146: Birthday Bonus: The Hardest Year of My Life and What I Learned From It
The Hardest Year of My Life (And What It Taught Me About Grief, Guilt, and Showing Up Anyway)
Some years rearrange you. Episode 146 is about one of those years for Tara, and it's the most personal episode of the podcast yet.
This one landed on her birthday month, which also happened to be the one-year anniversary of her mom's death. Two things that don't usually share a calendar square, sitting right on top of each other. So instead of skipping past it or saving the hard stuff for a journal entry no one reads, she sat down and talked through it. No script. No polish. Just the truth about what this past year actually felt like, the highest highs and the lowest lows, sometimes inside the same week, sometimes inside the same day.
If you've ever tried to keep showing up for your life while quietly falling apart in the background, this episode (and this post) is for you.
Grief Doesn't Get Lighter, It Gets Heavier
We're told grief fades with time. Tara found the opposite. The further she got from the day her mom died, the heavier it became, not lighter, like everyone promises. That gap between what you're told to expect and what you actually feel can make grief even more isolating, because it starts to feel like you're doing it wrong.
You're not. Grief doesn't run on a schedule, and it definitely doesn't run in a straight line.
The Guilt of a Complicated Love
Loving someone complicated and then losing them creates its own particular weight. Tara describes carrying guilt and shame like a jacket she couldn't take off, the kind that comes from grieving a relationship that wasn't simple, on top of grieving the person.
And here's the part that might surprise you: forgiving her mom wasn't the hard part. Forgiving herself was. That's often how it goes, we extend grace to everyone except ourselves, and healing usually has to start with turning that grace inward first.
A Sunset Walk Changed Everything
Healing doesn't always announce itself with a big moment. Sometimes it's a regular walk, at the end of a regular day, that quietly reorganizes everything. That's what happened to Tara, a sunset walk where, for the first time in a year, things finally started to make sense. Not in a tidy, wrapped-up-with-a-bow way, but in a way that lets her finally understand why she does what she does.
It's a good reminder that the breakthrough isn't usually in the big gesture. It's in the ordinary moment you almost didn't pay attention to.
Refusing to Dim Your Shine, Even When Life Is Hard
One of the most powerful threads in this episode is Tara's refusal to shrink herself just because life got heavy. Hard things and good things aren't mutually exclusive, you're allowed to have a genuinely difficult season and still take up space, still shine, still want things for yourself.
That's why she's celebrating her wins from this past year out loud, instead of quietly tucking them away out of guilt. Because, as she puts it, her mom would have wanted exactly that.
If you're someone who downplays your progress when other parts of life are messy, a body recomposition, a new PR, a habit you finally stuck with, this is your permission slip to say it loud anyway.
Five Hard-Earned Lessons From 36
Turning the page from 36 to 37 came with a list of lessons Tara didn't ask for but needed anyway. She talks through what she's learned the hard way this past year, what she's intentionally leaving behind at 37, and what she's finally ready to let in. None of it is the kind of advice you'd find in a quote graphic, it's the kind that only comes from actually living through something brutal and coming out the other side still standing, still showing up, still her.
That's the throughline of this whole episode, really: you don't have to wait until you've "figured it out" to keep moving forward. You can be in the messy middle and still be making progress.
Why This Episode Matters Beyond Grief
You don't need to be navigating the loss of a parent for this episode to hit home. The bigger lesson applies to anything heavy you're carrying while still trying to build a life, a body, a routine, a business: you're allowed to feel all of it and still keep going. Strength isn't the absence of hard seasons, it's continuing to show up inside them.
That mindset is exactly what we build on inside BroadsCOACH, because consistency was never meant to require perfect circumstances. If you're working on fueling your body through a hard season rather than against it, Broads' free Macronutrient Guide: The Balanced Plate Blueprint is a steady, simple place to start.
Let's Talk About It
Grief, guilt, complicated love, quietly carrying more than people realize, these aren't easy things to talk about, but pretending they don't exist doesn't make them lighter either.
What's one thing you're carrying right now that you've been afraid to say out loud?
