how to deal with Grief of losing a loved one, toxic & abusive relationships and God.

Hello, excuse me. Hi, I make TikTok videos. OK. I was hoping if I could talk to you guys for a second. Sure. We have to get back to our car in five minutes. OK, we'll take less than that. OK. Oh, my gosh. Now I'm kind of nervous. We're from Arizona. Yeah. We were just doing a sister trip, honestly. Has life taken you guys apart a little bit? Kind of, but not really. What was the hardest moment of your life? Recently, I got out of a really toxic, abusive relationship. So I think the hardest thing was like having enough courage to leave. How did you know when to leave? To be completely honest, I got a ton of signs and just ignored them. I didn't know if it was like God telling me like this isn't it. What really did it was I prayed a very specific prayer and I had a good friend that I hadn't talked to in years literally recite my entire prayer back to me. And so the next day I broke up with my boyfriend and I kicked him out. At what point in your relationship did you realize things weren't what you wanted? I as I look back on the relationship, it was like month three, not even month two. Yeah, that I was like, this is probably like not the best relationship, but I stuck it out very verbally, mentally, emotionally abusive. I wasn't valued as a woman. I played I felt like I stepped into my masculine energy more than feminine energy. And I just really wasn't allowed to like be soft and like whatnot. I felt like I had to have my guard up. Ask help from your sister. How did you help her through that time? I think that the biggest thing when anybody is in an abusive relationship is that they isolate themselves. So I think that keeping the line open, letting her know that, you know, we're always there for her and just just truly, you know, praying for her, loving on her, encouraging her and always being there. You know, when she came back, like no matter what, no matter how many times it was like, OK, we're here. So we have a really loving family. So it was really special to when she finally came back. We were like, yes. So how do you know if you should push them together or make them quit? I think that the biggest thing, the question that I always ask myself is, is this the person that God intends for your life? You know, so for us, you know, we've grown up in a Christian Catholic household and we know that God's plan for our life is goodness and his faithfulness. And and I think that we saw what was going on in her relationship. And that wasn't goodness. It wasn't faithfulness. And it wasn't God ordained, I guess you could say. So that's that was really just, you know, the biggest thing that to where we were like, OK, this is this is God's plan for your life. And abuse and pain is not part of it. So they were always like, we're here for you. We support you. Whatever decision you make, we support you. Like we're Team Kenzie. We're on your side, no matter what, if you decide to stay, if you decide to leave, we're here for you. So it was never like they never pressured me to leave. They knew that I was going to leave when I was ready. Yeah. Yeah. What's your outlook on dating now? Like, how would you go about it now? That's hard. So I've been talking to my therapist about it. Yeah. But just setting clear boundaries, because I feel like we fall into this trap, dating trap Oh, what happened? But what a bird went on didn't see a little bird. That is crazy. God is like, good girl, good talking. So creating clear boundaries and just being very gentle with myself and putting myself first, I feel like in the past, I've always put people before myself. So just being allowed to like. I want to still feel like me and I want someone to add value to my life. And if someone doesn't add value, then I'm just like, OK, it's not meant for me. What platforms through friends, dating apps? Like, I'm not doing dating apps anymore. She's done. I'm done with dating. I'm done with them. A lot of a lot of broken hurt people and hurt people, hurt people. Yeah. And so my my mentor, we do this thing every year we have a word. And so my word for the year is intention. And so I just try to do everything in life with intention. So I'm intentionally dating. But like, I'm also intentionally dating myself first. What's a good date to take a girl on? And how should they behave on the first date? That's good. That's really good. A lot of men pressure women to like go on dates. And I feel like it should really be on like the woman. Women feel uncomfortable sometimes when men are like overpowering. So allowing a woman to like kind of guide the first date and like on her level of comfortability. Yeah, I feel like it's like the best way to be gentle, being gentle so that a woman can feel comfortable and safe and like they want to do it, not like they're pressured to do it. Yeah. What about you? What was the hardest moment of your life? Oh, we've been through a lot together. We had a cousin who took his life a few years ago. Yeah. Yeah. And that was that was the hardest moment. I think of our entire family. Yeah. Life. But I think now looking back, that was about five years ago. There's so much that has come from it that, you know, was good and and true. And and I think that a lot of the times in life when something horrible happens, you think like what good could ever come off of something so horrible. But time after time, we've seen our family flourish. We've seen happiness. We've been able to help other people who have been suicidal. So it was a path that I don't think either of us thought we would ever have to walk. But praise God, our family is so tight in it. If someone's feeling alone and suicidal, how should they seek for help? And how should the family deal with it? I think that if you are somebody who is suicidal, the biggest thing that you can do is truly know that that the pain that you're feeling right now is temporary. It's not going to feel the same in a month or a year or two years. But your brain will just play tricks on you and convince you that the world is so much better without you. But your family and your friends or even the barista at a coffee shop is going to miss you. You know, and we think of our cousin every single day, you know, like we miss him every day. Yeah. And that's just what I would tell people is that it's just wait. You just hold on a little bit longer. As for family members, though, if you have somebody who's feeling suicidal, the biggest thing that they can do is support them, not discourage them. Like life's not that bad. You know, like you'll be OK. Faith is huge. I would say leading them to Christ, getting them the mentors or counselors that they need. There's so many resources out there for people's lives to be saved. What advice would you give them post someone taking that route since it happened to you guys? How did you guys deal and heal? Yeah. I would say, though, I I want to highlight our aunt. So our cousin. So we have two cousins, right? They're brothers. The first one passed away from a terminal disease. And then the other one took his life less than a year later. So what our aunt did was took her horrible pain and turned it into something so great. And she became a nurse and she could save other other people. She takes care of people now and she's able to support and understand individuals in a way that that not everybody can. Yeah. So I would say that take your pain and that suffering and turn it into something so much greater and purpose in that because they would want that. Yeah. Yeah. That's a lot of wholesome stuff, guys. Yeah. Just some trauma dumping on you. My name is Laurel. I'm Mackenzie.