Encore Episode: A "Death Day" Party and JOY with Tanya Hackney

In this episode, I have the privilege of talking to Tanya Hackney.  Tanya graduated with a B.A. from Middlebury College in 1997, where she majored in English and double-minored in French and Education. She married her high school sweetheart and taught kindergarten in Atlanta, Georgia before transitioning to homeschooling her own five children aboard sailing vessel Take Two. She’s lived aboard, traveled, and written for the Take Two Sailing blog for the last fifteen years. She has always had a bad case of wanderlust, having taken countless road trips as a child, spent a semester in Paris during college, and honeymooned in Mexico. In 2021, she published an award-winning memoir, Leaving the Safe Harbor: the Risks and Rewards of Raising a Family on a Boat. In her free time, she plays the ukulele, paints landscapes, and kayaks

Our conversation is about life raising a family on a boat and how her family has found a way to find JOY among the difficulties of sailing and living on the sea.

Tanya also shares with us a wonderful story about her Mother-in-Law, Mary who lost her life to cancer.  She shares how her family and friends celebrated with Mary during a "Death Day" party...before Mary passed and how they all felt JOY during a time of deep grief. 

Finally, Tanya shares the important of gratitude and how that has helped her tap into JOY even during life's massive challenges. 


How to find Tanya:

Blog- www.taketwosailing.com 
Book- https://ingeniumbooks.com/LTSH 
Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/tanya.hackney.71 
                         https://www.facebook.com/TakeTwoSailing/ 
Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/taketwosailing/ 
Pinterest- https://www.pinterest.com/tanyataketwo/

Drive-A-Logue link: https://drivealogue.com/?sca_ref=4141865.xLTkWKLvJW Put NJT in the coupon box for a 20% discount!

Lauren's Book, My Dad Died From ALS and How I Found Joy 30 Years Later
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B2J15M3Z

CONNECT WITH LAUREN AND HER FAMILY

Email: lauren@dailyjoy.us
IG: https://www.instagram.com/laurensdailyjoy/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/lauren.g.raymond

Transcript

00:01
free audio post-production  by alphonic.com

00:15
Hello and welcome to Navigating Joy Together. My name is Lauren and I'm here with my family  Mark  Addison  Hunter and our dog Onyx.  Each episode you will hear about our experiences with navigating joy together in our family  as well as tips you can bring back to your family.  Thanks for spending time with us.  Now let's get to it.

00:50
Hello everybody and welcome back to Navigating Joy Together.  I am so excited to share with you our guest, but before I do that, I just want to remind you about Drive-A-Log. Drive-A-Log is a phenomenal car game that you can use in your car when you are driving and chauffeuring your kids all over the place.  There are three different age levels. They have amazing questions. Some are fun and some are serious questions, but it provides

01:16
the opportunity for communication between you and your child.  It was created by  Adam Brooks and it is a wonderful tool to have. We use it in our car,  great questions, sometimes the kids ask the parents questions  and it just creates some really fun communication. Plus you're asking your children some questions that you might not think to ask or that you want to ask, but you're not sure how to bring it up. So I really highly suggest you grab it.

01:44
You can get 20 % discount if you go to the link in the show notes and put in the code  NJT for Navigating Joy together. Go get it. It's super fun  and look forward to hearing what you think about it. Now  on to  our guest. Today we'll be talking with Tanya Hackney. Tanya graduated with a BA from Middlebury College  in 1997 where she majored in English and Dumble.

02:12
and double minored in French and education. She married her high school sweetheart and taught kindergarten in Atlanta, Georgia before transitioning to homeschooling her own five children aboard a sailing vessel, Take Two. She's lived aboard, traveled, and written for the Take Two sailing blog for the last 15 years. She has always had a bad case of wanderlust, having taken countless road trips as a child, spent a semester in Paris during college, and honeymooned in Mexico.

02:40
In 2021, she published an award-winning memoir, Leaving the Safe Harbor, the Risks and Rewards of Raising a Family on a Boat. In her free time, she plays the ukulele, paints, landscapes,  and kayaks. I'm so excited for the conversation today. Something that was really intriguing to me when Tanya and I initially connected was that she said that she will be able to share and talk about what it means to have joy amid hardship generally.

03:09
and that her and her family have chosen a very challenging life on purpose and that it does bring them joy and that one can experience  joy even in the middle of life's literal and figurative storms. So I hope you enjoy this interview and this conversation with Tonya and I know you'll gain some awesome value and take away from it. All right, here we go.

03:32
Hi, Tanya. Thank you so much for joining us on this week's episode of Navigating Joy Together. I'm really excited to talk with you about your relation with joy and how it has impacted your life personally and what you do with it to create joy for others. So thanks for being here. Yeah, thank you so much for having me on and I'm excited to talk about this topic. Yes, and I have to say your life seems very fascinating to me. You live on a boat.

04:02
I do. I live on a sailboat.  I've been on this boat for 15 years. It's a sailing catamaran  and we have raised five children aboard. When we first moved aboard, we had four kids under the age of eight and we now have five kids and the oldest is getting ready to turn 22. That's incredible. That is so incredible that you've been on for so long and you've raised your kids. Did you homeschool kids or did they go to school?  Yes, actually I was an elementary school teacher and

04:32
That's a whole other topic of conversation, but  there's a canary in the coal mine when  teachers begin to homeschool their own children.  So yes, but we did it chiefly not because I was trying to get away from public school, although I was trying to get away from public school. It was because we wanted to travel with our family. So there's no school that would have put up with our travel schedule. that's very true. That's wonderful. What an incredible experience your children have had.

04:59
for some, whilst they were born, obviously. And wow, that is so fascinating. I'm gonna have to hear about that someday. It sounds amazing. So where, really quickly, where do you like dock out of, or do you just dock in different places? So when we first started out, we were on the west coast of Florida and we lived aboard, well, we had the boat for a year before we moved aboard full-time. The boat needed a lot of work to make it family friendly. And so we did, you know, three days.

05:24
on the boat four days at home or four days on the boat three days at home. And we did that for a whole year while we were renovating and getting acclimated.  Then we moved aboard and did short trips during that second year. And then during the third year we took off  and headed to the Bahamas. Well, he's first and then the Bahamas.  We do spend some time in marinas, but it just depends on the year, depends on my husband's work schedule, depends on the boat, mostly what repairs need to be done.

05:53
But we spent a full three and half years in the Caribbean traveling full time and we came back in 2019 because our teenagers needed some stability. So we've been in the Florida Keys off and on for the last four years. Pretty stable for us. Gosh, that sounds wonderful. What an exciting and thrilling life. I'm sure there was a lot of joy that has taken place in those experiences. I think joy lives.

06:18
and experiences more than a material thing. Yeah, one of our mottos is to collect verbs and not nouns.  And so we don't really do birthday presents or Christmas presents. We do birthday experiences at Christmas. We take the Christmas money and go somewhere or do something with it. So we have collected a lot of joy that way, for sure. And there was also a lot of hardship. So I think  we're definitely heading that direction to talk about joy in the middle of hardship. But there was a lot of that while we traveled.

06:48
But even looking back on that, my oldest son told me recently that he was very thankful for the sleepless nights  and the rough seas and the nights when you had to close the hatches because it was raining and it would get all steamy in your cabin and you're rolling around in your own sweat because it's the tropics and maybe there's a mosquito trapped in your room. He said that those things had made him a tougher, better human being. And I was so relieved because I'm always hoping that they'll remember the good things and forget the bad things. But it turns out that

07:17
Even the bad things are good things.  Isn't that crazy? is so crazy. And wow, what a really mature thing. I know your son's older, but what a mature thing to just reflect on and be able to communicate and believe and feel. That's awesome. Well, that's a really good segue to hardships. Some of the hardships that you guys have faced. When we initially connected, you had mentioned to me that you had an experience of unexpected joy during  something that is not

07:47
easy or that is very difficult to go through. And I would love for you to share your experience with that. Sure. Last October, I spent  five days and nights  at a hospice center in Naples, Florida.  My beloved mother-in-law, Mary, she's my husband's stepmom,  got pancreatic cancer the year before. I think from diagnosis to death was 10 months. I mean, it was fast and dirty and it was ugly and  painful and

08:16
horrible and all the things that you might imagine.  It was also amazing because we had, you know, 10 months with her and I got to take a trip  with her and with my 18 year old daughter. We flew her out to Colorado because she was going to go work at a dude ranch for the summer.  And we had this magical week in Colorado and in Rocky Mountain National Park. And we  really maximized all the time that we had with her because we just didn't know how long she would feel good and whether the treatment would work.

08:44
So don't have any regrets from that period of time. Like we really did, you know, knock things off the bucket list and really had some precious time with her. To know Mary is,  is you'd have to know like the whole history of our family. My husband grew up sailing with his dad and stepmom.  And so when we bought our boat, they still had their boat. And so we've done lots of buddy boating trips where we meet up in the dry tortugas or in the Bahamas and, or for Thanksgiving.

09:11
and cook a turkey on one of the boats and have holidays together afloat, which is really cool. She was only 59. And she was a travel, she was not a stewardess. That's the old word for Allegiant Airlines, the old word, I pulled. Flight Flight attendant. Thank you. Flight attendant for Allegiant. And she had lifetime flying benefits. And we had these elaborate plans because she was so young. figured we would get to keep her the longest of all the parents.

09:40
and we were gonna fly to Paris for lunch and, you know,  I was gonna be her travel buddy someday. And so  when she got cancer and then lay dying, it wasn't just,  you're not just saying goodbye to this person that you love and, you know, we were very, very close. You're saying goodbye to all of the expectations for the future, all the future memories. You know, you have these wonderful memories, but you're also saying goodbye, like we're not gonna make any new memories.

10:08
And that was probably the hardest thing for me, the hardest loss for me to grieve. It wasn't just losing her. It was losing all of the future things that we weren't going to get to do. This may touch on something else you wanted to ask me, but  one of the ways that I stay in joy, even in the middle of something really hard,  is to remain grateful. So  rather than feeling the self pity of the loss or saying, I wish this or it's too bad about that.

10:38
I would say I am so grateful that I had Mary in my life. I'm so grateful. I have two mother-in-laws and I love them both.  Who's that lucky? I won the mother-in-law lottery and I had 25 really good years with her. She was a recovering alcoholic the first five years when my husband and I were dating.  She was a different person. And when she  got sobered up right before we got married 25 years ago,

11:05
her whole life changed and our whole relationship changed. And I had 25 years with this person as a close friend and got to  watch her grow as a person and be close with her. I felt really grateful for those 25 years. Rather than lamenting the 25 that we're not gonna have,  I chose to be thankful for the 25 that we did have. And then the other thing, one of the other things that we do is to reframe things. So...

11:31
It'll sound funny, but of course we live a very adventurous lifestyle, but the word adventure is kind of loaded on our boat.  Adventure is what you do when something goes wrong.  And learning is what you do when something hurts. So we had a bit of a learning adventure with Mary  in hospice, but instead of viewing it as,  you know, we're gonna play a dirge for the next few days while she, you know, lays in this bed wasting away.

11:59
we treated it like an ocean passage. So when you're traveling, there's someone on watch at all times.  you when we've done offshore travel  from the Bahamas to the Caribbean, for example, it was eight days and eight nights and someone's at the wheel at all times. Even if the autopilot's driving, you still have to keep a lookout for ships and, you know, things like that. And so we sat down in her hospice room, her husband, my father-in-law, her caregiver, Christine and I,

12:28
And we made a plan for the next few days. And I said, well, we've done this before. This is just like a watch schedule.  And I normally take the night watch. And so if it's all the same to you all, I'll just sleep in the hospice room. know,  out, Al, my father-in-law could take the days and I could take the evenings. And then we could find friends and family who wanted to fill in the gaps so that we could get some rest in between times. And we'll just treat this like a final passage for Mary.  And so.

12:58
In that way, we reframed it as an adventure, not necessarily an adventure that we wanted to take, but one in which we're going to make these last few days of her life as amazing as possible. I'm so sorry to hear about Mary, and that's an incredible story. Last week when we were chatting, you had mentioned that you were talking to her caregiver and were reminiscing about the party you threw Mary in hospice and just the joy and myths.

13:26
sadness that you all experienced the week that she died. Is there anything else that took place during that week to create all of that? Well, that was probably my favorite thing from that week was I had been at a healing ceremony with her. She has a friend who's a shaman and  we had done praying and  speaking words of affirmation and healing six months before  she ended up at hospice. And at the end of that evening, she looked around at all of us and she said, well, I'm planning on surviving this.

13:56
But if I don't,  you all are the ones that I want around my deathbed. And I just, you know, tucked that little piece of information in the back of my mind.  And when we were sitting there in the hospice room trying to make a plan for this,  what turned out to be a five-day adventure, I said, what about visitors? And they looked at me and they're like, I don't know how to coordinate that. And I'm like, well, I know what to do. And so I called that group of ladies, her closest friends, many of them from Alcoholics Anonymous, just a wonderful group of people.

14:26
And I said, okay, girls, it's time. You we're gonna have a death day party. We're gonna send Mary off, a going away party. We have birthday parties, but we don't really celebrate death or the going home. And Mary's a Christian, I'm a Christian. We both believe that there's something afterward. She didn't go  fearfully. She went  happily to meet her maker. It wasn't a death full of angst and  fear.

14:53
And so we felt that this was a time for celebration. And so I told everybody to wear festive colors and bring chocolate and  bring something to either  say or sing a piece of music or something that they could share with Mary.  In a way, we wait until someone's dead and then we all get up and deliver eulogies and say all the nice things. And they aren't the beneficiary of those nice things. And so we said all the things to Mary that we would want her to know.

15:20
while she still was there enough with us that she could hear them. So I look back on that experience, did we cry? Yes, we cried. None of us wanted to say goodbye to this person. But we also had an incredible amount of joy. And I would argue that I don't think I even understood what joy meant. I understood it intellectually until I felt that level of grief. I'm distinguishing joy from happiness and pleasure the same way that C.S. Lewis would.

15:49
I actually wrote down this quote.  His definition of joy was, an unsatisfied desire, which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction.  Joy and longing coexist. It's a thing where you can feel an intense  euphoria and also heartbreak simultaneously.

16:12
And until Mary died, I could intellectually say, yes, I can see how you could be joyful even in the middle of a hardship. I felt amazement in a storm at sea where I feel I can look around at the wind and the waves and the lightning and say, oh my gosh, this is a beautiful spectacle. Also, while I feel terrified. So I understand about commingled emotions, but until I felt that depth of grief, I don't think I understood what joy really was. How could I feel?

16:39
this euphoria at the same time that my heart was breaking. Sure.  And  I just, I'm trying to imagine that scene. I've never heard of anybody actually throwing in a sense, a death party for somebody. I want to do it for a living.  Christine, who is Mary's caregiver, has since gotten her death doula certification. She used to work for a hospice  and she did for Mary what her husband Al, who's much older and what I've

17:08
far away with  raising children and stuff, couldn't do. She was there for her every day for the last six months of her life,  taking her to doctor's appointments. And she did for Mary what we couldn't do for her.  And she got really  close to that situation. But we both had such a powerful experience of walking through that with her. It affected us  differently. But for Christine, she said, I don't want to go back to my regular job. This is what I want to do. I want to help people.

17:33
with this transition  in the life cycle. I wanna be there for the families. I wanna help them walk through this. And I called her the other day and we were reminiscing about this death day party. And I'm like,  if there's any way that I can get involved, we're gonna be cruising up that direction. So we're gonna be there for a few months nearby. And I'm like, hey, I would be happy to do this again. I mean, this is an idea that could catch on. We do not have to be miserable.

18:00
at this phase in our lives, we can send a person off with love and joy,  knowing, you know, celebrating the things that they did well and  releasing them from  any kind of pain or bitterness so that they can die forgiven and at peace.  We really have a lot of work to do in that area culturally. And I know it sounds crazy, like a death day party, but it was  wonderful.

18:27
It was wonderful. And we had each other as we were grieving. weren't alone in that experience of sadness, but just to be able to celebrate someone's life while they're still there to hear. I think that would be incredible. That would definitely catch on when people realize what the purpose is of it and what it does. My husband and I talk about shifting patterns and behaviors, and that's a huge shift to look at death very differently and to

18:55
realize and learn how to feel joy in the midst of something that is so heartbreaking, you know, that you feel that inside. And it's hard for us, I think as humans, to imagine that we could still feel that kind of joy during that grief and that difficult time. Wow. I've given birth five times naturally without drugs.  And I was kind of amazed.

19:19
watching Mary go, she's the first parent in our family that we've lost. And so it was my first really up close and personal experience with death. How similar childbirth and death are  like it'll probably become fodder for some future book that I write just the intense pain and the intense joy that you have simultaneously. I mean, it's  obviously the emotions go in reverse, you know, in childbirth, you're feeling this like incredible pain. And then the pain is erased almost like the worst the childbirth, the

19:49
better the aftermath. And with Mary, it was kind of the reverse. Like we felt this intense joy watching her go,  you know, being there with her those five days and holding her hand. And I would sit up until I was falling asleep in the chair, holding her hand and singing with her and praying with her and talking to her. And as long as she had her, you know,  we began, she began to slip away. So obviously at some point I was just sitting quietly with her holding her hand.  But that intense

20:16
joy kind of turned into an intense pain. was really a very interesting reversal of in that life as life comes full circle. But both experiences were very similar and they're both transitions in life. Oh yeah, that's just an interesting way to put it and to think about that. Definitely. Yeah, and you know we are going to have that intense pain. I mean, you probably heard on some of the episodes you listened to that I had published a book. I don't know if you've heard any of that but

20:45
When I think about if my father was here with my children and how much joy he would experience, like that helps me get through it. But then there are times where I still have that horrible pain in my heart. I mean, it's been 32 years, you know, and  it's still extremely painful not to have him here. So I always have learned, I've learned how to try to figure out  what would it be like if, you know, if he was the joy he would have with us and my children would have and we all would have.  It's definitely a conscious feeling for sure. And it's,

21:15
I always go back to the... Well, and to think about what they would want for you. Like, Mary wouldn't want us standing around moping. You know,  she would want us to go on and to live our lives.  And  some of the things that I've done  after her death  have been in a way to honor her life.  One of the things that  I've done is, as I go back to visit my family in Naples about once a month, I've been helping Al clean out...

21:43
their boat, their sailboat, and get things off of the boat and clean it and put things back on the boat and sort of get things organized. My oldest son now lives in Naples and  is independent and he's been helping his grandfather get the boat up to speed. And we've planned a trip together. So in a way to honor her, I know she would not want that boat to just sit on the dock, that she would want Al to get back in the captain's chair.

22:11
and go sailing. And so we're actually getting ready to go sailing. We're going to go out to Dry Tortugas National Park, which is a place that I went with them.  When  Jay and I were newlyweds, we took a trip with them and it was kind of the seed that was planted that ended up with us buying a boat, moving aboard with our children. Like this is a kind of a memorial trip.  this is like an amazing thing that she would.

22:36
have loved. She would have loved to have been here with us, but she would not want us to  not do it. She would say, go, go without me. I'm fine. You all go have a good time. One of the other things that I've done to honor her is I've taken all of the hard things that happened, and that was not the only hard thing that happened last year. But I take it it's like all the crap that happens is just  manure. It's fertilizer.

23:03
for the fruit that's gonna grow. And so I'm taking all of these hard things and I'm a writer, so I process by writing.  And I started a new book after I  finished publishing my last book.  thought, you know, I had a bunch of things  on the table that I'm like, oh, I'm gonna work on this or I'm gonna work on that. And I put all those things aside and I started writing a daily devotional called An Anchor for the Soul. And I'm taking all of the hard things and recycling them  in a way to encourage other people. And Mary would have been

23:32
so proud of me. She would have been over the moon that I  was working on another book. So in a way, I'm writing it for her too, because I know that that's what she would want me to do. Yep. And that's where I think that joy comes in, definitely. Something else you said a while back, which  is the number one common theme, and I've been a believer of this for many, many years, but everybody I talk to about bringing joy into their lives is gratitude or appreciation. It is so huge.

24:02
And I don't feel like a lot of people really understand that when you can reflect on what you're grateful for. It really can lift you up. It could bring some joy back. It could just get you in a different mind space. It could bring that positive energy back. Doesn't mean it gets rid of everything you're feeling or, you know, those negative emotions, but I guess as people we have to decide, do we want to sit in those negative emotions, you know, and waste our time away in that state? Or do we want to?

24:32
identify them  and  accept them,  but also re-enjoy and live more joyfully in our life. So gratitude is huge.  Every single person that I've interviewed so far and when I've talked about it, gratitude is the number one thing, which it is.  I totally agree with you. And actually one of the other things, there's something I would call graduate level gratitude. So it's easy to be thankful for the things that are good or that are

25:01
pleasant, because we don't always know what's good and bad, right?  We're very thankful for the things that are pleasant. We're very thankful for the obvious blessings. Sometimes we can be thankful in the middle of something really hard and we can see the silver linings in the big dark clouds. But then there's what I would call graduate level gratitude, which is to be thankful for  the hard thing. And that's a much harder thing to say. It requires a level of trust, what I would say, a trust in God to say,

25:31
You know better than I do  what I need. And  you've got these details worked out and I can't see the big picture, but I trust you with the big picture. And even though we're going through cancer treatment, even though there's this  horrible hurricane, I choose to be grateful, not just in the middle of this, but for this thing,  because I know that this horrible thing is going to be used for something good. I might not be able to see it right now, but I'm thankful for it anyway.

25:57
And what I would say is I would never imagine that I would say that I'm thankful for a hurricane and I'm thankful for cancer. But right before Mary died, Hurricane Ian devastated the West Coast of Florida. It flooded my son's house and he had to move out. He was living with his uncle and aunt, my brother and his wife, and their 10 kids that live in this house. And my mother had had a medical emergency, so she was living there and it was kind of a mad house. I don't, there's no.

26:25
judgment there. It just was a lot. And so we were in the throes of trying to figure out where Eli could live when Mary took this downturn and she ended up in the hospital in September and then again in October. And we could see that things were not progressing in the direction that we had hoped. And I got the call that I was going to need to go to hospice. Not just like I'm going to go visit Mary in the hospital and then she's going to go home. Like Mary's not going.

26:55
home at all. Like she's going home to Jesus, not home to her house. And in the middle of all of that, after those five days, my father-in-law said, well, Mary's not coming home and Eli doesn't have a place to live. Maybe Eli could come live in the guest bedroom for a while. And he opened his heart and his home so that my 22, well, he's 21, almost 22 year old son,

27:25
could move in to their spare bedroom for three or four months until his house was repaired. And  the two things that we feel really grateful for were A, that our kid wasn't homeless and B, that Al in the middle of this really  horrible grief as he was in the initial stages of shock and sadness, he wasn't alone. He had my son there. And we just felt grateful for all of that. So I never thought that I would say that I was thankful for the hurricane, but without the hurricane,

27:55
there would have been a lot of loneliness right after in the initial stages of grief. And, you know, without Mary's death, my son would have continued to be homeless. And so even for  the bad things, I'm not thankful for all of those things. Clearly, all aspects of that are not positive. But I can be grateful even in the middle of something truly awful, because I know that it can get recycled for good. That is a perfect example  of

28:23
feeling joy and the gratitude and hardships because we do have so many hardships in life and it's really hard to look beyond those and figure out, well, what's gonna be, you what's gonna come good of this  or how can I be grateful for this? It's really, really hard to do that and what a great lesson. Oh gosh, that's very powerful. So thank you for sharing that. You're welcome. The other thing that I do, I'm a worst case scenario junkie. It helps me prepare for  disasters at sea or whatever.

28:53
always I'm thinking of like the worst case scenario and then I can kind of handle anything less than that. So I'm a big believer in looking at the silver linings and I can always say, well, it could have been worse.  know? So I know that doesn't work for everybody, but for me, I'm like, you know, my kid is bleeding and broken and I'm like, you know, it could have been worse. You could have been dead.  So I'm just going to be thankful. Yes, you're laying there bleeding and cut,  it could have been worse. And I'm just going to be

29:21
thankful that we all woke up this morning on the right side of the ground. And  just be thankful that we got another day and another shot and that hopefully tomorrow will be better. Yes. It puts things in perspective. Did you ever watch the show This Is Us by chance? I don't know if you know that show. I didn't.  It's about a family, three siblings, you're triplets, and one of the siblings and his wife do that. So anytime something comes up, they'll be like, okay, they have this game.

29:49
worst case scenario.  That's a good game. They bounce off each other and to see who can win with creating the worst case scenario. it's actually hilarious when you think about it. Oh, look up a clip. It's really funny to be like,  oh gosh, there are so many worst case scenarios than what is actually going on right now in this moment. you know, I think it's just a

30:14
It's hilarious. I love how they do it as a game. But I think about that too sometimes with my  experience with my dad dying with ALS, as horrible as that experience is, it does bring some perspective because there are people who have worse experiences than that as children growing up. And it's different for sure.  But when I  compare it to my experience, you

30:39
it could have been worse. There could have been worse things that were happening in our lives during that time. Is it Plato that says death is not the worst thing that can happen to a man? I think it's  a Plato quote. There's a  thing that you can even be thankful for death. If you've watched somebody suffer, mean, ALS is an awful debilitating, it's almost like Alzheimer's, like the long goodbye, because you're watching  someone go little by little.

31:07
pancreatic cancer was fast and dirty. actually feel thankful. I know that sounds awful because she was in so much pain, but it was fast. wasn't a long lingering illness.  When you watch somebody suffer, there's gratitude in the end of that suffering. So it could always be worse. It could be even longer and more torturous and more painful. there was mercy in her death that

31:37
She died actually not from the cancer or the treatment, but she had a stroke that was very debilitating and it was making her, you know, any kind of treatment options. It was just, it was going from bad to worse. And when, and she was in so much pain, but if she medicated, then she would be out of it. And so she was always walking the spine edge of medicating just enough to keep the pain at bay, but not so much that she couldn't remain present with the people in her life because she was really appreciative in those last few months.

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of how little life she had left and she wanted to really live it and she had a great sense of humor and she remained engaged. But I knew the cost that cost her something. Whenever she remained engaged, I knew she was suffering. So as she became more and more medicated and more and more lethargic and more and more out of it, I was saying goodbye, but it could have been years and not months. So I feel

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grateful  even for that because it was merciful. Yes.  I can see that definitely. know I've had a lot of, I remember when my dad died, I definitely was grateful for all of us, especially him to stop the suffering. mean, we're all suffering in very different ways and that was one thing that I was relieved about for sure. Before we wrap up, I want to quickly talk about

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the upcoming experience you alluded to that you were going  on a sailing trip with your father-in-law. And the way you described it,  it's gonna be, I feel like it's gonna be this experience where there's gonna be a lot of grief, but there's also gonna be a lot of joy. And that's a great example of how grief and joy can coexist with each other, right?  You can feel those simultaneously.

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And I know you agree with that, but do you have anything else to say about that part or that piece? This is the first trip  that we will take without Mary.  So we're going to miss her every single day.  Her absence is going to be palpably felt. I actually sent a text to my father-in-law this morning, and I was like, I know this sounds like a weird question, but is Mary coming with us? And I met her urn and her ashes. I  didn't know, did she have  any wishes to have her ashes sprinkled?

33:57
You know, she didn't talk a lot about death. We joked around about it a lot.  But she fully expected to survive. She maintained this level of optimism that you kind of have to if you're fighting cancer, like not to even entertain the idea of death.  But then when it's suddenly upon you, you're not really prepared for the  aftermath. And so she didn't actually express any wishes to be sprinkled or whatever. But my father-in-law said, I'm writing to you through tears.  Yes.

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of course she'll come with us. But my initial reaction was like, I don't want to sprinkle her because I'm not ready to let her go. So I don't know that there will be any ash sprinkling because it wasn't  a specific wish that she would have. But in a way, she'll be with us on the trip. I understand that she is not in her ashes. That was just  her tent and the tent is empty. But in a way, I'm also kind of glad that he said, yeah, I'll bring Mary with us.  She'll still be with us in so many ways.

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not in an urn, but in our memories. And we'll tell a million stories and reminisce about the other times that we've done there. Usually you're reminiscing about all the mishaps because those are the best stories.  It's probably going to be hot as Hades.  Hopefully the water will be nice because it's really beautiful down there and  we'll get to  remember what it's like to roll around in our own sweat.  So there will be like equal parts.

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you know, misery and joy  as usual, as they often are with sailing. And then with the added  piece with Mary. Yeah, with the added, yeah, the missing piece. There's definitely some heaviness there, but there will also be lot of joy. Well, I wish you guys a  very safe trip and a wonderful trip in many ways. I know there'll be a lot of grief, but there'll also be a lot of laughter and joy and  that, and gratitude, I know. Yeah, for sure, for sure there will be that.

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Is there anything else you want to share with us? I do have a blog. I've kept the blog since we, right before we bought our sailboat. So since 2007, we kind of documented our whole journey. All of our deep thoughts and shallow thoughts and photographs and adventures are on the blog. The book is not a how to go sailing with your family. It's much more about the metaphysical journey that paralleled our adventures. It's called Leaving the Safe Harbor, the Risks and Rewards of Raising a Family on a Boat.

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and I'm writing a second book called An Anchor for the Soul. I have no idea when it's going to be done, but  it will eventually be done. And then I guess the last, the parting thought that I would leave with you is that right before I went to hospice, I was wrecked, man. I didn't even know if I could get in the car and drive for four hours. I thought I was going to see her in the hospital after a stroke. And I get this call that actually  she's  not,

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going home, she's going to hospice. So  I have to do this like mental shift and I went outside and I have a very strict morning practice, which has been great. do a miracle morning practice after I read the book, Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod. So I'm out there doing  my miracle morning with this understanding that I now have to drive to hospice and I don't even know what's going to be required of me  as  this family member. I've never done this before and I'm just crying and praying and I'm in

37:23
child's pose, you know, with my forehead on the  deck. And I just said to God, I'm like, I can't do this.  I can't, I can't do this. And so clearly in my spirit, I heard these words, you don't have to, you just show up and I'll do the rest. And I have kind of clung to that. And I realized that so much of life is just showing up.  And so,

37:48
I show up for everything, even things that I feel are difficult or impossible or scary or sad. I just show up and I've really relied on God to do the rest and the details that he's able to manage that I can't manage are amazing. And he has more than made up for my, what I lack. And that I think that's where joy is found is in, in some way knowing your own limitations, but opening yourself up to the possibility of something supernatural.

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like a supernatural joy is beyond anything that we can kind of self create. Yes, thank you. That was beautiful. What a great way to end.  Makes me, gets me a little fluttery.  Love that.  Thank you so much for this amazing conversation. I learned so much from you and your experience and what you do to make sure that you still tap into joy during hardships in life and your life sounds.

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incredibly adventurous and joyful in many ways. I'll have all your links in the show notes so people can find you and follow you. I know there's a lot of people out there who love the water or sailors or might want to do something that you're doing, which is amazing. So thank you so much for your time and good luck to you on your upcoming trip. And are you going to be writing a blog on this one or? Probably, probably. It usually takes me a while.

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to digest something. So we'll have an experience and then I have to think about like, what did this mean to me? I mean, sometimes we're on the fly and we're just posting photos or, you know,  like this is what we did. But  yeah, I will definitely be thinking about it. And if it's something worthy of sharing, I'll it. Yes, well, I will be looking for your photos. I can live the sailing life curiously through you. I'm not a sailor, so. Awesome. Thank you, Tanya, so much and have a fantastic safe trip.

39:41
Thank you and thank you so much for the opportunity to share my story. hope everybody enjoyed that conversation with Tanya. There's so much about Tanya that is so inspiring. I really love the Death Day party. Never heard anything like that before. And what an incredible way to feel and live joy and grief at the same time. I'm sure it's definitely not an easy thing to do, but wow, to celebrate somebody's life with them still with us or still there and alive.

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to me is incredible. Not only would you be bringing joy to yourself, but that person as well before the end of their life.  And  I just think that was phenomenal. I love Tanya's attitude about everything. She's always very positive and her outlook on life  is just kind of going with the flow. There's been a couple of times and mishaps I've had with her on forgotten appointments  or.

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kind of went MIA after my dog died and never got back to her. And she has been so kind and thoughtful and just said, you know what, when the time comes that it comes out, this episode comes out, then that's the right time. And  I just so appreciate that attitude. So much inspiration from her. So Tanya, thank you. I hope you all gain some value out of this. I would love to hear your thoughts and some takeaways that you have  from this conversation with Tanya. You can reach me at lauren at dailyjoy.us.

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or on Instagram, Lauren's Daily Joy. I'm also on Facebook. You can find me  on my profile, Lauren Goldman Raymond. Thank you,  and  I  am outta here. Did you enjoy your time with us today? If you did, please give us a review on Apple Podcasts. Your review will make navigating joy together much more fun, and we would be truly grateful if you would share this with others who you know would gain value from our podcast.

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Thank you again and we look forward to sharing our next episode with you in two weeks.

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free audio post-production.