This is the first week I'm releasing two episodes. One Wednesday, one Sunday. Two very different stories that both ask the same quiet question: what do you do when the life you were living stops being available to you?
The first episode is Stephen Panus. Sunday's is Shruti Ghate. I hope you find something in both.
Walk On: What Grief Leaves Behind
Episode 245 – out now
In August 2020, Stephen Panus was driving on the highway with his wife and eleven-year-old son when his wife's phone rang. Twelve minutes into what should have been a two-hour drive, a doctor told them their sixteen-year-old son Jake was gone. They pulled into a bank parking lot and screamed to the sky.
Jake had left that Friday morning with a peace sign and a smile. His last words to his family were: you're acting like you'll never see me again.
Stephen didn't wrap this conversation in lessons. He just told the truth.
Listen here: www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com/s5e245
Watch on YouTube
THREE things to think about:
Grief is not a journey with a destination. Stephen is 5.5 years out from losing Jake and describes the holidays as landmines. They come at the same time every year. You steel yourself in advance. Grief doesn't end. You just build a life around it, carefully, and protect what has been put back together.
Forgiveness is not absolution. Stephen carried real rage toward the people whose choices led to Jake's death. He didn't let it go easily. But he came across a line that shifted something: forgiveness is releasing a prisoner only to discover that you were the prisoner. Accountability and forgiveness can exist at the same time.
Grief looks different inside the same family. Stephen, his wife Kelly, and their son Liam experienced the exact same loss and walked entirely different paths through it. Five and a half years later, Kelly still cannot look at photos of Jake without going immediately to the fact that he is gone. Stephen can sometimes feel a small flicker of joy. There is no right way. There is only your way.
TWO things to ask yourself:
Is there a grief you have been carrying quietly, one that doesn't look like grief from the outside, that you've never given yourself full permission to feel?
When someone in your life is hurting, do you show up, or do you wait until you have the right words?
ONE thing to try this week:
Think of one person carrying weight right now. Reach out with no agenda, no advice. Just let them know you are there. That's the whole thing.
If this episode moved you, hit reply and tell me. And if you know someone carrying grief right now, send it to them. Not because it fixes anything. Just so they know they're not the only one.
Coming Sunday: Shruti Ghate — Episode 246
Shruti grew up as a working mom in Melbourne when a quiet tingling in her feet gradually became a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. She lost her job, her mobility, and the version of herself she thought she was going to be.
Then she traveled alone to Kerala, India, for Ayurvedic therapy on nothing but hope. And she wrote a memoir about all of it.
What stayed with me: she looked back at all the stress she'd carried before MS arrived and said, I wish I hadn't done that. Because this is what actually matters. I needed to hear that.
Episode 246 drops Sunday. Find it at www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com.
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