The Event That Rerouted The Trajectory of My Life (Part 1)

Hello and welcome to the first episode of the Grief Unplugged podcast. I am your host, Heather D. Horton.  Grief Unplugged is a podcast that frees professional women from the blockages of grief to find purpose in their pain.  I am so excited to welcome you to this community where you will receive education and support while navigating on your grief journey.  Community = Strength is what I truly believe. 

My mission is to empower professional women to unmask their pain, leverage their emotions and transform their trauma into triumph.  Each episode will help you give yourself permission to grieve and fully embrace the gift of now.  You will learn that grief not only encompasses death but includes so much more.  Anything that has a beginning and an end requires you to process the grief around it. 

This podcast is for you if you’re a professional woman whether you are just starting your career, mid-career, or in the C-suite who has experienced the loss of a loved one, whether suddenly or anticipated after an illness and you feel stuck and unable to move forward and enjoy work, home/family or your relationships. 

This podcast is for you if you’re a professional woman who is tired of feeling completely lost in life and stuck in your grief, unable to decipher your feelings or begin to accept the loss but everyone around you just wants you to bounce back and get over it. 

This podcast is for you if you’re a professional woman who wants a community to engage with that creates safe space to explore your emotions around grief/loss which are normal and natural by the way. 

This podcast is for you if you’re a professional woman who is ready to stop masking your pain, and focus less on the loss but are not sure how to embrace meaning and purpose in life again or for the first time.

I am Heather D. Horton.  I am a Certified Grief Expert not only through training as a Certified Grief Coach and a Certified Professional Diversity Coach but also through years of personal experience with trauma and grief. 

I will share more about my personal experience later in this episode.  But first, I want to tell you a little bit about myself.  Before August 5, 2017, I was a highly successful GS-15 attorney manager in the C-Suite of one of the most talked about agencies within the US Department of Treasury.  I was on the verge of walking into the next level of management - SES - Senior Executive Series after serving 18+ years. But I left it all behind to start my own location independent grief coaching and speaking practice. And I have never looked back. 

I am the co-author of an anthology entitled “The Roots of Holiday Grief: Transcending Loss During the Holidays and Beyond” which is available for purchase on my website - www.heatherdhorton.com. The anthology includes my inspiring personal story of loss, hope, healing, and gratitude as well as the stories of other resilient authors. I am also writing a book detailing my grief journey which will be available in Late Summer 2018.  Personally, I love attending sporting events, horseback riding, traveling the world, supporting the arts, zip-lining in NC and spa retreats.

This episode is Part 1 of a 2-part series detailing my own story of my personal grief journey.  Part 1 will focus on the accident/death that rerouted the trajectory of my life.  Part 2 will take you through my 13-year grief journey and how I was able to transform my trauma into triumph.

I now invite you to journey with me to the year 2005.  I experienced two unique tragedies that year that altered my existence.  I was 33 years old, so all this occurred during my Jesus Year -  Jesus lived as a man for 33 years on earth and then resurrected to heaven.   The 33rd year of life is regarded as the year you are reborn in some sense.  I wholeheartedly agree that I was reborn in a number of ways that year. 

On May 17, 2005, a beautiful sunny morning, my aunt and uncle (my mother’s brother), two of their grandchildren, my mother and I were traveling via car from Atlanta, GA to Baton Rouge, LA after attending my cousin’s graduation from Clark Atlanta University.  Shortly after 12 noon that day, my uncle fell asleep at the wheel on Interstate 65 South.  I sat asleep as well on the front passenger side.  It felt as if we were drifting versus taking a straight path.  I awoke, still half asleep, to find the mini-van heading into oncoming traffic on the opposite side of the highway and alerted my uncle of our trajectory.  Startled, he woke up, began to accelerate and overcorrected.  The mini-van hit a pothole on the right side of the highway causing us to flip at least four to six times before coming to rest on its right side.  My injuries were quite severe – fractured neck in two places, fractured right thumb, abrasions and glass cuts all down my right arm and on both hands and wrists.  Unfortunately, my mother and my aunt’s injuries were ultimately fatal.  My mother succumbed to her injuries on May 18, 2005, the evening after the accident.  My aunt passed away from her injuries on June 2, 2005, two weeks later.  This incident shook me to my core.  My uncle and the grandkids were clearly shaken up emotionally but suffered very minor physical injuries.  The day of the accident was my awakening, or rebirth, my journey from Heather 1.0 to Heather 2.0. 

The second event occurred about three months later when I returned to work on a part-time basis after recovering from my injuries.  I had time to begin to deal with the shock of the trauma I experienced, heal from my injuries, and start to grieve the loss of my mother.  However, within two weeks of returning to work in New Orleans, LA, Hurricane Katrina hit the city on August 29, 2005.  I watched the destruction on the television, like most people across the world, from my mother’s home in Baker, LA.  The devastation was heartbreaking and numbing all over again. 

It was six weeks before authorities permitted anyone to re-enter New Orleans in order to assess the damage to their property.  I only anticipated being away from home two or three days as is typical for most hurricanes.  As each day passed that I was not able to return to my home in New Orleans, I slowly began to realize that life would be different yet again moving forward that year.  My office did reopen in November 2005, but I had come to the conclusion that I no longer had a reason to live in Louisiana despite the fact that my dad and extended family all lived there.  I just wanted to be alone.  My best friend, my mother, was no longer with me physically.  So when the opportunity presented itself for me to move clear across the country to Phoenix, AZ, I headed to the wild, wild West in December 2005.  I was so eager to run away from everything I knew and begin this rebirth phase that I didn’t realize that moving triggered my grief on a completely different level. 

We will start here with the next episode - Part 2 of this 2-part series of the story of my personal journey with grief which will briefly discuss the highs and lows of my 13-year grief journey.  Thank you for listening and I hope you will join us next week for Part 2.  To stay engaged with the podcast and learn more about my products and services at www.heatherdhorton.com. Also, please subscribe to the podcast so you know when the next episode is available and feel free to post a review and share the podcast with your tribe.  Until next time, keep moving forward.