S3 E118 She Taught Me Why the Ordinary Days Are Everything: A Tribute to My Beautiful Friend Narelle

Growing Tall Poppies Podcast: Season 03, Episode 118

This episode is a little different.

In Episode 111, I spoke about two beautiful friends facing very different battles. One of those friends was Narelle — my beautiful friend of more than twenty years, who had been living with cancer for over a decade.

Narelle has since passed away.

But in this deeply personal episode, I don't want to tell you the story of how Narelle died. I want to tell you a little about how she lived.

About the woman behind the cancer — the friend, the nurse, the dedicated mum, the woman with the enormous smile and infectious laugh who never went without her lippy and the woman who became woven into our family's life for more than two decades.

This episode is also an honest reflection on grief — including the grief that comes before loss, the extraordinary privilege and heartbreak of walking beside someone during the final part of their life, and the strange dissonance of stepping back outside into a world carrying on with its perfectly ordinary day while you're carrying something enormous inside you.

I also share something deeply personal about the way our nervous systems can hold the stories of previous losses, and how something happening today can unexpectedly touch a place inside us where another goodbye still lives.

Love can touch love. Loss can touch loss.

But woven through all of this is something Narelle has left me thinking about deeply:

The ordinary days.

The coffees. The sunrises. The laughter. The conversations. Sitting at the lighthouse. The moments we barely notice while we're living them, never imagining that one day we might give anything to experience them just one more time.

This isn't an invitation to live perfectly or to seize every moment.

It's simply an invitation to be here for more of it.

Make the phone call. Have the damn coffee. Take the damn photo. Sit at the lighthouse a little longer. Tell the people you love what they mean to you while they're still here to hear it.

Because perhaps the ordinary days aren't what happen in between the important moments.

Perhaps the ordinary days are everything.

This episode is for you, Narelle.

Thank you for the extraordinary privilege of being your friend.

With all my love. Dr Nat xx

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Intro and Outro music: Inspired Ambient by Playsound.

Disclaimer: This podcast is intended for educational purposes only. It is not intended to be deemed or treated as psychological treatment or to replace the need for psychological treatment.

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👉 Episode 117 - In the Presence of Excellence: Powerful on the Outside, Quietly Unravelling Within