After a ten-year career as a theater actress in Miss Saigon and other international productions, Lissa Romero de Guia was living a joyful family life in Baguio with two young children when she suddenly lost her husband, the filmmaker Kidlat de Guia, who died in his sleep while visiting Spain in 2022.<br /><br />When he died, Lissa had just taken a workshop on grieving after losing a close friend. She had also been doing yoga and meditation, and had experience counseling traumatized typhoon victims. A newspaper columnist and author, she has been writing openly about her grief and offers an example of how to deal with such a devastating loss. “I don’t cope, I just allow,” she tells Howie Severino. “You should allow the crucible of that pain, that experience to shape you, to change you… I feel like that is the gift.”<br /><br />She and her two children, now 10 and 8, remember Kidlat every day, so they still feel his presence.<br /><br />“My joke is that Kidlat couldn't have died at a better time in my life because in my 50 years here on Earth, I've gravitated towards practices that are really about soothing the highly anxious child inside.”<br /><br />In this revealing conversation, De Guia talks about those practices, but also about the importance of writing to “right things” and adjusting to life as a single parent. She shares advice on how to talk to people going through loss. She quotes another writer who said, “Every love story is a ghost story.” She explains what that means in this episode.<br />
