Are we allowed to grieve in public?

The past two months have been a rollercoaster.
I’m back, but different.

8 weeks ago I flew to Thailand because my stepdad had emergency surgery during his holiday.

When I packed my bags I figured I would soon be with him and my mum in the hotel, supporting their recovery and stress from dealing with a medical emergency in a foreign country. Be back in no time.

Great! I thought. I am a freelancer now, I can handle remote work.

But it all transpired differently.

My stepdad had many specialized doctors (got to give it to Thailand, I’ve never seen so many doctors taking care of a patient), but the medical prognoses were all vastly different. One told us that there would be no way he could leave the hospital in the next 3 months. The operation itself went well, but he had a lot of little fires burning everywhere in his body. One day, we were suddenly asked if we had thought about end-of-life care in Thailand.

Absolutely NOT. For obvious reasons, we hadn’t.

You see, my parents had medical travel insurance up to one million covered. But because the surgery originated from a known condition that my stepdad had been living with for the past 15 years and was stable and monitored every year, insurance didn’t pay.

Fast forward in time, we set up a crowdfunding to take my stepdad back home by medical ambulance. Cried because every single day the hospital financial department would come to the ICU to give us the updated hospital bill. Got incredible support from family, friends and strangers to pay the bills and loan money to hire medical transport. The war in Iran broke out, and suddenly, the medical ambulance couldn’t travel the original route anymore. My stepdad went from walking the hallways to unconsciousness in waves. When things were looking good, another bad piece of news would crash our hopes. Such as the medical plane breaking down in Islamabad, meaning we had to delay transport. Again.

I am not going to lie, this experience broke my mum and me.

Long story short, my family made it back home.
But by the time they made it back to Europe, they could do nothing anymore. The damage was too severe.

My stepdad died in the presence of his family a few weeks ago.

I don't know how to keep going after the experience of losing a close loved one. Everything seems so ridiculous: people on the internet complaining about the algorithm, dealing with the internet gurus, believing my own mental BS of excuses.

Life is too short not to enjoy what you are creating.

But the most devastating thing of all is the feeling of failing every day because I know I cannot be the best self for my clients. The only thing that would make sense in my mind is that they terminate our work together. Everyone is replaceable. They haven’t so far. Another reason of waking up in the morning and paying it back to them.

So after 8 weeks in hell, I am slowly crawling back.
Some days I wonder how.

So I took some time to reflect on the things that keep me going:

Since joining The Lab I get to experience the behind-the-scenes of creator life and learn from people I admire on the internet. Thanks to their mastermind program, I have a Thursday afternoon appointment every week that holds me accountable to show up and keep creating for my business.

They are the whole reason I am accountable for writing and sending this newsletter today.

Before personal hardship hit I was doing morning power writing sessions, similar to morning pages, where you create a goal to write freely. Certain amount of pages. Power writing is about setting a timer anywhere between 10 and 60 minutes to write freely. Most of the time it's me and my self-doubts but sometimes I write about my struggles and hope that people resonate with where I'm at at the time. I started to write again, mainly to process how my content business should evolve.

I'm still in love with the brand and the mission to empower audacious introverts, especially coming from academic backgrounds where you don't get to know many career/life options outside the bubble. I want to share the experience of what it's like to do a 180 turn in a completely different direction. I have to admit it's awkward explaining to people that now you do social media when you have a PhD in biomedical engineering. It is humbling, but deep inside, I know my truth that I'm working for energy, time, and location freedom. If anything, the PhD has enabled me, skill-wise and mindset-wise, to be at the point where I am now. I want to share more about that, maybe here, maybe on a different platform.


Thanks for reading this week. It means a lot, but especially today.