To Grit with Grace, Episode 8 — Lynn Thomas: Permission to Live
RANDY: Anyone who has ever dealt with grief knows there is no guidebook. It’s an internal battle, and as much as people on the outside can give you support, the real work happens on the inside. It’s hard enough when a relative dies at a ripe old age. But when someone we love is taken from us unexpectedly, and in the worst possible way, the difficulties multiply.
Lynn Thomas lived through the unimaginable. Just as she was starting her business and a new romantic relationship, homicide took her sister. As you would imagine — if you can imagine such a thing — this pushed Lynn to the edge of mental stability. Fortunately, she came from strong Greek immigrant stock, with parents who lifted themselves out of the ghetto, walked away from the mob, and found another way. She learned from them to keep going, even when you’re not where you want to be.
Like me, Lynn started her career as a tax attorney. Like me, she did a stint at Bank Boston. Like me, she channels her hardest life lessons into a force for good for her clients. She runs Thomas Consulting, a firm that works with business owners to delight their clients. Lynn brings the compassion, resilience, and understanding she found during her darkest time to help her clients find their untapped potential.
Her loss sears each and every day. Her heart remains scarred, but stronger than ever. And while she was on the edge, she developed strength and depth of compassion she says she might never have known otherwise.
This episode of “To Grit with Grace” is brought to you by Heron Wealth, a firm that provides financial planning and investment advice. Visit heronwealth.com for more information. To learn more about Lynn and her firm, Thomas Consulting, visit thomasconsultingwins.com.
Part 1: To Leave the Ghetto
I was really fortunate to grow up with a father who loved his work. I grew up thinking that work is fun. My father would come home, and literally, he would dance and sing. So, naively, it wasn’t until I was 13 that I realized most people didn’t love their work. When a friend said her father wasn’t happy, I said, “Why doesn’t he quit?”
The wild thing about my dad is that he grew up in a very poor family, parents were Greek immigrants, illiterate Greek and illiterate English. He started supporting his mother when he was nine years old, and he did that until she died. Never complained. He had every reason to complain. They would move from tenement to tenement, month to month. He went to bed hungry.
But at nine years old, he sold newspapers and he worked for a bookie. And when you work for a bookie, you get with some unseemly characters. My dad was really smart and knew how to handle himself, and he said at a certain point he realized everyone he knew was either dead, on the run, or in jail.
The mafia gave him an offer for $250 a week and .5% of the profits. This was in 1942, so it maybe is equivalent o $20,000 a week now. He said, “I had a decision.” He had taken secretarial courses in high school, and he made the decision to take a job for $25 a week.
He was hired by a gentleman, Joe Bender, who wound up becoming his mentor. At my father’s 65th birthday, Joe was there, and my father said, “Joe, you don’t know how close I came. You don’t know how close I came. You made the difference.”
It wasn’t easy to take another route. As my cousin said, “Your father is the only one who got out of the ghetto.” He did it by believing in himself — he was not egotistical, but he had high confidence. And he deeply cared about people and family.
As I move along in life, and I wonder if I’m making progress, I may not be where I want to be. But it doesn’t mean I stop just because I didn’t get where I wanted to be. I just keep going because that’s the right thing to do, that’s what I’ve chosen to do, that’s what’s meaningful to me. The message was: You don’t get discouraged. Life gives you what it gives you, you do what you need to do, and you do it 100%.
Part 2: My Sister’s Murder
I started at Arthur Anderson as a tax attorney, left there. Went to Bank of Boston, left them because they didn’t care about people. They weren’t willing to hire a company for $500 to teach people about stress. I even said I would pay for it, and they said no. I resigned the next day, committed to find a way for employees to win, shareholders to win, and customers to win. It didn’t have to be the win/lose.
I was in a really happy place. I had started a new business, which was going relatively well. I was dating a man who I really cared about. And life, as always, looked rosy.
A year after that, my younger sister was murdered.
It was — devastating, to put it mildly. I saw myself like if you held a china doll, and dropped it on the floor, that was me, lying there in pieces. Saying, “Okay, so how do I put myself back together?”
I didn’t know anybody who had been through murder. There was no one to turn to. What I felt like was that God dropped me in the Amazon, gave me a Q-tip, and laughed. So I felt totally alone, and what I learned from grief group is you can’t rely on your family because everyone’s broken. I had probably gallons of need — for compassion, understanding, wisdom — but neither my parents nor my other sister could provide it.
Business-wise, I sort of came to an abrupt halt. Survivor’s guilt kicked in — “I want to grow a business, and my sister’s dead? How could I be so egotistical?” It seemed greedy. It seemed, in a really distorted way, like, how could I get on with my life?
Part 3: My Father Grieves
For my dad, I had known that his brother, who was a year younger than him, had been murdered. When my father talked about it, he said his brother got too high into “the rackets,” and so he was killed.
One of his sisters, Millie, who died when she was 15, had gone into the hospital for appendicitis and died after the doctor gave her an enema. When I asked my father, “Any other murders,” he said, “My sister, Millie.” I said no, that it was medical malpractice. My father, who was always a minimizer, said, “Lynn, take my word, it was murder.” So I never asked again.
And then, my father’s father was murdered when he was 10 months old. My father had survived all of those homicides. With my sister, the daughter, he saw himself as the protector. He told me years later that he felt responsible. I tried to point out to him that she was a married woman, she was 32 years old, she had a child, how was he responsible? But he said, “I am her father. I had to protect her, and I didn’t.”
In my homicide group, up here, the fathers all said the same thing. They all felt responsible, even though most of their children were grown and out of the house. I think if the child dies of malnutrition, the mothers would feel guilty, because that’s what’s we’re assigned to.
I don’t think my father was ever depressed. He was sad. Profoundly sad, because he said about Elliot, “I was 10 months old and I don’t remember my dad. Elliot won’t remember his mom.” That really ripped at him.
Part 4: I Give You My Joy
We had a service two weeks later, when we were supposed to have had a family reunion. My dad had a story about each of us as kids — humorous stories. My dad was a great storyteller. When he started telling about my sister, Kim, emotions came up, and my father stood up there poised, took a breath or two, and continued.
To get out of the ghetto, he had mastered not repressing feelings, but managing them in some way which he couldn’t explain to me. Both my parents quit smoking like that [snaps]. They said, “I just decided to stop.” I said, “But what was the process?” They said, “You just make up your mind!”
He and I spoke about three or four times a week during all those years, 21 years. Because the rub in my parents’ marriage was my mom just wanted to go to the cemetery and pray every day, and my father wanted to talk about it. And I wanted to talk about it, so he’d call me and talk about it.
I believe I know why, and the police know why — the motive. That’s resolved. The bigger issue for me is, how do I live without there being justice?
I had a broken heart — and when people say “broken heart,” I had aches in my heart, the muscle. You know how if you run too much, you get a charley horse? I would have those for hours a day. Someone explained to me that with your heart, part of the connection that you shared with your sister is dying. So the fact that you feel like your heart is dying — you’re right. That connection is not going to be nurtured anymore. It’s gone.
And also the brain. I had suicidal thoughts for 14 months. Every night, I prayed for God to take me. I said, “If this is what this world gives, my heart is too tender. I can’t make it.”
So I had a visit. I’ve had two visits from my sister since she’s died. What she said to me is, “I left everything to my husband, but I leave you my joy. The best thing you can do for Mom, and Dad, and my son, is to live a joyful life.” She was amazingly joyful.
I don’t really know what happened, but I woke up 14 months later and it was okay for me to live. Now, to live fabulously came later — probably is still coming, to some degree. But I gave myself permission to live more fully. The image I have is that my heart has a big scar on it, but I learned how to live with the scar.
Part 5: The Depths of Compassion
So after my sister’s murder, what I had that I was able to bring to my clients was immense compassion and understanding on really deep levels. Uncomfortable? I’m fine with being uncomfortable.
I also was willing and able to stand with them in challenges and difficult situations. Probably half my clients know about my sisters’ murder. My rule of thumb is, if stories come up about families three times, I will mention it.
In difficult situations, I’m able to tell them, “This is a way out, there’s a ray there. How is this challenge now changing the way you view your business? How is it changing the way you view your clients? How is it changing the way you view your employees?” We all have immense untapped potential — how much are you willing to dig deep inside yourself? Come up with 20 solutions to a problem, not just one. 20.
I know there’s more inside of them. I saw some of the gifts that came out of my sister’s murder, inside me. If they’re being challenged by a business problem, I know it’s solvable. It may not be easy, it may not be quick, but it’s solvable.
The key things for clients that I work with is they have to care about people — extreme humanism. People come first: You take care of your employees, you really care about them, you don’t BS them (because they have a big BS meter, we all do) and you’re authentic, and you’re vulnerable, they will never steer you wrong.
Losing clients or employees is extraordinarily expensive. It’s prohibitively expensive. Your best assets are your people. They will jump through hoops to delight your clients if you do that for them.
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