Stephanie: Hey, Gabby, thanks so much for being here with me today. Thank you so much for having me. I'm happy to be here. I'm happy to have you as well. I'm very interested to dive into this conversation. You and I share some experiences with loss, and so, I'm really interested to hear how you moved your way through it and kind of compare and contrast with how I made it through.

Gabby: But before we get there, why don't we start at the beginning. Tell me about the forces that shaped you into the person you were kind of in your early to mid thirties. Where are we before our story starts? Okay, so, I kind of did everything very slowly and very late. So, my husband and I dated for 10 years before we got married. And so I had my child, just before my 30th birthday. So, I didn't become a parent until my 30s. And so my 30s were basically, you know, lots of sleepless nights and a very energetic toddler.

Actually a lot of moving. So we moved, to be closer to my husband's job when my son was four. And so that would have been almost mid thirties. And we moved from a whole house to a two bedroom apartment in another state. It was just far enough away from everybody that we knew that we couldn't realistically see them very often.

So, we would try to go down on weekends, but it was hard. And then within a year, we moved from that apartment to a 3 bedroom apartment, because we needed more space, but we didn't like the schools where the apartments were. And so within less than a year, probably, we moved into a townhouse and from there, my son started kindergarten.

And, it was a lot of moving back to back to back. And I'm lucky I have, very supportive parents. So my mom and my dad helped us with every move. And then when my son was in 3rd grade, maybe, not long before the pandemic, we moved 1 more time to the townhouse that we are in now. And it's actually right down the street from the other townhouse, but it was, more space and it's more open. And so it was still an upgrade for us, even though it's the same neighborhood. But he goes to the same schools. I used to be able to walk to work. It was very nice.

And so we finally started really establishing ourselves here and building a community here. Once my son started kindergarten. So, It was a little lonely, just because we didn't really know anybody here. But it was also hard because it didn't feel like we were getting to set down roots because we just kept moving.And isolating. So, I, you know, I really missed my family. I really missed my friends that were still back in Virginia. And so it was a little rough coming in. And then I had a lot of trouble finding work when we moved up here.

So I had been a supervisor at the public library where we lived in Virginia, and it was my favorite job ever. Probably working at the library was a dream. so, when we moved up here, I thought that I would get a job at the library here, tons of experience. I couldn't, not even as a page, somebody who shelves books. couldn't get hired for anything. So for a little bit, I was a stay at home mom and very stir crazy.

It did not work well for me. So when my son started kindergarten, his school put out a call for help with recess and lunch. I signed on for that and it was wonderful. Perfect schedule. I worked midday so I could still get him ready for school in the morning and I was still ready for him in the afternoon when he got home, but I also got out of the house, which was really nice. Eventually I ended up becoming the secretary at his elementary school and so I went from part time to working full time again. That was a bit of a transition. I want to say that was probably year or 2 before my 40th birthday, where I finally went back to working full time. So I worked full time job up until about a year before I had my son.

Stephanie: Wow.

Gabby: I had 5 years of weird part time, sometimes working, and like I said, it was hard for me. I like to be busy. I like to be doing things. I also like to leave my house. And so, the, I would say, my early to mid 30s was a rough time for me because I felt very unmoored. I didn't have much of a direction other than being a mom, and I didn't want that to be the only thing I had going on.

Stephanie: Yeah. And it sounds too like there was a lot of change. I mean, that many moves in that short a time is, unmoored is the perfect word there. Holy cow.

Gabby: Yeah, it was like we barely had time to unpack boxes before it was time to repack boxes.

Stephanie: Oh, that's the worst. Moving is just the worst. When we first spoke, you said that, for a lot of those years in your 30s, you were marking time basically by your son and his age. Tell me a little bit about that.

Gabby: So, like I said, I was 30 when I had him. Also, I had, I kind of quit working full time to stay at home with him because it felt like daycare costs kind of balanced out, me staying at home. And so I was home with him for a while. And then, like I said, I went back to work when he turned five and went to kindergarten.

And then, gradually made my way to working full time. And then right around the time that he went to middle school is around the time of my 40th birthday, because he was 10. And so I turned 40 and then also decided, I didn't really want to be a secretary anymore. And so I went back to grad school. Got my teaching certificate, and it's his last year of middle school, and it's my first year teaching. So we're kind of, going through milestones together, which has been both challenging and kind of wonderful because it just seems to be syncing up in a very organic way, which has been nice. But I do so, even though I said, you know, I kind of wanted to be more than just a mom.

I feel like being a mom has very much shaped everything that has happened, which I'm sure is true for every mom, since my son has been born, like, things seem to just be gravitating around him.

Stephanie: Yeah. So, but you have a, I'm not exactly sure how to characterize it, a hobby, a pastime, a side, gig. You're a writer as well. So tell me about that.

Gabby: I am..I've been a writer for a very long time. I would say I started, I don't want to say a serious writing habit. It makes me sound like addicted to writing. But I didn't start actually sitting down and writing with intention until I was in high school. I started taking some creative writing classes and I started writing even outside of school.

And I noticed that I really enjoyed it. And so I wrote mostly for myself. Didn't really expect anybody to read it. I still have those notebooks and still nobody reads them. They are just in my room in a box. But then when I got into college. I took some more creative writing classes, and I had the privilege of taking a poetry seminar with Claudia Emerson, who later went on to win the Pulitzer for Poetry. I believe for the collection of poems that she was workshopping with us, And I loved that she workshopped her with us too. So she was a working poet and she would accept our feedback on what she was working on while giving feedback. And it meant a lot to me. I still didn't do anything with my own poetry, though.

but while workshopping poems with her, I started, it was almost like, she was having us put a chap book of poems together as our final project and so we were writing poems on a theme. I chose family and that theme still is very heavy in my writing now.

I did start working full time, kept writing, filling more notebooks and locking them away. And then when my son was born, I decided instead of keeping a daily journal, I was going to start writing a poem a day.

Stephanie: Oh,

Gabby: And a lot of times they were like little mini journal entries. It would be something that we did that day or something he had done that day. But I really wanted to start getting into the daily practice of writing again. And once he was in school and I was working again, I decided, you know, again, probably mid to late thirties, I decided I need to stop sitting on all of this writing.

Beyond poetry, I had short stories. I had novels. I had all of these things that I had over the years, just sitting gathering dust. And so I decided I was gonna start trying to do something. I joined, during COVID, a virtual writing group with my library, and I met a writer there who is very prolific.

She writes a lot. She gets published a lot. She is just very motivated. And so that was very motivating for me. And one of the things that she had told me was that she tried to get a hundred rejections a year because she feels like then she's getting her work out there enough that statistically she's going to end up with pieces somewhere if she's able to gather a hundred rejections.

So, I decided I could do that. I was like, you know, what, if I'm setting my goal for rejection, then basically every acceptance is a bonus. It's a win. And I'm expecting failure, so it's not going to hurt as much. It's not going to be a surprise. That's my goal.

And so, I started to submit some things and my very first story got published right before my dad got really, really sick and we knew that we were going to lose him. So then I feel like I became even more motivated because I knew that he would have been so proud of me. And so I was like, I can't quit. Even though right now everything is a disaster and it's falling apart. It's even more reason for me to keep pushing through.

And so, like even with grad school going on and everything else going on, I've really tried to keep up with submitting. And so now I'm not necessarily aiming for the 100 rejections anymore, but I do like to have at least 50 pieces that are out on submission, and I'm just waiting to hear back. So, my approach has definitely changed over time, but the writing has always been there.

Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So now let's tie in this last thread, which you just touched on a little bit. Tell me about your dad.

Gabby: When it comes to talking about the beginning and what shaped me into what I am now, I mean, he's a huge part of that. Growing up, he was always present. Like when we had sporting events, he would come straight from work and he would be there cheering us on and like I said, we moved so many times and he was always there with a car load or a truckload of stuff helping us move.

If something broke, he would, always offer to come fix it, even after we moved so far away. So he's just, he was always a pillar of support for all of us, for me and my sisters. His decline was very rapid. During COVID, it was like right after July 4th, because my son had done a Cub Scout project with him.

So we had just gone down there and he had shown my son how to use power tools for the first time. And they had a very good bonding experience. And then within a few days, my mom called me to say he'd been out, working on the pool or something, and he had fallen and, he was in the hospital because he had a lot of stroke symptoms and they were trying to figure out whether he had bumped his head and it had caused a brain bleed or if the brain bleed had caused him to fall and it was like a whole thing. So he was in the hospital for a while and did some rehab and so that fall happened in July. And he was, you know, he made steady progress up until February, and he was actually, it was the day he was supposed to go to the doctor to get cleared to be able to drive again. And when my mom went into wake him, he was actually on the floor and couldn't get up. And so he got medevaced to the hospital. It was less than 2 weeks later, and he was gone. So it was, I would say it wasn't like, absolutely unexpected, but we, it definitely took us by surprise because we thought that he was getting better. And then all of a sudden, he wasn't. And so we brought him home from the hospital on Valentine's day. So Valentine's day was a Sunday and then he passed away on Friday.

Stephanie: Wow.

Gabby: It was so, so, so fast. In the midst of all of that, my son had to, you know, he's got his Chromebook at my parents house and he's doing virtual school. I'm doing virtual meetings while sitting by my dad's bedside. I also hurt my foot during that time, and so I hadn't been able to go to the doctor to get a boot. So they were just telling me to, like, hop around on one foot in the meantime. So I was trying to care like to help care for my dad, so that my sisters weren't doing it all on their own. But at the same time, only able to use one foot and it was just a series of unfortunate events.

Stephanie: Yeah. It sounds like a mess.

Gabby: And My family also, we just, humor is like our coping mechanism. So we're all trying to keep each other's spirits up, but it was a very challenging time. And, I'm very grateful that I had my sisters with me to be able to get through it. He passed away in February, and my 40th birthday was in October. So my very first birthday without my dad was my 40th. And so I feel like it just made it hit really hard for me.

Stephanie: So before your dad got sick, what would you have thought of your 40th birthday or turning 40. Like, did it have any meaning, any weight, any anything attached to it before things kind of went sideways?

Gabby: Not really. I know it's supposed to be a huge milestone. And so I guess, in the back of my mind, I know it's there and I know it's coming. I knew that I wanted to start doing different things in regard to work. But, had only just started to put those things in motion. I think maybe I was taking some prerequisite courses at that time, or, was about to start later in, the semester and so I knew it was coming.

I wanted to maybe get together with friends, people I hadn't seen in a while, just to kind of reconnect, but expected it would mostly be family, maybe just getting together and hanging out for the day.

I'm a pretty low key person. So, like we don't really do, I don't really do big events for myself. I love to plan them for other people. but when it comes to me, like, I'm perfectly fine with keeping something small. So I just plan to spend it with my family, and maybe some of my oldest friends.

Stephanie: But your husband had other ideas.

Gabby: He did so, and he, this is the second time he's done this for me. So when I turned 30, he surprised me by inviting everybody to our house. He knew I wouldn't want to go out because I had just had a baby a couple months before. So he organized everybody to come over and bring food and a cake and just hang out at the house with me. So that was really wonderful. And so then for the 40th, he planned another surprise. He took me to this weird mansion in D. C. that's kind of like a scavenger hunt meets an escape room. Like, you don't ever get stuck anywhere but, the whole house is filled with ephemera and it has all of these secret passages that you can find that lead you to other places within the house. And it was a very cool, very cool place. And he also picked my best friend up from the airport. She lives in Macon. He did not tell me that she was coming. So, that was a lovely surprise, and it was so good to have her there. And I got to meet her daughter for the first time. She's a little baby. And then all of our family met us at the mansion. So I didn't know that everybody else was going to be there. I knew Jessica was going to be there because. she was at our house from the airport. I didn't know who else was going to be there, but we basically just filled, like, we overran this house for a couple of hours. All of, like, my nieces and nephews and running through and finding things on the scavenger hunt paper and trying to find all of the secret passages that they told us about.

Stephanie: And so it was, a lovely evening. Yeah. Sounds like a great party.

Gabby: A lovely surprise.I wish that I had been able to appreciate it more. And I felt terrible because when we got home, like, I went upstairs and just kind of sat in my closet and cried for a little while. Because it wasn't until we were all together that like, it really hit me that my dad wasn't there and that there wasn't going to be anything that I could do to have him there.

And it didn't help that my sister in law who is beautiful and wonderful person made me this lovely gift. It was like, you know, be the things that you love most about the people who are gone. And it was a picture of me and my dad on my wedding day. So like, it was a beautiful gift, but I feel like it was like a shot to the heart for me, especially on that day. And I mean it's hanging on my living room wall now. I love it. I like it. I treasure that gift But I feel like

Stephanie: Too much all at once.

all at

Gabby: It really, right. It was too much. And so I, I you know as quietly as I could went and cried in my closet. So like I don't want my husband to think that I hate what he did for me. Like it was so good. But at the same time like I just can't stop crying. So I'm like, you know trying to cover my face and just, oh so, took me a little bit but I finally got myself together. But, I feel like that set off, like, a sequence of things, because, my dad's birthday is around mine also, and then we have Thanksgiving, and then Christmas. And so, like, it was all of these firsts without him, and they were just all hitting me at one time. And so, it was rough, because then, of course, after Christmas, you know, we get to February, which is the anniversary of losing him.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Gabby: Blow after blow after blow. It was a hard birthday, but it was like, I appreciate that my husband made it as special as he could.

Stephanie: Yeah. That's really sweet. There's a lot that I can, relate to here cause my, my dad got sick. I, I was in my early forties and, and my dad got sick. And, my husband and I had gotten engaged and we were planning our wedding for, so we got engaged in July. We were planning our wedding for Memorial Day the following year. And in February, we got word from his doctors that sooner rather than later is better. And so we threw away all of our, plans every last one. As a matter of fact, the day after that doctor's appointment, we had a, meeting with a friend who was catering and kind of stepping in as sort of like wedding planner kind of person. And he had come with, linens and plates and stuff, like all this stuff to like, this is for, you know, plan, this is the plan we were headed towards. And so as soon as he sat down at the house, we kind of said, well, we have to make some changes. And he literally just picked everything up, put it all behind him and said, all right, what are we going to do?

And we planned and executed a wedding in 29 days.

Gabby: Wow.

Stephanie: Yeah. And let me tell you, we didn't make it a little one either. I mean, we still wanted, people to come. So I think like 155 people showed up 29 days later. It was wild. And some people that we had not expected either, some of my husband's college friends came in from afar and, literally friends of mine from, Greece flew home.

And so it was, yeah, it was, it was really special. And I always like to think of it, it was my dad's last best day, I think. But you know, you're going through treatment and there's good days and there's good weeks and bad weeks.

And so a week before my wedding, he looks at me and he says, I think we should go take dance lessons. What do you think? And I said, well, three weeks ago, you couldn't pick your head up off the pillow, so whatever the heck you want, we will do. So, Oh God, I love this story. We went and in secret took dance lessons.

My mom knew. Patrick knew, and I think one of his, my dad's sisters knew, and that was it. So the day of the wedding, you know, we, we did it at a local museum. So it was all in one place. So, you know, he was, he walked me, you know, down the stairs and then seated. And then at the beginning of the reception, he stayed seated most of the, the beginning of the reception. And everybody kind of knows, I mean, I had to send it, I had sent the save the dates and then the week later I had to send, whoops, sorry. No, here's your invitation.

Gabby: Oh my God.

Stephanie: So everybody knew that, my dad was kind of sick. And so, you know, he's sitting and just very kind of low key, which was, I think a little unusual for my dad.

So when he got up to make his toast and said, you know, now I'd like to dance with my daughter. And like, we brought the house down with a foxtrot to Frank Sinatra, not a dry eye in the house. The place went wild because everybody thought he was seated all night because he was unwell. Meanwhile, he was literally just saving his legs for that moment. The rest of the night he was on the dance floor.

Gabby: Oh my gosh.

Stephanie: So, so yeah, I can just, I just so relate to the devastation of, of losing your dad. And, you know, we also are a family that uses humor. My dad was, very, very, a funny dude. Very, very funny guy. So, I relate to that a lot as well. And those firsts just, I mean, they just freaking suck.

Gabby: They do.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Gabby: Yeah, they hit hard. And like, you know that they're going to, and they still take your breath away.

Stephanie: Right. Even if you try to plan for it, you have no idea what what you're getting into. But for you, that was really just the beginning of a bunch of punches, one after another. Right. So tell

Gabby: It

Stephanie: about that.

Gabby: We lost my dad in February, like I said. And we start planning his services and everything. And a week before the date that we had planned for his funeral, so we were doing two funerals, one in Virginia and then one in New York, back where he and my mom grew up. So a week before the Virginia funeral, my mom got COVID and my mom got COVID really bad.

She was in the hospital for a while and on oxygen. And so for a little bit, we thought we were going to lose our second parent within like a month of losing the first one. She ended up thankfully recovering. She's fine. She's still with us.

Like, having it maybe like a month later than we had originally planned. And then Memorial Day weekend, we got a call that my husband's mom had suddenly passed away in her sleep. And so that took us all completely by surprise because she had not been, I mean, she had had some medical problems for her whole life, but like nothing that would've led us to believe that it was imminent.

It was very, very unexpected. And then, my husband ended up having Covid during her funeral, and so my son and I had to go alone. We tried to make it work for him, but her funeral was like an hour and a half away from our house. And he's like, I cannot make the drive, like, I will. It's not going to be pretty.

So, he ended up not being able to go and so that was kind of stressful because his family, of course, really wanted him there. And, like, we had a hard time convincing them of how sick he was. So we get past that hurdle and then we had the funeral for my dad in New York in June. And so we went up there and the day after his service, while we were still with his side of the family, we got a call that his brother had passed away.

So I lost my uncle and we, unfortunately, we're not able to stay in New York for long enough to be able to be there for his service. So we ended up calling in and Zooming his, service. And so, it was another blow. And then within not much longer after that, my dad's best friend's wife, who lived in Georgia, also passed away from cancer. And so I had to drive down to North Carolina for her funeral. And at the same time, my oldest friend, who has been neighbors with my parents for, oh, my gosh, 35 years, maybe. Like, the first pictures I have of me and her together, I think I'm 5. So, it's been a long time that they have lived next to us. And she was diagnosed with leukemia and for years, like, she would bounce back and forth. It would go into remission. She would get well, and then it would flare up again and she'd be in the hospital. And so I did a lot of hospital visits with her.

And, like, the year after we lost my dad, we got the news that basically it was it. Like, they were not going to be able to do anything else for her because blood transfusions were no longer working. They'd done a bone marrow transplant and it wasn't like, it worked for a little bit, but then had stopped. And so, we ended up, bringing her home into hospice care and I spent basically every free moment that I had at her parents house, sitting with her. We ended up getting a lot more time with her then we expected, because they had told us that they didn't think that she would make it until Halloween. And we had her until almost December. So we did get more time with her than we expected, but it was hard and like, her daughter is basically the same age as my son and then she has a son that's a little bit older. So her kids are still very young. And so just trying to go through that process and support both her and her family, and it was draining.

It was hard. It was a lot of loss for me and like all of that within maybe two years.

Stephanie: Yeah, that's a lot of, that's a lot for, for a year or two. That's for really close people almost losing your mom. Oh my goodness.

Gabby: And like you expect when you approach middle age, like, you know, you're going to start losing people. Like, you know, that it's happening, but you don't expect to lose so many in such quick succession. And so at one point I felt like I was not even having time to process any grief because I just had more grief being heaped onto me.

Like it was just, I couldn't even process one loss before another one happens. And I'd like to say, luckily I've been, it's, it's been a little bit of time since then. And I'm hoping that it's going to be a long time before I experienced something like that again, but it was just blow after blow after blow. And I felt like it left, not just me reeling, but like my sisters and my mom, just all of us kind of spinning for a little while. And so, my forties really came in hitting hard.

Wow. And so, that's really on top of, the transitions that you're making in your own life with, all the moves you've made and you're barely just settled and the career shifts that you're having and you have a young son that you're shepherding through, different stages. I mean, that's really a lot to manage at once. How did you? So, I actually fell back on my writing a lot. I have so many poems and I probably have at least one, if not more for every one of those losses. You know, the ones for my dad could easily fill a book on their own. I mean, and, even now I'll sit down to write a poem and I would say there's like an 80 percent chance that it's going to end up somehow being about him because I'm still just working through that. You know, my sisters really helped me just where, even though I live farther away now, we're still very close.

We talk a lot. We've taken some family vacations with all of us together to just give us time to be with each other and to give us some more happy memories to kind of, you know, balance out the recent ones we have that have been so unhappy. But really, I would say, without my writing, I mean, I would have been in a much, much darker place. but also just wanting to still be there for my son and be able to support him and just to kind of show him, you know, that, yes, like, your world can fall apart, but you can put yourself back together, and like, there's still so much that you can do even if it feels like you're losing so much that brings you joy in your life. Like, you're gonna be able to find new sources, and it might take a while,

Stephanie: Yeah.

but you're gonna get there. So, you know, one of the things that loss does for so many people is it really has a clarifying effect and it really brings a lot of perspective, to our lives of, you know, life is precious and life is short and you know, all of that kind of stuff. I'm curious to know, cause you know, this is all happening when you're 40, 41, 42, how did any of that, clarifying or perspective change how you were approaching your own life or the things that you were doing in your life? Were there, could you, can you trace changes or transitions back to, that period of loss?

Gabby: I think I can. I don't think I would consciously have recognized this if not having been asked it. But there are a lot of things that I used to stress over or that, I would hyper focus on. And a lot of those things I don't care about as much anymore. Like, it really puts into perspective what matters to you and what you need to worry about versus what really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

And I feel like I have taken that into both work aspects and home aspects. I really, when it comes to work, I don't like to leave things unfinished and I don't like to do a bad job of things. I'm very thorough and I'm very detail oriented. Do you know, like, almost a perfectionist when it comes to getting things done. However, not as much these days. So I will leave things, you know, if I'm tired, I will walk away from it. If I'm teaching, if we're in the middle of a lesson, and I realized that something's just not going to work, I will just abandon it and go and, I'm like, okay, we're going to do something different now because this is not working out.

And I feel like before I was such a rule follower. And I mean, I still am, if I'm being honest. I'm still very much a rule follower, but I've really learned to pick my battles and, I don't think that I had that kind of perspective, really, before all of this happened. I was constantly stressing about everything, trying to make sure everything was perfect all the time.

And then I, you know, completely finished everything. And now, if I showed you, like, if I panned this computer down and you could see the rest of my office and all of the unfinished things that are surrounding me, like old me would be you know ashamed and appalled at how much I just will let go these days.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Gabby: But I feel like I have started to focus more on what brings joy versus what needs to be done. And, you know, like, if I'm not liking a book, I will just stop reading the book. Whereas before, it was almost like I had to finish it because I started it.

You know what I mean? But these days, I'm like, who has time for that?

Who has time for this terrible book? We're just done. And so even like little things like that, I know it's a change that I could probably trace back to this.

Stephanie: Good. Those are positive changes. Those are,

Gabby: Yeah. Overwhelmingly positive for sure.And I mean, other things too, like I take more pictures then I used to. Just because, you know, when you, like losing my friend, especially, I'm like, I've known her for 35 years. How do I have so few pictures of the two of us together? Like, we literally grew up together. And I mean, granted, it was before everybody had a cell phone and was taking pictures all the time, but it just, you know, you start to realize that you are going to want to have these mementos because it's going to be at some point all that you have. So those things become more precious, too.

Stephanie: My dad's side of the family is very photographic. Like my grandfather, my dad's father always had a camera, always had, he was the first guy on the block with video cameras, thought like the whole thing. When we grew up, there was a room in that house, with an entire wall. It's a pretty big room of just all slide reels from the 50s, 60s, 70s. And, you know, one of the like special things to do would be like, can we look at slides. And, you know, somebody would set up a screen, turn the lights off. My dad always had cameras and, we always took pictures and stuff. So there's a lot of pictures of our life growing up and stuff. I've always loved taking pictures and having pictures and remembering things by pictures.

My husband's family, not at all. And so now like during holidays and stuff, like I always make sure to take out my phone and take pictures because they just don't, it's just not something, it's just not natural to them. And yet we lost my mother in law a couple of years ago, and I was the one who had most of the recent pictures. I mean, there were old pictures of, you know, her as a kid and her, her and, my father in law, you know, when they were young and with the, when the kids were very little. So it's interesting that you say that the taking more pictures, cause I think you're right. You know, it's, it's, and it's so easy now, you know, you don't have to buy film and get it developed or get slides made, right. And storage is cheap, so why not just take a couple of pictures every time you're with people. So yeah, I, I, I can relate to that really, really strongly.

Gabby: Yeah, I'm absolutely the picture taker for us. Like my sisters will even be like, you know, make a Google album and share it with us. And so they'll each take, a handful and they'll add them to the album, but then all of the rest of them will be for me. And so like, my side of the family just kind of knows that I'm going to be the one that does it. But the downside of that is I don't have pictures with me in them.

Stephanie: I know.

Gabby: they're like, I'm just just not there.And so,

Stephanie: I'm going to tell you something that has changed the way I approach these things because it's the same same. I'm always the one taking the pictures. I can send you a link. I bought a selfie stick, and not just any old selfie stick, but a selfie stick that the bottom of it, the handle turns into a little tripod so that you can use it as a selfie stick. And it's got this little, remote, the wifi remote, so that when you set your phone up on a tripod, you pull the remote out and you go get in the picture and just click your little button on the remote and you're in the picture.

Gabby: I should probably get one of those.

Stephanie: I'm telling you. It's like 40 bucks too. It's not even expensive. It's, and it is spectacular.

I, went to Ireland this summer on a trip. We had a family reunion over there. I was the one taking pictures. I mean, everybody was taking pictures, but I got everybody together for the family picture and set it up on the tripod. There's 25 of us in the picture. I did the same thing at my nephew's, med school graduation this spring too. So like, it's a game changer for the picture taker. It's a game changer.

Gabby: I, I'm definitely intrigued.

Stephanie: Gabby, tell me, how has the concept of "should" played a role in your life and has it shifted over time?

Gabby: I think this really ties in with my whole abandoning my adherence to rules and finishing things. So, like I said, I'm a rule follower. I have always been a rule follower. Growing up, like my biggest fear was getting in trouble for things. Like I just. Oh, my gosh, such anxiety over it. And so, you know, I got really good grades in school and I never got in trouble for anything. I was always such a good little dutiful student and daughter. You know, always trying to make sure that I was doing what I should be doing.

Stephanie: Hmm.

Gabby: Getting older and this probably started changing even when I had my son, because there are all these things as a mom that you should be doing, or that you thought you should be doing until you actually had a child and you realize that it's unrealistic.

Before my son was born, I was like, I'm not going to buy him any toys that are weapons. I don't want to raise him with violent tendencies. Society is so saturated with that already. And then he literally turned any object a weapon. Sticks, toilet paper tubes, anything. And I was like, this is a battle that was lost before I even began fighting.

Stephanie: Yes,

Gabby: So then I started buying him Nerf guns because I was like, at least those don't hurt. The Nerf darts don't hurt when they hit you. If you get hit with a stick, it hurts. So I abandoned that.

And then like the whole screen time debate, you know, there are so many good educational apps and things out there. And so also abandoned that because I was like, this is literally teaching him his alphabet and the phonics and like all of these things. And I was like, I don't see anything wrong with this. So there were all of these shoulds that once I became a mom, I kind of started tuning out. And I was like, okay, I'm going to stop listening to other people's shoulds and start listening more to what my shoulds are.

But you know, even those have shifted and I feel like, I can trace a bit of the shift back to that time where I now will even say, I know I should do that but I am going to do something else instead. So, just trying to, prioritize joy a little more just because, you start to see that your time is limited and why not take that joy when you can, even if it's not something that you should be doing.

Stephanie: Yep. Absolutely. Oh, so wonderful. Gabby, I have enjoyed having you so much. Thank you for joining me and for being so generous with your story and sharing your grief with us and your story of loss and resilience. I really appreciate it.

Gabby: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share it. I feel like every time I talk about it, you know, it helps me a little more. So

Stephanie: Yeah.

Gabby: I appreciate you being part of that process.

Stephanie: It's been my honor.