Grief Over My Grandson’s Sudden Death Redefined Success for Me

The call came while I was in the middle of producing a groundbreaking documentary sanctioned by the Napoleon Hill Foundation. I had also just been featured in Forbes. Everything in my career was accelerating exactly as I had planned.

Then came the news that shattered everything.

King, my 2-year-old grandson, had drowned in a tragic accident. The little boy who would stop whatever he was doing to run into my arms, whose face lit up every time he saw me, was gone.

I felt like an anvil had fallen on my chest. Every step I took felt heavy, and the more it sank in, the more I wanted to leap out of my body from the pain. My chest was heavy and I couldn’t breathe. It was instant trauma and a shock to my nervous system that left me gasping for air.

But that grief taught me something valuable.

My grandson meant the world to me

My first thought was denial. He’s so young. I was just with him. How could this have happened?

Just one month earlier, I had sent King and my daughter back to California. When their flight was delayed, King held onto my neck like he didn’t want to let go before boarding. I never expected that would be the last time I would hold him.

Related stories

King wasn’t just any child to me. Our relationship was magical. When I would play meditation music by the group Beautiful Chorus, he would hear just the first tone and stop whatever he was doing to come sit on my lap and sing with me. He was even on key. When he stayed at my house, we would sing together, play the African drum, and he would dance while I cooked. We would laugh until our bellies hurt.

The irony wasn’t lost on me. Here I was, producing a documentary about mothers who had overcome adversity to find success, and I was suddenly facing one of my greatest adversities.

I forced myself to sit with the pain of loss

I didn’t use work as anesthesia. Instead, I allowed myself to feel everything without grabbing any vices as coping mechanisms. It was painful. My nervous system wouldn’t allow me to rest, and when I did sleep, I woke up thinking about King.

The grief forced me to confront a fundamental truth: I had been building my identity on things completely outside my control. I realized that only the ego would allow me to believe that tomorrow is promised to me or anyone I love.

I couldn’t run from the pain. I had to use the tools I had been building through plant medicine, meditation, breathwork, and stillness to sit with it and find peace with knowing there was nothing I could have done to prevent this.

My grief helped me better understand success

Before King’s death, my definition of success was entirely external. Success looked like closing deals, taking meetings, and speaking at events. It was anything that fed my ego. I was chasing vanity metrics, using achievements to mask deeper insecurities I hadn’t yet faced.

But when I lost King, none of that mattered — the Forbes feature, the Napoleon Hill Foundation project, and the speaking engagements. All of it felt meaningless in the face of this devastating loss.

I started understanding that true success wasn’t about external validation. It was about healing trauma, facing my shadows, and addressing my addictions.

I know for a fact that if I hadn’t been doing deep inner work before this happened, I would have been completely broken. The preventive inner work I had done gave me the tools I needed to process this unimaginable loss.

I now realize that inner work before something happens is the only way to have the tools needed to process the curveballs life throws at you with full impact.

King’s death revealed the most resilient part of me. The part that won’t quit, even in the face of unbearable loss. He taught me that true success isn’t measured in Forbes features or foundation partnerships. It’s measured in our capacity to love deeply, heal authentically, and find meaning even in our darkest moments.

Every time I hear that first tone from Beautiful Chorus, I remember my grandson’s voice singing with mine, perfectly on key, and I’m reminded that the most important successes in life can’t be quantified on any business metric.