March 20, 2026
From Grief to Growth: The Lost to Living Framework with Mel Schlesinger
Send us Fan Mail summary In this heartfelt interview, Mel Schlesinger shares his journey through grief after losing his wife of 48 years, and introduces his 'Lost to Living' framework to help others move from loss to a fulfilling life. Discover practical steps, mental models, and inspiring insights to navigate grief and find joy again. keywords grief, loss, healing, mental health, personal growth, grief coaching, Lost to Living framework, resilience, emotional well-being, lif...
summary
In this heartfelt interview, Mel Schlesinger shares his journey through grief after losing his wife of 48 years, and introduces his 'Lost to Living' framework to help others move from loss to a fulfilling life. Discover practical steps, mental models, and inspiring insights to navigate grief and find joy again.
keywords
grief, loss, healing, mental health, personal growth, grief coaching, Lost to Living framework, resilience, emotional well-being, life after loss
key topics
The Lost to Living framework for grief recovery
Small actionable steps to rebuild life
The importance of honest acceptance of grief
sound bites
"Mel's journey from grief to a new life"
"I was with her when her breathing changed"
"I realized I couldn't stay frozen in grief"
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Mel's Background
01:07 Mel's Personal Loss and Journey Through Grief
06:50 Mel's Life with Patricia and Their Last Trip
10:05 The Diagnosis and Decline of Patricia
12:50 The Final Moments and Mel’s Immediate Aftermath
13:33 Joining Support Groups and Early Grief Steps
18:17 Realization: I Can't Stay Frozen in Grief
20:19 Discovering New Passions and Building a New Life
26:36 Surprising Aspects of Mel’s Grief Experience
28:34 Guilt and Regret in the Grief Process
31:30 Introduction to the Lost to Living Framework
32:00 Locating Where You Are in Your Grief Journey
34:21 Identifying Small Reachable Actions
35:45 Verifying Your Story and Avoiding Absolute Statements
38:06 Implementing Small Actions Daily
39:34 Progress with Gratitude and Self-Recognition
42:00 Creating a New Life While Carrying Loss
44:00 Talking About the Loved One and Honoring Their Memory
44:57 Addressing Guilt and Imagining Joy Again
46:00 A Small Action Before Bed: Lighting a Candle
47:09 What No One Told Me in the First Week
48:13 The Power of Choice in Joy and Sadness
49:04 Living Side by Side: Joy and Sadness
49:50 Connecting with Mel and His Work
50:26 Final Words of Hope and Strength
51:21 Conclusion: Moving from Surviving to Living
resources
Lost to Living Framework - https://substack.com/
guest links
Substack - https://substack.com/
Losing a child to cancer is a grief no parent should walk through alone. The Father's Refuge Podcast is a safe place for fathers and parents to share, heal, and find hope in the midst of heartbreak. If you are a father and you would like to share your grief journey with others reach out to me at FathersRefuge@proton.me
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WEBVTT
00:00:00.160 --> 00:00:09.519
Um I I think the thing that surprised me the most was uh how difficult dealing with the grief was.
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How big it knocked me down and how much I cried during those first two months.
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I mean, it was it just seemed like it no matter what I was doing, tears would come for no reason.
00:00:25.679 --> 00:00:33.119
And that was the thing that I think that took me the most by surprise was just how frequently tears would begin.
00:00:33.280 --> 00:00:44.399
You know, I I went to there's a place in Green Valley, I can't think of the name of it now, but every Friday they have a m a Friday morning coffee for people who live in Green Valley who are seniors.
00:00:44.560 --> 00:00:48.640
And I went to it one Friday morning just as, you know, see if I can meet people.
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And I talked to a few people and then there was the entertainment began.
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And out of the clear blue sky it hit me that, you know, I never even tried these kind of things when my wife was alive.
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My name is James Moffat, and I'll be your host today.
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Today on the Father's Refuge Podcast, we've we're joined by Mel.
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Mel, how are you?
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I'm doing good.
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Glad to be with you.
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Mel is a man who has walked through one of the deepest valleys any of us can face, the death of a lifelong spouse.
00:02:06.400 --> 00:02:11.439
After nearly 48 years of marriage, Mel lost his wife and best friend to an aggressive cancer.
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In the months that followed, he found himself alone, disoriented, and unsure of who he was without her.
00:02:17.759 --> 00:02:19.759
But Mel didn't stay frozen in grief.
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Through honesty, small steps, and a commitment to rebuilding, he discovered a new life filled with joy, connection, and purpose, not as a replacement for the love he had, but as a way of honoring it.
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Today he shares the framework he now uses as a certified grief coach to help others move from loss to living again.
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If you're carrying grief or walking with someone who is, this conversation will give you hope, clarity, and a path forward.
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Mel, welcome to the Father's Refuge.
00:02:46.240 --> 00:02:46.879
Thanks, James.
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I'm glad to be here.
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Yeah, do me a favor and introduce yourself to the listening audience.
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All right.
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Um, my name is Mel Schlesinger.
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I live in Tucson, Arizona.
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I just moved here uh last week from Green Valley, Arizona.
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Um been would have been married 46 years in February, although we were together would have been 48 years in January.
00:03:09.199 --> 00:03:19.199
And um I'm now kind of semi-retired, um, but really kind of enjoying life and looking forward to the next chapter.
00:03:19.520 --> 00:03:20.080
That's amazing.
00:03:20.240 --> 00:03:23.199
I want to just want to say I'm sorry about losing your wife.
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I appreciate that.
00:03:25.120 --> 00:03:26.560
Yeah, I I appreciate that.
00:03:26.800 --> 00:03:32.800
So, Mel, before we get into your framework, can you share who your wife was and what your life together meant to you?
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Sure.
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My wife was Patricia.
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As I've said, we would have been together 48 years in January, married 46 in February, and we had just a wonderful marriage from from day one.
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It was just more than I could have ever imagined and probably better than I deserved.
00:03:50.800 --> 00:03:58.400
But in the last five years of our life was just completely different than the the than the first 43.
00:03:58.560 --> 00:04:05.199
In in 2021, right after uh we got the COVID vaccines, we decided to go to Mexico for three months.
00:04:05.520 --> 00:04:08.080
It was going to be my wife's 75th birthday.
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She she's a little older than me.
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I was going to be 68.
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We celebrated a week apart.
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But we went to Mazatlan.
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I got an oceanfront hotel for her birthday, and we did that.
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And then after two days later, we moved into an apartment that we rented for three months.
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And had a great time, met lots of people.
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And in the first week of June, my my wife said, um, you know, we should go home and sell our house in North Carolina and move to Mexico.
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And so that's what we did.
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We went back and put the house on the market.
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It sold in three days.
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Well.
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Yeah.
00:04:46.160 --> 00:04:47.839
Well, you know, it was 2021.
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The market was starting to go crazy.
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Made more than I ever thought we would on the house.
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The people who bought our house bought our furniture and our artwork, and so we packed up and the way we moved was if it didn't fit into the Prius, it didn't go with us.
00:05:03.759 --> 00:05:12.480
And off we sat around the country to visit friends and family, stopped in Green Valley, where we bought a little one-bedroom as kind of a health care base.
00:05:12.560 --> 00:05:17.680
And by August, we were back in Mexico and spent most of the next two years there.
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It was just an incredible life.
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We were having the best time ever.
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And then in 2023, we had to come back because I needed some back surgery.
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And while while health care is cheap in Mexico, it was still going to cost$15,000.
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So we decided to come back and use Medicare where it would only cost me about a thousand.
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And then we thought we'd go back to Mexico, but I developed an infection, needed a second surgery.
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And by the end of twenty towards the end of 23, we decided we'd just live in the U.S.
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So we sold the one bedroom, bought a bigger house.
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That was going to be our forever home.
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I guess for my wife, it turned out to be her forever home.
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But and we thought we'd kind of travel and try to build some community locally.
00:06:01.439 --> 00:06:05.600
But shortly after we moved into the house, she developed her cancer.
00:06:05.759 --> 00:06:11.040
And so between treatments and trips up to Tucson, we just never made any friends.
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And in November of 2024, she had surgery and it looked good.
00:06:16.639 --> 00:06:18.319
It was, you know, clear margins.
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And we thought, well, the type of cancer she had, which is something called a mixofibrousarcoma, we thought, you know, it's a 75% five-year survival rate.
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So we thought we were good.
00:06:31.040 --> 00:06:37.920
And uh we made plans to go to France in February of 20 February of 25.
00:06:38.240 --> 00:06:44.959
And in January, she had her first post-surgery scan, and unfortunately, she had metastasis to her left lung.
00:06:45.120 --> 00:06:49.439
So she elected to do surgery, and we got through the surgery all right.
00:06:49.600 --> 00:07:07.519
And um in in the end of May, first part of June, we traveled around the country again, this time seeing friends and family, because we knew from research that if she had one metastasis, she was likely to have more sometime in the future, and that that one there'd be nothing we can do.
00:07:07.680 --> 00:07:11.120
So we did a kind of this goodbye tour and said goodbye to people.
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Saw a friend in North Carolina that I'm gonna talk about in a moment when we continue on, because that's one of the things that made my dealing with grief so much easier.
00:07:22.560 --> 00:07:27.360
But we came home and in July she had a scan and it was all clear.
00:07:27.519 --> 00:07:32.319
So we thought we were good and we made plans to go to Medellin, Columbia for a month.
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Uh we left at the end of August thinking we'd be there all through September.
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The trip down was great.
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The first three days were fantastic, and then on the fourth day things started going south.
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So a week later we flew home and then discovered that she had six new metastases, two in her lung, two on her chest wall, one in her um spleen, and one somewhere else, I don't remember.
00:07:58.160 --> 00:08:05.279
And the doctors told us that, you know, we had somewhere between one and two months, probably closer to a month.
00:08:05.519 --> 00:08:10.560
So at the end of September we got her on hospice and it was going to be in the home.
00:08:10.800 --> 00:08:13.519
But things just deteriorated really quickly.
00:08:13.600 --> 00:08:17.040
And on October 20th, she took her last breath.
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Luckily I I had stayed with her.
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We moved to the hospice facility because it was just too hard to take care of her at home.
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Right.
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I was a mess.
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And I was with her when her breathing changed, and as soon as I heard it as soon as I heard it change, I jumped up and sat at the bedside, held her hand as she took her last breath.
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Give me a moment.
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Okay.
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First time I've talked about it in a while.
00:08:40.639 --> 00:08:41.200
But it's fun.
00:08:41.519 --> 00:08:49.679
Um anyway, and and then uh, you know, I came back to the house and that was the beginning of just a really crummy time.
00:08:49.919 --> 00:08:55.440
Five days after her death, I I went to the my first meeting of the bereavement support group.
00:08:55.759 --> 00:09:05.519
A lot of people were surprised I was there so quickly, but I had no support network in Green Valley because we just never had a chance to build any friendships.
00:09:05.679 --> 00:09:13.679
And so I was just alone and I knew I did not want to stay in the state that I was in, and the only way out was forward.
00:09:14.080 --> 00:09:15.120
So I went.
00:09:15.360 --> 00:09:24.240
Um But part of my motivation and part of my motivation to get to where I am today was when we did our cross country trip.
00:09:24.320 --> 00:09:37.840
Um in we were in Winston-Salem in June, first week of June of twenty-five, and um we went and saw a friend of ours, good friend, whose wife had died in December of twenty-four.
00:09:38.399 --> 00:09:40.080
And he was just a mess.
00:09:40.320 --> 00:09:42.799
Seven months later he was he was just a mess.
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We took him out to dinner, and when we dropped him off, my wife looked at me and we knew that the metastasis that she had meant that that we'd probably only had a few years.
00:09:54.320 --> 00:10:02.720
And she said to me, Mel, you have to promise me that seven months after I die, that will not be you.
00:10:02.879 --> 00:10:07.279
And and I promised her that I would not let myself get stuck like that.
00:10:07.440 --> 00:10:16.879
And so after she did die, that really helped me in so many ways, that that permission to get my life together.
00:10:17.120 --> 00:10:25.360
And now it's been it'll be five months on March the 20th, and nothing about my life today resembles my life before.
00:10:25.519 --> 00:10:30.480
It is a completely new life that has no relationship to to my prior life.
00:10:30.639 --> 00:10:34.799
And um I stopped going to the bereavement support group a month ago.
00:10:34.879 --> 00:10:46.399
Uh I went one last time to say goodbye to everybody and talk about how much it helped me in those first six, eight weeks, but it was just time to move on from the group, not from other things.
00:10:46.639 --> 00:10:47.120
Right.
00:10:47.440 --> 00:10:52.960
So you already answered my second question, which was to take us back to the moment your world changed.
00:10:53.120 --> 00:10:55.519
What do you remember about those early days after her death?
00:10:55.679 --> 00:10:57.519
You've kind of already explained that.
00:10:57.840 --> 00:11:02.799
You've the third one says, You've said you felt more alone than at any point in your 72 years.
00:11:02.960 --> 00:11:06.000
What did that loneliness actually feel like on a daily basis?
00:11:06.399 --> 00:11:13.120
You know, the loneliness actually started in the week before she died because she went downhill so fast.
00:11:13.200 --> 00:11:16.240
And I hadn't I had nobody in Green Valley.
00:11:16.320 --> 00:11:25.279
And you know, my my daughter lives in New Jersey, my son up in Oregon, you know, my sister one sister lives in Nashville, the other one lives in Sacramento.
00:11:25.519 --> 00:11:39.360
And so it as as we moved from our bed to a hospital bed to a diaper, um, you know, middle of the night, I I was like, I was just alone dealing with all of this.
00:11:39.440 --> 00:11:49.039
Um did finally call the hospice in tears, begging them to we chose the hospice we chose because they had an inpatient facility that they owned.
00:11:49.200 --> 00:11:51.519
And I said, you know, I j I just can't do this.
00:11:51.679 --> 00:11:52.559
It's impossible.
00:11:52.720 --> 00:12:00.000
And and they moved her to the facility, so but right after she died and I came back to the house here in Green Valley.
00:12:00.240 --> 00:12:11.440
It was the number one, the the silence of the house of walking into this home where I used to go, I'm home, and she would call out, there was nobody here.
00:12:11.600 --> 00:12:20.559
And the house house was littered with all of the hospice stuff, the hospital bed, the oxygen tanks, the packages of diapers.
00:12:20.799 --> 00:12:36.080
I sat in my living room, and there's just no way to really describe that feeling because it's not like it's not like when she would fly east to see our daughter and I'd stay home because I had work or something.
00:12:36.240 --> 00:12:43.600
That quiet was completely different than the heaviness of the quiet, knowing that she was never going to be there with me again.
00:12:43.840 --> 00:12:57.440
You know, I I sat on the couch and looked at the love seat that she always used to lay on, and I mean it was just it was the the worst feeling I think I have ever had i in those moments.
00:12:58.240 --> 00:13:04.960
So getting into the turning point, was there a specific moment when you realized I can't stay frozen in this grief?
00:13:05.360 --> 00:13:13.120
Yeah, uh it it was I want to say maybe ten days later, right away I got back to getting up in the morning and walking.
00:13:13.279 --> 00:13:29.679
But it was now ten days later, and I was doing my walk and I thought everything was fine, and I got to the end of the first mile, my phone said one mile and sixteen minutes, and and the tears just started flowing for no particular reason.
00:13:29.840 --> 00:13:33.440
I mean, it's not like I was thinking about her or or anything.
00:13:33.600 --> 00:13:38.879
It just was like somebody took a sledgehammer and hit me on the back of the head with it.
00:13:38.960 --> 00:13:42.879
And I I cried as I walked for, you know, another 10 minutes.
00:13:42.960 --> 00:13:48.399
And and when I got home, I sat down and I was like, you know, I I just can't do this.
00:13:48.559 --> 00:13:53.679
I can't sit in the house and and just be in my sadness.
00:13:53.759 --> 00:13:56.879
I had to figure out how to get out of this.
00:13:57.039 --> 00:14:02.399
And it was in that moment I I started going, you know, all right, so what what am I interested in?
00:14:02.559 --> 00:14:13.039
And there wasn't a lot that I really knew because of the way we had lived our life, everything was really done together for the last five years, and before that I had my work.
00:14:13.120 --> 00:14:20.320
So I'd get up in the morning, go to work, and I'd come home at the end of the day, and she'd do her thing, and then we would have our life together.
00:14:20.480 --> 00:14:22.879
So it was like, what am I gonna do?
00:14:23.120 --> 00:14:33.360
Well, back in my youth, my youth, back in the 90s, I got into meditation, and I used to do that all the time, and then I kind of let it go by the wayside.
00:14:33.519 --> 00:14:48.639
So in Green Valley, I had discovered um a Tuesday afternoon group that met at the local library for guided meditation, and I I went, you know, I don't know anything about group meditation or guided meditation, but I'm gonna go.
00:14:49.360 --> 00:14:50.000
Sure.
00:14:50.799 --> 00:15:04.799
I showed up and it turned out to be a great group, and then I um showed up at another group, and so I started going to that weekly thinking maybe I'd be able to build the life out of that, but nothing really clicked, but I did feel better just being out.
00:15:04.960 --> 00:15:13.200
And then in December, one of the women in my bereavement support group had written a book of poetry about grief, about her grief.
00:15:13.360 --> 00:15:24.720
And she had announced that on December 27th she was gonna do she was going to an open mic at a bookstore in a place called Oro Valley, which is an hour from where I was living in Green Valley.
00:15:24.879 --> 00:15:29.279
And she had invited anybody who wanted to go, so I figured, you know, why not?
00:15:29.440 --> 00:15:35.200
It's I had made up my mind that I would say yes to things whether I thought I would like them or not, just to see.
00:15:35.360 --> 00:15:42.639
And this I think for for people who deal with who who are having to deal with their own grief might be helpful.
00:15:42.879 --> 00:15:56.559
On the day of the poetry reading, which was going to be at five o'clock in the afternoon, I remember I was getting close to about 3 30, and if I were gonna go, I'd have to leave no later than four to get there by five.
00:15:56.720 --> 00:16:09.279
And um, I still had to take a shower, and anybody who's dealing with grief knows that it makes you want to close all the shades and pull the covers over your head and crawl up in a ball and not do anything.
00:16:09.440 --> 00:16:10.720
And that's how I felt.
00:16:10.799 --> 00:16:20.159
It was like, you know, God, I'm not gonna drive an hour just to go hear her do her poetry for 15 minutes and then drive an hour back.
00:16:20.799 --> 00:16:21.440
Right.
00:16:21.919 --> 00:16:26.320
And then I talked to myself and I said, you know, look, you have a choice.
00:16:26.480 --> 00:16:35.039
You can spend it in the next three hours here at the house, crawled up in a ball, just thinking about how sad you are and how miserable you are.
00:16:35.279 --> 00:16:39.039
Or you can be miserable while you're driving and see what happens.
00:16:39.279 --> 00:16:48.159
And so um so I was now two months from from Patricia's death, and I got in, I got showered, I got dressed, and I went.
00:16:48.320 --> 00:16:58.240
And and that was really a major turning point for me because when I got there, there were a couple of other people from my group, but there were lots of other people.
00:16:58.399 --> 00:17:04.240
And my friend read her poetry, and then other people read their poetry because it was an open mic.
00:17:04.319 --> 00:17:09.759
And what I what I discovered was number one, I love open mic nights.
00:17:10.000 --> 00:17:15.200
That was so much fun for two hours listening to people read their poetry.
00:17:15.279 --> 00:17:20.400
And and I decided that I would go look for other open mic nights that I can go to.
00:17:20.559 --> 00:17:25.279
But the other thing it did is back in my 20s, I used to write poetry.
00:17:25.359 --> 00:17:29.440
And I realized that I needed to kind of look more into that.
00:17:29.599 --> 00:17:36.960
And at the end of the open mic night, my friend and some of her friends that weren't from the group were gonna go out to eat.
00:17:37.039 --> 00:17:38.799
And now it was seven o'clock.
00:17:38.960 --> 00:17:49.359
And, you know, my wife and I, we generally, if we ate dinner, it was gonna be about five-ish, not at not first go somewhere that you're getting at it to it at 7:30.
00:17:49.519 --> 00:17:51.279
And this was gonna be barbecue.
00:17:51.440 --> 00:17:53.680
And and my instinct was to get in my car and leave.
00:17:53.759 --> 00:17:58.079
And I and then I kind of sat in my car and I went, you know, Mel, what are you doing?
00:17:58.319 --> 00:18:00.400
Go to dinner and see what happens.
00:18:00.640 --> 00:18:11.279
And it turned out to be like the best night that I had had in two months because I was surrounded by other people and there was a lot of talk and laughter.
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And then as I drove the one hour home, I I said, you know, I just have to find things and say yes to things and see what happens, and not let my grief rule.
00:18:23.440 --> 00:18:31.920
And that became a turning point because I met somebody else who told me about the University of Arizona's Poetry Center and classes that they do.
00:18:32.160 --> 00:18:39.599
And so, you know, in January, I I went to an open mic night again down in Tucson.
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I signed up for a class at the poetry center and and went to that class once a week.
00:18:46.000 --> 00:18:50.960
And then I found another open mic night by going to the first open mic night.
00:18:51.119 --> 00:18:57.039
And in February, well, I had started writing some of my own poetry because of the class I took.
00:18:57.359 --> 00:19:05.759
And in February, I went to the open mic night that I had gone to in January, but this time I read some of my own poetry.
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And that opened a whole new door of interests for me.
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And then I don't even know how I discovered that there were classes in improv.
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And I've never thought about improv in my entire life.
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But there was a class that I can go to every Monday, it's 10 bucks, you just drop in.
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And so I went to an improv class and discovered that that's a passion of mine now.
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And so every Monday for the past nine weeks, I've driven from Green Valley to Tucson to go take this class for two hours and then drive back to Green Valley.
00:19:39.440 --> 00:19:44.240
But that was sort of a key moment in December when I went to that first open mic night.
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It was, you know, gotta make a choice.
00:19:48.000 --> 00:19:48.319
Right.
00:19:48.559 --> 00:19:59.759
So still on the the turning point subject, or timeline, I guess you say, the the timeline that you were experiencing this turning point, what surprised you most about your own grief?
00:19:59.920 --> 00:20:02.799
Something you didn't expect to feel or experience?
00:20:03.119 --> 00:20:12.480
Um I I think the thing that surprised me the most was uh how difficult dealing with the grief was.
00:20:14.000 --> 00:20:20.960
How it knocked me down in how much I cried during those f first two months.
00:20:21.119 --> 00:20:28.480
I mean, it was it just seemed like it no matter what I was doing, tears would come for no reason.
00:20:28.640 --> 00:20:36.079
And that was the thing that I think took me the most by surprise was just how frequently tears would begin.
00:20:36.160 --> 00:20:47.359
You know, I I went to there's a place in Green Valley, I can't think of the name of it now, but every Friday they have a Friday morning coffee for people who live in Green Valley who are seniors.
00:20:47.440 --> 00:20:51.599
And I went to it one Friday morning just as, you know, see if I can meet people.
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And I talked to a few people and then there w the entertainment began.
00:20:55.680 --> 00:21:02.319
And out of the clear blue sky, it hit me that, you know, I never even tried these kind of things when my wife was alive.
00:21:02.480 --> 00:21:04.799
We we didn't do these things.
00:21:05.359 --> 00:21:05.759
Right.
00:21:05.920 --> 00:21:14.799
And then the the other thing, probably the thing that really surprised me the most that I had uh that I didn't expect was the guilt.
00:21:14.960 --> 00:21:28.720
When even though my wife and I chose the hospice company specifically because they had an inpatient facility, because we talked about, you know, what would happen if it became more than I can handle.
00:21:28.960 --> 00:21:39.920
When I called the hospice and they came and took her, to this day I'm still haunted by the look on her face as they took her out of the house into the transport vehicle.
00:21:40.640 --> 00:21:40.960
Right.
00:21:41.200 --> 00:21:50.000
And so one of the most difficult things for me, and I know that everybody because I've talked to a lot of people now, everybody has this.
00:21:50.160 --> 00:21:55.119
The most difficult thing was that question of could I have done it differently?
00:21:55.279 --> 00:21:58.400
Could I have stayed at home and kept her in her own home?
00:21:58.720 --> 00:21:59.839
Did I let her down?
00:22:00.319 --> 00:22:03.920
And that was that was probably of all the things the toughest.
00:22:04.319 --> 00:22:11.440
So I want to let the listening audience know that that I learned about you on uh your Substack newsletter.
00:22:11.519 --> 00:22:16.480
And I like to write and read on both Medium.com and Substack as well.
00:22:16.640 --> 00:22:22.559
And I don't I don't know how I got your information or I don't know how I was it introduced to you.
00:22:22.720 --> 00:22:27.680
I guess you were your newsletter was part of a another group forum or something like that.
00:22:27.920 --> 00:22:28.160
Right.
00:22:28.319 --> 00:22:44.000
So I started reading your stuff and I subscribed to you because having lost two children in the last twenty-one years, one was uh a son, Jeremy, I lost him in January of 2025.
00:22:44.400 --> 00:22:50.799
While he and I were not close, it was still loss and grief to a certain degree.
00:22:50.960 --> 00:23:02.880
And so anyway, I started reading your stuff and I was like, wow, I like your I like your attitude, and I like I like how you I don't know, I can't think of any other term to use other than bounced back.
00:23:03.039 --> 00:23:10.079
And uh and I love your uh the Lost to Living framework, which I'm gonna let you get into here in just a second.
00:23:10.240 --> 00:23:26.720
Uh, and I thought I have got to have Mel on my uh Father's Refuge podcast because I feel like uh what he's developed or what you have developed is going to really help a lot of people that are dealing with loss and grief.
00:23:26.880 --> 00:23:34.319
And so I I have several sections with several questions, and I don't I really don't want to go through those.
00:23:34.480 --> 00:23:44.160
I would rather just turn you loose and let you talk about the loss to living framework, living L I V I N G, and each one means something specific, right?
00:23:44.319 --> 00:23:50.079
And so I would like, if you don't mind, uh I think I would like for you to present that in your own way.
00:23:50.480 --> 00:23:55.200
I'm actually going to bring it up so that I could talk about it as as I go.
00:23:55.359 --> 00:24:02.240
So, you know, part of this came from my life coaching background, which was really helpful to me.
00:24:02.480 --> 00:24:07.920
But you know, the the the the first part of that is, you know, locating where you are.
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