This is the moment everything shifted

I didn’t think he’d die.

On Monday, February 1, 2010, at 9:17 a.m., my husband Tyler died from a stroke. He went to the hospital on Sunday, January 17. A week later he had surgery and never woke up.

Tyler was 49. Our sons were 9 and 17.

We met when he was 20 and I was 19, at the top of Alpental on a spring ski day. Tyler and I dated on and off for years. I was young, and commitment took time.

In 1990, when my stepdad died, we came back together. He and Tyler had a special bond, and losing him pulled us back together in a way nothing else had. We married in 1992.

This week, it's been 16 years. It feels like yesterday. It also feels like a lifetime ago.

Those early years after he died were heavy in a way I didn’t know existed. There was a cloud over everything. I stopped making plans because I didn’t know what kind of day it would be — for me or for my kids. I was always waiting for the next thing to go wrong. Another rug pulled out from under our feet.

People around me still had problems.

But my perspective shifted completely.

A friend worried about her son vaping.

I worried about how my sons would make it through.

Not every day was sad. Most days were just… good enough.

And a good enough day was a blessing.

One day, during a normal conversation with my insurance agent, I admitted that when my sons called me, I usually answered the phone the same way.

"Are you okay?"

He paused and said something like, "That’s terrible."

He meant well. But he didn’t understand.

It wasn’t pessimism. It was worry.

It was how I had learned to listen.

When you’ve already lost the person you thought you couldn’t live without, your body stays on alert. You don’t wait for good news. You check for survival first.

There were days I had nothing left. No energy. No focus. Just getting through the day felt like work. People meant well. They offered advice. But no one really knows what helps. There are no clean answers. Everything felt hard.

Parenting was hard. I made mistakes.

I recently listened to Eckhart Tolle talk about unhappiness. One thing stuck with me: the situation was painful enough. The constant fear and what-ifs made it harder.

The situation was brutal. My husband was gone. I was raising two boys alone. That part was real and unchangeable.

But the constant mental noise — the fear, the what-ifs, the waiting for the next disaster — that was exhausting in a different way.

Most of the time I couldn’t think about the future at all. It was too much. And without realizing it, I learned to live closer to the present moment. Not because I was enlightened, but because I had no other choice.

Some days I was just watching. Like a bird always looking around. Alert. Aware. Grounded. Drifting off into my thoughts felt dangerous.

Eckhart talks about how life isn’t here to make us happy. I agree with that, even though I wish it weren’t true. Believing life should be fair or safe only made things harder. Letting go of that expectation didn’t fix the pain, but it changed my fight with reality.

I don’t believe that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. I hate that phrase. It’s bullshit.

Some things don’t make you stronger.

They just change you.

They narrow your world for a while.

They strip things away.

They lower the bar from happy, to okay, to good enough.

And sometimes, good enough is exactly enough.

My sons and I did come out of it. Each in our own way. There are still hard days — thinking about Tyler, or about how they remember, or try to remember, their dad. Hard days never go away. I don’t think they’re supposed to.

But there is also life. Real life. Quieter. More careful. Less careless with what matters.

Over time, my family, friends, and the ski community helped rebuild something I didn’t know could be rebuilt. Not all at once. Not perfectly. Just enough.

That’s part of why connection matters so much to me now — why helping other women find their people, their place, their way back to themselves feels important.

Sometimes, showing up is enough.