I am buckled into my seat, cozying up to 30,000 feet above South Carolina, en route to a funeral.
I just left four extraordinary days behind me, and what lies ahead is a celebration of life for a remarkable man, and father to a family I consider my own.
It’s like being at the intersection of friendship and loss, something I am acutely familiar with.
This whole trip started when one of my dearest friends asked me to join her at her home in Kiawah, in the low country near Charleston, where she was scheduled for a board meeting. Inside the trip she booked us one night at the most extraordinary inn I have ever experienced, in the heart of old Charleston.
It’s the kind of place very few people have access to and very few people know about. What a gift to be on the periphery of her knowing. It is the kind of place where everything is handled before you know it needs handling. Where every detail feels deliberate and every cupboard intentionally seems to hold a surprise worth finding. Down to no news outlets permitted on the television in the shared common space and an entire freezer full of Jeni’s ice cream with a loaded toppings bar on the center island. My nervous system said its own quiet thank you for both.
OMG and the pillows! They were so good I joked about taking one home. I felt like I slept on a cloud with my head surrounded by fluffy marshmallows.
Apparently I wasn’t the first to notice, as there was a book on the nightstand listing where everything in the room came from, which is how I found out my head had been sleeping on an $850 pillow. Seriously! I had no idea pillows could be so expensive. Despite the rule breaker in me, it did not come home in my suitcase.
As if sleeping like a queen wasn’t dreamy enough, we awoke to the fluffiest scrambled eggs I’ve ever eaten and enjoyed them on a porch built for the equivalent of royalty back in the day.
I’ve never felt more taken care of.
It was 24 hours of no worry. No obligation. And no sense of duty or responsibility.
And those days don’t exist quite like they used to for me.
The last several years I have been quietly rebuilding my foundation, one that crumbled out from under me like an earthquake and left me holding the bag of responsibility and obligation that once rested in the very capable hands of my late husband.
As if that loss wasn’t enough, then it happened again. Shortly after losing George to a spontaneous brain bleed, my dearest friend Todd, and daily lifeline, had a stroke that took him before we ever got to celebrate his 60th, a night that would have undoubtedly arrived with drag queens, dueling pianos, loads of champagne, and laughter carried out for days.
Loss like that, in addition to the unraveling of other friendships in the wake of rebuilding my life, doesn’t arrive without completely hijacking the nervous system. As someone with a deep need to control the outcome of life, unexpected arrives like a cannonball to the gut.
I have done the work. Mentally, emotionally, physically, through each of those respective losses.
My sympathetic nervous system is still walking the high wire.
I honestly thought I’d see a notable difference in my diagnostic testing, something I deeply believe in and am grateful to understand, thanks to my time at both Chenot and SHA Mexico.
I still have work to do.
As it turns out, physical stress doesn’t yield just because the threat is gone. Or the friendship wound has closed. Or enough time has passed that the loss is a reminder of the past rather than a deep cut.
That’s the hardest part to swallow.
The body takes longer than the mind to play catch up. It keeps its own record, and the nervous system needs nurturing, so it stops living in anticipation of the next crash.
It wasn’t until this afternoon, in conversation with my girlfriend while en route to the airport, that I realized how far I’ve come. We found ourselves deep into another conversation, much like the ones that had filled the last few days. Time with a dear friend is like that. You pick up exactly where you left off and then spend inseparable days together where the conversation never ends and the quiet stretches don’t need filling. Where you’re both anxious to hear and to share every detail between now and then that requires rehashing.
That’s what we were doing. Rehashing. And somewhere in it, I heard myself listing things I had been meaning to share with her. Things that I have implemented that I know she would benefit from too.
In the absence of my late husband, and the team of people who worked closely with him, there were things I left exposed.
That’s the part I don’t love admitting. I was a banker. A professional woman who understood exactly how this works.
And I handed it to someone else. I don’t think I am alone here. A lot of other women out there hand off those responsibilities in the same way. We prioritize roles and duties that balance out the household ecosystem. My late husband dutifully would enroll me in all the conversations but mentally my attention was elsewhere, and I left the load for him to carry until suddenly he wasn’t there to carry it anymore.
I needed to regain a solid foothold on everything and quickly. As the one solely responsible for holding the bag, I found small ways to add in a layer of protection that leaves me able to sleep at night, $850 pillow or not.
Because let’s be real, exposure of a personal and financial nature, especially in this day and age, is basically like standing on a street corner naked. The idea of that will wreak havoc on the nervous system on any level. My nervous system didn’t need any additional hits of voltage.
Over time, I adopted new tools and systems.
That’s what all of these are. Not productivity but protection and privacy. While they initially took time to implement, they’re so integrated now that they run on autopilot. I nearly forgot the value they carry until I found myself rehashing them with my girlfriend.
Here’s the thing. Whether you’ve experienced loss like mine or not, taking the driver’s seat feels damn good.
Loss stripped away my sense of security. The feeling of being looked after by someone whose job it was to think of it before I did.
I spent one night in a place where a stranger had anticipated every need I had, and a few I didn’t know I had, and I slept like a person without a care in the world. Floating on a cloud.
You can pay for that for a night, but that’s usually as long as it lasts.
Instead of chasing that sense of peace, I quietly, and mostly without noticing, built it over the last several years through small decisions I never thought of as recovery until now. Until I shared them with her, when there was a moment of both pride and ownership.
While my body hasn’t caught all the way up, it doesn’t have to today.
So here’s the list. Perhaps there’s one in here for you to grab hold of as well. While I cannot offer you a deluxe pillow, I can share what allows me to sleep at night.
Dashlane. A password keeper. I have reached the point where there are simply too many passwords, passkeys, account numbers and logins for my brain to be the storage system. And to be honest, for years I used the same exact password for everything. I know… yikes. Dashlane has become that extra layer of protection and a safe place to store everything. I no longer go through the brain drain of resetting passwords with each click I make.
DeleteMe. Keeps my privacy in check. This one was eye-opening. Google search your name. You may find yourself alarmed at how much personal information exists out there. DeleteMe literally does that. I discovered my information was sitting in places I didn’t even know existed, which was basically all over the wild worldwide web. I don’t need strangers being able to assemble a dossier on me with three clicks and a Google search. DeleteMe works on my behalf without effort on my end. Exhale.
A credit freeze with all three reporting agencies. This is one of those things I wish someone had told me to do years ago. I keep my credit frozen unless I actually need someone to access it. It doesn’t hurt your credit score, and you can temporarily “thaw” it online if needed. It takes the worry away about someone doing nefarious things in my name. It’s not protection against every kind of identity theft, but it puts a substantial barrier between my identity and someone trying to open a credit card with it and having their own Pretty Woman shopping extravaganza.
1440. News that keeps me informed without derailing me. I want to know what’s happening in the world. I don’t want what’s happening in the world to hijack my nervous system before I’ve finished my first cup of matcha. 1440 delivers a fact-driven email daily that keeps me informed without spending my day marinating in the news or figuring out what’s real.
Superhuman Mail. My attempt to make email less overwhelming. I’m still learning to integrate this one, but I’m intrigued by the possibility. Email can send me spiraling or, worse, leave me in paralysis because I get inundated with it daily. Superhuman helps organize it all and more.
I have a trip coming up that will leave me completely out of pocket for seven days. Yes, that freaks me out. My hope is that Superhuman becomes less another app I have to manage and more the thing that makes reentry and everyday email more manageable. Ask me after the trip. I’ll let you know when that is later!
NuCalm. This app truly allows me to sleep at night. This one came home with me from Chenot in Switzerland. They use NuCalm as part of their neuro-acoustic treatments, and I’ve come to rely on the 8-hour DeepestSleep setting. In particular, Dave and I both love the Summer Nights program that sounds like sleeping under the stars with crickets chirping. In short, it uses engineered sound to shift your brain out of stress, which I clearly need.
Privacy screen protectors for my iPhone and laptop. This might be the least sophisticated item on the list and one of the most practical. This is my 16th trip this year. I’ve had my phone, laptop, and iPad open in airport lounges, middle seats, and packed airport trams across the globe where I’m squeezed against strangers.
While a privacy screen isn’t cybersecurity, it does dramatically limit what someone sitting beside you can see. Because who wants the guy in 14B reading along as you text a friend. Not me.
That last one I almost forgot entirely until I was reminded to send my girlfriend the link.
Always EDITing,
Leslie
P.S. – No girls trip goes without a good shopping day and Charleston is no exception. More on my fun finds in the coming days including the last-minute funeral attire I picked up en route to the airport this morning and fully plan to wear again.
P.P.S. – For those with a little extra fun money to burn, here is the link to the pillows. If you do in fact buy one, please let me know. I will be dreaming about them for a long time to come. All other comments are welcome too. Always!
More from my time at Chenot Switzerland and SHA Mexico plus a few takeaways…
Leslie, I came for the $850 pillow and stayed for the far more valuable idea of rebuilding safety. I thought I was being wildly extravagant spending £50 on a memory foam pillow when I hurt my neck, so I may need a lie down after discovering what your head was resting on! 😂 I love this idea of independence after loss being built through hundreds of small decisions that gradually make the ground beneath us feel solid again. X
Wow…the pillow is something I never knew existed and now I realize I really NEED it! lol
It does sound dreamy, and I loved your other helpful points mentioned in your article. I will put them to good use!