When You Can’t Afford to Fall Apart: Grief, Fatherhood & Starting Over with Lee Ehlers

What happens when everyone needs you to be okay, but you’re barely surviving yourself?Hollywood screenwriter and producer Lee Ehlers spent years learning how to survive rejection, but nothing prepared him for the loss of his wife, Erin, or for discovering that sometimes the strongest thing you can do is stop pretending you’re okay.Lee’s professional breakthrough and personal devastation collided when his feature film EXES was finally being made as his high school sweetheart and wife of twenty years was dying from breast cancer. Suddenly widowed with children who were just 10, 7, and 5, Lee found himself trying to grieve while becoming the person they still needed every day. We talk about the private cost of performing the “strong dad,” the period when alcohol became the only way he could sleep through overwhelming grief, and the moment he finally admitted, “I’m not okay. I’m struggling.”In this episode:Grief after the death of a spouseWidowed fatherhood and raising children through lossPerforming strength when you’re falling apartDepression, isolation, and asking for helpSelf-medication and coping with acute griefWhy grief doesn’t follow a predictable processSupporting someone who is grieving without prescribing how they should healThe strange collision of happy memories and devastating lossStarting over after losing the person you built your life withIdentity after lossPersistence through rejection and uncertaintyNearly two decades of pursuing a Hollywood careerScreenwriting, creativity, and finding your own writing processWhat repeated rejection can teach us about survivalThe making of EXESWhy saying “I’m not okay” can be the beginning of getting helpWatch Lee Ehlers’ film EXES on Amazon:EXES on Amazon⁠Lisa Lacy | Notes From the Edge:https://www.lisalacy.comWhat did you perform in order to survive?Welcome to the Edge.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.