Episode 14 - Grief, Boundaries, and Grace: Marie Alessi on Navigating Sudden Loss and Finding Emotional Resilience Marie Alessi
By Jessica Garrison
Joining us all the way from Australia, our next guest is logical, reliable, and genuine. Marie Alessi speaks with such softness and grace while describing her embracing layers journey that it’s a nice break from all of the outside noise.
Marie tragically lost her husband to a brain aneurysm when he was just 45, a completely unexpected blow. She had her 2 young sons to think about when this happened, which only added more to the stress and shock of it all. She says that when her dad had passed away years earlier, she learned a lot of tools she was able to use in this situation, and a previous conversation she had with her husband became her guiding North Star. Still, there is nothing that can prepare you for the loss of a loved one. Boundaries are huge in situations like this, and Marie had to learn quickly the best way to protect her children. People have a lot of opinions, but not all of them are helpful and you don’t always want to hear them! She describes telling her children about their father’s death as the most confronting thing she ever had to do, so the rest of the boundaries looked minimal in comparison.
People would drop into Marie’s house unexpectedly, which was a suffocating and overwhelming experience for her. Although these people were trying to be of help to Marie, they didn’t stop to ask her how they could help or what she wanted. With modern technology, people think we are always on call. If a text doesn’t come back in 10 minutes, people’s minds wander and they think the other person is mad at them or something bad has happened. Honestly, it’s nice to be away from your phone for a while—we’re not meant to be on our phones 24/7. I remember one time I forgot my phone at home when I went out for dinner, but I didn’t care because I was out to dinner, so I wouldn’t need it anyway. Meanwhile, I came home from a bunch of texts from people with passive aggressive tones because I didn’t answer them within 2 hours. We didn’t always have constant open communication, and it’s important to remember that when you’re emailing someone or sending a text. Marie’s situation was a more serious case of needing to respect someone’s boundaries and privacy, but it’s something we can practice in everyday life. She needed space and time to process and those who truly cared about her, respected her wishes so she could do that.
Marie’s episode is jam-packed with emotional turmoil, resilience, strength, intelligence, and so much more. This is an episode that I will go back to as I continue to move through my embracing layers journey, and I think this will remain a great resource for a long time.
Ways to Engage: As Marie says in the episode, language can be very debilitating or very nurturing depending on how you use it. Think about this when you are setting boundaries, using self-talk, creating a dialogue, or anything else that comes to mind with the use of language.