news. How did you get through the next few months.
Speaker 4 (11:17):
I again, I think that farm upbringing and my dad
instilled in me this very very tough and I don't
mean that in some toxic masculine way. There's a real
resilience to me that I knew it was there, but
I'd never had to call upon. And I think I
just you go into survival mode. So you go at
(11:38):
first you're in shock, and then you go into survival mode.
And then when you're like me, you're like, I will
not let you die. Was basically right. So you research everything,
you try everything, you name it.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
We did all that.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
We did everything, every single integritive medicine combined with traditional
medicine and my traditional hospital, not like all sorts of medicines.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
We did all the medicines. Babe.
Speaker 4 (12:02):
When you're in survival mode, all you do is you
just keep going, like you get up every day and
you just keep going, and you fight all the fires
and you keep going, and you cook the food and
you just keep everyone alive.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
And you can't look at the bag pacture. You have
to literally take it moment by my mind.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
You're not even able to. Yeah, it's like when you
have it. You know, when you have a newborn baby
and you're in the fog, and it's like the fog
comes in to ensure that we keep our baby alive.
We're focused.
Speaker 4 (12:26):
It's like mother nature does this to keep us focused
on our number one thing, our baby.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
So it's like you go into a survival fog.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
And for me, it was keep my baby alive, keep
my husband alive, keep my business alive. It wasn't actually
so much about me it keeping me alive at all.
You're the very last thing on the list. But if
I can keep those three things alive, that's all I
do each day, and each day is instant repeat, just
keep everything alive. And you can't look outside the fog.
It's like you're incapable.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
And when you're in, because then you actually sink, right,
Like you have to just keep going.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Around.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
I think you just put that push the overwhel on button,
and some people do it. Everyone's different, Everyone handles.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
These situations differently.
Speaker 4 (13:09):
I'm lucky that my modus operandi was like full on
action mode and I'm doing this and everyone is living
this will not happen on my watch, so to speak.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
And so after how many months of treatment he had
to go over season there.
Speaker 4 (13:27):
Yeah, in PR you have to have a plan B, right,
You always have a plan A and a plane B.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
So my plan B was to find out what happened
if he became unresponsive to chemo in New Zealand, and
the only thing that was feasible or was that was
available was CARTI therapy, which is immunotherapy was not available
in New Zealand, was available in the US. We got
him accepted at mass gen and Boston, and we were
on a plane to Boston.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
You remind me so much of my mum.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
So my dad was diagnosed with stage four process cancer
when I was fourteen fifteen, and he got told he
had two to five years from doctors. My mum, who
was a doctor but then got really into alternative health
as well.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
God, she did not take that. Just remind me so
much of it.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
She did never, she never took no for an answer,
and she explored every single option, every Yeah, and you
do in that situation, You do everything you can.
Speaker 4 (14:22):
When you love someone like you will fight with them
till the end. And that's what it feels like. It
feels like you're in war like It's the only way
I can describe it. When I said this at Kurt's funeral,
I felt like I was this warrior that had picked
up the biggest sword I could find, and I would
swing at anything and everything that threatened us. And you
(14:45):
just keep fighting.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
So when you went over says you got him on
the trial? Was he initially response of.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
So WI party, they take your tea cells.
Speaker 4 (14:57):
Yeah, they send them till I think it was somewhere
in Chicago, and they genetically engineer them into killer cells,
and they do it through a process of exposing them
to different things like polio, this, that, till they're like
basically they are like, just yeah, the worst of the
baddest of the tea cells in a very good way.
(15:19):
And for some people it works, and it is very
good technology, and it is incredible.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
In Kurt's case, his cancer was so aggressive and so
fast that he had so much cancer within his body.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
Again that the t cells they go to work, they
do their job, but he went into a coma because
you get this massive build up of this toxin that
the cancer secretes as it dies.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
Something. If anyone's listening to this, that is medical and
I'm not giving it all up, but.
Speaker 4 (15:47):
I'm doing my best, hug And he got neurotoxin, and
he got neurotoxicy went into a coma, And unfortunately, at
that point they have to intervene because if they don't,
they have had a number of people on trials that
have been cancer free, but the aftermath of it is
so huge that.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
They may be in a coma for the rest of
their life. So in terms of ethics, they need to intervene.
So when they intervened, they stopped the T cells working.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
We then had a scan that actually showed that ninety
percent of all the cancer was gone.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
It's incredible. But there was this little area that lit
up like.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
A Christmas tree on the scan, and I remember thinking,
I've never quite seen anything light up that bright before.
And unfortunately, maybe that was what was left when they
had to stop the process, or this was a highly
aggressive kind of cancer that the tea cells were even
rendered useless against.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
We will never know that.
Speaker 4 (16:40):
And on Christmas Day, Boxing Day that year, I got
a call from Kurt and he'd had what they too
to reposition and scan and he said, it's bad news, baby,
and I remember him reading it to me, and again,
it's one of those moments.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
That it burned into your psyche.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
I remember my legs just completely falling out from underneath me.
Couldn't hold me any more, and I let out the
sound that I don't kind of like a cow giving
birth actually, And you'll understand that noise, but most people
will be like let out the sound, which is basically
every part of ear escaping your body. And I know
exactly where I was when it happened, and I can
feel it even now that moment, and that was the
(17:18):
moment that we thought, Okay, we've just got to get
you home. And I never got to speak to Kur
after that because he couldn't speak pretty much. From the
next day, everything was very and we've managed to get
him home to New Zealand and he passed the seventh
of January.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
That sound that you're talking about, it's a visceral sound.
I remember letting that out after my dad passed, and
I just remember going outside and it was almost like
a howl.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
And I remember in.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
That same moment, I was like, I don't know what
that was. I think my brother might have done it
as well. And I just think that's no, you don't.
And I just think that's a great response. And I
think it's totally natural. But we in the Western world
don't really talk about death.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Oh we really glossy. Yeah, I don't want to ask
in other people's discomfort. We're very the Western world. I
think we're very focused.
Speaker 4 (18:05):
On comfort and yeah, comfortable, and I think we're almost
at a point where we feel entitled to be comfortable
and to remove anything from our lives that feels uncomfortable.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
And I think then.
Speaker 4 (18:16):
Maybe sometimes in life when they're extremely uncomfortable happens.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
We don't have the tools at.
Speaker 4 (18:22):
All on board for it because we have been sheltering
ourselves and constantly living in comfort. And then you're faced
with something that you don't have any idea how to navigate.
And that's yeah, and that's enough.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
But learning experience in.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Itself, how did you find the years after that? It
was again that sort of fight or flight survival mode
for a very long time.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
Here's the thing with grief.
Speaker 4 (18:51):
Everyone's around you for that period, and then everyone is
just gone. And I'm every night at home with my baby,
the couch gone, There's no one.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
To talk to.
Speaker 4 (19:03):
It's silent, and it's very stark.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
And I was in shock. I now understand it.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
Shocked for five months, I want to say, like actual shock,
unable to really. But I still keep going. I still
keep running the business, keep the business alive, keep.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
That join the business.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
My child will not lose anymore. I will not lose
my house. I will not. So I'm like so fixated.
Speaker 4 (19:29):
On providing, making sure she doesn't lose anything else, the secondary,
minimizing the secondary losses for her, all of these things.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Yeah, and so has that been tensified that needing to
control what you can control since the past thing has
it always been a big part of you?
Speaker 4 (19:45):
Nah? I think it was probably a part of me,
which probably makes me good at my job and good
at you know, like there's a need for it.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
But you did.
Speaker 4 (19:52):
You clutch at the things you can control to provide
you with less of a sense of helplessness.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
I guess the mind no what's happened.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
The body or the soul takes a very long time
to accept what's happened. And I'm sure you understand what
I mean by that, but you don't know. There's not
a soul acceptance. And my soul didn't accept it for
a very long time.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (20:15):
And then after that period, the fog begins to retreat,
and I actually think then the hard bit kicks.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
In because it's been sheltered by this numbness.
Speaker 4 (20:24):
Shock and the fog numbs you out, keeps you going,
and then it's the fog retreats. You're then left with
the aftermath. And that that was much harder for me.
I don't want to speak on behalf of anyone else,
but that was much harder for me. So from about
the six month mark until the two and a half
year mark.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
It was life was very challenging, very challenging, you know
what I mean.
Speaker 4 (20:45):
And that was about two and a half years when
I think I saw the light at the end of
the tunnel. And then there's an entirely new thing because
you get to the end of the tunnel and actually
you just sit there for a long time in the car.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
I don't even know what to do now, what even
is this?
Speaker 4 (21:00):
And then also you go through Am I allowed to
continue with life? Am I allowed to find happiness? Am
I allowed to be happy? Am I allowed to to
give yourself all over again? To step back into life? Permission?
I've got this amazing vision board in my bathroom and
I was looking at I look at these munchras like
every morning, and one of them is.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
I give myself permission to be happy.
Speaker 4 (21:23):
Because I almost think that Hollywood has glamorized this. Oh
this widow, this was her love of her life. She
will never love again, and they've glamorized this.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
And I'm like, you know what.
Speaker 4 (21:36):
One of the things I've had to meet peace Worth
is I had this incredible deep love and I am
so grateful for it. But I am not going to
martyr myself for the rest of my life. And I
think some people think you should. I think some people
think you shouldn't, Like you'll never please everyone on this journey.
But I will not martyr myself. I will not take
(21:58):
the ability away from Sage to have an incredible father
figure in her life. She deserves that, And that was
one of my key motivators for moving forward and forcing
myself to date again and to do these things as
my daughter deserves an incredible father figure in her life.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
You know how like, especially when everything happened, you're like,
keep Kurt alive, keep Stage alive.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
And you were at the bottom of the pile.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
Have you found that you have managed to bring yourself
up and prioritize yourself through this journey.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
It's a tough question. Of all the.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Questions, I got it.
Speaker 4 (22:33):
Hey, look I have learned or I am still learning,
that I deserve peace, that I deserve to be loved.
So when you play caregiver for so long and for
a long time, and I had to do a lot
of work, I felt like I'd failed Kurt, I failed
to save him. I took that real hard. Failure for
(22:56):
me was very hard than to accept. So I went
about trying to.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
Save other people but not yourself, but not myself.
Speaker 4 (23:03):
If I couldn't save Kurt, if I can only save you,
that will help. And I'm trying to fill this void
of saving everyone else that I can see as thinking.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
Again, not a good idea, But.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
Grief is such a huge experience that you when you're
in pain, you know which won't be magnets.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
When you are being an immense.
Speaker 4 (23:25):
Pain, you will naturally gravitate or attract beings that are
also an immense pain.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
So I found there along the way.
Speaker 4 (23:32):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, And I probably made things a
lot harder for myself, but it was all part everyone's
our mirror was all part of So every time someone
would come into my life who needed saving or I
would feel this thing. If I look back now, it
shows my healing journey because we're attracting what we are
(23:52):
at the time, so it shows it's like a yes,
it shows how I navigated my healing journey.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
So when you came out of where at two and
a half years of hell, were you at a place
where you could start implementing routines that could make you
feel better? Like did you start realizing there were rituals
that were beneficial for you that you had to do.
Speaker 4 (24:10):
It was routine that got me through the first two
and a half years. So I went to the gym
every single day. I went back and found something that
was just for me, and then one hour every day
there was this place that was just for me where
I could actually transmute my pain into something that was beneficial.
So training became an outlet for my pain and suffering.
(24:34):
I would walk into that gym, I would put my
headphones on. I think sometimes I would have a cap
on because I didn't want anyone to see me. I
didn't want anyone to talk to me. I just wanted
to fade into the background and do my thing.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
And man, I.
Speaker 4 (24:46):
Trained hard because I had so much pain to training out,
but that was my thing. After a while, I managed
to decide. I maned to be strong enough to go
to the headresser and get my hair done, and I
almost cried at the basin because it was the first
time someone had touched me for months. There's a thing,
and I wrote about it. It's called skin hunger and
sounds really sucy.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
It's not. It's like you go.
Speaker 4 (25:10):
Through this thing where no one has touched you for
so long, and then someone was actually I remember it now,
someone was actually caring for me and giving me a
head message at the basin, and I pretty much just
lost it because no one kid for me, no one
had shown me anything like I. It was the keygiver
(25:32):
I And so it was this real moment where I
was like, oh, okay.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
So I actually started.
Speaker 4 (25:36):
And it sounds a bit frivolous, but I started getting
my hair done once a week.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
It doesn't sound riverless at all.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
It was this one thing that made me feel good.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
It's interesting my husband's grandmother does that every Friday.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
She goes to the hairdresser and gets her hair done.
And I don't know if.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
That's a generational thing, but I get it. I get
it like being and mum, you just carve out that
time actually in your situation.
Speaker 4 (26:01):
It might seem crazy. No, it was such a gift.
It was such a gift. And I still adore my
hairdresser and I'm lucky. It's like around the road.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
It's not far.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
She good at the head message. I hope she was
good at head message.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
Well, I mean it, maybe cry.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Hana.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
Look, I want this story to be obviously a story
of hope as well, because you have recently had some
really exciting news You've come back from BALI is that
where it happened?
Speaker 3 (26:31):
It is.
Speaker 4 (26:32):
Yeah, I think I'd decided that I was done with
trying to date, like again. But I think even as
single women, we go through these things like I'm going
to pop myself out there, I'm going to do it,
and then actually, that's a terrible idea. I'm not going
to do that, And so I would be torn between
trying to date and thinking that was a massive failure.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
Oh my god, I don't want to do that again.
Speaker 4 (26:50):
Ebenston repeat for a couple of years, and one of
my best friends I've been really good friends with for
sixteen years used to come to my spin classes back
in my aforementioned it's been instructed, had been had come
back into my life, and our girls had been having
playdates and this sort of stuff. And yeah, we started
eighteen a nineteen months ago and had looked for anyone
(27:12):
that's gone through grief or going through grief, I'm not
going to say that starting dating is this magical.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
I'm texted and I'm healed. It's really not.
Speaker 4 (27:21):
And actually it brought up a lot of stuff for
me in the first year. There was abandonment wounds in there,
understandably that.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
I didn't know.
Speaker 4 (27:31):
But it's like anyone that gets into a relationship, it's
going to bring up the work that's yet to be done.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
And man, did it bring up some work.
Speaker 4 (27:39):
So last year I had we had a lot of
work to do, but we have been friends for so long,
and we each had a lot of work to do,
and we supported each other through that work together and
I am just so proud of us. And this year
has been great. And then we med Bali and my
(28:02):
partner's name is Max and my fiance's name is Max.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
Sorry Maybe asked me.
Speaker 4 (28:08):
To marry him and Balley a couple of weeks ago,
and I am just I'm excited to get an opportunity
at a second chance of forever. Is there is a
little bit where I feel a bit teary. I'm so grateful.
I'm so grateful that there's a man in stages life
that wants to love her and be that father figure
(28:30):
that she so desperately deserves.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
I've had to watch her work out that the other
kids have dads and why doesn't she.
Speaker 4 (28:38):
I've had to watch her make Father's Day cards and
put them on top of We still have Kot's ashes
in her bedroom and every Father's Day we light a
candle and we put a card up there.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
And I've had to watch her. She even walking down the.
Speaker 4 (28:51):
Road, she would say she would blow a dandelion and say,
I wish for a new daddy.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
Man's some this.
Speaker 5 (28:58):
Yeah, there's some stuff that you don't think of, right,
And so meeting someone and building a life and with
them again is.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
Such an honor.
Speaker 4 (29:11):
And I have also shared that openly and what I
have been so not humbled by when I started sharing
on Instagram. I started sharing because when Kurk got sick,
I frantically tried to find other women who had been
through what I was going through who could give me
(29:32):
some sense of camaraderie an online community. And seven years ago,
six and a half years ago, that was actually not
a lot. We still we didn't talk about grief that much.
It was all a bit and people were like it
was a good type that you know, social media it
was all the.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
Highlight reels and no one. So I found a couple
of women.
Speaker 4 (29:48):
That gave me a sense of camaraderie. And when I
started sharing. I decided that I wanted to share and
create an account that was the kind of an account
that would have done sperately helped me one when Kurt
got sick, but two when Kurt passed, and it would
give me hope that I was going to get through this,
(30:09):
and that one day someone once said to me, just
start living until you start to feel alive again.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
And that was and.
Speaker 4 (30:17):
I do not know who that was on my Instagram
that messaged me that, but your quote became.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
My mantra for years.
Speaker 4 (30:27):
And you slowly start to see things in color again,
and you slowly come back to life again, and I
feel alive again. And so I have shared openly my
journey with finding love again and the challenges that's brought
up for me and how we've navigated them. And I
(30:47):
got so many amazing messages when I announced our engagement,
and they were all special, but some of the most special,
and the ones that meet the most to me again
I get a bit teary, were from widows and they
were the ones that said, you give me so much
hope that one day I will find love again.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
I was going to say, what bit of advice would
you have for someone really going through it right now,
whether it was similar to your situation or someone that
just can't see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Is it simply just keep living until you feel alive,
or do you have any other nuggets that have really
helped you along the way if you're.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
Right in the thick of it.
Speaker 4 (31:26):
I think that's a pretty decent one, to be honest,
because when you're in that space, there's no color. Life
is in some even black and white. I think that's
too contrasting. It's just shades of gray. So what I
started to do was and this is term now called glimmers,
which was not a thing way back when I was
going through the thick of it.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
But what I started to do was to find to like.
Speaker 4 (31:47):
Create moments of pure joy and connectedness in my day
throughout the day.
Speaker 3 (31:54):
And that started from when I wake up, I.
Speaker 4 (31:57):
Like in sense and I click in my mind, I
say a little black which I didn't realize I did,
but I do. I light this incense and I basically
say something around blessed this house, and but like I.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
Do, and then I light the incense.
Speaker 4 (32:08):
And I made a thing of watching the sunrise every
single morning because that's when I felt closest to Kurt.
I drink espresso, and I would make that a real ritual,
like I would rarely taste my espresso. I would make
more cups of tea, hot tea. It became very simple
stuff because I couldn't get out. Once my child's in
(32:30):
bed and she's still in I can't get out and
do things. So I became really good at lighting candles,
lighting incense, drinking espresso, really tasting what I was doing
and being so immersed and present, and I started to
find so much joy in those things. So it felt
(32:50):
like life. I was creating life that felt like art.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
I love I love that.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
I think back to pre kid life, and like when
we had the time and the disposable and kind of
just go to spas and treatments and all that stuff.
And that used to be the kind of self care
in your mind right, But actually the best kind of
self care is the self care that you can implement
on a daily basis and it doesn't need to cost much.
Do you have a little hack on shortcutting to that mindset?
Speaker 4 (33:23):
I think it's all breath and I don't want to
get all like preachy and whatever, but I think if
I think to what I do in order to ground myself,
because it's all about getting back in your body, right,
so I think I actually just take a breath. I
also need to take quite a bit as well as
the art form thing. Side note, but just in case
anyone wants to get into that, I really think it's
very helpful.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
And saying that I couldn't do it for the first
year at all. There was no way I wanted to
connect with my body.
Speaker 4 (33:47):
I had a feeling that if I created and felt,
if I felt into my heart, it just might kill me.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
So I couldn't.
Speaker 4 (33:52):
But I learned to get back into my meditation, and
it's incredible. I think it's amazing how much we slow
down and remind ourselves that we're a soul and a body.
And I think, and I know it's probably not the
extravagant answer you're looking for if you take a breath
before you light your candle or before you get into
your bath or run your bath, even because you could.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
Start your ritual there.
Speaker 4 (34:13):
I think creating rituals in our lives connects us.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
And adds romance.
Speaker 4 (34:20):
And I don't mean with someone else, I mean the
romance back into life with ourselves.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
And I think that's.
Speaker 4 (34:26):
The thing that helped me reconnect with my body and
reconnect to myself and actually reconnect with because for a while,
again when you're in survival mode, you're not connected, but
there's no one.
Speaker 3 (34:38):
I don't mean pleasure, and again the sourcy sense.
Speaker 4 (34:40):
I mean pleasure in creating a pleasurable life where you
do taste your.
Speaker 3 (34:45):
Wine when you slip sip it, you taste your coffee.
Speaker 4 (34:50):
Everything becomes a present, when your presence there's.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
An art to it.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
It's like there's been shame with pleasure, right, And you're right,
people think pleasure.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
And you don't need that. You need it is to
fully enjoy life, even.
Speaker 4 (35:04):
If do you know what new pair of silp pajamas
stop experience? And now social media calls it glimmers, and
I get it, and then it goes out into lots
of other things.
Speaker 3 (35:13):
But I think the.
Speaker 4 (35:14):
More in life that we can create our own little
microglimmers without the need for anyone else or the need
to leave home or they need to whatever, the more
we actually start having larger glimmers in life, because again
I think it's that what we are, What was it like?
What we attract what we are, we attract more of
what we're doing. So I think it's a great place
to start is creating those little micro glimmers through living
(35:37):
life to create life like an art.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
Right.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
That is such a beautiful note to wrap this chat up.
And I'm just so grateful for you coming on, Janelle,
because mate, you've just absolutely been through it, but you're
a true example of resilience and you show that there
is hope and life at the end of the tunnel.
It doesn't mean that it's all fairies and unicorns. I
know that you're still probably going through it in ways,
(36:02):
but I think you would have helped so many people
today by sharing your story. So thank you so much
for coming on.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
I thank you so much. PJ.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
Well, that was my episode with Janelle Brundon Riddy and
I told you, I told you. It was such a
moving chat, put so much in perspective, and it really
goes to show grief is not linear and everyone experiences
it differently. But for Janelle, she was in just like
(36:33):
obviously that fight or flight mode for quite a while
where she was just surviving day to day and then
after about two and a half years, you know, it
felt like there was some light into the tunnel, But
then how to navigate that? You know, is there a
life without Kurt? And hard is that look? But so
amazing that she has been so open about her experience
(36:57):
with grief. I think it's a topic that, as I said,
and Western culture is not so openly spoken about, and
there's still so much shame around talking about some aspects
of grieving and what's right and what's wrong. The thing
is is nothing wrong. There is no right or wrong
way to grieve. And I just, man, I just have
(37:21):
so much admiration for Janelle, and there's so amazing that
she has found happiness again and that she has found
love and she's engaged. I just can't even imagine having
to run your own company during all of that, through
the diagnosis, through the passing of your husband, You've got
(37:42):
a one year old, you are trying to navigate everything
on your own. Honestly, it was such an incredible chat,
and I loved hearing about just coming back to the breath.
You know, we always talk about the simple rituals that
bring you back breath and enjoying those luxurious, simple pleasures
day to day, whether it's you know, a beautiful a
(38:04):
beautiful wash in your shower, a nice little body wash
or soap or something that you put in your bath.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
Just infusing your day with.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
Things that you know that will bring a little bit
of bliss is a really good hack which I loved
from Janelle's chair.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
I would love to know what you got out of it.
Speaker 2 (38:19):
You can always message me on Instagram. It's embarrassing saying
my little handle.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
It's pj DJ.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
And if you go check out my page dot forget,
I've got an incredible Slow it Down bundle to give away.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
I'm going to be announcing the winner come.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
Tuesday, so go enter and yeah, it's a really epic
prize pack. Thank you so much for joining me for
another episode of Slow It Down.
With the Heads Podcast Network.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Hello and welcome back to another week of Slow It Down.
I am your host p J Harding and this week's
episode get your tshoes Ready. It is powerful and very
moving and puts life into perspective like nothing else. I
am joined by Janelle Brunton Rinnie, who not only founded
(00:29):
a very successful PR company called Media Jam here in
New Zealand, she has tackled marathons, triathlons, been a competitive bodybuilder,
and when she was thirty six years old, her husband
died of blood cancer. At the time he was diagnosed,
they had a four month old daughter together. She was
suffering from postnatal depression. There was a lot going on,
(00:53):
and in this episode we talk about how she survived
those incredible tough days, how she navigated being a solo
mum with postpartum depression, trying to run her own business
seemingly impossible conditions. Janelle is so resilient, so strong, and
(01:16):
also this is a tale of hope because she has
now found love again and she has engaged. And I
got so much out of this chat. I think often
we are guilty of taking for granted what we have
and pretty much every second.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
I was talking to Janelle, I was like, life is good.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
I need to appreciate everything I have right here right now.
It makes you stop listen, feel a heck of a
lot of empathy, and also feel really inspired as well,
just the absolute resilience that she showed through some of
the most unimaginable circumstances. I really hope you enjoy this
week's episode with Janelle Brunton. Ready, Janelle, it is so
(01:59):
nice to have you with me this morning and slow
it down. Thank you so much for taking the time
out of your day to have a little chairs Ah.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Honestly, I'm so excited to be here. Thanks so much
for asking me.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
I think I connected with you.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
There were sitting brands that you had under your PR company,
and then I don't know, I've just known you from
afar over Instagram over the years.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
Sure, and then I would have sent you stuff to
do with whatever life cycle you.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Were in, so more recently like yay than that sort
of stuff.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
How we work, Yeah, speaks of all Lea's go back
to the beginning of media jam.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
How did you get into all of that?
Speaker 4 (02:32):
It was like the coin of botox at twenty four
years old, and I was the marketing manager for the
Casey Group. And it was before everyone did the botox thing.
So I'm like trying to get everyone to understand botox
and it's amazing now, and whatever was everyone these days
talks about it was still a dirty word back then.
Fast forward and then I was in PR for Pandora
Jewelry and I thought to myself, I love PR. I could,
(02:54):
but if I had a number of brands, I could
share them all love and talk to everyone more often.
So I started Media Jam, thinking it'd be really great.
If I could get like three, four or five brands
on board, I would love it. And then Media Jam
did well, yours have to work super hard.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
And then I went to Bali and I don't know
when that was.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
It might have been maybe three years into Media Jam,
and Bali impacted me a lot the first time I
went there, and I came back and I thought about
it and I thought about it, and it was before
ethical business was really even a thing, and I decided
that I really wanted to use my voice for good
and I wanted to share. I ordered to focus on
(03:36):
sharing brands, people and products that were trying to make
a positive impact or positive difference in the world. So
I repositioned media Jam as an ethical PR company, which
was very groundbreaking at the time, and it really took
off and I was just so blessed to work with
so many incredible green eco brands and it's just.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Gone from there.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
So when you jumped into that you like, full on boss?
Did you go into that full boss role? Did you
have much experience like or were you winging it?
Speaker 3 (04:08):
Nah?
Speaker 4 (04:08):
I think having done all the marketing stuff, yeah, and
got all the business now and then realizing that PR
was where.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
My my what do you call it?
Speaker 4 (04:18):
My authentic set is very aligned with PR. I remember
all the most random things about everyone. I know their
dog's names, their children's names, whether they wear silver, gold,
rose gold. I remember what I gifted them like fifteen
years ago, and I've been doing it for twenty years now.
I moved to Auckland twenty years ago to work in
beauty and lifestyle and do what I'm doing so.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Now it just felt like a natural progression.
Speaker 4 (04:41):
I do remember they were Media Jam turned two and
I stood in the shower and ugly cried because when
you start a company, it's all these naysayers and everyone
says to you, I make it so hard and what
does it? Eighty percent of small businesses fail within the
first two years, and then I I think I was
twenty eight when I started it.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Man, did I hustle hard?
Speaker 4 (05:05):
And I stood and cried out of honestly genuine pride
because after two years I was established media jam was
doing well.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
I had a.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
Couple of really good brands by that stage I was
so proud of and slightly wepped in the shower.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
So do you put it down to being really authentic
with your business, Masha?
Speaker 4 (05:27):
I'm for farm in North Canterbury, so farm girl by nature.
Oh yeah, I can like drench your mob sheep like
I could actually do all the farm stuff bag.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
I wouldn't believe that I've been brought up on a
farm my whole.
Speaker 4 (05:38):
Life, and I think it gave me a really good
grounding around with ethics and ethos and ensuring I'm a
bit of a people pleaser as well by nature, which
is quite a good thing in pr So I think.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
I've got this work ethos where I love to over deliver.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
I've got my dad brought me up very like salt
of the earth, hard walking, good can tab family.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Whereabout North Canterbrec.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
Yeah, North Camber, Oh, White Brah.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
White bra also wine region.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Wine region.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
Yeah, they're mostly beef actually now beig farmers that back
in the day was all sheep and beaf. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
I think it gave me a good cift effects and ethos.
And combine that with the fact that I love to talk.
I remember all the random stuff about people because I'm
quite interested in people, and I'm a people pleaser who
likes to make everyone, like all parties happy.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
It makes me really good at it.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
That's amazing.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
What a skill to have though, That's such a beautiful
trait to have. So with slot down, I guess I
want to talk to people about how they stay sane
in the chaos and find peace in the mundane as well.
But jeepers, you have absolutely walked through fire over the
(06:53):
last five years is it seven seven years?
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (06:59):
And I don't I don't want to make you relive
all of the trauma that you've been through, but you
have openly Okay, we can chat about it.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
I'm good with chatting about it.
Speaker 4 (07:09):
I've done so much processing of it all, and as
you know, I have shared the journey so openly online
because it's helped me so much that I'm good with
talking about it.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
We can totally go there.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
It's okay because I often I often think about my situation,
life is so hard, and then I will literally think
about what you've been.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Through, and I'm like jeepers. It just puts everything into perspective.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
And I know everyone's hard as relative to their own situation,
and everyone at some point will go through a really
hard time. But you were your daughter was four months old,
and that's when you discovered that your husband Kurt, had
been diagnosed with blood cancer.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
I remember I worked the day before stage came out.
I knew that when it's you're the business owner.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
You don't get tunity leave, but I did have two
weeks off, and then I was running the company again
with a small child in a vesinette and next to
my desk, and that I don't want to glorify that.
I don't in hindsight, that's not a good idea. That
was a huge amount of pressure, and combined that with
all everything else, I had a really hard time as
a new mum. I was never diagnosed with postnatal depression,
(08:20):
but I definitely had a severe case of the baby
blues and I saved just born on the September, and
I remember on the third of January, I went to
Auckland Domain one tree hell, and I like sat under
this tree and I was like, I've made it. I've
got through that really hard time. I feel like I'm.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Really I've got this. I'm a good mum.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
My business is not crumbled underneath me, because it's what
I was terrified about.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
I've got this.
Speaker 4 (08:47):
And I wrote all this incredible stuff in my journal
and honestly thought I was holier than there and good
for me. And it was like that moment is so
burned into my memory because I remember thinking it and
then very quickly it's like I was taken by an avalanche. Basically,
we celebrated our wedding anniversary on the tenth of January.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
On the eleventh of January, Kurt, my late husband.
Speaker 4 (09:11):
Got out of the shower and just really nonchalantly went
to me, hey, j dreck and this feels a bit hard,
and prodded.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Around his upper abdomen.
Speaker 4 (09:19):
And Kurt was the most healthy guy I'd ever met,
never had a cough, cold, flu.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
The guy was seemingly like Superman. And I went, yeah, back,
maybe should go to the doctor. Never thought anything about it,
not even kedding didn't even cross my mind.
Speaker 4 (09:33):
Kurt, being very proactive about his health, went straight to
the doctor, and that afternoon life just unraveled at breakneck speed.
It's incredibly humbling to experience something where like literally within
a moment, life can completely unrevel And I got a
call from Kurt to say, been to the doctor. Doctor
(09:55):
sent me straight to an ultrasound. On my way to
the ultram ultrasound, got a call from Kurt after the
ultrasound on his way back to the doctor.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Lady at the ulch seon wouldn't tell me anything. I'm
going straight back to the doctor for the results. Now
we know that normally we go the uch side and
they go, oh, it's all good.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
That was when we thought, oh, and then read me
straight away to say I have a large growth on
my spleen and we need to do biopsas immediately to
find out what it is. You automatically jump on doctor
Google and life goes from the air. And the next
the next three or four weeks quite a blur because
you don't know what you're dealing with. You keep telling
yourself that it'll be benign. It's not benign, and Kurt's
(10:35):
blood cans had turned out to be very hyper aggressive.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
It would have killed him within four weeks without intervention.
Speaker 4 (10:41):
We did not have that small tumor was the size
of an American football in four weeks, and we did
not have time at all to really get anything done.
And he was in hospital, and we were very fortunate
that he responded initially very well to chemo.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
Otherwise that would have been the end of it, very rapidly.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
I can't even imagine being in your body in that situation,
like you're, as I said, like you're your new mum,
You're trying to still got your business, like you're still
trying to balance there, and then you're blown this earth
shattering news. How did you get through the next few months.
Speaker 4 (11:17):
I again, I think that farm upbringing and my dad
instilled in me this very very tough and I don't
mean that in some toxic masculine way. There's a real
resilience to me that I knew it was there, but
I'd never had to call upon. And I think I
just you go into survival mode. So you go at
(11:38):
first you're in shock, and then you go into survival mode.
And then when you're like me, you're like, I will
not let you die. Was basically right. So you research everything,
you try everything, you name it.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
We did all that.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
We did everything, every single integritive medicine combined with traditional
medicine and my traditional hospital, not like all sorts of medicines.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
We did all the medicines. Babe.
Speaker 4 (12:02):
When you're in survival mode, all you do is you
just keep going, like you get up every day and
you just keep going, and you fight all the fires
and you keep going, and you cook the food and
you just keep everyone alive.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
And you can't look at the bag pacture. You have
to literally take it moment by my mind.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
You're not even able to. Yeah, it's like when you
have it. You know, when you have a newborn baby
and you're in the fog, and it's like the fog
comes in to ensure that we keep our baby alive.
We're focused.
Speaker 4 (12:26):
It's like mother nature does this to keep us focused
on our number one thing, our baby.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
So it's like you go into a survival fog.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
And for me, it was keep my baby alive, keep
my husband alive, keep my business alive. It wasn't actually
so much about me it keeping me alive at all.
You're the very last thing on the list. But if
I can keep those three things alive, that's all I
do each day, and each day is instant repeat, just
keep everything alive. And you can't look outside the fog.
It's like you're incapable.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
And when you're in, because then you actually sink, right,
Like you have to just keep going.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Around.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
I think you just put that push the overwhel on button,
and some people do it. Everyone's different, Everyone handles.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
These situations differently.
Speaker 4 (13:09):
I'm lucky that my modus operandi was like full on
action mode and I'm doing this and everyone is living
this will not happen on my watch, so to speak.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
And so after how many months of treatment he had
to go over season there.
Speaker 4 (13:27):
Yeah, in PR you have to have a plan B, right,
You always have a plan A and a plane B.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
So my plan B was to find out what happened
if he became unresponsive to chemo in New Zealand, and
the only thing that was feasible or was that was
available was CARTI therapy, which is immunotherapy was not available
in New Zealand, was available in the US. We got
him accepted at mass gen and Boston, and we were
on a plane to Boston.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
You remind me so much of my mum.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
So my dad was diagnosed with stage four process cancer
when I was fourteen fifteen, and he got told he
had two to five years from doctors. My mum, who
was a doctor but then got really into alternative health
as well.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
God, she did not take that. Just remind me so
much of it.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
She did never, she never took no for an answer,
and she explored every single option, every Yeah, and you
do in that situation, You do everything you can.
Speaker 4 (14:22):
When you love someone like you will fight with them
till the end. And that's what it feels like. It
feels like you're in war like It's the only way
I can describe it. When I said this at Kurt's funeral,
I felt like I was this warrior that had picked
up the biggest sword I could find, and I would
swing at anything and everything that threatened us. And you
(14:45):
just keep fighting.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
So when you went over says you got him on
the trial? Was he initially response of.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
So WI party, they take your tea cells.
Speaker 4 (14:57):
Yeah, they send them till I think it was somewhere
in Chicago, and they genetically engineer them into killer cells,
and they do it through a process of exposing them
to different things like polio, this, that, till they're like
basically they are like, just yeah, the worst of the
baddest of the tea cells in a very good way.
(15:19):
And for some people it works, and it is very
good technology, and it is incredible.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
In Kurt's case, his cancer was so aggressive and so
fast that he had so much cancer within his body.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
Again that the t cells they go to work, they
do their job, but he went into a coma because
you get this massive build up of this toxin that
the cancer secretes as it dies.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
Something. If anyone's listening to this, that is medical and
I'm not giving it all up, but.
Speaker 4 (15:47):
I'm doing my best, hug And he got neurotoxin, and
he got neurotoxicy went into a coma, And unfortunately, at
that point they have to intervene because if they don't,
they have had a number of people on trials that
have been cancer free, but the aftermath of it is
so huge that.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
They may be in a coma for the rest of
their life. So in terms of ethics, they need to intervene.
So when they intervened, they stopped the T cells working.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
We then had a scan that actually showed that ninety
percent of all the cancer was gone.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
It's incredible. But there was this little area that lit
up like.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
A Christmas tree on the scan, and I remember thinking,
I've never quite seen anything light up that bright before.
And unfortunately, maybe that was what was left when they
had to stop the process, or this was a highly
aggressive kind of cancer that the tea cells were even
rendered useless against.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
We will never know that.
Speaker 4 (16:40):
And on Christmas Day, Boxing Day that year, I got
a call from Kurt and he'd had what they too
to reposition and scan and he said, it's bad news, baby,
and I remember him reading it to me, and again,
it's one of those moments.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
That it burned into your psyche.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
I remember my legs just completely falling out from underneath me.
Couldn't hold me any more, and I let out the
sound that I don't kind of like a cow giving
birth actually, And you'll understand that noise, but most people
will be like let out the sound, which is basically
every part of ear escaping your body. And I know
exactly where I was when it happened, and I can
feel it even now that moment, and that was the
(17:18):
moment that we thought, Okay, we've just got to get
you home. And I never got to speak to Kur
after that because he couldn't speak pretty much. From the
next day, everything was very and we've managed to get
him home to New Zealand and he passed the seventh
of January.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
That sound that you're talking about, it's a visceral sound.
I remember letting that out after my dad passed, and
I just remember going outside and it was almost like
a howl.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
And I remember in.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
That same moment, I was like, I don't know what
that was. I think my brother might have done it
as well. And I just think that's no, you don't.
And I just think that's a great response. And I
think it's totally natural. But we in the Western world
don't really talk about death.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Oh we really glossy. Yeah, I don't want to ask
in other people's discomfort. We're very the Western world. I
think we're very focused.
Speaker 4 (18:05):
On comfort and yeah, comfortable, and I think we're almost
at a point where we feel entitled to be comfortable
and to remove anything from our lives that feels uncomfortable.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
And I think then.
Speaker 4 (18:16):
Maybe sometimes in life when they're extremely uncomfortable happens.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
We don't have the tools at.
Speaker 4 (18:22):
All on board for it because we have been sheltering
ourselves and constantly living in comfort. And then you're faced
with something that you don't have any idea how to navigate.
And that's yeah, and that's enough.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
But learning experience in.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Itself, how did you find the years after that? It
was again that sort of fight or flight survival mode
for a very long time.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
Here's the thing with grief.
Speaker 4 (18:51):
Everyone's around you for that period, and then everyone is
just gone. And I'm every night at home with my baby,
the couch gone, There's no one.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
To talk to.
Speaker 4 (19:03):
It's silent, and it's very stark.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
And I was in shock. I now understand it.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
Shocked for five months, I want to say, like actual shock,
unable to really. But I still keep going. I still
keep running the business, keep the business alive, keep.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
That join the business.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
My child will not lose anymore. I will not lose
my house. I will not. So I'm like so fixated.
Speaker 4 (19:29):
On providing, making sure she doesn't lose anything else, the secondary,
minimizing the secondary losses for her, all of these things.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Yeah, and so has that been tensified that needing to
control what you can control since the past thing has
it always been a big part of you?
Speaker 4 (19:45):
Nah? I think it was probably a part of me,
which probably makes me good at my job and good
at you know, like there's a need for it.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
But you did.
Speaker 4 (19:52):
You clutch at the things you can control to provide
you with less of a sense of helplessness.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
I guess the mind no what's happened.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
The body or the soul takes a very long time
to accept what's happened. And I'm sure you understand what
I mean by that, but you don't know. There's not
a soul acceptance. And my soul didn't accept it for
a very long time.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (20:15):
And then after that period, the fog begins to retreat,
and I actually think then the hard bit kicks.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
In because it's been sheltered by this numbness.
Speaker 4 (20:24):
Shock and the fog numbs you out, keeps you going,
and then it's the fog retreats. You're then left with
the aftermath. And that that was much harder for me.
I don't want to speak on behalf of anyone else,
but that was much harder for me. So from about
the six month mark until the two and a half
year mark.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
It was life was very challenging, very challenging, you know
what I mean.
Speaker 4 (20:45):
And that was about two and a half years when
I think I saw the light at the end of
the tunnel. And then there's an entirely new thing because
you get to the end of the tunnel and actually
you just sit there for a long time in the car.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
I don't even know what to do now, what even
is this?
Speaker 4 (21:00):
And then also you go through Am I allowed to
continue with life? Am I allowed to find happiness? Am
I allowed to be happy? Am I allowed to to
give yourself all over again? To step back into life? Permission?
I've got this amazing vision board in my bathroom and
I was looking at I look at these munchras like
every morning, and one of them is.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
I give myself permission to be happy.
Speaker 4 (21:23):
Because I almost think that Hollywood has glamorized this. Oh
this widow, this was her love of her life. She
will never love again, and they've glamorized this.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
And I'm like, you know what.
Speaker 4 (21:36):
One of the things I've had to meet peace Worth
is I had this incredible deep love and I am
so grateful for it. But I am not going to
martyr myself for the rest of my life. And I
think some people think you should. I think some people
think you shouldn't, Like you'll never please everyone on this journey.
But I will not martyr myself. I will not take
(21:58):
the ability away from Sage to have an incredible father
figure in her life. She deserves that, And that was
one of my key motivators for moving forward and forcing
myself to date again and to do these things as
my daughter deserves an incredible father figure in her life.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
You know how like, especially when everything happened, you're like,
keep Kurt alive, keep Stage alive.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
And you were at the bottom of the pile.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
Have you found that you have managed to bring yourself
up and prioritize yourself through this journey.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
It's a tough question. Of all the.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Questions, I got it.
Speaker 4 (22:33):
Hey, look I have learned or I am still learning,
that I deserve peace, that I deserve to be loved.
So when you play caregiver for so long and for
a long time, and I had to do a lot
of work, I felt like I'd failed Kurt, I failed
to save him. I took that real hard. Failure for
(22:56):
me was very hard than to accept. So I went
about trying to.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
Save other people but not yourself, but not myself.
Speaker 4 (23:03):
If I couldn't save Kurt, if I can only save you,
that will help. And I'm trying to fill this void
of saving everyone else that I can see as thinking.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
Again, not a good idea, But.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
Grief is such a huge experience that you when you're
in pain, you know which won't be magnets.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
When you are being an immense.
Speaker 4 (23:25):
Pain, you will naturally gravitate or attract beings that are
also an immense pain.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
So I found there along the way.
Speaker 4 (23:32):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, And I probably made things a
lot harder for myself, but it was all part everyone's
our mirror was all part of So every time someone
would come into my life who needed saving or I
would feel this thing. If I look back now, it
shows my healing journey because we're attracting what we are
(23:52):
at the time, so it shows it's like a yes,
it shows how I navigated my healing journey.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
So when you came out of where at two and
a half years of hell, were you at a place
where you could start implementing routines that could make you
feel better? Like did you start realizing there were rituals
that were beneficial for you that you had to do.
Speaker 4 (24:10):
It was routine that got me through the first two
and a half years. So I went to the gym
every single day. I went back and found something that
was just for me, and then one hour every day
there was this place that was just for me where
I could actually transmute my pain into something that was beneficial.
So training became an outlet for my pain and suffering.
(24:34):
I would walk into that gym, I would put my
headphones on. I think sometimes I would have a cap
on because I didn't want anyone to see me. I
didn't want anyone to talk to me. I just wanted
to fade into the background and do my thing.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
And man, I.
Speaker 4 (24:46):
Trained hard because I had so much pain to training out,
but that was my thing. After a while, I managed
to decide. I maned to be strong enough to go
to the headresser and get my hair done, and I
almost cried at the basin because it was the first
time someone had touched me for months. There's a thing,
and I wrote about it. It's called skin hunger and
sounds really sucy.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
It's not. It's like you go.
Speaker 4 (25:10):
Through this thing where no one has touched you for
so long, and then someone was actually I remember it now,
someone was actually caring for me and giving me a
head message at the basin, and I pretty much just
lost it because no one kid for me, no one
had shown me anything like I. It was the keygiver
(25:32):
I And so it was this real moment where I
was like, oh, okay.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
So I actually started.
Speaker 4 (25:36):
And it sounds a bit frivolous, but I started getting
my hair done once a week.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
It doesn't sound riverless at all.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
It was this one thing that made me feel good.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
It's interesting my husband's grandmother does that every Friday.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
She goes to the hairdresser and gets her hair done.
And I don't know if.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
That's a generational thing, but I get it. I get
it like being and mum, you just carve out that
time actually in your situation.
Speaker 4 (26:01):
It might seem crazy. No, it was such a gift.
It was such a gift. And I still adore my
hairdresser and I'm lucky. It's like around the road.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
It's not far.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
She good at the head message. I hope she was
good at head message.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
Well, I mean it, maybe cry.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Hana.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
Look, I want this story to be obviously a story
of hope as well, because you have recently had some
really exciting news You've come back from BALI is that
where it happened?
Speaker 3 (26:31):
It is.
Speaker 4 (26:32):
Yeah, I think I'd decided that I was done with
trying to date, like again. But I think even as
single women, we go through these things like I'm going
to pop myself out there, I'm going to do it,
and then actually, that's a terrible idea. I'm not going
to do that, And so I would be torn between
trying to date and thinking that was a massive failure.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
Oh my god, I don't want to do that again.
Speaker 4 (26:50):
Ebenston repeat for a couple of years, and one of
my best friends I've been really good friends with for
sixteen years used to come to my spin classes back
in my aforementioned it's been instructed, had been had come
back into my life, and our girls had been having
playdates and this sort of stuff. And yeah, we started
eighteen a nineteen months ago and had looked for anyone
(27:12):
that's gone through grief or going through grief, I'm not
going to say that starting dating is this magical.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
I'm texted and I'm healed. It's really not.
Speaker 4 (27:21):
And actually it brought up a lot of stuff for
me in the first year. There was abandonment wounds in there,
understandably that.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
I didn't know.
Speaker 4 (27:31):
But it's like anyone that gets into a relationship, it's
going to bring up the work that's yet to be done.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
And man, did it bring up some work.
Speaker 4 (27:39):
So last year I had we had a lot of
work to do, but we have been friends for so long,
and we each had a lot of work to do,
and we supported each other through that work together and
I am just so proud of us. And this year
has been great. And then we med Bali and my
(28:02):
partner's name is Max and my fiance's name is Max.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
Sorry Maybe asked me.
Speaker 4 (28:08):
To marry him and Balley a couple of weeks ago,
and I am just I'm excited to get an opportunity
at a second chance of forever. Is there is a
little bit where I feel a bit teary. I'm so grateful.
I'm so grateful that there's a man in stages life
that wants to love her and be that father figure
(28:30):
that she so desperately deserves.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
I've had to watch her work out that the other
kids have dads and why doesn't she.
Speaker 4 (28:38):
I've had to watch her make Father's Day cards and
put them on top of We still have Kot's ashes
in her bedroom and every Father's Day we light a
candle and we put a card up there.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
And I've had to watch her. She even walking down the.
Speaker 4 (28:51):
Road, she would say she would blow a dandelion and say,
I wish for a new daddy.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
Man's some this.
Speaker 5 (28:58):
Yeah, there's some stuff that you don't think of, right,
And so meeting someone and building a life and with
them again is.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
Such an honor.
Speaker 4 (29:11):
And I have also shared that openly and what I
have been so not humbled by when I started sharing
on Instagram. I started sharing because when Kurk got sick,
I frantically tried to find other women who had been
through what I was going through who could give me
(29:32):
some sense of camaraderie an online community. And seven years ago,
six and a half years ago, that was actually not
a lot. We still we didn't talk about grief that much.
It was all a bit and people were like it
was a good type that you know, social media it
was all the.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
Highlight reels and no one. So I found a couple
of women.
Speaker 4 (29:48):
That gave me a sense of camaraderie. And when I
started sharing. I decided that I wanted to share and
create an account that was the kind of an account
that would have done sperately helped me one when Kurt
got sick, but two when Kurt passed, and it would
give me hope that I was going to get through this,
(30:09):
and that one day someone once said to me, just
start living until you start to feel alive again.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
And that was and.
Speaker 4 (30:17):
I do not know who that was on my Instagram
that messaged me that, but your quote became.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
My mantra for years.
Speaker 4 (30:27):
And you slowly start to see things in color again,
and you slowly come back to life again, and I
feel alive again. And so I have shared openly my
journey with finding love again and the challenges that's brought
up for me and how we've navigated them. And I
(30:47):
got so many amazing messages when I announced our engagement,
and they were all special, but some of the most special,
and the ones that meet the most to me again
I get a bit teary, were from widows and they
were the ones that said, you give me so much
hope that one day I will find love again.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
I was going to say, what bit of advice would
you have for someone really going through it right now,
whether it was similar to your situation or someone that
just can't see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Is it simply just keep living until you feel alive,
or do you have any other nuggets that have really
helped you along the way if you're.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
Right in the thick of it.
Speaker 4 (31:26):
I think that's a pretty decent one, to be honest,
because when you're in that space, there's no color. Life
is in some even black and white. I think that's
too contrasting. It's just shades of gray. So what I
started to do was and this is term now called glimmers,
which was not a thing way back when I was
going through the thick of it.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
But what I started to do was to find to like.
Speaker 4 (31:47):
Create moments of pure joy and connectedness in my day
throughout the day.
Speaker 3 (31:54):
And that started from when I wake up, I.
Speaker 4 (31:57):
Like in sense and I click in my mind, I
say a little black which I didn't realize I did,
but I do. I light this incense and I basically
say something around blessed this house, and but like I.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
Do, and then I light the incense.
Speaker 4 (32:08):
And I made a thing of watching the sunrise every
single morning because that's when I felt closest to Kurt.
I drink espresso, and I would make that a real ritual,
like I would rarely taste my espresso. I would make
more cups of tea, hot tea. It became very simple
stuff because I couldn't get out. Once my child's in
(32:30):
bed and she's still in I can't get out and
do things. So I became really good at lighting candles,
lighting incense, drinking espresso, really tasting what I was doing
and being so immersed and present, and I started to
find so much joy in those things. So it felt
(32:50):
like life. I was creating life that felt like art.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
I love I love that.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
I think back to pre kid life, and like when
we had the time and the disposable and kind of
just go to spas and treatments and all that stuff.
And that used to be the kind of self care
in your mind right, But actually the best kind of
self care is the self care that you can implement
on a daily basis and it doesn't need to cost much.
Do you have a little hack on shortcutting to that mindset?
Speaker 4 (33:23):
I think it's all breath and I don't want to
get all like preachy and whatever, but I think if
I think to what I do in order to ground myself,
because it's all about getting back in your body, right,
so I think I actually just take a breath. I
also need to take quite a bit as well as
the art form thing. Side note, but just in case
anyone wants to get into that, I really think it's
very helpful.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
And saying that I couldn't do it for the first
year at all. There was no way I wanted to
connect with my body.
Speaker 4 (33:47):
I had a feeling that if I created and felt,
if I felt into my heart, it just might kill me.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
So I couldn't.
Speaker 4 (33:52):
But I learned to get back into my meditation, and
it's incredible. I think it's amazing how much we slow
down and remind ourselves that we're a soul and a body.
And I think, and I know it's probably not the
extravagant answer you're looking for if you take a breath
before you light your candle or before you get into
your bath or run your bath, even because you could.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
Start your ritual there.
Speaker 4 (34:13):
I think creating rituals in our lives connects us.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
And adds romance.
Speaker 4 (34:20):
And I don't mean with someone else, I mean the
romance back into life with ourselves.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
And I think that's.
Speaker 4 (34:26):
The thing that helped me reconnect with my body and
reconnect to myself and actually reconnect with because for a while,
again when you're in survival mode, you're not connected, but
there's no one.
Speaker 3 (34:38):
I don't mean pleasure, and again the sourcy sense.
Speaker 4 (34:40):
I mean pleasure in creating a pleasurable life where you
do taste your.
Speaker 3 (34:45):
Wine when you slip sip it, you taste your coffee.
Speaker 4 (34:50):
Everything becomes a present, when your presence there's.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
An art to it.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
It's like there's been shame with pleasure, right, And you're right,
people think pleasure.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
And you don't need that. You need it is to
fully enjoy life, even.
Speaker 4 (35:04):
If do you know what new pair of silp pajamas
stop experience? And now social media calls it glimmers, and
I get it, and then it goes out into lots
of other things.
Speaker 3 (35:13):
But I think the.
Speaker 4 (35:14):
More in life that we can create our own little
microglimmers without the need for anyone else or the need
to leave home or they need to whatever, the more
we actually start having larger glimmers in life, because again
I think it's that what we are, What was it like?
What we attract what we are, we attract more of
what we're doing. So I think it's a great place
to start is creating those little micro glimmers through living
(35:37):
life to create life like an art.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
Right.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
That is such a beautiful note to wrap this chat up.
And I'm just so grateful for you coming on, Janelle,
because mate, you've just absolutely been through it, but you're
a true example of resilience and you show that there
is hope and life at the end of the tunnel.
It doesn't mean that it's all fairies and unicorns. I
know that you're still probably going through it in ways,
(36:02):
but I think you would have helped so many people
today by sharing your story. So thank you so much
for coming on.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
I thank you so much. PJ.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
Well, that was my episode with Janelle Brundon Riddy and
I told you, I told you. It was such a
moving chat, put so much in perspective, and it really
goes to show grief is not linear and everyone experiences
it differently. But for Janelle, she was in just like
(36:33):
obviously that fight or flight mode for quite a while
where she was just surviving day to day and then
after about two and a half years, you know, it
felt like there was some light into the tunnel, But
then how to navigate that? You know, is there a
life without Kurt? And hard is that look? But so
amazing that she has been so open about her experience
(36:57):
with grief. I think it's a topic that, as I said,
and Western culture is not so openly spoken about, and
there's still so much shame around talking about some aspects
of grieving and what's right and what's wrong. The thing
is is nothing wrong. There is no right or wrong
way to grieve. And I just, man, I just have
(37:21):
so much admiration for Janelle, and there's so amazing that
she has found happiness again and that she has found
love and she's engaged. I just can't even imagine having
to run your own company during all of that, through
the diagnosis, through the passing of your husband, You've got
(37:42):
a one year old, you are trying to navigate everything
on your own. Honestly, it was such an incredible chat,
and I loved hearing about just coming back to the breath.
You know, we always talk about the simple rituals that
bring you back breath and enjoying those luxurious, simple pleasures
day to day, whether it's you know, a beautiful a
(38:04):
beautiful wash in your shower, a nice little body wash
or soap or something that you put in your bath.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
Just infusing your day with.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
Things that you know that will bring a little bit
of bliss is a really good hack which I loved
from Janelle's chair.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
I would love to know what you got out of it.
Speaker 2 (38:19):
You can always message me on Instagram. It's embarrassing saying
my little handle.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
It's pj DJ.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
And if you go check out my page dot forget,
I've got an incredible Slow it Down bundle to give away.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
I'm going to be announcing the winner come.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
Tuesday, so go enter and yeah, it's a really epic
prize pack. Thank you so much for joining me for
another episode of Slow It Down.
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