Straddling the Picket Fence: Barb Higgins' Journey Through Grief and Resilience

So I have to say, if I have a list of terrible things I've gone through, and I do, I also have a list of what an amazing life I've had.

I've always had a juxtaposition of happy and sad at the same time, always.

I often describe my life as me straddling a picket fence.

And sometimes the picket fence is ankle high and I can straddle it just fine.

And sometimes the picket fence is so high my feet don't reach the ground.

So that's a painful visual.

Male or female, you don't want to sit.

You don't want to straddle a picket fence.

And I use that analogy always because to me, that's the clearest way to describe sort of the internal life of Barbara Higgins.

Today's episode is with Barb Higgins, and I think you're really going to be astounded by Barb's story.

There are so many aspects of Barb's story that are maybe unbelievable or something where you might listen to it and think, how did she get to where she is now?

Barb's story centers around the loss of her daughter.

So this is not really a spoiler alert because this is what she's kind of based her life around.

But how she held to herself or tried to lose herself, I guess is the better way to say it is really what the story is about and how deep the despair got until she was able to find a way out.

And there are other parts of her story that I'm not going to give away that will really connect you with Barb and make you want to reach out to her and talk to her and share your story with her.

So I was just really honored to have this conversation with Barb and connect in the way that we did.

So I hope you enjoy listening to her story as hard as it is.

Listen all the way through, because you'll hear the beautiful parts that have come from a lot of devastating moments.

So without further ado, here is my conversation with Barb Higgins.

I'm Mack Yel Hooley, and this is the Life Shift Candid conversations about the pivotal moments that have changed lives forever.

Hello, my friends.

Welcome to the Life Shift podcast.

I am here with Barb.

Hello, Barb.

I'm Matt.

Thank you for being a part of the Life Shift podcast.

You know, we've been talking for, like, five minutes now, so I feel like we go way back.

We do.

Way back.

Thanks.

Thanks for having the Life Shift podcast.

As I was saying before, I love these.

I love a Podcast that gives normal people the ability to share their crazy stories.

I feel like I have a huge network of people I will never meet, but that I can totally relate to.

Yeah.

You know, I think there's something that it says kind of the same thing that I love about this show, is that I have this opportunity to realize, like, a lot of the things that I felt growing up, feel now are very common.

And sometimes when we're in those moments, we feel like we're the only person to feel that way.

And so having all these conversations, I'm like, oh, okay, so, like, I am normal.

That's cool.

Yeah.

And also, too, where we kind of live in this environment in which a lot of people like to.

There's a lot of performative nature to a lot of things that we see on social media or on tv.

And those are not the things that I can relate to, like those big, high highs.

It's usually the things, the valleys, the struggles, the things that people kind of overcome that I'm like, oh, yeah, that's my person.

Yeah, exactly.

I feel the same way.

Yep.

Yeah, I've met some of the people that you've had on your show.

I feel like I know them now.

The other thing for me as well, is it's easy to feel like we're chronically unique, you know, or terminally unique or, you know, chronically damaged and when, you know, because we immediately assume that the outsides of everyone we see are flawless and perfect and nothing could be further from the truth is what I find out as I go along.

So.

Yep.

And it's a good realization, I think.

So.

You know, thank you for wanting to tell your story.

I know there are hard, very hard parts of your story, and there are light parts of your story, and there are things that we can celebrate and feel about that.

And I feel the same way about my story as well.

Anyone that's listening for the first time, just a little snippet of the reason the Life Shift podcast exists is because When I was 8, my mom died in a motorcycle accident and my parents were divorced, lived in separate states.

I lived with my mom.

And then suddenly my life was no longer going to be the way that any one of us anticipated it would be.

And growing up, it was the late 80s, early 90s, people weren't talking about mental health.

They were, you know, there's an 8 year old, he's grieving, let's make him happy.

That was the solution.

And so I felt really alone.

I felt like I had to.

I felt like I Had to be happy that everyone was expecting.

And I just wondered, always, do other people have these moments, these lines in the sand in which their life is 100% different from one minute to the next.

And turns out after Talking to over 150 people, people have lots of life shift moments.

They have lots of things that change them.

Whether that's an external force or something like that happened to me, or if it's an internal fire.

I've learned from a lot of people that have just like woke up one day and they were like, I'm quitting this and I'm running off to do this.

And I'm like, this is a really cool opportunity to hear from people about these moments in their lives and how they've changed them as people.

So that's a little bit about the life shift.

Your episode, telling your story was really touching.

There were several parts of it that resonated really strongly with me, and one of them was your hunch before your mom left that she shouldn't go.

Please don't go, please don't go, please don't go.

And I've had two or three moments in my life where I haven't listened to that voice or the person I wanted to hear it, didn't have the capacity to listen.

And it was the loudest voice in the room, really.

So I replayed that little snippet two or three times.

It really got me.

Yeah, it's.

Well, I appreciate that it's interesting to look back on, but it makes 100% logical sense to me why my mom would just have dismissed it because I was an 8 year old throwing a tantrum.

You know, it was just.

But looking back on it, I'm like, wow, that was really such a moment.

And I don't know if I felt a certain thing or if it was just a tantrum at that moment, but it does stand out in that way.

The way you shared it though, got me.

So I feel like on some little knowledge, some little eight year old and eight, you know, I feel as we get older, our eyes get dustier and dustier in terms of how clearly we can truly see like the universe or, you know, an 8 year old sees a lot more than a 50 year old sometimes.

Yeah.

And I don't know about you and these life shift moments that you've had, if things get tainted from that as well.

And so like for me at eight, that moment changed me in other ways.

Like I was no longer a kid anymore.

And, you know, like, I felt like I had to be a different person at that point.

And so maybe some of that connection to the source, you know, to the universe, was kind of diminished at that point for me.

Yeah, exactly.

So maybe you can.

Before we get into your story, maybe you can tell us a little bit about who Barb is in 2024.

Like, without giving away too much.

You already told me a bunch of things that you do, but tell us a little bit about you.

Well, if I had to give myself a descriptor, I would be a wrinkly kid.

I'm 61, but I don't look, feel, or act 61.

Sometimes I look 61 when I wake up in the morning.

I never.

I've never.

Sometimes I do, too.

But I.

I live in the town I grew up in.

I did.

I have traveled extensively and spent many years away from here, but if I were a bird, I could fly to my childhood home in about 12 seconds.

I have been a public school teacher for most of my adult life and a coach of runners and CrossFit athletes.

I'm a mom.

I'm a reluctant housewife, meaning I live in a house and I have a partner and we have kids.

So that's about, as, you know, definitive as I get.

And I've been a lifelong athlete, a very.

A lifelong asthmatic as well.

And my life has always been sort of.

Nothing good ever happens that isn't attached to something bad and vice versa.

Like, it's never just one or the other for me.

So I am a living dichotomy sometimes.

And my.

My.

My biggest life shift, I've.

I've had 50 life shifts.

I could be six episodes or eight episodes.

And oftentimes people will say, how is it that these things keep happening to you?

And I don't know if I'm lucky or unlucky, but they do.

And so I try to pick up and move on to the next thing.

So right now, I spend my days podcasting.

I just published a book, a memoir about being a mother that has had the experiences I've had called Motherland.

I do a blog, which I don't promote at all, so nobody reads it, but I still enjoy writing it.

I coach CrossFit, and I love the sport of CrossFit, primarily for the community.

And it's engaging and interesting and never dull.

And it allows me to do stupid, foolish things that I.

That I might not do otherwise.

I don't think any of them are stupid or foolish, but most of the world does.

And, you know, then I have.

That's that community thing.

Yeah, it is.

Well, it is.

It's like.

So I was a high school coach for years, a middle school and a high school cross country and track coach.

And so practice wasn't just showing up with a group of people and working hard.

It was getting to know one another and developing all those community skills.

And that's what CrossFit classes are like.

You don't just put your headphones on and work out next to a room full of people.

You're all in it together.

And I've met some amazing people in the CrossFit community.

And wherever I travel, I find the nearest CrossFit gym.

So I've met some amazing people worldwide.

And you walk into a gym and you could be anywhere, you know that the feeling is the same, which is either cultish or fantastic.

I think both are.

A little of both, maybe.

Yeah.

No, I've done CrossFit before, and I.

The community of crying is also part of it because, you know, some of those things are really hard to do.

Like, you want me to do how many calories on the assault bike?

Oh, I hate the assault.

I think I'm gonna.

So I understand it, though.

It is quite a community.

And I've had the opportunity to.

To do some CrossFit when I lived in the mountains near Aspen, but I don't do it anymore because I would cry through most of those workouts these days.

But good on you.

I mean, it sounds like you're not busy at all, though.

Like, you're just kind of just sitting around most of the time.

Just totally bored, totally twiddling my thumbs.

I don't have a list a mile long.

No way.

But it seems like you have the energy for.

And you feel really excited about the things that you do because the way you describe them, you.

You describe them with happiness, which is.

Which is a nice thing to see.

Well, in a huge shift in myself after.

After my life shift experience, I've always filled my life.

Keeping my head busy keeps it from going into dark places.

But I didn't always fill it with things I necessarily wanted to be doing, which I think is a common coping mechanism for people with traumatic or chaotic lives.

So I'm as busy as ever, and I'm as frantic as ever sometimes.

But once I start feeling like, all right, this is not what I want to be doing, I just stopped doing it, which was a huge behavior change for me because I never felt like I was allowed to stop doing it, if that makes sense.

We get very tied into things.

So do you think that was because you didn't want to disappoint anyone else.

Like, if you.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yep.

And we all, you know, we have our little roles in the family, and my role as a child was always to make everything okay, and I would rush around and fix it.

Second born, first girl.

You know, I think I just fit right into that dynamic.

And it's always been that way, even still with my family.

If something goes wrong, well, call Barb and see what she'd do.

Well, okay.

What does it matter what I do?

But it's just.

It's just the dynamic.

So I do.

I feel this incredible.

I'm willing to treat myself poorly to make sure I'm not treating someone else poorly.

And not that we should ever treat anyone poorly, but saying no doesn't mean I'm treating someone poorly.

It means I'm treating myself well.

And the two aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.

Yeah, no, I love that.

I think it's a.

I think it's a journey that so many people can relate to.

I think there's a lot of people pleasers out in the world, and a lot of it stems from other experiences that maybe we haven't unpacked yet.

You know, I did the same thing because I thought if my dad was disappointed, he was also going to leave me.

And my.

Because my mom left me in my small brain.

And so, you know, I did the same thing.

And now I'm coming into the place where a no is perfectly fine because it is something that is protecting me.

And if I can show up, protecting myself and in the most awesome version of myself, then everyone else will benefit from that versus me going through some, you know, so I'm happy that you found this little space where you can say, no, I'm not doing that anymore.

So maybe you can start.

Paint the picture of your life before this life shift moment.

You can go back however you need to, however far you need to.

However you want to set this up.

Let's.

Let's get into.

Sounds like a plan.

So I have to say, if I have a list of terrible things I've gone through, and I do, I also have a list of what an amazing life I've had.

I've always had a juxtaposition of happy and sad at the same time.

Always.

I often describe my life as me straddling a picket fence.

And sometimes the picket fence is ankle high and I can straddle it just fine.

And sometimes the picket fence is so high my feet don't reach the ground.

So that's a painful visual.

Male or Female, you don't want to sit, you don't want to straddle a fence.

And I use that analogy always because to me that's the clearest way to describe sort of the internal life of Barbara Higgins.

I had a wonderful childhood, but I was sexually abused by my father for about seven years in that childhood.

So that wasn't wonderful.

But in the meantime, I managed to be okay and go to school and nobody in my life would have known anything was happening to me.

I was lucky that I wasn't ever physically in pain or hit or hurt in that regard.

But, you know, you're keeping a big secret when you walk around with that happening.

When I finally told, of course, that was a huge life shift.

My parents divorced, my life settled down quite a bit, got into high school, found running.

So I'm a lifetime asthmatic.

I find running, my mom is like, don't go out for running.

You'll have asthma attacks all the time.

You'll never come home.

You'll fail.

Please don't, please don't.

And I was the first high school girl in New Hampshire to break five minutes in the mile in 1981.

Wow.

So this asthmatic, child abused kid who never made a sports team in her life did this amazing athletic thing.

So right there from, you know, the beginning, it's the bad with the good and the good with the bad.

There's quite a little, little connection there.

If you just look on the surface of the, the idea of running from something so, you know, like that there's like a clear connection there of like, how fast can I get away from this?

Although I chose track, so you, you go nowhere, just coming back, which is fast, which is also a pretty clear connection when you, when you, when.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

So, but yeah, running.

And I hated my body.

And it wasn't until I was a runner, I had, I have the perfect body for running.

Skinny, built like a 12 year old boy, you know, great endurance.

It was the first time that I actually really, truly loved my body.

Because of what it could do.

Yes, exactly.

And that it looked okay in the uniform, you know, like I didn't look ridiculous in it.

And I went off to bu and my freshman year in college was the first year that Title IX recognized women.

So I got a scholarship there and had an amazing time.

I was a Division 1 All American, came out of college, you know, well educated with an amazing running career and a hefty dependence on alcohol, which also isn't surprising when you think of just everything that I've been going through.

So I got right into teaching.

I taught in Woodburn, Massachusetts for a while and then moved home to Concord, coaching at my high school.

Teaching and coaching, where I grew up.

And I had a relatively normal life in terms of the outside, anyway.

Inside has always been a bit of turmoil for me.

Did that drinking also follow you, or was that just from college?

It did, it did.

So I did seven years in A.A.

like, I was seven years completely sober.

The thing with me.

And I taught high school health, and I would talk about my sobriety and lack thereof all the time.

And I would say, oh, God, I have no trouble quitting.

I've quit a million times.

And it wasn't until one of my mouthy little students said, well, if you quit a million times, it means you've relapsed a million times.

Which, of course, he was right.

Well, that was a wonderful conversation in health class that day, just talking about that.

But I've never been like a wake up, daily drinker kind of person.

Like, it was always weekends, it was always binge drinking.

It was doing foolish things, blacking out.

I just have all the physical issues that means I shouldn't drink.

So I didn't drink for a long time.

And then when I did return to having alcohol in my life, it was primarily because I met Kenny, who I'm my husband.

He was a daily drinker.

And so I became a daily drinker.

So alcohol has been an issue for me.

I can do a paleo challenge or a health challenge or a 75 hard or a 90 day.

I've done it a couple times, not a problem.

I can do anything that has an end date.

Whenever I enter a plank contest, I can be in the word, you know, just doing like an elbow plank.

I'll stay up longer than anybody because I.

Because I know eventually everyone will fall down.

And then I like, if I know there's an end in sight, I can do it.

So.

But this whole one day at a time for everything.

Still, still.

I just did 12 seasons on my 12 episodes on my podcast of the 12 steps to this book by Richard Rohr called Breathing Underwater.

I've learned so much about the 12 steps.

Not even connected to my own alcohol use or anything, just in general.

It was.

It was a profound experience.

But alcohol was a big piece of who I was early on and I think sometimes clouded my judgment.

I think any drug will cloud your judgment, but it plays into my big life shift moment.

I got involved with a family about 2006 or so.

So I have Gracie And Molly are born.

They're three and five or two and four, like little.

And it was a very dysfunctional family and actually a really, really scary sort of family.

And they got sucked right in.

And they were, they were, I don't even know how to describe them, like narcissistic and sociopathic and.

And I'm one of those people pleasers, right?

Like, you know, the perfect person to be sucked in.

And so they had this con, this horrible divorce and she claimed he was beating her up and, you know, he claimed she was cheating and all these like crazy, like just bad TV show things.

And so I got very, very invested in their kids because their kids were sort of the hapless victims here.

Long story short, I ended up really helping the dad in the divorce, make sure he didn't get separated from the kids and all this kind of stuff.

And in that process lost my job, a 20 year teaching career, and the details of that, that's a whole story in and of itself.

A life shift that I'm still sorting through.

But it was devastating to know that I.

A 20 year career in the town in which I grew up coaching at my high school, that could just be obliterated by some crazy, crazy people.

Okay, so that was directly related to that experience.

Yeah.

Okay.

That's such a long story.

If you ever get into scandalous podcast topics, I'm all in.

I'll be your first guest.

So the years following that, now Gracie and Molly are, you know, elementary school age and just approaching middle school age.

I settled, I, it was, that was a very humbling and hobbling experience.

It was publicly humiliating.

You know, Concord's not huge, but I was able to reinvent myself and started working at an online high school, got into CrossFit, got competitive in CrossFit, had great success as a CrossFit athlete.

So I, so I quickly filled my life with things that were positive, but my connection to the, this, this man, the father of these kids was on and off and, and just impossible to break.

He really had a hold on me.

My marriage sort of dissolved.

For a long while, Kenny and I lived apart.

And then Molly started to get sick.

So my shift, my life shift moment was her death.

And so, but, but it's more than just my 13 year old girl dying.

It's all that was going on leading into the death and all that fell apart after the death.

That really had nothing to do with dead Molly, if that makes sense, I think.

So the year leading up to her death, I was contentiously involved with this, with this Man.

Still, I was in a.

I had a new teaching job at a school that had a really, really off balance manager, like principal, and I was drinking like a fish.

I was really, really just unhealthy in every way.

I'd had an injury, so I couldn't work out.

Whenever I can't work out, I fall into bad habits.

And so Molly's seventh grade year, when she began to get headaches and started to have a real decline in her health, I was a disaster.

And of course, in, you know, in the months and days, days and months after Molly died, I was.

Felt so guilty.

But looking back, I could have been spot on.

And the things that were missed with her likely wouldn't have changed.

So she's.

So my daughter's in seventh grade, Gracie's in ninth grade.

Molly.

Molly is getting sicker and sicker to the doctors.

All these trips to the doctor.

In the meantime, I'm spending hours away from home.

Kenny and I are living apart, Will.

So what we did was we got an apartment.

And so Kenny would spend a week here and I'd spend a week at the apartment like three miles up the road.

And he was in dialysis at the time.

So those early mornings that he wasn't here, I just get up early and drive here and get the girls off to school.

And the nights that I had school board that I was here and he wasn't, he would come and cook dinner even though he wasn't.

So to the girls, it didn't even feel like we weren't living together.

We just didn't sleep in the same house.

But on any given day, they saw both of us.

And when we saw each other at the same time, we did okay because we weren't just on each other.

So there were aspects of the chaos that were okay.

And I feel had Molly not gotten sick and died, that we probably would have worked all these things out.

So the apex moment before the life shift is I went on a trip.

I went to Amsterdam with this guy, this person.

That crazy person so sucked you in.

Yeah.

And so it was a wonderful vacation.

I didn't really want to go.

I got sort of coerced into going, but I have to own the fact that I went.

So that was the last week of April of 2016, and it would ultimately be the last week of Molly's life.

So not, you know, I didn't know that Molly and I had a couple of interactions before I left that I look back on now.

And I think it's why your little tantrum with Your mother resonated so much.

Molly was furious with me for going.

She was just so angry that I would choose to go.

She.

You know, she had.

She knew the kids that I was trying to help.

She knew this man.

She hated him, was afraid of him.

You know, she didn't understand why I would spend any time at all with him.

And so she didn't want me to go, and she was angry.

So he was in the driveway picking me up to leave.

I had my suitcase all packed, and she's like, I'm not saying goodbye to you.

She just was blowing me off.

And so I just said, look, I'm flying across the country.

I'm across the ocean.

I could be gone.

If something were to happen to me, you would for the rest of your life, feel horrible that you didn't say goodbye to me.

So let's hit the pause button.

Put this on the shelf.

We need to have a nice goodbye.

And we did.

We had hugs and kisses.

I laid on her bed with her, and we talked about all the things I left them.

Money and a whole list of things to do over vacation with Kenny.

They had the best week with their dad, which they wouldn't have had if I were home, because they would have just been with me.

It was two girls.

And so off I went to Amsterdam, and the week was okay.

I mean, I had a wonderful time.

Amsterdam is a beautiful city.

And I kept in touch with the girls over the course of the week.

And she had gotten sick a couple of times while I was gone.

I went to the Anne Frank Museum, and there's this whole thing with Anne's dad about how he didn't know her, that he didn't really know her until he read her diary.

And how could he live in a room with a girl for two years and not know who she was?

And it just got me.

Like, I had to sit down and I felt nauseous, and I cried for a while.

And Roy got really frustrated with me and upset with me.

And at the same time that was happening, Molly had been taken to the hospital with, like, profuse vomiting and all this.

I didn't know that those two things were at the same time until later on.

So I get home to.

I get back to, you know, the United States.

I come home, and Molly's in the er.

She.

So she would have these headaches, and she'd wake up vomiting.

Like.

And when you wake up vomiting, it's.

It's a cranial pressure symptom.

They did pregnancy tests on her.

You know, she's 13 years old, seventh grade.

Like, they did drug testing.

The ER was just not.

Just not good.

So we spent this whole long day in the ER pushing for a CAT scan.

What's wrong?

You know, just back and forth.

But again, the part of me that wasn't willing to stand up, I didn't want them to think I was unstable or off kilter.

So I didn't argue with them about the CAT scan.

Okay, if you think she's best, that's fine.

That's fine.

16 hours in that ER and a brain tumor ruptured in her head and killed her.

So the first piece of my life shift was watching her die because I'd never seen someone actually be alive and then dead.

And I'm holding her hand, and they're catheterizing her because they want to finally want to do a CAT scan at, like, one in the morning, because she's not responding at all now.

And she had been thrashing all around, which I now know to be my occlosis, which is your nervous system.

It's like a car backfiring.

Your nervous system does all this weird stuff when it's under great pressure before it kills.

So really she was dying, but I didn't know.

I thought she was waking up.

And I'm holding her hand, and I'm watching her, and she's thrashing all about.

And then, you know, I'm just sort of chatting with the nurse, and I notice her legs are completely still.

Like, I've never seen still.

And my.

My neck hairs went up, and I'm like, oh, my God, she's so still.

And I look up at her face, and it's sort of gray, and then it's blue, and then it's yellow, like, seriously changing colors right before my eyes.

So I didn't know it at the time, but that's really when she died right then.

So you go into.

You go into panic mode.

I think it must be what happens when you're in the doorway in an earthquake and the building crumbles around you, and all you can do is sit in rubble and wait for who knows what.

That's kind of how I felt.

So we had a week where they.

They put her on life support.

They took the tumor out.

They hoped she would wake up.

She didn't wake up.

But the true.

The true moment where I became forever different was when the neurologist said to me, she will never wake up.

She.

The catastrophic event in her brain killed her.

She was dead before you brought her here.

She will never Wake up.

And I heard like the ocean in my ears and I heard a noise and I'm like, what is that noise?

And it was me screaming.

And I can't explain.

It's.

It sounds crazy, but it's like detached.

Yes.

I was just so out of it.

Peed my pants.

I crawled on the table.

When I look back on it now, it was just feral.

I feel like it was.

There was a whale in the ocean off Alaska that had her dead whale baby on her for like six weeks.

Made all this noise.

I totally could relate to what that mother whale was going.

That's what it felt like.

Do you remember that?

Do you remember those moments?

Or is it more like looking back?

Oh, I.

Oh, I remember it.

I don't.

Sadly for me, I don't forget anything.

So I remember them all.

I remember.

I remember the ocean.

I remember.

I mean, the roaring in my ears.

I remember hearing a noise and not realizing it was my voice.

I remember crawling on the table.

My friend Robin was with me, and we went into the chapel at the hospital and I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed and laid on the floor and snot was coming out.

You know, like, I remember it all.

I also could describe it to you as if I were watching somebody else.

So I think I was really detached.

Even though I was in it, I was also completely out of it.

I can't.

I mean, I'm so sorry that you had to experience that.

I think that should never be on anyone's list ever.

No, it shouldn't.

You know, and.

Well, an 8 year old should never have to hear that their mom is dead.

You know, there are things that just shouldn't happen.

Right.

It's those moments.

And, you know, you were eight, I imagine in your little brain and your little psyche and your little heart and your little soul, all of those things happened.

You know, for me it was very obvious.

The vom.

You know, the screaming, the snot, the pee, the swearing, you know, all of that was.

Was how it manifested for me.

But also, I mean, I feel like a lot of your story, and forgive me if this sounds like I'm saying anything that's not correct, but you had a very traumatic childhood.

Even though you said it was good.

And a lot of the things that you describe sound like they were way that you were comforting yourself, you were finding ways.

And now this like, brick wall in which there's not much you can do now you have to actually crumble.

Yes, yes.

If, if, if all goes quote unquote, well, you should crumble at that Moment.

Yes.

Did, did you feel like there was no hope?

Did you or were you at that.

Moment, it was too horrifying to acknowledge as true.

So at that particular moment I was, I was.

Well, here's the other piece.

I have my then 15 year old daughter Gracie and like seven of their best dance friends because they were big into dance and theater, all outside of this room wanting to know they've all been painting Molly's nails and you know, she's on life support.

Like 500 people came to visit in the first like three days.

Like, you know, all really.

Did you have to play people pleaser?

Oh God, I had to all of it.

I had to take care of all of it.

Oh yeah.

In some ways it was, I call it bar.

Like I had to channel my inner Barb for a long time that people who knew me, you know how the hashtag is a big thing, Watch it, you're going to get hashtag barbed.

And it just means that I come in and take care of it.

I go into barb mode.

And so I go back into the room where the doctor is and where the table full of people telling me my daughter's dead.

And I, and there's, and there's, I walk by Gracie and all of her friends and I realized somebody needs to tell Gracie and it can't be me because I, I don't want those words to come out of my mouth for, to her.

So we have to pull her in and you know, rub her back while the doctor explains it all to her.

And that was a precious, you know, she's a 15 year old.

Molly and Gracie were like twins, so close.

He goes through all of it and he, and he tells her again and again, ask me anything, ask me anything.

There was no way to not know that Molly was dead based on how he explained it to her.

And sweet Gracie says, I have one question.

How long until she wakes up?

Like.

And so then she blocked it.

Yeah, she just didn't get it.

And so her first panic response when told she won't wake up is what do I tell my friends?

You know, what do I put on my social media?

You know, like it was, it was just sort of a sweet, absolutely genuine response.

And so she went out into the lobby, little lobby area where her friends were sitting, and just announces, molly will never dance again.

So none of those girls at that time knew what all that meant.

You know, they just, they didn't know what that meant.

So I collected myself and I went out and the hospital had a social worker and she said, let me do this for you.

And I said, no, no, these are my girls friends.

This.

I'll do it.

And big breath.

And I just explained all that Molly had gone through and what happened and that a brain tumor inside of her head.

The damage was too much.

It ruined her brain.

Like, I went through it all just like the doctor had.

And this sweet little group of girls are looking at me, tears just pouring down their faces.

And this girl, little girl, Kelsey, raises her hand.

Kelsey was at a very prestigious private school, just graduated from a really hard, prestigious college.

Smartest one in the.

In the group by far, raises her hand and says, so how long until Molly wakes up?

Like, you know, it's just like, honey, she'll never wake up.

And so I think when you just don't have that experience in your life and you don't like, it just.

It seems so far from something that could ever happen because you just saw them, you know, four weeks ago or whatever, doing X, Y and Z.

And it's like your brain just doesn't understand.

It doesn't.

It absolutely doesn't.

It's like danger or it doesn't want to.

Right?

Yeah.

Yeah, it's.

It clears it out.

Amazing.

It's amazing.

I will say having.

So when you're abused as a child, you learn how to dissociate, you know, step out of yourself so you can deal with what's happening to you.

I have been able to utilize that skill in positive ways, actually, throughout my life.

Be a female distance runner.

Be a distance runner.

Right.

You're halfway through a 5k race and you want to puke.

I think I'll just.

This is a great time to dissociate, you know, finish the race and.

Well, yeah, I mean, it's a protection.

Exactly.

It is.

So I did a lot of it here, and the way I could do it was by stepping into caretaker role and organize things for others.

So we had a week at the hospital, which was wonderful because I found out so much about Molly.

I channeled Otto Frank a million times and totally understood why the universe showed me that quote on that day.

Because I found out so much about Molly that I did not know.

Which again, is an incredible gift from the friend.

Over the six days that she was on life support, I would say close to 800 people came.

Teachers, coaches, friends, neighborhood people, acquaintances, family.

And the stories were never ending.

That has to be overwhelming in, like, the most heartwarming way.

Yeah.

Horrifyingly wonderful, yet also sad, right?

Yeah.

Yep.

And then we had to unplug her from life support.

So I will say, you know, you watch Grey's Anatomy or, you know, Chicago PD or whatever, you watch and you see people get unplugged from life support, and it's like you unplug it and they're gone.

And life support being on it and being off it is so much more than a breathing machine.

There's 50 IVs that have all the different hormones and chemicals and things that regulate everything in your body.

You know, you have to replicate the kidneys, so there's all these bags of fluid that replicate what your kidneys do.

Your kidneys are like a science lab for the body, which I never knew until I had Dead Molly plugged into kidney liquids.

There's all sorts of things.

So it takes a long time to remove all of that.

And the last thing they do is remove the vent so, you know, she's still breathing while all these things are being removed, because the machine is breathing for her.

In New Hampshire, before you can unplug a child, you have to do all of this testing to make sure that they really won't wake up.

And as horrifying as that was to watch, it allowed me to be okay with unplugging her.

They poured water in her ear.

They took a Q tip and rubbed her eyeball.

Does it give you proof, though?

Did you say that that makes it easier or.

It made it easier for me to unplug her?

Because if somebody could pinch her shoulder that hard and she didn't flinch, if somebody could pour cold water down her ear and she didn't move, you know, rub a Q tip on your open eyeball, you know, impossible.

And she didn't flinch.

And then the last thing they do is remove the vent, and you watch the little carbon dioxide CO2 thing go up, up, up, up, and it gets to, like, a red line.

And if she could, that's when she would have gasped for air.

But there was no gasp.

So that was the day before she.

We took her off life support.

So the next day when we did, it wasn't.

It wasn't as traumatic as it could have been, because I knew.

I knew that I wasn't ending her life, that her life was ended six days prior.

I had orchestrated a wonderful goodbye for her, or the universe had orchestrated this goodbye, and we could sort of set her free.

Another thing I learned is that once you're off life support, your heart keeps beating for a long while.

So they unplugged everything.

There's no vent.

She's just beautiful.

Molly in the bed.

So I climbed in the bed with her and I put my hand on her chest and there's her heart beating in there.

And so they took all the machines out into the hall, which is another incredibly kind gesture because I didn't want to be listening to the beep get slower, you know, like, you don't, you don't.

So there was a doctor outside the room and he'd poke his head in.

Okay, she's at 20 beats a minute now.

Okay, 13 beats a minute now, you know, and I'm feeling it.

And Kenny and I took turns.

And then it stopped.

It took about 20 minutes from the vent out of her mouth to the heart stopping.

Not that I wish I didn't know any of these things, but I will say that going through it all was incredibly helpful to the process.

So then that the last piece of the life shift before my life was just playing different, was coming home without her.

Like, actually really coming home without her.

Like, it was just Gracie Kenney and I that came home.

And, you know, we'd been with her.

I looked at her every day.

I'd slept in the bed with her.

I'd smelled her, you know, she was warm and rosy cheeked because of all the machines.

And it just looked like she was sleeping.

And when we went and saw her at the funeral home, she looked nothing like she looked before.

Like, tell me different.

Oh, yeah, it's, it's, it's.

Yeah.

You know, you touch her when she's alive and there's some pliability to her.

You touch her face the funeral home and it's like cement, you know, it was.

The difference was astounding.

Yeah.

So I've experienced that.

Isn't it awful?

When my grandmother died, I had.

We, we.

I spent the last 96 hours with my grandmother in hospice and similar.

Went through a lot, a lot of similar experiences.

She was much older and lived a long, wonderful life.

So quite different than Molly.

But that experience of like walking into the funeral home, I'm like, guys, that's.

Not who I just left.

That doesn't look like her.

Like, it would just.

She just looked like a different person.

And I don't know if that was helpful or.

I don't know if that was.

I.

Yeah, I don't know how I felt about that.

I don't.

We took pictures of everything.

I have 50 pictures of her in her casket.

And I have friends who are like, why would you do that?

I'm like, it's her.

Like, you know, and remembering all of it.

I think with someone young, the biggest difference is.

I mean, loss is loss.

You had your whole life with your grandmother, and now she's gone.

So that's a huge change for you.

Forever.

She's not a part of it anymore, but her future was limited on a good day.

Right.

So you're not mourning the 50 million things that should have happened with your grandmother that didn't.

You might be mourning the fact that you'll never have another Christmas with her, but it's not like you're mourning the wedding and the.

The graduations and all the things that are supposed to happen.

As a parent, you see that.

Yeah.

With Molly, it's been hard to.

Those things are really difficult.

And believe it or not, the dead body pictures help sometimes.

Like, she's not here.

Like, there was a lot of.

In the first months when I was just so batshit crazy, there was a lot of times that the only way I knew she was gone was to drive to the cemetery in the middle of the night and put a sleeping bag on our grave and argue with the police officers that wanted me to leave the cemetery because I wasn't safe.

Like, all.

Like I care, you know?

Like it was, you know, crazy behavior.

Right?

No.

Crazy.

It's not.

I mean, but not.

It feels like it's like a human response, like you were grasping for something to help you.

Yeah.

I touch her name on the.

On the gravestone.

I'd look at the picture of her on my phone in the casket.

I'd know that the casket was underneath me because I watched it get put in there.

All of those things.

It sounds awful, but it helped me.

It was just incredibly helpful for me to believe that all this was true, that she wasn't missing.

I don't think it sounds awful, though.

I don't think.

I just think it sounds human.

And I think it sounds human.

And I think so many of us would say the same thing, but yet we were taught not to talk about some of these things.

And I think that's my apology for the.

I know this sounds awful because we don't speak of these things.

Right.

But we should.

Yeah, exactly.

Because.

Exactly.

Because as shitty as this experience was for you, there are other people that have experienced this as well.

Exactly.

You know, and to know that even in the moment when you felt you dissociated and physical things happened to you in the hospital.

Like, I'm also sure that you're not the only person that's ever absolutely experienced that.

And it's all permissible.

Like, it just feels like, it's just a human experience.

Like, I was gonna ask.

That is the truest phrase right there.

I'm obviously, I'm in a lot of grief groups, you know, online groups, support groups and such.

And people are always asking for advice, and always.

I just say, wherever you are and whatever you're feeling is exactly right.

There's no should here.

If you wake up angry, be fucking angry.

You know, that's what you're supposed to do.

People don't.

You know, people.

How about when you laugh, though?

Then you feel like I am the worst human that's ever existed.

Yeah, but.

Yeah, you're human.

Yes.

Like, I will say.

I will say one of my other favorite books is One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest.

And there's a character in that story, Chief.

He's this big Native American dude that Jack Nicholson in the movie befriends, and he's.

One of his lines is, if you lose your laughter, you lose your footing.

And I read this book in high school.

I had this amazing English teacher, and I'll never forget it because.

Because I'm.

I've always been someone that cracks a joke, you know, class clown kind of person.

And I had probably some of the best visits and funniest revelations that week at the hospital.

And I remember one of my college roommates saying, how can you laugh?

And I'm like, how can I not?

Like, you know, this is the rest of my life.

Like, I have to.

I have to balance this out somehow.

So I have been lucky.

The hardest part for me with Happy is when people say to me, oh, finally the old Barb is coming back.

And I think, what a.

What a shallow sentence that is, because how can the old Barb come back?

The old Barb had a daughter named Molly that wasn't dead.

Like that.

That Barb doesn't exist.

She is nowhere.

It doesn't mean there's a lot.

That a lot of me isn't still here, but that.

That's always been hard for me.

And it's hard for a lot of people, I think.

You'll never be the eight year.

And I don't know how many days into the year, eighth year you were, but say you were eight and a half versus eight and three quarters, two completely different little boys you want.

You aren't the same because how you were before you had the mum.

So, yes, you're the same human, but a multitude of things are different.

Do you see that?

I mean, being in a lot of grief groups, I would imagine you see that.

I Think people just don't know what to say.

They don't know what to say.

And then they say really dumb things.

And then, you know, the more evolved version of us looks back and go, okay, well, maybe they didn't quite mean.

Do you feel that way or are you just like always?

Always.

And I, and I always try to remember that I would rather have somebody try and say the wrong thing than look at me and walk away.

And I've had that happen too, where people, you know, someone sees me walking down the street, I'll never forget it.

She'd only been gone a little bit, so it was fresh.

And I, and I went, oh, there's so and so.

And you know, she sees me and then runs into a store.

And I was like, oh, it just happened.

But you know, at the same time I'm not.

I don't know how I would act either.

So, you know, I mean, there's a million things I've done terribly wrong.

Or were you just a human and you made mistakes?

You know, I think because I always look at like society really faulted or hurt me in a way because I felt like I wasn't allowed to do certain things and I wasn't allowed to feel a certain way.

And the same thing.

That woman that went into the store, she was never taught how to help someone that was.

Or just say, hey, I'm here.

There's nothing I can do or say to make this any better for you, but I'm here if you need me.

And like that.

Sometimes that's all we need, or we just need a body there to be like, here I am.

You know, I was going to ask, and I don't.

I mean, it sounds like you may have.

Did you.

Was there a time where you just completely lost it?

So I have a tree.

Did you just call it my scream tree?

The first time I lost it was when I got the call from the pathology that her tumor was benign, that had they just given her a CAT scan when we took her to the ER at 10 in the morning, that they would have taken it out.

And it likely it was a.

It was in a hard shell.

It wouldn't.

The reason that it killed her was because it got engorged with blood and ruptured.

And even still they.

It came right out.

So I was in my car on Main street in Concord and I started to scream that same sort of scream.

I just was so angry.

But this wasn't, this was more of a pissed off scream.

I remember people looking at me.

So I absolutely Fell apart.

I fell apart.

So the other piece of this is Roy, the guy that I had gone to Amsterdam with.

And I don't mind using his name.

He.

Once he realized that Molly had died and that now I was going to be very, very swallowed up in that, he just.

He said, you know what?

It's always all about you.

I can't keep waiting for you.

Like, we had been on again, off again.

Kenny and I separate.

I'm with Roy.

Roy and I separate.

You know, it was just.

It was your classic.

He, ultimately, he didn't really want to be with me.

He.

He liked having me in his life, but it was never.

He wanted the attention.

Yes.

And so about a month after she died, he's like, I can't do this anymore.

And I'm.

And I'm like, can't do what?

I have a dead child.

Well, you know, it's been six weeks.

You need to let me come up and clean the house and make Kenny go live somewhere else and get Gracie and move.

Move to Massachusetts with me.

And, you know, just.

And I'm just like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I can't.

I can't.

You just out of it.

I mean, really just walking around in a daze.

And so he did.

He.

He left.

He stopped.

We still communicate.

We still communicated quite a bit up until a couple of years ago.

Just texting and checking in with one another.

Super unhealthy connection.

But.

But he was dating someone else by July.

Molly died May 7th.

And, like, July 15th, he was on a.

On a getaway weekend with his new girlfriend, like, that fast.

And I was just like.

So all of it, like.

Like everything that was under my feet was.

Was just crumbled, and I was a disaster.

So a couple of things, of course, I obviously was drinking a ton.

I would.

I couldn't sleep.

I couldn't lie still.

I couldn't.

Gracie and I set.

Put blankets on the living room floor.

We slept on the living room floor for two years.

We didn't come back up here upstairs.

No.

We just couldn't face being upstairs.

Where Molly's room was the bathroom she got sick in.

We just lived downstairs.

We'd come up to get close, bring them down, you know, I couldn't go into that bathroom for months and months and months.

I took a shower with the hose in my driveway.

Like, I put my bathing suit on and washed up in the driveway because I couldn't, you know, I went into labor with her in the downstairs bathroom, and she, you know, spent her last alive Moments in the upstairs bathroom, I couldn't do it.

So those are some of the crazies that, for me, became a part of my daily existence.

I'd wake up and fly right out of bed.

I'd count the minutes until it was late enough in the day to have a drink.

I played on my phone incessantly.

Like, I couldn't, I couldn't.

I just escaped.

Just essentially, I was just hobbled, just so hobbled.

And then lost all contact with Roy.

And even though most of that relationship was incredibly unhealthy, it had become an expected stabilizer for me.

And when you're in a relationship with somebody that's narcissistic like that, they create this dependency.

So you become hyper dependent and hyper vigilant and doing everything you can to not have them leave you.

And so I was in this, like, just this panic mode all the time.

So being me, me being me, I had another connection in my life.

Not a romantic connection, but a friend of mine who was a pretty heavy drug user.

I, you know, I.

I was a product of the 80s.

So in 19, between 1981 when I graduated high school, and 86 when I graduated college and grad school, cocaine was like the party drug.

Everybody did.

You.

You went everywhere and it was just, you know, you're probably too young to.

How old were you in the 80s?

10, 5?

I was born in 81, so.

All right, you graduated high school, so.

Yeah, you're in elementary school.

And I was having a good time in Boston, so.

But.

But then when I moved home, you know, and did, you know, sobriety and all that, I.

I was, I mean, alcohol in my adult life, I never.

I really never liked smoking pot so much.

I didn't trust pills because how do you know what's in the pill?

I mean, how do you know what's in the coke either?

But, you know, you don't.

So I stayed away from it.

And so when all of this started happening, you know, I didn't know much about what was going on in this other person's life.

He was going through a whole bunch of stuff as well.

And he had started using coke, snorting it and cooking it, smoking it, out of, totally out of my realm.

And he said, come over, I think I can make you feel better.

So I went to visit and I had never in my life, you know, smoked cocaine.

I didn't even.

I didn't even know what that meant.

He goes, here, just breathe this in.

And so I breathed it in, and it was the most amazing feeling.

I'VE ever felt in my life.

And I.

And I was just like, oh, my God, I'm going to be okay.

So, not surprisingly, I became a daily crack smoker, which when you, you know, at the time I was 54.

Right, 53.

Turning 54.

You know, well respected my community on a school board.

You know, most people in my community don't know this about me.

I've.

I'm in the process of really just beginning to share it because I think the people I met in this journey also held positions of power and stature in the community.

We think of drug users as, you know, scarred up, skinny people under bridges.

And that's not the truth at all.

Some really amazingly fine people have other sides that are alarmingly fragile.

And I got very sucked right into that.

Was that like.

Is that another escape for you?

Was that something that, like, just pushed everything away for you?

Yes.

I felt that first year, all I could do was keep Gracie alive.

Like, seriously only worried about keeping Gracie alive.

Kenny was really sick and on dialysis.

We were so separate at the time of Molly's death that I didn't ask him anything and he didn't ask me anything.

You know, I slept downstairs with Gracie, he slept upstairs.

He went to dialysis and lived his life.

Got sicker and sicker and sicker.

I got Gracie to school.

I did what I needed to do in her life.

I went to the dance recitals, I got her to dance classes.

I went to the parent teacher conferences.

Like, I was able to do what I needed to do.

Survival mode.

Yeah.

Yes.

And I was able to work sort of part time.

I worked as a tutor.

So I was able to cobble together money to get the basic bills paid.

We had a lot of money given to us at the time of Molly's death, and then we settled a lawsuit.

So money became, you know, not quite so such an issue.

I'm lucky that way.

I mean, it's dead Molly money.

But it was money nonetheless, you know, but I spent from, you know, July of, well, May of 2016 until really two full years and then about six months really trying to extricate myself from it of.

Of really regular coke use.

And.

And it was.

I'm surprised I'm not dead.

Sometimes, I will say, when you're in the upper echelons of society and you're hanging around with people with money, your sources for such things are probably a bit safer than your average street dealer.

Although, I don't know, you know, I never.

I never even entered into that part.

But I do know that it utterly paralyzed me.

You know, if I could go back and do it differently, would I?

I don't know.

I.

I do know at the time.

I didn't know you needed to solve.

You needed something to like.

Yes.

Like a comfort blanket of some sort to just hug you.

Exactly, exactly.

And.

And so my.

You wouldn't recommend it to other people?

Yeah, yeah.

You would not recommend it, right?

No.

God, no.

God, no.

Yes.

That's a good thing.

Oh, God, no, no, no.

It's one of those things where you.

It's just when I would brag to my classes that I could quit drinking anytime I wanted, it's a blessing and a curse because I can also deny that I have an alcohol issue because, oh, I can quit and I can.

I never drank when I was pregnant.

I never drank when I was nursing.

You know, I, like, not a problem.

If there was a challenge at my gym and I signed up, I.

I didn't drink.

Like, I can quit anytime.

During these years where I was, you know, regularly using this powerfully anesthetic, calming substance.

If we went away, like, we went to Hawaii for a couple of weeks, went to Florida several times, I didn't even think about it.

I got on the plane, I wasn't like jonesing for it in Hawaii.

So it's like being home.

You just wanted to.

Yes.

The minute we got back into Concord, it was all I could think about.

So in the process of this, in the process of going from a successful public educator with a wonderful career and a great athletic career to once or twice a week at the most, bathing decimated, drug addicted mother of a dead kid, like overnight, you know, it was like, how did this happen to me?

So one of the other pieces that sort of happened about two years after Molly's death, exactly two years after, actually, as we settled that lawsuit.

And I had had this crazy dream shortly after Molly died, like weeks after she died, that I was supposed to have a baby.

And of course I think, okay, I'm mental.

You know, I'm.

I'm having all this, you know, I was.

I went through traumatic trauma induced menopause.

Like, I was still, you know, having my period every month and totally not in menopause at 53 when Molly died, or 52.

Yeah.

And then boom, that was it.

And so I thought, okay, I'm going through menopause, I'm freaking out, blah, blah, blah.

So I went to my doctor, had all this testing done, told him I was having this crazy dream that I was supposed to try to have a baby.

And he said, well, you know, I can't just fill you up with estrogen right now.

You're going to have to go to a.

To a IV IVF doctor, and you're too old to do it here.

He sent me to a doctor in Boston.

So I actually went to this doctor.

Oh, wow.

So you were pursuing this because of the dream?

Yes.

I just needed to follow through because the dream was persistent.

Like, I.

Oh, okay.

You know, it was happening and happening.

So then, you know, so I would, you know, you know, smoke more cracks, try to quiet it down.

Right.

Like, it was.

It was just ugly.

And so then I would step back.

This constant.

Oh, my God, I would never want to go back there.

It's really good for me to talk about this because it was just so difficult.

But long story short, I went through all the testing.

I went through.

I had a colonoscopy.

I had a mammogram.

I had a brain scan, a CAT scan.

I had blood work.

You know, I had a little inside of my uterus, biopsied, all of it.

And the doctor said to me, you, I would never know based on your test results that you're in your 50s.

So when you're ready, we'll absolutely help you have a baby.

So.

But I hadn't settled a lawsuit yet.

I was still actively addicted to drugs.

I was still drinking like a fish.

And we didn't have the money at the time.

I was.

We were still really.

Just still really hobbled by Molly's death.

So I just said, all right, stop with the dreams.

Enough, enough, enough.

And they did.

They went away.

So we settled the lawsuit.

And it wasn't two weeks after that the dream came back.

I was sitting having coffee on the porch, and I said to Kenny, hey, guess what dream I had last night?

He's like, the baby dream.

And I'm like, yeah, no kidding.

So another piece of the lawsuit settling.

It was like hearing Molly's never going to wake up all over again.

For two years, all I did was talk to people about alive Molly and what had gone wrong and what they did wrong and how they didn't save her and how they should have saved her and how her death.

But in my mind, the Molly I'm talking about is still alive.

So then we settle the lawsuit, get a check, and it's like, oh, my God, she's never coming back.

Like.

Like, she's.

She's dead.

So it was.

It was.

And everyone I know, all other parents that I've talked to that have gone through the medical Malpractice piece say the same thing, really?

That it buys you.

It buys you time to talk about your child, you know, and bring them up and bring them up, and then, boom, it's over.

So.

So it was at that time that I'm like, all right, I have to go off all this.

I got to go off all this medicine.

I have to.

And all these drugs, and I'm on all these.

I mean, I was on Xanax and Lorazepam and Lamictal, you know, and plus the drinking and the smoking and, like, why.

I don't know why I'm not drooling in a rag right now.

I truly don't.

I.

Did the people around you notice?

No.

Nobody knew.

Not.

Not one person.

Nobody.

Just the person that I partied with.

That was it.

Nobody else.

And they told nobody.

And even talking to them now, they're like, no, you seemed.

Yeah.

No, they don't know.

When I share with people how.

What I was doing at that time, they look at me like.

Like, I finally sat down and told Kenny, and he's like, what.

How did I.

You were here.

I said I'd leave the house at 11 at night, and I'd get home at 5 in the morning, and you guys were all asleep.

I'd been up all night, and then I'd be up all day, and that was, you know, four or five nights a week.

It was a lot.

It was all the time.

I don't know.

I mean.

Yeah.

I don't know how you got away with it.

Yeah.

Like, people I know.

That's power.

That's like power of human spirit right there.

Yeah.

Yep.

Yep.

And so.

And.

And I was also still.

I still never stopped going to CrossFit.

I started bringing Gracie to CrossFit, so I.

I couldn't.

I didn't work out with any intensity.

I went through the motions completely.

Everything made me cry.

So I couldn't listen to music in the car, so I just would leave my seatbelt unbuckled so that it would be the beep.

The beeping noise.

Oh, wow.

Interesting.

I went for drives a lot in my car, and I would scream.

I would scream until my eyes were bloodshot and my voice was gone.

It was just a way to get.

Just to get it all out.

And then I medicated myself.

So when I decided that I was going to try to have this baby, that we'd settled the lawsuit, I needed to go off all this medicine.

She's never coming back.

Just swallow it, Barbara.

She's not coming back.

That was when I started to have a real shift in who I was because I wasn't functioning in panic anymore.

I wasn't, I wasn't.

I was making concerted efforts to.

So I, I had to sit with my doctor and chart out all the medicine I was on.

It took me four months to safely stop taking everything I was taking.

We looked at the pills.

Yeah.

And then I, and then I, of course, had to be honest and say, look, I'm also doing this, you know, talking about the coke.

And she said, okay, so that would be a really smart thing to stop.

Like cold turkey.

It's not going to hurt you to stop that.

Cold turkey, like.

Okay.

So that was essentially, that was essentially what got me to stop that.

Did you.

Do you think that, like, you want that new version of you, if you will, was because there was like a purpose now?

It was like a different purpose to chase?

Absolutely, yeah.

Absolutely.

That it wasn't.

And that even though I, I had a corner turn, I wasn't forgetting about her or leaving her behind.

I now had the means to bring her along.

Her meaning, Molly.

Yeah.

And I, and I, I, I just need to follow through on this dream.

I didn't really understand it.

So in the process of going off all the medicines, I have a nerve condition called trigeminal neuralgia.

So you have a nerve that runs on the side of your face, so it makes you tear, makes you snot, makes you drool.

Dental trauma can trigger it in.

It continues to fire, just like, like a phantom pain kind of thing.

So I got it in my, in this, in the bottom part of it.

So for like four years, I felt like I had a toothache all the time.

I mean, of course it happens more to women than men.

The ER and my doctors thought I was just looking for drugs, you know, and this was before I was the actual drug addict.

It was excruciating pain.

When it was finally diagnosed, they put you on anti seizure medicine, Tegretol, topramate.

I was on Neurontin, which is Gabapentin.

It's a nerve block.

All of those things brought the pain down.

But you can't grow a baby when you're on 2 full milligrams of Xanax a day, you know, Lorazepam, Lamictal or Eklonapan or whatever.

Like all of those plus seizure, anti seizure meds.

I had to go off all of that.

So it took about three months.

All of August, September, four months.

So as I, as I lessened the medicine from my mouth, the Pain was excruciating.

So I found a doctor that can perform a surgery that repairs trigeminal neuralgia.

He's in New York City.

I sent him an email.

This is who I am.

This is what I'm trying to do.

Would you be willing, you know, for me to come and you'd fix my mouth?

And he goes, absolutely.

Get this MRI with contrast.

So I get the MRI with contrast, and I'm sitting at the kitchen table about two hours after the mri, and my phone rings and it's my local neurologist office.

And I'm thinking, okay, there's never good news when you have a phone call from your neurologist two hours after a scan.

So lo and behold, I have a, like an orange sized tumor in my brain, which, had I known that was in there when Molly was dying, I certainly could have fought for her.

That was my first thought.

Are you kidding me?

You know, it's Gracie's senior year.

Like, this poor child, you know, her dad's on dialysis now I have a brain tumor, her sister's dead.

Like, what is this?

You know, it was just.

But instead of going into that absolute, utter panic mode, there was a piece of me.

It was a huge shift after the lawsuit settlement.

And I'm just like, maybe this is the whole reason I had these dreams, is to find this brain tumor.

Because I would never have gone off the medicine.

I wouldn't have.

I don't know what would have happened to me, but I wouldn't have found the tumor.

And the way that it sat, it was putting a lot of pressure on the carotid artery.

And my doctor said you would have had a stroke.

That would have been a stroke sooner than later.

That could have been pretty damaging.

So I go from having trigeminal neuralgia surgery to brains brain tumor removal.

And they got it out.

And then a few months later, I had the.

My nerve damage thing fixed.

So two craniotomies in three months.

So I.

So I start to think, okay, okay, I need to open my eyes, I need to pay attention, I need to slow down, and you stop taking care of everybody.

I mean, this was sort of being hobbled in a good way, you know, Like Molly's death hobbled me in the worst possible ways.

This utter physical, okay, I give in.

I give up.

You win.

You know, I spent four months in my living room because I couldn't walk up and downstairs easily.

I had a head full of liquid is what it felt like.

I had a daughter who was a senior in high School that just wanted to be happy, and I had my sick husband, so.

But I never once.

I really never went back into that place where I couldn't function.

I never had a desire to get high.

You know, Like, I.

It was.

It was a pretty amazing shift.

Shortly after that, one of my Molly's best friends, we found out she was on life support.

Right around the same time frame.

End of April, beginning of May.

They danced together.

This girl Rachel danced in Molly's funeral.

Molly had, like, a.

We had, like, a variety show for her.

It was the opening number that this girl Rachel was in.

So, of course, Kenny and I dove into action.

You know, I'm bald.

I have, like, bruise.

I look like hell because I've had my head cut open.

So we helped this family get through what they ended up doing, which is taking their daughter off life support three years and a day after we took Molly off life support.

So in the process of talking to them, we found out that Kenny had the same blood type as their daughter Rachel.

And so in this ridiculous moment, they gave Kenny Rachel's kidney.

So Kenny got a kidney from a girl that danced in his daughter's funeral.

Like, that's.

That is our connection.

So Molly dies.

My relationship with Roy disappears.

I fall apart.

I become a drug addict.

We settle a lawsuit.

I figure it out, okay, I can do this.

I can do this.

I stop all the drugs.

I go to fix my face.

I have a brain tumor.

Kenny's gonna die.

He's so sick.

Somebody else's daughter dies.

Kenny gets a kidney.

Like, do you see the good, the bad, the good, the bad, the good, the bad?

Like, it's this never ending sort of journey.

So through all of this, though, I had.

I just.

I can't say I had clarity, Matt, because there was nothing clear inside my head, but I really was able to just sort of trudge along in an increasingly positive way.

Like, it.

Like everything was just sort of okay.

It all continued to be okay.

Gracie got to be good friends with Rachel's younger sister, Allie.

They really.

They were each other's lost sister for a while.

It was an incredible connection.

And my doctor wrote off and said, sure, go ahead and try to have this baby.

And so, like, six months after.

Yeah, five months after my second craniotomy, we did our first round of ivf, which was not successful, but I was.

So I was just okay with it.

Like, you know what?

Maybe it wasn't about a baby after all.

Like, maybe the whole point of this was for me to find these tumors and for Us to find and connect with Rachel's family and for all of this to happen.

But my doctor, this wacky Italian guy named Vito Cardoni.

So, such a great guy.

Stoneham.

Stoneham, Mass.

So not too far from Lawrence.

He was like, no, no, no.

Come back.

I want to.

You.

You.

You have this amazing physical reality.

I want very much to try again.

If you'd like to try again.

I'm like, sure, of course.

And so we did.

We tried again.

Covid came, and so it put it off a bit.

And then I got pregnant with Jack.

And so that was another one of those moments where rather than look like everything that happens to me or happens to my body, you know, because it was my body that was abused.

It was my body that I put drugs into.

It was my body that grew my babies.

It was my body that lost Molly.

I lost my first child at 25 weeks.

So it was easy for me to hate myself, easy for me to put drugs into myself, easy for me to turn all that anguish inward.

But all of these things just sort of turn it around for me.

Like, okay, so maybe I'm just a vehicle here for something that I'm supposed to do that maybe has nothing to do with me at all.

And I got pregnant with Jack, and that pregnancy was easily my best of the four pregnancies, the easiest, the healthiest.

I gained the least amount of weight.

I felt the best.

I worked out the most.

You were the oldest.

I was the oldest, yeah.

And.

And so.

So I have this child now.

And, you know, people always ask, how do you do it?

And I will have to say it's pretty fucking hard because I'm tired all the time.

But.

But I also know that I feel like I have a candle.

Like Jack is just like a candle he doesn't have.

It's not his job to be my candle.

I don't look to him to light my way.

But I will say, being at this phase of my life, Jack has just calmed it all down.

He's.

He's given me a focus that doesn't take me away from anything else, but makes everything else easier to deal with, you know, and he's a feisty, obnoxious, articulate, too smart for his own good.

Where does he likes to sleep?

Where could he get that?

No, I mean, but I think that, you know, it's such a.

This is the power of story.

Because so many parts of your life story should have taken you out, you know, in some way.

And here you are ending.

Not ending, but ending this conversation with a Story of hope, of a.

Of moving forward, of creating life, and also building a new version of your life.

Not forgetting Molly, but bringing her along.

Yes.

For the ride and having her memory through all the things that.

That Gracie's doing and then Jack is doing.

I mean, it just.

It feels like so many times if we heard just little segments of your life, we'd be just like, discount it.

We would just be like, well, there goes that one, you know, like, there goes Barb on that one there, you know, and, like.

And then just there's no hope.

But yet somehow you push through all of these moments.

Right.

And then you have this conversation where people are like, oh, I couldn't have done that.

But I think we could.

Yes.

Yes.

You know, I think that shows us that we can.

People will.

And I will say, before Molly's death, the number of times I said I could not handle losing Molly or Gracie, I could not handle child loss.

You know, I lost baby Gordy at 25 weeks gestation, and that was devastating.

But I never got to know that baby.

It was an unknowable essence in my belly, and it was devastating.

But I.

But I dealt with it.

Okay.

Because there wasn't 13 years to have somebody every day in your life.

And I can't say that I've done it well either.

I've had some pretty ugly moments and some pretty devastating experiences.

However, I think you're right.

All of us have the capacity to do it.

We.

Some may do it easier than others, and some may do it better or worse than others or differently than others, but the human spirit's pretty amazing is what I.

What I sort of find out.

Yeah.

And I don't know if you feel this way about some of these tragic moments and the decisions that you made because of those.

Do you think.

Do you look at them as.

Them getting you to this version of you and seeing weird silver linings in some of those?

Like whether that was the drug addiction or the alcohol or whatever it might have been.

Yes, I do.

And the main reason I do is because I've come to learn that sometimes we try to process our lives completely backwards.

I can't erase child abuse.

It happened.

I can't get unabused.

All I can do is is work on and manage and alter how I deal and cope with the abuse and how it affects me.

And by both letting it affect me the way it needs to, and then by figuring out ways to own how it affects me so that I'm in control of that piece so I can't Undead Molly.

And I think it takes a long time for mothers to get to the point where they really realize they cannot alive their children.

So I don't need to relive her death.

I need to look at how her death has affected me.

And that's where my story is.

So how her death affected me.

Well, for two years I was a drug addict.

Would I like to go back and undo the drug?

Sure.

Except that I know there's huge pieces of me that wouldn't be me if I hadn't put that pipe to my mouth all those times.

I wouldn't be me.

And so just, you know, in my self loathing times, I'll be like, well, sure took you a lot to finally learn the lesson.

And then I realized, Barbara, there's no lesson.

I'm not learning a lesson.

Not in the traditional sense.

Like you did something wrong.

If you learned your lesson more.

Like everything is a lesson.

Like, you know, like you were coping.

Yeah, right, exactly.

I mean, you didn't choose the healthiest way, but you were coping.

And that was all you knew how to do because that was what was available to you at the time.

It was the easiest route.

You know, like, I just feel like sometimes we shame ourselves for the things that we were just doing to protect ourselves, to keep going.

Because had you not done that well.

Yeah, I don't know.

Right, right.

You could have done something worse.

What?

That other path, you know, two roads diverged in the yellow wood, Right.

So you think, oh, what if I taken the other path?

There could have been a cliff at the end of that other path.

There could have been a lion waiting.

There could, you know.

Exactly, right?

Yeah, exactly.

And I think that's the, and I go back to it.

It's like the importance of us sharing our stories like this because these are not the stories that you see on social media.

These are like, these are the real stories.

These are the things that you realize, okay, we're going to make mistakes.

We're going to make, we're going to do things in our lives that we maybe regret someday, but we did it.

And you know, like, we have to move through it and we have to, you know, make some kind of like, comfort in the fact that it happened.

And then we move forward and we learn from it whether we need to or not.

So I, you know, I thank you for being so open and so candid about your story because there's people listening that will hear and go, I did that too.

And yes, I'm not the only God.

I'm not the only one.

Yep, exactly.

Yeah.

You know, I love.

I know we could talk for hours about this, so thank you, everyone, for listening.

We're a little longer today, but wondering if this version of Barb, this.

This moving forward with purpose.

You've got Jack, you've got this candle, you've got seemingly more healthy approach to things and to healing yourself.

If you could go back to Barb sitting in that chapel in the hospital, is there anything that you would want to say to.

To that version of you about this journey that was going to unfold after the loss of Molly?

Yeah.

You know what I would say?

I would say, give it time, sweet Barb, and don't judge yourself for the choices you make.

You're going to do what you need to do, and you will get to another side.

There is no the other side, but there is another side.

And you'll get there, and it will be as okay as it can be.

And I think I would comfort her and I would give her permission to fuck up in every possible way because.

Because that.

Find that tree.

Keep screaming at that tree.

You know, like, do the things that you need to.

To get through this.

And.

And you will find a new version of this.

At the same time, there isn't a day goes by that.

That I don't beg Molly to come back.

Of course.

You know, it's just that dichotomy, like, please come back.

Please come back.

That's always gonna.

Yeah, you want your.

Who doesn't?

Who doesn't?

You know, these relationships that are supposed to be lifelong, when they aren't, you miss them forever.

You don't miss any of that?

No, I can't imagine.

And I don't think that'll ever stop for you.

And I don't think it should.

I mean, I think that's always going to be a what if a.

I miss you.

I.

No matter how long it's been, you know, at this point, it's been 35 years since my mom died.

I.

Very few memories to hold onto, and I don't remember many of them, but I'd love to have a conversation with her, you know, and, like, could I have her on the Life Shift podcast?

That would be really cool.

Yeah.

You know, but I'd love to, but.

But then you wouldn't have ever met me, right?

You know, we would have never had this conversation had that not happened.

I would not be this version of me had I not struggled grieving her for two decades and then finally figuring it out, you know, like, all the things I Look back on, I'm like, that's just my journey, you know, and that's how I become me.

And who knows what's ahead?

I might make some really dumb decisions ahead of me and.

Oh, you will be fantastic.

Exactly.

So thank you so much for just sharing your story in this way.

Thank you for having me.

It means a lot to me.

It really does.

If people want to listen to your podcast, check out your book, read your blog that you don't promote, what's the best way to, like, get in your orbit and find you?

Yep, that's so the best way.

So everything.

I have a website called A Thousand Tiny Steps.

And it's kind of my life, you know, mantra that you just take that first little step.

It takes a thousand to get there, so don't stress about one or two.

So my website and podcast and blog is all called A Thousand Tiny Steps.

And then I also have a foundation page, the Molly B.

Foundation, in honor of Molly.

So those two websites are sort of linked, hooked together.

And then on social media, I'm just Barb Higgins.

So on Facebook, I'm Barb Higgins, and my Instagram is Barb444.

And all of those areas will connect you to all the other areas.

Awesome.

Your book is on your site, I'm assuming?

Yeah, it's on both.

Yep, yep.

Okay, perfect.

Well, again, thank you.

If you're listening now and something resonated with you, please reach out to Barb.

Connect with Barb.

Tell her your story.

Tell her how it connected to you.

Maybe someone in your life needs to hear this story, maybe share this episode with them.

We would love for you to do that and spread the word.

I think the thing, one goal that we both kind of share here is that people don't feel alone in their circumstances, you know?

So thank you for being a part of this.

Thank you for listening.

And with that, I'm going to say goodbye and I'll be back next week with a brand new episode.

Thanks again, Barb.

Thank you, Matt.

For more information, please visit www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com.