Grief, Healing, and Getting Real: How Loss Led to a Gentle Reset

In 2020, I received news that shattered me: my father had passed away the year before, in 2019. My mother, who was not married to him for many years, had Lewy Body Dementia (which I didn’t know until I found out my father died) and truly forgot to tell me.

I was living an ocean away in Germany, completely unaware that I had lost my dad.

The shock and confusion of learning about his death so late hit me like a tidal wave. I not only had to grieve his loss, but I also grappled with guilt and disbelief. How could I mourn someone I didn’t even know was gone? It felt utterly surreal and left me reeling in emotional free-fall.

While I was still finding my center after that, the pandemic swept across the world and with it came another crisis close to home. My mother’s health plummeted in 2020. She was hospitalized as her dementia worsened, and due to pandemic restrictions, I couldn’t fly to her immediately. Eventually, she was moved to a caring elder facility in Boston for her safety. In 2021, I finally got that phone call every child dreads: I needed to come now if I wanted to say goodbye. With so many restrictions on travel, I eventually got out of Germany (which had the heaviest requirements to leave and re-enter the country) and I flew back to Boston and spent one final week by my mother’s side.

Day after day, I sat with her, held her hand, and tried to find the words to say thank you and I love you, even as her awareness was questionable. It was the most heartbreaking, fragile week of my life, a blur of beeping hospital machines and the weight of impending loss. At one point, she regained 100% of her memory for about 2 minutes. She told me she loved me, that I was the best daughter, she was so happy I was there, etc. Then, she faded back into her lost world where I could no longer access my mother but instead, a blank-eyed mom who looked at me as if I was a stranger,

I returned home to Germany (where I’ve lived for the past 16 years) with a broken heart.

She died a month later.

When she took her last breath in the summer of 2021, a part of me broke in a way I had never felt before.

In the span of less than two years, I had lost both of my parents. I was devastated and emotionally exhausted. It felt like the ground beneath me had vanished. In losing them, I also lost a sense of my own identity and stability. It was as if I didn’t know how to be me in a world where they were no longer here. I felt, in many ways, like I was teetering between being a grown woman with a family of my own to a 12-year-old girl who still very much needed her mama.

Grief settled over my everyday life like a heavy fog.

I remember waking up back in my bed in Hannover, the same ceiling above me, but everything felt different. I felt untethered. Alone. And I didn’t know how to begin moving forward with that kind of pain weighing me down.

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My Healing Journey

In the aftermath, I knew I couldn’t survive this alone. I reached out for help. For the next year, I devoted myself to therapy, week by week, session by session, investing thousands into my recovery. I was determined to heal but knew that the journey would be long and complicated, just as my relationship had been with both of my parents.

I sat with a compassionate counselor who helped me start unpacking the trauma and sorrow. I also turned to the words and wisdom of others: I read countless self-help and personal growth books, searching each page for comfort or guidance, anything to help make sense of what I was feeling. I even enrolled in a training program with Mel Robbins, hoping that learning from a motivational coach would spark some light in the darkness, and it did.

Through these months, friends became lifelines.

I talked with close friends for hours about what I was going through, sometimes crying, sometimes laughing at an old memory, always feeling their support.

I found solace in the voices of strangers, too. Late at night when I couldn’t sleep, I’d play podcasts about grief, healing, and personal growth. Hearing others share their stories made me feel just a little less alone in mine.

Another thing I did, and still do, is that I would open up the voice notes app on my iPhone and record messages to my mom as if she were still alive. These voice letters have helped me to stay connected to her, though I leave them less and less, which I assume is a sign that my healing journey isn’t as heavy now as it was intially when I’d leave her constant messages.

And through it all, I wrote.

I have always been someone who finds clarity in writing, so I picked up my journal and began pouring out everything: the rage, the confusion, the sadness, the love.

Every emotion went onto those pages. Journaling became more than just a therapeutic exercise; it became a sacred ritual for me. Each entry was like a conversation with myself, one where I could be brutally honest, vulnerable, and raw without fearing anyone’s judgment. Many mornings, I’d wake up with a heaviness in my chest, but after writing in my journal for a while, I noticed that heaviness would lighten, even if just a bit. Writing was my safe space to process the unthinkable.

Morning coffee and journaling became a daily ritual of self-care, a quiet time to let myself breathe and be which was vital for my healing.

In those gentle moments, I slowly learned how to live with my grief. I gave myself permission to take it day by day. On some days, my only “accomplishment” was making a coffee and listening to an uplifting podcast, and that had to be enough. I tried to be present for small comforts: the softness of my favorite blanket, the sun filtering through my kitchen window, the sound of a friend’s voice on a Whatsapp message. Bit by bit, I felt the suffocating fog begin to thin. The pain was still there, but I was learning to carry it more gracefully. I was learning how to care for myself the way I would care for someone I love… Gently, patiently, with compassion.

As I wrote in my journal, something unexpected happened. I began to realize that the grief I was writing about wasn’t only about losing my parents. Yes, losing them was a profound heartbreak on its own, but their deaths also cracked me open and exposed deeper wounds that had been quietly within me for years.

I started to see that my pain was also about loneliness, about feeling untethered and unstable far beyond these two losses.

There had always been a part of me that felt a little lost in the world, a sense of being unmoored that I’d carried since childhood because we moved so much from state to state and now, I’m living in Germany which isn’t my homeland and still feels a bit like foreign soil even after 16 years. The whirlwind of losing both parents in such a short time brought that buried sense of loneliness and instability to the surface. I realized I wasn’t just mourning my mother and father; I was mourning a lifetime of change, uncertainty, and things that never were. It was a hard truth to face. But in acknowledging it, I felt a strange relief. It was like I was finally getting real with myself about everything, not just the recent loss, but all the pain I had been holding onto for so long. And with that realization came the question: What do I do with this truth? How do I heal not only from losing my parents, but also from the deeper loneliness and disconnection I’d uncovered?

Turning Pain into Purpose: Creating Get Real

For a while, I didn’t have the answer. I kept journaling, kept going to therapy, kept searching. Little by little, though, an idea began to form. I realized that if writing and self-reflection were helping me survive my darkest days, maybe they could help others too, others who felt lost, misaligned, or hollowed out by life.

In my heart, I knew I couldn’t be the only one feeling this way.

What if I could take everything I’d learned and create something to guide someone else through their own journey? The more I thought about it, the more it felt right. I’m a writer by trade and by passion, and words had always been my way to reach out to the world. So I decided to write my way forward.

Over the past six months, I poured myself into creating a guide and workbook that encapsulated all the insights, tools, and gentle comforts that had helped me begin to heal. It isn’t just a journal or a book of advice, it became a bit of both, a structured yet soft-hearted program for self-reflection. I named it Get Real.

The name feels exactly right, because that was the core of what had happened to me: life forced me to get real about what I was feeling and what truly mattered to me. I wanted to help others do the same, in a safe and nurturing way.

I want to be clear: I didn’t create Get Real as some kind of polished “expert” or teacher looking down from above. I created it as a woman who desperately needed this - for ME. After years of running a creative business, being a mom, navigating constant changes, and showing up for everyone else, I realized I had lost my own alignment. By the time I went through my season of grief, I was completely drained and out of touch with myself. I needed a reset, a real one, but nothing I found out there in the self-help world felt quiet or honest enough for what I was going through. Everything was either too long, too intense, or too expensive for me to handle in that fragile state​.

In a culture obsessed with “hustling harder” and constant productivity, I craved the opposite. I yearned for something gentle, something slower and more sustainable for my soul. So, I made what I couldn’t find. I crafted Get Real as a soft place to land, a 7-day mini course and workbook that feels less like a class and more like a warm embrace. I was determined that this wouldn’t be just another high pressure course. It’s not a productivity challenge or a self-improvement class. Instead, it’s a slow, beautiful return to yourself. It’s the kind of gentle reset I wish I’d had when I felt completely lost.

So what exactly is Get Real? It’s a 7 day guided journey of self-reflection and creative reawakening, centered around a comprehensive workbook I wrote and designed.

When you join, you immediately get a copy of GET REAL, the 149-page digital guide and workbook that I wrote filled with themed chapters, reflection prompts, and creative exercises to gently encourage you each day​.

Over the course of seven days, we focus on seven key themes (one per day):

• Day 1: The Pause. What in me is asking for a pause right now?

• Day 2: The Whisper Within. What have I been ignoring or silencing in myself?

• Day 3: The Honest Mirror. What am I still carrying that I’ve already outgrown?

• Day 4: The Inner Compass. What really matters to me in this season of life?

• Day 5: The Quiet Vision. What would I want next—if it could be gentle and honest?

• Day 6: The Space Between. What needs to go, so I can grow?

• Day 7: The Real Reset. What does “getting real” look like in my daily life?

Each day, you’ll spend a little time with the workbook and with me: I recorded a short video lesson for every day (about 5–10 minutes each) to guide you through that day’s topic, almost as if I’m right there beside you, sharing what I’ve learned.

You’ll also receive a brief encouraging email from me daily to keep you accountable and supported as you go.

Get Real isn’t about doing a huge life overhaul in a week or achieving some perfect result, it’s about creating a small, nurturing routine for seven days where you can hear yourself think and feel again. Everything in it is designed to be gentle, clear, and completely on your own terms. You can do the daily activities in 20 minutes or take two hours, there’s no pressure to perform, no grade at the end. This is your journey.

I also added a few special touches that I’m really excited about.

For one, I’ve always loved stickers and the little spark of joy they can bring (maybe it’s the former scrapbooker in me!). So I created a printable sticker book called STICKY with over 150+ beautiful, inspiring stickers that you can use in your journal or planner as you work through the course​. They’re cute and calming and were designed to help you express your emotions visually, sometimes a little heart, a star, or a meaningful word on the page can say what we struggle to write in sentences.

Another bonus I’m offering is an invitation to join a live 90-minute group journaling and vision boarding session with me at the very end of the 7-day journey. I added this because I believe so strongly in the power of community and sharing. In that live session (which will be online, so you can join from anywhere), we’ll come together to reflect on what came up during the week, do a bit of creative vision board making and journaling, and just hold space for each other’s feelings and dreams. It’s completely optional, but I wanted to include it for those who crave a sense of connection after doing some personal inner work. (And don’t worry – if you can’t attend live, there will be a replay available, because I know life gets busy.)

Creating the Get Real workbook and course will be the first time I’ve ever done anything like this. I filled it not just with prompts and exercises, but with pieces of my heart. Throughout the guide, I share some of my own personal stories, little anecdotes and truths from my life, so that it feels less like a textbook and more like a conversation between friends. I want anyone going through it to feel understood and less alone, the way I started to feel when I heard those podcasts or read certain passages during my darkest days.

You’ll also find some of my favorite tools and techniques that helped me rediscover my creativity and hope, everything from mindset exercises to tiny lifestyle tweaks that can make a big difference. And because I know aesthetics can affect our mood, I made sure the design of the entire workbook is soothing and minimalist. The pages are clean, calming, and peppered with encouraging quotes and gentle imagery (nothing overstimulating or overly bright). I wanted it to be a visually peaceful space for you to reflect, not an overwhelming one.

In short, Get Real is the resource I wish I’d had when I felt out of alignment, and now I’ve created it so that you, or anyone else who needs it, can have it by your side when you’re ready to find you again.

An Invitation to Get Real

After so much pain, I’m finally finding my own gentle path forward – and I want to share it with you. I will always miss my parents. There are still moments when a memory of them catches me off guard and the grief washes over me anew. But I’ve learned how to navigate those waves with honesty and self-compassion. In many ways, that’s what “getting real” means to me: allowing myself to acknowledge the hard truths of life, while also embracing the hope and the strength that live alongside those truths. I’ve seen firsthand that even after the deepest sorrow, it’s possible to create meaning and find light again. And I truly believe that if I could find my way through such darkness, anyone can. You are never as alone as you might feel, and there is always a path forward, even if it’s dimly lit at first.

If any part of my story resonates with you – if you’ve been feeling a bit lost or burned out or just off lately, yearning for something softer and more true in your life then I invite you from the bottom of my heart to join me in Get Real.

This 7-day mini course and 149-page workbook is my labor of love, born from both my pain and my healing. It’s an opportunity for you to take a gentle pause, to reconnect with yourself, and to find clarity about what truly matters to you. I would be honored to have you along for this journey. Together, we’ll spend a week stepping away from the noise and pressure of the world, and tuning into you. No rush, no hype, no perfection, just a sincere, supportive space to breathe, reflect, and maybe discover a spark of hope and purpose that’s been hiding under the surface.

You can check out the GET REAL mini course and workbook now on my site and see if it speaks to you. I poured six months of care and honesty into it in the hopes that it might help someone else out there, someone like you, find their own path through the fog. It might just be the gentle reset you’ve been needing. And if you do decide to join me, I can’t wait to walk alongside you during those seven days of self-discovery and healing.

This is for you if…

• You’re feeling burned out, foggy, or emotionally cluttered

• You crave clarity before your next step, personally or professionally

• You’re pivoting, healing, or simply pausing

• You miss the real you

• You want a soulful space to reflect, without pressure or perfection

• A little lost or creatively disconnected

• Emotionally tired, but not sure why

• Like you need a pause, not a plan

• Ready to feel clear, grounded, and honest again

Thank you for reading my story. Remember, no matter how heavy life feels right now, you’re not alone in carrying it. Be kind to yourself, and when you’re ready, let’s get real – together.

Love,

Holly