Grief is the wilderness no one prepares us for. The world tells us to move on and bury the pain. But what if grief wasn’t meant to be erased but integrated into who we are becoming?
Melissa Dlugolecki knows this firsthand. After losing her daughter Leyden to NEC, her life was shattered, her heart broken, her finances devastated, and her sense of identity stripped away. And yet, it was in that breaking that her rebuilding began. Today, she is a speaker, coach, and author of Scar Tissue, helping thousands transform grief into healing, resilience, and purpose.
In this episode, Melissa opens up about the truth no one wants to talk about: grief doesn’t disappear, it integrates. And within those scars are the very lessons that can crown us with identity, strength, and calling.
What You’ll Learn:(02:45) - Moving on vs integrating grief (05:12) - Why Melissa wrote Scar Tissue (11:31) - What to say (and not to say) to someone who’s grieving (14:06) - Toxic positivity and the danger of “time heals” (19:46) - The biggest lesson Melissa learned from her daughter (22:09) - Radical responsibility: shifting from victim to creator (26:22) - How grief prepared Melissa for entrepreneurship (28:02) - Listeners, Distractors, and Doers (32:16) - Authentically grieving and scheduling grief (35:57) - The art of presence and authentic communication (38:41) - Living with alignment, saying no to what doesn’t serve (41:47) - How to deal with a team member who’s going through grief
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