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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Ratgeber
- Sprache: Englisch
A guide to start living again for those who have lost a loved one, written by a mother and widow
What Must Be Carried: Living a Beautiful Life Beyond Loss is an empathetic guidebook that walks readers through the grieving process, giving them the tools they need to carry the pain of their loss and start truly living again. With relatable personal narratives from Whitney Lyn Allen Gadecki, mother of two boys, Jackson and Leo, certified grief educator and coach, and a widow whose life has been forever altered by the loss of her husband, as well as actionable advice for those grieving, this book is a perfect, steady companion for anyone impacted by a devastating loss.
This book explores ideas including:
- The emotional range of processing grief, from numbness, to agony and rage, to cascading waterfalls of tears and beyond
- Patience, experimentation, time, curiosity, and practice as difficult but essential foundations of living with and healing from grief
- How to discover contentment, peace, love, and beauty anew, even when it often feels like life is all downhill from here
- Grief's hidden gifts of helping you live more authentically, ambitiously, purposefully, and fearlessly despite its heavy burden
What Must Be Carried: Living a Beautiful Life Beyond Loss is an important, helpful, and cathartic read for widows and all those who have lost someone precious to them seeking to once again shine brightly in the face of darkness.
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Seitenzahl: 261
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
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Table of Contents
Cover
Table of Contents
Praise for
What Must Be Carried
Title Page
Copyright
Letter to the Reader
Introduction
1 The Weight I Carry
What to Expect in the Pages Ahead
2 He's Not Coming Home
Clean Slates and New Beginnings
When You're Ready
3 Don't Let Them Steal Your Joy
The Weight of Opinions
The Things We Do to Survive
The Weight of the Unforgivable
Some Affirmations
4 When the Grief Lasagnas Stop Coming
The World Is
Still
Spinning and My Husband Is
Still
Dead
Broken Promises
The Honest But Sad Truth
5 The Unraveling
Grief Is a Needy Bitch
I Am Going to Ask You
6 The Art of Practicing Living Before You Feel Alive
Things to Try
7 The Scarlet “W”
At the Heart of Who You Are Now
8 A Love That Feels Like Coming Home
A Love Tangled with Grief and Darkness
The First Kiss
Reach For the Good
Things to Consider If You're Thinking About Dating After Loss
9 It's Not About a Refrigerator
Letting Go of the Darkness
Releasing What Is Holding You Back
10 Wings to Fly
You Don't Have to Be “Woo‐Woo,” But It Helps
Connecting with Your Loved One
11 I Carry It All with Me
An Activity to Leave You With
Afterword
Acknowledgments
About the Author
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Praise for What Must Be Carried
Title Page
Copyright
Letter to the Reader
Introduction
Begin Reading
Afterword
Acknowledgments
About the Author
End User License Agreement
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Praise for What Must Be Carried
“Whitney gives an honest reflection on grief that empowers readers to move forward, discovering that even in the darkest moments, joy and authenticity are within reach.”
—David Ferrugiocreator of DEAD Talks Podcast
“Whitney's What Must Be Carried offers a powerful reminder that healing isn't about returning to what once was, but rather creating space in our hearts for what is. Her writing beautifully encourages us to unapologetically embrace every emotion, allowing us to honor our grief while simultaneously seeking peace and joy. As a fellow young widow, I feel truly blessed by her wisdom in this guide. Whitney instills hope, reminding us that the power to heal lies within, and that What Must Be Carried won't always feel this heavy. She is a true gift to anyone walking the path of profound loss.”
—Krystina Dinardowidow, mother of three, and digital content creator
“Despite being written while in hell, Whitney's words offer a soft balm for all human hearts. She paints a realistic portrait of loss and grief—one of despair but also hope.”
—Stacey Healeauthor of Now Is Not the Time for Flowers
“As a fellow young widow, Whitney truly does an amazing job articulating what life after loss looks like. Her ability to tackle the raw and messy parts of grief without sugar‐coating it is undoubtedly valuable. By offering practical and tangible ways to navigate through dark times, she provides a sense of hope and empowerment, allowing the reader to find their own path to healing. In this book, Whitney's passion for helping others is palpable, while offering gentle guidance that supports you on your own journey.”
—Kellie Bullard‐Kelleyauthor of Behind My Smile
What Must Be Carried
Living a Beautiful Life Beyond Loss
Whitney Lyn Allen Gadecki
Copyright © 2025 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved, including rights for text and data mining and training of artificial intelligence technologies or similar technologies.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data
Names: Gadecki, Whitney Lyn Allen, author.
Title: What must be carried : living a beautiful life beyond loss / Whitney Lyn Allen Gadecki.
Description: [San Francisco, California]: Jossey‐Bass, [2025]
Identifiers: LCCN 2024042400 (print) | LCCN 2024042401 (ebook) | ISBN 9781394311996 (hardback) | ISBN 9781394312016 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781394312009 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Grief. | Death—Psychological aspects.
Classification: LCC BF575.G7 G355 2025 (print) | LCC BF575.G7 (ebook) | DDC 155.9/37—dc23/eng/20241125
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024042400
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024042401
Cover Design: Paul McCarthy
Cover Art: © Getty Images | Kampee Patisena
For Anthony, Ryan, Jackson, and Leo.
Letter to the Reader
While I was waiting at a local coffee shop for the funeral director down the street to text me to pick up my handsome husband's ashes and the documents solidifying his death to the world, I sat and drank my iced Americano and stared blankly at the people passing. Many were smiling and laughing. Some were sitting at nearby tables with their headphones on, intently gazing at their computer screens. Life was happening all around me and I wanted to scream, “Don't you fucking see me?! My husband is dead! Look at me damn it!” There were people that locked eyes with me for a brief moment and smiled but they didn't really see me. I felt like I was alone in a world where no one could understand what it felt like to have the person that you planned forever with be ripped away. I felt like a stranger in my own body, feeling emotions I didn't even know I had the capacity to feel, in a world that no longer made sense to me. The pain and the trauma I endured felt invisible. I was a living ghost. And without possessing the knowledge and tools yet of how to manage the weight of my loss, I felt like I was suffocating and crumbling underneath of it all. I felt like I had reached rock bottom, but this is where starting over after Ryan's death really began for me. It is where my processing, self‐evaluation, and healing began. It is literally where I started to write my first book, Running in Trauma Stilettos, but also where I was symbolically starting to write the next chapter of my life without my husband and father of our two children, Jackson and Leo. I knew sitting in that coffee shop while I waited for the funeral director to text me, that resenting the happy and carefree people around me was not the answer, although at the time, those emotions wrapped themselves around me like a warm, soft blanket, comforting and soothing me. But this didn't feel like living at all. It felt like suffering.
***
I was in a dark place then, so dark in fact that my body and mind were numb to the pain the majority of the time. If our bodies and minds allowed us to feel the enormity of the pain that crashes into us when we endure such loss all at once, it would certainly wreak such havoc on our systems that we could die of a broken heart. I was grateful for the numbness. When my mind and body did allow me to feel anything, my “go‐to” emotion was rage, which hid the intensity of the agony underneath. I had to release the anger and guilt I was holding, at myself, at the world, at Ryan for dying and leaving me a young widow with two young children. I had to learn to carry my loss, my pain, and my grief so it didn't feel like it was all‐consuming. I had to learn to integrate Ryan's absence from my life and my future and still find joy, beauty, and purpose in the world. Somehow feeling at rock bottom was the catalyst for beginning to rebuild my life from the ashes. This meant figuring out how to adapt, grow, and evolve in my own grief to transform and tame the darkness that was crushing me so I could feel like I was still living life with it. It meant discovering what life looked like for me now in a world where my husband was dead.
Perhaps you were drawn to this book because you find yourself in a dark place similar to how I just described it. A hole that feels so dark, dreary, and monumental that you can't even fathom your first step toward the light. I have since learned that finding yourself in this exquisitely painful purgatory between your old life and the life that you could live is part of surviving a life‐altering loss.
Whereas my first book, Running in Trauma Stilettos, is a retelling of the trials and tribulations I had to endure between the time of Ryan suffering an anoxic brain injury from a freak severe allergic reaction to a bee sting, to the time of his death, this book is different. My first book was a way for others going through the worst days of their lives to feel seen and witnessed in what they are experiencing or had experienced in a real and raw way. This book is a compilation of the experiences I have been through after Ryan's death in order to show you how to build something beautiful out of something traumatic and messy. It is a collection of lessons I have learned throughout my time as a widow that have allowed me to hold my grief as I go through life and write this new chapter without the person that I was supposed to be with until the end of my story. This book is my way of showing you that there is life worth living on the other side of loss.
***
When Ryan was on hospice before his death on April 7, 2022, my time away from “death watch,” as I called it, was my weekly therapy sessions with a grief counselor. During one of our sessions, I asked my therapist a simple question as I stared out the window feeling exhaustion to my bones, “Will I ever feel content again?” It sounded like a simple enough question, but it was complicated. It was so many questions wrapped into one. I was asking if I would ever feel joy, security, and safety again. I was asking: “Can I not only survive this, but can I heal enough to find peace again? Will I feel normal again? Can I love my life again? Can I find beauty in this life when I hold all this ugliness now? At thirty‐five years old is my life just downhill from here? Will it always feel this damn heavy?” I don't remember how she answered my question and it wouldn't have mattered. Even if she had said the most insightful thing on Earth, I wouldn't have believed her. I was completely enveloped by darkness and death, literally watching my beautiful husband wither away and die before my very eyes a short ten‐minute drive from where I sat that day. My “break” was talking about how fucked up it all was. Any potential future life for me that was close to something that looked like contentment didn't seem possible. I wish that I could have known what I know now, that the gravity of the grief that I held then will feel differently as time passes and I create a new reality and version of myself and life. That the sheer force of it all isn't as insurmountable as I once honestly believed. There is contentment to be found when you come to peace with the fact that life now demands holding so much all at once: the pain of your loss, the love for your person that is no longer here, and the joy and purpose that you are able to find in the aftermath. I know it may seem like any semblance of happiness and meaning is an impossibility at the moment. The truth is, there will never be life without grief now, but that can be seen as both a burden and a privilege if you allow it to. You see, I have discovered that I will always carry the pain of losing my husband, Ryan, but grief has also allowed me to live more authentically. Grief has given me the courage to live more urgently and go after my new ambitions and purpose in a fearless way, including leaving my ten‐year career as an attorney to pursue helping others in grief through writing about loss and also by becoming a certified grief educator. Ryan's death was a slap in the face and a harsh reminder that life is painfully short and I refused to continue any career that didn't make me feel fulfilled. Helping others navigate their own grief and showing how they can take back their power that death steals from them, feels authentic to the transformed person I have become as a result of Ryan's death. Grief has allowed me to cherish every beautiful moment and everyone in my life more fully. I want to remind you that losing your person is unfair. Having to endure trauma and heartache like you've endured is unfair. But the lessons that can flow as a consequence of living through the darkness of grief and death and the meaning it can bring to your life in the aftermath can be a gift if you allow yourself to truly see and feel it. It isn't all bad. Life is never all bad. There is beauty to be found among the wreckage of a broken life and heart, but you have to first believe you deserve to find the light again. I know what is possible for you because I have found contentment and solace in my life after loss and this book is a guide on how you can balance holding all of these emotions and experiences with more ease and grace so you can start living again.
A New Chapter
It is just past 5:30 a.m. in the morning and the light is beginning to peak in through the floor‐to‐ceiling windows in the living room. I am sitting in a large, plush, cream‐colored chaise sipping on freshly brewed Nespresso trying to drink away my early morning grogginess. I am not living in the home that my husband and I shared and had planned to raise our family in when he was alive. I am living in a new home with my two sweet boys and a man that I fell in love with shortly and unexpectedly after my husband's death. His name is Anthony. Anthony is peaceful, patient, kind, understanding, and thoughtful. We have committed to building a life together, which includes an engagement, marriage, and hopefully growing our family in the future. He is the first person who really saw me for me after becoming a widow, and he has been my grounding force since we met in June 2022. We are building a life together in all its beauty and messiness. I am not numb, angry, resentful, or full of despair like I was more than a year ago. I am not in a dark place like I once was in the immediate aftermath of Ryan's death. Ryan is still gone and I miss him terribly. The mere passage of time is painful because I am getting farther away from when I last heard his voice or laugh, or I felt his hug or kiss. My children are growing and becoming little people with big personalities and I wish he could be part of it. My heart will always ache that he isn't here to experience life with us. These things will always bear weight on my soul and none of it can be changed. And I've found contentment and solace. I've come to peace and acceptance that there are irreconcilable things in life that can never be made better or fixed and I have learned to live with these harsh and painful realities and find the beauty in life. All of these things are true at once. By living with grief after a life‐altering loss, we discover that so many truths and emotions can be true at once. And we carry them all.
You may be reading this right now and are holding the belief that joy, contentment, purpose, and seeing the beauty and magic in life is beyond your grasp after the death of your person. Your chest feels tight and like at any moment your heart could just burst into a million pieces. As you walk it feels like there is cement in your shoes and every time you open your mouth to speak, a lump in your throat forms that impedes you from speaking without your voice cracking and tears streaming down your face. Grief makes us feel out of control and powerless. It takes away every ounce of the magic that we once possessed in our everyday lives. And the most fucked up thing about it all is that we didn't ask for this. We didn't choose to carry this darkness with us, the darkness chose us because life is random, unjust, and unfair at times. But I know if you're reading these words right now that you lived a beautiful life in the “before,” in the world before your loss. You know what that can feel like and you deserve to discover what a beautiful life looks like for you now as a person who has suffered a great tragedy. Your new life will look different and even feel differently than it once did, but it can still light your heart on fire. I understand you can't imagine this right now, because I didn't think that I could create anything that resembled anything close to beautiful after Ryan's death because he was so much of what made my life simply enchanting. But I promise it is possible because I've created a new life from the ashes of my pain and deepest heartbreak. The magnitude of the darkness that burdens you now can become lighter. I've learned a lot since my husband's accident. I've learned the ugliness and hopelessness that I can possess. But most profoundly, I've discovered that making life beautiful again by learning to hold and honor my deep loss while still living life to my fullest capacity is a battle worth fighting for. Your battle begins right now. Let's begin discovering what you need to learn to create a beautiful life after a life‐altering loss.
Introduction
There is life before your person dies and there is life after. This abrupt shift feels like falling head‐first into a deep, dark hole with no bottom. I'm here because I've lost someone precious to me, my husband of eight years, Ryan. I carry a lot with me each day; the weight of Ryan's death is palpable. Ryan was my best friend, the father of my two children, my protector, my sounding board, my entertainment, and my comedian. His soul was larger than life. He was so much of what made my life beautiful and worth living in my “before,” and now he is dead. If you're reading this, you've probably lost someone very precious to you too. You may be feeling like you're aimlessly going through the motions of life because the death of your person weighs so heavily that it is all you can feel and think about. You're likely devastated, overwhelmed, and anxious about moving forward in life without the person you love. You may be feeling guilty and confused about how advancing in life is even possible because it feels like grief has put up a huge wall in front of you that you can't tear down. Building a new life around your grief may even be inconceivable for you at the moment. Maybe you've lost hope that happiness and peace are even something you can possess after you've been through the gauntlet of tragedy and trauma. You are apathetic that there is life happening around you because the person you love isn't here to share it with you. This is what a life‐altering loss feels like. It is all‐ consuming and it is the type of loss that has no finality or fixing. Your person is dead and there is no mending that harsh reality. There is no putting a pretty bow around the traumas that are associated with that loss. If you're like me, you've likely seen and experienced things that have brought you to your knees and will forever haunt your soul. There is no silver lining for the fallout that occurs when someone dies and you have to figure out how to pick up the pieces and somehow make pieces of your old life make sense in an entirely different one.
There are things in life (thankfully very few) that cannot be made whole by money, time, platitudes, therapy, flowers, self‐care, or sympathy cards. The death of the person you built a life with and wanted to grow old with, or another beloved person in your life, cannot be made whole because there is no suitable substitute or remedy for this. This is a truth that we are tasked to live with and an actuality that will not be OK forever. And it is OK that this terrible reality will never be OK, because it shouldn't be. You may be thinking at this point that this is some depressing and dark shit this girl is talking about and “Great, I am reading this book to feel better and it just sounds like I am screwed here.” And yes, this is some really sad shit I am talking about, but you are not doomed. You may have experienced the most devastating loss, but you are not doomed to live out the rest of your days in misery. The best days of your life are not over if you don't want them to be. In fact, more “best” days are within your reach and possible for you.
The trauma from the experiences I have lived since my husband's accident in October 2021 cannot be disposed of or eliminated. It is part of what has molded me into the woman I am today. It is part of every cell of my being. The memories of these experiences cannot be taken up by anyone else but me; they are mine to hold and bear. They must be carried. My grief used to feel like I was carrying a boulder with me everywhere I went. Ryan's absence from this world was my singular focus because the weight was so great, the crushing nature of it all was so palpable. It was debilitating and destabilizing. But I've learned to hold my grief as I go through life and have discovered how to survive this inconceivable loss. Since Ryan's death, I have experienced new things, created new memories, found new purpose and meaning from my loss, formed new relationships and ended others that didn't serve me, set boundaries, and formed a new identity as someone who is now living as a person who has suffered a life‐altering loss. After Ryan's death, I felt a calling to help guide and navigate others who have suffered a life‐altering loss. I became a certified grief educator, and now I work one‐on‐one with other widows and grievers and help them discover how to hold their pain in a way that feels manageable so they can start living a life they love while tending to their grief authentically, given their unique experience. I have traveled, I launched my first book, I have celebrated holidays with Anthony's family, who now feel like family to me and my sons, I have started new traditions, I have weathered several intense waves of grief, I have mothered by myself and have learned to co‐parent with Anthony. I have made mistakes and I have triumphed. I have fallen and have picked myself up countless times. I have coped in healthy and unhealthy ways. I have cried, screamed, cursed, laughed, and loved. It has felt like I have lived a hundred years in just over two. That's the thing about living through grief and trauma. Grief, trauma, and death change you indelibly and profoundly. They age your soul and your spirit. They force you to learn lessons and be transformed in a manner that does not equate to the amount of time in days, hours, or minutes that have gone by. You cannot count your worst days on a calendar or clock. I am a different Whitney than the one that was married to Ryan. I have been changed in both beautiful and ugly ways, in ways that only can occur when you completely break, unravel, and build anew from the ashes of a life that no longer exists.
And because of all of this, the weight of my loss has lessened, softened, and quieted. Now my grief feels like I'm carrying around small pebbles in my pocket instead of a boulder. I can feel them jiggle as I go throughout life and sometimes I take them out to hold, but I am truly able to live again. That doesn't mean I don't miss or long for Ryan. It doesn't mean that I don't get filled with rage at how unfair Ryan's accident and death is. At times I still feel deep longing, pain, anger, frustration, and a multitude of other emotions because grief is forever evolving and changing. Grief ebbs and flows with the seasons and with dates that hold significance to your specific loss. For me that is Ryan's and my wedding anniversary (October 12), the day of Ryan's accident (October 14), the day he went home on hospice, and also our anniversary of meeting (St. Patrick's Day, March 17), the day he died (April 7), his birthday (May 21), and many other milestones throughout the year that are a reminder of his absence.
But my grief no longer controls my world. And if you're reading this, I want that for you too. I want you to be able to honor your loss and be able to lean into the pain when you need to feel it, but I also want you to take intentional steps forward to build a beautiful life. I want the weight that you're feeling on your chest to lift. I want the lump in your throat to dissipate and a calmness, contentment, and feeling of safety to return to your world. And it is possible. More importantly, you deserve to live a meaningful life filled with joy after all the suffering you've endured, although you may feel completely undeserving of these things at the moment.
