356| I'm Not Different. My Choices Are. Memorial Day 2026

Speaker A: This week, I'm stepping away for our series for just one episode. I know we're only one episode in, but it's because there's something I wanted to tell you about. Something I have, uh, fully. I haven't fully told on the podcast. And Memorial Day felt like the right time. Hi, my name is Tammy Imlay, and this is a Leader's Purpose podcast. And I want to tell you what it actually means before we get into today's episode. The leadership. It's not a job title, it's not a skill set, and it's not something you do because it looked good on a career path. It's a calling. And all callings cost something. They've cost you sleep. They've cost you certainty. They cost you the version of your life that would have been easier and quieter and a whole lot less yours. The leaders I built this show for are the ones who already know that. The ones who show up when it gets hard. Not because they have to, but because something deep inside of them will not let them stop. The ones who put others ahead of themselves, not as a strategy, but as a way of living. The ones who step out when they can't see the road because the calling is louder than the fear. I built this show because I needed it once. I needed someone to tell me that the sacrifice was not the end of the story and that what I was carrying could become something that. Leading from a place of loss and faith and choosing forward when forward was not clear. That's not a weakness. That was purpose. And that's what this podcast is every week for the leader who's still standing. And, uh, when standing costs something, you already have what it takes. And this is where you get to remember that. This will be my 15th Memorial Day without my husband. D. A piston to his brothers and daddy to our not so little kids. 15 years and every year, uh, except for COVID 19, my family. My family and I have gone to D.C. for an event. It's a conference of sorts, but it's not an ordinary conference. It's more of a family reunion. And I just wanted to. I wanted to tell you what it's looked like over the years, because it hasn't looked the same. And I think that it really matters. So here's a little backstory. I was 10 minutes from home, and, um, I was running the math on nap time. I had two toddlers. We just got finished with a bounce house birthday party. 90 minute drive, keeping them awake in the car so I wouldn't miss the. The window and every mom knows the window. You miss it and you pay for it until bedtime. And sometimes you pay for it at bedtime. But the fruit was cut, the chicken nuggets were ready, and this was pre air fryer time. So this was some slow times. And I could see the finish line. I wasn't a single mom, but I was a solo mom. D My husband, an Air Force fighter pilot and my high school sweetheart was deployed. And two weeks in, he didn't even know his way around the base yet. I pulled into the garage. The dog started barking. The kids are starting to fade. But there was nothing out of the ordinary. I was focused. Then there was a knock on the door. Three men in service dress. I had been on that detail before. I knew what it meant. But my brain wouldn't let me know what I already knew. It was protecting me. Ms. Imlay, there had been an accident. Your husband didn't survive. My body collapsed before my mind could. Could catch up. Uh, my kids were tapping on the shoulder. Mommy, I'm hungry. Mommy, who are these people? Mommy, why are you crying? And I had no answer. I didn't even know that I was crying. Everything I built my identity around was gone in one sentence. The first time I went to D.C. for Memorial Day, the grief was fresh, it was new, it was loud, and it was right on the surface of everything. Walking into that space. I don't want to call it a grief conference, but it's a national conference for an organization called the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors. And it is built for. Created out of hardship, created from a, uh. The founder who lost her husband and realized that there was no support, no grief support for families who were grieving this type of loss. So it's. It is a reunion. It is a, uh, a conference, but not the conference you picture. Like a leadership conference, but walking to this space for the first time, it was so overwhelming. Way more than I ever could have expected. You're surrounded by hundreds of people who. They didn't need an explanation. The people who understood what it meant to carry that. This specific kind of loss. And people who were not you, uh, were not worried that they were going to say the wrong thing because they lived it, too. It was the first place after Dee died where I felt I could just be. Not perform. I didn't have to hold it together for my kids or my family or the people around me who needed me to be okay. I could just be. So. 15 years later, this. I will be at this conference. And we will be there for Memorial Day. And it just happens. Mondays are memorial days, right? So the anticipation that I used to feel walking in, it softened the expectation I used to carry. Well, that's gone, too. Um, now when I go, it's rest. It's reflection in a place that reminds me of how far my family and I have come. We still live with griefs in our lives. We have not outrun it. Um, we're not pretending that we. That we have outrun it or that it no longer exists in our house. Um, but we have chosen for it to not define us. We live because we grieve. Not in spite of it, but because of it. And we really. We really, truly work to live. So now when I walk through these halls, I don't know many of the faces 15 years you had. People come and go. Time passed. People moved on. New families have entered the space, carrying that same fresh weight that we. That we carried 15 years ago. But I still belong there. That hasn't changed. What has changed is the way I see it when I walk through it, I can see my choices, mine and my kids, the ones that we made in the years nobody saw. The ones that were hard and slow and completely unremarkable from the outside, but changed everything about who we were becoming. Someone asked how I'm different from the families who have been coming for 20, 25 years and are standing in the same place emotionally, still in the same chapter of the same story. I told them. I'm not different. My choices are. So why am I still talking about this? And why am I sharing this on my podcast? So why is it important that I keep talking about this? And why do I bring it up and why do I feel it's important for you to hear it? It's because we don't get to choose our circumstances. That day at my door was not a choice. The years of solo parenting that followed were not a choice. The grief that still shows up, that's not a choice. But what we do with it, how we carry it, whether we let it define the ceiling or become the foundation, that is always a choice. Choose your hard. Life will give you heart. Either way. Uh, you get to choose your hard. So life will give you hard either way. The question is, which hard you're going to pick up and carry forward and which one you're going to set down. I heard something deep in my soul that day that the. My world collapsed. And at that time, I didn't know what it meant, but it was. It kept resonating. I kept hearing it over and over. It said, this will be used for good. I now know what it means. Not because the grief became easy. Not because I found a framework that made the loss manageable or life manageable. Hello, teenagers. But because I made choices. Imperfect, slow, sometimes terrifying. And every single one of them moved my family and me forward instead of keeping us where we were. So without my faith, I would not be standing here. And I mean that simply and completely. That was not a strategy. That was not a mindset shift. It was the thing that held when nothing else did. So this Memorial Day, whatever, wherever you are and whatever you're carrying, I want you to hear this. You are not defined by what happened to you. You are shaped by what you choose to do after. The heart is not going to go away, but you get to choose which hard you pick up. I truly believe Dee would have loved knowing that something good came from the hardest thing that we ever faced. I think about that every year as I walk through those halls. And every year, it reminds me of why I do this work. So thank you for being here. Thank you for letting me share this today. And I'll be back next week with our series. But until then, honor the day, honor your people. And remember that the choices you make, even the quiet ones that no one sees, are building something. Bye for now.