Why Mindset Matters - I Said YES To Grief

Episode 1: I Said YES to Grief

In this very first episode, I open my heart and share the story that changed everything — losing my daughter Rylee to suicide in 2022. This isn’t easy to talk about, nor is it easy to listen to... but it’s real. I said yes to grief because I had no other choice — and because I’ve learned that grief, when we let it, can teach us how to live more honestly, more gratefully, and more intentionally.

This episode is a tender, raw, and personal look at why your mindset matters— especially in grief and loss. And how we can learn to live and grieve simultaneously, to find moments of joy in the middle of heartbreak, and to choose healing even when nothing makes sense.  If you’ve known loss, or if you're walking with someone who has, I hope my story helps you feel a little less alone.

Transcript

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I... have learnt over the last two and a half years that you absolutely can live and grieve simultaneously and that grief and sadness and even at times sorrow can take up space and reside in the same parts of your heart and soul as do joy and peace and happiness and that they the presence of one doesn't negate the value or presence of the other but that they can reside simultaneously in a way that actually exists paradoxically because of each other Welcome to the Why Mindset Matters podcast. I'm Eslana Lower and this is my first ever episode. So thank you for tuning in. Thank you so much for having me. Her life was very suddenly interrupted in a horrific nature by the sudden and unexpected death of my daughter due to suicide. So Riley, my 15-year-old daughter at the time, took her life without warning because of bullying we didn't know was happening. So... In an instant, as I said, our lives came crashing to a halt that felt at the time and for quite a period afterwards, insurvivable. I guess you'd say I've spent the last two and a half years not just kind of getting through the initial denial period and stumbling to my feet, but in doing so, learning how to live and grieve simultaneously in a way that lends itself to what I would now describe describe as a very rewarding and amazing life. have learnt over the last two and a half years that you absolutely can live and grieve simultaneously and that grief and sadness and even at times sorrow can take up space and reside in the same parts of your heart and soul as do joy and peace and happiness and that the presence of one doesn't negate the value or presence of the other but that they can reside simultaneously in a way that that actually exist paradoxically because of each other. So it's been quite the journey. Prior to losing Riley, since 2015, I taught antenatal workshops to help people prepare for labour and birth in a way that saw them avoid unnecessary birth trauma. The workshop itself was called Why Mindset Matters in Childbearing and I always thought saw there coming a Why Mindset Matters series of something. So I don't believe there's any area of our life that our mindset doesn't matter. And when we really have the courage to pull back the curtain, expose the parts of ourselves that we might not be taking accountability for and have the courage to start to take accountability for our mindset, our perceptions and the choices that we may be making subconsciously more often than not from a place of conditioning or even childhood that might be outdated and no longer serve us. So when we start to recognize, take accountability and have the courage to start changing those things, we can alter make some really significant changes and positive impacts to our life and our well-being as a result. And this is a big part of what I had taught since 2015 and it was my superpower in helping people avoid what I would say the majority of birth trauma is otherwise avoidable. I think you can go into birth wanting a water birth. You can take steps, for instance, to optimize the chances of birth going the way that you want, but you can also walk away from an emergency caesarean going, we did it we had our best birth if you understand what's happening every step of the way don't give your power away and i'm making informed decisions and providing informed consent so my role as an antenatal educator, was helping women and their partners understand that. And that really, pregnancy seems to be the only area of our life that we do package our power up and give it away so willingly in this submissive role as the patient that we don't even know we're taking on, because we wouldn't do that typically in other areas of our life. We go about empowering ourselves and really making sure that we're in the driver's seat. And so... I would turn the light on, I guess, for people so that they could see that they had within them all of the tools and skills or ability to facilitate the most incredible journey for themselves and their partner. And a part of that was I taught about conscious parenting and being really present and, yeah, just being really present. So obviously when I lost Riley and we didn't know initially– about the bullying we didn't know for about four months that she was actually being groomed by her 21 year old lesbian supervisor who had Riley convinced that she was bi and prior to meeting this person Riley had never showed any interest in anything other than boys this person was seeing her outside of work spending a lot of time and energy as I said grooming her and as a result Riley Believed that she was bi and when she came out to her friend group, one of the people who had previously been closest to her was using Snapchat, which Riley wasn't allowed, to say things like, no wonder you want to kill yourself, you should just fucking do it, there's no place in the world for people like you. And so she did. But she didn't just do it, she did it in an extremely violent way. and horrific manner by jumping off my balcony 33 stories in the air with her sisters and I home and I had to go down and find her and I will never forget the feeling as I got in the lift to go down it was almost as if my brain or soul said and it felt like a physical feeling of like wrapping itself, wrapping my brain in cotton wool and saying, brace yourself because what you're about to experience would kill you. And as I came through the foyer and saw her laying in the broken glass, obviously I was screaming and This horrific sound just kept coming from my body, a sound I'm all too familiar with from my days in emergency, and it's the same sound every parent makes when they find out their child's gone. But it was so loud and so primal that the girls, her younger sisters, heard me screaming from 33 stories up and they came down and they saw her. So... Life's a lot. Life has been a lot. And all things considered, being two and a half years down the track, we are doing an incredible job of not just surviving but thriving, and that's been a really conscious effort. I think one of the things that I really respect about our body, our soul, our brain, whatever it is that's at the wheel when it comes to the capacity for protecting us from the full, impact and heaviness of a traumatic event like that by cushioning us by a denial. Denial absolutely serves a purpose because the reality is for much like that physical sensation as if my brain had been wrapped in cotton wool that night, I don't believe I could have survived truly experiencing the full gravity of that reality. I don't believe that I could. I don't know what would have happened to me. But I don't believe. I believe that there are some things that happen to us in life that at the time it's just impossible to truly absorb the gravity or fully experience the reality of it. And so our brain or soul protects us via denial. And it's very valuable because it gets us through. It helps us survive. And But something that I've learned is that there comes a point, and usually pretty quickly, that denial doesn't serve us anymore. It doesn't protect us. It actually perpetuates our suffering because it's my ego at the wheel of life that wants to deny a reality as if this denial could change the fact that it's a truth. And so had I continued to deny, which is where your ego wants to go, this hasn't happened, this couldn't have happened. And for us, there was no warning. And it took four months to get any kind of information or put these pieces of the puzzle together. So it was four months of just chaos, of trying to make sense out of something that was incomprehensible and didn't make sense. And to this day, so much of it will never make sense. But the something that I realized I'd did early on and it's not like I was consciously doing it or aware that I was doing it but was to start to say yes to grief. I remember she passed away on the Thursday night and we were with family members and talking on the Saturday and just in so much denial like I could barely sleep, I couldn't eat, if I did sleep I would wake up vomiting or find myself kneeling in the door frame of the toilet. screaming that same sound, just in so much disbelief and so much denial. And the conversations that unfolded around the Saturday were, we're not having a funeral. You're not supposed to have a funeral for your child. I'm not calling to organize the cremation. We're not, this isn't happening. This can't be happening. And by the Monday, I had come to realise, and this is the subtle ways we begin to say yes to grief, is that you're not supposed to have a funeral for your child. But it didn't have to be a funeral. It could be a celebration of life. And having a celebration of life or not having one was not just about us. It wasn't just us that lost Riley. Riley was... academic excellence and the kindest kid you've ever met who made a massive impact on not just the faculty at her school, but her peers and people younger than her and older than her. And there was this whole demographic of people, not to mention the kids closest to her and her siblings, but all of these people that lost Riley too. It wasn't just us. And they lost her suddenly without explanation and a lot of them without any clarity of knowing what what had even happened, just that she'd taken her life. And so I realised that her celebration of life isn't... I guess a funeral could be this overwhelming sorrow and grief-stricken sadness at the early departure of someone you thought you would spend your life with, whereas the way I saw it was a celebration of life was an opportunity for all the people impacted by her absence to come together and have somewhere for their unexpressed love that would have... had nowhere to go had we not had the courage to say yes to grief and plan a celebration of life for our baby. And so I'm so grateful and proud of that version of myself that began to say yes to grief, that I could see beyond my own pain and shattered heart and broken soul that Riley meant just as much to so many people and that those people deserved to farewell her. The other way that I saw myself transition from denial and starting to say yes and accept the grief and try to accept the reality is by the Monday I had gone from I'm not calling, I can't be the one to call to organise her cremation to it felt like it needed to be me. I called and I'm glad that I did and I spoke to an incredible man who helped me through this unimaginable process. But I had moved from in such a short time to this place of I can't to I need to. She was my baby. Who else is going to do it? I don't want somebody else to do that. And it was the little but at the same time so massive and so heavy things that I had to carry or say yes to or become burdened by and face that ended up being cumulatively things that added together to build this foundation of strength that saw me move forward with each step and stronger in my awareness of my capacity to say yes to grief to lean into it and it's not that you allow it because it's the ego again that thinks you can deny it that you can disallow it because Denial doesn't serve you moving forward. You can't be in denial and move forward. That's the reality of it. Denial equals being stuck and being stuck in a way that accelerates and perpetuates your suffering because you get stuck on that narrative of know-how and it's like putting a burn near the sun. It makes everything worse. And so the early days were spent saying yes to grief and in time... As things would unfold, even the planning of her celebration of life delayed the following week. We were talking about Riley and she was asking questions and I had said that I always said that I believe our children are on loan to us to help prepare for the world. I don't believe that they're ours to control or make conform and that had I known Riley was only on loan to me for 15 years, I wouldn't have done anything differently. I loved her with every fibre of my being and she knew that. The night before she died, I had told her how much she meant to me and how I didn't know if it would take me until she held her own baby that she would actually understand how much I loved her. And we were both crying and she hugged me for the longest time and told me how much she loved me. And then the next night she was gone. And I'm so grateful for that interaction. I'm so grateful that the heaviness of grief and loss wasn't compounded by guilt or regret or remorse over just the fact that everything always came from a place of love. And I had mentioned that in the planning of her celebration of life. And then I think it was a couple of weeks after we lost her and a friend took me to a bath soak house that I hadn't seen in a while, like a couple of years. And we were talking and talking about everything that had happened that night and her passing. And I said, you know, I'm so grateful that she looked like she was laying face down, just peaceful, laying face down with her hands up around her head, And that she wasn't splattered everywhere because of the height that she fell from. The turning circle glass had broken her fall, which had, I guess, protected the integrity of her staying contained. Because had she been splattered everywhere, I would have just looked for the next truck and run in front of her. But I was making the point of how grateful I was that she did look peaceful, not just for the sake of my memory of that event, but because her sisters saw her. And my friend was standing there going, as if you're talking, you're about things that you're grateful for after what you've just been through, I think you're going to be all right. And she couldn't have been more right. Throughout the early days to at least a year, anytime anybody would hear me talk about Riley's death and what we'd been through, they would say with almost the same narrative every time, man or woman, how the fuck are you still standing? How are you doing this well? How are you even surviving? I couldn't, I wouldn't be able to survive. And it was that same, almost the same wording every single time. And you hear that enough, you start to think, what am I doing? What am I doing that people think that somehow this is special or that they couldn't do this? And I've prided myself on after a lifetime since I was little of abuse and neglect and sexual abuse and then continued sexual abuse Thank you so much. was never the victim. I never took on the victim mentality. I was not the sum of my origins. I was not going to let my life be defined by what had happened to me or where I'd come from. And it was about a year or a year and a half in that I had my poor me, why me? Like, what the fuck? I really thought life was going to start being kinder to me. Why? Why did all that bad shit have to happen to me? When am I going to catch a break? And it was in that moment, and I'm on the background of I always tell my children that it's really important that you acknowledge your emotions, whatever they are, allow them to be and experience them, but then it becomes a choice whether or not you stay there and that that's the difference between being a victim or not in life. And I... was sitting in this victimhood of why me. And I realized that since I was little and we never had any food and we lived in poverty and neglect, and if you just fed me, I was so grateful. If you were kind to me, I saw simple acts of kindness as if they were acts of unconditional love that gave me hope in humanity and that maybe there were kind people out there. I was so grateful. And this gratitude, I had this resilience born of gratitude that had stemmed, yes, from abuse and neglect, but that had become this internal default in my subconscious so that I wasn't even having to try. I just always found things to be grateful for. And it was so ingrained and I became a lot more aware of it through my grief because I would hear myself in almost every conversation saying things like, I'm so grateful that she looked peaceful. I'm so grateful to have been her mom. I'm so grateful. And it's sincere. I mean it with all of my heart. But it made me realize after all of these people were saying the same thing, the same narrative, the same scripting, that they were convinced they couldn't survive something like this. What was it that I was doing? And it was the fact that I had... this internal default system of gratitude and something I've come to realize as I learned to live and grieve simultaneously and have created a life where I would say I'm the happiest I've ever been. And tears will always flow when I talk about this stuff. Most of the tears are tears of compassion for that prior version of myself that was so convinced I wouldn't survive for the longest time. I would say to Kai, I'm still not convinced I'm going to survive this. I would never hurt myself, but I was convinced I was going to die from a broken heart. And again, the tears flow because I feel so much compassion for that version of myself that couldn't see the light at all. I couldn't see the forest or the trees. And I would now say, define myself as the happiest I've ever been. And I think that That is a lot for a lot of people because on paper that doesn't make sense after everything that I've discussed. But the reality is I don't believe that happiness is a state of being. As a female particularly, but all humans, we all have our own hormonal cycles and we are all at the mercy of so many things, not just our internal biochemistry, but environmental factors, everything. So if your happiness hinges on your ability to maintain some stable state of being, then of course we're doomed and we always feel like we're failing or we're not as happy as we thought. But I would define happiness as being a perception of my life in spite of my ever-changing state of being. And now in the aftermath of horrific trauma and learning to live and grieve simultaneously, I love where I live. I love everyone in my life. I love what I do for work. I love every part of my life. I've facilitated decision-making processes that involve protecting my peace. and creating this life where I can perceive myself as completely content and happy. And that doesn't mean I don't have sad days. It doesn't mean that I don't get rocked by grief because grief is a bit. It doesn't even knock at the door. It just arrives permeating your soul and bringing you to your knees. And that's the nature of the beast that is grief. But Because I am grieving doesn't mean I can't be happy. And I'll never forget one of the first times after losing Riley that I heard myself laughing and I was overwhelmed with this guilt of how dare you? You don't get to do that anymore. And I think it's so culturally acceptable in our subconscious, at least, that that's the nature of grief and trauma and loss. is that if we truly love them as much as we say, then we must be overcome with horrific sorrow for the rest of our existence or end our life. And I'm so grateful, which you'll hear me say over and over again, can't help it, for the fact that I have been able to flip that on its head. And I'm not going to accept that as my grief journey. I appreciate the grief is with me across the lifespan. I appreciate that there will be elements of sadness that I will have to face on repeat as we continue to navigate milestones and birthdays and anniversaries and the girls having babies and all of these things that we were supposed to share with her. But we can also do it in a way that doesn't destroy our chances to be very present for ourselves and our girls. We can acknowledge that Riley is a part of our story and her death is a massive exclamation mark in our story, but what we won't do is let her death define our story. And I didn't want the girls' childhoods defined by the death of their sister. Around the one year anniversary, I had said to the girls, I want you the next year to be the year of who is Mia, who is Zali. And what were they? They were like 12 and 14 at the time. And they said, what do you mean? And I said, well, I don't want your childhood defined by the death of your sister. I want you to spend the next year on a journey of self-discovery of who am I, who do I want to be, what do I like, what do I not like, and become the individuals you were destined to be because there was so much about the trauma of her death that made us bond and become inseparable, which is fine and it fostered a connection and a sense of safety in the early days. but I was very careful to not let that create a codependency where they didn't know how to do anything without each other or be away from us or be so scared of separation or so fearful that bad things would happen that it stifled their ability to enjoy what was left of their childhood and reach their potential as individuals. And I'm very happy to say we are doing an exceptional job of that. They are amazing children. And humans. And it's funny because people will often ask, how are the girls doing? And again, seems, and it's never malicious intent on the part of the questioner, but it seems that it would be more culturally acceptable for my response to be, oh, they're fucked. They're not okay. You know, think about what I've just discussed, what they went through. Of course, people expect me to say that they're completely broken in a way that has just permanently damaged them emotionally. and affected their ability to function because that seems more comprehensible than her death. But when they're met with a response of they're doing amazing, they're just amazing. And I would say, you know, if you didn't know what they'd been through, you wouldn't know. And I don't mean in a toxic way of, like, denying it or, you know, just moving on with their life at all. I mean in a way that they have– we've all taken in reflecting the right steps to be able to have these well-adjusted, soon-to-be young adults who are doing such an amazing job. So on looking back at our grief journey, at our trauma, at everything we've been through, at how we've dealt with it, initially it rocked me. I was always very invested in normalising conversations around sexuality and where the girls sat with that. Way before the world became whatever it is today, I would have regular check-ins with the girls about, do you think you'll have a boyfriend or a girlfriend when you're older? And Riley would always just smile at me. and so just a boyfriend mum. And so it shook me when I found out that Riley had considered herself to be bi. I was like, how could my baby not think I was a safe place for her sexuality to land? And it wasn't that. It was that in her soul she knew that this wasn't right, that an adult shouldn't be spending this much time with a child. She was such a naive person. 15 year old and then to have all of these things happening and happening so fast and and the big age gap and the way that it was unfolding I don't think that it was about not feeling like it was safe to discuss this. It was that this doesn't feel like it's right. But the fact that she hadn't, the fact that she hadn't brought it to me and that it had spiralled so quickly and unravelled her mental health in a way that she felt the only way for her pain to end after the supervisor rejected her and then she went back to the friend and said, please just stop, who apparently went her in public even worse, that she felt the only way for her pain to end was for her to end and her life was horrific. And for me as somebody who had always consciously invested in my children and just tell me the truth, whatever it is, we can face it together. And I had always parented from a place of conscious parenting and taught about it. It rocked me. And I felt in the aftermath of her death, who am I to teach people about this stuff? But turns out I straightened my crown and I remember exactly who the fuck I am to teach because in the aftermath of the most unimaginable pain, trauma and sorrow, I am standing before you today as somebody who has managed to put the broken pieces of my heart back together in a way that resembles nothing that I knew my life to be. but it turns out is an extremely beautiful, beautiful piece of art that I'm very proud to call my life. And I'm so grateful to have been her mum and I'm so grateful for the lessons she came here to teach. I was so traumatized by abuse and neglect and sexual abuse as a child that I was convinced I was not to have daughters. I just wanted all boys. I wanted six kids and I wanted them to all be boys. And life and its wisdom gave me a son 23 years ago today, actually. So the reason I chose to launch this podcast on the 1st of June is because 23 years ago today, I became a mom for the first time. And this Why Mindset Matters podcast is my... latest baby that's been brewing at the base of my soul, wanting to come to fruition for a long time. And I thought, what better date to launch it than on the anniversary of me becoming a parent. And life was very kind in its wisdom of giving me a son to start off with, because I think that I needed that. I felt like I was too angry at the world and sharp around the edges to parent girls. And if my own mum couldn't protect me, how was I going to do that? I didn't want the responsibility of protecting girls. And so I was convinced I would have all boys, which is just, again, the ego, thinking that we could plan life when life has its own plan for us. And I remember when we had the ultrasound and there was no penis on it for Riley, I cried. Man, I cried for like four weeks. I kept saying to Kai, what am I going to do with a girl? Like, I can't do this, Kai. I can't be the mother of a girl. I'm not equipped. And... My mum never had any of the difficult conversations growing up. Anything that scared her, she just avoided. Or she trauma dumped on me at a very young age about how you know her first period she bled all over her clothes at school in front of everyone and she was only 10 years old so she would scare me with stories like that but not prepare me for the realities of a period or how to deal with it when it comes and instead of discussing sex she told me at a very young age that she when she was 15 she hitchhiked to get to her boyfriend's but a car full of men five men picked her up and took her out to the bush and gang raped her and then left her in the bush and she had to walk to her boyfriend's and when she got there he broke up with for hitchhiking like just trauma stories that scared me it didn't prepare me for life at all so I just thought man if your own mum if it's too hard as a parent to have these hard conversations like and she couldn't do it who am I to do this and I had three girls after my son and each one of them softened me more and more and showed me a love I never would have known if it wasn't for them so it We can think that life isn't going to plan, but trying to plan life is one of the most arrogant things the ego can think we're capable of doing because life has its own plan for us. I think if we can set our intentions and act intentionally and work on things like gratitude and our mindset and our perception of our life and how it's unfolding, but doing so lends itself to enjoying the ride because life has its own plan for us. And... We don't always get to dictate or rarely get to dictate much of it. So that is the introduction to who I am, how I got here. But I am extremely grateful that life had its own plan for me and that I got to have daughters. And I truly believe that Riley was here to teach me and many people about love. Because when she came, we would say, for years that she was our honeymoon love personified as Riley. She was just love. And she taught me how to love myself. She taught, she cracked me open in ways that facilitated me knowing a self-love that I never would have known if it wasn't for the capacity and opportunity to view myself through the lens of her eyes and how she viewed me. We were somewhere once when she was about eight and she was sitting with her dad and she cocked her head to the side as she watched me come in and she goes, man, she's just so confident. She walks in with her head high and her shoulders back and And she was just admiring me. And having that fed back to me as this person who had most of my life spent it in fight or flight with this angry five-year-old at the wheel of my life, running everybody over in an attempt to protect myself, to have the opportunity to see myself through her eyes and be loved by her and love myself the way that she learned to love myself the way that she loved me. I truly believe that her purpose here was... to be loved and to gift this love and self-love and all of these opportunities to me that I would have missed out on if not having the opportunity to be her mum. And who am I to dictate her term here? She impacted so many lives in the time that she was here and even if I could somehow avoid this pain, But it meant not being her mum. There's not a version of my life that I would give up the opportunity to have loved her and been loved by her. I am extremely grateful for everybody in my life and all of the lessons and gifts that have come from sometimes the hardest, hardest life experiences that you think that you can't survive. But I'm here to tell you that rock bottom doesn't need to be the end. It can be the beginning of an incredibly beautiful becoming. It doesn't feel that way at the time and not for some time after. But I tell you what, they say it takes a village to raise a child. I 100% will tell you it takes a village to survive the loss of one. And The things that I teach about are one thing, but how I've been able to facilitate my learning to live and grieve simultaneously and thrive, not just survive, has been the majority to do with connection. and who I put myself around because we are the sum of the people we spend the most time around. And sometimes when you feel like you can't get through something or this is the end for you, you need connection. You need those people who are going to band around you and hold your head above water when you are convinced that you're going to drown. And I had that and I am eternally grateful for every person, whether they knew us or some of them were strangers, for every single way that people banded around us, particularly in those early days when we didn't know how we would survive And here we are two and a half years later doing better than surviving, absolutely loving our life and each other and thriving because of the courage we had to say yes to grief and keep putting one foot in front of the other. and walk back through the flames of trauma and grief in those early days to be able to start to come out the other side of the trauma you never come out the other side of grief grief is not a journey you get over or get through it's something that you learn to allow to take up residence in your soul and join you on your life journey but not rule the house that is your soul. Grief can exist with and in me but it's not going to take over. It's not going to dominate my experience or define my life experience and that's something that I would like to share with people in more ways than I can think but also to help people realise that Your grief journey or your significant losses in life do not need to define your future. They don't need to overwhelm your present day and rob you of the opportunity for joy. I'm here to share that. Something grief shows you is that Everybody's just struggling. Everybody is carrying some kind of struggle or burden and we don't always get to pull the curtain back and see what that struggle is or understand what's going on for people. But when we come to our interactions in life with compassion and an awareness of that, it means that we're better positioned to understand the positive impact the simple acts of kindness can have. Just a simple act of kindness, that and offering people connection. Because at the core of us as human beings is the basic need for connection and those two things go a lot further in life and people's journey than you could even imagine and they save lives and you don't always know that that's what you've done. So walking around being somebody who's willing to do random acts of kindness and to offer connection, even if it's a smile or saying hi to people, you never know how what you're doing is impacting that person's journey and I'm saying that as somebody who has been significantly impacted by simple acts of kindness and connection that people were at the time taking for granted and didn't know how powerful their presence was in my life. So... If you haven't noticed, I could talk underwater and for an extended amount of time about any topic. So I'm very happy to have you here. I'm going to wrap it up because this is a sufficient introduction into why mindset matters. I am very grateful for everybody that's tuned in and I'm extremely grateful for the technological advances that mean that I can do this and record this in my studio, but then reach out to potentially the other side of the world. So thank you so much for tuning into why mindset matters. I We'll see you in the next episode.