From Plane Crash to Widowhood
As a plane crash widow, Jenny Brandemuehl offers a deeply moving exploration of resilience following the devastating accident that forever changed her life. Drawing from her memoir, Forever Fly Free: One Woman’s Story of Resilience and the Power of Hope and Love, Jenny opens up about the grueling journey of caregiving, the heartbreak of loss, and the long road of grief and healing. This conversation explores how staying present in life’s darkest moments can provide an anchor of purpose, why true hope is found in possibility rather than certainty, and how healing unfolds through the power of vulnerability and community. Ultimately, Jenny reminds us that we don’t heal to forget, but to live—rediscovering meaning, connection, and even joy along the way.
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL HEAR ABOUT THINGS LIKE:
- How Jenny navigated unimaginable tragedy and became a source of strength, hope, and advocacy.
- What it means to stay present in the face of overwhelming grief—and how taking life moment by moment can anchor you in purpose.
- Why hope is not about certainty, but about holding belief in possibilities during life’s darkest chapters.
- How unprocessed grief and suppressed emotions can impact the body and nervous system.
- The power of vulnerability, community, and allowing others to support you through trauma and loss.
- Jenny’s journey of rebuilding her identity after losing her husband of 31 years.
- How practices like journaling, somatic healing, and heart-centered meditation can support emotional healing.
- Why healing is not about “getting over” loss—but learning to live fully with love and grief side by side.
- The importance of micro moments of joy and how they help restore meaning, connection, and resilience.
SOME QUESTIONS IRENE ASKS JENNY:
- Could you tell us all about Mark, your 31-year marriage, that plane crash, and what those first few days taught you about love, presence, and purpose?
- What helped you remain steady amid all this chaos and uncertainty?
- Did you start navigating questions like, “Who am I without my soulmate? What am I going to do?”
- How did you start practicing compassion for yourself to rebuild your identity and rediscover yourself?
- By learning to give up control, what guidance did you receive to help you navigate your life?
- What are some of the powerful signs and messages you received during Heart-Coherent Meditation?
- How did your trauma journey trigger you to learn more about your family history to help you heal intergenerational trauma?
- How can we learn to trust our inner compass to guide us through both the calm and stormy seasons of life?
- How is healing not about getting over grief, but about learning to live fully with it and allowing it to transform you rather than define you?
💛 Don’t miss Forever Fly Free by Jenny Brandemuehl — a powerful memoir on caregiving through catastrophic burn trauma, navigating grief, and rebuilding life after the loss of a spouse.
Jenny donates proceeds from her book sales to the Phoenix Society for Burn Survivors to support burn survivors and their recovery journey.
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From Plane Crash to Widowhood
I hope this message finds each of you so very well. I’m speaking to you from my studio in West Orange, New Jersey. I could not be more delighted to welcome Jenny Brandemuehl, who is joining me from Mountain View, California. Jenny is the author of the national bestseller, Forever Fly Free: One Woman’s Story of Resilience and the Power of Hope and Love. It’s her gripping memoir that chronicles her extraordinary journey through unimaginable tragedy after a devastating plane crash left her husband Mark with burns over 80% of his body.
Jenny’s unwavering devotion, courage, and the profound love they shared became the force that carried them both through the darkest of days. Jenny, who was a respected executive in the tech and fashion industries, suddenly found herself stepping into the roles of caregiver, medical advocate, and emotional anchor as Mark fought through months of surgeries, setbacks, and triumphs.
She stood by him through every moment of that battle. After his passing in October 2019, she faced the profound challenge of rebuilding a life shaped by grief, healing, and rediscovery. Jenny is a dedicated advocate for burn survivors. She donates proceeds from her book to the Phoenix Society for Burn Survivors and speaks widely on mental health, trauma, and the quiet power of intuition.
She is also a passionate advocate for the empowerment of women leaders, having served on the Board of Directors for Women’s Initiative for Self-Employment in Oakland, California, and Wesley College’s Business Leadership Council. I’m looking forward to talking with Jenny, who by the way is a delight about how Mark’s accident reshaped her understanding of love, presence, and purpose.
Also, how grounding ourselves in purpose can steady us in the face of overwhelming grief, what unprocessed grief can do to us, and how she rebuilt her identity after her profound loss. This promises to be a deeply moving conversation, one that will remind us that even in our darkest chapters, an inner compass can still guide us both through calm waters and the fiercest of storms.
Jenny, a truly warm, heartfelt welcome.
Thank you so much, Irene. It feels so good to be here with you.
Not only are we going to have a great conversation. Your story is amazing. A lot of people are going to learn a lot from what we have to share. Let’s start from the beginning, in a way. Could you tell us all about Mark, your 31-year marriage, that plane crash, and what those first few days taught you about love, presence, and purpose? What a tragedy.
The Miraculous Rescue: A Hero on the Two-Lane Road
Mark and I had a near-perfect life together. I was on a happy autopilot. We were about to retire. We both had given notice in our jobs. That June of 2019, Mark said, “I’m going to Scottsdale. I’m going to the Mayo Clinic to get a one-day executive health checkup. I want to know if I have a clean bill of health before I retire.” He decided to fly his private plane to Scottsdale.
The day before, he called me and said, “Everything’s great. My heart health is great.” He got on the flight the next day. Seven minutes after takeoff, they declared an emergency in a rough-running engine. He tried to emergency land on a two-lane road, but there were three drivers. Since they were in the way, and he didn’t want to hit them, he swerved right, but then it caused his plane to lose balance.
Two light poles caught on fire. It flipped upside down and hit a concrete barrier. He landed face down in a burning plane. The amazing thing was that a good Samaritan named Thomas Honeycutt happened to be driving by that day. He saw what was happening, got out of the car, and said to himself, angry, “All these people are filming. If somebody doesn’t go out and rescue the pilot, he’s going to die.” In that moment, he went running out.
He told me later, “I was thinking to myself, Jenny. If your husband’s seatbelt was still on him, I wouldn’t be able to rescue him. I got up to the cockpit window. I saw him. He was on fire. The plane was on fire.” He saw his seatbelt melt off Mark’s body right in that moment. By the way, later I heard from another eyewitness, another woman who was there before Thomas. She said, “I was so frantic. I didn’t know what to do. I heard him yelling for help. I started praying for him.”
When we pieced it all together, the timing was that she was praying the same time Thomas got to the cockpit. His seatbelt melted off. He pulled him out on one try, got some help, and carried him to safety across the road, then the plane exploded. Thomas was later awarded the Carnegie Hero Award. They only give that to four people a quarter in this country who put their own lives at risk to rescue someone else. He’s a true hero and a part of my family now. Through all of that, it was a miraculous rescue. He was considered a hero because he put his own life at risk to not hit the three drivers that were coming down the road.
Anchored in Hope: Lessons from the Arizona Burn Center
I know you talk about it in the book, about everything that hit you, what you had to do, and all. What helped you remain steady amid all this chaos and uncertainty? Which anchored you in purpose as you faced this overwhelming grief.
What happened was a shock. My life changed in an instant. Everything was going so well. He came out of this with 80% of his body third-degree burned. Burn is the worst human physical trauma a person can go through. We spent five months at the Arizona Burn Center. I moved to Phoenix and rented an Airbnb. During that time, Irene, back to your question. I took it a day at a time, a moment at a time. I had to. I think of the Eckhart Tolle quote, “Don’t dwell on the past. Don’t overthink the future.”
It was the first time I was challenged to understand what that meant. I would drive myself crazy if I tried to think about the future too much. It was an emotional rollercoaster for five months. He went through leg amputations, finger amputations, sepsis, and a fungal infection that he nearly died from. We thought he might die in the first two weeks. Miracle after miracle happened. The other piece of this was not only just living in the moment and taking it a step at a time, but it’s also having hope.
One of the things that I’ve learned and carried forward in my life is that I believe hope and love are both incredibly powerful. For me, the doctors at the burn center modeled hope, which is that they never said never, and they never said always. They always said, “Here’s the scenario. He’s got a fungal infection. Here are the three options and scenarios.” My definition of hope is it is not about expectation, but it’s about holding a belief in possibilities. We can talk about this later. When I went through my own grief journey, I always had hope that my life would be good again.
That’s beautiful. You are always so powerful and strong in your career and everything. This must have been a whole new learning to allow yourself to receive help and cultivate that healing power of love and community to create the scaffolding you needed to survive this huge loss. Am I right about that? Was that a big adjustment for you?
The Portal of Love: Finding Strength in Vulnerability
It’s interesting, Irene. On the one hand, I was a leader my whole career. I took charge. I met with the doctors. I stayed on top of facts. I said, “Mark needs me. I represent him. I’ve got to do a good job. I can’t let him down.” He is in a medically induced coma. At the same time, I’d been a private person when I had tough times in my life. Here I was in Phoenix, away from California and my whole network of support. I started posting on one of these caregiver online communities to friends and family.
What started as medical updates every day turned into me pouring my heart out, talking about how Mark and I met, and how much we loved each other. All the things I hoped that we could get back to. He loved to cook. We loved to travel. He was a double black diamond skier. I talked about all of this. All of a sudden, my son, who was the administrator, says, “Mom, do you know that there are over 500 people following your posts every day?”
Later, after I came home to California, people told me they’d been forwarding my posts to their faith communities, their synagogues, and their churches. We had thousands of people following my posts and praying for us. I felt that love. It opened up a portal of love that I never expected. I’m a very self-sufficient person. Mark and I were both the oldest born kids in our family. We didn’t know how to ask for help. We helped everybody else.
This was humbling and also awe-inspiring in terms of how much people reached out to me and gave me support. One of the things I always say now is be vulnerable. Allow yourself to feel the full cycle of emotions without judgment, because when you can open up and show who you are and what you’re struggling with. It invites other people to help. Otherwise, you shut them out. There’s more to that whole topic, but that was my first inkling.
Allow yourself to feel the full cycle of emotions without judgment, When you can open up and show who you are and what you’re struggling with, it invites other people to help. Share on X
I found that it was generative. For example, Mark went to Stanford Business School. His classmates rallied. They started having conversations within their own community about health scares, people in their family who’d passed away, and what was the meaning of life. You don’t expect that of a bunch of Stanford MBAs. They’re CEOs and CFOs. They can talk more about where to find a business development consultant and how to raise money. I was pleasantly surprised by how they came through for us.
You’re reminding me of the first message I got two months before our accident. A voice came into my head and said, “Saul has to go. Many lessons will be learned from his death.” We have so many similarities because this is very similar. The whole class of Stanford was learning lessons from this. It was opening their hearts. It was changing things.
Most of us concentrate on the minutiae of what’s going on, especially when we’re under this cloud. We don’t see the bigger picture but there is a bigger picture. You contributed to it, we contributed to it, and all of that. Another question I want to ask you. She was not thriving all the time, did you start navigating questions like, “Who am I without my soulmate? What am I going to do?” How did you start practicing compassion for yourself to rebuild your identity and rediscover yourself? You were going through so much.
Rebuilding Identity: Who Am I Without My Soulmate?
Irene, it’s interesting. During my five months at the burn center, I never gave up hope. Hope is so powerful. It propelled me forward to always think about, “He’s lost his legs. He’s lost partial fingers.” I was always thinking about, “He was such a lover of life.” I had the hope that he would learn adaptive skiing. I was always busy trying to talk to the nurses about, “What do you think he could do? What can he not do? What can he do? What can I do?” I was proactive about that. It was only after he died suddenly. In my story, this is what I talk about in the book.
After five months, he suddenly caught a hospital infection that was resistant to antibiotics. He was gone in 24 hours. It was a huge shock. Our whole family, our friends, and everyone thought he was going to make it. I had to face the question you brought up which was, “Who am I without my soulmate of 31 years? Who am I?” We raised our children together. We had what I’d call a startup marriage, as opposed to a merger marriage. We met early in our first jobs out of college. We molded each other through life. He was the person I spent the most time with in my life, together closely. That was when I had to face that question.
You have to face it, and all of this is going on. You also talk about how it’s important not to repress your negative emotions when you’re going through something like that. With these two questions, I want to zoom in on. You went through so much. You’re busy dealing with all of this. You had what you call the sunrise moment, which provided you with this emotional shift that helped you. Could you share that with us? Here you’re going through all this heavy stuff. You must’ve felt you’ll never be free from it.
We talked about this earlier, Irene. I realized I still had the capacity to see beauty in the world and to find the small joys. That started at the burn center. Arizona is a very different place from California, but I began to see the beauty in the desert mountains when I was driving by. I try to go for hikes. I tried to get out. I found those moments along the way, wherever I could find them. It helped me.
It continued to carry me forward after Mark died. He died at the end of October 2019. COVID hit in February of 2020. All of a sudden, I’m in my grief journey, isolated. My oldest son was living with me at the time, looking for a job. We had all those restrictions. The silver lining of that time was that I was forced to face my emotions. My tendency is to run away. “I’m going to go to Europe. I’m going to travel. I’m going to go see family.” Anything but stay at home. I was stuck at home.
I knew that I had to face the good, the bad, and the ugly. That’s what I say a lot to people who are going through grief. Don’t hold back. Let me tell you. There was this amazing documentary I saw during that time of a Polynesian country where a young man had just died. There must have been hundreds of people who took to the streets to memorialize him. These young men, who were friends of his in the community, were shouting. They were crying. You could feel the energy. I thought, “We don’t know how to deal with grief in this country, in most of the Western world.”
Face the good, the bad, and the ugly. Don’t hold back. Share on X
This is one of the reasons for this show because people do not deal with their feelings. They have a tendency to bury them.
People don’t know what to do with you. Part of this is when you’re that raw and honest about your feelings, which I was. I highly encourage people to go there because it helps your healing process faster. Some people are uncomfortable with that. As I transformed and changed, Martha Beck has this great analogy about the friends in life. Friends and family in life are your personal elevator.
There are times in your life when you’re going through such a big change that some people are going to choose to get off your personal elevator. That’s okay because it makes room for new friends to step in. At some point, those friends and family who stopped off may come back into the elevator at a future point. That happened for me as well.
Your relationships change. I experienced that also. I have this favorite expression that I picked up somewhere. “Some people are for a reason, some for a season, and some for a lifetime.”
I love that.
You had friends, as I did, who were there for that reason in that season, but then your life changed. Now, you add some new people. I also know that you did some healing modalities. I want to ask you about that. You went for professional support from a grief coach. You had your spiritual practices in your community care. You also used healing modalities such as letter writing. You visited a psychic medium. You did energy healing. You practiced something called heart-coherent meditation. None of us can get through all of this all by ourselves. We need support.
Somatic Healing: Loving the “Weak” Version of Self
We all need help. We weren’t meant to be alone in our healing journey. Healing happens in community. One of the things I did do was also join a spouse partner grief support group during that time. They were my lifeline for a year and a half because they walked a mile in my own shoes. In addition to that, I did quite a bit of work around intergenerational trauma healing. It triggered a lot of questions all of a sudden in my mind about how my family shaped the way I coped. I learned that I love the strong me, but not the weak me.
Let me give you the story about that. If I look at the four stages I went through, the first stage was shock. They’re not linear, by the way. They’re overlapping circles. Two steps forward, one step back. The first stage was shock. The second stage was, “Who am I?” Who am I without my beloved husband? The third stage was that I had to grow. There’s this great quote. I’m going to read it here so I don’t mess it up from Viktor Frankl. “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” I was forced to go through a transformation. The fourth was that I had somatic healing, which I had to go through and am still working through.
Can you explain to people who are saying, “What is somatic healing that you did?”
What I realized is that my nervous system was stuck in fight or flight. It was made that much worse by going through the trauma of what happened to Mark. I went to consult with a medical intuitive in Arizona who’s also been one of my several spiritual advisors. She said, “Why don’t you go see this chiropractic neurologist? He could help you with your nervous system issues.” I was having migraines and vertigo. I’ve had them for fifteen years and they were getting worse. I went to see Dr. Teames.
In the intake, he said to me, “I can get you most of the way there, Jenny, but the rest of it is emotional work. It will take you loving yourself to fully heal.” I said, “Dr. Teames, I love myself. I had a great dad. I was close to my father. My mom was emotionally up and down a lot, but I had a great dad, and I had a great childhood.” The next day, I thought about it. I thought, “I love the strong me. I don’t love the weak me at all. I’m very conditional about my love for myself.”
You were very judgmental of yourself.
A part of a very harsh inner critic was in me. It was so fascinating. I went for two months of treatment at the clinic. I moved to Phoenix for a couple of months with my partner. I came home. I saw a medium in Oregon. She was referred to me because Dr. Teames said, “Part of your process of healing is you’ve got to go see my hypnotherapist.” The hypnotherapist said, “You should go see this medium I’d recommend. I feel like maybe we have some stuckness here.”
I met with the medium. She said, “Jenny, you’re transitioning to who you were meant to be in terms of your higher self. You’ve learned so much about trusting your intuition. How do we get you over the finish line to being that way more consistently?” I said, “I understand that, but I don’t know how to get there. In theory, I got it.” I came home. I found a book. I walked into a bookstore. There was this book by Nicole Sachs called Mind Your Body.
What a coincidence.
Isn’t it interesting? It was the first book. I didn’t even go into the bookstore to get a book. I was looking for a condolence card for a friend. I walked in and turned to the left. This book jumped out at me right on the stand. It gave a 45-day journey on how to calm your nervous system down through journaling. I’m a writer. My second act was to be a writer. That was what I was planning to do in retirement.
She has a journey, three columns. Write about all the things that upset you in childhood because her theory and view is that, and perfectionists tend to do this, people pleasers, people who are hard on themselves, and usually, high achievers, suppress their negative emotions. It’s got to come out in your body somehow. It manifests in many ways, such as migraines, IBS, and all of that. I did the 45-day journey protocol, which was to write about childhood events, write about my personality, and write about daily stressors.
I did this systematically for 45 days. I’ve been doing this for seven months, and my migraines and vertigo have subsided. It is nervous system-driven. Here I was thinking I had a diagnosis that required medication or going to see a vestibular therapist. It’s just by way of explaining this as an example of how there are many chronic pain issues that people have that could be caused by a nervous system dysfunction. I had a diagnosis around that. Part of it for me is letting go of the strong me and loving all of me.
You’re a package girl. You’re not just one end of it. What’s that expression that Oprah would say? “When someone shows you who they are, believe them.” Sometimes, we only see a slice of who they are.
You don’t even know those parts of you. I said one of the things about going through the grief journey is that you start to find friends in parts of you that you never knew existed. It’s like finding rooms in the house that you’ve lived in for 30 years. I learned so much about myself in terms of how much I buried and shoved under the rug in terms of anxiety, fear, and panic. There was so much in childhood without going into the whole story.
One of the things about going through the grief journey is that you start to find friends in parts of you that you never knew existed. Share on X
How wonderful that you were able to cover that. That’s fantastic.
Some of your audience might relate to this. My father came from a military family. Dr. Teames said, when I told him that my grandfather was a general, “I had you pegged right from our first intake, Jenny, that you came from a military family.” I said, “How did you know?” He said, “You’re so calm on the outside, but you’re intense on the inside. That’s what I see in a lot of military kids.” I said, “How interesting.” I realized my dad was my role model for being stoic, strong, and in control.
Heart Coherent Meditation: A Love-Based Practice
What was this heart-coherent meditation that you did?
I have tried meditating for so many years before Mark’s accident. I have a monkey mind. I can’t concentrate. I tried guided meditation. I tried everything. I gave up. After he died, I’m isolated. The only few things you can do are outdoors, so I went skiing a lot. I love skiing. It’s my happy place. I thought to myself, “I experienced the power of love when I was at the burn center. The amount of love I was on the receiving end of was just beyond measure, beyond anything I could ever expect of people. It touched me so much. Surely, there is a way to have a heart-based, love-based meditation, not just a Buddhist version.
What do you know, Irene? This is back to funny synchronicities. I suddenly remembered HeartMath Institute in Boulder Creek, California. When I worked at Hewlett-Packard, we brought them in to do stress management workshops and biofeedback. I thought, “I wonder what they’re up to these days.” I google them. I found out they’re teaching heart-coherent meditation.
It is exactly what I was looking for, which is love-based meditation. The approach is where you focus on your heart. They said the heart sends more signals to the brain than the other way around, believe it or not. Your emotions and your emotional state affect how you function in the world. They said when you do heart-based, heart coherent meditation, you’re bringing your heart rhythm into the same resonance as a human’s resonance.
They’ve done studies of couples across distances where, when even one of them does heart-coherent meditation and thinks of their partner with love and appreciation. Their heart rhythms synchronize. They have data on this. They’ve also discovered this between people and their pets. Their horses as well, and their dogs.
Is there a specific meditation or a specific wording that goes with this heart-coherent meditation?
It’s so simple, Irene. I’ll paraphrase it because I’ve led people through this in a session I did. You just put your hand on your heart. You do the usual breathing, whatever that might be for you. Four intakes and four out-breaths. Count to four or out four. Maybe I do ten of them. I start to visualize my heart pumping, and that this is where all my love flows out of here. My adaptation is I visualize someone or a place that I love. I’m there. I close my eyes. to myself, “What do I hear? What do I see? What do I touch and feel? What do I smell?”
You’re instantly transported into a place of love. I found that it took me places that I never expected. The first few times I did this up in Lake Tahoe. It was snowing. It was February of 2021. The snow was just coming down. I saw a white owl flying towards me in a white light. I thought, “All the times I’ve tried to meditate, I have never seen anything.” I remember thinking, “I want to find a soulmate again. Will I ever find a soulmate again?” I heard the owl say to me, “You will once you establish a daily spiritual practice.”
Right before I had the meditation, I read an article by Oprah. She said, “If you have a monkey mind, try this. Start in January and meditate for one minute. Every successive month, like in February, add another minute. By December, you’re meditating twelve minutes a year.” I thought, “I can do that. I’m going to do that.” I tried. I saw the white owl. This is what that white owl told me. A year later, I met my partner, Robert, who is my second soulmate.
That’s wonderful. They talk about spirit animals. I wonder if the owl is your spirit animal.
Birds are, in general. Once, when Robert and I weren’t unsure about where our relationship was going, because it was long-distance, as he’s from Southern California, up North. I heard in meditation, “Patience, Jenny.” I was still early in all of this messaging. I thought, “Am I hearing things?” The next morning, I went to pull my garbage bin back into the side yard. There was a black feather on the ground. It was a black bird that spoke to me in meditation, by the way. I said, “That was a confirmation of my little skeptical type A mind.”
Your type A mind was being taught that there was so much more that meets our eyes and our senses. When we’re talking about signs and synchronicities and you’ve been guided by many of them. How do you advise people tuning in to us to trust their inner compass to guide them through different stages?
Signs and Synchronicities: Guidance from the Other Side
First of all, having a regular practice, I start to establish a finding in inner stillness. However, people want to do that, I feel like there’s no prescription for that. For some people, it can be going for a walk in nature for twenty minutes. For others, it may be sitting in a chair and meditating. Whatever works for you. Our world is always on digitally. You’ve got to shut that stuff out on a regular basis and build that boundary. I have found that either I’ll see an image or I’ll hear something. I don’t think it matters what you attribute it to. I remember asking myself, because it happened at the burn center, “Is it God? Is it me? Is it intuition?” It doesn’t matter. When you hear it, it’s a quiet voice. It’s emphatic. It’s very few words.
That’s how I experienced it.
Direct. That’s your experience, too, Irene. Let me give you an example. Robert and I were still working through lots of things to be together. We hadn’t seen each other in a while. I was in Lake Tahoe. I was going for a walk. He was going to fly in that afternoon. I was anxious. I was like, “I don’t know where this relationship is going.” I’m going for a walk. I have my earbuds on. I heard a voice. It was Mark. He said, “Take your earbuds off, Jenny.” He said it in an irritated way, the way he used to when I’d be on my phone, while we’re watching Netflix. I go, “What happened?” He’d say, “Get off your phone.”
It was the same annoyed tone. “Get off your earbuds, Jenny.” I took my earbuds off. I said, “Yes?” He says, “Love him.” I said, “I’m hallucinating. They’re going to think I’m that crazy hiker lady.” I look around the trail. There’s no one around me. No one’s talking to me. I put my earbuds in and I think, “I think that was Mark.” I walked two blocks, Irene. I kid you not. I have gone on this walk for twenty years. I always turned left. It was a different street name on the right. I looked to the right. It said, “Robert Avenue.” My partner’s name is Robert.
We had a joyful reunion. He showed up, and then he left. When I was driving home from Lake Tahoe two weeks later, I saw a little car go by, a Toyota Yaris with a license plate that said, “Maxwell.” It was his last name. Maxwell isn’t that common. A week later, he drives near LAX. He sends me a photo. He’s just gone by “Jenny Avenue. No U-turn.” How many more signs did I need to confirm what I heard from Mark? That’s what I mean. It’s just to the point, short and sweet.
I experienced the same thing. I also want to say to all of you tuning in that through all the interviews I’ve heard, I’ve experienced over and over, people say that when our loved ones get to the other side, there is no jealousy there. All they want is your happiness. It does not interfere with the relationship you had with them. You will see them.
You will celebrate each other when it’s your time to cross over, but they don’t experience all those earthbound emotions anymore. They see the bigger picture. I absolutely believe that Mark had your best interests at heart. He approved of who Robert was. He wanted you to be happy. That validates what I’ve been taught, or what I’ve heard about.
That is my experience as well. I know that Mark has a benevolent presence in my life. He’s shown himself to Robert, my partner. Even more, we both know that we’ve been guided to each other because Mark said to Robert, “She loves to laugh.” By the way, Robert’s funny. He makes me laugh every day.
It’s very important.
I believe, for sure, given my experiences, that our energy continues to thrive in and continue after physical death on this earth.
I know this for a fact. I tell people all the time, I’m no longer afraid to die. I’m just passionate about living life well and taking care of myself to the last drop. That’s it. It’s because I know that they will greet us and we’ll be with them again.
I see it that way, too, Irene. It’s my experience. It’s not research. I’ve heard from Mark. Multiple friends have heard from Mark since he died.
Healing to Live: Transmuting Grief into Love
That’s fantastic and so validating. I want to ask you about a statement that you made that is so important. You say, “You don’t heal to forget. You heal to live.” How is healing not about getting over grief, but about learning to live fully with it and allowing it to transform you? In this process, you have to give up a lot of those old feelings of control.
Grief can transmute to love. I keep coming back to the topic of love. I have decided love is the center of everything good in the world. It’s powerful. I always say this. It’s an energy, not just an emotion. When you go through extreme loss, and traumatic loss, too. You tap a deep well within you of love and empathy. I cherish love and the people in my life so much more than I did before. It’s a deeper appreciation and also the transformative power of love.
One of the stories I talk about in my book is that Mark and I had a beautiful relationship. We loved each other. We adored each other. One day, I was at the doctors. A burn survivor has to go through a very big ordeal in addressing change. You have to stay sanitary and clean, so you don’t get an infection. It can take two to three hours. Mark apparently was anxious. He was still semi-comatose.
A younger nurse in her twenties called me at the doctor and said, “Mark is anxious. He was asking for you. Do you mind if I put him on speakerphone?” I said, “Absolutely.” That is going above and beyond for a nurse. Usually, the nurse will say, “Don’t worry, Mark. Your wife’s coming in three hours. She’ll be here at noontime.” Instead, she called me. I could say, “Honey.” He couldn’t speak. I said, “I love you. I’ll be there soon. You’re doing great.”
It was wonderful. I talked to the nurse later and said, “Why did you do that? That was so kind of you. Most people wouldn’t.” She said, “The love that I have seen between the two of you is greater than anything I’ve experienced in my life or in the hospital. I’m going to raise the bar for who I want to marry and date in the future because of what I saw between the two of you.” Irene, after Mark died, this young nurse got in touch with me.
She said, “After that incident, I started dating Daniel.” He was the nurse who took care of Mark the day he died. He was one of the kindest nurses there. They are two good human beings who got together, and they’re now engaged. She said, “We’re engaged. When we’re ready to get married, I want you to come have front row seats because you were such a big part of our story.”
You know what I learned, Irene? That is an example of how what we think is death and loss can lead to the birth of love. Love never goes away. We never forget because their loving presence is always with us, even if they’re not physically here, but they are energetically always with us. The goal is not to forget in healing. The goal is to move forward and to find new memories and new experiences.
I want to add something else to that. If you believe, and we all do, that we’re part of a collective, and we’re influencing each other. We don’t even realize what we’re doing. Think about how your love influenced her. Her love is going to influence so many people who will experience her. That’s how it works. While we’re talking about your book, is there anything else you would like to tell everyone about your book? It’s wonderful and it’s an award-winning. Is there anything else you’d like people to know before they run out and get it?
Readers have told me it’s an inspiring book. I want anyone who would decide to pick it up to know that if you’re going navigating a difficult chapter in your life. I t doesn’t have to be exactly what happened to me. There’s so much in there that you may resonate with and see a part of yourself in. In terms of what could help you navigate the breadcrumbs through your own lost journey, or your difficult times, whatever that is.
Micro-Moments of Joy: New Lenses for the World
I can also see people gifting it to people who are going through tough times. Look what she was able to overcome. There’s some good stuff in here for you. It’s great. I want to ask you also. You say that micro moments of joy are tiny but powerful reminders that life is still beautiful, even in pain. How did those small sparks of joy help you build this emotional endurance we’re seeing during this terrible season and open the door back to joy?
I can’t talk about that without saying that writing and journaling can help you get to that place of stillness. When you can catch yourself in those moments during the day, which is for me, nature has always been very healing. I found it played a bigger and bigger role in my healing. I never used to notice birds. I started to notice birds everywhere, Irene. There is the beauty of birds in flight and the mountains.
Think about this. You were skiing, and these gorgeous mountains with the birds, you never even saw them.
I never noticed them. It’s like I had new lenses to see the world in. It’s when something terrible and shocking happens that snaps you out of the distraction of your day-to-day life. You start to notice more around you. I even noticed people, like what was going on with strangers. I started talking to strangers all the time. Those were beautiful moments.
I got on the phone with T-Mobile to take Mark off my account. I ended up having a whole conversation with a woman whose brother died in Iraq. We had the lovely ten-minute conversation. This was happening all the time. Those to me are micro moments of joy, when you suddenly find this profound moment of human connection with someone you hadn’t known before, or you see the beauty of the mountains, or an amazing cup of coffee.
You’re feeling grateful that you woke up for people in your life.
People who’ve been through grief will say this. They never thought until they went through it that you can hold two emotions in one moment. Both the sorrow and the sadness, and the joy and the love.
You can hold two emotions in one moment—both the sorrow and the sadness, and the joy and the love. Share on X
A lot of people don’t get that. I so resonate with that.
It’s a paradox. You can feel both. The good and the beautiful can pull you forward.
Trusting the Universe: Navigating the Breadcrumbs
Jenny, I so admire you because you chose to live fully to honor Mark by embracing new passions. You’ve nurtured meaningful relationships and stepped bravely into the unknown. Look at where you are. You remind us that healing is worth the effort because it opens the door back to life itself, to laughter, hope, and the person you’re still becoming.
Thank you for your remarkable memoir. I highly recommend it to everyone called Forever Fly Free: One Woman’s Story of Resilience and the Power of Hope and Love, and for this truly unforgettable, enlightening, and moving conversation. I want to say you’re too far away. It’s time to have some dinner together.
I’ll make it to New York. I was born in New York. I’ll make it to New Jersey. It’s right next door.
You could just tell people, “I know a Jersey girl. I got to say hello to her.” Truly, from my heart, I wish you abundant blessings throughout the rest of your life and your days. It’s such a pleasure to know you.
Thank you, Irene. I feel blessed. Thank you so much for the positive message that you send out into the world with your show series.
Trust the universe to care for you and to show you the way. Share on X
Thank you. Even with what you do with your books, giving the proceeds of your book to burn victims and all that. Also, by what I’m doing by paying it forward after all the grief and everything that I went through. Together, we are helping so many people. It’s a blessing.
The other thing I learned is to trust the universe to care for you and to show you the way. A bunch of breadcrumbs led me to you and to be doing what I’m doing now.
What a blessing. I’m going to blow you a kiss and say to be continued.
Thank you, Irene. What a pleasure to be with you.
Thank you so much.
Guest’s Links:
- Connect with Jenny Brandemuehl on LinkedIn
- Forever Fly Free: One Woman’s Story of Resilience and the Power of Hope and Love
- Phoenix Society
- Women’s Initiative for Self-Employment
- Mind Your Body: A Revolutionary Program to Release Chronic Pain and Anxiety
About Jenny Brandemuehl
Jenny Brandemuehl built her career as a respected executive in the tech world. When her husband survived a fiery plane crash with burns over 80% of his body, Jenny became his caregiver and medical advocate. Forever Fly Free is her story of love, trauma, and resilience. She now advocates for burn survivors, donates proceeds to the Phoenix Society, and speaks on mental health and healing.
Through trauma, caregiving, grief, and rediscovery, Jenny writes with fierce vulnerability, humor, and hope.
Jenny Brandemuehl was born in New York and was educated at Wellesley College and received a master’s degree in Human Resources and Organization Development from the University of San Francisco. She grew up in New York, New Jersey, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Malaysia. She spent most of her career in leadership roles within Silicon Valley and the fashion industry, most recently as Chief People Officer for Chegg and previously at JDS Uniphase, Gap Inc., and Hewlett-Packard.
She is a passionate advocate for the empowerment of women leaders, having served on the Board of Directors for Women’s Initiative for Self-Employment in Oakland, California, and Wellesley College’s Business Leadership Council. She splits time between Lake Tahoe, the Bay Area, and Southern California with her partner, Robert.
