The following is a transcript of this episode. It has been edited for clarity.
Teaser: As much as we like to talk about the beautiful side of midlife, there is no denying that sometimes this stage of life comes with loss. There are all kinds of losses and my next guest unfortunately had the experience of suffering a great one when she became a widow a couple of years ago in midlife, but she took her grief and her compassion and all the stuff she learned during the worst year of her life and she wrote about it in order to help people who may be going through something similar. She’s here today to share her journey with us, and I can’t wait for you to listen to her inspiring insights.
Welcome to More Beautiful, the podcast for women rewriting the midlife playbook. I’m Maryann LoRusso and I invite you to join me and a guest each week, as we strive for a life that’s more adventurous, more fulfilling, and more beautiful than ever before.
Maryann:
Welcome back to the More Beautiful podcast. I’m so happy to have on the show today, the lovely Cristina Ramirez, an author, entrepreneur, and an empowerment coach who helps clients redefine what’s possible for themselves, their families, and their communities. Cristina’s recent book Empowered By Discomfort was inspired by what she calls the worst year of her life when her husband of many years passed away. It’s filled with so much wisdom about life and loss and love. Cristina, welcome to the show. It’s such a joy to have you here. Cristina, you have lived in so many places, and your professional journey has taken many interesting turns. You began your career in investment banking, and then you worked in the startup world of Silicon Valley for a while, then around Y2K, you relocated to Santiago de Chile and co-founded a nonprofit. Then you returned to the US and did social work at Miami’s largest homeless shelter, and then you took time off to raise your two boys. You became a preschool teacher, and then you founded another nonprofit. Wow, can you tell us where you are now on that whole journey?
Cristina: Yeah, my career has taken a lot of turns, but I feel like it all brought me to where I am today. Now I’m an entrepreneur. My coaching company helps empower people from children all the way to corporate executives, and I really focus on that confidence and empowerment theme throughout everything that I do nowadays.
Maryann:
In December of 2021, you became widowed at the age of 49, when your husband of 19 years passed away, suddenly from cancer. First of all, I’m so sorry for your loss and I can’t even imagine how hard that must have been. If it’s not too painful, can you tell us a little bit about your husband, and the year he became sick, which you say was the worst year of your life understandably so.
Cristina: That’s not a problem at all. I love talking about Joe because he was really a spectacular guy. And it’s not one of those things of like, when somebody dies, they’re saints. Not at all. What I loved the most about him was his kindness. He was in public relations for most of his life and we decided to move from Miami to a little town in rural New Mexico, just kind of to live life on our own terms. I feel like that’s where he really blossomed because he just became part of this new community and his kindness just showed in everything that he did. He was really a big part of the community and he became a part of that community that welcomed us from Miami a few years ago.
Maryann: So when he got sick, though, how did this all go down? It was a shock to you, right?
Cristin: It was, though hindsight is always 2020, and I think if we were paying closer attention, we could have maybe seen some signs that something wasn’t 100% right. But by the time that we got his cancer [diagnosis], it was October of 2021. It was way too advanced and his decline—it was seven weeks from when he got diagnosed with cancer to when he passed away. So it was really fast. With kidney cancer, it’s sometimes like that. It goes into a vein that’s called the vena cava. From there, it just kind of spreads everywhere and then went into his heart and he died of a blood clot in his heart of a heart failure.
Maryann: Oh, God, my heart goes out to your family. I think I told you when we spoke last time that my mother became a widow also at age 45. You were 49. My father died at 46 of a massive heart attack while he was out jogging. He was a marathon runner and he ran his morning run. He just came back and collapsed. I was in college at the time, but I just recall her being in shock, just absolute shock. When something like that happens so suddenly, there’s no time to process right? You’re suddenly thrust into this widowhood and especially if you have kids, you have to be there for your kids. Looking back at that time, what kind of state were you? Was it similar?
Cristina: Absolutely. Your brain—it’s really hard to process grief. I love neuroscience; I totally geeked out on this. Part of the problem of processing grief is (a) it’s very individual and there’s no right or wrong way. Nobody’s like, “This is how it goes.” Everybody has their own process. The problem is that you have somebody that is in the past, that is no longer in the present in any way, shape, or form. It’s not like when somebody goes on a trip, you can still think of them, or you can still call them. So your brain understands they’re not here, but they’re [over] here. Your brain has a really hard time understanding that that’s it, you know, that you won’t see that person anymore. When you start realizing I’m never going to hear his voice again. Oh, my God, that was the worst. When I came home, for the first time from being in the hospital, I fell to the floor crying, because I realized that he was never going to be in our home again. And yet, he was everywhere that I saw, like, his coffee mug was still in the dishwasher. His glasses were still on the side table. So it’s like, he was there, but he wasn’t there. That is crushing, just like the finality of it. And nothing is as final as death. It’s really hard to kind of grasp. So I was—I was in shock— and I was sad. I thought I was going to have a heart attack because I could feel it in my body and in my heart. They say that a lot of widows do die of a broken heart. Because it affects your circulation, the stress, all of that. So it was a really rough time. But I do believe that having kids was my saving grace,
Maryann: Really?
Cristina: Yeah, it’s hard, obviously, because you have to be there for your kids. But that’s what’s good, that you have to be there for your kids. So I wish I could have just gone under the covers and covered my head and stayed there for a couple of weeks just to figure things out. But you can’t. You’ve got to keep going and it also makes decision-making easy because the decision is not about me. It’s what is best for my boys and I didn’t like a lot of the decisions that I had to make, but that’s what what was best for my boys. So it made it very clear to me where to go next.
Maryann: Yeah, I think my brother was 10 when my father passed, and my mother just had to be there for him. How do you not be there for a 10-year-old? How old were your boys when this happened?
Cristina: 14 and 16. So they were freshmen and sophomores in high school.
Maryann: Okay, and we’re gonna get to all that—we’re gonna get to some questions about parenting when you are going through grief yourself. But before we get to that, I just want to mention your book, Empowered by Discomfort. You wrote it to share the tools you used to face that horrible year. What motivated you to start writing? When did you start writing? And was the process a catharsis for you?
Cristina: Yeah, I’ve always loved writing and I always wanted to write a book. I just didn’t know what book I was going to write. When I went through this thing with Joe, I kept posting on Facebook, processing what was happening and kind of sharing my story. So many people would tell me, “That was so helpful and that was so insightful. Thank you.” And [they kept telling me], “You should write a book, you should write a book, you should write a book.” So I started writing the book on December 26, 2022. So, a year and a couple of weeks from his death. By February, I was done. I just took the time off and I wrote the book, and it just poured out of me. It was everything that I already knew. So the book is not so much about grief, or about a memoir about my story, but it’s just the tools that I used, and I’ve been using those tools for years. I’ve been teaching those tools for years to my clients. So it just came out of me and I think that that’s what makes it easy to read. Most people tell [that they] got done with it in like a couple of days. I was like, “I know I wrote it in like a couple of weeks. Isn’t that crazy?” It’s a very easy, smooth book to just go through, and that’s how the process was for me. So it wasn’t really cathartic in the sense of, I’m sharing Joe with the world, or I’m sharing my pain with the world. It was more like, this is what I did and I’m a teacher, and I’m a coach. That’s what I love to do, so that’s what I focused on.
Maryann: I love the title, and that you mentioned discomfort in the title. Why do you think it’s important to lean into discomfort when something tragic like this happens?
Cristina: Well, you don’t only lean when something tragic happens; tragic things happen all the time, to a variety of degrees. We will always have challenges, and it’s something that I teach children all the time. Things happen. Life isn’t like—it’s not neat. But instead of being so afraid of that, if you just look at it as, “Oh, I’m feeling discomfort here, that means that that’s what I need to work on next on my evolution in life.” I see discomfort as big flashing signs that are telling you [to] go here, go here, because this is something that’s still unresolved, or this is something that you need to work on, so that you can reach your goals, and you can get to where you’re at. I think if we demystify discomfort, we’re doing all of us a favor. Intellectually, we know when we look at Instagram, that it’s not real, but we still compare ourselves to that. There’s a disconnect between what we see in our lives, which will include discomfort, and what we see in social media or in the movies, and then we start feeling bad. So I’m saying, take that feeling bad as a clue of, where I go next to grow.
Maryann: I love that. Do you think that those textbook stages of grief that we often hear about are accurate? Did you experience grief like that, or differently?
Cristina: I think I experienced it differently. I think you feel all of those emotions, but it’s not linear. You feel anger at times, and you feel sadness at times, and you feel—I don’t even know what the grief stages are. I remember anger because anger is kind of shocking when you get mad at somebody that you love, because they died, right? And then you’re like, what the hell is that? So you feel those things, but I don’t necessarily [think it is] a clean timeline that you go through and then after six months, a year, [or] whatever you’re done. Somebody told me, “Oh, you’ll grieve for the amount of one month for every year that you were married.” Like, what the hell was that?!
Maryann: Those little rules?
Cristina: There are no rules, there’s only the way that you’re handling it. But what I like to tell people is that it’s also not the end of the world, and we need to understand that. He died, but I did not. And I need to find a way—hopefully, I still have 20-30 years with my kids, [and] I need to find a way to make those years okay, and not just okay, but happy and joyful and productive and kind through those years. That’s what the book is about. Life will happen, so what? Just go with it, because the best is always yet to come.
Maryann: Yeah, I know, for my mother, the anger stage was sort of about, well, we had so many plans. We’re only in our 40s we didn’t get to see our kids graduate from college, get married. We didn’t get to travel together. And I mean, you also were so young when this happened, so I can imagine that so many dreams and plans that you and your husband shared, seemed to have evaporated into thin air. Did life seem unfair to you for a while?
Cristina: I don’t know if unfair is the right word, but I definitely felt that. I felt like the life that—again, we created this life that people thought was a little crazy. We left Miami, we go to this little bitty town in the middle of nowhere in rural New Mexico, and I was in love with my house. I was in love with my family. I was in love with my husband. We created something that really matched who we were, but that life does not compute without him. I needed him in order to—you know, just having a house in the middle of nowhere already comes with all these issues that I can’t handle by myself.
Maryann: Right.
Cristina: So I feel like my dream was taken away. But again, having kids makes the decision of letting go of that dream a lot easier. Because if I didn’t have kids, maybe I would have struggled. [I may have debated], maybe I can stay here, what do? But it was so clear to me that staying there wasn’t the right thing for them [and] that, yeah, I was angry about it and I was sad about it. Sometimes I still look back and say like, “Ahhh!”, but there’s nothing I can do. It is no more. So I might as well not dwell on it.
Maryann: Right. So, logistically speaking, there are so many practicalities that you have to face also, when a tragedy happens, right? I remember my mom going through paperwork, and not really understanding a lot of the financial aspects and asking for help. I had a financial advisor on the show to talk about what do you do financially when this happens? I mean, did you find yourself not wanting to face that stuff, facing that stuff? I guess it depends on what kind of person you are? Did you have to ask for help from people, you know?
Cristina: Oh, I asked for a lot of help. It’s one of the things that I teach a lot is that, when you ask for help, you’re actually doing the other person a favor. I can’t tell you how many people [say], “Well, if you need anything… how can I help?” So if you give them an opportunity to help, they’re going to feel good about it, and you’re going to feel better because you have to help. So this [attitude that] I have to figure this out. If not, it’s not my own whatever, I call bullshit on that. I don’t think that’s true at all. So I asked for a lot of help and I received a lot of help. From everything, from planning his memorial, I didn’t do [many things]. I went to one call… everything was taken care of for me. I had this wonderful support system. In terms of the financial, I have this other friend of mine, that was a widow, she sent me a spreadsheet. She’s like, these are the things that you need to do, from the life insurance to social security. She had a spreadsheet [for all those things]. I did some of it and then I asked my sister [who] is also a financial advisor [to] please help me and then she helped me take care of almost everything else.
Maryann: That’s wonderful that you had those people in your community, and it’s also the difference of something like this happening suddenly versus gradually. If somebody gets sick, and they stick around for a while to discuss all the options with you, tell you how they want their service to be… but when it happens like this so fast, it’s just, there’s no time, right?
Cristina: No, but it’s funny because you do second guess yourself, but there’s some things that I did not second guess myself. He was a stoic and I’m a philosophy major. So we talked about death a lot, and what happens, not in a morbid way, but like, [for example], “In 100 years, like, nobody’s gonna even remember who the hell we were.” Things like that. So, [with] his ashes, there’s a company that turns ashes into stones, that’s called Parting Stone, I have [no affiliation] with them, but they were amazing. They take their cremains and they turn them into rocks that look kind of like river rocks, and they’re actually better for the environment because if you spread ashes, it’s very alkaline for trees and things like that. So it’s actually ecologically friendly. So I have these rocks, and we go and we leave them in places that were meaningful to him.
Maryann: I love that.
Cristina: Yeah, like in nature. He skied a lot. So in his favorite run on the river, where we used to go swimming all the time. I gave some to his family, to his parents to his sisters. So I always have one with me, and my kids have some. That wasn’t hard. I know that he would have been 100% okay with that. We never talked about it. But I know that he would have been happy that that’s what we were doing.
Maryann: That’s beautiful, Cristina, I love that. I wanted to ask you about relationships because when you have a relationship like the one you had with your husband, a really solid, beautiful relationship. Then it’s suddenly taken away from you. Did you feel untethered when that happened? Did you [feel that way] when you realized that you suddenly had to start traversing the world again, as a single [woman], a single mom no less?
Cristina: Yeah. I talked about this in the book. I used to be embarrassed about this story, but I’m no longer because I know it’s helped a lot of people. I’m 20 years sober. When I was in the depths of my addiction, I was suicidal. What I didn’t understand then is that it’s not that I wanted to die. I just wanted to not feel the way that I was feeling. It was really bad. I ended up in a mental institution and it’s the kind of place where if you wanted to smoke a cigarette, which I did a lot of back then, you couldn’t just light it. It was a burner on the wall. And the burner was covered with like this metal grate with a hole that was big enough for a cigarette, but not big enough for finger.
Maryann: Wow.
Cristina: So that you couldn’t burn yourself. And I needed that because I would have been the person that stuck my finger in there. That’s how bad and how low I was. So from there, again, this was like 20-something years ago, I had to recreate my life. I remember [thinking that], if I’m not gonna die, I need to learn how to live. I actually met Joe in Alcoholics Anonymous, in a meeting. So I felt like I have already been through that process of losing everything and just trying to recreate or really reconnect with who I really was to create myself again. I held his hand as he took his last breath and it was not peaceful for me. For him, he was probably fine. For me, I was a mess. But even at that moment, or when I came home and I collapsed because I realized he wasn’t coming home. Even then, in the worst moments, there was a little light inside of me, that said, we’ve been here before. It’s going to be okay. It was that little light that helps me kind of have faith and hope that the same way that I wanted to die 20 years ago, and the best part of my life came because I didn’t die. You know, I met my husband, I created my family, my business, whatever. I can do it again. That kind of helped me through this process.
Maryann: That’s amazing, because I’m sure there were times when you did feel weak, right, just with grief and stress? And so you just kept coming back to that realization that you’ve you’ve been there, you were able to overcome it. I’m so happy you’re sharing that story, because I think it’s so important because there is so much addiction, especially in midlife, people don’t want to talk about it, but it’s there. It’s rampant.
Cristina: Absolutely. The thing is, because it’s a stigma, then it makes things worse, you know? But I remember, I wrote the book, and I wrote the story. And it’s the story of being in the mental ward. I did something. It’s this whole story. I wrote it and I published the book. And when I had the book in my hand (and I did a Kickstarter) I had to send it to like 200 people. I was like, oh my God, everybody’s gonna know. Other than in an AA room where you share stories like that and people are like, “Yeah, whatever,” nobody had ever heard that story. So for the first time, I was like, [gasp] what have I done? Why I sharing this? But by then I was like, “Well, you know, if it helps one person out there, it’s all good.” I feel like if we’re all that open about how we feel— because there’s a solution, right? It’s not who you are, it’s what you’re going through. And there’s a difference between that.
Maryann: Absolutely. You’re not defined by what happens to you. It just it happened to you. It’s not who you are. It’s what happened to you.
Cristina: Exactly. But how you react to what happened to you, that’s who you are.
Maryann: Yes, I love that. Absolutely. Wow. Okay, so back to parenting. How did you handle parenting during this time? I know, you said you had to be there for your kids and that kind of helped you get out of bed in the morning. But it must have been hard dealing with your own grief and then helping your kids through theirs. What was your strategy with that?
Cristina: It was—it was really hard. It’s funny because a few months ago, we watched a TV show and the guy loses his wife and he went crazy. You see him you know, like six months later, and he has a beard and is all schizo[phrenic]. I saw the guy I [said to my kids], “Aren’t you guys lucky I didn’t go crazy?” And they look at me [with an expression] like, “Uhhhhh…”
Maryann: And they’re like, “You did go crazy?” They’re saying you did? Funny.
Cristina: So the way that I view how I behaved, if you asked them, they probably felt it differently. Right? All that to say, from my point of view, I was very honest with them. I was very open in my grief, to kind of give them permission to feel whatever it is that they were going to feel. I think that for them seeing me cry my eyes out and then get myself back up and go into a meeting—it shows them that it’s okay to feel your feelings and it’s also okay to do what you got to do. We were always very open about that. I think with what I learned about grief and teenagers is that they don’t process it the same way that we do, in the sense that they’re in a different stage of life. I think what I was told is that with teens, they’ll go through grief, little by little in their life, as things happen to them, and they don’t have their dad to lean on. That’s when they’re going to miss him the most. So we talked about that and my other strategy was to create a network of men that could be—they’re never going to be his dad—but that they could at least know that there are some male role models that when there are things that they don’t feel like they can talk to me, they have somebody to talk to.
Maryann: Those are such great tips, Cristina, because, first of all, what you said about adolescents processing differently. I totally agree. I was in college, my sister was in high school, and my brother was 10. I think for us, first of all, we didn’t have a great role model in my mom, because she, for some reason, she’s Italian, but she did not know how to mix. She did not know how to put her grief on display. So we didn’t see her bawling her eyes out, and I think we were all a little bit repressed in that way. But it came out for us incrementally like you talk about, [like] when he wasn’t there for graduation when he wasn’t there for my wedding. You’re absolutely right. I would encourage all moms out there, if this happens, please have your child see someone. My 10-year-old brother could have really benefited from that. Did you ever seek outside counsel for the kids or for yourself?
Cristina: Absolutely. But they didn’t want it. So they’re like, “Oh, I don’t need it.I don’t want to go.” The way that I got them to go was because it’s through the school. I [told them], “You’ll get to miss class,” and they’re like, okay. I [asked them to] just go twice because once it’s not enough, just go twice. If you hate it, you don’t have to go again. The way it works in New Mexico is that mental health is free for teens. And I think for adults too. I don’t know when they go, when they don’t go, how many times [they go]. They won’t let me talk to the therapist. So I feel like I showed them that possibility and then they took advantage of it for a little bit, then they stopped and maybe sometimes they go back, but I don’t keep track of that for them.
Maryann: But that’s okay because they know that they have permission to do it. They have been through it, and they will get the help if they need it now, because you’ve set the example for them. That’s perfect.
Cristina: Yeah, and they know about my addiction, and they know about their dad’s addiction, and so we’re very open about the way you handle this. Unfortunately for you, it’s in your DNA that you might try to escape, you might try to dumb down your feelings and things like that. You’re at a very high risk. So don’t do that. Let’s talk about it. If you don’t feel comfortable with me here, just there’s their uncles, and if not, there’s the therapist, and if not, there’s their friends, but I really encourage them to talk about it. They don’t always do because they’re teenage boys. But again, I think it’s what you said: that they know that they can if they feel like they need to and they know what the risks are when they don’t
Maryann: Let me ask you how did this loss change who you are? Do you have a new sense of urgency about what you want to accomplish in the world? Did it change how you want to spend the rest of your life? Did you reprioritize things? Did it change you as a human being?
Cristina: Yes, I think that it would be impossible not to change, right? I think I’m more grateful for what I do have. For me, it changed my priorities, in a sense. Not that it changed my priorities, but my kids are it, and I have them for a couple more years. So everything else that I thought was important, is kind of on hold. It’s not on hold, I’m doing them, but I’m not feeling stressed [about them]. I [used to think], “I wanted my business to be at this level.” Whatever, it doesn’t matter, because right now, I’m present for my kids, and that’s what matters the most. Everything else? Maybe it’ll be there. Maybe it won’t be there, but it’s okay. This is what matters. I feel like not that before my kids weren’t my priority. Of course, they’re my priority. But you don’t think of it that way, is like, well, I have to build this and I have to create that—because I feel like it doesn’t matter. What matters to me, is who I am for my kids at this moment.
Maryann: I found it interesting that you also began a fitness journey in midlife. Tell us about that.
Cristina: Sure. So, I was the girl in the back of the gym smoking pot, right? I was not your athlete. And hence, I became an addict. I had I met my husband and I met my kids when I was sober. So this was way before, but my boys were little, they must have been one and two, and I wanted to be the mom that did stuff with them. I wanted to take them on hikes, and bike rides, and I couldn’t even run around the block without feeling like I was going to die and gasping for air. I [decided] that’s not who I want to be. So I started running and I ran a 5k. And oh my God, you would have thought that I won an Olympic gold medal. I was like, “Oh, my God, I ran a 5k!” Something switched and I was like, if I can do that, what else can I do? So then I ran a 10k, then a half marathon. Then I got into triathlons. I did sprint triathlons. Then I started doing Iron Mans, and I’ve done three Iron Mans. So it was from that spark of like, “Oh, my God, if I can do that, like, what else can I do?” That is where my coaching business started, because that’s what I teach the kids. What else can you do? Confidence doesn’t come from having an easy life. Confidence comes from facing a challenge, being supported in it, coming out on the other side, looking back, [and realizing] holy crap, look at what I did [and] what can I do now?
Maryann: That’s incredible. Are you still doing Ironman and triathlons and all that?
Cristina: No, I had to have a hip replacement at 49, just because I overdid it a little bit. I couldn’t even walk. I was on crutches. It was so painful. But I do snowboard and I actually compete it in the national championships in snowboarding and I go mountain biking or hiking. I want to be healthy. But I don’t know if a triathlon is in my future. You know, road biking is dangerous, it just doesn’t call to me. I want to maintain my health, and I love the mountains, so I want to take care of my body to allow me to sustain the life that I want to lead, but that’s about it.
Maryann: Well, I’m so impressed, I really am. Truly. Good for you. So tell us anything else you’ve learned through grief and tragedy?
Cristina: I think that those are the moments that you really find out who you are. And you may not like who you are in those moments, and you may not like how things are, but it’s up to you and you have the power to change. So if something is not working, there’s no law that says that it can’t be different, and there is no reason why you can’t find joy again. It’s gonna be different, and those things can coexist. I can miss my husband deeply because I miss him every day. But I can still find joy. It’s not either/or. Life is more both. I can love my late husband AND still be happy and do the things that I want to do in this life.
Maryann: Absolutely. On a personal level. you don’t have to answer this, but are you in a relationship? Are you dating? And if so, was it hard to get back to that point?
Cristina: I’m not there yet. I think it’s been like 15 or 16 months since he died.
Maryann: Not a long time.
Cristina: Yeah, I don’t think I’m—it’s not even a thought that crosses my mind at this moment. I feel like my kids are my priority. If something were to happen, who knows? I don’t know. But I’m a hermit, so I don’t see how that’s gonna happen. But it’s not something that I’m really thinking about at this moment.
Maryann: Right. Right. Never say never. I think I told you that my mom just said, “No, I’m done,” when my father died. You just said he was the love of my life and I don’t need to date anymore. And that was that. It was so interesting.
Cristina: And I feel like maybe that’s gonna be my story too because he truly was the love of my life. But I know that life has so many turns and I’m not saying it’s like I will never—it’s just it’s not in my orbit at this moment.
Maryann: Well, Cristina, what advice, either emotional or practical or both, would you give other women out there, other people out there who may have lost someone dear to them and are still healing? Are there coping strategies you would recommend?
Cristina: I think that grief really is so individual. The only coping strategy that I would share in grief, is just to take care of you. Do some self-love and don’t feel like it has to be a certain way or there’s a certain timeline, you do you, but acknowledge that you didn’t die with the person that you loved. The world needs you and your light and what you can bring to it for you to just live a life in death. Don’t live your life as if you died with them, live your life. And if anything, just to make their memory last, share with the world what they were, but shine your light. And the other thing I always tell people is nothing is impossible. If it doesn’t go against the law of nature, right? Like, I can’t bring Joe back. When I teach this to kids, [a kid will say] you can’t be born an adult and die a baby. Yeah, you can’t do that kind of stuff. But other than that, everything is possible. So it may not look the way that you want it to look—Lord knows my life does not look like I thought it was going to look or how I wanted it to look—but nothing is impossible. If you start the season of your life thinking that, then all opportunities open up for you because you get to decide what it is that you want. Nothing like nothing is on the off the table, because everything is possible. You just have to work at it.
Maryann: Are there little things you do with your boys like, ways that you honor your late husband with them? Anything that’s become a ritual?
Cristina: I think you know that the stones are a big part of what we do. We’re going back to Miami this summer, we’re gonna bring some stones and place them in places that were meaningful to him. I’m very close to my in-laws, both to my father and mother-in-law, and I have three sisters-in-law, and we’re super close. We go and visit them as often as possible, because I think it makes us all feel connected to him. Anytime there’s a joke or something that he would say—that’s, you know, Papi would laugh at this. If I want to know [if] what they’re saying [is really true—these are teenage boys, right?— they’re like, “I put it on Papi. On my dad.” So it’s become the bar of truth in our house, which is actually really useful when you have teenage boys, because then you really know that it’s true.
Maryann: Cristina, this has been amazing. Can you tell everybody out there where they can find you online and where they can buy your book?
Cristina: Sure. My book has sold anywhere where books are sold. It’s called Empowered by Discomfort. There’s the print and an ebook. You can find me at CristinaMRamirez.com. That’s kind of the hub for everything that I do, because I have lots of different programs and businesses that go from there, but you can find out there. People think I’m crazy, but I answer all emails—like me, myself. I don’t have somebody answer it for me. So if you want to, [email me] it’s hello@CristinaMRamirez.com. I may not be like the very next minute, but I do answer emails and I love when people share with me what you said helps me with this. There’s nothing that brings me more joy in my professional world to know that I made a difference. So write to me.
Maryann: It’s very generous of you. And I’m sure there are going to be people who write to you. Cristina, thank you so much for sharing your story with us today and for all your amazing tips and insights and revelations. We really appreciate you and I can’t wait to see what you do next.
Cristina: Thank you.
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