From Heartbreak to Healing: Discovering New Paths After Loss

Have you ever wondered how the heartbreak of grief can become a catalyst for profound healing and personal transformation? In this poignant episode, I sit down with Andrea Wilson Woods, a remarkable woman who turned her devastating loss into a powerful force for change. Show Notes | Transcript At my lowest points, I could just go hug this 200 pound dog. And he was always there for me. There's something very healing about animals because dogs give you that unconditional love." - Andrea Wilson Woods Andrea shares the heart-wrenching story of raising her younger sister, Adrienne, only to lose her to liver cancer at the tender age of 15. Andrea talks about how she turned her grief into a mission, becoming a patient advocate and founding the nonprofit Blue Faery. We delve into the deep emotional battles she faced, including the challenge and pain of writing a memoir that included her sister's journal entries. Discover how Andrea: Embraced an unexpected role as both sister and parent at a young age Navigated the intense emotional terrain of caregiving during Adrienne's 147-day cancer battle Found purpose in pain by founding the Blue Faery nonprofit organization Explored unconventional healing modalities to process her grief decades later Key insights include: The power of unconditional love in the face of unimaginable loss Why grief doesn't have an expiration date – and why that's okay How changing your environment can unlock emotional breakthroughs The importance of finding healing methods that resonate with you, even if they're unconventional Resources: Join the Soulful Women's Network Connect with Andrea Wilson Woods: bluefaery.org Women in Podcasting Awards Live. Love. Engage. has been nominated for a Women in Podcasting Award in the Mindset category. Voting is open between August 1 - October 1, 2024. We'd love your vote! Go here to express your support: womeninpodcasting.net/live-love-engage Thank you! Connect with Live Love Engage: Send Gloria Grace a message ☕ Support the podcast ❤ Love this episode? Leave us a review and rating LinkedIn: Gloria Grace Rand Facebook: Gloria Grace Rand YouTube: Gloria Grace Rand TRANSCRIPT Gloria “Grace” Rand Namaste. What if the deepest pain of your life became your greatest source of healing? Join us today to learn how one woman's 147 day journey through loss revolutionized her approach to grief and could transform yours, too. But before I bring her on, I want to welcome those of you who may be new to live love, engage. I am Gloria Grace, and I help feed female entrepreneurs, attract clients who align with your values, and become your biggest cheerleaders. And joining us today is a woman that I have known for a couple of years. I was actually fortunate enough to be on her podcast a few years ago. Her name is Andrea Wilson woods, and she is a keynote speaker, a writer who loves to tell stories, and a patient advocate who founded the nonprofit Blue Faery, the Adrienne Wilson Liver Cancer association. And her bestselling and award winning book, Better Off Bald: A Life in 147 Days, is a medical memoir about raising and losing her sister to liver cancer. So without further ado, I'm going to bring her up onto the stage and welcome you, Andrea, to live love, engage. Andrea Wilson Woods Thank you so much, Gloria. Now, Grace, I've been looking forward to this because like you said, we know each other. Gloria “Grace” Rand I know. Yes. It's always nice to be able to have a chat with someone that you've chatted before with. I don't think my English was very good there, but whatever. I feel like my preposition was in the wrong place, but whatever. Anyway, yeah, so we do have something in common in that the fact that we have both lost a sister to cancer. But the similarities in our stories really am there. So I would appreciate if you could share with our audience a little bit today a little bit about your sister and your journey and how has kind of led you to where you are today and the work you're doing. Andrea Wilson Woods Yes. So we do have that in common. And the major difference is I ended up raising my sister. So my sister and I have the same mother but different fathers. Her father actually died before she was born, so she never knew him, unfortunately. And there was a 14 year age gap between us. And when my sister was eight years old, she came to visit me in Los Angeles for what was supposed to be a two week Christmas vacation. And the day after Christmas, our mother called and said she didn't want to be a mother anymore. And I did not put this together at the time. It took me years to actually make this connection, but that was three days before my mother's 50th birthday. And so I don't know if it was a combination of a midlife crisis, but she also was a drug addict, and she had lost her nursing license for shooting up morphine at work. And so I had watched her life just fall apart than previous year, and I had even been sending my mom money. And so when she said that the day after Christmas, I just told her, I said, well, if I take her now, I'm not giving her back, because. Because I saw the destruction and of my sister's childhood. And so I ended up taking physical custody that December of 1994. And then eventually I went to court and won full legal custody of my sister. Gloria “Grace” Rand Wow. Yeah. And like I said, we do have other things in common, too, because I had, there was a 14-year difference between me and my brother. Well, I was the baby of the family. It sounds like your sister was as well. So, yeah, it's interesting how things like that happen. So, yeah, so what happened? I mean, how did it wind up that she was diagnosed with cancer and what happened there? Andrea Wilson Woods Yeah. So I raised Adrienne all through my twenties, and she did have a very difficult time in middle school. She had a very serious bout of depression. And I. I sort of accidentally, when cleaning her room, found out how suicidal she really was, and so got her into therapy right away. And we were very fortunate that we just got the best therapist for my sister on the planet. So shout out to Denise, whose name I changed in the book, but I could say her name now. And we were so fortunate. And so we really thought we got through that. And she started high school. She was really just embracing who she was, and she stopped trying to fit in and be like others. And she had a great boyfriend, a lot of friends, honor students. And so here she is. She's about to finish her freshman year of high school at Burbank High in southern California. And I came home from work, and I was actually a teacher. And usually when I walked in the door, she would be at the kitchen table doing her homework, because that was a rule in our house. She had to do her homework first. But instead, on that day, on May 16, 2001, I walked in, and she was on the living room floor curled up in a fetal position, saying she couldn't breathe. Now, mind you, the day before, she was fine. And so we went to her pediatrician. He didn't like what he saw. He sent us to the local hospital to get a CAT scan. So we go through the emergency room, and it was actually an ER doctor who told us that Adrienne had tumors in her liver and lungs. And that hospital in Burbank, it's for adults. It's not for pediatric patients. So that night, she was transferred to children's hospital Los Angeles. And that was one of many, many rides in an ambulance. And that was day one of her 147 day cancer journey. I think one of the few blessings we had was that because she was so young, they moved very fast because they could not believe what they were seeing on that CAT scan. She had a biopsy within two days that confirmed that she had stage four hepatocellular carcinoma, which is the most common type of primary liver cancer, also known as HCC, and that had metastasized to her lungs. And it was just shocking that she was doing her first round of chemotherapy a week later. Gloria “Grace” Rand Yeah, it's crazy how those things can come up so fast and, you know, similar with my sister, no symptoms, and then all of a sudden pain. And from the size of it, when it was finally diagnosed, I mean, it was not a small tumor. And so it had been growing for a long time, but it's weird how those things happen. In looking at the website that you started, the nonprofit, I saw that she was keeping a journal, which, again, it's similar. My sister did that as well. She started to documentous her experience through that. Can you talk a little bit about that? Was that something she decided to do on her own, or did somebody else encourage her? Andrea Wilson Woods She was always a writer. She started keeping paper journals when she was ten years old. You know, it's kind of funny, and I still have them, you know, and there's those, like, little paper journals that locked, but not really. So she always loved to write, and she was a voracious reader as well. And she started keeping a journal online before she was diagnosed, and I was not allowed to read it, but other people were. Had spies that read it to make sure, because I was still worried about the depression. But so she. Yeah, so she started journal online before she was diagnosed and decided to continue writing in it throughout. And so she wrote in that journal up until about three weeks before she died, was the last entry in that journal. So she. Yeah, she was an amazing writer. Gloria “Grace” Rand Now, did you include any of that in your book then that you wrote, or? Andrea Wilson Woods Yes. So I did not read her journal in its entirety until about a year and a half after she died. And I kept a medical diary when she was diagnosed. And when I decided that the structure of my book would be like a journal, I decided to include excerpts from her journal beginning on day three....