The Heart

This past week, a woman named S. Michelle Mathai, a former Foreign Service Officer with the US State Department, sent me an email that I think gets to the heart of being human. It’s a story of deep love and crushing loss… two sides of the same coin that have shaped who Michelle has become.

And, from what I can tell, Michelle is pretty incredible. I’m going to let Michelle tell much of this story — “the tale of a survivor” — in her own beautiful words.

The Journey

Michelle’s story begins in the summer of 1998, when her older brother, 29-year-old Tomas was diagnosed with brain cancer after experiencing a grand mal seizure. Even though he had a successful surgery to remove the tumor, he had another seizure as soon as he returned home. Michelle’s parents froze, forcing her to spring into action to care for her brother. When the seizure finally subsided, Michelle wrote “he grabbed my arm and said, ‘Kid, you are quarterbacking this now. Mom and Dad can’t handle it.’ At that moment my role in the family had changed: from kid-sister to caregiver at the age of 24.”

But Michelle still had a life to live, taking her first consulate post in Auckland, New Zealand. It was everything and more that she hoped for. When her assignment was coming to a close, her parents came to visit to explore New Zealand’s South Island. That vacation turned tragic when something spooked Michelle’s father off the road. Their car plummeted into the Haast River. Only she survived.

Michelle wrote: “Little did I know that, just as I was about to complete my first assignment abroad, my final task as a Vice Consul was to identify my own parents’ bodies and have my staff process the death certificates of the ones I adored the most.”

The Turning Point

With her parents gone, Michelle tried her best to balance her diplomatic work with the ever-increasing needs of being Tomas’ now-sole caregiver. After a decade of juggling, she chose her brother, who soon had to enter hospice. 

That time turned out to be revelatory, with Michelle writing that: “I didn’t know that our eight months in hospice at my home in the Napa Valley, changing diapers, losing my brother piece-by-piece, would be the most meaningful time in my life. It was such an honor to give him a good death, surrounding him with the best of friends, delicious food, and a safe, serene place for him to find peace. Life boils down to the simplest things in the end.”

But, when Tomas finally passed, Michelle was confronted with a new dilemma — figuring out who she was without the identity of being a caretaker. That space and that silence was a door creaking open for overwhelming grief to enter… but Michelle became proactive in fighting it back. She started running marathons to raise money for cancer and guide disabled athletes, launched a podcast about her experiences, and wrote a soon-to-be-released memoir. She called each one of these endeavors “situations that might re-wire a grieving brain and spark the mind-body connection as well as give me a purpose.”

The Takeaway

Michelle’s life journey has provided an endless well of hard-earned insight — a rubric of how to reframe grief into wisdom. Here’s my favorite nugget:

It’s a reminder that the pain we go through after losing someone is because of how much our hearts were open to them. Because of how much their joy became intertwined with ours. That’s not a warning to avoid love — but a recognition that love is what gives this life meaning, even when that love is gone.

I’ll let Michelle close us out the way that she closed out her letter to me: “David, I have emerged from the wreckage of grief as an enlightened, creative being who is curious about how I can contribute to a world I don’t necessarily understand, but I’m ready to learn more on this adventure. To those who are lost in the mires of grief, my advice is to breathe deeply and let the memories wash over you and embrace you. You are so loved.”

You can read her full letter here.