Kathi knew for most of her daughter's life that something was different. She was little, pale, and had a yellow tinge on her skin. Through the blessing of a new doctor during a regular check-up, Kathi finally got the answer, but it was not the one that she wanted to hear.

How often do you want your child to be special and unique? But not with a diagnosis of Fanconi Anemia which is so rare that there are only 1000 known cases worldwide. Kathi walks us through her daughter's diagnosis, the eight months of treatment, and the heartbreaking goodbye. Kathi is launching Sparkendipity - The Art of Sparking Joy & Happiness to inspire women to live life to its fullest.

Kathi is proof that you can find joy in any circumstance when you trust in God's plans for your life and the lives of those you love.

Kathi Goodwin: Why is my daughter so little? Why is she so pale? And he said, It's one of three things I've only seen this one time in my life.

Diane Belz: Have you ever felt hopeless? Like nothing good could ever happen happen again? Well, I have. And that's why I created the Hope Station. Each week you will hear amazing stories of hope from people just like you. People who have transformed disastrous, disappointing and depressing events in their lives into messages of hope, turning tragedy to triumph, pain to purpose, crisis to new careers, all through the power of hope. So, sit back, relax, and pull into the Hope Station, the place where you can refuel, refresh and realign your hopes and dreams. Today, my guest is Kathy Goodwin, and we are going to hear her story of how she came back after losing her daughter. And I just thank you, Cathy, for giving us the privilege of hearing this story and for teaching us all how you move through that journey to where you are today. Thank you.

Kathi Goodwin: Thank you for having me on. I really appreciate this. I just love sharing my story with people and helping to inspire them.

Diane Belz: Okay, so what happened? You lost your daughter? Just take a deep breath and we'll just hear that part of your story.

Kathi Goodwin: Well, life was going on just perfectly and we were a family of four and just doing all the fun things that life has to offer. And then all of a sudden one day we were going to be going to Busch Gardens and we had a doctor's appointment that morning and that's when my world changed.

Diane Belz: Was a regular doctor's appointment?

Kathi Goodwin: It was a regular doctor's appointment. And we had a different doctor that day. She was pregnant. And I asked her the same questions I asked all of them and it was, why is my daughter so little? Why is she so pale? Why does she have this yellow ring around her like her mouth? It just looks like she was jaundice, but yet her eyes were not jaundice.

Diane Belz: Okay?

Diane Belz: What any of those meant. Did you know what any of those leukemia. I know, I don't know the other right.

Kathi Goodwin: We were talking as we were walking through Bush Gardens, my husband and I, and I said, I hope it's either leukemia or aplastic anemia because those sound like they're better, if you will, or actually, no, I was saying that I wanted it to be a plastic anemia, not the leukemia, because I thought leukemia was worse. And so anyway, come to find out, when somebody has spankena anemia, by the time they're seven years old, they usually have leukemia as well. And they also usually get a plastic anemia, which shuts down all their bama. Well, when we finally found out what really was going on, she had a plastic anemia and fancone anemia, and it was just a whole nother story in itself, the journey that we went down. So basically we went and did some research with the world renowned specialist in New York, and I'm thankful that we did, because they measured all kinds of pieces of her body, including her ventricles in her brain and things like that. And that became very important because we ended up going to Minnesota for a bone marrow transplant. And basically she had to have that quickly. She was seven and a half.

Diane Belz: What's her name?

Kathi Goodwin: Casey Elise Goodwin.

Diane Belz: Casey. Okay, so how was Casey up until this time? What was her childhood like?

Kathi Goodwin: Oh, my goodness. Everybody thought she was just so we know Casey as smiles and giggles. Okay. Casey would light up a room no matter where she went, and she was full of energy, or what we thought was energy, but she never could learn how to ride a bike, and we couldn't figure it out. She would take like two times around with her legs and then she would stop, and we couldn't figure that out. And coming to find out later, it was because she did not have the energy and the stamina to do that, but she wanted to, but she wouldn't.

Diane Belz: Have known any different because this is how Casey lived her life.

Kathi Goodwin: Right. She had it since birth because it's a genetic illness, and she had it since birth, and she just adapted to everything. But everybody loved her. And it was just when we went to Minnesota, the very first thing they do is they run a bunch of tests, but then they kill off all your bone marrow, and that said that they can put the new bone marrow in. And we had a very young donor that was matched, so we were so thankful. And I think she was like 24 years old anyway, so we went through that, and as soon as they killed off all of her Bmera, we found out that she was very sick. She had meningitis.

Diane Belz: Was that because of the test, what they were doing, or just after?

Kathi Goodwin: We don't know how she contracted meningitis, and it's very rare for somebody to go through a bone marrow with meningitis. As a matter of fact, they came in and one of the doctors told me that she probably wasn't going to make it. And of course, I kicked them out of the room and said, it's not your decision. It stops. And so I didn't give up on my daughter. I wanted to be there for her through everything. But I will tell you, I didn't feel hopeless. It was more I felt helpless. In other words, I had been through some other challenges in my life in the past, and so I already knew. I promised God that I'm always going to trust you, I'm going to have my faith in you. But this was bigger than I could ever imagine.

Diane Belz: So what led you to throwing the doctor out of the room? He's proclaiming something of your daughter that was your daughter there and awake and aware?

Kathi Goodwin: Yes, but he was kind of just talking to us over to the side, but I knew that she probably could hear. And so I said, you know, no, we're not giving up on her. We're going to make it through. But yes, this is challenging. And so she ended up having to have multiple brain surgeries. And at one point, I even had to stay in the room with her during a brain surgery. And that's because what they do is they turn a bone here room unit into an actual operating room because it's more dangerous to take her out of the environment. I stayed with her because she had to be awake, and that was pretty challenging as well.

Diane Belz: How did you do that? I painted the sight of blood. So how were you able to do that?

Kathi Goodwin: I don't know. I prayed for strength, but nobody was going to make me leave that room. Yeah, it was one of those things. I knew if my daughter had to be awake because they wanted her to be awake so she could respond. If she was going to have to be awake, somebody was going to be in there with her. And so I decided it was May.

Diane Belz: Was that painful for her?

Kathi Goodwin: Actually, I don't really know. And I say that because.

Diane Belz: There were.

Diane Belz: Did he say it been a suda done, and did she ever come home out of this or okay.

Diane Belz: So April, this month is our anniversary.

Kathi Goodwin: Yes, April 27 is her anniversary.

Diane Belz: Okay.

Kathi Goodwin: And I'll tell you, so when she actually passed away while she was there, and she had gotten sepsis, and she got sepsis multiple times, and she had been on a ventilator, and I just remember telling her, casey, if you don't do anything else, and this is right after they had taken the ventilator off of her. And so she was supposed to be breathing on her own, which she was, but I could tell things were just going the opposite direction from where I wanted. And I remember telling her, and I said, Casey, I said, if you don't do anything else, at least say Mommy or I love you, and if Jesus wants to carry you home and it's time, then it's okay and we'll be okay. And she looked up at me, and I kid you not, she had not spoken for two days. And she looked up at me as clear as day, and she said, Mommy twice. And then started having seizures. And I told my husband, this is up. And before that I would have never said it, but I had been praying the whole time. And one of the prayers that I had to God is I said, you have got to give me a true answer. I don't want the gray area. It's got to be black or white. It's got to be clear as day. And that's the kind of bold prayer it was. Bold, let me tell you. I did some bold things.

Diane Belz: There was one time I have to.

Kathi Goodwin: Laugh about this because there was one time where I actually fell down on my knees, and I was the only one in there at the time other than my daughter. And I fell down on my knees, and I remember praying to God, and I said, I don't know, maybe I'm praying wrong. I said, But I'm on my knees now. And I said so I need you here. I did some crazy things, but I had to because it's tough when you're living inside of a one room DMT unit. Yeah, do all that.

Diane Belz: But 20 years ago, you lost your daughter. What has transpired since then?

Kathi Goodwin: Okay, well, one thing is, matter of fact, the date that she passed, I remember not just grieving, because I felt like I went through the whole grieving during the whole process, but what I did is the words that came to me right away was, thank you, Lord, for allowing me to raise an angel. And that has always stuck with me. And I am in the process of writing a book. I don't know if I'll name it that, but that's kind of the premise of it. I always try and look at the positive things, and she was all about smiles and giggles, and it's so funny because you will see something pop up at a time where I need comforting or whatever. It just smiles and giggles will pop up somewhere, and so that's always there. But now, I have started a business just recently. I work full time, so I'm doing it on the side. But I started a business, and I am the creator of Sparkendipity. And Sparkendipity is something that I coined, and it stands for the art of sparking, joy and happiness. And I really feel that God has put it in me to inspire other people to get through tough things in their life. And I've been able to help people on a smaller scale. And now I'm ready to go all out in a business. So that's where I'm heading.

Diane Belz: Can I step back a little bit? And I would like you to talk about your grief journey. And I had also lost a daughter. She was 22 at the time, sudden. So it's a different kind of grieving process, and that just explain your process, because what I'm doing is I'm putting these into monthly segments. And I was saying to Lord, well, if you want me to start with my grief story, I need some other people who have a grief story as well. And then I looked at your story. I'm like, okay. And then I looked at someone else's, I'm like, oh, okay. The prayers were answered before I sent them. And it's interesting that you said thank you. And I remember the day after my daughter died, I would say I had a renewed faith just six months before, and I couldn't even get out of bed. So I got on my knees and I said, lord, I know I am supposed to thank you for this, even though I don't know why I'm doing it.

Kathi Goodwin: Yes.

Diane Belz: So why do you think that that's important, to just thank God for that?

Kathi Goodwin: Well. You know. It came to me. And I guess the thing is. When you're going through something like what I did. Because it was a lengthy period. If you think about it. Where we were grieving every day and the roller coaster was so intense. I mean. I felt like we were just up and down. And it's almost like going up a roller taster and never getting to the top. And your heart is just like. Sinking. Anyway, as we were going through it, I felt like we were grieving along the way. Now, I had a daughter who they were very close, and they were only three years apart that I left home with my parents. And at the time we left, my mother was in the hospital with something else very serious, but she did not want me to wait. So we went on and went, and it was every single one of us raised in a different way. And my dad, he was so close to my daughter, and he would call and he would want to hear everything himself. He did not want somebody else given the story. But as I was trying to tell him and all, he was grieving in a different way. And he ended up passing away right behind her. And I had to give him permission to go, but we didn't know it, but he had pancreatic cancer. And what he did while he was laying in the hospital room, he was sitting there, taking his hands, going towards him, and he said, that guy was telling them, it's okay. And Casey is saying, Come on. And he went ahead and let go.

Diane Belz: I want to back up a minute. This is such good stuff, the releasing of people. You release Casey and you release your dad. Why do you find that that's important to do?

Kathi Goodwin: I think they hold on, and I think they hold on for a reason. And my mother same thing happened with my mom. My mom had strokes, and I took care of her. And the day that she passed because she didn't want to go, because she felt she needed to be here for my oldest daughter. And so the day that she passed, her mother, which was a lot older, she was in another state and she wasn't here. And my mom wouldn't let go because I think she needed to see her. So I kept showing her pictures of everybody in the family and just talking about it and trying to get her to let go. And finally the phone rang, and it was my grandmother, and she talked to my mom. And then right after that, my mom let go. I said, she talked to my mom. My mom couldn't talk at that point, but I put the bang to her ear, and you could just see the piece, and she just like, yeah, I've been there.

Diane Belz: When my mother died, when my husband and I lost my husband three years ago when he passed away, and my father in law. And each one of them was a waiting and then a release. And I remember talking to my dad was so adamant that he wouldn't let my mother go. And I would pick him up, and I'd say, dad, I want you to think about this. I said she grew up in Camden. Camden, New Jersey, is like the crime capital per capita of the United States. It's a dark place. I said, you're wanting her to stay in this place that's like Camden. She's physically and mentally she had Alzheimer's in Camden. He said, you always would take her on these wonderful vacations. Just think that you're releasing her into paradise. It's okay. And I think the fear of him being alone, he ran from death. His dad died when he was young. He ran away when my daughter died, when his brothers died, when his grandson died, my dad just would run away from it. So this is where we're pulling him every day into the situation with my mom. And when my sister and I my sister had rescued her from the nursing home and brought her to her house because she said, I'm going to take care of her. We're going to make sure her last days are good days, and she's going to be surrounded by people. So she took her home. We went out to do a training class that we were doing together. And when I got back, I stood by her and I said, her lips are blue. I think it's time. So we're trying to pull my dad off the couch. And I said, dad, you really need to release her. She's holding on for you. You have to release her. Let her go. So he stood up. He goes. What do I say? I said, Say what's in your heart, right? He said, Honey, say hello to Jesus for me.

Kathi Goodwin: That's special.

Diane Belz: Guess what? She passed away. It's just like the spirit. And they're beautiful stories of how you need to release. They don't want to disappoint you, even in that hour, and they just need to hear what you say. It's okay.

Kathi Goodwin: And for myself, because I've had to do that to all three of them, and it's actually been a blessing for me because I can remember the special moment of that. And yet I watched some other people, because when we were in Minnesota, we watched a lot of children pass away. And we became really close families with a lot of the families. And some people really struggled because they weren't there. The whole time because one of them had to be at work or whatever. And for us, we had decided if we lost everything we owned, we were both going to be there. The only thing that really was tough for us is we didn't have our other daughter with us. How old was she at the time? She was eleven.

Unknown Speaker: Okay.

Kathi Goodwin: Yes. And it was extremely tough, and she went through some tough days after that. Tough years, actually. But the grieving was different and she wasn't there at every step. So she didn't go through the process the same way that we did. And one thing that I do want to say is a lot of times people will say whenever somebody has lost a family member or something, they'll say, I know how you feel. Oh, my goodness. That is one thing that I never want to hear. And I promised myself I would never say it to someone else. Because nobody knows. Even if they're going through the same journey with you, they don't know how you feel. Absolutely different. Everybody great is different.

Diane Belz: And every journey is different. Every relationship is different. And I think we say that in a way to empathize. And I've had people say things that were so bizarre that I went, oh my gosh. Someone had told me they took me out to lunch after my daughter died, and they said, I know how you're feeling. And I knew this person very well, and I knew that she didn't know how I was feeling. And out of her mouth came I just found out that I have a weed allergy.

Kathi Goodwin: Oh my goodness.

Diane Belz: And I said, Lord, give me the grace. Give me the grace right now not to hurt her with the fake knife, that you're just like, give me the grace. And I think that people think about it.

Kathi Goodwin: They don't think about what they're saying because they don't know what to say. It's almost like a nervous word coming out of their mouth, right?

Diane Belz: That's why I always said, just give me the grace. Give me the grace to be in this tough situation and just be graceful. Just be graceful. I'm sorry to hear that, was my response. And I thank God every day because they don't know what to say. And that's what I'm saying. You don't have to say anything, right? You don't have to say anything. One of the hard things I had, especially when my husband passed away, was when people would come up and say, well, how are you doing, white police? Don't ask me that question. I had to stop my neighbors and say, I am avoiding going outside because I can't answer that question.

Kathi Goodwin: Well, that brings up something funny, too, because in the beginning, I worried that something was wrong with me because I felt like I was not crying as hard as everybody was expecting me to cry or any of that. And then it dawned on me, and I kept praying about it, and it dawns on me that really what was happening is God had given me the time to grow with him as well as to understand the experience, and so I had accepted it. Now, I will say, I mean, there were times where I broke down, but there were times where it was uncontrollable and it would just happen out of the blue. But that was my relief, is that.

Diane Belz: While she was in the hospital or.

Kathi Goodwin: After she had passed away, that was after okay, yeah. While she was in the hospital. Oh, my goodness. So many times I would just burst into tears because we were hearing something new constantly. And it was a very tough road. I mean, it just tough. I never could have and people ask, how did you get through it? And it's like, how could you not get through it? You have to. You have to journey through what you're presented with at the time. And I didn't think about it, to be honest with you. And I've learned because I've been through a lot of challenges in my life, and I've learned that the way I respond to things is I immediately go through all the emotions very fast. As a matter of fact, when we went to Bush Gardens that day, I went through the emotions that night. I figured out that she had fanconi an India that night because I researched it on the Internet. And that was back when Internet was really just starting up. But anyway, I did the research, and I said, oh, my goodness, she's got all these symptoms. She has all these little traits here. This is what she has. And so I already knew in my heart, and so I was crying like crazy, but I went through all that that weekend. We met with the doctor on that Monday, and I was already ready to get into action. And let's fix this. The attitude I took is, let's fix this.

Diane Belz: So explain to me this process of going through the rapid emotional response. We'll call it. Help me. How did you do that? What is it? Go through the process.

Diane Belz: You had more things that needed to be done.

Kathi Goodwin: Yeah. And so that's kind of where my journey started, is going through some tough things. And then my mom had a bunch of medical things here and there, and I would always call her the Energizer Bunny because she always seemed to still go strong no matter what, and she would get through circumstances no matter what. And so I don't know if it's just because I've had so many things happen that I just jump into I'm a troubleshooter. I mean, I'm just thinking, do you.

Diane Belz: Like because when I'm saying that, I'm seeing like those little dolls that they used to have, little Red Riding Hood, it's the grandmother, it's the wolf, it's the Ax Man, or whatever it was called. And I just see that rapid response of saying, is your brain just going through, okay, I'm going to feel this, I'm going to feel this. I want to feel this, I'm going to feel this, and saying, okay, I felt what I needed to feel. Now let's get into action.

Kathi Goodwin: That must be what's going on. Because, I mean, when I cried, it was crying unbelievably and screaming so loud that you can't hear your screams. I mean, that's how bad it was. But then it's almost like, all right, I'm ready, let's go, let's get in action. What do we need to do? How are we going to fix this? But that is where I said I didn't feel hopeless, I felt helpless, and it's because I had to realize that I'm not in control.

Diane Belz: Even though you knew you weren't in control, so you're saying you backed off, saying, this is what we can do, and then you left the rest in God's hands?

Kathi Goodwin: Yes.

Diane Belz: Okay.

Kathi Goodwin: But I will say it's also very interesting for people that have gone through bone marrow transplants, usually what they do, we read a research hospital and they allowed us to participate in every decision. And so it's so different than going to a doctor on a normal basis for results or whatever, and you get your results right away. In other words, they will make sure that they go ahead and have the labs run the results immediately and say you're expecting instantaneous answers. Whereas when I came home and I had different things because I ended up with breast cancer and stuff, and I'm expecting answers like that day, they don't do it that way.

Diane Belz: That's a different journey. Let's just talk a little bit about the grieving process. You had. Your sister, your husband.

Kathi Goodwin: It was my daughter.

Diane Belz: Your daughter, I'm sorry.

Kathi Goodwin: Yeah, the daughter and not my husband, but my father and my mother both passed.

Diane Belz: Now I'm saying you're dealing with the grief of different people in your life, right? Yeah. To do that. So how was it different for you versus your husband versus your daughter?

Kathi Goodwin: Oh, I see.

Diane Belz: Okay.

Kathi Goodwin: So that was tough because being in the bow mirror unit, they only allow one person to stay. In the room when you're sleeping because the way the airflow is. And so we had chose that I would be the one. So my husband, unfortunately, he was supposed to sleep at a Ronald McDonald's house, but we immediately had to move out of there because we would never be taking her there. We had to have a special apartment, so we had to buy so he would stay at the apartment. But then it got to the point where he couldn't do that because he wanted to be close in case something he moved into the lounge at the hospital. And so he struggled in a different way. He was more analytical, and he would remember all the details, whereas I was more on the emotional side. So we did a journey every night, a journal. And I would write the journal, and I consider the emotional pieces, but I could never remember all the details because there were so many. And so he would help fill in the pieces for that nice. But he and I, we stuck together. It was very tough. And they said that most couples will divorce when they go through something like that. The divorce rate is really high, and yet we've become really close through our experience. And then my daughter, who had to stay home, she really struggled because she would come out there and we would fly her out there like once a month, sometimes more. But every time she came, Casey was on life support. And so she was blaming herself initially. And then when she passed, she was blaming us because we didn't allow her to be there the whole time. So that was a real struggle. And I can understand because at her age, you're developing a lot of skills, and she wasn't able to develop the coping skills because she was going through so much to do all that.

Diane Belz: What made you decide to keep a journal?

Kathi Goodwin: I had a lot of support through my work and things like that. And we had somebody that was doing the website, and of course, this was all new stuff back then. It was just really ramping up then. And so she said, I'm going to put a website up so that you can keep in touch with all of us and you don't get all the phone calls. And so that's how it started. And then it was like a blog, but it was just I call it the Journal because it is. That's what I called it on the site. And I was just every night, right? And I will tell you, we received thousands of letters from people and people that we didn't know. And people would say, they're on their knees praying, and they were hanging on to every word. And I was so exhausted a couple of times where I didn't write at night and I didn't write till the next morning. And people were like, You've got to write every night because we're wanting to hear what's going on.

Diane Belz: Did that feel pressure to you? Was it helpful to you? Was it catholic to you?

Kathi Goodwin: You know, in some ways I felt good about it because it was kind of the release for what all happened during the day. And I could give the highs as well. I mean, I have the lows, but I could also give the highs because even one time after she had had a brain surgery, we actually were trying to get her to walk again and she took three steps and just her taking those three steps were like the look on her face, she had such a huge smile and it just put joy on all of us.

Diane Belz: You know, the people were with you in this journey that you didn't even know, right?

Kathi Goodwin: It was amazing.

Diane Belz: So let's talk about the spark and dipity. You made up that word, which I love.

Kathi Goodwin: Yeah, thank you.

Diane Belz: I make up my own words, so I love that, just playing around with the words and making a word. So what is that? What is that? How can we find out about it? What is the purpose of it? And who needs this? That's a lot of questions.

Kathi Goodwin: That is a lot of questions. So I initially started out when I said I was going to start a business, I kept thinking about little life sparks. So I started it out as being little life sparks. And then one night, I don't know, my favorite word of all times was there and Epiphany, and it's because my husband and I went on a vacation after all this had occurred. And we hadn't been on a vacation forever, and we still have a hard time going on vacations, but we went on vacation to Maui and everything was about just doing things spontaneously. And we came upon this store called Serendipity, and I didn't know what it meant, so I had to look it up. And anyway, I ran into serendipity multiple times and I just loved the word.

Diane Belz: What does it mean for you when you serendipity?

Kathi Goodwin: Yeah, serendipity is a positive word for me. Sometimes people think of it as like magic or something of that nature. But to me, serendipity is recognizing the moments that are out there in life that you don't normally see. So in other words, if you're walking out and let's say you're really depressed, but you're walking out and all of a sudden you're walking in a field of flowers, it just puts a smile on your face. And that's what it means to me. It gives me hope, it gives me encouragement, and I just love the word. And so recently I came up with little life sparks, and so I liked the word sparks, and so I just threw it all together and it just came to me and I thought, okay, I love this. Every time I've said it, people get a smile on their face and I said, okay, that's the name of my business now. And so that's what I'm doing with it. When I think about what I really want to do and who I want to help, it's women. Women that are maybe they've gotten to a point in their life where they think they're at midlife. And I started asking people, what does midlife mean to you? And it's funny because people usually throw a number out there, 30, 40, 50, whatever. And I think to myself, yeah, when I was younger, I thought it was one thing. Now I'm thinking it's something different. And as I get older, I keep shifting. What that means whatever age you are.

Diane Belz: Continues to be midlife. Right, exactly.

Kathi Goodwin: But then it was like, you know, my daughter lives to eight and a half, and so her midlife was four and a quarter. And I thought, that is a lesson. That is to tell people, do not stop doing what you love and what you enjoy and go after those streams, because you don't know when that midlife is. You don't know when your expiration date is. You have no clue to leave it. That's my message. My message. Get out there and tell people that there's more to life. And not just that, but there are so many things. Before she ever got sick, our family always did everything as making memories with every moment, and we literally did. And that's why it was so shocking that our world has changed just like that. And I think to myself, we need to always do that, and we need to teach people to do that, because that's how God wants us to live. He wants us to be happy. He wants us to enjoy life.

Diane Belz: And I just want to ask this question because you were saying before that you almost felt like there was something wrong because you weren't crying. And do you feel that at times that you have to battle that between, can I be happy and I lost my daughter? Or can I be happy and I lost my mom and my dad? What keeps you in that joyful space? Because you can see on your face I won't be on camera. Sorry. You can just do that. How can you do that?

Kathi Goodwin: You know, when she passed away, she had beautiful long blonde and mixed colored hair. Her hair color was just amazing, but she looked like an angel. And I remember as she's running and stuff, I used to see her hair flowing and stuff like that. When she went through her bone marrow transplant, she actually lost all of her hair. And I remember thinking, Lord, please let me see her, as I remember her with the long flowing hair and just the radiance and stuff like that. And that's how I see her. I actually have had visions when I wake up in the middle of the night where I've seen her running across the front yards. And so forth with that long hair. It's just gorgeous. But I think what happens is I feel as though I'm constantly reminded of how much joy she brought to us and the smiles and the giggles, and we even had somebody donate a star in her honor. And so we know where the star is up in the sky, and we always look up through it and we can see it. It's amazing. Or what we think is her star.

Diane Belz: So do you feel it's a choice that you're making? It is a choice.

Kathi Goodwin: It is a choice. Yeah, it's definitely a choice. And, you know, there's so much going on in the world now where people are really sad and going through a lot of just grieving of things going on, and we can choose to continue to go down that path and feel in a negative way at all times, or we can choose to back off of that and think in a positive light. And so sometimes it means you have to isolate yourself away from the media or whatever you have to do in order to get in your good space. And gospel music does it for me. I can put on some gospel music, and all of a sudden, it just frightens my day.

Diane Belz: I played in between my interviews, like Alexa.

Kathi Goodwin: It does. It just lights me up. I don't know.

Diane Belz: It does. I've been listening to it for a long time and just working so much on my own mindset with my second brief journey that I wake up in the middle of the night and it's playing in my head like it's a coffee. Exactly. Oh, my God, there's that song going through, and there's another I don't know if I've listened to the same playlist so often that it's like it's almost like a Groundhog Day experience, but it's a good experience to say, my head is just filled with this. I can feel joy and I can feel peace. And I was talking to my one son last night, and I said, when we can learn that, we can have competing emotions at the same time and it's okay, right? It doesn't mean, like, the sadness or the grief, whatever you want to call it, has to go away for joy to come in. They can both coexist. It's like, that's who we are. We're emotional, and good things happen and bad things. And if you can do that balance, and if you can go out, like you said, and find these serendipitous moments of just saying, god, you are here, or even feeling the presence of your daughter, like, you still exist, you're here, your spirit is alive. It changes everything. And then you can go into that space of saying that this becomes your defining moment, that losing a daughter becomes your defining moment. And I've seen people stop living at that point. They stop, and the world keeps moving, and they're stuck in that space of grief and I don't know for you, but the thing that kept me moving was my faith. Yeah, I'm looking at the Bible and I remember right now, I remember Leisy asteris I'll say it, there's a season for everything, right? And there's a time for morning and there's a time for dancing to realize that there is this different seasons. And we almost get to determine how long those seasons are going to last by how we respond to that season. And it seems that you have a response to say, we're going to move forward.

Kathi Goodwin: I have vision sometimes. Like when she passed away, we used to play music for her as well. And when she passed away, that song that says, in the arms of an angel, I could actually see an angel carrying her to heaven. And that vision comes to me a lot. And so I really feel that there was just a total connection there and I think that that helped put it all together for me. And it's different for somebody that has lost a child. Like in your situation where you may not have gotten to say goodbye and that happens and I think that's harder.

Diane Belz: You know what, it's funny that you're saying this and I'm thinking, not funny. I think your journey was harder. I didn't have to watch her suffer, I didn't have to watch the pain. So I think it's different for everyone. I have a friend of mine who lost a baby very young age and she said, well, it has to be harder for you than me. And I said, no, I got to see Jessica, 22, almost 23 years of her journey and live with her and get to know her. You didn't have any of that. So it's good that we're empathetic to say your situation was harder. And I'm feeling like, I don't know, I watched my sister, her husband had multiple myeloma. He went through the bone marrow, he did his own transplant, they took it all out, cleaned it up. And this is like seven years ago. So it's a little bit different, the technology and such. And I just watched how sick he was and the struggle and God bless him, he had a strong faith and he roasted that occasion. But to say that I think it's human nature to say you had a harder journey and we don't know. I didn't have your journey, you didn't have my journey. And I just look at my journey is like I said, I was a new, I'll say a stronger Christian six months before that happened. And I woke up the day that she died, not knowing that she had died. And I woke up and I said to my husband, I said, this is the best day ever. I cannot believe how I feel. It's like this amazing day. I went into work, I felt like I could skip. This is an amazing day. I was telling my co workers, amazing day. Let's go to lunch. We went shopping, everything. It was the best day I've ever had. And I was proclaiming that, having no idea that my only daughter had drive. When I heard that I'm driving because it was, like, announced I was at work, and they said, Diane Bells, pick up the phone. I'm like, I'm sitting right here. What do you mean, pick up my phone? I'm in my office. And it was my brother telling me the story, and I just sat there. When bad things happen, I almost get this wall of, like, saying, okay, get into action, like you said. And I said, I have to go tell my husband I have to go see him. I wasn't going to call him on this cell phone. He had a cell phone. It was like 98. And my co worker said, Are you okay? I said no. Jessica died. Let me bring you. And I said, no. I have to do this. And on the way over to see him, I kept on saying, God, you're not a liar. You're not a liar. I wouldn't have felt this powerful. This is the best day ever. And I felt like as I was waking up, she was going up. Like, I just had that vision that we were just and she was transferring some level of joy to me. And I think just the feeling of, like, I'm not supposed to feel like that. That was a whole different journey, because that grief was I just cried for days, and I didn't think I ever stopped crying. And then I was reading the book Tuesdays with Morris. I'm going to cut it down to 20 minutes because I'm looking and saying, this is impacting my entire family. Our youngest son was still living with us. Our older son was in college, my husband. And I said, I don't know how to stop doing this. I don't know how to stop doing this. So it was like a process. I had to do, like, a sheet. Okay, how do you feel before you cry? How do you feel after you cry? And then I would listen. I have a headache. I can't breathe. I look absolutely terrible. Okay, do you miss her any less? And I'm like, no. Like, crying doesn't work. What does work?

Kathi Goodwin: Crying.

Diane Belz: It's like this process of elimination of how you get through it, and it's just you do. And I think getting through is a choice. One of the things I would say is this is not my defining moment. This is my refining moment. I'm going to let it refine me absolutely well.

Kathi Goodwin: And one of the things that I tell people that have come to me for advice when they lose somebody is think of something that really brought you joy with them. And, like, for instance, my father was a fisherman, so anytime I see somebody that's a fisherman riding down the road or whatever, I think of them my mother, she was so giving with anything and everything she did, and she used to help the homeless, and she used to just all kinds of things like that. So anytime something like that occurs, I think of her and, of course, Katie with smiles and giggles. And I see her initials on license plates all the time. All the time. It's amazing. It's amazing.

Diane Belz: I think that they're those God moments. I would call them TC five miracles, but the TC five is bigger than it's almost like a nose me miracle. Like they're so small that an untrained eye couldn't see it. And then because you're looking for it, you're looking for God's blessings. You're looking for? God's confirmation. You're looking for just to still have joy and the memories that you had with your mom and your dad and your daughter. Kathy, I just want to thank you for sharing your story. And I think I know where your daughter got the smiles and giggles.

Kathi Goodwin: Thank you.

Diane Belz: I got that from her mom. And even recalling a very painful time in your life, you can still see your joy, and that's a miracle itself.

Kathi Goodwin: Thank you.

Diane Belz: Thank you for showing up at the Hope Station today.

Kathi Goodwin: Well, thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate you having me on. Bye.