Two weeks after we moved into this house, he got diagnosed with a very aggressive brain cancer. My whole world had imploded, and that was only like a year and a half after Bob had died, and then her tumor had come back. I can’t believe this is my life. This episode is our 100th episode of the Shit Happy Podcast, and also the launch of our brand new YouTube channel. My guest, Becky Livingstone, is someone I interviewed 14 years ago for another project, and her story has never left me, so it seemed the perfect choice for today. Hello, hello, I’m in- I was alone and living alone with these two girls, happily. And then when Rachel was 15, she had a grand mal seizure at school, and they didn’t really know what it was. It turned out that it was a brain tumor. Then what happened, we were going through all this one surgery, another surgery stuff with Rachel, and life was pretty good, and she was doing okay. And well, when did Rachel get diagnosed? 2002. So two years later, I met Bob, and we fell in love, and it was just wonderful. Both my girls loved him too. Anyway, so we went out for a while, and then he moved in with me, and then we lived together for a year. We got engaged. We bought a house. And two weeks after we moved into this house He got diagnosed with a very aggressive brain cancer, and he died six months later. Must have seemed like you don’t get hit twice by lightning. Must have seemed incredibly unfair. Totally. Couldn’t believe it. Yeah. I thought, “I can’t believe this is my life.” It felt like my whole world had imploded because it was a future. That was… It was a future. It was this budding future, this new beginning, and then it was just, boom, snuffed out just like that. Yeah. Tell me about Bob. What sort of guy was he? He was brilliant. He was just great. Really charismatic, really lovely. Sometimes think of him as my, as my little Buddha, and he was a big guy, 6’2″, but he was so wise. He really… You know when sometimes you hear people say they, they come into your life for a reason or a season or something, which is a bit, mm. But when I look back on it, I think he really came into my life for a reason. He helped me see things about myself that I certainly couldn’t see about myself, and things that I didn’t want to see about myself often. Yeah. Yeah. So- What were the lessons? I remember 14 years ago when we discussed, Bob spoke then about the lessons that he taught you. Mm-hmm. Yeah, there were so many. At his little celebration of life, read them all. But the ones that really stick with me were, whatever choice you make is the right one. So you th- imagine just, like, how calming that is when you’re there savoring, “Oh, no. Should I do this? Should I do this?” And I could think of that, and Bob would say, “Hey, Bet, whatever choice you make is the right one.” And it’s like a breath of fresh air, you know? Yeah. Mm. I remember you saying something about that he lived very much in the present. You lived a lot more in the future. Yeah, so true. He taught me- Yeah … so much about not making assumptions. I remember often I would say, “Yeah, but if that had happened, then that’s gonna happen.” But and he’d be like, “Whoa. Who…” Like, almost like, “Who do you think you are? You know the future, do you?” And- … I wanted to say, “Well, yes, I sort of know that if this happened, this’ll hap-” And he really called me on that, and it r- has really helped me hugely in not going down a path- in which I have no idea what’s going to happen. And so I’m very, very, very, very grateful for, for him saying that to me. It’s a little bit like he did come along to prepare you. Yeah, I know. I know. Well, here’s another thing he said. So imagine I’m a single mum. I’ve got these two teenage girls, a 15-year-old, a 13-year-old, Rachel, who’s had now a brain tumor, right, for the last two years and all that. And my younger daughter was a– had a really difficult time through her teenage years. And I was just plowing through, and I was so strong, and I was just, ah. And this man came to me to make me vulnerable, because I couldn’t let myself be vulnerable because I had to be so strong to get through life. And I remember one day going to work, probably in a bit of a huff and a rush kind of a thing, and he said to me, “You know, Bec, to be constantly strong is a weakness.” Hmm. And I, I won’t tell you what I wanted to say in that moment, but it wasn’t good. Tell me what you did- I was telling him, “You know what?” But man, I say that to other people. And now we’re talking, it’s been 20 years this year that Bob died, and I still say that. Yeah. I say it to my daughter, my living daughter, when she’s trying to hold it all together. Mm-hmm. It’s so much with her. And I just recently I said to her, “You know, to be…” Bob would say, and of course she loved Bob, right? So it carries a whole different meaning because it’s come from Bob. You know, to be constantly strong is a weakness. And I just thought that was so insightful, so wise. It is. Yeah, I love that. Mm-hmm. I don’t think I’ve ever heard it put like that either. Tell me about the relationship he had with your daughters. They were just really happy for me. They were just so happy. He was such a likable man, and he did… I remember him saying things like, “This is heaven on earth right here, right now. We don’t need to be going anywhere doing this, doing this, doing… This is it. This is all we’ve got in the moment.” And that was the sort of language that I’d used with my girls, the readings of Pema Chodron, lots of things like that. So they must have really seen that there was a resonance there and this is this great connection. He was cheeky, he was fun. Mm-hmm. He liked to cook. Mm-hmm. Which was lovely. But, I mean, I think your kids always want to see you happy, right? And they saw me really happy. And- Mm. Yeah, they just, yeah, they really, really liked him. Mm. I think they were absolutely devastated for me when he died. Yeah. I, yeah. Charlotte had moved away at this point. She was at university. But Rachel was living… I mean, we bought this house, Rachel, Bob, and I, and four and a half years later, there was only me living in that house. Yeah. So Bob died two, well, six months pretty much after you moved in. That’s right. Very rapidly after he was- Yeah … diagnosed. You’re back to single again, and you have in your care a daughter who is starting to get sicker. Well, actually, she was actually getting better, and she was doing great. She was traveling. She– We had to pause her radiation when the doctors gave her the all clear. She went off- Mm … to New Zealand for four months, Australia, back to Australia for a month. She was just doing great. And then- Mm … suddenly she wasn’t, and she was getting some words mixed up, and I was like, “Oh my gosh, what’s going on?” And that was only, like, a year and a half after Bob had died, and then her tumor had come back, and they gave her an oral chemotherapy drug, because with a brain tumor you don’t use regular chemotherapy, you– ’cause of the blood-brain barrier. And it, and it worked really well for a few months, and then it just stopped, and then they put her on something else, and something else, and something else. And yeah, and it finally took her life. So after Bob died- Mm … okay, you’ve got grieving. What was that process like? I know you got a lot of help from the community in the way of meals and support. What else helped during that time, and then how did that equip you for Rachel’s death? Mm, good question. I really fell apart actually after Bob died. Once he’d been diagnosed, I just quit my job to look after him for six months, and then I took a whole year off work. ’cause I couldn’t really get out of bed. Mm-hmm. I, I slept a lot. I cried a lot. I was really numb. I did go to see a friend who lived in Nova Scotia whose husband had died, and I thought she might be a good person to go and visit because she’d known that experience, and it was. And I did a little bit of work in the house. I painted. It was a really not great house. Bob was a builder, and he was gonna do a huge reno on it, so I made it sort of passable. I did end up going back to England after about seven, eight months, ’cause I had not been back for 13 years. Mm. And when I came, that was a bit of a turning point. When I came back from England, I decided that I really had to sort of get myself together, and I did a few things. I got another dog, because when you have a dog, you have to walk, and I needed a reason to move my body every day. I started to dance. It’s called Surrock Dance. I think you have it in Australia, too. Oh, and then I started to usher. I was a, an usher at a local theater, so that I would get out and meet people and that kind of thing. So those three things really helped me. Bob was in a hospice for the last month of his life, and I remember this wonderful woman. I used to go into the hospice every day. I’d get into bed with Bob. We’d just snuggle. I remember her one day, she said to me, “What are you doing to take care of yourself?” And I remember being quite horrified, and I said, “What am I doing? He’s about to die. I’m doing nothing for myself. Very soon he’s not gonna…” And she said something to me. She said, “To take really good care of somebody else, you need to take care of yourself first so that you have more to give.” Well, it didn’t go over very well at that point. I remember thinking, “Oh, him.” But let me tell you, Toni, when Rachel got really poorly, and she only got poorly in probably the last three or four months of her life. Honestly, she was absolutely fine before that. I thought of those words of Carol’s, and I thought, “You know what? This is a whole different thing now. This is my daughter. She’s living at home, and I have got to take care of myself if we’re gonna get through this together.” What did you do to take care of yourself then? Ah. Well, I went to my yoga every week without fail, sometimes crying quietly as we were doing Shavasana, tears. But I went ’cause I knew I had to. I went walking in the woods. I had a place up near North Vancouver that was my go-to place, and I had a friend who’d come pick me up, say, “Come on, let’s go,” always knowing I could only ever go when the palliative care workers were at the home. Again, meals again, quietly left on the doorstep. Told no ringing the doorbell. Her dad moved into this house, so because we were having to give her injections every four hours around the clock. So we would do that together. Yeah. It was pretty intense, but huge. And then those were the kinds of things. That’s all I needed to get really good walks in nature, and to know that I had the love and support of a whole bunch of people at work. And then of course, a service like all these palliative care workers that could come in Sometimes you’d want to just go, “Ah, go away, go away.” And other times you’d be like, “I’m so glad you’re here. Thank you, thank you.” Right? Yeah. Yeah, it would be a mixed relationship because part of you would want that time just for yourselves, and part of you would be like, “Help me.” That’s right. In fact, interesting because I remember sometimes I didn’t even want her dad in the house. Mm. Because she lived with me, and I’d lived with her all this time, and now we’re coming to the end of her life, and I just wanted more of her and me. Mm. Yeah. Yeah. No, he did go off to work, and then he’d come, he’d come back to the house. But yeah, there’s so many weird things that are going on in that time, right? It’s such a fragile, precious time. Mm. Um, but yeah. Anyway, I think, I think those things help. So yes, that bit from learning that about Bob and this lady Carol at the hospice, that taking that- Mm … and that when Bob was dy- it was very much just me and the hospice. But when Rachel was dying, because there was me and there was her dad, and Charlotte came back from university, and I did the walking, and I had the yoga practice, I felt much more buoyed. And I had palliative care workers. Mm. There was way more people involved at the end of Rachel’s life. Tell us about what Rachel was like. Oh, she was just… Oh, now I think I might cry now. But anyway. It’s okay. Well, she was just a shining light. She was just such an easygoing, happy kid. She had this fabulous laugh, and when she laughed, she’d sort of throw her head back and her eyes would close. It was a full body laugh. Very, very much genuine kind of thing. And she loved to laugh, and I loved that she wanted to travel. You know, I was a, I’m a bit off a chip off the block of my dad because he was a huge, avid traveler. And, and Rachel, of my two daughters, Rachel was very much that, too. So it was wonderful that, I mean, she died when she was 23, and in those years she got so much traveling in, and that’s what she wanted to do. Yeah. Yeah. She had a book, didn’t she? She did. Yeah. She did. And it’s right there on my bookcase over there, and it’s called Unforgettable Places to See Before You Die. And I bought her that book for a Christmas a couple of years before she died, and she loved it, and she starred all these places that she’d already been to in the book. And in the final weeks of her life, now in the final month of her life, I took a leave from work to take care of her now because it’s got… Yeah. And I remember she’s lying in, it was hospital bed she had in our house, and I took that book off the bookcase and I said to her, “Do you want to look at this?” And she nodded, ’cause she couldn’t really speak very much ’cause that’s right where her brain tumor- And I even then doing that thought, is this cruel? Is this just like cruel? But opening a book so that she could see not just where she’d been, but where she was never going to see, right? Yeah. And ’cause I, I remember that when she first got the book, she’d seen a picture of the Taj Mahal and she said, “One day I’m gonna go there.” And that’s why after about a year and a half after she died, when I ended up going on this 26-month journey, leaving her ashes around the world, I knew I wanted to go to India and that I had to find a way to get to Agra, which is where the Taj Mahal is, and I had to find a way to put her ashes in so that I could come home and I could put a star in that book. Becky, on Thursday, I’m gonna make the whole interview about this journey you took with your daughter. Okay. So we’re gonna get into depth about that later. For now, though, you did this, then you decided to write a book about it. Tell, tell me- Mm … the whole journey. What’s, what, where did the book idea come from? How did you get- Yeah … a publisher? Yeah. Mm-hmm. Well, yeah, when I was, when I was on this journey, I thought to myself, I’m gonna write a book, and I’m gonna call it Joyful Mourning, and I’m going to… It’s gonna be all about what people have done to help them move through this time of grief. Was up in the Kootenays, which is actually where I was living before I moved back down to Vancouver. Had the friend up there, she’s a writing friend, and we were talking and I was saying I was gonna write this book, and she said, “You need to write a memoir.” And I said, “I can’t do that. I have no idea. Where do you start?” And she said to me, “No, you know what? Anybody could write the other book,” because they could just sit down and do the research. But she said, “Only you can write a book about where you went and why you left her ashes where you left them. And that’s an interesting story, and that’s a story that needs to be told.” And as she said that, I was just… I remember this feeling going, “She’s absolutely right.” Mm. Only I can write that story. And slowly but surely it came together. So I finished this journey with Rachel’s Ashes in 2013, and I wrote and I wrote and I wrote, and then… So it was published in September 2018. And how did it do? It did great. I was– And you know what, Toni? I still get people now who contact me. In fact, I’ve got a Facebook group called Vital Travel Journeys for Women 55 Plus, and I’m amazed at the number of women that tell me, “I read your book.” Wow. And then they’ll tell me their grief story, right? Wow. I, in fact, I was– I’ve just been teaching this course at our local university, Simon Fraser University, on travel and transitions, and I read part of A Three, ’cause we were talking about traveling light and all that kind of stuff, and what we have to let go of. And I thought, I’ll take some of the copies of my book in case somebody wants to buy them. I sold all of them. Well, anyway, it’s, it’s, it’s been marvelous. You think- Yeah … so it’s this far on and it’s still got a life. I was always aware, I think, that how important storytelling was, but I don’t think I was as aware as I am having now being around 100 episodes into this podcast- Yeah. Right … how healing and wonderful it is for the storyteller, and necessary it is to tell your story. Mm-hmm. It’s something incredibly powerful- Mm-hmm … about telling your story, isn’t it? It, it, it is so true. I am incredibly grateful what Bob taught me and what Rachel taught me. And, and just so you know, Bob rarely features in this book. My mentor said to me, “This has to be a book about Rachel.” Yes. And it’s a book about Rachel’s ashes, so Bob comes in a little bit, but it was like, “No.” But I totally understood that it had to just have that central theme. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now, when I went to talk to you, it was because- Mm-hmm … I had heard about your unusually grateful response to all of this, how you were able to incorporate gratitude as one of the ways to grieve, and I hadn’t really come across that before. So seems on the outside that when you have just met the love of your life and moved into this wonderful house, and he’s taken, snatched from you and the future’s gone, and then it happens again just years later almost, that doesn’t seem something that you could be grateful for. Can you tell me how gratitude works here? Well, first of all, I have to say I certainly wasn’t feeling grateful when any of that stuff was happening. Yeah. Well, that’s not completely true. The gratitude I felt for both of them when they died was that they were no longer struggling in a state of health that only had one ending. And so that release for both of them, I was grateful for. But beyond that, nothing else. Then to remember, well, you… Bob really wanted me to go on and live my life very, very much fully. And to have that gift was incredible because I think about him, and I thought about him on that journey, and I thought he’d be so happy for me that I am stepping up, and I’ve followed my heart, and I’ve done this really courageous thing. Yeah. And of course, for Ra- with Rachel, because she was a traveler and because her dad and I in the, at the end of her life, I mean, she couldn’t speak, but my– her dad said, “How about your mum and I take your ashes with us whenever we go traveling?” And she nodded yes. Hmm. Which is all really I needed. Hmm. Because when… The, the words of the dying carry a very special weight, you know? And when, it was about 18 months after she died and I was not doing well at all, I just, I was really having a hard time. And I thought, “I’m gonna leave this all behind and I’m just gonna do this.” And to be able to honor that wish that she had to keep traveling was huge. It was the driver behind everything. And all work was, was finding places that I thought she would think is funny or exciting or interesting or something. And I would talk to her, right? I would talk to her and have that guidance from her. And we’re probably getting a bit off topic ’cause this is more about my journey. The gratitude, I think what happened is I felt really grateful for the sense of aliveness that I had when I was on that journey that I never would have had if I carried on doing the same old, same old. And I think both of them, they changed me so much, right? I’m more compassionate, I’m more empathetic, I’m kinder. I’m kinder on myself and on other people. I’m much more courageous and more bold, and only that those things only happened because they’re no longer around. And I remember when I was house-sitting in Tasmania I felt joy, and I could not believe that I felt joyful. And I remember almost thinking, “Well, that can’t be possible. How can you be joyful?” And could my… Could I allow myself to feel joyful? Because they’re dead, and I’m not. But that, the joy in my aliveness was very, very much connected to them wanting me to have a full life, the best life I could. And, you know, it’s kind of like a pregnant woman eating for two. It was like I have to like all this, and I have to live my life so much more for them, right? For them, yeah. So in a way, I’m grateful for that point of view. The other thing I th- that came up for me was that, you know, grief and gratitude are so closely linked. I think grief diminishes as gratitude increases. And life is so fragile, right? You know, what happened to me on that journey was I just came to realize that being grateful for what I have is such a strong, is such a strong force. It’s a force. It, it, you know what I mean? I can’t even think of a word than that, really. And I think even, even when I left her ashes where I left them, I’m now looking in a completely focused way, and I’m hearing, and my senses are much more piqued. Things that would’ve passed me by in previous years all of a sudden slowed me right down, and it made me live in the moment. This was Baba with me again, right? Yes. Yeah. This is it, right here, right now. Don’t think about tomorrow. Don’t do… You know, just be here now. And of course, leaving my daughter somewhere, talk about being in the now. Yep. You can’t be anywhere else. So yeah, hugely grateful for that recognition of beauty- Yeah that’s all around us. That’s a grounding and extreme gratitude. Yeah. I remember you saying in the interview we did in 2012- Mm … that kind of gratitude began a little bit when Rachel was first diagnosed because suddenly there was a, “Will this be my last Mother’s Day?” Well, you know, th- this sense that, oh, the to- clock is ticking- Mm let’s make the most of it, and how that changed your relationship and things. Do you remember that? Well, I remember that Mother’s Day, Toni. I do remember that. And that was right around the time she got her diagnosis, and I just thought… See, that’s what happens. I think even if whether we get the diagnosis or somebody we love gets the diagnosis, time shifts, period. I mean, well, how can we keep living the way we lived before once something has rung an alarm on such a huge stage? It– And that’s a good thing. Yeah. And I often wonder, do we need to have these massive wake-up calls for us to really pay attention in the way that we need to pay attention? I certainly wasn’t paying attention like I did after Rachel got sick Yeah. I think that’s what drew me into the work I do now, was the realization of how incredible it is when your life gets wiped out in a way, and you learn about gratitude. And for me, gratitude was so life-changing that now I– all I wanna do is tell people about it so that they can practice it and get everything out of their life before the big thing hits. You know, so that, so we don’t have to wait that long. Mm-hmm. That we can understand the here, the now. This is literally like I’m lying in bed with my husband yesterday morning, cuddling him, thinking, “It doesn’t get better than this.” Absolutely. Yeah, I mean… And no matter– We all know, no matter what happens in life, it’s not the what happens, it’s the way you meet it. So I try very much to live a life which calls me wherever I can. And I live a very minimal life as a result, ’cause I’m not about getting the money and all the rest of it. I just really want to go where I feel, well, where I feel right, where I think Rachel would be happy, where Bob would be happy with the choices that I’ve made. Because it’s like you said, you know, this whole thing about you lying in bed cuddling your husband- Mm. … it’s a beautiful, the thing, that recognition, ’cause we just don’t know how long we’ve got. There’s a great quote in a book I read, Rachel Tusk is the author And it’s something like, we’re all dying, but only the lucky ones know it. Yes. Yeah. I know. And I think that’s one of the few gifts old age gives you. Mm. Um, there’s not a lot of fun in the body falling apart and the mind diminishing. But there is a lot that it has to give you in terms of the, the clock’s … the time’s shorter, and so what is important is much more obvious. Totally. Yeah. And that is one good thing about it, is like- Mm-hmm … w- now, Phil and I have been together 48 years, and I don’t take any weeks for granted. Right. Yeah. Now, you have launched into a new career. I have. Yes. Oh, wow. I have. Yeah. Look, we get to a certain age and we’re like, “Oh, you know, I’m 50, I’m 55, I’m 60,” whatever. It’s too late. Right. It is not too late, is it? Tell us- No … what’s happening. No, not at all. I think, you know, it’s important to us to keep learning. I mean, we know for our cognitive health, uh, for our mental … It is just so important, this whole thing- Yeah … of lifelong learning. Um, and I think it’s wonderful to reinvent ourselves and, um- I try and live that life to honor that. I’ve always loved learning, and I think travel is a fabulous way to learn, not just about other cultures, but a lot about yourself and how you show up when- Yeah … you’re traveling, right? I mean, that’s- Yeah … not just the one gonna go there and see this at all. Um, in fact, I would argue that it’s actually much more the other way, that it’s a- Ah brilliant opportunity for us to learn an awful lot more about ourselves. Ah, yeah, that’s a great way to look at it. Yeah. So you did some training? Yeah, I trained as a life coach, and then I’ve trained in the last couple years as a travel coach. And so now I have this travel coaching business, and I help women, uh, like 55, 60, you know, up, like revitalize their lives through travel. Like, in what circumstance would people come? Do they ring you and say, “I want to go to Europe, how do I do it?” Or what… Where does the coach come in? Right. Well, so it’s a great question because travel coaching is a very relatively new arm of the whole coaching tree, right? Yeah. And travel coaches don’t book trips. It’s not- No … that at all. It’s much more life coaching. So because I believe, and because of my experience, that when you’re going through a life transition, and many of us are, especially at midlife, retirement, empty nest, grief, oh, there’s just so many things, and we’re looking often for some way to navigate that transition. My belief is travel is the best way to do that- Ah … because you get yourself out of your comfort zone- Yeah … out of the surroundings of your home, and you move your body somewhere else. It doesn’t have to be halfway across the world. Mm-hmm. In fact, it could be, in your case, another part of Australia. I mean, it could even be another part of Queensland. You’d think changing your outer view will change your inner view. Ah. You need to have solitude. You need to have silence. You can do the other things with other people, but the work, much like grief, has to happen with yourself reflecting- Mm … on what’s happening- What it is you wanna feel, what’s your intention, how do you want to feel when you get back from any particular trip. So I work with women who are wondering all these, what’s next, I don’t know if I’ve got the confidence, or I’m not courageous, or my husband’s died and I don’t know. And, uh, and you know, there’s so many, like, not sure things that women are dealing… Permission’s another one, right? Oh, I don’t know, can I really do that? You know, you know what women- Mm … typically looked after people most of our lives, and then we have a, we can have a really hard time saying, “It’s my time now.” Do people need advice on where might be appropriate for them, or the sort of trip? Is that what you talk about- Yes … as well? Well, so for example, say, yeah, and everybody’s so different. So depending on what they’re, they’re dealing with. Mm-hmm. You know, you might, I might suggest to them that if they’re dealing with grief or overwhelm or something, that they might go to somewhere very quiet. Mm. Somewhere in nature. We know that green spaces are very healing, blue spaces, looking at horizons. I mean, this has all been researched, right? Mm-hmm. But you might have somebody else who’s coming and they’re really wanting to go somewhere that’s super vibrant, and they wanna feel alive and a complete, and they want festivals and carnivals and, you know, really big, you know, places where they want a very different landscape. So it very much depends on what it is they’re wanting, which is the, one of the first things that need to find out, I need to find out from somebody, right? Mm-hmm. Wow, that’s so interesting. I had, hadn’t even- Mm-hmm … really thought about a travel coach. Right. But, yeah, I can see it could be very useful if- It can be especially if, if you’re in that state of grief or overwhelm and- Right … you know, your brain isn’t really working- Mm … very well. And that’s often what happens with trauma, is your brain doesn’t work very well- Mm. It doesn’t … afterward. No. You’re right. Yeah. You’re right. I- And even after that, you know, yeah, I would say I was totally the same. I mean, I don’t think my head was attached to my body, I mean, for the longest time. Yeah. But the… I was 18 months, and it, I don’t think I could’ve been ready even before that. No, no. Yeah. It’s, it’s a long- Takes a long time. Well, depending on, you know, the relationship and the person you lost, really. Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you for sharing this. And on Thursday we’re gonna hear about your journey with Rachel, which- Lovely. Okay … I’m very interested to hear about. Lovely. Thank you. And bonus for our YouTube listeners, that episode will be out today. Make sure you catch it.