Don't Wait Until They're Gone: Seeing the Sacred in the People Right in Front of You

Episode 202: Don’t Wait Until They’re Gone: Seeing the Sacred in the People Right in Front of You

We save our kindest words for funerals. We use the good dishes for guests. We wait until life feels “special enough” to start really living. But what if every moment and every person were already sacred?

In this final episode of 2025, I share a deeply personal reflection on losing a close family member and what that experience taught me about honoring the people in our lives while they are still here. From the quiet halls of a hospital to the untouched purse on my shelf, I explore the everyday ways we delay love, gratitude, and appreciation.

This episode will challenge you to stop waiting. Stop waiting for people to change. Stop waiting for relationships to improve. Stop waiting for a better time. And start seeing the beauty in the ordinary. Because this is the moment. This is your life. And it’s worth living and loving right now.

You’ll hear about:

• The sacredness of ordinary moments in family relationships
• How grief wakes us up to what we’ve overlooked
• Why we hold back appreciation and how that blocks connection
• A story about a beautiful purse and how it became a metaphor for life
• Thought reversals that will shift how you see your adult children
• The power of reflecting on 2025 with grace, gratitude, and growth
• Two powerful quotes from Albert Einstein and Thomas Merton that tie it all together

This episode is especially for you if:

• You feel like you're walking on eggshells around your adult child
• You’ve been holding back love, waiting for your child to change
• You want to reconnect with an estranged or emotionally distant adult child
• You’re ready to stop waiting and start appreciating your family even if it’s messy

Tina Gosney is the Family Conflict Coach. She works with parents who have families in conflict to help them become the grounded, confident leaders their family needs.
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Tina is certified in family relationships and a trauma informed coach.
Visit tinagosney.com for more information on coaching services.

Transcript

Tina Gosney: 0:00

Tina, why do we wait until someone is gone to tell them how much they mean to us? Why do we do that? I'm Tina Gosney, family conflict coach, family life educator. And today's episode is very Tinder, because it's about loss and love and the things that we're missing in the middle very recently. Just a couple weeks ago, a close family member passed away. I spent a few hours in the hospital with family as we said our goodbyes, and that time felt really, really sacred, like almost like time it stopped. It was sad and it was sacred. There's really no other way to describe it if you ever lost someone, you know what I mean, those quiet, heavy moments in the hospital. I just kept thinking, why don't we recognize how sacred every day is? Why does it take something like this to really have that brought home? Because we mark the beginning of life. You know our birth, the birth of a child with this awe and this celebration, and then we mark the death the end with reverence and sadness and grief. But what about all those moments in between? What about this, the everyday moments, like your child walking through the door, even if they barely say hi or don't even say hi. What about the sacredness of the messy dinner table with the people that you love? That's a miracle, even if the conversation feels awkward, that is a sacred moment. What about a phone call from your adult child, if it only lasts two minutes, what if you just get a short text? All of these moments are sacred. We miss the sacredness in everyday life because we're missing the sacredness in them, the people that we love. We're so busy getting caught up in seeing what they're not, what they're doing wrong, what we wish they would say, or how we wish they would act. We're too caught up in who we want them to be, instead of loving the person that's standing there right in front of us. And the hard truth is that we often appreciate people more after they're gone in their absence than we ever did in their presence. So standing in that hospital hallway, and I was not thinking about this, what this person could have done better, I was just so grateful for the life that they lived, for their presence in my life, and their role in my family's story. And I just thought about, why do we wait until death to honor life? Also reminded me of something else, which I'm going to really shift gears here. This is something sitting on a shelf in my closet. A few years ago, my husband and I took a special trip overseas, and on that trip, I bought a beautiful purse. I loved the colors, I loved the design. I just saw it in a store, and I was like, that is the souvenir I want to take home. I did not have much room in my bag. I was traveling really light, but this is the one thing that I wanted to take home from this trip. And every time I would look at it, it reminded me of that trip and how much fun we had and all the things that we did on that trip. It reminds me of that trip and all the fun that we had. And here's the thing, I have used that purse one time, aside from that one time, it's been sitting on a shelf. Now it is tucked inside a protective bag so it doesn't get dusty and it's out of sight. It's unused. It's too special for regular life, for just every day, whatever, and it's been eight years I've used it once in eight years, that purse has become a symbol of something that I didn't mean to say to myself, and that is, hey, wait, wait for the right moment. Wait until something feels worthy to use it. But that moment is right now. It's today. Life is not waiting for some event to make it count. This is the event. This is the life. This is not a dress rehearsal, and we do the same thing with people in our lives. We save the good words, we wait to say the loving thing. We keep our admiration and our appreciation wrapped up in this emotional purse, and we only pull it out for a special occasion. But what if we can pull it out any day, what if we can use the good dishes today? We can use the purse now? What if we spoke words and gave compliments and offered hugs and appreciation, not because it's a holiday or a funeral, but just because they're here, because every single. Moment of your life is special, and every moment of their life is special too. So stop saving the love for some day, stop waiting to live and use the personnel. Albert Einstein said there are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. Which way are you choosing? I want to choose. The second way I want to live as though everything is a miracle. What if we treated this messy, beautiful life and the people in it as sacred miracles, not as projects to be fixed, we think that we need to wait for someone to change before we can really appreciate them and express that appreciation. So I will appreciate them more when they apologize, or when they start coming around more, or when they see all that I've done for them, and then I'm going to open up my heart again. But what if that moment never comes? What if the real healing begins, not when they shift and start doing something different, but when you do what if appreciation is not something that's earned, it's something that we choose to offer because we decided to show up as someone who sees that person's humanity with all their messiness and all their mistakes, and we see the sacredness in them, because you can see that same sacredness in yourself. You know, we get caught up in this trap of believing that if we express love or gratitude too soon, when they aren't doing what we want them to do, or being the person we want them to be, before things are fixed, if we're expressing love or gratitude too soon, then we're giving up our power. It's like we're holding that hostage, and we think we're letting them off the hook if we express that to them before they've fixed the thing that we want them to fix. We're afraid that, oh, that means that they're going to think that things are okay with how they are. But appreciation does not mean approval. And love does not mean you have forgotten your pain, and gratitude does not erase boundaries. It just says, I see you. You matter. Here, right now. You matter. This is not about pretending that things are perfect. This is about choosing to live open hearted in an imperfect world. It's about going first, not waiting for them to take the first step, you get to choose to be the one who says, I'm going to love you in the middle of this mess, not because you've changed, but because I have. And when you can do that, that is powerful. That is a piece that goes down deep inside of you, and that is when generational patterns begin to shift. And I know that this is not easy. And you could even be thinking right now, Hey, Tina, my kid has cut me off. They will not talk to me anymore, or they don't even want to hear from me. Or you might be thinking like, what if I reach out and get rejected again? Or what if I say something and they push me even further away, or maybe you're thinking like I don't even know what to say. It's been so long since we talked, I have no idea where to begin. One, one thing that I hear quite often is that, you know, talking that way, expressing love and gratitude and appreciation like that just feels awkward. That's we're not that kind of family. It just feels weird to be saying those things. And you're right. It can be feel really awkward, it can feel really vulnerable, it can be clumsy, it can be raw, and especially it can feel that way if the relationship has been strained, sometimes those words will get stuck in your throat, and your pride just wants to hold on for a little bit longer. And sometimes you're scared that, even if you do open up and say the words that you have been thinking, that they're going to reject what your heart is offering, and then you're going to be even more hurt, but the hard truth wrapped in love is that fear, that discomfort, is the price of growth. It's the price of healing and becoming and establishing something new, a new relationship, a new you. There's another thing that I've seen time and time again in my coaching is that even when the words are fumbled, even when they don't know how to respond, they remember when you show up open hearted and you were authentic and honest and you try because people remember being seen. They remember. Being appreciated. They remember when someone chose to love them right where they were, instead of waiting for them to fix themselves. So yes, it's going to feel awkward. Say it anyway. Yes, they might shrug it off. Speak it anyway. Yes, it might not change their relationship right now. Offer it anyway, because when you do, it will change you. It will expand you. And how sad would it be if you went your entire life waiting for someone else to change so that you could approve of them and be happy, only to discover at the end of your life that one of the great purposes of you being on the earth was for you to change and find your happiness internally, regardless of outside circumstances. Thomas Merton said, every moment and every event of every man's and woman's life on the Earth plants something in the soul. What are the moments of your life planting in your soul? How are those moments expanding your soul? This is the last episode of 2025 and I want you to want to invite you to do something very powerful, and that is to take a sacred pause before you rush into the new year. Take a moment to reflect on 2025 What did your family relationships give you this year, even if they were messy, actually, especially if they were messy, especially if they did not go the way that you hoped. And there was pain and silence and misunderstanding, because in those moments, those difficult, difficult moments when we choose to reflect with gratitude and appreciation, that is where we grow and expand our capacity. That's when we begin to not just see the struggle, but to see the sacred inside of the struggle. So what have your relationships taught you this year? Where have you been stretched? Where have you loved more deeply or felt this ache of disconnection more sharply? Is it possible for you to look at those moments with soft eyes and a tender heart and say, even this has shaped me, even this most difficult thing has grown me. So let them be who they are. Let yourself be who you are, which is a sacred, struggling, stunning human being, trying to love and be loved in the best way you know how. So even if they don't receive it, even if it goes unreturned, you'll know how to show up differently, and that's where real healing begins. Here's something I want you to do today, send a message, a simple message to someone in your life, just one little short sentence, something like, I'm thinking of you today, and I'm so grateful you're in my life, not because they earned it, because people don't need to earn that, not because it's their birthday or because it's Christmas or it's a holiday, not because things are perfect, just because they're here, and just because you want to be the kind of person who sees the sacred in every ordinary day. As we close out 2025 I want you to see the sacredness in yourself as well. You have made it through another year, you have shown up, you have grown, you have loved even in the messy parts, and that deserves recognition. Take that sacred pause, reflect with love, and I will meet you back here in 2026