Scott Peck, in his book "The Road Less Traveled", began with the simple but profound phrase, “life is difficult”. What adds to these challenging times is the confusion around the question, “WHY?” Why is this happening? Why now? Why me?

In the first of two episodes, Chris Hilken transparently shares about his family’s overwhelming loss and their journey of grief.

If you or someone you know is currently struggling with suicidal thoughts, please reach out to the Suicide Prevention Hotline at 800-273-8255 or go to https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/

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No Grey Areas is a motivational podcast with captivating guests centered around how our choices humanize, empower, and define who we become. This podcast is inspired by the cautionary tale, No Grey Areas, written by Joseph Gagliano. Learn more about the truth behind his story involved with sports' biggest scandal at nogreyareas.com

Speaker 1

You're listening to the No Gray Areas podcast. Patrick McCullough. Today's guest is Chris Halkett, speaker and Pastor Chris shares about his overwhelming journey and how he's struggled with the question why do bad things happen to good people? Let's dove in.

Speaker 2

Chris Hill, welcome to the No Gray Areas podcast. So good to have you. We've known each other for a couple of years. We both spoke at some of the same churches. I felt a connection, a kinship to you. You have a big family, right? How many kids?

Speaker 3

Five kids, five kids?

Speaker 2

Yeah. And like many people that I most of our listeners are actually just listening. They're not watching, so they wouldn't know this. But if they were watching, they probably look at you right now and say, how do you have five kids? You're like, 24 years old because you look really young, right? You've heard that your hope.

Speaker 3

I get that a bit.

Speaker 2

You're going to like that when you get to your forties, though, lots of.

Speaker 3

People tell you I probably that's what they keep saying.

Speaker 2

Yeah, but you in this last year, you went through what what someone might say, like hell on earth, a really difficult time, right? So start to unpack that I don't think many of our audience would know.

Speaker 3

Yeah. So my wife and I were married for eight years and we were ready to give birth to our first kid. When I say we, I use that really loosely because she's giving birth and I'm watching and so gave birth to her.

Speaker 2

We learned a lot in those eight years. Clearly. I see that the way you just qualify that. Yeah.

Speaker 3

And this is like a home birth. It was cool. Everything was going great, and we were just kind of relishing it. Feel like our family was complete. Felt like we finally had after every kid we kind of looked at each other, even in the hospital after birth and just went like, I think I think we want more. And so we finally felt like, wow, I really think this is content.

Speaker 3

I really feel like our family is complete with her. And we talked about doing adoption later on, but within about 48 hours after.

Speaker 2

So you were going to add more kids? Yeah.

Speaker 3

Adopt. Well, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2

Okay.

Speaker 3

Yeah. I don't think it's a lot, but it's fun. Yeah. Never a dull moment. So. Yeah. 48 hours maybe afterwards. Start again. This, like, kind of strange back pain and didn't think anything of it. And I'm thinking, well, you just gave birth in the corner of our bedroom in a hot tub. Like, maybe that, you know, some pain, you know, like, you strain something and you pulled the muscle.

Speaker 3

And so that was kind of consensus, like, you went online to all that stuff, and that was kind of what it was. And it started not going away. It just kept kind of lingering there. And so after a quite a bit of time, I finally called my buddy who works at a hospital in the area, and I said, Okay, this is what happened here that's going on.

Speaker 3

And he said, like this strangely harrowing phase where he said, 99% chance, it's a it's a pulled muscle. You tweaked it, you slept on it. Weird. You pushed in a funny position that that, you know, it might require some physical therapy or, you know, acupuncture or whatever chiropractic care, whatever it is. But there's 1% chance it's a pulmonary embolism.

Speaker 3

And so I'm, you know, trying to African-American. So if I'm five, explain a pulmonary embolism to me. And he said a lot of times it's like pregnant women and women immediately after birth, they'd get these blood clots in their legs that end up traveling different places. And one of the places that I'll get lodged is your lungs, so you'll get a blood clot on your lungs.

Speaker 3

And he said, 25% of people, their first symptom is death. So they don't even know it's what passes from their lung to their heart, and it kills them instantly. And so, unbeknownst to me, Page had been following someone on Instagram. She was a she was big on Instagram. She did a lot of holistic health stuff, and she's an amazing entrepreneur and started a bunch of businesses.

Speaker 3

And so but the the the Instagram account that she was following this is a woman who, during her pregnancy with her fifth kid, had a pulmonary embolism and it killed her. And so this is all kind of fresh and pages mind. And we go to that.

Speaker 2

She just gave birth to her fifth kids.

Speaker 3

Four fifth kid. And so.

Speaker 2

Reading about watching this.

Speaker 3

She's watching the parallels happen. So we go to the hospital and they do a scan and everything like you have a pulmonary embolism. And so you just kind of watch something, click for her in her brain, something just kind of and I really think it was we had an amazing marriage. We had all five kids. We had our future in front of us.

Speaker 3

We were living out in a cool like farm town out in North County, San Diego. And it just everything was lining up. And then I think she's watched. She was healthy and she took care of her body and she ate like all organic, you know what I mean? And then all of a sudden.

Speaker 2

Doing everything right. Yeah.

Speaker 3

And then this thing snuck up on her where it's like, wait, did you just tell me I almost died? And the fear of that set in so intensely for her that we spent a couple of days in the hospital, and she was always natural pathak like, holistic stuff. And now she's like having to give herself shots so that she can as, like, blood thinner so she can try to keep nursing the baby because the normal medicine doesn't allow you to nurse.

Speaker 3

So it's like her whole world kind of got thrown off, and we went home that night. And I don't know if was that night or the next night, but she woke up in the middle and like a panic, she thought she thought that the blood clot had passed and it hit her heart. So she felt some heart palpitations.

Speaker 3

And then so she woke me up and she, like, said our goodbyes. She's like, I'm not going to make it. She's like, let's get the kids up. And I'm like, whoa, you know, I'm I'm the I can't overemphasize the intensity of that moment, but so I'm trying to keep cool and I'm trying to be calm. And so I call the, you know, the nurse hotline.

Speaker 3

I'm calling the emergency room, and I'm like, hey, what's going on? And they're like, hey, I'm sure this is not what's happening. Like, you don't, you don't you're probably not super cognizant of it. She might have a cardiac infarct, Jer, which is basically, you know, a heart palpitations, palpitation because part of your heart wasn't getting oxygenated blood for a season because your blood clot was stopping it.

Speaker 3

That's probably what it was. And but when she had that freak out moment, her brain just kind of started connecting sleep with death. If, you know, if I go to sleep I'm not going to wake up again. And I didn't think much of it, but the next time we got in bed and she just like stayed awake, so it's probably midnight at that point.

Speaker 3

She wakes me up. She's like, Hey, Chris, you can't sleep.

Speaker 2

And so consciously trying to stay a stay awake.

Speaker 3

Now if you want to sleep more than.

Speaker 2

Anything. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3

So I'm like, OK, I'll stay up with you. And so is midnight and we, like, put on some worship music. I got my guitar out. I'm just like going to play with her because she's just not she's just not even it doesn't seem like she's tired. And so that happens and that's day after day, night after night after night after night, the same thing happens.

Speaker 3

And after day two, I took her to the emergency room, just said, guys, something's going on. Like she won't sleep. And I don't mean she sleeps a little bit, you know, like, everyone was like I was like, my wife's not sleeping. OK, so how many hours that you get? I mean, I. I'm not mincing words. I think you heard me say she's not sleeping well, but I didn't.

Speaker 3

She's just not sleeping. She's got a newborn, she's breastfeeding, she's undernourished. She's all these things. She and she doesn't sleep. And so it's like every day that we would go back and it would give us, like, the next bigger pill and the next bigger, like, intense thing to put her down and to, like, put her finally to sleep and just wasn't working.

Speaker 3

Speaker 3

And then on day four, she started talking about like, hey, I, I'm starting to think I'm sort of these weird, like, suicidal thoughts. And my wife is someone who, whenever we heard about someone committing suicide, was always she would just kind of break down to me, like, how could anyone do this? Like, it's so selfish and it's so this and it's so that I don't understand and I can't comprehend it.

Speaker 3

And like, if someone ever had anxiety around us or depression in our close circle, she was always very empathetic towards them, but then would come to me and go, like, I don't get it.

Speaker 2

So she's never struggled up to this point. She didn't have a past struggling with anxiety or depression or no nothing.

Speaker 3

And, and her platform was fairly big on social media. And she had she was outspoken about her views. And so she she had the stuff thrown at her to like people would, you know, she had moments where people would come at her and it was like water off a duck's back. She just didn't, wasn't bothered by anything, didn't get wrapped up in anything and was just phenomenally confident and helped so many women throughout her life.

Speaker 3

And so she just kind of knew who she was. She was so comfortable in her own skin. And so and that you sit there and you're like, what did you just say? You're having suicidal ideation. Like, what are you talking about? Like, I just want to use the restroom. And I looked at like my my cord to my hairdryer and thought I could use that or like and she's like, I just can't shake this idea.

Speaker 3

And she was always very honest, open with it. Like, she never really hid anything. And and so I went back to the emergency room the next day, walked him through that. I gave the next biggest pill and nothing worked. Went back the next day, next biggest pill, nothing worked. And then I was going to teach at church that next night, and she came with me because I just felt like at this point I want to leave her alone or alone with the kids because she's not sleeping.

Speaker 3

And that can make you do weird stuff. Like if you start Googling. Oh, yeah, what do you do after three days of no sleeping? Most of the things are jokes and some are like, yeah, you're probably you're on like a binder or you've got, you know, you're cracked up on something. But when you start Googling, like, what happens after five days of no sleep, the articles go from like two point million hit, 2.5 million hits to like 13 hits because it's just not something that happens.

Speaker 3

And for ten days straight, she didn't sleep at all, not one week. And after day, whatever day it was when I was at church, she ended up saying like, I don't feel safe if you go inside. And so I called.

Speaker 2

Like, this is right before you're going up to see me.

Speaker 3

Yeah, yeah. I'm like in the parking lot getting ready to go in. And I just it was always this ideation, like they call suicidal obsession. Some times, especially for people who go through something traumatic like that. She got diagnosed with post-traumatic stress. And so I'm like, OK, this, that she's having these ideations. But then she started saying, I don't feel safe.

Speaker 3

Like, I feel like I could act on this. And so I called everyone who's got any kind of psych in their name, psychiatrist, psychologist, psychological, whatever it was. And Northcoast is Kim from North Coast, came around her and just kind of sat with her and sat with me. And I'm trying not to panic, but in my head, I'm going like, wait, what?

Speaker 3

Like what is going what are we talking about right now? Are we really having this conversation? And so we end up taking her down to a behavioral health unit in San Diego that night. And she was there for, I think, six days or whatever it was. They finally gave her this crazy cocktail of sleep medicine, and she was able to sleep after like the first or second night, which equaled ten days total.

Speaker 3

And then every day I would drive down, it's about an hour drive. I had someone watch the kids. I would drive down, I would get a Rubio's on the way there and we would eat lunch together at the behavioral health unit and just felt so weird. It was like, why are we here? What are we doing here? Like, this is not for people like us, you know, this is for people who and a lot of them had different drug issues and whatever.

Speaker 3

And and those diseases are very real to not try and diminish them, but just to say like everything that we've done in our life was to protect to these things and to, you know, our marriage and our open lines of communication and our our handling stress and our handling different arguments like it was all to prevent this. And now we're sitting here.

Speaker 3

So she went through that process, ended up getting a she got some brainwave therapy afterwards. And she just registered off the charts. And in terms of trauma, they basically said, like, it's like you're constantly in a war. So my wife's fight or flight reflex was constantly engaged and so when you talked with her, it was like she wasn't really there when she was when she was there.

Speaker 3

And long story short, there's a lot more elements to.

Speaker 2

It when you say that it was like fight or flight, because I think that those terms are thrown around a lot nowadays. But hers was really serious. I mean, from not sleeping that much, right? Like, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3

She would explain to you how she would kill herself in any moment. But if you said, are you depressed, you know, do you want to end your life? No. Yeah. Well, then why are you talking about this? And her brain?

Speaker 2

How confusing for her. Oh, my.

Speaker 3

Gosh. She was she was so confused. Yeah, because it was it was like an impulse. And that's what afterwards I'm realizing, learning so much about the brain that that lack of sleep can rewire your brain to where it's self-preservation. Instinct becomes like self-destruction instinct. And you're like, what in the. So that's what you do. She would sit there and she would laugh and she would play, and she would talk about how much she loved her life, and she would write in her journal, and she would do all these things.

Speaker 3

And then she would sit there and go, like, I can't drive today. I can't drive the kids anywhere. I can't do this kind of stuff. And and so this behavior just that's like the fight or flight thing. I was just constantly in that in that zone. And she was afraid of things and when we talked about the future, she was like, I want to talk about the future right now.

Speaker 3

And so there's a lot other stuff that happened. But but basically the trauma just kept getting worse and worse. My son Leo went limp one day, just fell over and was unconscious and they thought he took pages, sleep, medicine, and he was going to die. It's already said. And we were about him like and so we didn't have a way down the.

Speaker 2

Hill.

Speaker 3

Where I'm speaking to him. Like we don't have a way of, you know, the hill there where you can life flight. And so I had a guy tell me, like, if what happened is what you think is what we think happened? We can't save him. We can't promise that we can do all that stuff. But it's not going to it's already setting in.

Speaker 3

He's he's limp. He's unresponsive. And after a few days of like, what the heck is going on, got diagnosed with acute onset cerebral itis, which is this just in infinitesimally rare disease where a kid's whole nervous system shuts down because they're getting sick. And after three days, he was fine. And my daughter Finley, our newborn, had an asthma attack in the middle of the night and we had to rush her to the emergency room and it just felt like.

Speaker 2

Getting hit over the head with.

Speaker 3

It just felt like I remember my prayer being so poignant. That term was like, God, just leave me alone. Like, just leave me alone, OK? And I'm thinking back to like a heroes of heroes of faith, historically speaking, and or even people that I like. You read their books and their theologians and, you know, like you read Grief Observed and how come C.S. Lewis wrote it all?

Speaker 3

Because his wife died and and, you know, the guy who wrote it is well with my soul. And he writes it when he's passing over his entombed child's grave in the in the Atlantic or whatever it is. And so I just started thinking myself like, is this what you're doing? Like, are you just trying to make an example out of me and my family and like, I'd rather just not be involved in ministry and you leave me alone then to give me some kind of testimony that you're going to want me to share later on.

Speaker 3

I just like Jimmy. It was never been anything but a definitely wrestling of like, just leave us alone because it just felt gratuitous. And when anyone in our in our immediate community was just kind of like, this is a joke, like, this is all a joke, you know? And I always tell people, like, you know, they couldn't find their keys.

Speaker 3

They're like, well, I'm getting jobbed right now. You know, like, this is like job in the Bible. And and that's kind of it felt like everything that was sacred to us was getting kind of ripped away one by one. And.

Speaker 2

Well, and in some ways, it was though, right? Because not finding your keys is a lot different than what you were going through. You literally were in the process of going through what? Similar to what Joe had to deal with.

Speaker 3

Yeah. And my my son was having like I saw my other son named Brady. His eyes were turning inwards randomly. We thought he was crossing his eyes for fun. But turns out he had some kind of what they thought could be a growth in his brain and was doing that stuff. And I just stopped telling people this stuff because it just felt like a lie.

Speaker 3

It felt like there's no way you're going to believe that this is happening to me, too. And so I ended up just hiding it and everything else bad that would happen. I would just not even tell anyone because we're just so intense and so weird. And it was just, you know, it felt like Satan was getting the win every time new people were freaking out or whatever.

Speaker 3

So anyway, her mental health continued to decline to a point where she just started participating really strange behavior. Like I was sitting next to one day, she jumped off the balcony at our house, like we're just standing like holding each other, talking about the day and she's like, I just feel like I want to. And then she just jumped off the balcony and she landed on the ground below.

Speaker 3

And fortunately, she wasn't hurt by that. And but like, all my kids were around and, you know, my son's going like anyone who would come over it. Why is mom jumping off the balcony? Like, what is going on? And and, you know, like, I would catch her, like, trying to put things around her neck and strangle herself. And it was just and it was just this duality.

Speaker 3

It was as close to what you would understand is like possession as you could possibly get where it's like you're normal. We're talking we're having conversations, we're doing this, and then you do this erratic behavior. And and even psychiatrists are starting to scratch their head like, we don't really get what's going on.

Speaker 2

She's she's sleeping by now, but it's it's probably something. Half the trauma, OK, but the trauma has rewired her brain in some ways.

Speaker 3

Right? She's not yourself anymore. And so that probably started the beginning of May. And so May through July, I would say she stopped being herself probably mid April, I would say. And then it was kind of like there was this person and she was almost like she's like a patient. And I was like a doctor. And so we're doing everything.

Speaker 3

I'm like EMDR, eye movement therapy, hypno cysts, like no matter what, right? I mean, just try anything. And we're in a Christian counselors like, can you hypnotize her? You know, like, I don't know, just get her to go to sleep. And that was my thing. It's like, almost in tears at each. I'm like, I hope you wouldn't just give me my wife back, you know?

Speaker 3

And so after the balcony incident, I finally, like, I went on Google and I just said, I'm not worried about local. I'm not we're about anything. And before that, she didn't want to leave the kids. Like, I don't whatever you are, I'm not leaving you and not even our kids. So if you want to do an outpatient thing, I'll go for a day.

Speaker 3

But after that episode.

Speaker 2

Five kids, like you said, and the newborn was a newborn. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3

And she's kind of disassociated with the idea of her needing help or her going crazy. She doesn't she doesn't connect with it because when she's healthy, it's like, oh, this is great. After that, she agreed to. She's like, I think I need something more intense. So I went online. I said, What's the best PTSD trauma center in the nation?

Speaker 3

Like, we don't care what it costs. I don't care if it's covered by insurance. It was like, What is your insurance? I don't care if it's the best one at this point. Like, I'll sell my kidney. Like I'll sell my plasma if we have to. If we're all naked on the side of a road and we have no house, no clothes left, let's do it because I just have to get my things, getting my life back.

Speaker 3

Like it's like the parable of like the, the the pearl in the field or the treasure in the field is like now that I know that this can be taken from me, like, just sell everything and get her back. So Tucson, Arizona had one that was nationally renowned, and so she end up going to that center. And again, after a couple of days she was able to convince them to let her out of like the intense check in every 30 minutes thing.

Speaker 3

And she went into residential side and within 48 hours she had she had taken her own life. And so July 31st at 10 a.m. I'm sitting in a living room with my kids and my parents were in town randomly and I get a call from, from the police from Tucson. And I think it's just like our daily check in. You know, the day before we talked about Costco, I took our five kids to Costco and it was just a great spectacle and I took a picture of them and consented to actually never film with her.

Speaker 3

But I'm talking to her about, you know, I going like, hey, I appreciate so much more than I ever did because this is hard. And this is it's not just hard. It's taxing and it's emotional. And they're like, but nothing out of the ordinary, nothing weird in that conversation and in that 10 a.m. I just there's three people on the phone at the same time.

Speaker 3

I answer the phone, Hey, babe, what's up? And you know, it's, hey, this is Dr. whomever they.

Speaker 2

Called on her phone.

Speaker 3

No, they call that she would all these her phones. So they call them the phone from the phone, the area code that I was expecting because that's what she did every day. We, we talked every day and it's three people. And I know this isn't good, you know, like, but I'm thinking to myself, like, every time she's had any kind of attempt, it was always more of a, you know, jump off the balcony, like that wouldn't kill you or you know, she would move towards me when she felt like she was going to do something impulsive and she would like let me know about it and I would protect her from it.

Speaker 3

And so the doctor said, you know, Mr. Hill, can this morning your wife attempted suicide. And and he paused. And I was like, and I'm thinking like she kicked out of the program, like, what do you mean, she attempted suicide? And and then he said, and she was successful. And I remember thinking, even at the moment, like, first of all, you need to get a new way of saying that.

Speaker 3

And secondly, like your world, it just if you think of, like, a war movie where a bomb goes off next to the guy and they use the ringing in your ears and then, you know, English language. So, you know, I know what you just told me you know, like, there's no way that you just told me what you just told me.

Speaker 3

Like.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Speaker 3

And so I just I remember just collapsing like a puddle on the floor and and then it was almost like adrenaline kicked in and it was like it was like dad mode, like, I got to go tell five babies that they're never going to see their mom, you know what I mean? Like, there's just, you know, you can go to seminary, you can go to Bible college, you can you can you just but nothing prepares you for that moment where you got to be like.

Speaker 3

So I remember going downstairs and I sent the kids upstairs first to tell my my parents were there and my brother and his wife was there again as an act of God, they live they lived in Bakersfield. They shouldn't have been there. They were dropping off my dog, who ended up whatever but I remember. I just I like staring or much just like she's dead and my dad.

Speaker 3

What? Who, what? And I think Page is dead and everyone just collapsed. It just it was just like because the ramifications just it sets in one by one and almost like a thousand paper cuts. You start thinking of the implications of this, and not the least of which is like, there's my lover, there's my wife, there's my everything, there's my future, there's my there's my passion, there's my plan.

Speaker 3

There's like, there she is. My everything. And you just told me she's gone. And I just I just don't under I do not know how there are words that I know how to say to to help articulate what it feels like to have your soul get stepped on like that. And so I told everyone I was like, hey, you got to be strong.

Speaker 3

We got to tell these kids. And this is this is the worst day of their life. They're not even know it yet. But I don't want to add fear in the mix because you guys are rolling around on the ground and freaking out, like, let's get it together and let's be there for them. It doesn't mean a lot of time today for us to weep with each other and to fold and to do that.

Speaker 3

But right now, let's get these kids told because nothing's going to make sense until they understand what happened. And so I explained to them, and I remember thinking to myself whether it's right or wrong, like, I don't have to tell them twice, so tell them exactly what happened.

Speaker 2

So and how old are they how old is your oldest?

Speaker 3

Speaker 3

And so we've been talking, we've been talking about death. We've talked about his cancer, we're talking about my buddy Tito who was killed. And so then it made the vocabulary strong enough that they could get both of those concepts. And so I said, you guys know how, how pop up. That's that we call my dad a pop up had cancer and it threatened to kill his body.

Speaker 3

Mom had a kind of a cancer too of a brain. And when this cancer gets really bad it tells you to do stuff that you would never do. And because you're so sick that you start listening to it. And Mommy had a kind of a almost had cancer of the brain that told her that the best thing that she should do right now is to kill herself.

Speaker 3

And and that's what happened. Mommy's disease got so bad that it's like someone else took over her body and took her life from her because, you know, your mom, your mom, you would never do that. Your mommy loves you so much. You do. And you just start watching their cogs turning, like, because they're now they're starting to get the implications of what's going on, and they get enough that they're like, wait.

Speaker 3

So, you know, my middle son's like, so I went. So hold on. She's dead. But when is she coming back from the hospital? And oh. MAN two Your worst enemy. You would never want them to have that come. It's just it was just like the most painstaking. And that just led to, like, that was the beginning of just the season of, you know, the dark night of the soul, where you go, how in the world, why?

Speaker 3

Who are you guys? Like, why, why? How did you and from that to planning her memorial to then picking up the pieces of your life to go now what? Like, you know, and in your moments, it's like it hits you in ways your wave. At one point that day was like, wait, Samir, good day, people again. Like, what did I just become like the single father of five, the the, you know, like what in the what is in these short think about your future and, and all the promises that you made about what you were going to do and then reflect back on your wedding.

Speaker 3

And our wedding song was I won't give up on us. Even if the skies get rough and you like you think about your vows and for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health till death do us part. And you just it's just.

Speaker 2

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3

Yeah. So that just kind of began that season for me that I'm in, you know, right now, deep refining deep grief, intense suffering. But also, I think in the middle of that, in God's faithfulness, I found the different attributes of God that have always escaped me are now so much more real to me than ever before, like God as comforter.

Speaker 3

And what did that mean? You know, well, who needs a comforter when you've never been uncomfortable? Goddess as provider? You know, who needs a provider when you've always had providence and and that's been that this season for me is just this deep, passionate relationship with Jesus that I've never had before. On the coattails of the most intense charge I could possibly imagine, just taken every day, one at a time, and trying to raise these kids to know Jesus and and doing whatever I can to try to be both mom and dad to them.

Speaker 3

And so that's kind of been my story.

Speaker 2

Man. Chris, I run a podcast, so I have to talk, but I, I mean, I think when anybody goes through something like you've gone through, you know, I've heard it said before, you just show up and shut up. Sometimes because what do you say? It's a little bit like what I feel like right now. Like I don't only know what to say, but I certainly hearing you describe that grief and confusion go well together.

Speaker 2

Don't they like that? What I kept hearing, you're saying you're confusing, you're you're confused. Like there's all these different thoughts. You know, you're thinking wedding day and future and how do you tell your kids? And so you're going through that. Your kids are going through that. And I imagine in the last segment a year now, right. It's like seven or eight months now.

Speaker 2

You've had to do many times what you did that first the first moments where you had to set aside what you were dealing with to deal with your kids. But then you have to deal with your stuff, too. Otherwise you're going to be in a really unhealthy place. So I can't even imagine the weight and yeah, hey, we recognize that this is a really deep subject, difficult subject.

Speaker 2

We're talking about grief. We're talking about suicide. So first of all, we just want you to know that if you're struggling with this or you know, someone who is we have information in the description about a suicide hotline that you can reach out to. But we are because of the fact that this is such a deep subject we're going to split this into two parts.

Speaker 2

So make sure and join us again next week as Chris Elkin continues to unpack his journey and how we can deal with our own grief. And help deal with the grief of others.