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Dec. 3, 2024
Straddling the Picket Fence: Barb Higgins' Journey Through Grief and Resilience
Barb Higgins shares a deeply moving and raw story about the loss of her daughter, Molly, an experience that transformed her life in unimaginable ways.
Barb Higgins shares a deeply moving and raw story about the loss of her daughter, Molly, an experience that transformed her life in unimaginable ways.
The conversation explores the complexities of grief, addiction, and the journey toward healing after such a profound loss. Barb candidly discusses her struggles with substance use as a coping mechanism and how she navigated the tumultuous emotions that followed Molly's death.
As she reflects on her experiences, Barb emphasizes the importance of allowing oneself to feel and process pain without judgment. The episode concludes with a message of hope and resilience, highlighting that even in the darkest moments, there are pathways to new beginnings and personal growth.
Takeaways:
- Life is a balance of joy and sorrow, and both can coexist simultaneously.
- Straddling life's challenges can feel like being on a picket fence, with highs and lows.
- The journey through grief can lead to unexpected paths and new beginnings.
- Coping mechanisms, even unhealthy ones, emerge as we try to handle trauma.
- The importance of sharing stories lies in connecting with others who have similar experiences.
- Transformation often arises from our darkest moments, leading us to new perspectives.
Barb Higgins is a dedicated educator, coach, and author committed to inspiring others through her personal experiences. Her journey from overcoming childhood trauma to becoming a published author highlights her resilience and passion for personal growth. Barb's work in education and athletics continues to empower individuals to pursue their own paths of healing and transformation.
Connect with Barb Higgins:
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Transcript
Matt
So I have to say, if I have a list of terrible things I've gone through, and I do, I also have a list of what an amazing life I've had.
Matt
I've always had a juxtaposition of happy and sad at the same time, always.
Matt
I often describe my life as me straddling a picket fence.
Matt
And sometimes the picket fence is ankle high and I can straddle it just fine.
Matt
And sometimes the picket fence is so high my feet don't reach the ground.
Matt
So that's a painful visual.
Matt
Male or female, you don't want to sit.
Matt
You don't want to straddle a picket fence.
Matt
And I use that analogy always because to me, that's the clearest way to describe sort of the internal life of Barbara Higgins.
Barb Higgins
Today's episode is with Barb Higgins, and I think you're really going to be astounded by Barb's story.
Barb Higgins
There are so many aspects of Barb's story that are maybe unbelievable or something where you might listen to it and think, how did she get to where she is now?
Barb Higgins
Barb's story centers around the loss of her daughter.
Barb Higgins
So this is not really a spoiler alert because this is what she's kind of based her life around.
Barb Higgins
But how she held to herself or tried to lose herself, I guess is the better way to say it is really what the story is about and how deep the despair got until she was able to find a way out.
Barb Higgins
And there are other parts of her story that I'm not going to give away that will really connect you with Barb and make you want to reach out to her and talk to her and share your story with her.
Barb Higgins
So I was just really honored to have this conversation with Barb and connect in the way that we did.
Barb Higgins
So I hope you enjoy listening to her story as hard as it is.
Barb Higgins
Listen all the way through, because you'll hear the beautiful parts that have come from a lot of devastating moments.
Barb Higgins
So without further ado, here is my conversation with Barb Higgins.
Barb Higgins
I'm Mack Yel Hooley, and this is the Life Shift Candid conversations about the pivotal moments that have changed lives forever.
Barb Higgins
Hello, my friends.
Barb Higgins
Welcome to the Life Shift podcast.
Barb Higgins
I am here with Barb.
Barb Higgins
Hello, Barb.
Matt
I'm Matt.
Barb Higgins
Thank you for being a part of the Life Shift podcast.
Barb Higgins
You know, we've been talking for, like, five minutes now, so I feel like we go way back.
Matt
We do.
Matt
Way back.
Matt
Thanks.
Matt
Thanks for having the Life Shift podcast.
Matt
As I was saying before, I love these.
Matt
I love a Podcast that gives normal people the ability to share their crazy stories.
Matt
I feel like I have a huge network of people I will never meet, but that I can totally relate to.
Barb Higgins
Yeah.
Barb Higgins
You know, I think there's something that it says kind of the same thing that I love about this show, is that I have this opportunity to realize, like, a lot of the things that I felt growing up, feel now are very common.
Barb Higgins
And sometimes when we're in those moments, we feel like we're the only person to feel that way.
Barb Higgins
And so having all these conversations, I'm like, oh, okay, so, like, I am normal.
Barb Higgins
That's cool.
Barb Higgins
Yeah.
Barb Higgins
And also, too, where we kind of live in this environment in which a lot of people like to.
Barb Higgins
There's a lot of performative nature to a lot of things that we see on social media or on tv.
Barb Higgins
And those are not the things that I can relate to, like those big, high highs.
Barb Higgins
It's usually the things, the valleys, the struggles, the things that people kind of overcome that I'm like, oh, yeah, that's my person.
Barb Higgins
Yeah, exactly.
Barb Higgins
I feel the same way.
Matt
Yep.
Matt
Yeah, I've met some of the people that you've had on your show.
Matt
I feel like I know them now.
Matt
The other thing for me as well, is it's easy to feel like we're chronically unique, you know, or terminally unique or, you know, chronically damaged and when, you know, because we immediately assume that the outsides of everyone we see are flawless and perfect and nothing could be further from the truth is what I find out as I go along.
Matt
So.
Barb Higgins
Yep.
Barb Higgins
And it's a good realization, I think.
Barb Higgins
So.
Barb Higgins
You know, thank you for wanting to tell your story.
Barb Higgins
I know there are hard, very hard parts of your story, and there are light parts of your story, and there are things that we can celebrate and feel about that.
Barb Higgins
And I feel the same way about my story as well.
Barb Higgins
Anyone that's listening for the first time, just a little snippet of the reason the Life Shift podcast exists is because When I was 8, my mom died in a motorcycle accident and my parents were divorced, lived in separate states.
Barb Higgins
I lived with my mom.
Barb Higgins
And then suddenly my life was no longer going to be the way that any one of us anticipated it would be.
Barb Higgins
And growing up, it was the late 80s, early 90s, people weren't talking about mental health.
Barb Higgins
They were, you know, there's an 8 year old, he's grieving, let's make him happy.
Barb Higgins
That was the solution.
Barb Higgins
And so I felt really alone.
Barb Higgins
I felt like I had to.
Barb Higgins
I felt like I Had to be happy that everyone was expecting.
Barb Higgins
And I just wondered, always, do other people have these moments, these lines in the sand in which their life is 100% different from one minute to the next.
Barb Higgins
And turns out after Talking to over 150 people, people have lots of life shift moments.
Barb Higgins
They have lots of things that change them.
Barb Higgins
Whether that's an external force or something like that happened to me, or if it's an internal fire.
Barb Higgins
I've learned from a lot of people that have just like woke up one day and they were like, I'm quitting this and I'm running off to do this.
Barb Higgins
And I'm like, this is a really cool opportunity to hear from people about these moments in their lives and how they've changed them as people.
Barb Higgins
So that's a little bit about the life shift.
Matt
Your episode, telling your story was really touching.
Matt
There were several parts of it that resonated really strongly with me, and one of them was your hunch before your mom left that she shouldn't go.
Matt
Please don't go, please don't go, please don't go.
Matt
And I've had two or three moments in my life where I haven't listened to that voice or the person I wanted to hear it, didn't have the capacity to listen.
Matt
And it was the loudest voice in the room, really.
Matt
So I replayed that little snippet two or three times.
Matt
It really got me.
Barb Higgins
Yeah, it's.
Barb Higgins
Well, I appreciate that it's interesting to look back on, but it makes 100% logical sense to me why my mom would just have dismissed it because I was an 8 year old throwing a tantrum.
Barb Higgins
You know, it was just.
Barb Higgins
But looking back on it, I'm like, wow, that was really such a moment.
Barb Higgins
And I don't know if I felt a certain thing or if it was just a tantrum at that moment, but it does stand out in that way.
Matt
The way you shared it though, got me.
Matt
So I feel like on some little knowledge, some little eight year old and eight, you know, I feel as we get older, our eyes get dustier and dustier in terms of how clearly we can truly see like the universe or, you know, an 8 year old sees a lot more than a 50 year old sometimes.
Barb Higgins
Yeah.
Barb Higgins
And I don't know about you and these life shift moments that you've had, if things get tainted from that as well.
Barb Higgins
And so like for me at eight, that moment changed me in other ways.
Barb Higgins
Like I was no longer a kid anymore.
Barb Higgins
And, you know, like, I felt like I had to be a different person at that point.
Barb Higgins
And so maybe some of that connection to the source, you know, to the universe, was kind of diminished at that point for me.
Matt
Yeah, exactly.
Barb Higgins
So maybe you can.
Barb Higgins
Before we get into your story, maybe you can tell us a little bit about who Barb is in 2024.
Barb Higgins
Like, without giving away too much.
Barb Higgins
You already told me a bunch of things that you do, but tell us a little bit about you.
Matt
Well, if I had to give myself a descriptor, I would be a wrinkly kid.
Matt
I'm 61, but I don't look, feel, or act 61.
Matt
Sometimes I look 61 when I wake up in the morning.
Matt
I never.
Matt
I've never.
Barb Higgins
Sometimes I do, too.
Matt
But I.
Matt
I live in the town I grew up in.
Matt
I did.
Matt
I have traveled extensively and spent many years away from here, but if I were a bird, I could fly to my childhood home in about 12 seconds.
Matt
I have been a public school teacher for most of my adult life and a coach of runners and CrossFit athletes.
Matt
I'm a mom.
Matt
I'm a reluctant housewife, meaning I live in a house and I have a partner and we have kids.
Matt
So that's about, as, you know, definitive as I get.
Matt
And I've been a lifelong athlete, a very.
Matt
A lifelong asthmatic as well.
Matt
And my life has always been sort of.
Matt
Nothing good ever happens that isn't attached to something bad and vice versa.
Matt
Like, it's never just one or the other for me.
Matt
So I am a living dichotomy sometimes.
Matt
And my.
Matt
My.
Matt
My biggest life shift, I've.
Matt
I've had 50 life shifts.
Matt
I could be six episodes or eight episodes.
Matt
And oftentimes people will say, how is it that these things keep happening to you?
Matt
And I don't know if I'm lucky or unlucky, but they do.
Matt
And so I try to pick up and move on to the next thing.
Matt
So right now, I spend my days podcasting.
Matt
I just published a book, a memoir about being a mother that has had the experiences I've had called Motherland.
Matt
I do a blog, which I don't promote at all, so nobody reads it, but I still enjoy writing it.
Matt
I coach CrossFit, and I love the sport of CrossFit, primarily for the community.
Matt
And it's engaging and interesting and never dull.
Matt
And it allows me to do stupid, foolish things that I.
Matt
That I might not do otherwise.
Matt
I don't think any of them are stupid or foolish, but most of the world does.
Matt
And, you know, then I have.
Barb Higgins
That's that community thing.
Matt
Yeah, it is.
Matt
Well, it is.
Matt
It's like.
Matt
So I was a high school coach for years, a middle school and a high school cross country and track coach.
Matt
And so practice wasn't just showing up with a group of people and working hard.
Matt
It was getting to know one another and developing all those community skills.
Matt
And that's what CrossFit classes are like.
Matt
You don't just put your headphones on and work out next to a room full of people.
Matt
You're all in it together.
Matt
And I've met some amazing people in the CrossFit community.
Matt
And wherever I travel, I find the nearest CrossFit gym.
Matt
So I've met some amazing people worldwide.
Matt
And you walk into a gym and you could be anywhere, you know that the feeling is the same, which is either cultish or fantastic.
Matt
I think both are.
Barb Higgins
A little of both, maybe.
Barb Higgins
Yeah.
Barb Higgins
No, I've done CrossFit before, and I.
Barb Higgins
The community of crying is also part of it because, you know, some of those things are really hard to do.
Barb Higgins
Like, you want me to do how many calories on the assault bike?
Matt
Oh, I hate the assault.
Barb Higgins
I think I'm gonna.
Barb Higgins
So I understand it, though.
Barb Higgins
It is quite a community.
Barb Higgins
And I've had the opportunity to.
Barb Higgins
To do some CrossFit when I lived in the mountains near Aspen, but I don't do it anymore because I would cry through most of those workouts these days.
Barb Higgins
But good on you.
Barb Higgins
I mean, it sounds like you're not busy at all, though.
Barb Higgins
Like, you're just kind of just sitting around most of the time.
Matt
Just totally bored, totally twiddling my thumbs.
Matt
I don't have a list a mile long.
Matt
No way.
Barb Higgins
But it seems like you have the energy for.
Barb Higgins
And you feel really excited about the things that you do because the way you describe them, you.
Barb Higgins
You describe them with happiness, which is.
Barb Higgins
Which is a nice thing to see.
Matt
Well, in a huge shift in myself after.
Matt
After my life shift experience, I've always filled my life.
Matt
Keeping my head busy keeps it from going into dark places.
Matt
But I didn't always fill it with things I necessarily wanted to be doing, which I think is a common coping mechanism for people with traumatic or chaotic lives.
Matt
So I'm as busy as ever, and I'm as frantic as ever sometimes.
Matt
But once I start feeling like, all right, this is not what I want to be doing, I just stopped doing it, which was a huge behavior change for me because I never felt like I was allowed to stop doing it, if that makes sense.
Matt
We get very tied into things.
Barb Higgins
So do you think that was because you didn't want to disappoint anyone else.
Barb Higgins
Like, if you.
Matt
Absolutely.
Matt
Yeah.
Matt
Yep.
Matt
And we all, you know, we have our little roles in the family, and my role as a child was always to make everything okay, and I would rush around and fix it.
Matt
Second born, first girl.
Matt
You know, I think I just fit right into that dynamic.
Matt
And it's always been that way, even still with my family.
Matt
If something goes wrong, well, call Barb and see what she'd do.
Matt
Well, okay.
Matt
What does it matter what I do?
Matt
But it's just.
Matt
It's just the dynamic.
Matt
So I do.
Matt
I feel this incredible.
Matt
I'm willing to treat myself poorly to make sure I'm not treating someone else poorly.
Matt
And not that we should ever treat anyone poorly, but saying no doesn't mean I'm treating someone poorly.
Matt
It means I'm treating myself well.
Matt
And the two aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.
Barb Higgins
Yeah, no, I love that.
Barb Higgins
I think it's a.
Barb Higgins
I think it's a journey that so many people can relate to.
Barb Higgins
I think there's a lot of people pleasers out in the world, and a lot of it stems from other experiences that maybe we haven't unpacked yet.
Barb Higgins
You know, I did the same thing because I thought if my dad was disappointed, he was also going to leave me.
Barb Higgins
And my.
Barb Higgins
Because my mom left me in my small brain.
Barb Higgins
And so, you know, I did the same thing.
Barb Higgins
And now I'm coming into the place where a no is perfectly fine because it is something that is protecting me.
Barb Higgins
And if I can show up, protecting myself and in the most awesome version of myself, then everyone else will benefit from that versus me going through some, you know, so I'm happy that you found this little space where you can say, no, I'm not doing that anymore.
Barb Higgins
So maybe you can start.
Barb Higgins
Paint the picture of your life before this life shift moment.
Barb Higgins
You can go back however you need to, however far you need to.
Barb Higgins
However you want to set this up.
Barb Higgins
Let's.
Barb Higgins
Let's get into.
Matt
Sounds like a plan.
Matt
So I have to say, if I have a list of terrible things I've gone through, and I do, I also have a list of what an amazing life I've had.
Matt
I've always had a juxtaposition of happy and sad at the same time.
Matt
Always.
Matt
I often describe my life as me straddling a picket fence.
Matt
And sometimes the picket fence is ankle high and I can straddle it just fine.
Matt
And sometimes the picket fence is so high my feet don't reach the ground.
Matt
So that's a painful visual.
Matt
Male or Female, you don't want to sit, you don't want to straddle a fence.
Matt
And I use that analogy always because to me that's the clearest way to describe sort of the internal life of Barbara Higgins.
Matt
I had a wonderful childhood, but I was sexually abused by my father for about seven years in that childhood.
Matt
So that wasn't wonderful.
Matt
But in the meantime, I managed to be okay and go to school and nobody in my life would have known anything was happening to me.
Matt
I was lucky that I wasn't ever physically in pain or hit or hurt in that regard.
Matt
But, you know, you're keeping a big secret when you walk around with that happening.
Matt
When I finally told, of course, that was a huge life shift.
Matt
My parents divorced, my life settled down quite a bit, got into high school, found running.
Matt
So I'm a lifetime asthmatic.
Matt
I find running, my mom is like, don't go out for running.
Matt
You'll have asthma attacks all the time.
Barb Higgins
You'll never come home.
Matt
You'll fail.
Matt
Please don't, please don't.
Matt
And I was the first high school girl in New Hampshire to break five minutes in the mile in 1981.
Matt
Wow.
Matt
So this asthmatic, child abused kid who never made a sports team in her life did this amazing athletic thing.
Matt
So right there from, you know, the beginning, it's the bad with the good and the good with the bad.
Barb Higgins
There's quite a little, little connection there.
Barb Higgins
If you just look on the surface of the, the idea of running from something so, you know, like that there's like a clear connection there of like, how fast can I get away from this?
Matt
Although I chose track, so you, you go nowhere, just coming back, which is fast, which is also a pretty clear connection when you, when you, when.
Barb Higgins
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
Matt
So, but yeah, running.
Matt
And I hated my body.
Matt
And it wasn't until I was a runner, I had, I have the perfect body for running.
Matt
Skinny, built like a 12 year old boy, you know, great endurance.
Matt
It was the first time that I actually really, truly loved my body.
Barb Higgins
Because of what it could do.
Matt
Yes, exactly.
Matt
And that it looked okay in the uniform, you know, like I didn't look ridiculous in it.
Matt
And I went off to bu and my freshman year in college was the first year that Title IX recognized women.
Matt
So I got a scholarship there and had an amazing time.
Matt
I was a Division 1 All American, came out of college, you know, well educated with an amazing running career and a hefty dependence on alcohol, which also isn't surprising when you think of just everything that I've been going through.
Matt
So I got right into teaching.
Matt
I taught in Woodburn, Massachusetts for a while and then moved home to Concord, coaching at my high school.
Matt
Teaching and coaching, where I grew up.
Matt
And I had a relatively normal life in terms of the outside, anyway.
Matt
Inside has always been a bit of turmoil for me.
Barb Higgins
Did that drinking also follow you, or was that just from college?
Matt
It did, it did.
Matt
So I did seven years in A.A.
Matt
like, I was seven years completely sober.
Matt
The thing with me.
Matt
And I taught high school health, and I would talk about my sobriety and lack thereof all the time.
Matt
And I would say, oh, God, I have no trouble quitting.
Matt
I've quit a million times.
Matt
And it wasn't until one of my mouthy little students said, well, if you quit a million times, it means you've relapsed a million times.
Matt
Which, of course, he was right.
Matt
Well, that was a wonderful conversation in health class that day, just talking about that.
Matt
But I've never been like a wake up, daily drinker kind of person.
Matt
Like, it was always weekends, it was always binge drinking.
Matt
It was doing foolish things, blacking out.
Matt
I just have all the physical issues that means I shouldn't drink.
Matt
So I didn't drink for a long time.
Matt
And then when I did return to having alcohol in my life, it was primarily because I met Kenny, who I'm my husband.
Matt
He was a daily drinker.
Matt
And so I became a daily drinker.
Matt
So alcohol has been an issue for me.
Matt
I can do a paleo challenge or a health challenge or a 75 hard or a 90 day.
Matt
I've done it a couple times, not a problem.
Matt
I can do anything that has an end date.
Matt
Whenever I enter a plank contest, I can be in the word, you know, just doing like an elbow plank.
Matt
I'll stay up longer than anybody because I.
Matt
Because I know eventually everyone will fall down.
Matt
And then I like, if I know there's an end in sight, I can do it.
Matt
So.
Matt
But this whole one day at a time for everything.
Matt
Still, still.
Matt
I just did 12 seasons on my 12 episodes on my podcast of the 12 steps to this book by Richard Rohr called Breathing Underwater.
Matt
I've learned so much about the 12 steps.
Matt
Not even connected to my own alcohol use or anything, just in general.
Matt
It was.
Matt
It was a profound experience.
Matt
But alcohol was a big piece of who I was early on and I think sometimes clouded my judgment.
Matt
I think any drug will cloud your judgment, but it plays into my big life shift moment.
Matt
I got involved with a family about 2006 or so.
Matt
So I have Gracie And Molly are born.
Matt
They're three and five or two and four, like little.
Matt
And it was a very dysfunctional family and actually a really, really scary sort of family.
Matt
And they got sucked right in.
Matt
And they were, they were, I don't even know how to describe them, like narcissistic and sociopathic and.
Matt
And I'm one of those people pleasers, right?
Matt
Like, you know, the perfect person to be sucked in.
Matt
And so they had this con, this horrible divorce and she claimed he was beating her up and, you know, he claimed she was cheating and all these like crazy, like just bad TV show things.
Matt
And so I got very, very invested in their kids because their kids were sort of the hapless victims here.
Matt
Long story short, I ended up really helping the dad in the divorce, make sure he didn't get separated from the kids and all this kind of stuff.
Matt
And in that process lost my job, a 20 year teaching career, and the details of that, that's a whole story in and of itself.
Matt
A life shift that I'm still sorting through.
Matt
But it was devastating to know that I.
Matt
A 20 year career in the town in which I grew up coaching at my high school, that could just be obliterated by some crazy, crazy people.
Barb Higgins
Okay, so that was directly related to that experience.
Matt
Yeah.
Barb Higgins
Okay.
Matt
That's such a long story.
Matt
If you ever get into scandalous podcast topics, I'm all in.
Matt
I'll be your first guest.
Matt
So the years following that, now Gracie and Molly are, you know, elementary school age and just approaching middle school age.
Matt
I settled, I, it was, that was a very humbling and hobbling experience.
Matt
It was publicly humiliating.
Matt
You know, Concord's not huge, but I was able to reinvent myself and started working at an online high school, got into CrossFit, got competitive in CrossFit, had great success as a CrossFit athlete.
Matt
So I, so I quickly filled my life with things that were positive, but my connection to the, this, this man, the father of these kids was on and off and, and just impossible to break.
Matt
He really had a hold on me.
Matt
My marriage sort of dissolved.
Matt
For a long while, Kenny and I lived apart.
Matt
And then Molly started to get sick.
Matt
So my shift, my life shift moment was her death.
Matt
And so, but, but it's more than just my 13 year old girl dying.
Matt
It's all that was going on leading into the death and all that fell apart after the death.
Matt
That really had nothing to do with dead Molly, if that makes sense, I think.
Matt
So the year leading up to her death, I was contentiously involved with this, with this Man.
Matt
Still, I was in a.
Matt
I had a new teaching job at a school that had a really, really off balance manager, like principal, and I was drinking like a fish.
Matt
I was really, really just unhealthy in every way.
Matt
I'd had an injury, so I couldn't work out.
Matt
Whenever I can't work out, I fall into bad habits.
Matt
And so Molly's seventh grade year, when she began to get headaches and started to have a real decline in her health, I was a disaster.
Matt
And of course, in, you know, in the months and days, days and months after Molly died, I was.
Matt
Felt so guilty.
Matt
But looking back, I could have been spot on.
Matt
And the things that were missed with her likely wouldn't have changed.
Matt
So she's.
Matt
So my daughter's in seventh grade, Gracie's in ninth grade.
Matt
Molly.
Matt
Molly is getting sicker and sicker to the doctors.
Matt
All these trips to the doctor.
Matt
In the meantime, I'm spending hours away from home.
Matt
Kenny and I are living apart, Will.
Matt
So what we did was we got an apartment.
Matt
And so Kenny would spend a week here and I'd spend a week at the apartment like three miles up the road.
Matt
And he was in dialysis at the time.
Matt
So those early mornings that he wasn't here, I just get up early and drive here and get the girls off to school.
Matt
And the nights that I had school board that I was here and he wasn't, he would come and cook dinner even though he wasn't.
Matt
So to the girls, it didn't even feel like we weren't living together.
Matt
We just didn't sleep in the same house.
Matt
But on any given day, they saw both of us.
Matt
And when we saw each other at the same time, we did okay because we weren't just on each other.
Matt
So there were aspects of the chaos that were okay.
Matt
And I feel had Molly not gotten sick and died, that we probably would have worked all these things out.
Matt
So the apex moment before the life shift is I went on a trip.
Matt
I went to Amsterdam with this guy, this person.
Barb Higgins
That crazy person so sucked you in.
Matt
Yeah.
Matt
And so it was a wonderful vacation.
Matt
I didn't really want to go.
Matt
I got sort of coerced into going, but I have to own the fact that I went.
Matt
So that was the last week of April of 2016, and it would ultimately be the last week of Molly's life.
Matt
So not, you know, I didn't know that Molly and I had a couple of interactions before I left that I look back on now.
Matt
And I think it's why your little tantrum with Your mother resonated so much.
Matt
Molly was furious with me for going.
Matt
She was just so angry that I would choose to go.
Matt
She.
Matt
You know, she had.
Matt
She knew the kids that I was trying to help.
Matt
She knew this man.
Matt
She hated him, was afraid of him.
Matt
You know, she didn't understand why I would spend any time at all with him.
Matt
And so she didn't want me to go, and she was angry.
Matt
So he was in the driveway picking me up to leave.
Matt
I had my suitcase all packed, and she's like, I'm not saying goodbye to you.
Matt
She just was blowing me off.
Matt
And so I just said, look, I'm flying across the country.
Matt
I'm across the ocean.
Matt
I could be gone.
Matt
If something were to happen to me, you would for the rest of your life, feel horrible that you didn't say goodbye to me.
Matt
So let's hit the pause button.
Matt
Put this on the shelf.
Matt
We need to have a nice goodbye.
Matt
And we did.
Matt
We had hugs and kisses.
Matt
I laid on her bed with her, and we talked about all the things I left them.
Matt
Money and a whole list of things to do over vacation with Kenny.
Matt
They had the best week with their dad, which they wouldn't have had if I were home, because they would have just been with me.
Matt
It was two girls.
Matt
And so off I went to Amsterdam, and the week was okay.
Matt
I mean, I had a wonderful time.
Matt
Amsterdam is a beautiful city.
Matt
And I kept in touch with the girls over the course of the week.
Matt
And she had gotten sick a couple of times while I was gone.
Matt
I went to the Anne Frank Museum, and there's this whole thing with Anne's dad about how he didn't know her, that he didn't really know her until he read her diary.
Matt
And how could he live in a room with a girl for two years and not know who she was?
Matt
And it just got me.
Matt
Like, I had to sit down and I felt nauseous, and I cried for a while.
Matt
And Roy got really frustrated with me and upset with me.
Matt
And at the same time that was happening, Molly had been taken to the hospital with, like, profuse vomiting and all this.
Matt
I didn't know that those two things were at the same time until later on.
Matt
So I get home to.
Matt
I get back to, you know, the United States.
Matt
I come home, and Molly's in the er.
Matt
She.
Matt
So she would have these headaches, and she'd wake up vomiting.
Matt
Like.
Matt
And when you wake up vomiting, it's.
Matt
It's a cranial pressure symptom.
Matt
They did pregnancy tests on her.
Matt
You know, she's 13 years old, seventh grade.
Matt
Like, they did drug testing.
Matt
The ER was just not.
Matt
Just not good.
Matt
So we spent this whole long day in the ER pushing for a CAT scan.
Matt
What's wrong?
Matt
You know, just back and forth.
Matt
But again, the part of me that wasn't willing to stand up, I didn't want them to think I was unstable or off kilter.
Matt
So I didn't argue with them about the CAT scan.
Matt
Okay, if you think she's best, that's fine.
Matt
That's fine.
Matt
16 hours in that ER and a brain tumor ruptured in her head and killed her.
Matt
So the first piece of my life shift was watching her die because I'd never seen someone actually be alive and then dead.
Matt
And I'm holding her hand, and they're catheterizing her because they want to finally want to do a CAT scan at, like, one in the morning, because she's not responding at all now.
Matt
And she had been thrashing all around, which I now know to be my occlosis, which is your nervous system.
Matt
It's like a car backfiring.
Matt
Your nervous system does all this weird stuff when it's under great pressure before it kills.
Matt
So really she was dying, but I didn't know.
Matt
I thought she was waking up.
Matt
And I'm holding her hand, and I'm watching her, and she's thrashing all about.
Matt
And then, you know, I'm just sort of chatting with the nurse, and I notice her legs are completely still.
Matt
Like, I've never seen still.
Matt
And my.
Matt
My neck hairs went up, and I'm like, oh, my God, she's so still.
Matt
And I look up at her face, and it's sort of gray, and then it's blue, and then it's yellow, like, seriously changing colors right before my eyes.
Matt
So I didn't know it at the time, but that's really when she died right then.
Matt
So you go into.
Matt
You go into panic mode.
Matt
I think it must be what happens when you're in the doorway in an earthquake and the building crumbles around you, and all you can do is sit in rubble and wait for who knows what.
Matt
That's kind of how I felt.
Matt
So we had a week where they.
Matt
They put her on life support.
Matt
They took the tumor out.
Matt
They hoped she would wake up.
Matt
She didn't wake up.
Matt
But the true.
Matt
The true moment where I became forever different was when the neurologist said to me, she will never wake up.
Matt
She.
Matt
The catastrophic event in her brain killed her.
Matt
She was dead before you brought her here.
Matt
She will never Wake up.
Matt
And I heard like the ocean in my ears and I heard a noise and I'm like, what is that noise?
Matt
And it was me screaming.
Matt
And I can't explain.
Matt
It's.
Matt
It sounds crazy, but it's like detached.
Matt
Yes.
Matt
I was just so out of it.
Matt
Peed my pants.
Matt
I crawled on the table.
Matt
When I look back on it now, it was just feral.
Matt
I feel like it was.
Matt
There was a whale in the ocean off Alaska that had her dead whale baby on her for like six weeks.
Matt
Made all this noise.
Matt
I totally could relate to what that mother whale was going.
Matt
That's what it felt like.
Barb Higgins
Do you remember that?
Barb Higgins
Do you remember those moments?
Barb Higgins
Or is it more like looking back?
Matt
Oh, I.
Matt
Oh, I remember it.
Matt
I don't.
Matt
Sadly for me, I don't forget anything.
Matt
So I remember them all.
Matt
I remember.
Matt
I remember the ocean.
Matt
I remember.
Matt
I mean, the roaring in my ears.
Matt
I remember hearing a noise and not realizing it was my voice.
Matt
I remember crawling on the table.
Matt
My friend Robin was with me, and we went into the chapel at the hospital and I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed and laid on the floor and snot was coming out.
Matt
You know, like, I remember it all.
Matt
I also could describe it to you as if I were watching somebody else.
Matt
So I think I was really detached.
Matt
Even though I was in it, I was also completely out of it.
Barb Higgins
I can't.
Barb Higgins
I mean, I'm so sorry that you had to experience that.
Barb Higgins
I think that should never be on anyone's list ever.
Matt
No, it shouldn't.
Barb Higgins
You know, and.
Matt
Well, an 8 year old should never have to hear that their mom is dead.
Matt
You know, there are things that just shouldn't happen.
Matt
Right.
Matt
It's those moments.
Matt
And, you know, you were eight, I imagine in your little brain and your little psyche and your little heart and your little soul, all of those things happened.
Matt
You know, for me it was very obvious.
Matt
The vom.
Matt
You know, the screaming, the snot, the pee, the swearing, you know, all of that was.
Matt
Was how it manifested for me.
Barb Higgins
But also, I mean, I feel like a lot of your story, and forgive me if this sounds like I'm saying anything that's not correct, but you had a very traumatic childhood.
Barb Higgins
Even though you said it was good.
Barb Higgins
And a lot of the things that you describe sound like they were way that you were comforting yourself, you were finding ways.
Barb Higgins
And now this like, brick wall in which there's not much you can do now you have to actually crumble.
Matt
Yes, yes.
Barb Higgins
If, if, if all goes quote unquote, well, you should crumble at that Moment.
Matt
Yes.
Barb Higgins
Did, did you feel like there was no hope?
Barb Higgins
Did you or were you at that.
Matt
Moment, it was too horrifying to acknowledge as true.
Matt
So at that particular moment I was, I was.
Matt
Well, here's the other piece.
Matt
I have my then 15 year old daughter Gracie and like seven of their best dance friends because they were big into dance and theater, all outside of this room wanting to know they've all been painting Molly's nails and you know, she's on life support.
Matt
Like 500 people came to visit in the first like three days.
Matt
Like, you know, all really.
Barb Higgins
Did you have to play people pleaser?
Matt
Oh God, I had to all of it.
Matt
I had to take care of all of it.
Matt
Oh yeah.
Matt
In some ways it was, I call it bar.
Matt
Like I had to channel my inner Barb for a long time that people who knew me, you know how the hashtag is a big thing, Watch it, you're going to get hashtag barbed.
Matt
And it just means that I come in and take care of it.
Matt
I go into barb mode.
Matt
And so I go back into the room where the doctor is and where the table full of people telling me my daughter's dead.
Matt
And I, and there's, and there's, I walk by Gracie and all of her friends and I realized somebody needs to tell Gracie and it can't be me because I, I don't want those words to come out of my mouth for, to her.
Matt
So we have to pull her in and you know, rub her back while the doctor explains it all to her.
Matt
And that was a precious, you know, she's a 15 year old.
Matt
Molly and Gracie were like twins, so close.
Matt
He goes through all of it and he, and he tells her again and again, ask me anything, ask me anything.
Matt
There was no way to not know that Molly was dead based on how he explained it to her.
Matt
And sweet Gracie says, I have one question.
Matt
How long until she wakes up?
Matt
Like.
Matt
And so then she blocked it.
Matt
Yeah, she just didn't get it.
Matt
And so her first panic response when told she won't wake up is what do I tell my friends?
Matt
You know, what do I put on my social media?
Matt
You know, like it was, it was just sort of a sweet, absolutely genuine response.
Matt
And so she went out into the lobby, little lobby area where her friends were sitting, and just announces, molly will never dance again.
Matt
So none of those girls at that time knew what all that meant.
Matt
You know, they just, they didn't know what that meant.
Matt
So I collected myself and I went out and the hospital had a social worker and she said, let me do this for you.
Matt
And I said, no, no, these are my girls friends.
Matt
This.
Matt
I'll do it.
Matt
And big breath.
Matt
And I just explained all that Molly had gone through and what happened and that a brain tumor inside of her head.
Matt
The damage was too much.
Matt
It ruined her brain.
Matt
Like, I went through it all just like the doctor had.
Matt
And this sweet little group of girls are looking at me, tears just pouring down their faces.
Matt
And this girl, little girl, Kelsey, raises her hand.
Matt
Kelsey was at a very prestigious private school, just graduated from a really hard, prestigious college.
Matt
Smartest one in the.
Matt
In the group by far, raises her hand and says, so how long until Molly wakes up?
Matt
Like, you know, it's just like, honey, she'll never wake up.
Barb Higgins
And so I think when you just don't have that experience in your life and you don't like, it just.
Barb Higgins
It seems so far from something that could ever happen because you just saw them, you know, four weeks ago or whatever, doing X, Y and Z.
Barb Higgins
And it's like your brain just doesn't understand.
Matt
It doesn't.
Matt
It absolutely doesn't.
Barb Higgins
It's like danger or it doesn't want to.
Barb Higgins
Right?
Barb Higgins
Yeah.
Matt
Yeah, it's.
Barb Higgins
It clears it out.
Matt
Amazing.
Matt
It's amazing.
Matt
I will say having.
Matt
So when you're abused as a child, you learn how to dissociate, you know, step out of yourself so you can deal with what's happening to you.
Matt
I have been able to utilize that skill in positive ways, actually, throughout my life.
Matt
Be a female distance runner.
Matt
Be a distance runner.
Matt
Right.
Matt
You're halfway through a 5k race and you want to puke.
Matt
I think I'll just.
Matt
This is a great time to dissociate, you know, finish the race and.
Barb Higgins
Well, yeah, I mean, it's a protection.
Matt
Exactly.
Matt
It is.
Matt
So I did a lot of it here, and the way I could do it was by stepping into caretaker role and organize things for others.
Matt
So we had a week at the hospital, which was wonderful because I found out so much about Molly.
Matt
I channeled Otto Frank a million times and totally understood why the universe showed me that quote on that day.
Matt
Because I found out so much about Molly that I did not know.
Matt
Which again, is an incredible gift from the friend.
Matt
Over the six days that she was on life support, I would say close to 800 people came.
Matt
Teachers, coaches, friends, neighborhood people, acquaintances, family.
Matt
And the stories were never ending.
Barb Higgins
That has to be overwhelming in, like, the most heartwarming way.
Matt
Yeah.
Barb Higgins
Horrifyingly wonderful, yet also sad, right?
Barb Higgins
Yeah.
Matt
Yep.
Matt
And then we had to unplug her from life support.
Matt
So I will say, you know, you watch Grey's Anatomy or, you know, Chicago PD or whatever, you watch and you see people get unplugged from life support, and it's like you unplug it and they're gone.
Matt
And life support being on it and being off it is so much more than a breathing machine.
Matt
There's 50 IVs that have all the different hormones and chemicals and things that regulate everything in your body.
Matt
You know, you have to replicate the kidneys, so there's all these bags of fluid that replicate what your kidneys do.
Matt
Your kidneys are like a science lab for the body, which I never knew until I had Dead Molly plugged into kidney liquids.
Matt
There's all sorts of things.
Matt
So it takes a long time to remove all of that.
Matt
And the last thing they do is remove the vent so, you know, she's still breathing while all these things are being removed, because the machine is breathing for her.
Matt
In New Hampshire, before you can unplug a child, you have to do all of this testing to make sure that they really won't wake up.
Matt
And as horrifying as that was to watch, it allowed me to be okay with unplugging her.
Matt
They poured water in her ear.
Matt
They took a Q tip and rubbed her eyeball.
Barb Higgins
Does it give you proof, though?
Barb Higgins
Did you say that that makes it easier or.
Matt
It made it easier for me to unplug her?
Matt
Because if somebody could pinch her shoulder that hard and she didn't flinch, if somebody could pour cold water down her ear and she didn't move, you know, rub a Q tip on your open eyeball, you know, impossible.
Matt
And she didn't flinch.
Matt
And then the last thing they do is remove the vent, and you watch the little carbon dioxide CO2 thing go up, up, up, up, and it gets to, like, a red line.
Matt
And if she could, that's when she would have gasped for air.
Matt
But there was no gasp.
Matt
So that was the day before she.
Matt
We took her off life support.
Matt
So the next day when we did, it wasn't.
Matt
It wasn't as traumatic as it could have been, because I knew.
Matt
I knew that I wasn't ending her life, that her life was ended six days prior.
Matt
I had orchestrated a wonderful goodbye for her, or the universe had orchestrated this goodbye, and we could sort of set her free.
Matt
Another thing I learned is that once you're off life support, your heart keeps beating for a long while.
Matt
So they unplugged everything.
Matt
There's no vent.
Matt
She's just beautiful.
Matt
Molly in the bed.
Matt
So I climbed in the bed with her and I put my hand on her chest and there's her heart beating in there.
Matt
And so they took all the machines out into the hall, which is another incredibly kind gesture because I didn't want to be listening to the beep get slower, you know, like, you don't, you don't.
Matt
So there was a doctor outside the room and he'd poke his head in.
Matt
Okay, she's at 20 beats a minute now.
Matt
Okay, 13 beats a minute now, you know, and I'm feeling it.
Matt
And Kenny and I took turns.
Matt
And then it stopped.
Matt
It took about 20 minutes from the vent out of her mouth to the heart stopping.
Matt
Not that I wish I didn't know any of these things, but I will say that going through it all was incredibly helpful to the process.
Matt
So then that the last piece of the life shift before my life was just playing different, was coming home without her.
Matt
Like, actually really coming home without her.
Matt
Like, it was just Gracie Kenney and I that came home.
Matt
And, you know, we'd been with her.
Matt
I looked at her every day.
Matt
I'd slept in the bed with her.
Matt
I'd smelled her, you know, she was warm and rosy cheeked because of all the machines.
Matt
And it just looked like she was sleeping.
Matt
And when we went and saw her at the funeral home, she looked nothing like she looked before.
Matt
Like, tell me different.
Matt
Oh, yeah, it's, it's, it's.
Barb Higgins
Yeah.
Matt
You know, you touch her when she's alive and there's some pliability to her.
Matt
You touch her face the funeral home and it's like cement, you know, it was.
Matt
The difference was astounding.
Matt
Yeah.
Barb Higgins
So I've experienced that.
Matt
Isn't it awful?
Barb Higgins
When my grandmother died, I had.
Barb Higgins
We, we.
Barb Higgins
I spent the last 96 hours with my grandmother in hospice and similar.
Barb Higgins
Went through a lot, a lot of similar experiences.
Barb Higgins
She was much older and lived a long, wonderful life.
Barb Higgins
So quite different than Molly.
Barb Higgins
But that experience of like walking into the funeral home, I'm like, guys, that's.
Matt
Not who I just left.
Barb Higgins
That doesn't look like her.
Barb Higgins
Like, it would just.
Barb Higgins
She just looked like a different person.
Barb Higgins
And I don't know if that was helpful or.
Barb Higgins
I don't know if that was.
Barb Higgins
I.
Barb Higgins
Yeah, I don't know how I felt about that.
Matt
I don't.
Matt
We took pictures of everything.
Matt
I have 50 pictures of her in her casket.
Matt
And I have friends who are like, why would you do that?
Matt
I'm like, it's her.
Matt
Like, you know, and remembering all of it.
Matt
I think with someone young, the biggest difference is.
Matt
I mean, loss is loss.
Matt
You had your whole life with your grandmother, and now she's gone.
Matt
So that's a huge change for you.
Matt
Forever.
Matt
She's not a part of it anymore, but her future was limited on a good day.
Matt
Right.
Matt
So you're not mourning the 50 million things that should have happened with your grandmother that didn't.
Matt
You might be mourning the fact that you'll never have another Christmas with her, but it's not like you're mourning the wedding and the.
Matt
The graduations and all the things that are supposed to happen.
Barb Higgins
As a parent, you see that.
Barb Higgins
Yeah.
Matt
With Molly, it's been hard to.
Matt
Those things are really difficult.
Matt
And believe it or not, the dead body pictures help sometimes.
Matt
Like, she's not here.
Matt
Like, there was a lot of.
Matt
In the first months when I was just so batshit crazy, there was a lot of times that the only way I knew she was gone was to drive to the cemetery in the middle of the night and put a sleeping bag on our grave and argue with the police officers that wanted me to leave the cemetery because I wasn't safe.
Matt
Like, all.
Matt
Like I care, you know?
Matt
Like it was, you know, crazy behavior.
Matt
Right?
Barb Higgins
No.
Matt
Crazy.
Barb Higgins
It's not.
Barb Higgins
I mean, but not.
Barb Higgins
It feels like it's like a human response, like you were grasping for something to help you.
Matt
Yeah.
Matt
I touch her name on the.
Matt
On the gravestone.
Matt
I'd look at the picture of her on my phone in the casket.
Matt
I'd know that the casket was underneath me because I watched it get put in there.
Matt
All of those things.
Matt
It sounds awful, but it helped me.
Matt
It was just incredibly helpful for me to believe that all this was true, that she wasn't missing.
Barb Higgins
I don't think it sounds awful, though.
Barb Higgins
I don't think.
Barb Higgins
I just think it sounds human.
Barb Higgins
And I think it sounds human.
Barb Higgins
And I think so many of us would say the same thing, but yet we were taught not to talk about some of these things.
Matt
And I think that's my apology for the.
Matt
I know this sounds awful because we don't speak of these things.
Matt
Right.
Barb Higgins
But we should.
Matt
Yeah, exactly.
Barb Higgins
Because.
Matt
Exactly.
Barb Higgins
Because as shitty as this experience was for you, there are other people that have experienced this as well.
Matt
Exactly.
Barb Higgins
You know, and to know that even in the moment when you felt you dissociated and physical things happened to you in the hospital.
Barb Higgins
Like, I'm also sure that you're not the only person that's ever absolutely experienced that.
Barb Higgins
And it's all permissible.
Barb Higgins
Like, it just feels like, it's just a human experience.
Matt
Like, I was gonna ask.
Matt
That is the truest phrase right there.
Matt
I'm obviously, I'm in a lot of grief groups, you know, online groups, support groups and such.
Matt
And people are always asking for advice, and always.
Matt
I just say, wherever you are and whatever you're feeling is exactly right.
Matt
There's no should here.
Matt
If you wake up angry, be fucking angry.
Matt
You know, that's what you're supposed to do.
Matt
People don't.
Matt
You know, people.
Barb Higgins
How about when you laugh, though?
Barb Higgins
Then you feel like I am the worst human that's ever existed.
Barb Higgins
Yeah, but.
Barb Higgins
Yeah, you're human.
Matt
Yes.
Matt
Like, I will say.
Matt
I will say one of my other favorite books is One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Matt
And there's a character in that story, Chief.
Matt
He's this big Native American dude that Jack Nicholson in the movie befriends, and he's.
Matt
One of his lines is, if you lose your laughter, you lose your footing.
Matt
And I read this book in high school.
Matt
I had this amazing English teacher, and I'll never forget it because.
Matt
Because I'm.
Matt
I've always been someone that cracks a joke, you know, class clown kind of person.
Matt
And I had probably some of the best visits and funniest revelations that week at the hospital.
Matt
And I remember one of my college roommates saying, how can you laugh?
Matt
And I'm like, how can I not?
Matt
Like, you know, this is the rest of my life.
Matt
Like, I have to.
Matt
I have to balance this out somehow.
Matt
So I have been lucky.
Matt
The hardest part for me with Happy is when people say to me, oh, finally the old Barb is coming back.
Matt
And I think, what a.
Matt
What a shallow sentence that is, because how can the old Barb come back?
Matt
The old Barb had a daughter named Molly that wasn't dead.
Matt
Like that.
Matt
That Barb doesn't exist.
Matt
She is nowhere.
Matt
It doesn't mean there's a lot.
Matt
That a lot of me isn't still here, but that.
Matt
That's always been hard for me.
Matt
And it's hard for a lot of people, I think.
Matt
You'll never be the eight year.
Matt
And I don't know how many days into the year, eighth year you were, but say you were eight and a half versus eight and three quarters, two completely different little boys you want.
Matt
You aren't the same because how you were before you had the mum.
Matt
So, yes, you're the same human, but a multitude of things are different.
Barb Higgins
Do you see that?
Barb Higgins
I mean, being in a lot of grief groups, I would imagine you see that.
Barb Higgins
I Think people just don't know what to say.
Matt
They don't know what to say.
Barb Higgins
And then they say really dumb things.
Barb Higgins
And then, you know, the more evolved version of us looks back and go, okay, well, maybe they didn't quite mean.
Barb Higgins
Do you feel that way or are you just like always?
Matt
Always.
Matt
And I, and I always try to remember that I would rather have somebody try and say the wrong thing than look at me and walk away.
Matt
And I've had that happen too, where people, you know, someone sees me walking down the street, I'll never forget it.
Matt
She'd only been gone a little bit, so it was fresh.
Matt
And I, and I went, oh, there's so and so.
Matt
And you know, she sees me and then runs into a store.
Matt
And I was like, oh, it just happened.
Matt
But you know, at the same time I'm not.
Matt
I don't know how I would act either.
Matt
So, you know, I mean, there's a million things I've done terribly wrong.
Barb Higgins
Or were you just a human and you made mistakes?
Barb Higgins
You know, I think because I always look at like society really faulted or hurt me in a way because I felt like I wasn't allowed to do certain things and I wasn't allowed to feel a certain way.
Barb Higgins
And the same thing.
Barb Higgins
That woman that went into the store, she was never taught how to help someone that was.
Barb Higgins
Or just say, hey, I'm here.
Barb Higgins
There's nothing I can do or say to make this any better for you, but I'm here if you need me.
Barb Higgins
And like that.
Barb Higgins
Sometimes that's all we need, or we just need a body there to be like, here I am.
Barb Higgins
You know, I was going to ask, and I don't.
Barb Higgins
I mean, it sounds like you may have.
Barb Higgins
Did you.
Barb Higgins
Was there a time where you just completely lost it?
Matt
So I have a tree.
Matt
Did you just call it my scream tree?
Matt
The first time I lost it was when I got the call from the pathology that her tumor was benign, that had they just given her a CAT scan when we took her to the ER at 10 in the morning, that they would have taken it out.
Matt
And it likely it was a.
Matt
It was in a hard shell.
Matt
It wouldn't.
Matt
The reason that it killed her was because it got engorged with blood and ruptured.
Matt
And even still they.
Matt
It came right out.
Matt
So I was in my car on Main street in Concord and I started to scream that same sort of scream.
Matt
I just was so angry.
Matt
But this wasn't, this was more of a pissed off scream.
Matt
I remember people looking at me.
Matt
So I absolutely Fell apart.
Matt
I fell apart.
Matt
So the other piece of this is Roy, the guy that I had gone to Amsterdam with.
Matt
And I don't mind using his name.
Matt
He.
Matt
Once he realized that Molly had died and that now I was going to be very, very swallowed up in that, he just.
Matt
He said, you know what?
Matt
It's always all about you.
Matt
I can't keep waiting for you.
Matt
Like, we had been on again, off again.
Matt
Kenny and I separate.
Matt
I'm with Roy.
Matt
Roy and I separate.
Matt
You know, it was just.
Matt
It was your classic.
Matt
He, ultimately, he didn't really want to be with me.
Matt
He.
Matt
He liked having me in his life, but it was never.
Barb Higgins
He wanted the attention.
Matt
Yes.
Matt
And so about a month after she died, he's like, I can't do this anymore.
Matt
And I'm.
Matt
And I'm like, can't do what?
Matt
I have a dead child.
Matt
Well, you know, it's been six weeks.
Matt
You need to let me come up and clean the house and make Kenny go live somewhere else and get Gracie and move.
Matt
Move to Massachusetts with me.
Matt
And, you know, just.
Matt
And I'm just like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I can't.
Matt
I can't.
Matt
You just out of it.
Matt
I mean, really just walking around in a daze.
Matt
And so he did.
Matt
He.
Matt
He left.
Matt
He stopped.
Matt
We still communicate.
Matt
We still communicated quite a bit up until a couple of years ago.
Matt
Just texting and checking in with one another.
Matt
Super unhealthy connection.
Matt
But.
Matt
But he was dating someone else by July.
Matt
Molly died May 7th.
Matt
And, like, July 15th, he was on a.
Matt
On a getaway weekend with his new girlfriend, like, that fast.
Matt
And I was just like.
Matt
So all of it, like.
Matt
Like everything that was under my feet was.
Matt
Was just crumbled, and I was a disaster.
Matt
So a couple of things, of course, I obviously was drinking a ton.
Matt
I would.
Matt
I couldn't sleep.
Matt
I couldn't lie still.
Matt
I couldn't.
Matt
Gracie and I set.
Matt
Put blankets on the living room floor.
Matt
We slept on the living room floor for two years.
Matt
We didn't come back up here upstairs.
Matt
No.
Matt
We just couldn't face being upstairs.
Matt
Where Molly's room was the bathroom she got sick in.
Matt
We just lived downstairs.
Matt
We'd come up to get close, bring them down, you know, I couldn't go into that bathroom for months and months and months.
Matt
I took a shower with the hose in my driveway.
Matt
Like, I put my bathing suit on and washed up in the driveway because I couldn't, you know, I went into labor with her in the downstairs bathroom, and she, you know, spent her last alive Moments in the upstairs bathroom, I couldn't do it.
Matt
So those are some of the crazies that, for me, became a part of my daily existence.
Matt
I'd wake up and fly right out of bed.
Matt
I'd count the minutes until it was late enough in the day to have a drink.
Matt
I played on my phone incessantly.
Matt
Like, I couldn't, I couldn't.
Barb Higgins
I just escaped.
Matt
Just essentially, I was just hobbled, just so hobbled.
Matt
And then lost all contact with Roy.
Matt
And even though most of that relationship was incredibly unhealthy, it had become an expected stabilizer for me.
Matt
And when you're in a relationship with somebody that's narcissistic like that, they create this dependency.
Matt
So you become hyper dependent and hyper vigilant and doing everything you can to not have them leave you.
Matt
And so I was in this, like, just this panic mode all the time.
Matt
So being me, me being me, I had another connection in my life.
Matt
Not a romantic connection, but a friend of mine who was a pretty heavy drug user.
Matt
I, you know, I.
Matt
I was a product of the 80s.
Matt
So in 19, between 1981 when I graduated high school, and 86 when I graduated college and grad school, cocaine was like the party drug.
Matt
Everybody did.
Matt
You.
Matt
You went everywhere and it was just, you know, you're probably too young to.
Matt
How old were you in the 80s?
Matt
10, 5?
Barb Higgins
I was born in 81, so.
Barb Higgins
All right, you graduated high school, so.
Matt
Yeah, you're in elementary school.
Matt
And I was having a good time in Boston, so.
Matt
But.
Matt
But then when I moved home, you know, and did, you know, sobriety and all that, I.
Matt
I was, I mean, alcohol in my adult life, I never.
Matt
I really never liked smoking pot so much.
Matt
I didn't trust pills because how do you know what's in the pill?
Matt
I mean, how do you know what's in the coke either?
Matt
But, you know, you don't.
Matt
So I stayed away from it.
Matt
And so when all of this started happening, you know, I didn't know much about what was going on in this other person's life.
Matt
He was going through a whole bunch of stuff as well.
Matt
And he had started using coke, snorting it and cooking it, smoking it, out of, totally out of my realm.
Matt
And he said, come over, I think I can make you feel better.
Matt
So I went to visit and I had never in my life, you know, smoked cocaine.
Matt
I didn't even.
Matt
I didn't even know what that meant.
Matt
He goes, here, just breathe this in.
Matt
And so I breathed it in, and it was the most amazing feeling.
Matt
I'VE ever felt in my life.
Matt
And I.
Matt
And I was just like, oh, my God, I'm going to be okay.
Matt
So, not surprisingly, I became a daily crack smoker, which when you, you know, at the time I was 54.
Matt
Right, 53.
Matt
Turning 54.
Matt
You know, well respected my community on a school board.
Matt
You know, most people in my community don't know this about me.
Matt
I've.
Matt
I'm in the process of really just beginning to share it because I think the people I met in this journey also held positions of power and stature in the community.
Matt
We think of drug users as, you know, scarred up, skinny people under bridges.
Matt
And that's not the truth at all.
Matt
Some really amazingly fine people have other sides that are alarmingly fragile.
Matt
And I got very sucked right into that.
Barb Higgins
Was that like.
Barb Higgins
Is that another escape for you?
Barb Higgins
Was that something that, like, just pushed everything away for you?
Matt
Yes.
Matt
I felt that first year, all I could do was keep Gracie alive.
Matt
Like, seriously only worried about keeping Gracie alive.
Matt
Kenny was really sick and on dialysis.
Matt
We were so separate at the time of Molly's death that I didn't ask him anything and he didn't ask me anything.
Matt
You know, I slept downstairs with Gracie, he slept upstairs.
Matt
He went to dialysis and lived his life.
Matt
Got sicker and sicker and sicker.
Matt
I got Gracie to school.
Matt
I did what I needed to do in her life.
Matt
I went to the dance recitals, I got her to dance classes.
Matt
I went to the parent teacher conferences.
Matt
Like, I was able to do what I needed to do.
Barb Higgins
Survival mode.
Barb Higgins
Yeah.
Matt
Yes.
Matt
And I was able to work sort of part time.
Matt
I worked as a tutor.
Matt
So I was able to cobble together money to get the basic bills paid.
Matt
We had a lot of money given to us at the time of Molly's death, and then we settled a lawsuit.
Matt
So money became, you know, not quite so such an issue.
Matt
I'm lucky that way.
Matt
I mean, it's dead Molly money.
Matt
But it was money nonetheless, you know, but I spent from, you know, July of, well, May of 2016 until really two full years and then about six months really trying to extricate myself from it of.
Matt
Of really regular coke use.
Matt
And.
Matt
And it was.
Matt
I'm surprised I'm not dead.
Matt
Sometimes, I will say, when you're in the upper echelons of society and you're hanging around with people with money, your sources for such things are probably a bit safer than your average street dealer.
Matt
Although, I don't know, you know, I never.
Matt
I never even entered into that part.
Matt
But I do know that it utterly paralyzed me.
Matt
You know, if I could go back and do it differently, would I?
Matt
I don't know.
Matt
I.
Matt
I do know at the time.
Barb Higgins
I didn't know you needed to solve.
Barb Higgins
You needed something to like.
Matt
Yes.
Barb Higgins
Like a comfort blanket of some sort to just hug you.
Matt
Exactly, exactly.
Matt
And.
Matt
And so my.
Barb Higgins
You wouldn't recommend it to other people?
Matt
Yeah, yeah.
Barb Higgins
You would not recommend it, right?
Matt
No.
Matt
God, no.
Matt
God, no.
Matt
Yes.
Barb Higgins
That's a good thing.
Matt
Oh, God, no, no, no.
Matt
It's one of those things where you.
Matt
It's just when I would brag to my classes that I could quit drinking anytime I wanted, it's a blessing and a curse because I can also deny that I have an alcohol issue because, oh, I can quit and I can.
Matt
I never drank when I was pregnant.
Matt
I never drank when I was nursing.
Matt
You know, I, like, not a problem.
Matt
If there was a challenge at my gym and I signed up, I.
Matt
I didn't drink.
Matt
Like, I can quit anytime.
Matt
During these years where I was, you know, regularly using this powerfully anesthetic, calming substance.
Matt
If we went away, like, we went to Hawaii for a couple of weeks, went to Florida several times, I didn't even think about it.
Matt
I got on the plane, I wasn't like jonesing for it in Hawaii.
Barb Higgins
So it's like being home.
Barb Higgins
You just wanted to.
Matt
Yes.
Matt
The minute we got back into Concord, it was all I could think about.
Matt
So in the process of this, in the process of going from a successful public educator with a wonderful career and a great athletic career to once or twice a week at the most, bathing decimated, drug addicted mother of a dead kid, like overnight, you know, it was like, how did this happen to me?
Matt
So one of the other pieces that sort of happened about two years after Molly's death, exactly two years after, actually, as we settled that lawsuit.
Matt
And I had had this crazy dream shortly after Molly died, like weeks after she died, that I was supposed to have a baby.
Matt
And of course I think, okay, I'm mental.
Matt
You know, I'm.
Matt
I'm having all this, you know, I was.
Matt
I went through traumatic trauma induced menopause.
Matt
Like, I was still, you know, having my period every month and totally not in menopause at 53 when Molly died, or 52.
Matt
Yeah.
Matt
And then boom, that was it.
Matt
And so I thought, okay, I'm going through menopause, I'm freaking out, blah, blah, blah.
Matt
So I went to my doctor, had all this testing done, told him I was having this crazy dream that I was supposed to try to have a baby.
Matt
And he said, well, you know, I can't just fill you up with estrogen right now.
Matt
You're going to have to go to a.
Matt
To a IV IVF doctor, and you're too old to do it here.
Matt
He sent me to a doctor in Boston.
Matt
So I actually went to this doctor.
Barb Higgins
Oh, wow.
Barb Higgins
So you were pursuing this because of the dream?
Matt
Yes.
Matt
I just needed to follow through because the dream was persistent.
Barb Higgins
Like, I.
Barb Higgins
Oh, okay.
Matt
You know, it was happening and happening.
Matt
So then, you know, so I would, you know, you know, smoke more cracks, try to quiet it down.
Matt
Right.
Matt
Like, it was.
Matt
It was just ugly.
Matt
And so then I would step back.
Matt
This constant.
Matt
Oh, my God, I would never want to go back there.
Matt
It's really good for me to talk about this because it was just so difficult.
Matt
But long story short, I went through all the testing.
Matt
I went through.
Matt
I had a colonoscopy.
Matt
I had a mammogram.
Matt
I had a brain scan, a CAT scan.
Matt
I had blood work.
Matt
You know, I had a little inside of my uterus, biopsied, all of it.
Matt
And the doctor said to me, you, I would never know based on your test results that you're in your 50s.
Matt
So when you're ready, we'll absolutely help you have a baby.
Matt
So.
Matt
But I hadn't settled a lawsuit yet.
Matt
I was still actively addicted to drugs.
Matt
I was still drinking like a fish.
Matt
And we didn't have the money at the time.
Matt
I was.
Matt
We were still really.
Matt
Just still really hobbled by Molly's death.
Matt
So I just said, all right, stop with the dreams.
Matt
Enough, enough, enough.
Matt
And they did.
Matt
They went away.
Matt
So we settled the lawsuit.
Matt
And it wasn't two weeks after that the dream came back.
Matt
I was sitting having coffee on the porch, and I said to Kenny, hey, guess what dream I had last night?
Matt
He's like, the baby dream.
Matt
And I'm like, yeah, no kidding.
Matt
So another piece of the lawsuit settling.
Matt
It was like hearing Molly's never going to wake up all over again.
Matt
For two years, all I did was talk to people about alive Molly and what had gone wrong and what they did wrong and how they didn't save her and how they should have saved her and how her death.
Matt
But in my mind, the Molly I'm talking about is still alive.
Matt
So then we settle the lawsuit, get a check, and it's like, oh, my God, she's never coming back.
Matt
Like.
Matt
Like, she's.
Matt
She's dead.
Matt
So it was.
Matt
It was.
Matt
And everyone I know, all other parents that I've talked to that have gone through the medical Malpractice piece say the same thing, really?
Matt
That it buys you.
Matt
It buys you time to talk about your child, you know, and bring them up and bring them up, and then, boom, it's over.
Matt
So.
Matt
So it was at that time that I'm like, all right, I have to go off all this.
Matt
I got to go off all this medicine.
Matt
I have to.
Matt
And all these drugs, and I'm on all these.
Matt
I mean, I was on Xanax and Lorazepam and Lamictal, you know, and plus the drinking and the smoking and, like, why.
Matt
I don't know why I'm not drooling in a rag right now.
Matt
I truly don't.
Matt
I.
Barb Higgins
Did the people around you notice?
Matt
No.
Matt
Nobody knew.
Matt
Not.
Matt
Not one person.
Matt
Nobody.
Matt
Just the person that I partied with.
Matt
That was it.
Matt
Nobody else.
Matt
And they told nobody.
Barb Higgins
And even talking to them now, they're like, no, you seemed.
Matt
Yeah.
Matt
No, they don't know.
Matt
When I share with people how.
Matt
What I was doing at that time, they look at me like.
Matt
Like, I finally sat down and told Kenny, and he's like, what.
Matt
How did I.
Matt
You were here.
Matt
I said I'd leave the house at 11 at night, and I'd get home at 5 in the morning, and you guys were all asleep.
Matt
I'd been up all night, and then I'd be up all day, and that was, you know, four or five nights a week.
Matt
It was a lot.
Matt
It was all the time.
Barb Higgins
I don't know.
Barb Higgins
I mean.
Matt
Yeah.
Barb Higgins
I don't know how you got away with it.
Matt
Yeah.
Barb Higgins
Like, people I know.
Barb Higgins
That's power.
Barb Higgins
That's like power of human spirit right there.
Matt
Yeah.
Matt
Yep.
Matt
Yep.
Matt
And so.
Matt
And.
Matt
And I was also still.
Matt
I still never stopped going to CrossFit.
Matt
I started bringing Gracie to CrossFit, so I.
Matt
I couldn't.
Matt
I didn't work out with any intensity.
Matt
I went through the motions completely.
Matt
Everything made me cry.
Matt
So I couldn't listen to music in the car, so I just would leave my seatbelt unbuckled so that it would be the beep.
Matt
The beeping noise.
Barb Higgins
Oh, wow.
Matt
Interesting.
Matt
I went for drives a lot in my car, and I would scream.
Matt
I would scream until my eyes were bloodshot and my voice was gone.
Matt
It was just a way to get.
Matt
Just to get it all out.
Matt
And then I medicated myself.
Matt
So when I decided that I was going to try to have this baby, that we'd settled the lawsuit, I needed to go off all this medicine.
Matt
She's never coming back.
Matt
Just swallow it, Barbara.
Matt
She's not coming back.
Matt
That was when I started to have a real shift in who I was because I wasn't functioning in panic anymore.
Matt
I wasn't, I wasn't.
Matt
I was making concerted efforts to.
Matt
So I, I had to sit with my doctor and chart out all the medicine I was on.
Matt
It took me four months to safely stop taking everything I was taking.
Matt
We looked at the pills.
Matt
Yeah.
Matt
And then I, and then I, of course, had to be honest and say, look, I'm also doing this, you know, talking about the coke.
Matt
And she said, okay, so that would be a really smart thing to stop.
Matt
Like cold turkey.
Matt
It's not going to hurt you to stop that.
Matt
Cold turkey, like.
Matt
Okay.
Matt
So that was essentially, that was essentially what got me to stop that.
Barb Higgins
Did you.
Barb Higgins
Do you think that, like, you want that new version of you, if you will, was because there was like a purpose now?
Barb Higgins
It was like a different purpose to chase?
Matt
Absolutely, yeah.
Matt
Absolutely.
Matt
That it wasn't.
Matt
And that even though I, I had a corner turn, I wasn't forgetting about her or leaving her behind.
Matt
I now had the means to bring her along.
Matt
Her meaning, Molly.
Matt
Yeah.
Matt
And I, and I, I, I just need to follow through on this dream.
Matt
I didn't really understand it.
Matt
So in the process of going off all the medicines, I have a nerve condition called trigeminal neuralgia.
Matt
So you have a nerve that runs on the side of your face, so it makes you tear, makes you snot, makes you drool.
Matt
Dental trauma can trigger it in.
Matt
It continues to fire, just like, like a phantom pain kind of thing.
Matt
So I got it in my, in this, in the bottom part of it.
Matt
So for like four years, I felt like I had a toothache all the time.
Matt
I mean, of course it happens more to women than men.
Matt
The ER and my doctors thought I was just looking for drugs, you know, and this was before I was the actual drug addict.
Matt
It was excruciating pain.
Matt
When it was finally diagnosed, they put you on anti seizure medicine, Tegretol, topramate.
Matt
I was on Neurontin, which is Gabapentin.
Matt
It's a nerve block.
Matt
All of those things brought the pain down.
Matt
But you can't grow a baby when you're on 2 full milligrams of Xanax a day, you know, Lorazepam, Lamictal or Eklonapan or whatever.
Matt
Like all of those plus seizure, anti seizure meds.
Matt
I had to go off all of that.
Matt
So it took about three months.
Matt
All of August, September, four months.
Matt
So as I, as I lessened the medicine from my mouth, the Pain was excruciating.
Matt
So I found a doctor that can perform a surgery that repairs trigeminal neuralgia.
Matt
He's in New York City.
Matt
I sent him an email.
Matt
This is who I am.
Matt
This is what I'm trying to do.
Matt
Would you be willing, you know, for me to come and you'd fix my mouth?
Matt
And he goes, absolutely.
Matt
Get this MRI with contrast.
Matt
So I get the MRI with contrast, and I'm sitting at the kitchen table about two hours after the mri, and my phone rings and it's my local neurologist office.
Matt
And I'm thinking, okay, there's never good news when you have a phone call from your neurologist two hours after a scan.
Matt
So lo and behold, I have a, like an orange sized tumor in my brain, which, had I known that was in there when Molly was dying, I certainly could have fought for her.
Matt
That was my first thought.
Matt
Are you kidding me?
Matt
You know, it's Gracie's senior year.
Matt
Like, this poor child, you know, her dad's on dialysis now I have a brain tumor, her sister's dead.
Matt
Like, what is this?
Matt
You know, it was just.
Matt
But instead of going into that absolute, utter panic mode, there was a piece of me.
Matt
It was a huge shift after the lawsuit settlement.
Matt
And I'm just like, maybe this is the whole reason I had these dreams, is to find this brain tumor.
Matt
Because I would never have gone off the medicine.
Matt
I wouldn't have.
Matt
I don't know what would have happened to me, but I wouldn't have found the tumor.
Matt
And the way that it sat, it was putting a lot of pressure on the carotid artery.
Matt
And my doctor said you would have had a stroke.
Matt
That would have been a stroke sooner than later.
Matt
That could have been pretty damaging.
Matt
So I go from having trigeminal neuralgia surgery to brains brain tumor removal.
Matt
And they got it out.
Matt
And then a few months later, I had the.
Matt
My nerve damage thing fixed.
Matt
So two craniotomies in three months.
Matt
So I.
Matt
So I start to think, okay, okay, I need to open my eyes, I need to pay attention, I need to slow down, and you stop taking care of everybody.
Matt
I mean, this was sort of being hobbled in a good way, you know, Like Molly's death hobbled me in the worst possible ways.
Matt
This utter physical, okay, I give in.
Matt
I give up.
Matt
You win.
Matt
You know, I spent four months in my living room because I couldn't walk up and downstairs easily.
Matt
I had a head full of liquid is what it felt like.
Matt
I had a daughter who was a senior in high School that just wanted to be happy, and I had my sick husband, so.
Matt
But I never once.
Matt
I really never went back into that place where I couldn't function.
Matt
I never had a desire to get high.
Matt
You know, Like, I.
Matt
It was.
Matt
It was a pretty amazing shift.
Matt
Shortly after that, one of my Molly's best friends, we found out she was on life support.
Matt
Right around the same time frame.
Matt
End of April, beginning of May.
Matt
They danced together.
Matt
This girl Rachel danced in Molly's funeral.
Matt
Molly had, like, a.
Matt
We had, like, a variety show for her.
Matt
It was the opening number that this girl Rachel was in.
Matt
So, of course, Kenny and I dove into action.
Matt
You know, I'm bald.
Matt
I have, like, bruise.
Matt
I look like hell because I've had my head cut open.
Matt
So we helped this family get through what they ended up doing, which is taking their daughter off life support three years and a day after we took Molly off life support.
Matt
So in the process of talking to them, we found out that Kenny had the same blood type as their daughter Rachel.
Matt
And so in this ridiculous moment, they gave Kenny Rachel's kidney.
Matt
So Kenny got a kidney from a girl that danced in his daughter's funeral.
Matt
Like, that's.
Matt
That is our connection.
Matt
So Molly dies.
Matt
My relationship with Roy disappears.
Matt
I fall apart.
Matt
I become a drug addict.
Matt
We settle a lawsuit.
Matt
I figure it out, okay, I can do this.
Matt
I can do this.
Matt
I stop all the drugs.
Matt
I go to fix my face.
Matt
I have a brain tumor.
Matt
Kenny's gonna die.
Matt
He's so sick.
Matt
Somebody else's daughter dies.
Matt
Kenny gets a kidney.
Matt
Like, do you see the good, the bad, the good, the bad, the good, the bad?
Matt
Like, it's this never ending sort of journey.
Matt
So through all of this, though, I had.
Matt
I just.
Matt
I can't say I had clarity, Matt, because there was nothing clear inside my head, but I really was able to just sort of trudge along in an increasingly positive way.
Matt
Like, it.
Matt
Like everything was just sort of okay.
Matt
It all continued to be okay.
Matt
Gracie got to be good friends with Rachel's younger sister, Allie.
Matt
They really.
Matt
They were each other's lost sister for a while.
Matt
It was an incredible connection.
Matt
And my doctor wrote off and said, sure, go ahead and try to have this baby.
Matt
And so, like, six months after.
Matt
Yeah, five months after my second craniotomy, we did our first round of ivf, which was not successful, but I was.
Matt
So I was just okay with it.
Matt
Like, you know what?
Matt
Maybe it wasn't about a baby after all.
Matt
Like, maybe the whole point of this was for me to find these tumors and for Us to find and connect with Rachel's family and for all of this to happen.
Matt
But my doctor, this wacky Italian guy named Vito Cardoni.
Matt
So, such a great guy.
Matt
Stoneham.
Matt
Stoneham, Mass.
Matt
So not too far from Lawrence.
Matt
He was like, no, no, no.
Matt
Come back.
Matt
I want to.
Matt
You.
Matt
You.
Matt
You have this amazing physical reality.
Matt
I want very much to try again.
Matt
If you'd like to try again.
Matt
I'm like, sure, of course.
Matt
And so we did.
Matt
We tried again.
Matt
Covid came, and so it put it off a bit.
Matt
And then I got pregnant with Jack.
Matt
And so that was another one of those moments where rather than look like everything that happens to me or happens to my body, you know, because it was my body that was abused.
Matt
It was my body that I put drugs into.
Matt
It was my body that grew my babies.
Matt
It was my body that lost Molly.
Matt
I lost my first child at 25 weeks.
Matt
So it was easy for me to hate myself, easy for me to put drugs into myself, easy for me to turn all that anguish inward.
Matt
But all of these things just sort of turn it around for me.
Matt
Like, okay, so maybe I'm just a vehicle here for something that I'm supposed to do that maybe has nothing to do with me at all.
Matt
And I got pregnant with Jack, and that pregnancy was easily my best of the four pregnancies, the easiest, the healthiest.
Matt
I gained the least amount of weight.
Matt
I felt the best.
Matt
I worked out the most.
Barb Higgins
You were the oldest.
Matt
I was the oldest, yeah.
Matt
And.
Matt
And so.
Matt
So I have this child now.
Matt
And, you know, people always ask, how do you do it?
Matt
And I will have to say it's pretty fucking hard because I'm tired all the time.
Matt
But.
Matt
But I also know that I feel like I have a candle.
Matt
Like Jack is just like a candle he doesn't have.
Matt
It's not his job to be my candle.
Matt
I don't look to him to light my way.
Matt
But I will say, being at this phase of my life, Jack has just calmed it all down.
Matt
He's.
Matt
He's given me a focus that doesn't take me away from anything else, but makes everything else easier to deal with, you know, and he's a feisty, obnoxious, articulate, too smart for his own good.
Barb Higgins
Where does he likes to sleep?
Barb Higgins
Where could he get that?
Barb Higgins
No, I mean, but I think that, you know, it's such a.
Barb Higgins
This is the power of story.
Barb Higgins
Because so many parts of your life story should have taken you out, you know, in some way.
Barb Higgins
And here you are ending.
Barb Higgins
Not ending, but ending this conversation with a Story of hope, of a.
Barb Higgins
Of moving forward, of creating life, and also building a new version of your life.
Barb Higgins
Not forgetting Molly, but bringing her along.
Matt
Yes.
Barb Higgins
For the ride and having her memory through all the things that.
Barb Higgins
That Gracie's doing and then Jack is doing.
Barb Higgins
I mean, it just.
Barb Higgins
It feels like so many times if we heard just little segments of your life, we'd be just like, discount it.
Barb Higgins
We would just be like, well, there goes that one, you know, like, there goes Barb on that one there, you know, and, like.
Barb Higgins
And then just there's no hope.
Barb Higgins
But yet somehow you push through all of these moments.
Matt
Right.
Barb Higgins
And then you have this conversation where people are like, oh, I couldn't have done that.
Barb Higgins
But I think we could.
Matt
Yes.
Matt
Yes.
Barb Higgins
You know, I think that shows us that we can.
Matt
People will.
Matt
And I will say, before Molly's death, the number of times I said I could not handle losing Molly or Gracie, I could not handle child loss.
Matt
You know, I lost baby Gordy at 25 weeks gestation, and that was devastating.
Matt
But I never got to know that baby.
Matt
It was an unknowable essence in my belly, and it was devastating.
Matt
But I.
Matt
But I dealt with it.
Matt
Okay.
Matt
Because there wasn't 13 years to have somebody every day in your life.
Matt
And I can't say that I've done it well either.
Matt
I've had some pretty ugly moments and some pretty devastating experiences.
Matt
However, I think you're right.
Matt
All of us have the capacity to do it.
Matt
We.
Matt
Some may do it easier than others, and some may do it better or worse than others or differently than others, but the human spirit's pretty amazing is what I.
Matt
What I sort of find out.
Barb Higgins
Yeah.
Barb Higgins
And I don't know if you feel this way about some of these tragic moments and the decisions that you made because of those.
Barb Higgins
Do you think.
Barb Higgins
Do you look at them as.
Barb Higgins
Them getting you to this version of you and seeing weird silver linings in some of those?
Barb Higgins
Like whether that was the drug addiction or the alcohol or whatever it might have been.
Matt
Yes, I do.
Matt
And the main reason I do is because I've come to learn that sometimes we try to process our lives completely backwards.
Matt
I can't erase child abuse.
Matt
It happened.
Matt
I can't get unabused.
Matt
All I can do is is work on and manage and alter how I deal and cope with the abuse and how it affects me.
Matt
And by both letting it affect me the way it needs to, and then by figuring out ways to own how it affects me so that I'm in control of that piece so I can't Undead Molly.
Matt
And I think it takes a long time for mothers to get to the point where they really realize they cannot alive their children.
Matt
So I don't need to relive her death.
Matt
I need to look at how her death has affected me.
Matt
And that's where my story is.
Matt
So how her death affected me.
Matt
Well, for two years I was a drug addict.
Matt
Would I like to go back and undo the drug?
Matt
Sure.
Matt
Except that I know there's huge pieces of me that wouldn't be me if I hadn't put that pipe to my mouth all those times.
Matt
I wouldn't be me.
Matt
And so just, you know, in my self loathing times, I'll be like, well, sure took you a lot to finally learn the lesson.
Matt
And then I realized, Barbara, there's no lesson.
Matt
I'm not learning a lesson.
Matt
Not in the traditional sense.
Matt
Like you did something wrong.
Matt
If you learned your lesson more.
Matt
Like everything is a lesson.
Matt
Like, you know, like you were coping.
Matt
Yeah, right, exactly.
Barb Higgins
I mean, you didn't choose the healthiest way, but you were coping.
Barb Higgins
And that was all you knew how to do because that was what was available to you at the time.
Barb Higgins
It was the easiest route.
Barb Higgins
You know, like, I just feel like sometimes we shame ourselves for the things that we were just doing to protect ourselves, to keep going.
Barb Higgins
Because had you not done that well.
Matt
Yeah, I don't know.
Matt
Right, right.
Barb Higgins
You could have done something worse.
Matt
What?
Matt
That other path, you know, two roads diverged in the yellow wood, Right.
Matt
So you think, oh, what if I taken the other path?
Matt
There could have been a cliff at the end of that other path.
Matt
There could have been a lion waiting.
Matt
There could, you know.
Barb Higgins
Exactly, right?
Barb Higgins
Yeah, exactly.
Barb Higgins
And I think that's the, and I go back to it.
Barb Higgins
It's like the importance of us sharing our stories like this because these are not the stories that you see on social media.
Barb Higgins
These are like, these are the real stories.
Barb Higgins
These are the things that you realize, okay, we're going to make mistakes.
Barb Higgins
We're going to make, we're going to do things in our lives that we maybe regret someday, but we did it.
Barb Higgins
And you know, like, we have to move through it and we have to, you know, make some kind of like, comfort in the fact that it happened.
Barb Higgins
And then we move forward and we learn from it whether we need to or not.
Barb Higgins
So I, you know, I thank you for being so open and so candid about your story because there's people listening that will hear and go, I did that too.
Barb Higgins
And yes, I'm not the only God.
Matt
I'm not the only one.
Barb Higgins
Yep, exactly.
Matt
Yeah.
Barb Higgins
You know, I love.
Barb Higgins
I know we could talk for hours about this, so thank you, everyone, for listening.
Barb Higgins
We're a little longer today, but wondering if this version of Barb, this.
Barb Higgins
This moving forward with purpose.
Barb Higgins
You've got Jack, you've got this candle, you've got seemingly more healthy approach to things and to healing yourself.
Barb Higgins
If you could go back to Barb sitting in that chapel in the hospital, is there anything that you would want to say to.
Barb Higgins
To that version of you about this journey that was going to unfold after the loss of Molly?
Matt
Yeah.
Matt
You know what I would say?
Matt
I would say, give it time, sweet Barb, and don't judge yourself for the choices you make.
Matt
You're going to do what you need to do, and you will get to another side.
Matt
There is no the other side, but there is another side.
Matt
And you'll get there, and it will be as okay as it can be.
Matt
And I think I would comfort her and I would give her permission to fuck up in every possible way because.
Matt
Because that.
Barb Higgins
Find that tree.
Barb Higgins
Keep screaming at that tree.
Barb Higgins
You know, like, do the things that you need to.
Barb Higgins
To get through this.
Barb Higgins
And.
Barb Higgins
And you will find a new version of this.
Matt
At the same time, there isn't a day goes by that.
Matt
That I don't beg Molly to come back.
Barb Higgins
Of course.
Matt
You know, it's just that dichotomy, like, please come back.
Matt
Please come back.
Barb Higgins
That's always gonna.
Matt
Yeah, you want your.
Matt
Who doesn't?
Matt
Who doesn't?
Matt
You know, these relationships that are supposed to be lifelong, when they aren't, you miss them forever.
Matt
You don't miss any of that?
Barb Higgins
No, I can't imagine.
Barb Higgins
And I don't think that'll ever stop for you.
Barb Higgins
And I don't think it should.
Barb Higgins
I mean, I think that's always going to be a what if a.
Barb Higgins
I miss you.
Barb Higgins
I.
Barb Higgins
No matter how long it's been, you know, at this point, it's been 35 years since my mom died.
Barb Higgins
I.
Barb Higgins
Very few memories to hold onto, and I don't remember many of them, but I'd love to have a conversation with her, you know, and, like, could I have her on the Life Shift podcast?
Barb Higgins
That would be really cool.
Matt
Yeah.
Barb Higgins
You know, but I'd love to, but.
Barb Higgins
But then you wouldn't have ever met me, right?
Barb Higgins
You know, we would have never had this conversation had that not happened.
Barb Higgins
I would not be this version of me had I not struggled grieving her for two decades and then finally figuring it out, you know, like, all the things I Look back on, I'm like, that's just my journey, you know, and that's how I become me.
Barb Higgins
And who knows what's ahead?
Barb Higgins
I might make some really dumb decisions ahead of me and.
Matt
Oh, you will be fantastic.
Barb Higgins
Exactly.
Barb Higgins
So thank you so much for just sharing your story in this way.
Matt
Thank you for having me.
Matt
It means a lot to me.
Matt
It really does.
Barb Higgins
If people want to listen to your podcast, check out your book, read your blog that you don't promote, what's the best way to, like, get in your orbit and find you?
Matt
Yep, that's so the best way.
Matt
So everything.
Matt
I have a website called A Thousand Tiny Steps.
Matt
And it's kind of my life, you know, mantra that you just take that first little step.
Matt
It takes a thousand to get there, so don't stress about one or two.
Matt
So my website and podcast and blog is all called A Thousand Tiny Steps.
Matt
And then I also have a foundation page, the Molly B.
Matt
Foundation, in honor of Molly.
Matt
So those two websites are sort of linked, hooked together.
Matt
And then on social media, I'm just Barb Higgins.
Matt
So on Facebook, I'm Barb Higgins, and my Instagram is Barb444.
Matt
And all of those areas will connect you to all the other areas.
Barb Higgins
Awesome.
Barb Higgins
Your book is on your site, I'm assuming?
Matt
Yeah, it's on both.
Matt
Yep, yep.
Barb Higgins
Okay, perfect.
Barb Higgins
Well, again, thank you.
Barb Higgins
If you're listening now and something resonated with you, please reach out to Barb.
Barb Higgins
Connect with Barb.
Barb Higgins
Tell her your story.
Barb Higgins
Tell her how it connected to you.
Barb Higgins
Maybe someone in your life needs to hear this story, maybe share this episode with them.
Barb Higgins
We would love for you to do that and spread the word.
Barb Higgins
I think the thing, one goal that we both kind of share here is that people don't feel alone in their circumstances, you know?
Barb Higgins
So thank you for being a part of this.
Barb Higgins
Thank you for listening.
Barb Higgins
And with that, I'm going to say goodbye and I'll be back next week with a brand new episode.
Barb Higgins
Thanks again, Barb.
Matt
Thank you, Matt.
Barb Higgins
For more information, please visit www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com.
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