Welcome to the season premiere of It’s Just Me, Emily! This season, Emily opens her heart to share a deeply personal journey of self-discovery and healing. Through the lens of her own story—losing her husband, Ian—Emily explores the profound belief that our souls choose their paths, even the hardest ones, to grow and evolve. Emily reflects on how societal expectations often box us in, keeping us from truly understanding who we are. By shedding these external labels, she’s discovered the limitless essence of the soul—and she invites you to do the same.

This season, Emily encourages listeners to find meaning in both life’s joys and its heartbreaks, reframing challenges as powerful opportunities for growth and self-discovery. 

Join Emily on this intimate and transformative journey—you’re not alone.

Episode Highlights

• Breaking Free: Letting Go of Societal Labels to Find Your Authentic Self
• Emily’s Story: Navigating Widowhood and Rediscovering Strength, Identity, and Empowerment
• Finding Meaning in Loss: How Life’s Hardest Moments Can Reveal Who We Truly Are
• Connecting with Your Inner Truth and Purpose Beyond the Need for Approval

Chapters

(00:00) Intro

(01:39) Embracing Identity and Truth After Loss

(20:54) Rediscovering Self After Loss

(23:17) Ego Death and Soul Searching

(36:27) The Journey of Transformation

Host

Emily Bingham helps you free yourself from the “shoulds” to discover your authentic self. She is known for guiding clients through tragedy to find their truth – using their grief as a vehicle for growth and transformation! She is a Certified Spiritual Life Coach, Certified Grief Educator, and Founder of her coaching business I Am Emily Bingham, LLC where she empowers hundreds of clients through online and in-person coaching sessions, including magical, transformative retreats. 

Emily is also deeply connected to her mother archetype – not just as a widowed mom to two kids – but in her creative endeavors. She loves ushering in new ideas and birthing them into life and has done so with the publication of her book Love & Grief, her podcast It’s Just Me, Emily, and her social media content, which inspires millions of viewers to this day. 

Connect with Emily

If you are ready to heal old wounds, explore the unseen realms, and taste the liberation of what it feels like to just be yourself:

Book a discovery call to apply for Emily’s 1:1 soul purpose mentorship: https://calendly.com/iamemilybingham/coaching-discovery-call. 

Explore Emily’s books + courses: www.iamemilybingham.com. 

Follow Emily on Instagram or TikTok for daily inspiration.

WIN A FREE COPY OF LOVE & GRIEF! We're giving away a free copy of my book Love & Grief to the first 20 podcast listeners who subscribe and leave a review on my podcast. Enter your info here and I'll send you the deets to win.

Mentioned in this episode:

Schedule a Coaching Call!

https://calendly.com/iamemilybingham/coaching-discovery-call

1:1 coaching

Hi, friends, it's just me, Emily.

Welcome to my brand new podcast where we explore how to discover your soul's purpose, how to embody more of your essence, and how to actually get out there and live a life in alignment with your truth.

If you've been following me for a while, you might know me as Emily the widow Emily the grief and loss coach.

Maybe as a solo mom, but here I really want to show up as just me, Emily.

We live in a society that really defines us by what we do and not who we are.

And so we often feel this pressure to fit into these boxes, these identities.

Whether it's a doctor, a lawyer, a grief coach, a mom, we have an image of what we do and who we need to be in that identity.

I know for me as a grief and loss coach, I felt like I couldn't shine my bright light because I thought that I was supposed to be darker, moody, more solemn and grave because of the gravity of what the grief and loss space kind of looks like.

And I really limited myself and kind of abandoned who I actually was to try to fit that box for a while.

And I think we all do this in a lot of different ways, whether it's motherhood or professional career that you have, and we tend to abandon actually who we are in the pursuit of what we do.

I have found that it is so incredibly liberating when we decide to take off our masks, say screw you, should, and strip away all of these external masks and identities that we, that we have come to perceive ourselves as and just allow ourselves to be in your essence.

Because your essence is eternal.

You are infinite.

Our soul is infinite.

But we have again grown up in this society that defines us by all of these things that we do outside of ourselves.

I learned this the hard way.

And at that time, my entire identity was wrapped up in being his wife, in being a mom to our two kids.

And all of a sudden, with his death, I lost our entire life.

I lost my identity as a wife and I turned into a widow.

I went from being a parent with shared parenting responsibilities, decision making, to doing it all alone, and also assuming new roles and responsibilities of being head of household and also trying to figure out what I was going to do with my career.

So all of these identities that I had come to know about myself all of a sudden melted away.

And not only was I brought face to face with the task of trying to navigate this whole New normal.

I was also really lost trying to figure out who I actually was anymore.

Without these outside boxes to contain me and to define me, I didn't have a nice little neat box to check anymore.

And as hard, tragic and devastating as the entire experience of losing my 32 year old husband and then having to navigate an entire new normal was, I am so grateful for it.

I'm grateful for the experience of suffering.

Because that tragedy is what has allowed me to understand my truth and to know that my truth, my soul, consciousness and love are absolutely eternal and they are not defined by anything outside of ourselves.

It all comes from within.

And that's what I want to talk about in today's very first episode as we kick off this season of It's Just Me, Emily.

Now, I'm going to drop some spiritual concepts here, and if you're like, what the heck is she talking about?

If it's just not landing, I invite you to just stay open and curious.

When I first learned about these concepts, I was like, I don't really know how I feel about them.

But with time, as I started to just stay open and kind of think about them and process them and decide, like, if I really believed this or not, they've slowly started to drop into my body where I really feel like they are embodied as truth.

So there's a Vedic belief, and it's not just Vedic, there's a lot of different spiritual beliefs around this, that our souls actually choose the path that they're on in this lifetime.

So being here on Earth is kind of like having a.

It's the Earth lessons for your soul to have in this lifetime.

So our physical bodies are literally just like this character that we play in the greater fate and design of the universe.

And when we are born, our soul is ushered into our body.

And the different experiences that we go through in life are a part of the personal destiny that we fulfill in this lifetime.

And that's going to look different for all of us.

But there's this idea that there is this greater divine plan and that each of us has a personal destiny to live out.

Whether we live it out in this lifetime or another is really up to us to decide.

And that's where free will kind of comes into this conversation of fate.

So going back to this concept of tragedy to truth, that would mean that my soul and my late husband Ian chose this path.

His soul chose the path of him dying at the age of 32.

And my soul chose the path of falling in love with someone who would ultimately leave us Way too early in the game.

And so that can be a hard concept to digest.

And even sometimes for me, it still feels a little bit hard to understand.

It's hard for me to comprehend why Ian's soul would choose that path for him to leave us and even for me.

But I think when we're having these conversations around death, we need to be cautious of our own projections around mortality.

Because when you strip away the meaning of death or the meaning that our society has assigned to it and projected onto it, death just is.

Death is actually what gives meaning to life itself, because without the end, you know, there is.

There is no ending to life.

It caps it, and it makes the time that we have here more precious and significant.

So death really just is.

Just like birth is a beginning, death is an ending, and they're related to one another.

We can't have one without the other.

Yet we, as our society, our society, our Western society, and I think most around the world, but not all, but definitely in the United States, we tend to associate beginnings as good as light and endings as negative and bad.

And death kind of falls into that category as well.

So when we look at this from the soul level of Ian's soul, decide choosing that path, we want to try our best to keep this projection of morality out of it and really just see it for what it is that Ian's soul was on that path for.

You know, maybe he completed his dharma in his lifetime and it was time for his soul to leave.

At that time, maybe he was an old soul right where he'd already lived out his.

And dharma means your soul's purpose.

He'd already lived out his personal destiny, and it was his time to go.

And for me, it was part of my personal destiny to go through the tragedy of losing him.

And so I invite you to think about how that concept lands with you.

Does it trigger you?

Does it feel?

Does it resonate?

Is there resonance there?

Or is there just a level of curiosity for you to kind of play with and discern for yourself at some point?

But I do believe that my soul chose this path.

And I believe that part of the lessons that I have had to.

That I have had to learn in losing my husband, Ian, have absolutely brought me into a closer version of truth.

And when I talk about truth, what I mean is my truth is really like who we are meant to be.

Again, if we look at this from the soul level or the universal level, if you believe in God, if you believe in a higher power, if you believe in Source, Goddess, whatever you want to call it?

Because we don't know.

We don't know if there's a big man up in the sky or if it's Mother Earth, right?

This is the mystery, this is the unseen order.

But if you believe that there is a design to all of this, one way to look at it is that we have all been designed with certain unique gifts and strengths.

And part of our purpose is to simply use those gifts and strengths and to shine our divine light so that we can all fit together into this greater puzzle piece of life.

But often what happens is instead of shining our divine light and using our God given gifts and strengths, we listen to what society tells us to do or we listen to our parents or religion or the media, right?

There's so much conditioning that says you should be this way or should be, you should be that way that being an artist won't make you any money or a teacher, right?

So we end up living out of fear and we end up following the shoulds and all of the rules outside of ourselves instead of actually tapping into who we are meant to be.

So I believe that Ian's death helped me remember the truth of what I meant, who I am meant to be as a natural extension of what I do here in this lifetime.

So.

And I'm going to put some context to that for you.

So my entire life, I was a rule follower.

I grew up in a wonderful family, had an amazing childhood, but I was like such a good girl.

I followed all the rules.

I, I listened to my dad, I and mom.

I was like a straight A student.

I was like the gold star child.

Like, give me anything for the gold star.

And so I never really gut checked myself on anything.

It was just like, Emily, like, do this and you'll be safe.

Emily, do this and you'll get a straight A.

You'll get the gold star.

Emily, do this and you'll be worthy.

Right?

So I learned to source validation and safety and love outside of myself through programming from my parents.

And a lot of us go through that.

And what I want to name here is that none of our parents did this intentionally.

They were just doing the best that they could too.

Right?

But there weren't many conversations around Emily, like, what's your truth?

Does that feel good to you?

Does that feel true to you?

Does that feel alive for you?

It was more about like, all right, Emily, get good grades, get into a good college, find a job, stand on your own two feet, eventually get married.

And that's going to be like, start a family and that's going to be your recipe for happiness, fulfillment, and success in life.

And we all have different versions of what that story or what that equation kind of looked like for each of us, depending on how you were raised, your cultural beliefs, your religious beliefs.

Right.

But we all kind of have that script that we're supposed to follow.

So I was totally on that path.

I had gone to a great school, got good grades.

I actually met Ian when I was at University, University of Denver.

We fell in love.

He actually got cancer after we.

We broke up for a little bit after college, and that's when his original diagnosis came in.

It was, like, when he was, like, 22 or 23.

And that original diagnosis is kind of what brought us back together.

So although he was diagnosed with cancer, we still chose to get married because I believe that our love for one another, our desire to be with each other was greater than the fear of him dying.

And again, at, like, a very, like, universal soul level.

And you think of personal destiny, like, I could have chosen to not marry Ian knowing that he had cancer, but I didn't.

I chose to marry a man knowing that he had cancer.

I remember my dad walking me down the aisle thinking, man, this girl has a 50, 50% chance of.

I'm getting emotional saying this, you know, if this actually working out.

But at the time, it didn't matter.

And we chose that path.

We got married, we started a family together, and it was beautiful.

And we were very much just, like, living that recipe of, like, we're both working, we got a home, we got married, we started a family, Right?

Like, we were.

We were living the life according to everything that we had been taught.

And so when he passed away, all of that melted away, right?

Like, I.

The beautiful life that we had built, the identity of wife, of mother, because I transitioned from being a parent to a solo mom, which was entirely different from wife to widow.

And so all of these things that I had wanted that I thought were the key to my happiness and to my success, that had.

That I had defined myself by completely just melted away.

And so if you can imagine your entire life falling apart, and all you have is this blank canvas to move forward, and you have this blank canvas with, like, nothing to.

With no.

With no more rules to follow.

Because in my book, I was like, everything that society and my parents had told me mattered doesn't anymore.

It's all gone.

So I had to come into this process of really figuring out what was aligned for Emily now, so figuring out what I wanted to build in that New normal was a process and it still absolutely is.

Figuring out my identity and who I was without my husband and as being a solo mom was a journey in itself.

So what that looked like is I couldn't go back to my normal 9 to 5 job.

Everything just felt so small, so insignificant.

I was really jaded by the experience of Ian's death and so I wanted to do something that felt more meaningful and fulfilled.

So I started just talking about grief on a GoFundMe campaign where we were trying to raise money for like, outstanding medical bills, travel, things associated with Ian's cancer journey.

And all of my friends and family were like, Emily, you're a really wonderful writer.

Are you going to continue to write after, you know, now that Ian's dead?

And I kind of thought about it and I kind of tuned into myself and I thought, wow, like, you know, writing has been really therapeutic.

I really enjoy this.

I like talking about my story of loss.

So I started a blog where I, where I shared about my grief journey very early on.

The blog then turned into a social media channel or an Instagram page.

The Instagram turned into a TikTok and all of a sudden I had this like huge community of grievers following me just for these vulnerable posts.

Vulnerable posts that I would share about Ian's death and what I was going through.

And also tools and tips that were kind of helping me navigate the experience.

And that's kind of what gave me.

Because that felt so meaningful and aligned for me at the time.

That's what invited me to kind of start this, start a business and that my first business was called Move Through.

I was also a fitness teacher at the time.

So Move through was all about physically moving grief through your body with intention based exercises.

This was like the first time, right, where I wasn't looking outside of myself and asking, you know, what should I do?

Because if I had asked what I should do, people would have probably said, emily, go and get a 9 to 5 job where you can make money and pay for like childcare for your kids.

Right?

That's probably the more rational thing to do.

But because I had gone through this massive loss, like I couldn't lead from anywhere but my heart, I need.

To me, it felt so important, like there wasn't any other option for me to, to talk about grief and loss and find a way to help others with my experience.

So all of this just happened really organically.

So I started Move through the business, kind of evolved as I did in the five years that I was of it.

Of its existence.

It kind of moved from the physical coaching and grief movement to more just regular grief coaching, where I started having online grief groups and running retreats and working with clients.

And all of that felt incredibly aligned with who I was, who I was at that time.

So I did that for about four years.

And then in year four, it was like all.

All of the wind that had been the wind just kind of left my sail.

I felt like I had no more energy to keep talking about grief and loss and my dead husband.

I was tired of being Emily the widow.

And that kind of put me into a whole nother round of soul searching and figuring out who I was.

So, like, after Ian died, I became kind of like Emily the widow.

A whole nother identity kind of outside of myself.

It did feel more aligned than any version of myself that I had ever been before.

Emily the grief coach, right.

But then a year and a half ago, I just hit a wall and I said, I cannot talk about this anymore.

And I started doing some deep, deep soul searching.

And this is where I really started to learn that I'm not Emily the widow.

I'm not Emily the grief coach.

I'm not Emily the mom.

I'm not Emily the partner.

I'm just Emily.

I am just me at my essence.

And it was it.

It really required me to go on a spiritual journey to realize that I am so much more.

More than these roles and these identities and these boxes and what I do, right?

So this soul search experience not only required a deep spiritual exploration, but it also required my full on ego to die.

I had to go through a full ego death.

And how I knew that I had to go through this was because in therapy, I would constantly talk to my therapist about how I wanted to stop talking about widowhood and how I wanted to pivot.

But there was like a part of me that kept me stuck.

And so this often happens when we need to go through an ego death.

And it's because there's two parts of ourselves that are running the show.

The soul was saying, emily, stop talking about widowhood.

There's more for you to be explaining that feels more aligned for who you are now.

But the ego was still attached to this identity that I had created.

And it's because this identity was actually filling a deeper wound that I had within me, A wound from childhood that was long before Ian actually died.

And that was the wound of self worth, of unworthiness.

Because, you see, with this identity of widowhood, I had finally gained the spotlight.

People knew me as Emily the widow.

I had likes, I had followers, I had viral videos.

I was even asked to be on, like, the Bachelorette and on Good Morning America.

Like, a lot of really exceptional things happened to me because of this story.

So in pivoting, I would be forced to let go of that identity and the accolades and everything that might that fed my ego and that deep wound of unworthiness that I had basically inherited as a child.

I had learned again, right, to be the gold star child, that I needed that permission and validation to feel worthy and to feel enough and to feel loved.

So once my therapist and I brought awareness to this wound, I was so incredibly grossed out by it.

And this happens often in shadow work.

It's.

It's in the shadows, it's in the darkness of our psyche because we don't want to look at it.

We hold a lot of shame over these areas of ourselves.

So, um, so I went into the shadow because I was grossed out.

I was like, ooh, I don't want to be doing.

I don't want my life's work to be about filling a void within myself.

I don't want this to be about my ego.

I want to be soul led.

So I looked at it, I sat in it, I just got uncomfortable and examined the wound.

And I think we have to go into this work with a level of grace and also non attachment, knowing that everyone has a shadow, we all struggle with similar wounds, and that there's nothing wrong with me.

And so really looking at this wound with non attachment and objectivity, which is actually a superpower of mine, and it's a skill that I hold my clients through because it's really easy to beat yourself up when you're looking at these parts of yourselves.

So after I sat with that wound long enough, I finally made the decision to say, eff it, I am getting off of social media.

I need to let this identity that I have built online as an influencer, as Emily the Widow, completely die to really figure out the next iteration of my purpose and truly who I am at my essence.

So if you've been following me, I took a three month, like four month hiatus off of social media this summer and I didn't show up.

I didn't post anything, I didn't send out emails.

I barely.

I worked with a couple of clients on the back end, but that was it.

Like this whole identity was gone.

And it was then that I was also able to really dive deep into some of the spiritual work that I had been exploring as well.

So the world of Spirituality is so incredibly vast.

And I worked with a lot of different tools and coaches, healers, and tried different practices to help me reconnect with the deeper parts of myself, with my soul and my intuition.

So some of those tools were very brain based tools like the studying the enneagram and healing, human design and astrology.

These are all different systems that help you understand how you're wired, how you're programmed.

They help you see the unconscious self and the conscious self.

And these are all tools that just help you define yourself and give language to who you are and how you show up in the world.

And I'm going to be bringing in experts to dive deep into all of these different tools over the season together.

I also practiced a lot of mindfulness and stillness.

A lot of my work in grief had been around movement and moving the big energy of emotion through my body.

But soul level work required me to get really quiet.

I learned different practices like empty presence, where I would empty out all of the different thoughts and emotions in my body so that I could be completely empty and still.

And then I would ask for guidance from Ian, my late husband, or I'd ask for guidance from a certain goddess or from other loved ones who had passed on, or just from the universe.

And I would wait to listen and hear what my soul, how my soul would answer.

And often when we're speaking with our soul or speaking to deceased loved ones or to the universe, they're not going to always answer us with a clear message.

It might be through a symbol or through a color or an image.

And metaphors is really how the universe speaks through us, how God, how source speaks to us.

And so I learned how to decode those messages in my own unique way.

So through mindfulness and meditation, I was able to connect to the universe.

As well as my late husband.

I also talked to mediums who are actually trained in connecting to spirits beyond the veil.

I also worked with tarot cards and Oracle cards, asking for asking a specific question.

And then spirit would give me a card that I would read and kind of guide myself into the answer using whatever showed up in the card in the description.

And again, I'm going to be bringing expert Tarot and Oracle card readers into onto the show so that we can learn more about that technique.

I also adventured into the altered state realm with psilocybin and ketamine treatments.

And what's beautiful about altered state is that it allows you to bypass the constraints of the mind.

So concepts like the whole universe resides within me and me connect Being connected, that we all are one, we all are source and consciousness.

We're just in these, like, meat suit bodies, right?

Like, that's a really hard concept for the mind to understand.

But through the use of altered states and plant medicine, I was able to not just see that and conceptualize it, but actually feel it in my body.

And again, I'll be bringing in experts to dive deep into this topic later on.

During the season, I also worked with somatic coaches to help me get back into my body.

I realized that since dissociating from Ian's death, I lived in my mind, in logic, and it's really hard to listen to our soul speak as well as to gain wisdom from our body.

Like, our body is sending us codes and messages all of the time, but if we're disconnected and dissociated, it's really hard to listen to them.

So I had to learn how to get back into my body, to trust it again, to get still enough again to listen to its wisdom as well as those deeper parts of my soul.

I also worked with coaches and healers to help reprogramming my subconscious beliefs around my unworthiness, helping me not just conceptually, conceptually say, oh, Emily, I am enough, but to actually feel that encoded as a deep belief in my body.

So we're going to be exploring all of those different, different methods and tools and healing techniques in this season so that you are able to apply some of these, some of the wisdom in your own journey to find your soul's purpose and your truth.

So this whole soul searching journey was a lot of work.

And you might be listening to this and be thinking, emily, that's crazy.

I would never want to invest all of that time and energy in learning about myself.

And that's okay.

We're all built so differently.

But for me, after going through this journey in within, I have learned that I am a seeker.

That is my archetype.

I believe in magic, and I need to enter into the unseen realm, into the spiritual world to give my life meaning and purpose.

And what this journey has done for me is it's given me clarity around the reason that I'm here.

And that reason is to just be me.

My core wound of perfectionism, of never feeling like I was enough and always thinking that I needed to do something for validation, for approval, for love, is the wound that I am here to heal in others.

So by me being a role model of what it's like to just feel comfortable in your own skin, to shine your light, to say, screw the Shoulds to let go of societal rules and to build your own.

I believe that that is my life's work.

And had I not gone through that journey, I think my ego would still be running the show.

And so that is what this whole season is dedicated to.

It.

It's about me showing up as just me, Emily, in my essence, sharing what is on my heart, the tools, the insights that have helped me let my ego die so that I can live my life from a deeper place within.

It's about introducing you to all of the magic in the world, to all of the different experts and healers and everyday people that I encounter who are living in alignment with their truth and purpose and being a role model for others to do the same.

There are so many different pathways into soul, into learning how to find your truth and trust your intuition.

And that's why I'm going to be bringing in conscious DJs, experts in subconscious reprogramming, somatic coaches, Oracle card readers, tarot card readers, you name it.

Anything under the sun that has helped me in my own personal journey.

Or maybe it's something that I have yet to try, but anyone that is that can help me and you come back home, come back to our truth and build a life in alignment with that.

The number one regret of the dying is living someone else's truth and not their own.

And you can look it up.

So we all know.

Or maybe you don't know.

Maybe you're lucky enough not to know that life is short.

But for me or anyone else who has gone through the hardship of losing someone that you love, you know that your time here is limited and there is no right or wrong way to do this life.

What feels good is what's in alignment.

Because what's in alignment feels true.

It naturally feels good.

Truth is the compass.

So as you listen in over this season, knowing that there is no right or wrong pathway into this work, truth is really what we're looking for.

So as we have these conversations, notice what happens in your body.

Is there, you know, a tingling in your tummy like butterflies in your stomach?

Does something feel activated or triggered?

Do you maybe feel like you just want to melt because there's so much emotion coming through?

Right?

These are all subtle hints and these are ways that your soul is actually speaking to you.

And the more that you pay attention and get curious about them, that might be the hint as to what is next for you.

So if it's the conversation with the conscious DJ that kind of lights you up and inspires you, or if it's using tarot cards that sparks a lot of interest, follow that.

Those are the whispers of your soul saying, this might be for you.

This might be a path to a deeper sense of knowing yourself and what is aligned for you.

Your soul's purpose will continue to evolve.

It's part of the lesson that your soul is here to learn.

And as you're on the path of life, life will continue to throw you different experiences that shape the trajectory of that path and also influence your personal evolution.

So if you look at your life as a series of highs and lows of a series of events, like weddings, birth of your births of your children, getting that first new job, graduating college, and then lows, Maybe it was the job rejection, the college rejection, getting dumped by your boyfriend, or losing the love of your life to cancer at the age of 32, you can kind of see how all of these experiences either shaped you as a human being or guided you into the next chapter of your life.

If you look, and I invite you to even write these events down, when you look at the highs, the celebrations, these are the moments, these are clues as to what brings you meaning in life, what sets your soul on fire, what.

What makes you feel ecstatic and alive, right?

Like, is it publishing that book or was it when you first started your garden?

That's going to look different for everyone.

But noticing what are the things, the most memorable things that bring you that meaning and that deep fulfillment in life?

And then if you look at your lows, the hard points, maybe it was the job loss or your husband dying, whatever it may be, the tragedy, what was the lesson that you learned from it?

How did you grow?

Who did you become as a result of going through that hardship?

And also, where did it guide you next?

Because rejection is often a redirect and failure is just feedback.

And I'm not saying this to minimize how hard, painful and awful these experiences are.

Part of the transformation is going through the hardship of them.

And at the same time, there is always something.

There is light, there is goodness, there is a lesson, there is something for you related to anything hard that is happening in your life.

So look at those events.

The highs really show you.

Like, what do I desire?

What brings me deep satisfaction and meaning in my life?

And the lows are, where did this redirect me?

How did I learn and grow?

And you can kind of start to see this map of personal destiny.

So if you are in it right now, if you are in the darkness, if you are dealing with a loss of any kind Divorce, death, maybe just kids leaving your house.

And it's hard and it's painful.

Instead of asking yourself, why is this happening to me?

Change the question to why is this happening for me?

There is always something for you on the other side of darkness.

Because dark and light are related.

Endings and beginnings are related.

They're actually one in the same.

The tragedy of losing my husband Ian, absolutely guided me to my truth.

As awful as it was for him to get cancer at the age of 24 and for us to be in hospitals when I was pregnant and with a two year old dealing with brain tumors, as horrible as that experience was, it also taught me what it means to be fully present, what it means to recognize that tomorrow isn't guaranteed and today is such a gift, so why not make the most of it?

It taught me to stop speculating about the future and focus on the now.

When Ian died, as awful as it was to lose the love of my life and to lose my kid's father, to have to be a solo parent, what that experience taught me is how much, how much more resilient and capable I actually am.

Again, it showed me that nothing is guaranteed in life.

And in knowing that, and viscerally knowing that in my body, it started to open up new possibilities for what my life could look like.

Because I realized, oh my gosh, I am so much more capable and strong than I ever thought that I was.

So if I can survive my worst nightmare, why not live my freaking dream life?

And then, you know, four years down the road when I had to go through the ego death, through this period of everything professionally just hitting a dead end of not being able to talk about Emily, the widow of clients, honestly just kind of no longer enrolling in my courses.

And I'm thinking, gosh, am I just not meant to do this?

That was a really hard chapter for me.

But in going through that ego death, I was allowed to evolve, I was allowed to grow, and I was allowed to realign back with, with my soul to a deeper sense of me.

And because of that journey, I now know that I don't need anything outside of me.

I can feel happiness, deep fulfillment and love just by looking within.

And with that realization, I honestly feel fireproof.

I'm okay no matter what life has to hand me.

And through that ego death, I have learned that I am so much more than what I do.

That my essence, my frequency, is infinite.

And it's that same essence and frequency that connects me to everybody else in this world.

And being able to just be in that frequency and shine my light and show up as just me.

Emily has been such a gift.

No longer needing to prove, no longer needing to care what somebody thinks of me, and just allowing myself to show up fully as I am.

My greatest desire is that this episode and this whole season together gives you not just inspiration, but actual practical tools to massively transform your life.

To look at the disappointment, the hardship and the failures and see them as opportunities for personal growth and expansion, and to truly believe that everything in life is happening for you.

I will be here along the way to support you.

Not as Emily the widow, Emily the grief coach, or even the spiritual guide, but as just me, Emily.

So thanks for being here, friends, and I hope to see you in another episode soon.

Sa.