Learning to Love after Loss

[00:00:00]Have you ever wondered if life can still go on after losing somebody that you love, especially if you lose a spouse and you're trying to find love afterwards? There is a lot of scientific research on why your brain is having a hard time moving on. Um, it is it's a very personal, strong, emotional journey. There are some things that I have done in my own life to navigate life after losing somebody that I was deeply in love with. And I thought today was a great day to share some of that with you in the She Drives Me Crazy podcast. So, welcome to the She Drives Me Crazy podcast. I'm your host Alabama, and let's get into it. It was interesting. I found a lot of research on what happens to our brains when we lose somebody that we care about and we love about, and I think I'm finally ready to talk about Justin, who was the love of my life at uh the time of our relationship.

[00:01:00]And I'm going to try my best to get through this episode without crying today because I'm trying to find love after losing somebody that I was deeply in love with. And that is one of the hardest experiences I think I have ever dealt with, and I know that there are other people dealing with this. And so, I wanted to talk about it.

[00:01:21]And scientifically, you are not crazy.

[00:01:23]Like, the science behind it, losing a spouse causes profound psychological and physical trauma. Our brains encode a romantic partner as part of our own identity because what we do and what when we're with somebody is we create a we instead of you and me. And when you lose somebody, whether it be death, and this is why breakups are so hard on some people, the loss shatters the bond, and it triggers this intense grief, identity loss, extreme loneliness, and cognitive fog. And I found this one thing that was very interesting when I was doing my research on what people go through when they lose a loved one and there's this thing called a neurological phantom limb because your brain is wired for attachment and when you lose a spouse it literally feels like an amputation and if you've ever lost somebody that you love if you're a widow or a widower you know this is so true.

[00:02:19]Neurologically your brain still anticipates that that partner is going to come back home or they're going to show up and you're still going to see him and you can even have auditory or visual hallucinations of your partner that they have come back and it is almost like this expecting you're going to turn the corner and that person's going to be there. It's almost like our brains cannot process that that person is actually gone. Survivors of a lost spouse often experience the feeling of a vanished self because the loss of daily routine, shared memories and future plans. So losing a spouse is literally one of the hardest things you can ever go through. There are studies that show it is it is literally one of the most stressful and traumatic life events that you can go through. Um and I went through it. I went through it with Justin who was before we ever dated my best friend. We dated after high school. We had known each other since second grade. We rode the same school bus together and we were in second grade and I remember in second grade our teacher had us fill out a questionnaire of about ourself and read it to the class and Justin's answer was his childhood dog was named Buttercup and so my nickname for him all through elementary school, middle school and high school was Buttercup. He didn't even know it. We would drive by his house cuz his house was on the way to my great grandmother's from my grandmother's who raised me.

[00:03:52]And we would drive by his house and I go, "Oh, there's Buttercup's house." And then in high school, we became really good friends. I dated one of his friends. We were We hung out in the same crowd. And I always had a crush on Justin, but we never dated. And I remember graduating high school and a few years later moving from Alabama to California. And I remember Justin being so proud. He was like, "You're You're doing it. You're getting out of here. That's so awesome." And I would come back home and visit and we would go to some of the same parties and then we lost touch for God, 10, 15 years? How I would We were 30. I would I turned 33 by the time we reconnected. I came home. My little cousin Hannah graduated high school. I If you follow me on the show, I talk about Hannah a lot. I'm really close with Hannah. And his nephew graduated with Hannah. And so we reconnected that weekend when I came home and it was instantly like just love.

[00:04:53]Just love. It was like my best friend.

[00:04:55]It was like coming home.

[00:04:57]And we started dating.

[00:05:01]I still lived in Chicago. I was doing radio in Chicago. He lived in Alabama.

[00:05:05]So we were trying to navigate this long-distance relationship. I would fly home at least every other week or fly him up to Chicago to spend time with me because I like then I was making great money and I was like, "We're going to do this. We're going to make it work. We're going to see each other. We're going to figure it out. Um you're going to move here at some point." We were talking about him moving to Chicago. And then we broke up for a little bit.

[00:05:28]Um and then I wrote a book and traveled across the country and lived out of a tent with my dog Stevie Nicks cuz I was heartbroken over him. And then I I moved to Seattle.

[00:05:39]And we reconnected again in Seattle and started dating long distance.

[00:05:45]And we talked about him moving to Seattle.

[00:05:48]And then my mom died, and then COVID hit, and all these circumstances happened when I was in Seattle, and I ended up moving back home, and we were going to figure it out here in Alabama, and then I got my job, and that's how that all worked. But our relationship God, there's so many layers to it. I He was absolutely my mother. I dated my mother and Justin. They had some of the same issues. They had the same exact birthday.

[00:06:16]Um he helped me get through her death. When she passed away, he was my first call.

[00:06:22]It was just There's so much to unpack here. We had dogs together, Stevie Nicks and Bodhi.

[00:06:28]I adopted Stevie, and she loved him, and then I adopted Bodhi when we were together, and I was like, "Bodhi's your dog." And Bodhi chose him as his human.

[00:06:38]And so there was a lot, and then Justin passed away in 2023.

[00:06:45]And we had been broken up for 6 months at that point. We had a on-again, off-again relationship.

[00:06:53]And I think a lot of our relationship is As deeply as I loved him, we still had our problems. I I think that I was trying to save my mother through him because he reminded me so much through her.

[00:07:12]And I was so stuck in my codependent cycle of trying to save him that I could not love him and just let it be. And I think he had his own issues that he was working through, and so we were on-again, off-again.

[00:07:29]And he passed away when we were off again. I knew I was going to need tissues for this episode. Why did I not bring them in here?

[00:07:35]Um anyway.

[00:07:37]>> [snorts] >> We had been broken up for 6 months, and at that point I was dating somebody new.

[00:07:43]I was dating the person that I started this podcast with and I really truly believe that when I started dating that other person, it was it was to make myself leave Justin alone long enough to get his life together and I had just hoped that eventually we would come back to each other and that was always the plan, but then he passed away.

[00:08:08]And so there was a a really hard time in the grief of that because I was dating somebody else and we were broken up and so there was the loss of like I wasn't anything to him at that point. I wasn't his girlfriend. We never got married.

[00:08:25]And so it was like I feel I feel like a widow, but I don't have the the title or the rights or the what I don't know, but I feel like I had gone through so much stuff with this person and then he was just gone.

[00:08:45]And that was how that ended. Um I'm still really close with his family and I love them, but now the process is how do you learn how to love again when you lose somebody because there is a guilt of I don't know, maybe moving on through life without that person. There's also this very profound feeling of what if they were the one? What if they were my only great love and I can never experience that love again? What if loving somebody else means that my love for him didn't matter. That's a really strong one. That's I have a guilt of I really want to find my soulmate and spend the rest of my life with somebody and grow old with somebody and and amplify my life in a way because I have so much love to give.

[00:09:43]And I know that this life is worth sharing.

[00:09:48]>> [snorts] >> But then there's that thought of, "Oh my god, what if I fall in love with somebody and they do feel like my soulmate? Does that mean that Justin wasn't?" Because I always thought that he was. And so there is that that shattering of your your beliefs and everything that you thought was true in your life. And so that's what I'm working on and the other day one of the things I was really um it just kind of came to me out of nowhere. I I thought about writing a letter to myself as if I was Justin because I had had conversations with Justin before of "What do I do if you die? I I'll I'll never be able to live without you. Life won't go on." And he looked at me like I was crazy and he was like, "You'll live and you'll be fine and you'll move on with your life because that's what we do. I won't be here anymore."

[00:10:45]And I truly feel that in a way Justin was my best friend because he had known God, he'd known me since I was a little kid. He knew He knew Amber, spoiler alert, my real name's Amber. He knew Amber. He grew up with me and he knew a part of me that people I meet now don't know. And so there was a a a a deep intimacy and a deep bond with him through that and and we would often speak to each other as best friends, but he was like, "You'll move on. You'll be fine."

[00:11:13]And I just couldn't fathom that. So the other day, because now I am trying to date and that is the the struggle of feeling the guilt of am I allowed to love again after losing somebody I loved so much. And then what's the balance when you find somebody new of being able to talk about somebody that meant so much to you and impacted your life so much because when I was dating the other guy when Justin died, it was like I could not grieve Justin. I could not speak about him. It was It It was just such a crazy thing. I was in such a haze and not even able to grieve him. So now I feel like 3 years later there's a little bit of delayed grief. So anyway, here's the thing I did.

[00:11:58]And if you are grieving someone, I think that this will help you.

[00:12:02]I wrote myself a letter to me as if I was Justin and I brought it I wasn't going to read it on the podcast. I was going to just say do the exercise, but I think it would be more impactful if I read the letter and I'm going to do it. So this is probably the most vulnerable I will ever be on this podcast.

[00:12:25]It says, Amber, stop being an idiot.

[00:12:31]And I mean that with so much love.

[00:12:38]God, I didn't mean to cry on this podcast today.

[00:12:40]And this is the one I decided to video tape to put on freaking YouTube.

[00:12:46]You have You have to stop being so sad over me.

[00:12:53]You have so much more life to live and you've already slowed down enough for me.

[00:13:02]I already feel bad for you coming back home when I was alive and you can't let the memory of me hold you back after I'm gone.

[00:13:14]And these are literally conversations we've had with each other.

[00:13:20]I've always been so proud of you and all the things that you've accomplished and you've been through so much and made it out on the other side. I cannot be the thing that breaks you.

[00:13:32]>> [snorts] >> And this is very Justin thing to say. He would say, "Do you know how crazy that is?"

[00:13:40]I'm still here.

[00:13:42]I'm still with you.

[00:13:44]You just can't see me the same way. It's like I told you with your mom. It's just a different dimension that you can't see. Oh, he said he would say the simplest, most profound things. When my mom died, there [snorts] was a day I was having a bad day and I was missing my mother and I told him that and he it was the simplest thing, but it was the perfect thing in that moment. He goes, "Well, she's still here. She's just in a different dimension that you can't see."

[00:14:11]>> [snorts] >> And that made so much sense in that moment. It's like, she's still here, she's still with you, you just can't see her. And I I do genuinely feel that he is he is that way.

[00:14:24]I'm cheering you on. Go be happy. I want you to fall in love. You deserve to be in love and find the person that you'll grow old with and I will be here smiling and cheering you on.

[00:14:37]>> [snorts] >> Don't do any more of this dumb where you date someone who treats you badly so that you don't fall in love with them. You're better than that.

[00:14:48]I'm sorry for the things that happened between us.

[00:14:53]But I was broken then and now I am not.

[00:14:56]I did love you in the best way that I knew how and now I love you even more.

[00:15:03]Because I think you need to write the things that you needed to hear from that person too and I think that's what I I needed to hear from him.

[00:15:12]You were never meant to be stuck.

[00:15:15]I see the life that you wanted to have with me and [snorts] you can have a life even better now. Not because I don't want to be there, just because I cannot be.

[00:15:31]>> [gasps] >> I see you.

[00:15:34]I'm proud of you.

[00:15:36]I love you.

[00:15:40]Now for the love of God, go be happy and live your life and go find love and tell the dogs I love them and I miss them, even the new ones. I see them, too.

[00:15:51]I love you.

[00:15:53]Justin >> [sighs] >> I cried so hard writing that letter.

[00:16:09]And this is the first time I've read it out loud back to myself.

[00:16:16]And good God, if you have ever lost a spouse, I really think that that is so healing because that is exactly what he would say.

[00:16:28]And it takes away your guilt of being able to love. I think that our souls and our hearts have so much love to give and we can love more than one person in our lifetime and it doesn't make the love any less for the other people that may not be with us anymore.

[00:16:57]And they would not want us to be stuck and sitting around and just miserable the rest of our lives because they can't be here and and I had this thought also last week. Justin was such a happy person and I'm one of the things that I miss the most about him is laughing and having fun with him.

[00:17:18]God, my face is a mess.

[00:17:20]>> [snorts] >> I miss laughing and having fun and the joy that we would have together because he was genuinely a joyful person and being around him brought me so much joy.

[00:17:30]And I used to be a joyful person and then after he passed away it was like I almost felt like I wasn't allowed to feel joy or be joyful or have fun anymore and so I stopped. And how sad is that? Because if you think about if you were to pass away, you [snorts] wouldn't want the people you love to stop experiencing joy because you're gone. You would want them to experience the life that you can't experience anymore because life is so precious and it is so full of joy and there is so much love and I I truly I truly believe and I've been saying this to myself for the past four or five days for whatever reason out loud to myself, I truly believe that love wins.

[00:18:16]I love romantic movies. I love watching the movies where the good guy always wins. There's the big romantic gesture.

[00:18:23]There's all the things and you'll see a lot of content out there that says, "Oh, that's not real. Don't believe the fairy tale. Don't believe Disney." But in every significant special moment in my life, there's always been that magical element to it that felt bigger than life, that felt mystical, that felt so much bigger and I truly believe that our world is full of that.

[00:18:48]But we get so bogged down by our pain and our grief and whatever we refuse to see it. And I I think that we should see it and believe in love and let love win and and let love in.

[00:18:59]Not just let love win, let love in because it's so hard to do especially when you lose somebody. So, um I know I will tell more stories about Justin in another podcast because this was not enough to tell the story of him.

[00:19:18]But I think I just wanted to share a technique for getting through pain and grief if you've lost someone. And that that really helped me. I wrote a letter a few days after that to myself from my mom cuz I I I also struggle with the loss of my mom. I lost her to an accidental overdose and that helped a lot, too.

[00:19:38]And I I wrote myself the advice that she would give me in life right now. But I hope that that helps. And I really think that if you are also struggling with losing the love of your life, losing I don't know if he's the love of my life because it's so weird to say that now that I'm looking for my soulmate to spend the rest of my life with. So, I don't really know what the right term for that is anymore. He was my great love and he'll always be my great love.

[00:20:14]But I hope that that helps.

[00:20:16]And if you have lost somebody that you that you love in a romantic way, please feel free to leave in the comments some of the things you've did to get through it or that you've done that has helped.

[00:20:35]Um I don't think we actually ever fully get over it. I think we just we learn to how to love again and we learn how to live life without that person and and that's okay.

[00:20:46]But feel free to comment. You can follow the She Drives Me Crazy podcast on Instagram um social media. Follow follow here if you're if you found me on YouTube. And thank you for listening. I'm going to go blow my nose now.