I got so tired of saying goodbye.
My parents. My in-laws. And then my dearest friends — my girls — getting sick and slipping away one by one. And it never made sense, because these were healthy, athletic young women whose lives were suddenly taken out of their own hands. They ran marathons. They loved the beach and the mountains. Their lives were full — full of dreams, full of friendship, full of plans they never got to finish.
Illness has a way of doing that. It takes too fast. Linda and Trudi, gone too soon as well — both of them mothers. Starr and Nicole, two of the truest friends I ever had.
For a long time, all I could ask was why. Why them. Why so many. Why me, left here in all this silence.
But somewhere in the middle of all that loss, something quietly shifted. The question stopped being why me and started becoming what now. What do I do with everything I've survived? What do I do with everything they no longer can?
And the answer came slowly, like a light I almost missed: I could live it for them.
I could take the health they lost too soon and treasure my own. I could grow food, eat well, care for this one life I still have — not casually, but on purpose, because I have watched how precious and fragile it is. I could pour myself into helping other women, the way I'd give anything to keep helping the women I lost. I could build something good out of all this grief.
That became my purpose — born straight out of all that dying.
And then the words came to me, the ones that changed everything: Instead of begging for a seat, build your own table. That became Elizabeth's Farm Table. My motto. And now, my life's work — through health, through wellness, through this community of women who understand.
I carry them with me into everything I build. Every woman I help, I help a little for them. Every healthy day I'm given, I don't waste — because they would have wanted it, and they don't get to have it. My grief didn't disappear. It changed direction. It stopped pulling me under and started pushing me forward, out into the world, on behalf of the ones who can't be here.
That's what I want you to know, wherever you are in your own loss: the people you've lost are not gone from your story. You can carry them forward. You can let your love for them become something — a kinder life, a deeper purpose, a hand reached out to someone else who's hurting.
The pain was real. It still is. But it doesn't get the final word.
Their lives mattered. And one of the most beautiful ways we honor the people we've lost is by truly living — fully, gratefully, on purpose — the life they no longer can.
I am living through the lives I've lost. And in a strange and holy way, that has given my own life back to me.
Come as you are. There's a place for you here. 🤍
If grief still feels too heavy to carry some days, please don't carry it alone — reach out to someone you trust, or a counselor who can walk closely with you. Honoring your pain and asking for support are the same kind of brave.