In this inspiring episode of Widowhood Real Talk with Dr. Tina, Dr. Tina welcomes Chanoa Inez, author of Dream On: How to Create the New Life of Your Dreams After Upheaval or Loss. Chanoa shares her remarkable journey after the sudden loss of her partner while traveling abroad and the long road of healing that followed. Together, they discuss what it takes to move beyond survival mode, rediscover hope, and intentionally create a meaningful life after devastating loss.

Whether you’re newly widowed or years into your grief journey, this conversation offers practical strategies, heartfelt encouragement, and the reminder that while grief changes your life forever, it doesn’t have to end your dreams. If you’ve been wondering whether joy, purpose, and hope are still possible, this episode is for you.

I am sharing my experience of loving the same man for 32 years, a mother to two adult children, a retired military officer, a breast cancer survivor, and my connections with others. 

Anyone experiencing suicidal thoughts should reach out to a suicide hotline or local emergency number in their country: Psychology Today Suicide Hotlines and Prevention Resources Around the World.

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Watch the episode here

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How To Dream Again After Losing Your Spouse: Finding Hope, Healing & Purpose With Chanoa Inez

Our conversation with Chanoa Inez is going to be something you will remember for quite a while. Chanoa talks about being stuck in a cloud of grief and feeling like she can never get herself out of it. There was the moment where she realized she deserved more, and she realized she could and deserved and had the capacity to dream on. Let’s get into this conversation now.

Chanoa, welcome to the Widowhood.

Thank you, Dr. Tina.

When you hear Welcome to The Widowhood, what do you think?

Rethinking the Definition of Widowhood

To Widowhood, even though technically a part of it, I’ve never used that word. I guess first because I was not married, but second because I always think of it more like someone who’s maybe in the last chapter in their life, or they feel like they’re the last chapter of their lives, and they decided I’m never going to try. I’m never going to grow for love again. That was it. Now I will be alone forever.

That is never something I’ve heard in the context of this show, but there are a lot of people that feel like that in widowhood. That word makes you feel like I’m done. I do not have anything to hope for. That life has completed itself. That’s because widowhood is often connected to someone older, someone who is way past in their life and has done all the different things, but yet they’re not done. It’s never. People do not feel like it’s connected to someone younger. Now you mentioned you’re part of it, but not part of it. Can you elaborate on that a little bit more?

I would say because, when my boyfriend passed away, we had plans to get married. He even wanted to start having children shortly before he passed away. I delayed it because I said, “We’re moving to another country.” Obviously I had some guilt about that, as you can imagine. It would not have, it was not supposed to be that way. We were not married. Everyone considered us like, that’s it. I was the stepmother basically to his son, and we lived together. I would say technically, I think they usually reserve it for people who are married.

Do you think that’s unfair considering the level of commitment that you had and how invested you were, and people are not seeing what you’ve lost for what you have because of a term?

Yes, thankfully, like family and friends, nobody looked at it that way. They knew how we were. They were inseparable, and everyone knew our commitment to each other. It was complicated, in some ways, like, for example, we pulled our funds and moved to a foreign country, and he passed away within 24 hours. We were not married. I had no access to the funds. Thankfully, I had friends who helped me out.

Protecting Assets in Unmarried Relationships

Eventually, his family was able to get that money out. It was just able to be like, let that be for his son. Those are the kinds of things you do not think about. You’re like young people, and you’re like, “We’re moving and we need a foreign bank account,” and all these things. There are so many technical ways, like even if somebody ends up in a hospital and they have not passed away, where if you’re not married, then it’s very difficult because technically that paperwork, they’re going to see things differently and you’ll lose access to certain privileges, I’d say.

I did not think about this when we had our pre-episode conversation, but hearing you talk about it now, what advice would you give to someone who’s in between? We’re married, and we’re in this committed relationship that would be a good safeguard for them and their partner.

It really depends on the nuances of what they need to protect. I would definitely say some paperwork, for example, us deciding, “Let’s put our money together and put it in this account. My name should have been on the account. There should have been some there.” We’re just thinking. We’re young, of course. We’re waking up tomorrow, and everything’s fine. There’s nothing to do there. Just that, like, see what nuances you have together. You live together, and one of you owns the house? If something happened, would you want the other person to have that house? This is paperwork that needs to be taken care of because you’re completely shut out if anything happens, regardless of family’s efforts.

Thank you for that. That is going to ring true to people because people that are tuning in to this conversation they may have not decided to get remarried, but they may have recoupled. There may be some legal documentation that may be leaving them vulnerable if something happened, and just not thinking of that’ll be later instead of just when life happens. Who was Chanoa before living in Montgomery, before meeting your fiancé? What were the things that you dreamed about, and how did you see life for you?

Before meeting him. That’s funny. I was not in a great spot. I was like, “I’m not dating anymore. It was like a very classic scenario where somebody’s making the choosing incorrectly and then just getting burnt out on dating. That’s where I was.

I’m sorry to say, Montgomery, my apologies. It should have been Montego, correctly. I pronounced that wrong. My apologies.

What was I like, though? I was very social, outgoing. I lived in South Beach, and I moved there when I was like nineteen. I worked in nightlife. I had a million friends, and it’s like a village. Now it’s a lot different, but it’s only 23 blocks. It’s like, if it would rain and you’d go to the grocery store, you’d see like 50 people. It’s really funny. It was a nice place to live at that age. I always wanted to leave Miami. My family moved there from Westchester County, New York when I was nine, and I never actually wanted to stay in Florida. I was like, “This is for vacation.” I did not know where I wanted to go, but I knew I was going to leave eventually.

I noticed the artwork behind you, I think, during our pre-episode, but I cannot help but notice. Just tell us about that.

I just gave you another.

No, it was perfectly fine. No, it’s good.

It was very interesting because as much as I love to tell people and I like to practice this, I just think I had a blind spot. I like to tell people, like, whatever you desire for your future, live it now. I had a blind spot. I would always live like, and whatever apartment I’m renting, and say it was very, very simple decor, because I was always thinking, “When I have my house,” but then you’re supposed to treat your apartment like your house. My friend’s grandmother is a master Feng Shui consultant. He gifted me a consultation with her. It was great.

I went through the whole thing with her, and she’s like, “You have to put more life in this place.” One of the things I needed was that she just gave me the dimensions for the painting on this wall. Not what it would represent. She said, “Look for something you love.” I could not find anything I liked for a long time. I found this synchronistically. As soon as I saw it, I was like, “This is perfect.” It was on an art gallerist website. It had nothing to do with home decor. Amazingly, the entire description for this painting described the Feng Shui behind it, the meanings behind it. They were all aligned with my intentions for my Feng Shui consultation.

How has your space been impacted by having that there?

It’s just so much life. This blooming energy. A lot of feminine energy, and I do not know, it’s a very warm and powerful piece.

I get all of that, and it is just the way it is behind the very solid background. It seems like it explodes even more.

Yes.

Thank you. When your partner passed unexpectedly, what was going on inside of you that no one else saw going on?

It was really dark. I was so happy in that relationship, and I knew so little about personal development and personal transformation that I did not really notice. Because I was not feeling stressed, I did not notice all the stuff I still had that I was carrying for a long time. Before I got into all the things later on, meditation, things like that, when something difficult happened in my life since I was a child, I would basically be storing that.

There could be effects I’d have in, like, a thought process or my emotional response to something that would show that I never let go of so many things. I was never taught that, and I was young, and you just keep going forward. I did not realize until a while, a little bit after the early days of grief, that my identity was so wrapped up in the relationship. We were very happy together. Nobody was like, manipulated or controlling.

We somehow became like, we used to say one plus one equals three. Sometimes I was like, actually, it was like one person because when he passed away, I literally felt like part of me was gone. That was obvious to people. Something that they did not know was like, “I went so numb for a long time.” That was the scariest part, I think, of the grief for me because there are a lot of things that would scare me.

I realized after a while I was like, “Nothing scares me.” That scared me because I was like, “That’s an extreme emotional response.” When I started having fears again, strangely, I was very happy about that because I felt like I was coming out of it, but I was just like, I just did not care. It was a deep heartbreak.

I know it’s not easy to talk about it always. I know for me sometimes it’s something I can just roll off my lips. Sometimes it’s like, “I need a tissue. Wait a second. I’m like right back in that spot.” I’m grateful for you being willing to have this conversation because I do not think people realize that when we are in relationships, sometimes we may not be married, but that level of pain, that severed relationship, the trying to find who you are as an identity, those are things that are common in profound grief when someone we love passes.

They may not be married, but the honoring of what has happened because they are no longer in this world is important. It should not be short-sighted for someone because they had not reached marriage in the relationship. The commitment, the binding of hearts existed. That is what the grief comes from.

Recognizing the Unseen Layers of Loss

The binding of hearts. That’s lovely. I also feel like, number one, the greatest pain was that he was gone. Later on, I realized I was grieving many things. I was grieving being a stepmother to his son. I was grieving for the child or children we were going to have. I was grieving our life together and the new life that we imagined for ourselves. I realized there are just so many more layers to the grief in addition to losing the person.

It is, and you mentioned something. The things that never were able to take place, the dreams, expectations unfulfilled, those can come on you the moment they pass. Three years later, when you find yourself somewhere and go, “I thought this would have looked like this, and it looks different.” Have you had any instance since your partner passing going forward that it’s like, “That’s grief showing up in my life.”

Breaking Free From Physical Stress and Grief

Yes. I always thought whenever I felt stressed, it was whatever was happening at hand, but it took me many years to release so much unresolved grief I had from his passing, and I did not realize it. A few years after he passed away, I started having a series of health issues out of nowhere. I was very healthy before then, food allergies, food sensitivity, all kinds of things. Everything was weird, although I say I am grateful now. Weirdly, things that you cannot just go to a doctor and they can just give you something and like, that’s it.

It’s because I was carrying so much pain. I was carrying so much pain, and I did not realize I was creating it. After a while, I realized it must be stress-related, but I did not realize it was that until many years later. I fast-forward to that, like when I realized I had the self-love piece missing. Later, thankfully, in response to those health issues, I say I’m grateful because they led me to meditation and all these different modalities because I was like, “I have to figure this out, and nobody can help me.” That’s why I’m really grateful for that.

Shifting Out of a Victim Mindset

I meditated for a decade and did yoga and went to the Amazon plant medicine retreat, whatever you want. Everything just felt like it was keeping me in survival mode. If I had not done those things, I do not know what would have happened to my body. Thankfully, I was missing the US when I came back. I moved to LA, and just the change of environment already shook me up. I started noticing that I actually had a victim mindset. I was surrounded by people who were reinforcing that. I surrounded myself with people who had helped me feel like a victim because they were victimized.

I realized I chose it all. That was eye-opening for me. I realized I had that mindset from before I passed away, but then not solidified it because it was like, “What a why-me situation, why us. I realized the self-love piece. I always thought, “Of course, I love myself, see my meditations, fine.” I realized, “That’s an action.” If you choose one of my best friends at the time back then and a person I was in a romantic relationship with, both of those people I spent the most time with, the way the dynamics were, it’s like, “I’m not a victim.”

I chose these people, and I’m saying that I love myself. I decided to surround myself with people who will help me basically destroy my confidence and have this situation. That was really eye-opening for me. That happened in a period of time where I was just feeling fantastic because I started going deeper in meditation. Four hours a day, I was just like, “I have to figure this out. I’m just so tired of this.”

I was going so strong into this self-awareness process and seeing all these patterns and things I could not see before. I got home one day, and I was like, “I just stepped out of the cloud of grief.” I kept attributing all that stress to what was happening at hand, but I was carrying a cloud of grief that whole time. I’ve heard that this can happen to a lot of people who lose a loved one. It’s like they end up growing these relationships that it does not make any sense.

It’s like you’re in this fantastic relationship. Now I do not know what you’re doing. I just could not see it. My next thought was just like, “I have to write a book because nobody has to be stuck in limbo for so long.” I could not believe how long I could not see it. I was there like trying to fix basically the symptoms, the day-to-day stress.

Thank you. M Because my next question was going to be, what was that moment where you felt like I cannot live like this anymore? It sounded like it was an evolution of time, one thing on top of the other, and then clarity finally came. Was there an exact moment that you could remember and go, “This is where I remember it. I cannot live like this anymore. I want better for myself”?

I got married a couple of years after he died. I was separated for like a year before I moved to Los Angeles and got divorced. There was already an end of a chapter there. I was not attributing anything like this to the grief. When I came here, I realized no matter how much inner work I’m doing, I’m making these 3D terrible decisions that are not serving me. I was just so fed up with it. I was like, “No, I know too much. I’ve read too much. I’ve done too much introspection to have these blind spots and to operate like this. Life does not have to be like this.”

That’s really when it started going like that. I had this strange sensation. It was like, “I need to figure this out now.” It was a very strange pressure I felt, and I do not know if that’s, health would have deteriorated. I do not know what, but it felt like an alarm, like figuring it out. I do not care how many hours of meditation a day it takes you to figure it out, but just do it. My health turned down completely. I have perfect health.

I have just one of the food allergy, which is one of the very notoriously strong ones, but it’s still there, and I can still have, sometimes, one or two pieces and nothing happens. I know that one will go away too. It’s just amazing. A five-year bout of chronic tendonitis my body had, I stopped trying to treat it, and it went away with meditation. It came back. It went away right, like in an instant, and meditation came back over a series of days, and then I started realizing like I need to just stop stressing.

It’s going to go away was my proof. It’s going to go away. It eventually went away. It was like some starts and stops. It would get worse and then. It’s completely gone. Now I practice. I started taking ballet classes. I can do yoga again. It’s really amazing and just empowering to see that we can create so many hurdles for ourselves and not realize that we’re doing it.

You mentioned feeling like you had to write a book. Was writing a book something you’d always thought about, or was this an evolution from this experience in life?

I’ve always thought about it because I am a writer. I’ve been a lifelong writer, but not an author.

You wrote about dreams too, no less after being in a dark space, dreaming about how to create the new life of your dreams after upheaval and loss, coming out of that cloud. What I hear is you have to be an active participant in doing things, just hoping and wishing, or just letting things go on. It’s that action that makes a difference.

It is. For someone who does as much energy work as I do, meditation, everything. I stress to everyone, if you’re not changing anything in your daily actions, I mean, you’re just going to have fantastic meditations and fantastic whatever-have-you modalities. You’ll be miserable outside of those sessions. I changed so much, and I really recommend that everybody do that. It’s not always butterflies and sunshine. It’s part of personal transformation. When I go from how I was living in my late twenties, I look at pictures of myself, and I say, “I look like a hostage of my own life.” It was just like, “I look so much younger now.”

How old are you now since you’re going to mention all those ages?

Forty-one.

Becoming Your Own Biggest Cheerleader

Nice. I have three sections of your book. I’d like to read them and then for you to tell us what that means now to you. This is page 43. “Why do you think you deserve to live that way? Now think about your closest friends and family. What if you offered yourself the same kindness, love, and encouragement that you offer them? What if you became your own biggest cheerleader? If you were your own greatest supporter, how unstoppable you would be.”

What does that mean to me now on a personal level or generally?

Both.

I’m my biggest cheerleader now, and I really recommend everyone do it because we’ve been conditioned many ways in our society to really be there for others and really be a ride or die for everyone else. For ourselves, it’s okay to chronically give ourselves a hard time about not being enough or why didn’t I do this long enough? Why did it take me so long to get out of the hardest days of grief?

All these things, we can just load ourselves up with that. The first relationship, the most important relationship in all of our lives, is going to be with ourselves. The better that relationship is, the better relationships can be with other people too. I just really realized how important that is because you have a constant stream of thoughts and feelings. If you do not work through that first filter, what are me and me discussing?

I’m not dealing with the head chatter. That is a good foundation.

It is. I would just say also, societally, I love that we really are honoring, in society, everyone wants to think like, “Take care of our children.” That’s very important. It’s like, as soon as a child turns eighteen, we’re like, “Let them deal with that.” We need to remember that we are also that child inside, and we do not lose our value when we become adults. Many of us the things that we go through things as adults that might be stressful or burdensome to others to have to, if they see that energy, like, “This person,” that’s not who they are. It’s things that they’ve collected over the years. Those are the results of their responses to different things. Anything can be reversed, right? People can come back from that. I think we can give a lot more grace to adults.

When you were sharing that my daughter was in her 30s, we had a big disagreement about something. As we were working through it, she said, “Mom, you’re just a girl living life and being here for the first time too, and trying to get this right.” I was like, “She’s right,” but I was like, “Do I need to put that on a magnet? I’m not sure what we’re doing,” but I never looked at it like I’m the mother. She goes, “You’re just a girl trying to get it right too,” and I was like, “Are we friends now? I’m not sure.” As I hear you saying that too, it’s true.

We are trying to do our best, but it comes from still trying to figure it out too. I want to read another section. “How to make it happen. Let your environment give you a nudge. The Open-Focus Brain offers original exercises and one jaw-dropping case study after the next. Whether you use the book’s formal exercises or simply broaden your awareness on your own, you can shift your focus on a moment’s notice to immediately feel its effect. To be clear, narrow focus is a gift, but most of us spend far too much time inside the tense mode of myopic vision. That’s when stress, burnout, and skewed perceptions come in.”

I love open focus exercises. Basically, the narrow focus, like if you were working on the computer right now, Dr. Tina, and you’re like laser-focused, or you’re studying with the book, that’s fantastic. Many of us, we just stay in that focus state of tension all the time. It’s like driving with the foot on the brakes. If anything happens, then your system gets overloaded because you’re already gripping for no reason. The open focus. I like to describe an easy way to think of this is if you can see us on the screen right now, but you can also now see the sides of your room, but you’re still looking straight ahead.

That relaxation effect. You can feel that relaxation is not just a vision. It’s an opening of all of your energy. It’s great. I think of it also like, if you’re in New York City, I love New York City, but if you’re in some parts where the buildings are so tall, you do not really have that visual effect. You’re locked in. If you go to, I do not know where, there’s like a ferry, then everything just broadens up like that relaxation, that effect. It’s interesting because also, I think just spending so much time on computers and cell phones, it’s so easy to stay in that locked focus. It’s hard to list all of the benefits to just letting it all go.

My last, still under how to make it happen. “Use these intuition-boosting tips. Start heeding the signs. Take action that aligns with how you really feel. How many times have you regretted a decision only to later realize that your initial sense, your gut feeling, was spot on?”

I just had this conversation with a friend two days ago. He was trying to explain away red flags with a potential business partner.

We would ignore the red flag.

My answer is simple. I said, “There’s not been a single time that I had a certain first impression of somebody and went against it, and it turned out okay.” Sometimes that was many years later, but then it was always that moment where like, “I knew that, I knew it. This is where I went.” I was like, “I’ll just leave you with that. You can make your decision.”

Now your work is focused on helping people dream, helping people to listen, to think. Whether it’s through your book or this conversation, what is it that you’re really wanting them to know?

As difficult as it might be to imagine, you can come back from anything. You can come back.

Do we come back the same, different, improved? What does come back look like?

You’re going to be different. I’ll talk about the loss of a loved one because I’m on your show. Life will be different without that person. That’s something. There’s no way around that. The details of how your life is going to look are going to be very different. That doesn’t mean that you cannot be happy again. Actually, a more recent conclusion I’ve come to is that if somebody loves you so much, it would pain them to see you decide to suffer instead of to live again.

That was a recent realization I had a few months ago. Actually, I had a photo in my dream, which has never happened before. I was thinking, he was probably thinking, “What took you so long? Why would you do that?” No rush, no pressure about how long it takes for you to come back, but just to keep moving towards the future and keeping that openness to imagine that life could be good again. Different, but you deserve to live.

We deserve to live, and we can come out of it. There is a different version of us, but it’s possible. We do not have to stay in that cloud. Tell me about Magnetize Your Personal Brand.

When I finished writing my manuscript, I was thinking about how everyone kept talking about the importance of having a personal brand, but the focus was on the exterior considerations like social media templates and what to wear, etc. While those things carry some weight. The most important part of the personal brand is the person. I came up with a program that combined my lived experience because my business was a side gig when we moved to Montenegro.

I was supposed to be changing it to a full-time business after that summer. I was in the early days of grief and then going to a full-time business. I learned the long, hard way that whatever’s going on on the inside is happening on the outside in your world, no matter how much you work. I worked a lot, and that was one of the ways I tried to kind of tune out the feelings of grief.

It was like everything was a slow uphill climb, and I did not realize it was, like, the shattered confidence and the boundaries that then became a mess, coming up in negotiations, etc. I combined that and then my copywriting, what my business was before, copywriting strategy. I combined the classic elements, the personal branding, messaging and positioning, communication, but it starts with the inner work, developing the business owner from the inside out.

Your relationship is with yourself. However, your relationship is with others. That’s really what’s not just creating the results in your business, but allowing you to connect with and resonate with people who you’re a fit for. You, your message, your business. You’re not showing up as some professional character, or you’re not hiding behind the scenes and hoping the results of your work will be enough, but you’re hiding from being visible, all of those things.

What has surprised you the most in your life experience over the 40 years you’ve been on this planet?

How much power to change? How much is within our control? There’s so much that’s not within our control, but what actually is within our control has the power to change so much. I’m continually surprised by that.

I try to give my guests the opportunity to be the podcast host. Do you have any questions for me?

What would you advise someone who’s in the early days of grief? If the people around them, if they’re giving them a hard time and telling them they’re taking it too hard or they’re taking too long to bounce back, their energy is heavy, etc, how would you advise them to respond either through their actions or actually responding to the people?

That’s loaded. I’m from Chicago. You talk about being from New York, so that may not always be known. One, the person that is grieving, your grief is valid. What may be your road to coming back is going to be different from every other person. It doesn’t look the same. Be kind to yourself. Be gentle with yourself. You are in uncharted territory. All these things are going on in your mind. You may have thought grief was just about being sad. You may have thought grief was about just, they’re not here anymore, and I just need to figure out how to live.

The longer they’re not here, the more you start realizing grief is far beyond sadness. As Chanoa spoke about, it impacts your mental and physical. You may find yourself fatigued. You may find yourself unable to remember, and you’re going, “Am I going crazy? I thought they just died.” This is what grief looks like in our body. The neurological impact of grief literally your prefrontal cortex is not operating in the same way it did before. You may find that your amygdala is now operating, and you’re more in a fight-or-flight mode.

No one’s had these conversations about what grief looked like. You’re only going, “When Grandma was sad, they went by themselves, and then they came back, and they were okay.” No one really walked through how this grief is impacting me on so many levels. Reach out, read books, understand what’s going on with you because knowledge is power. Also, that knowledge can normalize what you’re experiencing because you’re dealing with the death of a loved one, and now you feel like your body, your mind is going crazy. Now that’s double duty.

If you can come to realize, “This is what it looks like. I can deal with this differently.” To the people that are showing up poorly, one day it will be you. If you are so lucky, one day someone you love will stop breathing, and you will look for comfort in people around you, or you will no longer be here, and the people you love will grieve you. That is the nature of the world in which we live. Be nice. It’s not about you at this moment. The person who is grieving is drowning right in front of you. They have chosen to be transparent. They have chosen not to just tell you, “I’m okay, I’m fine.”

They have chosen to let you see their pain and their struggle. You may be uncomfortable because you’ve never been here before. You’re uncomfortable. Be uncomfortable. You may be thinking this should have been over now. You’re not them. You do not know what their loss. You cannot determine that. You may be thinking this is too much. It’s not for them. They need you to hold them. Whether it’s holding a space while they tell you the same story 62 times because they’re still trying to come to terms with this reality. If you care about the person that is grieving, put your feelings aside and just be there for them, and do not make it about you.

Beautiful.

Thank you. Any other questions? No one asked me that.

I do not have it on the top of my head now.

No problem. If someone is tuning in and feels completely stuck and they’ve heard like, “I can come back,” what would you want to tell them if they were sitting across from you? What hope, what truth would you want them to walk away from this conversation with?

Embracing Your Right to Reinvention

I’ll say reinvention is your birthright. That means so much to me for so many different reasons and for so many different scenarios. For somebody who’s like, “How can I come back?” We have this life, and as far as we know, we have this one life, and let’s go beyond that. You deserve to feel better. I know when people are going through a difficult time, they’re not really thinking about themselves. I’ll even say it will energize somebody who’s at a low point.

It’s really your duty to show up in the world and to shine, and whatever part of you is here to shine. I do not mean you have to rush through grief, but I mean, we do not want to see you disappear into a corner. Whatever it is that you bring to this world, if that’s a good listener, if you’re a great parent, if you’re a pillar of your community, whatever it is, we need you to come back. You take your time, but this space is here for you.

Thank you for trusting me with your story. Thank you for trusting everyone tuning in with your story. Thank you for sharing, for people to continue to dream on because grief can be so heavy and you feel like you do not have anything. As you said at the beginning of this conversation, they may feel like their chapter has been written and there’s nothing else to hope for, but dreaming is possible. I know I’ve asked you a lot, and you have been so kind to answer every question. I would like for you to wrap up this conversation with your final thoughts for our audiences.

I’m going to actually throw it towards you. I really love that you have a community, Dr. Tina, and I did not have one. I white-knuckled my way through all those early days of grief. I just cannot recommend enough that people reach out and become part of a trusted community such as yours. At least my response to feeling like I was in a dark place was to disappear and really sit with that grief myself. Even if you’re engaging, even if it’s a digital community and you’re not writing posts, or if you’re in person and you’re not really talking, but if you’re there and you’re listening, that’s very powerful. I would say, do not exclude yourself from those opportunities.

Thank you so much.

Important Links

• Chanoa Inez
• Chanoa Inez on LinkedIn
• Magnetize Your Personal Brand

About Chanoa Inez

Chanoa Inez is the author of Dream On: How to create the new life of your dreams after upheaval or loss. She’s also the creator of MAGNETIZE YOUR PERSONAL BRAND™, a program that combines personal transformation and personal branding to help clients enrich their lives and attract better opportunities.