Episode 18: Losing A Parent As A Teen

🎧 Grief hits different when you're young. In this powerful and moving episode, teen advocate Sunny Lamba opens up about navigating the complex journey of loss while growing up and discovering herself.

Through raw honesty and profound insight, Sunny shares her personal story of loss, offering a voice to teens who might be experiencing similar challenges. This isn't just another conversation about grief – it's a real look at how losing someone shapes your identity during these crucial years.

In this emotional episode, we explore:

• How grief uniquely affects teens compared to adults
• Balancing personal growth with processing loss
• Managing school, friendships, and family dynamics while grieving
• Finding strength and identity through difficult times
• Unexpected ways loss can shape who you become
• Practical coping strategies from someone who gets it

Perfect for: Teens dealing with loss, anyone supporting a grieving friend, young people processing major life changes, and those seeking connection through shared experiences.

Featuring authentic conversations about a topic that's often overlooked in teen spaces, with insights that go beyond the usual grief advice.

Content note: This episode includes discussions of loss and emotional experiences.

To listen to her podcast, contact, follow or reach out to Sunny, please click on the link below.

https://linktr.ee/sunny_lamba

Transcript

Welcome to Mindshift Power podcast, a show for teenagers and the adults who work with them, where we have raw and honest conversations. I'm your host, Fatima Bey, the mind shifter. And welcome. Today, we have with us, well, today we're gonna be talking about losing a parent as a teen, very important subject. And we have with us today, Sunny Lamba.

She is in Toronto, Canada. She's the host of Floodhentic Me podcast. She's a mindset and self love coach and the owner of Authentic Me Coaching. How are you how are you today, Sunny? I am doing well.

And thank you so much for having me. Well, thank you for coming on. I I appreciate your you responding to the reach out. Well, I like to just dive right in. So I will let you tell us what happened when you were 14.

In short, I was 14, and I lost my mom to cancer. She struggled for almost three years and tried everything, everything that she could because she really wanted to be there for her kids. But, yeah, that's what happened when I was 14, and things just I I believe life just changed from that moment. It was never the same. Mhmm.

I had to suddenly grow up. I had to suddenly be a parent to my two younger siblings. I had suddenly had no one to braid my hair. I had really long hair. Like, I'm talking about small things that I always think of because literally two days later, I had to go to school and I who's going to braid my hair?

So I had my hair braided by my older sister in a very funny way. And I went to school, and half of the hair was sticking out. But, yeah, that's what happened when I was 14 years old. And we are, so I have a older sister, and then I have a younger sister and a youngest brother, so four of us. And we just had to figure figure things out, figure life out.

Okay. Our sorry. Go ahead. No. Go ahead.

Finish what you're gonna say. So my dad was, I was gonna talk about my dad a little bit. My dad was a typical, you know, just reverse back to thirty five years ago or thirty years ago, typical male who didn't take part in raising the kids. He was also very absentee father. He did have alcoholism a bit.

Mhmm. He he we dealt with that a lot. So he wasn't the one who was gonna get us ready for school. He still continued life as it was. He would wake up at 6AM, go to work, expected that food would be cooked, expected that we would be the partner that he lost in terms of taking care of the household and taking care of the kids and everything.

I think he I think it never even occurred to him that he was expecting my older sister was 16 when mom passed away, and he was expecting a 16 year old and a 14 year old to have dinner ready when he comes home, served exactly the way it was served before, warm food, ready to go. And he didn't even maybe he did. I don't know his side, but he never thought that how we would running that house, how the day was going when he was not there. He would leave home at 6AM. He was a business owner, so he had very long days.

And he would come home at 8PM expecting everything to be the same. Wow. Yeah. So Yeah. Yeah.

Well, let's talk about you said everything changed from there. Let's talk about what those changes felt like or what those changes were like. I think, I want people to hear, you know, what's going through the mind of a 14 year old. And I do wanna point out something right now as people are listening so that they can listen, more clearly, I would say. Sunny's from India, so she grew up in India.

So when she was 14, she was in India, which may be a different culture than America or Canada, you know, where some where our listeners primarily are. But I want you to listen to what she's saying because so much of what she's saying applies across cultures, whether you're in the island, whether you're in Guatemala, China, Nigeria, wherever. A lot of what she's going to say applies across cultures. So I want you to listen beyond that. So, Sunny, what are some of those changes?

How did that affect different areas of your life? For example, how did it affect your relationship with your siblings? I think it really changed us at a very, very deep level. So I want you to imagine my older sister who was just two years older than me, and then my sister who's younger than me is six years younger than me. So me and my older sister were closer because we were just two years apart.

We were, like, the best friends. We would play together. We would play dolls, and we would play you know, we would marry our dolls to get you know, marry them. You know, play play play home. Play house.

Right. Right? And then beef I'm gonna rewind a bit. And before mom passed away, she was in and out of the hospital a lot for three years. So my older sister had already taken on a big responsibility of running the household while she while mom was still alive.

And so she kind of that it started shifting even before mom passed away. My older sister was always a very mature one. Like, she would hang out with adults. She was one of those. And I think it's that eldest daughter syndrome that she was the responsible one.

And I was I was the quiet one. And even though I was the quiet one, I was one of those who would watch everything, notice everything. What's happening? What are they hiding from me? So I was the quiet one, but who was always observing things around her, noticing things but not saying anything.

So a week before mom passed away, my older sister already knew that this was going to happen. And I had no idea because they didn't take us to the hospital, the rest of the family. My grandmother who lived in Canada at that time flew back four days before mom passed away because everyone knew that this is this is it. So she flew back, and we were not taken to the hospital because they didn't want us little kids to see how mom was. And then a day before she came to the the the a day before she was discharged, not a day before she passed away, but a day before she was discharged, we were taken to the hospital.

And I still remember when I saw her, she was just not that same person. Like, I I just could tell that, oh my god. There's something really, really, really wrong with her. And I remember just seeing her on a wheelchair, and I'm first thought was, why is she not walking? Why is she in a wheelchair?

And I just started crying, and then there's so much stigma around crying. And everyone said, don't cry. Mom is gonna feel bad. Just smile with her, laugh with her, talk to her. Mhmm.

But she had lost her voice by then. Oh, wow. So I was, like, trying to talk, but when she would try to make some sound, but she wasn't talking. It was just some sound coming. And not to, like, really go to that place, but I wanna show the difference that we already had before she passed between me and my sister's relationship because she was this person who was already taking on responsibility, and I was this person who was not being exposed to what's coming.

So once mom passed away, my sister right away took on the role of the mother. And I think I felt that day that I lost a friend. I lost my sister. Now I have this new mother because she suddenly she was so good. She was so good at the taking on that role, and I just had to now play with my younger sister who was six years younger than me.

But I somehow had to play with her and my brother more because my sister never played after that day with us. She was always just, oh, you know, you gotta finish your food. You gotta do your homework. In the morning, she's small things. I remember, I think three or four days after mom passed away, finally, the kids were sent to school.

And my older sister I was, like, sitting there. I'm like, who's gonna do my braids? I had long hair. And my older sister said, I'll do it. And I talked about that a bit, and it was just that she had to take that role.

So I think with my siblings, it changed a lot. While she became my mother, I ended up becoming the mother to the younger two. I kind of took on that role. So it's like this this hierarchy kind of came in. Instead of us being siblings, we ended up parenting, not just ourselves, but also our younger siblings.

Now my my youngest brother, till today, calls me the mother. He still today till today, he says, you are my mom. He comes to me for everything, anything in life, any challenges. He reaches out to me. But he was only six years old when mom passed away.

Wow. And you know how universe just knows what's happening? So the day he was born, we were three sisters, and I always used to say, I need a brother. I need a brother. So when mom came back from the hospital, she gave this little baby to me.

She's like, here you go. You know? Here you go. You wanted a brother, here's a brother. And the universe probably just knew that that I will be his mother from day one.

And I just you know, it's it's funny, but, we ended up taking on a lot more role of a parent, I feel like. And we never became siblings until recently, actually. Oh, wow. So what I'm hearing what I'm hearing is that you your your titles were still siblings, but your role but your roles were were a a hierarchy of parenting. Absolutely.

And that and her her her, you know, leaving is what that developed into. So when when when we lose our parents as teenagers now I I didn't lose my parents as a teenager, and that's why I have someone else on talking about it because I can't talk about that experience. You know? But as when you're losing your your parents as a teenager, there's there might be role changes. Now for you, the role for your family, the role changes where immediately, okay, we haven't we need to have a new hierarchy of parenting.

And so every you and your sister in different ways assume those roles. In different for people with different family and culture dynamics, the roles may switch in another way. Absolutely. And I think it's important to point out that that is a natural occurrence. The role switching, and sometimes we don't necessarily recognize it while it's happening.

I mean, would you agree? I totally I don't think I recognized it at that time. I did recognize my older sister taking on the role of a parent. I did recognize that, but I didn't recognize that I did that as well. Mhmm.

Until recently, me and my younger sister were talking, and I said, I'm so grateful for my the elder one that she took on that role. But she said she said, no. For me, you were the mom. And I never realized that when my younger sister said that to me. She said no.

You did my hair. You packed my lunch. You were the mom. And I said, but no. It was the older one who used to do it.

And then we realized so there's a little bit of, something that happened, eighteen months after mom passed away, my elder sister ended up coming to Canada, actually. And that's when I took on that mother role. And my younger sister only remembers that part. She's like, no. But you were the one who was doing everything.

And, of course, she was too little, and she just remembers that part because we spent a lot of time after that. After my older sister came to Canada, the three of us spent a lot of time still in India, you know, figuring things out. Mhmm. So it's interesting that I didn't realize that I was doing that. And now when I see myself, and this shows up in every area of your life, even me as a partner to my husband, I feel like that mothering comes in.

Yeah. And I have to step back and tell myself, hold on. I'm not his mother. Can I interject one one thing there? Yeah.

For to not to you, but to the audience. What you just said, I think is key. You were developing because you're 14 years old. You're still developing when you're 14. You're far more developed.

You know, you're you're really coming into who you are and figuring out your identity, all of us, you know, at 14. I don't care where you're from. At 14 years old, you develop this motheringness as I like to call it because you had to because something traumatic happened to you at 14. Yeah. And many many of the listeners that right out there right now, if you are a teenager and something traumatic is happening to you while you're developing, don't think that that's not affecting you.

It definitely and it could be good ways. It could be bad ways, but it's definitely having an effect on you. I did wanna ask you something else. We talked about how it affected your relationship with your siblings, and I think that was an important point to to bring up. How did it affect your self esteem and your self worth?

Oh, gosh. Again, I didn't even realize until, like, I became a coach how much it had affected me. Mhmm. Because number one, first of all, my mother is gone. I'm not worthy of love.

So you're blaming yourself at that age. It's it's like you're you're blaming yourself that this happened because I wasn't worthy of that love, or this happened because maybe I did something bad. God took my mother away because I was not a good child. So there's all that stuff. And on top of that, as soon as your mother passes away, you become the center of attention of everyone in terms of the relations, the relatives.

My grandma, who moved back to India after that because someone had to take care of the kids, but she was so old that we ended up taking care of her most of the time. Wow. But my grandma, that everyone expects you to be this perfect child. And this is my experience I'm talking about. It was like you cannot mess up.

Because if you mess up, someone will say, oh, they don't know. They don't have a mother. And I don't want anyone to say that. Mhmm. I don't want anyone to say that that her grades are not good because she doesn't have a mother.

So I put this huge expectation of myself on myself that I have to be good in school, I have to maintain the same standard, same as I was doing before. And small things like your house is not clean and someone visits, and they make a remark without realizing that there's no mother in this house. And they just make a small remark, oh, you know, the house is not clean. I remember one of my aunts is she's she would come and she would help us. Every weekend, she would come and help us cook a couple of things just to help us get through the week.

But she would make this remark all the time, oh, the house is so dirty. And I know she said it from the point of that, oh, you know, my sister is not here anymore in this house and the house is dirty. She was coming from that place. Yeah. But I took it upon myself as I am not good enough that I'm not able to fulfill all these roles, that my house is not clean.

I'm not good enough. So I gotta do that. And that impacted so much that even today, I struggle with perfectionism because of that. Mhmm. Because I felt that everything has to be perfect because no one can say that she is not doing this well because she doesn't have a mother in the house.

I don't want this to hear this. I don't want people to think that. And it's so interesting how that plays because the truth is, yes, I don't have a mother. I don't have anyone to show me how things are done, but I didn't want to hear that. And a couple of times, I still remember someone said that that, oh, poor kids.

They don't have a mother. They don't know how to do certain things. And then it doesn't make you feel good about yourself. No. Not at all.

And it affects your self esteem so much. So here you are thinking I'm not worthy of love because I lost my mother, but I do need to make sure that no one ever points that out that I'm not good enough. So you're, you know, you're setting really high expectations on yourself. You don't wanna fail, so now you're scared of failure. You want to be perfect.

But because you wanna be perfect, you are questioning yourself the whole time because no one is perfect. And then there was other kids who had their moms who could mess up. They were okay. They messed up. No one said anything or maybe they did, but me as a 14 year old thought that, oh, they're allowed to date.

They're allowed to go out on dates. They're allowed to go clubbing, but I can't because I gotta be home for my six year old brother. So I can't go out clubbing. I can't go out, and I'm talking not at 14, but once I started going to college at 16 and 17. I I never ever remember going out for a late night movie when my college friends were going or going clubbing because I have to be home.

What I'm hearing from you, and I'm I'm again, I'm saying this really for the audience. What I'm hearing out of a lot of what you're saying is the importance of community around all of us. Whether that community is family, whether it's neighbors, whether it's friend, because all of us have different communities. It's important that we all try to help when we see someone is, you know, hurting. But when you do help, don't be condescending about it.

That's something it's something that I see a lot. And, again, as you stated earlier, I don't think it's always meant with ill intention. I think people are often, you know, well intended, but sometimes they say things that make people who are going through something make they make us feel worse Yeah. When you're already struggling. You know?

So I think it's for the audience out there listening, it's just use some wisdom in how you approach. And if you don't know how, try and pay attention to reaction. Just just pay attention. Not trying is is worse, but at least try. You know?

And and and you might make a mistake. It's just that's just a fact. You're human. But at least try because it it matters. I can only imagine how much worse it could have been if you didn't have family to help step in.

Oh, yes. Yeah. I had family. I had community. As I'm saying this, I don't want anyone to think that there was no one there.

My grandmother lived with us after that. She was there, but I think it was the lack of knowing how to talk to a 14 year old or a eight year old, number one. Number two, there is the stigma around talking about death. And I feel it still today. Still today even.

Well, talking about deep emotions, period. Talking exactly. Yeah. Talking about any deep emotion because people think that if I bring this up, I'm going to make her feel sad. But the truth is that talking actually helps you heal.

It does. So I remember no one ever would mention that. No one would mention that your mother is not here anymore. And my brother was having night terrors where he would wake up in the middle of the night screaming and pointing to mom's picture. And because no one had the knowledge or no one knew what to how to handle that or what to do, they just removed her picture from there.

They said, oh, I think he's just pointing at the picture, so let's not keep this picture here. So you're suppressing that pain so much, so deep, so deep because you're not talking about it, and no one is talking about it. Key point. Suppression does not equal healing. No.

No. And a lot of times when it comes to not just death, but any other traumatic issue, they think if we don't talk about it and we suppress it, it'll it'll go away. It'll it'll heal. Time will heal it. No.

Time doesn't heal anything. No. It really doesn't. It's just deep deep inside you and it's then starts manifesting in different ways in your life, in your relationships. And the day you become a mother, it starts showing.

I till today so I have 11 year old boy, and I feel that sometimes I do parent as that 14 year old. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I had to do so much healing over the last six, seven years to not do that anymore because I was clinging to him. And I know where that was coming from because I lost a mother, so I never wanted him to feel that your mother is not around you.

Yeah. And I had to work on that. I had to go to therapy, and I had to work on that as an adult because it wasn't done back then. And you mentioned suppression, and that brought me one another. It actually brought a memory.

I never cried in front of my younger brother and sister. Oh, wow. When I felt overwhelmed as a 14 year old maintaining my school grade, cooking and packing lunches and doing hair, everything, when I felt overwhelmed or when I missed mom, I would go in the bathroom, lock myself, and cry. Because I saw around me that no one is crying. No one is talking about it.

Yes. They cried when she passed away for the first three, four days, and then no one cried about it. No one really sat with their tears and just with their emotions. So I learned that I gotta suppress it because I can't show that this to my younger brother and sister. Right.

And today, when I work with other women and I wanna clarify, I don't I'm not I don't work on grief, but anything. Like, when I work with other women, I do tell them, I'm like, it's okay to cry. It's okay to feel your emotions and cry if you have to. Yes. And that's what I would like anyone who's listening to say that if you feel like crying, it's okay.

Crying is not bad. It's a part of your body process. Exactly. And it's it's your body trying to get back into balance. I you you just brought up the exact thing I was gonna say.

Trauma very often produces imbalance. So I'm gonna use what you just said as an example because the balance is something I teach and talk about a lot. You your trauma caused you to parent, and then you recognize that you were overparenting. I'm rewording what you said, and I'm choosing to say overparenting just to simplify it. But that caused an imbalance.

And then you recognize, wait a minute. I'm being imbalanced. I'm overparenting. So let me try to draw back and be balanced because everything in life that works has balance. And everything that's not working, something's out of balance, something's out of whack.

And, and I think it's important to point that out for everybody listening, and not when and, again, that goes beyond just talking about death. Now I do want you to tell the audience, how did you how did you overcome this? How have you been able to like, you're talking about it now. I can hear your emotion, but it's it doesn't you have it. It doesn't have you.

So how did you get from it having you to you having it? So if you talked to me and if we recorded this podcast five years ago, I would have been a mess. I would well, number one, I wouldn't even have said that, yes, I can talk about it because I couldn't. Mhmm. Right.

I would have cried through the whole conversation or totally avoided it and just pretend to be this happy person. And I realized, as I said, when I started over parenting, I realized that I need to heal. And it started with something small. I got a book. It's called motherless daughters.

And I can't think of the name of the author, but it's a really, really famous book. It's been translated into multiple languages and sold millions of copies. Motherless daughters. So and I wasn't ready to go to therapy yet. So I got this book, and I started reading it.

And that's when I saw all these stories of little girls who lost their mother or girls at my age, 14, when they lost their mother and how things were happening and how how they were going through it, how they were taking on the role. And I realized that I'm not alone. Yeah. I'm not alone at all, and everyone goes through the same thing. That book made me realize, okay.

I really need to heal myself. The second thing I did is I started crying. I started crying in front of my son. I remember till today, he was five. He came back from school.

It was summer last day before summer holidays, and he said, oh my this friend is doing this. My this friend is this. And then he's like, oh, my friend is going to grandma's house. Why do I never go to grandma's house? And I couldn't even reply.

Like, I just started crying. I could not answer that question, and I was putting him to bed. And my husband heard me, and he came in, and he's like, what happened? And I said, you gotta talk to him. And I I was just crying.

Like, I was crying. I could not talk. Mhmm. I left the room, and my husband talked to him and explained it to him that you don't have a grandma. And my husband also doesn't have his mother, actually.

So Oh, wow. Both grandmas are not there. But he was able to talk to him. Being a man, I think he still has a lot of suppressed trauma from that, but let's not go there. And You're probably right.

Yeah. And that day, I actually realized, okay. I really need to heal this. And I started talking about my mother more, which I never used to talk about. Mhmm.

Before that, I started celebrating her birthday. This is one thing we have started doing in our household. We used to always remember on her death anniversary, and we would go to a soup kitchen or food bank, and we would donate on her death anniversary. And I came to this realization, why am I celebrating that day, and why am I not celebrating her birthday? And we started celebrating her birthday.

So now we get a cake, and we do everything that she used to love. We cook her favorite food. We listen to her favorite music. She used to love singing and dancing. So we do that.

And my son has through that, my son has connected to his grandmother a lot. And he started asking me questions then. What did grandma used to do? Like, what did she do? What was her favorite?

Before that, he thought that he didn't even know the word grandma before that because I never talked about it. I think, again, as I said before, talking about it really helps you heal. And after that, the other thing I started doing is I started writing letters to her. That has really helped me heal. Okay.

So I write her a letter on her birthday. I write her a letter on mother's day. I write her a letter on my birthday, and I write them. Most of them, I keep them. In the beginning, a few of them, I burnt them just to release that trauma.

And all those things included with some therapy that I've gone through has helped me and got me to a point where I can talk about it without completely breaking down. Yes. And I think that, I wanna point out that your letter writing and talking about it even outside of therapy was also a part of your therapy. Seeing a I'm always talking about therapy on the show because I think it's extremely important, But I also want people to understand that seeing a therapist is only one kind of therapy. It's necessary, but you can't just see somebody for one hour a week and think you're gonna be okay.

You've got to do other stuff beyond that. They their their conversation can help you, but you've gotta do stuff beyond that. And some people, it might be running. Some people, it might be dancing while expressing yourself. It could be painting.

And for you, it was letter writing, but you've gotta do something to get it out and express it and and get therapized. That's what I'm saying. Get therapized. Absolutely. And as I said, that's why when I was explaining, like, I did all these things.

And then at the end, I said, okay. Now maybe I need to talk to someone a little bit more to get deeper. But before that and when I had that realization that I'm I need to heal, I just consumed everything I could get my hands on. I was listening to TED Talks about grief, and I was reading books on that. And I because I really felt like this is holding me back as a parent Yes.

As a wife, as a coach, and as a person. And I think after I healed, my relationship with my siblings has changed so much as well. I had to make a very tough call of not being my brother's mother anymore. I felt I had made him dependent on me, not knowing Mhmm. What I was doing.

And any small thing happened, I've jumped in to help. Right. So that so he didn't grow. So I had to make a very harsh decision of stepping out, and I had to tell him, you gotta figure this out yourself. If you wanna talk to someone, I'm here for you.

But you gotta do the actual work yourself. And that is that's powerful. Yeah. I was gonna ask you what advice you have for for those who are going through it, but I think you've really just already said it. And the advice that I was gonna ask you for those who are around people who are dealing with stuff, I think that has already been said, unless there's anything else you wanna add because I think you said a lot already.

Yes. I think we covered mostly. And you said that as well that be there to support them, but not in a condescending way. And if you don't know, it's okay. You can we can learn, but just say that I'm here for you.

And talk about the person who's gone. Talk about that parent. Don't just imagine that parent is suddenly vanished from the face of this earth, and you're never gonna talk about them. Yeah. Talk about them.

Mom used to do this. Remember mom used to do that? Another thing, actually, I really wanna say is one thing that helped me heal was laughter. I agree. I feel that laughter and especially laughing with my siblings has helped me heal a lot.

We laugh about things we did when we were trying to figure things out after mom, and we laugh about it so much that remember how my hair was so stupid, how I went to school, and remember when we burnt the food, and remember this happened, and we just laugh about it today. And but that's today. After so many years of that suppressed pain, we didn't talk about these things for so many years. But someone who's going through it right now, and if it's something really new, you might not laugh. But I have felt that when you think of the memories that you have created with that parent, looking at their pictures and just laughing about things that you did, silly things that you did with that with your parent, it really helps to heal as well.

I I do wanna say one more thing before we go. Talking to and I'm specifically talking to teenagers right now who are going through this. They just lost a a a parent within the past year, I would say. Please please please please make sure you get the you get the help that you need. If you you need you need therapy.

I don't care who you are, and you don't have to get therapy from, you know, the typical way, but just get some kind of therapy. Because if you don't, what you're gonna end up doing is you're gonna try to therapy get yourself some therapy with drugs, get yourself some therapy with alcohol, get yourself some therapy with having sex with everybody, dating everybody under the sun who you don't need to be dating. And I could go on with a whole list of other stuff that people do to try to Yeah. Deal with it. And all you're doing is throwing dirt on a wound.

You're not healing it. So deal with your issue. As I always say, deal with the issue or the issue will deal with you. Because if you don't deal with it, it's already manifesting itself in your life. Even if you don't see it yet.

As Sunny just said with give us examples of her own, but please make sure you deal with it. Sunny, I really, really thank you for coming on and being willing to be to be open and honest on the air with us. I know that that's that's a lot, and I I I'm very grateful that you made the choice, and it was a choice to decide to grow, to decide to heal, to decide to do whatever you gotta do so you can get over it instead of it being on instead of being under it. Yes. Absolutely.

Thank you so much. And and, again, thank you. So tell the audience, how a little bit about your your coaching, and there will just so you know, you guys, there will be a link in the show notes or the, podcast description, a link where you can find everything that she does because she does quite a few little things. So I actually work with women. I help, mostly high achieving women who have all these big dreams, but they're not taking action on those dreams.

And it starts with maybe trauma from childhood or self esteem, limiting beliefs, which comes from conditioning, decades and decades of conditioning from their upbringing or the society or the state or the culture that they are in. So I help them overcome those limiting beliefs and really start seeing themselves as this powerful person that they actually are, but they're questioning that. And I help them achieve those dreams that they have by changing their mind, basically. And I strongly, strongly, strongly, strongly believe in what you do. Another thing I wanted to point out about Sunny is I'm not sure if we said it earlier, but she does focus on, helping south Asian women in particular.

That's a big passion. And I absolutely love that she does that. And I I I really just because I've heard her mentality and I see how she thinks and I and I've I've seen her heart. I highly recommend her, not just for South Asian women, but for South American women because y'all are just alike and you just don't know it yet. Yes.

If you are if you are if you really need someone who can understand your particular needs from another culture where misogyny is an issue and feeling like you aren't worth anything as a woman, she understands that. And so, you know, this show is for teens, but for any adults who are listening, because I know a lot of my listeners are adults and you know that that's you or you know someone like that, you might wanna check her out. So her information will be in my show notes. And, again, thank you, Sunny, for for coming on. Thank you so much, Fatima.

It was a pleasure. And now for a mind shifting moment. If you're listening right now and you have lost a parent in recent years or recently in your teen, I want you to know that you're not alone. There are a lot of other teens out there just like you, actually. And please get some therapy.

Get some help. We don't all mourn the same way. We don't all deal with things the same way, and it is okay that you deal with it differently than I do. But don't run to substances. Don't run into the arms of the wrong person because you're trying to suppress the hurt and the pain and the things that you need to deal with.

Unfortunately, that's what a lot of people do, and it harms their life greatly. Therapy comes in many forms because I promise you, if you don't get some therapy for it now, it will haunt you. It will affect every area of your life. It might take a long time before you see the effects, before I should say, you recognize the effects, but please get the help that you need. If you are looking for help and you don't know where to go, if you go to FatimaBay.com and you go to the other help page, at the bottom of the page, you'll see a little, a big black box with a link in it that'll take you to Unite Us platform where you can find us where you can find someone around you who is a counselor, grief counselor, or therapist, whatever you need.

But please don't just sit there and try to suppress it and say, I'm a deal with this myself because you're not. It's gonna harm you more than anything else. I hope that you got something out of today's message. And if you're around those who've lost a parent, just understand there's a lot going on with them. Just try to be mindful of that.

Help as much as you can, and you know how to. Thank you for listening to mind shift power podcast, please like, and subscribe to my YouTube channel at the mind shifter. If you have any comments, topics, suggestions, or would like to be a guest on the show, please visit fatimobay.com/podcast. Remember, there's power in shifting your thinking. Tune in for next week.