Finding Acceptance Through Loss - My 2025 Journey
Pandemic era aside, this has been the most challenging and devastating year of my life… so far. What may seem like an airing of the grievances, dear reader, does have a purpose, so bear with me.
Gideon
Technically, my very-bad-really-not-so-good-actually-it-sucked-on-toast year started November 20th, 2024 when I had to make the horrible, yet medically necessary decision to put down my beloved dog, Gideon. A fate I had prayed neither of us would ever meet, but at least I can be sure my response to a no-win situation was compassionate. Pet owners who have succumbed to this crossroads know exactly how this hopelessness feels and how difficult it is to say goodbye to a furry family member. Perhaps I’m too tenderhearted but as a single, childless woman who cared for a living, breathing creature for over a decade, it hit me hard in the chest and I feel like I’ve been gasping for air ever since. Within a few weeks another despair-driving event would knock me for a loop.
Grandma
While visiting my beloved Grandmother back in Illinois for Christmas 2024, little did I know I’d spend a majority of that trip navigating a Peoria hospital’s hallways. The day before we were laughing as we were squeezed into a van to go visit a Reindeer Farm and drive through East Peoria’s Festival of Lights.
My Grandmother, like yours I’m sure, was the sweetest, most caring, silliest and God-loving woman I’ve ever met. We’d end every phone call with me saying, “I love you more” to which she would reply, “But I’ve loved you longer.” Naturally, I had to capitulate, because she’s right, she loved me before I was even born. She helped raise me, feed me, bathe me, and spoil me rotten.
After a fall at home, Grandma was rushed to the hospital and my family was told she probably wouldn’t make the ambulance trip let alone to Christmas. But Grandma is tough and eventually was released back to her home just as we were flying back to ours in Los Angeles. I quickly returned to my annual slew of doctor’s visits while parts of Los Angeles started to burn in the horrible fires. Shawna and I evacuated for a few days but were spared personal devastation. I returned home just in time to prep for my annual colonoscopy. Yeah, you could say 2025 was off to a shitty start.
My Turn
The prep isn’t pleasant (I’m the biggest baby in the world and I have gotten through it a few times, so I don’t want to hear any excuses from the rest of you) but the colonoscopy itself is great thanks to the twilight drugs they knock you out with leading to the best nap of your life. But when I woke up, I wasn’t greeted with apple juice and good news – the Doctor found something. Something that needed a Surgeon’s care, and quickly. Dazed from the drugs and the diagnosis, I called my parents, (already on high alert for fires or dire Grandma updates) to tell them I might have cancer. Their nervous laughter quickly turned into panicked concern.
I sped into February full of heart testing, bloodwork, more doctor’s appointments, and failed attempts at NOT Googling every possible outcome. Not the ideal scenario for anyone, especially one with health anxiety to boot. Shawna proceeded with her Valentine’s Day foot surgery and I took care of her, giving me a temporary parking spot for all that anxiety. But the hits kept coming when we got a call just a few days later that Grandma passed away.
Mom and Dad were torn about leaving their suddenly ailing (and still seen as sixteen through their eyes) kids behind to attend the funeral, but at our insistence, went. My poor mother would suffer many losses this year, her Mother being the first. Shawna couldn’t fly post surgery and needed my care, but I was also about to go under the knife and couldn’t risk travelling with all those pesky pre-op appointments looming. So, my sister and I watched our Grandmother’s funeral via Zoom which might have been a blessing in terms of compounding grief, but the digital distance made her death feel even more unfair and strange. I wrote a memorial (Mom presented it at the funeral for me) that ended with, “Grandma, I think I can safely say I finally won our playful dispute, but it’s a bittersweet victory as now I’ll live to love you more and more… and longer.”
March was upon us and one-procedure-of-removing-a-foot-of- colon-surrounding-the-offending-mass later, I was given something better in return – a non-cancerous biopsy. Finally, a glint of silver in these dark clouds. My body quickly recovered at home, but my mind was still stuck on Gideon… Grandma… guts… all of it was so horrible and confusing but time marched on whether I wanted it to or not.
Family First
A few weeks later, Dad joined in the surgery fun and also had his foot repaired (a trait I now pray isn’t next inherited by me). While the Benson clan recovered into the summer, my Mom’s Aunt Eleanor (Grandma’s sister) passed away in June, followed quickly by my Mom’s cousin Jaylynne (Eleanor’s daughter) passed away in July. I started to quickly analyze who we might have wronged who would curse the family in such dire succession.
The fall was upon us and we couldn’t let the year go by without one more surgery, this time on poor Mom’s shoulder. Poetically, perhaps it was the weight of all this unbearable death that fell upon Mom’s shoulders but medically, torn muscles and raw nerves were to blame. Out of everyone, I seemed to bounce back the quickest much to the family’s joy and equal irritation that their own recoveries were slow going. But my victory was tainted with weight gain (even though I was eating well and working out), sleepless, sweaty nights (even though I was going to bed on time with the A/C blasting), misophonia, and a noticeable lack of periods aka perimenopause (the time leading up to menopause).
I know, perimenopause seems like the “IT” topic online these days, but remember, the voices leading the charge are us GenX’ers who refuse to go quietly into this phase like our mothers and grandmothers did before us. There’s science to back us up and now we’re leading the charge into talking about it instead of shying away from it. Because “IT” deserves its own blog post and isn’t something to be ashamed of, I plan on talking more about this another time. But for now, just know that MIDI has helped me with providing HRT (hormone replacement therapy) which eliminated a majority of my symptoms and I’m figuring it all out.
I got a quick respite in September when I visited my friend in Cambridge, UK for a week of rainy weather, gin, and much needed belly laughs. That’s not to say my local friends hadn’t already broken the glass to provide me emergency companionship, check-ins, and chuckles. They did in spades, but sometimes just getting out of Dodge is enough to soothe one’s soul.
RIP Benson Sisters?
My return was met with the sudden realization that Shawna and I were in a career rut and neither of us was able to change the direction of the trolley car about to run us over. Nevertheless, we wrote and finished up our horror script, something that, no doubt, in the eyes of our agent, took us WAY too long to finish but for us, something we could never have finished had we not gone through our own horror maze of events. We wrote CALL OF THE VOID which was about a cursed video that forces people to unwillingly succumb to their intrusive thoughts. It was gruesome with lots of gore and scares, but for us, it was about loss, grief, hopelessness, and our inherent lack of control. I wrote about Gideon, Shawna wrote about James… for that, we must detour to 2022 when she suffered the loss of the love of her life.
Shawna and film critic turned school teacher, James Rocchi, had rekindled their on-again-off-again romance and planned future adventures together… but wait… I know we usually write together but honestly this is her story to tell, when she’s ready to tell it. All I can say is that I don’t wish that kind of suffering on anyone. And to the friends and family in the wake of that kind of loss, my heart goes out to you too. We’re left trying to toss life vests and arm floaties to our grieving loved ones drowning in their own tears. All this loss is unimaginable and unfair and forced me to face my greatest obstacle – acceptance.
After a Thanksgiving break-in at my best friend’s condo, I accepted that I could not control the loss surrounding me — James, Gideon, Grandma, a portion of my colon, Aunt Eleanor, Jaylynne, the TV industry, my menstrual cycle, a friend’s prized possessions and sense of security — but I could control how I was going to react to it and take back some control over my own life. Shawna and I will always write together, but I needed a project of my own. Me.
That’s when I dove headfirst into getting certified for Project Management, took the BarSmarts bartending certification, started GLP-1 for loads of health reasons, and decided to book a trip to Tokyo in 2026. OK, so for me, deciding to take control doesn’t mean half measures. But we’re not in the “Go big or go home” phase, rather, I’m in a “Go big from the comfort of my own home” phase… But as I settled into my parents place in San Diego this week for Christmas, confident I had seen the worst the year had to offer (Rob Reiner RIP), I heard the shocking news that David Adam Williams (aka Adam the Woo) suddenly passed away at age 51.
Who’s the Woo?
Adam the Woo wasn’t a family member, not even a friend, but a social media celebrity who got me through one of the toughest years of my life via his YouTube channel the Daily Woo.
I stumbled upon his channel during my Disneyland research phase for the pilot Shawna and I were working on and although we completed our project, I saw that Adam’s was ongoing. He vlogged every day. Every morning I could expect to wake up to one of his amusing adventures, his piping hot caffeinated beverage, and his unflappable positivity. He was decorated in tattoos, seeped in straight-edge punk rock, and awash in childlike wonder. In fact, I’d hold his frequent trips to Disney World, horror conventions, international travels, and grocery runs to his local Publix to any streaming binge, any day.
Maybe you never heard of him or you saw his newsworthy obituaries and wondered why a YouTuber was notable at all. Well, if we’re just looking at numbers, 762 thousand subscribers, 4.2 thousand videos, a wage worthy of quitting his day job, and countless online tributes all week indicates he meant something to someone. I’ve cried a few times this week at the loss of a man I never met in real life (but really hoped to someday) who put his life up for all to see and share in a way that went beyond a parasocial relationship. We fans feel like we knew him, because, as his friends continually repeat, we did. Adam was the epitome of acceptance every day where even when inconvenienced or angry could only chuckle and mutter, “It’s all part of the experience” in annoyance. What a blessing to have that kind of outlook on life.
Acceptance
Most of us don’t have our lives documented for posterity like Adam did, but maybe that’s what this Writing and Whatnot blog will become for me. It’s already having that effect as per the above, very personal, very emotional retelling of my year to you. As writers, we get the unfair advantage of using our writing as an outlet. It’s therapy for us but we’re always aware and hopeful that it might help others in return. My therapist pinpointed my lack of acceptance as a roadblock, but now that I’ve reached it, I see it as a pothole we keep driving over, unaware of the damage it’s doing to our tires… I’m losing the metaphor here but essentially, we wear ourselves out trying to avoid it.
Every day is a fresh start to try again. And again. Write some more. Daydream a bit. And live… a lot. I know that my year has been worse than many, but a cake walk compared to some. But we should continue to let love into our lives because without all those friends, family members, pets, or parasocial relationships, we live a life without experience. I’m not going to go into 2026 with resistance, but with acceptance that there will be even more challenges I can’t control. Acceptance isn’t apathy or a laissez faire way of living life, it’s the final stage of grief. It’s allowing yourself to feel happiness when much around you is sad. And by the amount of sadness 2025 has wrought, we ought to be beaming with joy in 2026. All the loss, all the frustration, all the grief… it’s all part of this experience we call life.
