Beautifully Mending: Sylvia Moore Myers' Insights on Grief, Loss, and Resilience After Violent Tragedies

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:00:00

And it was eight months almost to the day that Jacob was killed. It was now, like August. And I was coming home. I had been with friends. The boys were at the house. And I came home, garage door opened up.

I pulled my little Volkswagen Bug in there, and I opened my door, and a man stepped into that spot, and he said, can you give me directions to Sandy Run? I knew. I knew he was fake. I knew that was just something that he was sent just to catch me off guard. So I thought of something really quick.

I said, oh, you mean Lake Joy? You know, another. I named another road rather. And he goes, yeah. And I went. Now I knew I was dead, right? It's like I'm dying.

I'm gonna die right here in my little car. I said, sure, let me get out and I'll get you directions. And he backed up. I got out and I tried to run. Grabbed me by the hair.

We fisticuffed all the way to his car as he tried to shove me in. I ended up in the back of his car.

Matt Gilhooly
00:00:58

Today I'm joined by the incredible Sylvia Moore Myers. She's an author, she's a grief recovery expert, and she's a mental health coach.

And she has a truly extraordinary and unimaginable story of resilience, healing, and transformation.

In this conversation, she opens up about losing her son Jacob to a truly senseless act of violence and then surviving her own harrowing encounter with an attacker.

Her just a few months later, through these horrific events, she emerged with this, I don't know, deep, deep, deep insights of grief and truly the power of having scars and the strength within us all to beautifully mend.

In this conversation, she shares this raw, unfiltered truth about navigating grief and trauma, the lessons she's learned along the way, and her transformative scar framework, which stands for strength, courage, adaptability, and resilience. She also sheds light on how we can embrace these scars as symbols of growth and healing.

So, once again, this episode is just a powerful testament to the human spirit, and I'm really, truly honored to share Sylvia's story with you. Without further ado, here is my conversation with Sylvia Moore Myers.

I'm Matt Gilhooly, and this is the Life Shift candid conversations about the pivotal moments that have changed lives forever. Hello, my friends. Welcome to the Life Shift podcast.

I have been talking and you haven't been hearing this, but I've been talking to Sylvia now for a couple minutes. Hey, Sylvia.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:02:47

Hey, how are you?

Matt Gilhooly
00:02:48

Fantastic, as you know. Well, that's a lie I might be getting a cold, so. But we're just telling me, right? Like I'm telling myself, I'm not going to get a cold.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:02:56

You're not going to get a cold.

Matt Gilhooly
00:02:58

And that is the salt.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:03:00

Mind over matter. You're done.

Matt Gilhooly
00:03:01

Thank you for wanting to be part of the Life Shift podcast. We were talking a little bit before recording. I dropped a little bomb on you.

So the Life Shift podcast really comes from my own experience of losing my mom when I was a kid. And my failure is what I call it.

Other people don't like when I say that, but my failure of grief as I went through 20 years of trying to make a mess of my life and then figuring it out. And part of that is the questions that I ask my guests come from that personal experience.

And we were talking of how I don't do a lot of research because I don't want to know too much until it kind of gets revealed live. And so sometimes that takes us down really fun roads. So I'm looking forward to this conversation. So thank you for being open to that.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:03:46

Absolutely. Yeah. That's what I do.

Matt Gilhooly
00:03:48

Well, life is important.

I think we were, you know, stories I found, having Talked to now 167 people, maybe more on the Life Shift, it's everyone's story, although wildly different, has so many pieces in which we can resonate with in our own journey or can inspire us in another way or can kick off a different perspective of something.

So I think it's just so beautiful when people are willing to kind of bear all and share that deeply personal story, whether it's with society used to tell us that shouldn't share some of these stories out loud. Right. Like we should hide behind things and not tell people. So it's just such a beautiful journey that I've been on.

And hopefully you found the same in your own journey.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:04:35

Absolutely did. Yeah. Thank you.

Matt Gilhooly
00:04:37

Is it. Is it. Do you find. Before we get into your specific story, do you find that sharing your story helps heal you in new ways each time you tell it?

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:04:46

It does. And, you know, I think a lot of people hide behind a mask. You. You know, and I think I told you, I'm the expert mask wearer.

I've been wearing one my whole life.

When you pull that mask down and you tell it how it really happened, what really hurt, and, you know, you get into the minutia of what happened in your life, you find out that there's a lot of people that have had the same experience. Some of them have moved on and Some of them are still stuck, like you. And I love to tell people people with wounds are looking for people with scars.

We want to know, how did you get to that point? Where did. How did you get to that point where you are now? And when I got to that point.

Matt Gilhooly
00:05:28

I wrote my book, you know, and now you can help people without even having to say the words out loud anymore. It's. It's a beautiful journey. And you're right. What you just said was my journey from like, 8 years old to probably, like, early 30s, in which had I.

And logically, I knew all of this was true, but in my emotions and in my brain, had I seen other people that had a dead mom in the way that I did, that were succeeding and doing great things and not having to try to get everyone's approval, maybe earlier in my life, I would have been like, oh, like this is possible. I'm not the only one out here. I knew logically I wasn't. But, you know, you feel that way.

You feel like you might be the only one that would understand how you're feeling, and it's. It's just not true.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:06:17

You know, we. We broke grief in this country about a hundred years ago. We just broke it. It was going on just fine. We. Grandmother would die.

We would go to her home, where she would be laid out in the parlor, and we'd all gather in the kitchen and eat and talk and maybe even laugh a little bit about the funny things Grandma did before she died. And then we would bury her, and the kids would be there, and the grandkids and the great grandkids and all of the ext.

And it would be sad, but happy, but resolving. And then we would go on. You know, we decided for some reason to change all that.

Now we take everybody to this strange building, including small children. It's like, why is Grandma here? This is not where she lives. Why are we here?

And then we stuffed the children in the kitchen at the funeral parlor, which they stole from Grandma's house. And we gather around and we torture the family members that are standing by the.

The casket for two or three or four hours, depending on how many people showed up. And we just stand in line to say something very profound, like, God needed Jacob in heaven. It's like, did he.

It's like, there's another angel there now. I said, is there? Jacob's work on earth was done. And I'm like, what was he working on? And why did he finish so soon? But we.

We broke grief, and now we don't model it for children like we should.

And therefore our children do not learn how to grieve and go through those stages and resolve which they could have taken care of in your case, 30 years before.

Matt Gilhooly
00:07:56

Yeah, my mom was 32 and people would tell me the same thing. She would be just. They would be like, yeah, her work on earth was finished. And I was like, I was eight.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:08:06

Really?

Matt Gilhooly
00:08:06

Well, I mean, I thought she was old. You know, at 8, you think 32 is pretty old.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:08:10

So practically in the grave at 32.

Matt Gilhooly
00:08:12

Yeah. And to that point, like, we're not even taught how to be with someone that is grieving. We don't know how. Like, there's nothing we can say really.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:08:22

In the English language. Think about it for a second. Our language doesn't have anything for saying, I don't know what to do. Your person that you loved has died. You.

There's no words for that. The best you can do is say you're sorry.

My condolences, which is supposed to be from like your boss, not from your family and friends, or I love you and where for you, which is the best answer and I'm sorry is okay. But we just have to feel like we have to create something. But, you know, God and never created a word for that. And it was a no word for a reason.

It doesn't exist for a reason.

Matt Gilhooly
00:08:58

It's so fascinating and I'm glad that, you know, it sucks that our situations bring us here to have this conversation, but at the same time, I find it myself personally, just to my earlier question about this healing, every time I'm able to talk about my journey, it gives me another piece of the puzzle that kind of, you know, finishes that piece. And I don't know, finish is not the right word. But, you know, it starts to make it feel more complete in that way.

So any case, let's get to you before we get into your. Your detailed story and your life shift moment and how you got to where you are. Tell us who you are now. Like, who is Sylvia?

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:09:36

Well, let's see. I am a grandmother to two lovely grandchildren. I've ordered eight more, but they won't reproduce. Really upset about it too.

And no one's named their child Sylvia yet, so I'm very upset about that. So I'm soliciting neighbors now for that happen. But I'm a fifth generation Sylvia. I wanted to continue, but I have three beautiful sons.

One is in heaven, two are here live near us. And my husband Adam is not my first husband. He is my last. And Also my very best friend in, in the world.

God put him in my life at a, at a point when we both needed each other. We were as mismatched as you can imagine. An ink pen and a pencil, a crayon and a black magic marker, whatever, we just didn't match.

But it, it's now 20 years, so I think we're pretty stuck with each other. And I'm a writer, I'm an author, I'm a speaker. I've trained with National Speaking association so I can speak. I'm a late autistic.

I'm a late diagnosed autistic. Talk about a puzzle piece, 61 years old and find out that you're autistic.

It's like, really let me sit here for a few weeks and think about my whole life.

Matt Gilhooly
00:10:49

I would imagine that's like a flood.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:10:51

Book two coming out next year, so. But yeah, so I own real estate companies and property management companies. That's what we do for a living to other to bring in money.

And my husband's a contractor and he has a psychology degree. I'm working on a master's degree in trauma crisis.

Matt Gilhooly
00:11:11

So you're not busy.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:11:12

So I just have nothing left to do. I'm just so bored.

Matt Gilhooly
00:11:16

Hey, you know, it sounds very fulfilling. Does it feel fulfilling?

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:11:21

It does. And you know, the first time in my life I've really felt fulfilled is, you know, the last, probably 10 years, I'd say, of my life.

You know, we have a small farm also and chickens and goats and.

Matt Gilhooly
00:11:34

So you are really bored. I'm sorry. That's so sad that you have nothing to do.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:11:39

I have absolutely nothing to do.

Matt Gilhooly
00:11:41

That's why you made beautiful time for us this Saturday afternoon. So thank you for that.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:11:46

I've been given a lot of revelation. I've given, I've been given a lot of gifts and I have a very short time on Earth. I'm 63 in January.

Matt Gilhooly
00:11:55

Happy birthday. Almost. Well, by this time comes out, you'll be 63.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:11:59

63. I could get Social Security in it. Great. And I'm starting another career, but I just feel, I don't. There's no promise time, you know.

And so with what I've learned about grief recovery, with what I've learned about how easy it is to walk someone through those steps and get them to, to, you know, from scar to scar to heal, I just feel like I, I need to be in, in a rush to do that. I don't need, you know, to sit around and contemplate it. I need to get busy and do so.

Matt Gilhooly
00:12:30

That's why you're making it happen, which I think is a beautiful thing. A lot of us, to your point, I think a lot of us sit around like, oh, there, there'll be time.

And then pretty soon 10 years have gone by and you're like, oh, I guess I could have done that 10 years ago.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:12:43

So I give it a go until I get. Till the, you know, till the Lord what? My work on earth is done, as we talked about earlier.

Matt Gilhooly
00:12:51

Exactly, yeah.

So why don't you, why don't you just take us back however far you want to go and kind of paint the picture of your life before this major life shift that's kind of brought this version of Sylvia out to the world.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:13:02

I appreciate that. And I offered you before a red pill, a blue pill or the purple.

Matt Gilhooly
00:13:06

I said take them all.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:13:07

I'm gonna give you a purple pill, which is a little bit of everything. So I want to start in the middle. We'll work our way back each end. How's that sound?

Matt Gilhooly
00:13:15

Sounds great.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:13:15

All right. So in 2003, I had a thriving real estate company, married to the nicest man on the planet, James. He was sweet husband.

I had three sons, Jacob, Isaac and Daniel. And life was good. Jacob was playing guitar.

It was December, December 5th, I think is when he was December 5th, it was a Friday and he was playing guitar with friends. He was 19 years old, in college, on a scholarship, so he was having a good time. What most 19 year old boys with a girlfriend do.

So he was going to come home later that evening, sneak in. He knew not to wake anybody up.

And then the next morning we had a parade in the city that his brothers were in and he and I were going to finish putting up the tree because we were the only two humans in the house that liked to put up a Christmas tree. At our home. We actually made ornaments every year and we had made some that year. So it got late, we went to bed.

The boys were younger boys went to sleep. Isaac was 16, just, just turned 16 and Daniel was, I guess seven.

And so we were sound asleep and the phone rang and went straight to the answering machine.

And it was James's mom, Grandma Judy, and she was yelling our names and she said that someone had called her and they needed to talk to us right away. I listened to the next voicemail and it was a hospital in Macon, which is about.

Normally if you're not driving like a bat out of hill, it's about a 30 minute drive. Jacob was near grandma's House where he was playing guitar. You know, he was five minutes away from home and five minutes to our local hospital.

So, number one, my mind's going crazy. Like, why is he in Macon? Why is he that far away? And so the gentleman that I called at the emergency said, your son is here.

You need to come here now. I said, is it an accident? What happened? He goes, ma'am, you need to come here now. And I said, you've got to give me something.

I'm dressing, you know, I'm putting on yesterday's clothes on the top of the basket. James is, you know, calling his mom, getting her to come over and take care of the boys.

And so off we jump in the car, and I told James on the way, I said, I just feel like something really terrible has happened. So we rush into the emergency. It took us about 20 minutes to get there.

We rushed in there, and Jacob's in the emergency center by himself, obviously with nurses, but there's no surgery going on, and he's apparently got head injury. And I. As I got closer to him, I realized. I know that it was on the table. That's all I can say. It was pretty. Pretty horrific.

I had run Life Squad years before. I'd seen a lot of horrific things as a very young person.

And I don't know why I didn't just totally collapse, but I knew that the emergency room was filling up with teenagers and their parents, and half of everybody that knew us was coming to see Jacob because, you know, they. They were balloons and flowers and cards and get well soon and we're here for you kind of stuff.

And so I end up helping the nurse to clean my son to find out that they've already done several brain scans, and even though he looks perfectly fine everywhere else, there's no activity. He's a donor.

And they wanted our permission to let him be a donor, which meant that we were going to go through the whole night with all of the children wishing him well and hoping he'd be great and all this and walk away from him while he was still warm, because you can't. You can't harvest organs if the person has died. You can't if you sit there and hold the hand of the person you love until the last heartbeat. Beads.

They are not a donor now because it's too late to use those organs that very second it happens. So it has to be done in spontaneously, and I can't be present. So we left the hospital the next morning.

I'll leave out a lot of the details from the hospital. But the boys were devastated, as you know, Everybody was there. His girlfriend, their parents.

His girlfriend's mom took Daniel home with her and left early and got him out of that. That situation. We broke the news to Isaac, which, you know, he's was just devastated. That was his best friend besides his.

Matt Gilhooly
00:17:31

Brother, closer in age.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:17:34

Yeah. And so we left the hospital in the morning, knowing in a few hours or more, he was going in surgery.

But we had to go pick out a coffin and that the next time we would see our son, he would be cold and in a coffin that we had to go choose. And we were leaving him while his hands were still warm and his heart was still beating. And it's really hard. You know, he had been a cost.

Busted at a gas station and shot in the head at close range by the person that was. Yeah, Rob.

The bullet went across the back of the kid sitting in the truck with him, busted through the glass, went across the parking lot into a metal building, and bounced off the other side of the wall inside the building. That's how much the velocity that bullet had. But it entered in one spot under the ear and out the other. So that was where the. The wound was.

And that's why there was no brain activity. That was devastating. And what happens to you when you lose someone in a tragic accident is your brain rewires.

A lot of that is temporary, but some of it is permanent. You. You think one way, and then the next day you don't.

You're the person that cooks all the food in the house, and then the next thing you know, somebody else has become that person. Roles change, personalities change, and relationships are destroyed. And so my good marriage ended almost as quickly as you can count on.

We couldn't stand to be around each other. Mostly it was me.

Matt Gilhooly
00:19:02

I think that's very common.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:19:04

It is. By the way, to put it. I put a little light on here for you this morning. Now, that was 21 years ago that Jacob was murdered.

This morning, my ex husband and I, I fed him breakfast while he waited on our son so they could go to an event. While my Adam and I entertained him with a quiche that we had made. We. We mended all those relationships. And that's part of healing, is it?

Healing is relationships. Words are relationships. Words are not words. It's connection. Right. So it's learning to heal everything, and it includes those relationships.

But our marriage ended, and it was eight months almost to the day that Jacob was killed. It was now like August, and I was coming home. I had Been with friends. The boys were at the house, you know, locked in, you know, normal.

And I came home, garage door opened up. I pulled my little Volkswagen Bug in there.

And I opened my door and a man stepped into that spot and he said, can you give me directions to Sandy Run? I knew. I knew he was fake. I knew that was just something that he was saying just to catch me off guard. So I thought of something really quick.

I said, oh, you mean Lake Joy? You know, another. I named another road rather. And he goes, yeah. And I went. Now I knew I was dead, right? It's like I'm dying.

I'm gonna die right here in my little car.

Matt Gilhooly
00:20:28

Yeah.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:20:28

I said, sure, let me get out and I'll get you directions. And he backed up. I got out and I tried to run. Grabbed me by the hair. We fist cuffed all the way to his car as he tried to shove me in.

I ended up in the back of his car and I saw his license plate number, which I can tell you today is AK 30943. But I saw his license plate.

And when I got up that next time I ran, I got my son's baseball bat and I just started swinging it at him and screaming his license plate number at. At him. There's no reason.

He could have overpowered me instantly and kill me, but for some reason, he got in his car and he backed down my driveway and he left. He told the police that night that he was just trying to kill someone. He. I was his fourth victim, not his first.

I was the only one that got his license plate number. And, yeah, so I escaped an attempted murder on my life in the driveway in the safest subdivision in town.

Our little safety team that walks around the subdivision had walked by 15 minutes prior to that. That's my driveway. But I knew if I didn't get.

If I didn't take him out or at least escape, that he was going to walk in my house and probably my other children, too.

Matt Gilhooly
00:21:44

I mean, you tell this story, this horrific story of losing your child in such a horrific way, and after that you're going through your grief journey. Everything's falling apart in some ways. Everything. You know, you're trying to keep life together and this happens.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:22:00

Happens.

Matt Gilhooly
00:22:01

How do you.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:22:02

The red pill, the blue pill and the purple pill. Which one did you want? Right, so, yeah, I. We're with you. The DA comes to my house.

By that time, we're best friends because we're going to trial in 30 days on the man that murdered my son.

Matt Gilhooly
00:22:14

Right, right.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:22:15

DA and the assistant DA are sitting in my living room. After I've id'd the guy. They had to drive me there to say, is this the mf. That. That's the guy. So. Wow. So he's sitting by, learning this.

I can't believe this.

Matt Gilhooly
00:22:29

Right.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:22:30

I can't believe it either. And he said, I have to tell you something, because you need to know. I said, okay. He goes. When I.

When they questioned him a little while ago, they asked him, why did he want to kill someone? And he said, he wanted to kill someone, just like Tommy Hardison had. Tommy Hardison was the man that murdered my son. Didn't even know my son.

Just shot him. The guy that tried to kill me swears he didn't know that I was Jacob's mother, but none of us believe it. I mean, he went to jail anyway, but.

But it was. It was frightening.

Matt Gilhooly
00:23:02

Yeah. How do you. I mean, like, how. First of all, like. I mean, I think a parent losing a child. How do you Go on. How do you.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:23:11

It was really hard because I already had PTSD from Jacob's murder, and I had recovered from that. There was no. I was in deep grief, and I was in what's called traumatic grief grief, because I hadn't. You know, there was no resolution.

You know, 30 days after that, if you're still as bad off as you were the first day. Yeah, it just got worse. And then that was kind of like, icing on. And talk about my other two children.

They just lost their brother now their mother just fought for her life. She's got. Her hair is missing out of the back of her head. There's. I mean, I've got a man's blood all over my hand where.

Punched him as hard as I could. He left one hand free, man. I had to do something with it, so I hit him. But, yeah, that was pretty horrible, wasn't it?

Matt Gilhooly
00:23:51

Yeah.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:23:51

Yeah. And I call it in my book Fight Club, because no one talks about Fight Club. And I said, how do you top someone murdered my son? But guess what?

I was also attacked by a serial killer. Eight months. I couldn't even articulate it for the longest time.

Matt Gilhooly
00:24:09

Yeah. And it sounds like you're fairly like you have a faith or religion of something that you. That you lean in.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:24:15

I lost it for a while because I was really angry at God. Yeah. I yelled at God for a while because I would.

Matt Gilhooly
00:24:20

I mean, I would imagine, too. And I. I would imagine that you're like. Like, I've already done one. Like, I don't need another piece. Right. Like, I don't need all these elements to.

To knock me off. Why me?

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:24:33

Why me? Yeah.

Matt Gilhooly
00:24:34

Yeah, I can imagine that. But that didn't save you then.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:24:37

I think it brought me back. So it took me a while to completely heal and really learn the process of, you know.

You know, because people don't really, you know, we're not a chameleon. We're not going to grow back our tail. If we. If it gets chopped off, we lost it, it's gone. You know, we get a big gaping wound.

You know, we're not a sea cucumber either. It doesn't heal overnight or even in a couple of weeks. They can grow back organs. The darn little creatures. But not humans. We were meant to scar.

And so we don't really heal. We scar. And that's why I say people with wounds are looking for people with scars. And it's like, how did you do it?

You know, how did you get to that scar? But Kintsugi was. What the idea for the book was, is we beautifully mend, you know, and I didn't need a way to forget what happened to Jacob. I didn't.

I didn't need a way to forget what happened to me. I needed a better way to remember what happened. And that meant I had to heal. And that's where the Kintsugi came in. It's like, we beautifully mend.

Matt Gilhooly
00:25:35

Right. That's the gold.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:25:37

Yeah. And if you look on the COVID of the book, you'll see that there are. Oops. There are Kintsugi vases and Kintsugi throughout and all over the back.

But it's just to symbolize the fact that. That I still have scars from. That I still have scars from the.

Matt Gilhooly
00:25:52

Attack, physical and emotional and mental and all.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:25:56

The shoulder will never be. Yeah, it's always going to be bad. And, you know, just anything that you have that happens to you in life, you've got a scar.

If you have a surgery, you can prove it. Say, and here's three C sections right here. I can't. I know where that. And. But, you know, and here's where I burn myself. We just don't heal.

Not really. We mend, and so why not beautifully mend? And that's where that came from. But. But yeah, that I lost basically my faith.

It's not that I didn't believe in God. I was very angry at God, and I don't believe that God said, you know, she's kind of losing her faith.

Let's go down there and have her beat up real quick and then she'll come back, right? Not the God I serve. Neither did he call Jacob into heaven because needed him for some big project in heaven, like everybody said, right.

God needs him in heaven. I said, for what?

Matt Gilhooly
00:26:44

No, and why in that way? Like, I mean, none of it makes sense.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:26:48

Food for him to eat or something, but. No, none of it makes sense. But. But I do believe that when. When bad things do happen to you, that God can turn them to good for you.

And in my case, that attack actually was the very moment that I said to myself, I need to live. Because up for eight months after that, I didn't give a rat's ass whether I was alive or not.

And I was doing a very lousy job helping my children to grief because we were hiding in our house. After about a month or two of someone murdering your son, nobody shows back up, you know? Yeah, you just.

They just all go, I hope, I hope she's over that. Does she need us? Hope not.

Matt Gilhooly
00:27:29

I hope they don't actually think that. Yeah, no, but they're just oblivious to other people. I mean, we just kind of.

It's just like the human nature of we just keep going and then, you know, we're there for the moment and then we're like, well, what else can I do? Forgetting that these people are living in the same house. They're, you know, like you're. You're seeing all the memories.

You're remembering everything that you always did there.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:27:54

Everything. Yeah. I had nightmares that Jacob almost every night for a long time that he was standing up on the balcony.

We had a two story with the balcony on one side over the living room. And he would, he would be standing go, mom. I go, yeah. I go, mom. I go, yeah. I go, mom, I go, yeah.

And then he would jump and I would wake up and I could never figure that dream out. But I knew that was just my brain's way of reliving that trauma over and over. I was in a trauma treadmill, like a little gopher.

Matt Gilhooly
00:28:26

You know what? I've never said this out loud, but I've had many dreams after my mom died of like different ways of her dying.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:28:35

Yeah.

Matt Gilhooly
00:28:35

And it was. I. I don't think I ever told anyone that, but it was very weird. And it was like. I guess I. There was like a shame in it because I was young.

Like, why am I picturing my mom being like kidnapped and killed in this way when, you know, like. But I've. I mean, it's so. It's it seems like it's common.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:28:54

Very normal. Yeah. I eventually became a grief recovery specialist because I went through a grief program that actually stuck. And it was just very, very simple.

It's like, you got to acknowledge it. You got to live in that grief. You got it. You know, you got to turn this into something where you can find the resilience.

And it worked for me, but it. There was so much compounded grief that I just kept on writing that book for them. It's like, okay, we need to take this a little bit further.

We got to give people something to kind of hold on to. And that's where my seven to heal came from. Because they're not steps necessarily.

But, you know, one of the very first things that people have to do is say that they need help or get help. And that's the first age is help. And then healing is just setting that yourself, you know, into that healing. Don't I screw it up too much? I hadn't.

Where my bookmark? There it is, my little bookmark. I have these online. You guys can get for free, but we'll come.

Matt Gilhooly
00:29:47

Oh, awesome. Yeah.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:29:48

But being healthy, no one thinks about eating right, drinking water, having enough to, you know, eat, eating the right foods, not eating carbs, like four carbs on your plate and a piece of meat is not a good meal.

Matt Gilhooly
00:30:00

Well, it is a good meal. It's not good for you.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:30:02

Please don't post that on Facebook. That's not healthy.

Matt Gilhooly
00:30:05

Right.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:30:06

And then having hope, and I think a lot that's hard that I lost first was hope. But you can find something, you know. Are you hopeful for what? That the mint colored mint flavored toothpaste.

I mean, find 10 or 20 things that you're hopeful for that you know, that you can think and go, I really. I really hope that I have this. And I hope that life is good. And I. I hope that I find someone that I can help like me. I hope that I can make friends.

In your case, I hope I can find someone to interview that'll teach me something new about what I've already think. I know. And then holiness is just worthiness. We. We hate ourselves when we grieve. We don't like us.

Matt Gilhooly
00:30:45

Yeah. We think we should be done with it. We think, like, why am I like, it was five months ago, it was 20 years ago. It was whatever.

Like, why am I still thinking of this?

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:30:54

Yeah. People come up to us and go, what's wrong? And it's like, yeah, just thinking about Jacob still. It's like, yeah, he's still dead.

So I'm still gonna think about it. Yeah, I'm. I'm cocky and funny, and I'm pretty much. That's. That's my personality when I go on stage, I make people laugh.

I make them cry, and then I make them laugh. But I think that's because God gave me that gift of. Of joy, and I can't get rid of it, so I pass it along. But that's. The next thing is being happy.

We don't give ourselves permission to be happy. We feel like we have to punish ourselves for that. And that's what holds people down in the grief for years and years.

Matt Gilhooly
00:31:35

We think there's a timetable, like, we should be sad for X amount of time. And then what if I laugh? What if I watch a TV show? That's funny.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:31:44

Yes. We're afraid to be, you know, be joyful. We can't go out with friends because that would look bad, you know? And it's like.

Because the next step in the seven is being hilarious. Being able to laugh your ass off about something and make fun of someone, even someone that you lost.

I tell this story because it happened the day of Jacob's funeral. My brother and his wife flew down on, I think, Southwestern Airlines, right? Together, of course, husband and wife. His ex wife booked the same flight.

They ended up sitting side by side, the three of them. Right? Well, they're right up in the front row. Stuart finds out about it. He grabs the mic. He's like, so, is anyone flying today?

Welcome to Southwestern. Is anyone flying today with their wife by chance? And then, you know, the hands go up, and he goes, anyone flying with their ex wife?

And my brother, who's also a asshole like me, stands up, takes the mic. He turns around to everybody, you know, in the audience. He goes, my girlfriend tried to get on this flight, but we had to book her on the next one.

And it made everybody laugh. And then my brother told that in the kitchen that morning before we left for the funeral. We were all dying. And I'm like, is this even allowed?

And, you know, it's those moments that we feel like we don't have permission to have, and they come naturally, and we should just enjoy that, because that's part of healing, is being able to laugh and being able to laugh out loud.

Matt Gilhooly
00:33:13

The most important. I mean, to me, the most important piece that you said is this. Like, it's a general awareness of, like, this is what.

Where you are, and this is what you need to do. Until you have that, it's just like this. It's like a shame wave. It's like it just. You're drowning in it.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:33:32

You're paying a bill that you have no money with to pay.

Matt Gilhooly
00:33:34

Oh, that's a good.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:33:35

Yeah, Never do it.

Matt Gilhooly
00:33:36

Yeah.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:33:37

Trying, but it's never going to pay it off. The large credit card with the 75% interest rate. Right.

Matt Gilhooly
00:33:43

Yeah. And it's, it's so fascinating to me that even, I mean, my mom died so 35 years ago, I think. Yeah, 35 years ago. So this was late 80s, early 90s.

People weren't talking about grief. I can maybe remember I was put in like a school counselor like twice maybe right after she died.

And my life had changed a lot because my dad lived in Georgia, my mom lived in Massachusetts. I lived with my mom, but I was visiting my dad when she died. And so, like, it was right before school started, so I had to start at a new school.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:34:20

Oh, new.

Matt Gilhooly
00:34:21

You know, like I'm the, I'm the kid with the Boston accent coming into a Georgia school for dead mom. Like all the things that, like realize.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:34:30

That moving schools, moving across town causes grief for a child. Right.

Matt Gilhooly
00:34:35

Yeah.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:34:35

Moving across country and you lost your mom and your. Yeah. All of that together compounded. Was compounded grief for you. You needed to be in counseling immediately.

Matt Gilhooly
00:34:47

I did and I needed.

But what I did at the time, and this is why it's so important, I think, that we have these conversations and that you put your book out there, that you're doing, the work that you do, is at the time, as an 8 year old, I guess you understand that what death is just in a small way. Right. Like, I saw my mom's body in the casket and I figured she was dead. I saw the, the burial, all those pieces.

But at the same time, I, I associated her death with abandonment. And so everything that I did after that point was in hopes that I was a good student.

I was making my dad happy so that he wouldn't abandon me because my mom abandoned me in my small brain. And it was just like, I didn't realize this until I was in my 30s of like, why I was doing the things that I did.

But I was just so fearful that everyone else was going to leave. Like, she had a choice, she didn't have a choice.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:35:40

But you put yourself in the position of being the one that controlled it.

Matt Gilhooly
00:35:44

Yeah. And had. And I think back, and I don't. Obviously my dad was doing the best he knew how to do with the tools that he had.

And my grandmother, you know, like the people around me were just. They didn't know how to grief. Like, nobody did. Nobody was really talking about it.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:35:57

No one teaches that. I do.

Matt Gilhooly
00:35:59

Yeah. Which is great. And I think to your earlier point of, like, how we lost that from 100 years ago, of, like, that we talk about death, we see it.

It's part of this experience that we have here on Earth.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:36:13

We don't model it anymore. And that's what I think we need to do. We've lost that ability.

Matt Gilhooly
00:36:18

We make it like this shameful thing. Like, I mean, people are going to die every day, and that's just part of it.

And some people are going to die too soon, and some are going to live too long.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:36:28

You know, like, there's guarantee. There's no guarantee.

Matt Gilhooly
00:36:30

Exactly. And it's. I think, you know, I think of you in the hospital, and I know we kind of went past that moment.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:36:38

Yeah. I don't. I put people there too long, and it gets very traumatic for my audience. So I would imagine back. Yeah.

Matt Gilhooly
00:36:44

But I'm curious, because I think that's something that we don't know how to experience. Like, how do we. Was it a checklist moment for you? Was it like, these are the things that I need to do so I can, like, move forward?

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:36:56

I took on that responsibility of protecting everyone that was waiting to see Jacob. So I should not have been helping the nurse clean brain matter off at the table. No offense, but I shouldn't have been that person.

I did, though, because she said, I have to clean him up. And she said, if you'll step out. And I went, I'm not leaving, but I'll help you. And. But I knew his girlfriend was on the way.

We'd already called her mother woke them up. They're all on their way.

And everybody else in town had already found out because teenagers that go to school together call each other just like that. And everyone was coming.

Matt Gilhooly
00:37:32

Was it a dissociation for you, or were you fully in the moment, do you think?

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:37:36

I remember every moment, pretty much of that hospital. And that was a long time ago, and I remember all of it.

I think I started to break down finally when we were in the icu when he was on support and we were holding his hand and we were trying to leave, you know, which is really hard.

Matt Gilhooly
00:37:56

I can't imagine.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:37:57

We. It's like, yeah, so I just stay here until y'all wheeling down.

It's like, we can't let you do that, because, you know, you can't, you know, and so we'd Already made that decision, and that was hard. And I know for a lot of parents, there's nothing wrong.

If you have a child that's dying and you want to hold that baby in your arms until that baby dies, that is your business. And I'm all for it. If you make the other decision, I'm all for it again, it's, it's, it's. It's still a loss.

And no one can judge you for that because they told me, it's like you change your mind at any moment. We're good, you know. But the very next morning, there were five people who had a new leash on life because of Jacob.

And I ended up knowing each one of them. Not personally. I knew who they were and what they did for a living. They knew who I was and our family. And it was just a feeling.

And I would sometimes cry when. Because they started to pass after, you know, some time, we would lose one and I would lose Jacob in a way again.

It's like I lost, you know, Yeah, I lost his kidney, but, you know, it's. But I lost a part of him. There's another part of him that's going. So it was hard to do that, to be that gift giver. Right.

But there was also another side of it that just gave us all this great joy.

Matt Gilhooly
00:39:09

There's beauty in what you just said and the sadness of that, because I, like, I've never heard anyone say that before. Of like, the giving of the organs and people having it. And then when they pass another lost feeling.

Like, I think that is so important to share because I don't want to.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:39:30

Think about it from organ donation, because it was also. It's just been a beautiful gift to know. It's like, you're late, you know, the birthdays, Mother's Day, you know, talk about divine intervention.

The first Mother's Day after Jacob's death, I was going through a box in my closet just to, like, people do. And I pulled out a letter that Jacob had written me last year, the year before, for Mother's Day. He didn't send cards. He wrote novels. Right?

I mean, you write. So he wrote this long, beautiful letter for me for Mother's Day. And I remembered it, of course, but I read it and I just laid in the floor and cried.

But those kinds of things bring back really good memories. It's like, you don't want to take all that and hide it or burn it anywhere you want to run into it again. Right?

And that was a big gift that I saw that on Mother's Day. How. What are the odds? Right? But that's the same for organ donation.

You've got another person that's alive because your child, when he was 16 years old, walked in and asked, ask your husband, what does this mean if I sign the back of this card? And he says, well, that means that if something were to happen to you, that you're okay with them using your organs for someone else.

He's like, oh, that sounds good. And he signs it and he walks away. And you don't think anything about it until three years later when he dies.

And then you honor his wishes to do what he wanted to do.

Matt Gilhooly
00:40:49

And that's probably a very hard decision for a lot of people and maybe easier for some. But either way, like you said, you know, look, there's no judgment there. We don't know how we're gonna.

Also, we don't know how we're gonna act in any of these moments, and nor should we have to prepare for that.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:41:05

But, you know, and don't. And don't give it. If anybody writes you a book and says, here's what you do when you lose someone, punch them. Tell them I said to, yeah, no, but.

No, you can't.

Matt Gilhooly
00:41:16

But everyone wants the book. Yeah, everyone wants the book.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:41:20

Yeah.

Matt Gilhooly
00:41:21

That's not going to help them. Right. Because we all have to find our own journey through it. There might be tips and tricks and things that we can consider, but, yeah, you've got.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:41:30

Well, you know, you can prepare yourself by modeling grief right now, by understanding it, knowing what not to say at a funeral. There's a whole section, and I call them middle eight, intermission.

And of the book where I just stop and go, please don't say these things at a funeral. You know, and I explain how we broke it. And, you know, it's a great section. I can just pull that out, put a cover on it, and sell it to everyone.

Funeral parlors.

Matt Gilhooly
00:41:56

Right. Yeah.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:41:59

So that people will kind of be prepared for that part of it. It is hard to lose, but there's no right or wrong way to grieve.

It is when the grief becomes so obsessive and so harmful that it starts to hurt the person. And there's. There's no healing in sight. There's no mending that in your future, and you start to step all over yourself.

And, you know, again, I don't think that eight months after Jacob's death that I was supposed to get attacked so that I would appreciate life. You know, it's like that. That wasn't the point.

I wanted to live because I had two children on the other side of that door that really needed me and I needed to get my shit together so I could help them.

Matt Gilhooly
00:42:37

And did. How long after that, that devastating attack were you. Did you feel like you were on your grief journey?

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:42:46

We got through two jury trials.

Matt Gilhooly
00:42:49

Okay.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:42:49

The murder of Jacob and then the attack on me.

Matt Gilhooly
00:42:51

And that's because that's just reliving everything. Right?

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:42:53

Right. Isaac went through a deep depression a year after that. We had to get him through that, and he got through it okay.

We ended up sending him to college in Northern Kentucky with family. You know, just get him out of this area for a short time.

Came back, got married, came back with Jessica, and they're married with my two only grandchildren.

Matt Gilhooly
00:43:11

One more. Come on. Come on, kids. That's.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:43:13

Make more. Make more. But. But yeah, that, you know, Daniel, his is a progress because Daniel was seven. So Daniel's real grief came when he turned 19ish.

And he was the same age as his brother was. I know past now Daniel's into his 20s. But those are hard moments when you.

Those are places in a child's life when they get to a certain age, you know, that they start to relive that experience as the person that died and really rethink it again, you know, so grief is a long, lifelong process. Grief recovery is, I think, getting over the traumatic grief, the ptsd. I had PTSD so bad after the attack that I couldn't be.

I couldn't even walk down a hallway by myself. Any person that was unfamiliar to me that started walking towards me, I just almost passed out. I mean, it was really, really rightfully so.

I mean, yeah, it took a while for that one to get over. The first thing that I tell people is use the word scar. Because everything that you've already got in your brain.

Remember I told you when you go through bad grief, when you go through a traumatic event, your brain rewires itself. Some of it'll go back to normal and. But a lot of it is permanent. Right. You're not the cook anymore.

You don't want to be married to the person you're with. Most marriages, things fail. It's common for it to fail. Not most, but those things change.

But the things that you have inside of you right now are strength, courage, adaptability, meaning the ability to change, and then resilience. They're already pre wired into your brain, and I use them as scar. And that's where that kind of came from.

Matt Gilhooly
00:44:53

I didn't even Put it together.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:44:55

Yes. Strength, courage, adaptability and resilience. They're already pre wired in.

You just got to kind of tap into those and kind of tell yourself, I can do this. I've got the strength to do this. Right. It's not my fault. I didn't do it. I've got that. I've got to have courage.

Because most of us don't have the strength to make any kind of change in our life. You know, we just, you know, really hard give up. Like, I'm not going to do it, you know, you can't make me kind of attitude.

So it's got to be internal, but it's actually there. We were created with that in us already. And if you say that and you go, and I was meant to scar, that I'm always going to have it. You don't.

I didn't need an eraser to get rid of what happened to me. I needed a highlighter, right? I didn't need to forget. I needed a better way to remember. Right?

So if you're going to scar, then make it a way that you can remember it in a good way. No one's going to give you a lobotomy where you'll forget about what happened to your mom. No one's going to take away my memory.

What happened to Jacob. Why would we want to live that way? We were. We were supposed to remember.

Matt Gilhooly
00:46:01

I. I did re. I remember reading one.

One piece or I remember one piece of like our back and forth a little bit about how grief doesn't end or we don't like, close the door on that. And I get in trouble with a lot of people that I talk to on this show about grief because I. I do kind of feel.

And maybe it's wrong because I talk about all the time now that in my 30s, I closed the door on grieving my mom. And I think it's because. And maybe it's the wrong terminology, but I think it's because I don't remember my mom.

And so for so long, that growing up, period, maybe because I was pushing stuff down and I wasn't actively remembering because people weren't telling me stories because we don't want to upset the kid, right? Like, we don't want to. So she was a figment. She was an idea of a person that existed in my life growing up.

And so all of the grief was really seeing other people with their happy families and their mothers seeing, you know, like, hanging out with people, getting close to other people's mothers. So a lot of that was that.

And when I, my grief journey started in like early 30s, I was going to a therapist and she was like, you realize that every decision that you've made, you've done with your 8 year old brain that was afraid of losing someone else. And like that's when the clouds parted and I started actively grieving the loss of my mother. And then it felt like it was over. So it's weird.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:47:29

You really were, you were really just suppressing everything and then all of a.

Matt Gilhooly
00:47:33

Sudden there it was and then no more.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:47:35

Yeah. And you know, and nothing, like I said, nothing against family. I had a very quiet, you know, childhood in a sense that I have very.

My mother was very loving, but not to me. So she was very. She was not a nurturer. I had, I had to schedule appointments to have a. With her. As she got older, there was just no nurturing.

I didn't sit on her lap, we didn't chat, we never shopped together. She never curled my hair, she never combed my hair. She just wasn't that type of mom.

And I learned years later, after she died that she was probably Asperger's.

And when I was finishing this book, I was teaching grief recovery to a lot of people, but I felt like I was teaching like one person at a time and I would be like a hundred before I helped anybody. And so I spoke to good. And that's where the book came from. And it's.

It's a New York published book with Morgan James, but I was finishing the book up. He. He sent me to do a last reread and the last re. Edit, you know, come back and he says, go through it one more time.

And I said, I really want to talk about my last statement because I want to do, you know, give me about a week. And because during the time I was researching about my mom, the more I learned about Asperger's and autism, the more I.

And she was brilliant, fricking smartest woman you ever knew. I mean, she worked for the governor, the United States government, she flew all. She was as smart as she could be.

Terrible mom as far as nurturing, but she was a great cook. But the more I learned about her, the, the more I saw that in me. And I was like, this is me.

And that was, that was the revelation that I made towards the end of the book. And I wrote that last piece and it went to publishing. I said, I think I'm autistic. I'll let y'all know. You know, so.

And then you Know, several months after it went to press, the diagnosis, I got my appointment finally, and I went in and got diagnosed. But a lot of that, my inability to handle grief was because I really wasn't. Nothing was modeled to me as a child. You know, I didn't have nurturing.

I didn't know how to lose anyone. I lost my grandmother. We did have a funeral. It wasn't in her parlor, it was at a funeral home.

And I did see my dad, you know, modeling grief for a minute, but there was no discussions, no talking about it. My babysitter committed suicide when I was like 10 or anything. And no one told me why. They just said it was over a boyfriend.

And I'm like, why would anybody kill themselves over a boy?

Matt Gilhooly
00:50:03

Yeah.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:50:05

Doesn't make sense. You know, it's like. But no conversations, you know, nothing. And I really just was. When Jacob was killed, I really seriously wasn't prepared for that.

Matt Gilhooly
00:50:18

Although I don't. I mean, to be fair, I don't know that anyone is really prepared for that experience. I think we can prepare for, like a grandparent.

We can prepare for those things a little bit easier. But this trauma piece is. That's a whole new world.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:50:31

That's different. And then. And then no one came forward, and they. So they wanted to do marriage counseling for James and I, and now. And James and I are friends now.

You know, we, the three of us, co parent. He's married now, and they're all. We're all. We all go to the ball games, watch kids play.

Matt Gilhooly
00:50:46

That's great.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:50:47

That's important, you know, and we all get along just great. But, you know, it. No one tells you, you know, you know how you're going to deal with all that. You know, you don't know how it's going to affect you.

Sorry, I lost my train of thought, but.

Matt Gilhooly
00:50:59

No, it's fine. But do you. Do you think I.

I mean, part of this feels so much like the world already gives us permission to grieve, but it feels like we don't have that permission. And it's almost like once we feel like we have the permission to be fully however we want, whether that's. I want to punch something.

I want to cry on the floor for 16 hours. I want to watch this really funny movie that I've always. Whatever it is, once we feel that permission, I think that's when things start.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:51:28

Yeah. So there's a. You know, I told you, I'm seeking my PhD. I'm getting my master's. And so I just went through A class on.

And they were talking about grief. And in. I think it's McMinn. But he said that it takes so many months to get through the initial trauma of the grief. Right.

If it's after 30 days and you're still in the deep grief, you know, you're. You probably need to get some help. But probably about 6 months to 18 months is about the time, you know.

But people give each other six and a half weeks. That's it.

Matt Gilhooly
00:52:01

Six and a half weeks, like from beginning to end.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:52:04

Yeah.

Matt Gilhooly
00:52:04

That's all.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:52:05

You get that. To our neighbor. We don't know we're doing it, but we set as a people, as a. As a, you know, creature living on earth.

After six and a half weeks, we're like, well, what's her problem? I mean, God. Yeah.

Matt Gilhooly
00:52:19

Yeah.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:52:19

Taking a little long to grieve, don't you think?

Matt Gilhooly
00:52:21

Until they realize it themselves.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:52:23

Yeah. Until it happens to them. That's right. And by the way, we all are going to face grief in one way or another.

And if you're lucky enough to escape through life without some kind of tragedy, congratulations. But it's coming to a house near you. It's. Yeah.

Matt Gilhooly
00:52:38

Yeah. I mean, I hate creating a silver lining in my own life, but.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:52:43

Oh, no, you need a few silver linings in there.

Matt Gilhooly
00:52:45

The version of me I now, I feel is far different than the version of me had that not happened to me as a kid.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:52:53

Yeah.

Matt Gilhooly
00:52:54

To the rewiring point and all these things.

But the trajectory that I saw, if I look back on that version of me in that version of my life and where I lived and all the other things seems a lot different. And so there is a silver lining of the things that I've gained because failing at grief for so long, eventually finding the way to do it.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:53:14

Yeah.

Matt Gilhooly
00:53:15

You know, so it's a weird thing to say, though.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:53:18

Look at the. The pat. Look at the path I went down. I'm Dorothy, you know, and I've had the red shoes on the whole damn time and didn't know it. It. It took this.

I'm in my 60s, and discover I'm autistic. You talk about putting puzzle pieces into place. Every bully, every bad thing. I was sexually abused by two people in my life.

I was harassed by two employers. I had to quit the legal field because of sexual harassment. I dropped out of college twice. I went back after Jacob died. I went back.

He was studying business. Right. And had. It. Had a small scholarship. And I went back to the college that he was going to, and I Finished my business degree.

I walked valedictorian at age 52 at college, but I didn't find out I was autistic until I was 60. But the whole thing. Remember the purple pill?

Matt Gilhooly
00:54:12

Yeah.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:54:13

Just, you know, would I know that today? Would I understand why, you know, I was picked on as a child?

You know, I was a very creative teenager, and I got through high school with a little bit of popularity, you know, but it was very strategic. And I was exhausted all the time. I couldn't keep a relationship. You know, I would laugh at people. I've been married four times.

My first marriage lasted 30 days. He was engaged to be married to someone else. My second husband was abusive verbally and everything else. James was my nice husband.

And someone murdered our child. And I've got Adam. And God's gift to me for all I've been through is that I am perfectly paired with someone very much different than me.

But we love each other so much, and we've made it all this way. But I used to tell people I don't have a lot of close friends because I'm autistic. I have friends, but I only have one or two close friends. Right.

I'm always a bride, never a bridesmaid. That's funny. But it's like. But. But it's. If.

Had I known if I'd been diagnosed as a child, a lot of the things that I went through as a child would have been avoided. But my family didn't talk. I could have had a disease, and my mother would have never let a soul know about it.

Matt Gilhooly
00:55:31

But that was the time period, too.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:55:33

I think I was born in 62. That's right. They would institutionalize me if. And half of my siblings, because I have five brothers and four sisters. So.

Matt Gilhooly
00:55:42

Wow, you've had quite a life. And. And all the things. Any of those things that you just mentioned could knock someone off their path, could knock someone out of the race. And.

And you have this resilience to that R. I mean, that. It seems like it's wired in there.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:56:00

And I think that's what's really kept me through. It was just harder to get after Jacob's death because I was dealing. I was helping everyone else, and I never went back and helped myself.

And when I finally did it, I'm not kidding when I tell you it was almost an instant, like, revelation. I was like, oh, yeah. You know, it's like, let's do this. And I wrote the first.

You know, in grief recovery, you write a letter to whatever happened to you. Some people run to the event, to the person. And so I went to grief recovery to get through the grief of my son. Right. And then the.

Then I thought, I'm gonna do Jacob first, and then I'm gonna work on the attack.

Matt Gilhooly
00:56:45

That's how it works.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:56:46

And tried to kill me. Yeah. The murderer that's, you know, out there somewhere. And.

And instead I wrote a letter to my mother because my grief started from the neglect that I suffered as a child. There was no nurturing. So everything's taught. When I said everything's tied to relationships. They start at that very young age.

That nurturing between parent, that attachment. And how you handle grief, a lot of times depends on how well the attachment is in the parenting as well. So for you, you lost your nurturer.

The nurturer. For you, you lost very early, and that's what made it so difficult for you. What we've learned in grief in the last 10 or 15 years, it's amazing.

Matt Gilhooly
00:57:30

All right. Do you think you're. Do you feel different now than you did like, the day before? Jacob? Do you feel like a different person?

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:57:38

I'm a whole different in the world. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's a wonderful gift, you know, that. That you can do, because a lot of people don't. They don't make it through that.

Matt Gilhooly
00:57:47

Right, exactly. So you've evolved in a way. Do you feel that. How would you describe yourself then versus now?

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:57:54

I think I was seeking income and status, and I wanted to be like, the perfect woman. And I was, you know, business lady and. And I was people. I was a formidable person. And, you know, I made myself. I created.

I had a great person to go after. My mother was a businesswoman of all. Businesswoman.

Matt Gilhooly
00:58:13

You check the boxes.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:58:15

She was there. I knew it. I followed her pattern. I was smart like her, and I knew I could. I could to do it.

I was going to be a billionaire in business, real estate person, you know, and all of that was fake because I hated it.

Matt Gilhooly
00:58:31

What would this Sylvia say to. To that version of you?

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:58:34

I would have probably told her back then. I would have told her, just go get your. Go back and get your degree, you know, go finish your law degree. I've lost my desire to be a lawyer.

I'm going to be a psychologist instead. It's all right. But. But, hey, you know, but I would have told her to do that, you know, and focus more on the kids and.

And less on the house and, you know, just.

Matt Gilhooly
00:58:58

There was just the relationships.

Sylvia Moore Myers
00:59:00

Yeah. On the relationships. Yeah. And because Again, it's never about words. It's always about relationships when we talk to each other.

And the relationship was with God too. I, I was a Christian because I wore a cross and had a bible and said I was right.

But when you have chat with God at 70 miles an hour in 30 degree weather with the top down on your Volkswagen convertible, that's different type of being a Christian.

And when you come out of it on the other side, if you've given, if you've given yourself to that scar process, if you've given yourself to that change, then there's no telling what you're going to come out on the other end. But it's going to be good.

Matt Gilhooly
00:59:40

Yeah. No, I mean your story is so this cliche to say this, but inspiring in a way that you've moved forward. You found this, this new path for you.

As hard as the path was, you've paved something new in front of you and you're kind of working towards that.

And I think it's, it's a good inspiration to others to know that like it's possible they don't have to follow what you did, but they can move through.

Sylvia Moore Myers
01:00:06

Yeah.

And the skills, I mean the scar, just if you take nothing back with you, take the scar with you that you, you have all, I promise you, your brain is already wired to be able to do those things. Your, your adaptability is there, your strength is there, your courage is there.

You only need a little bit of each and, and then resilience, that is called bounce back. You know, resilience is part of your brain. You know when I told you it rewires, it does it for a reason. It's protect you. That's why.

So everything in your body, when you go through something traumatic like that, starts rewiring, redoing to get you ready so that you can scar.

Matt Gilhooly
01:00:45

You know, speaking of scar, how can people like connect with you? Find your book, find like get in your space.

Sylvia Moore Myers
01:00:52

Get in my space. If you go to goldscars.com I mean literally that's the website and you will find pretty much everything you need there.

Matt Gilhooly
01:01:03

Perfect.

Sylvia Moore Myers
01:01:04

Let me make sure it's got the thing on it still and then I'm going to give you a code. But Gold Scars is the name of the book. You can find it everywhere. But if you buy it from my publisher, I get credit for it on New York Times. Right.

If you buy it from Amazon. I don't. Okay, good to know to make sure everyone does.

My publisher says if they go to my website and they go to goldscars.com and you hit the Buy the book. Get the book and you go to the buy from publisher, put in MJA 40 M. Morgan J. James A author 4 0. You'll get 40% off the book. So it's just a fraction.

Matt Gilhooly
01:01:44

Awesome.

Sylvia Moore Myers
01:01:45

Yeah. Really good deal. And then on the seven to Heal, I have the seven to Heal portion of the book free on my website. So if you go there, look for it.

It's in the little scroller, but it'll say download the free report. You'll get the free version. It's a small version of it.

Matt Gilhooly
01:02:00

Awesome.

Sylvia Moore Myers
01:02:00

And we do have a, a larger portion of that coming out really soon. I've got it written. We just got to polish it up and that should be on the website hopefully by the end of the year.

So we're going to try to offer that one for cheap. Cheap, you know.

Matt Gilhooly
01:02:12

But yeah, we'll definitely put the links in the show notes so if you're listening, you don't have to rewind and type in some stuff.

Sylvia Moore Myers
01:02:19

I try to make it easy.

Matt Gilhooly
01:02:20

Goldscars.com and we'll put that in the show notes. And are you on socials? Do you like when people connect with you?

Sylvia Moore Myers
01:02:26

Yeah. If you put Sylvia Moore Myers in Google, you'll find everything about me except for my blood, blood type and I'm.

Matt Gilhooly
01:02:31

An A positive and that's, that's important now, you know, just in case you need some. No, it's been, it's, it's been such a wonderful journey to go on this conversation with you.

So thank you for, for being open to this experience and helping heal a little piece of me. You know how we said that little puzzle?

Today's puzzle piece is recalling and remembering those dreams that I had as a kid and realizing that they weren't weird, they weren't.

Sylvia Moore Myers
01:03:02

That was your brain rewiring you for healing.

Matt Gilhooly
01:03:06

So thank you for, for a piece of my healing journey.

Sylvia Moore Myers
01:03:08

I wanted to say one thing about autism and healing.

I, I found something as I go through my grad school and my final months of this is that there's very little research done on grief recovery for autistic children. There's, there's very little on children alone.

I mean, there's enough out there that I wrote many papers on it so far, but when I search for autism, it comes up blank in the grief.

So I'm, I'm, I've talked to a lot of folks, a lot of professors, and I'm writing my next book called Being Tizzy, which Was my nickname as a child, Tizzy. And all my family still calls me Tizzy. So you feel free. But that's gonna be the next book. I really want to focus on that because I think we're.

We have an entire group of people. 5 million adults in this country right now are autistic. Right. Adult autistics, not let alone children. One in every 40. And that has.

That hasn't even scratched the surface where there's no research on it.

Matt Gilhooly
01:04:03

Yeah, that's important.

Sylvia Moore Myers
01:04:04

I want to make sure that there is.

Matt Gilhooly
01:04:07

Well, you're starting it. You're starting. You're spreading the word, and you are being open with your journey and how, you know, you can help other people.

Just by hearing your story, people are going to hear your story. The most random of sentences that you shared will stick with them.

And that's the beauty of storytelling, because we never know what part's gonna resonate or light someone up.

Sylvia Moore Myers
01:04:30

You know, before I got on your show, I talked to God and I said, whatever the words that come out of my mouth, I want them to represent you. So. So whether I mess it all up, it's all your fault. No, I'm kidding. But. Sorry. Me and God have a good relationship. But. But I.

I wanted that because I know that, like you said, there's somebody out there, whether they're autistic or whether they got children who are grieving or whether they've just been stuck in this grief for so long and they don't know why, there's a really good way out. And at the very end of it, it's kind of like I said, you've had it in you the whole time, Dorothy. Just click your heels. Right.

But I can show you that.

And I try to make everything I do as free as possible, because when I wrote the book, I really seriously meant to get as many people healed as possible. And I wasn't going to do that one on one in Georgia.

Matt Gilhooly
01:05:24

You know, no doubt you're doing it. And thank you for what you're putting into the world. And it's just. It's. It's really.

I'll say this silly, inspiring word again, though, but it's to see. To see you having survived all those things and now thrive through. Because of all the other adjectives and descriptions that we can make.

It's really just a beautiful story. Although you. All the scars that you're, you know, showing through there, it's important to show.

Sylvia Moore Myers
01:05:54

I'm proud of them. There they are. Well, I'll show you mine. You show me yours.

Matt Gilhooly
01:05:58

Exactly. Thank you for. For being a part of this journey for me and. And all the listeners. And if you need to reach out to Sylvia, please do that.

I'm sure she would love to hear from you. Check out her book, buy it from the publisher, use the code that we put in the show notes, all those things. Thank you for being on my website.

Sylvia Moore Myers
01:06:17

Yeah, you can find me.

Matt Gilhooly
01:06:18

Exactly. So find Sylvia.

Sylvia Moore Myers
01:06:21

There's no way you won't find me foreign.

Matt Gilhooly
01:06:35

For more information, please visit www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com.