week 6: do it now

this week on the little dream farm

I tapped on her contact from our most recent text exchange from the week prior. The FaceTime call rang through with no answer.

Strange, I thought. I wonder if her iPad is acting up today.

In the year and a half we’d been working together and meeting every Thursday afternoon for our weekly coaching call, that happened a handful of times.

I tapped her contact again, only this time, after a few rings, her husband’s face was now staring back at me through my phone. My heart started pounding.

“I’m glad you called, I’d been looking for your contact,” he said.

Two days prior, she’d had a stroke. After multiple surgeries, the neurosurgeons decided that proceeding any further would cause more harm then good. “Wait and see” turned into having to say goodbye.

And like that, heaven welcomed another angel.

Her husband said it in the most elegant way: “The stars have gained what I have lost.”

There are a million facets to this story but I’ll share the perspective of what’s been on my heart.

A few weeks prior around the holidays, she was feeling very frustrated and overwhelmed by some creative projects she was pursuing…an Etsy store she was wanting to start…things she was wanting to make for others but feeling burdened by so many possibilities and it feeling incredibly hard to focus.

We talked about how to combat the overwhelm—I used the example of the Cut Flower Patch and how it was so key for me to break down an enormous undertaking into smaller, manageable tasks to fend off the heavy feeling that plagues us when taking on something new…especially something creative.

You see, my personal training and nutrition coaching is never just about food or just about exercise. Just about every single one of my clients has remarked over the years that working with me is like therapy. It’s why I also became a certified life coach—because change is hard. Change requires us to look deep within, and often we don’t like what we see. The Work, as I refer to it, is rolling up our sleeves, digging in, and taking a good hard look at Our Crap in order to heal it. It seemingly has very little to do with food and movement, but at its core it has absolutely everything to do with it.

Our calls in the last few weeks turned from talking briefly about projects to talking solely about the pain, the fatigue, and the needing to let some things go in order to focus on feeling better. She’d battled a laundry list of health issues through the years—one after another—and often the solutions felt like a Catch 22.

Not long after hiring me, she said to me something I’ll never ever forget—the kindest, most profound, most meaningful, and highest compliment I’ve ever received.

She said,

“I watched for so long how well you loved your animals. And I knew that if I hired you to help me, that you’d pour that same love you show all of them into me, too.”

It’s true. I did love her.

And I’m terribly sad to say goodbye.

And I will miss her dearly.

We’d had plans to meet in Denver where they live when I’m there this week for work.

She’s from a town nearby in New Hampshire that she planned to visit soon, and we’d planned for her to visit us here on the farm while on that trip.

Selfishly, I keep thinking about the earrings I’ll never get to buy from her.

That there’s a void in my Thursday.

That I won’t get to see the pure joy on her face when she’d finally meet the animals in person here on the farm…especially BK and Molly-Max.

The hugs I was so looking forward to that I’ll never get.

Everyone has been asking her husband, “What can we do? How can we help?” and I wanted to share his reply with you…as it’s something that applies and serves as a directive to us all:

He said,

“Know that she loves you all as you love her and if only a fraction of that love is shared and can endure then her time with us is not wasted. So many will ask and wonder… ‘What can I do for you?’ Do everything with love and kindness. Do nothing with hate and anger. So often all she wants is a life without pain and in which she is contributing. She wants to be free to enjoy all of the world’s beauty and wonder and so often that means sharing her own gifts with all of you. If you wish to do anything for us now, it is simply to make sure you honor her by sharing as much love as you’re given with others. Thank you, be kind, and know that she can never truly leave us if we are sharing the love and joy she always so freely gives.”

I’ve never ended a Farm Note this way, but today I’m giving you homework…a charge, if you will. My directive to you:

Firstly, please go tell the people you love the most that you love them. Yes, they know it, but it never gets old hearing it, so take the time to tell them. Please do as her sweet husband said, “Do everything with love and kindness.”

And second—if there’s a stirring in your heart; a dream you cannot shake; something on your mind; something you’ve been waiting to do; a thing you’ve been putting off for when it makes more sense or the thought is more fully formed or you have the answers you think you need…please just begin it now.

“Do it now. Later can become never.”

Let me leave you today with these words…

To my dear friend—thank you for trusting me with the most vulnerable parts of you. Thank you for truly seeing me the way all those who love and care about you also see you. Thank you for teaching us through your example about how to live by love and kindness. My heart is bigger for the friendship we shared. I’ll wait for those hugs I was so badly wanting from you…may you give them to me someday in a warm gentle breeze so I know instantly that it’s you.