home, but there is a small market for mansions.
Tosca says she has learned the biggest lesson
she could have imagined. “But I also learned I
have the power of yes and no.”
Now Tosca is working to bring her career
to life and establish financial stability. She has
written a new book about resilience, a story about
Robert’s cancer and what happened over the
past two years. When her publisher read it, this
was put to her, “That is a great story about Bob,
but you are missing from the picture.” “I never
thought it could be about me. I did not think I had
permission to write about my side of the story
because I did not think it mattered.” She knows
now how much she mattered.
What she is learning from this whole
experience; first is the wonderful, beautiful power
of “no.” And one thing: Tosca has always been an
optimist. I never got the victim feeling from her nor
the feeling that there is nothing she could do about
her situation. But in her rawness of telling her story
she hopes to empower other spouses to help
others evaluate their emotional habits.
I admire her attitude of responsibility and
perseverance.
She is and will come back, this time with four
daughters. After Robert’s death, Tosca asked his
daughter Chelsea if she wanted to be adopted.
With a yes, her daughter team became four.
Chelsea is the youngest of her four at 22.
Tosca describes her as logical beyond reason,
deep - trying to shed her teenage years and come
into womanhood. She says Chelsea has handled
her layers of tragedy with both sadness and
grace. “It has been a beautiful process to watch.”
Kelsey, 24, is production assistant at an
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M A G A Z I N E || JUNE 2015 || EDITION 2
advertising agency, she is “creative and stubborn”,
a classically trained dancer, and photographer.
Kelsey had a lot to do with newest iteration of
Tosca’s website. Kiersten 27 has a Masters in
Integrated Marketing and Science Communication
from Northwestern University. She is working in
Chicago in the US at a company that takes social
media data and writes algorithms to leverage
that data. At 30, her daughter Rachel is married,
living with Scratch Golfer husband. Rachel is a
Naturopathic Doctor and Tosca can go to her
regarding medical advice. As you can see, she has
built a dream team of daughter to help her with this
journey back.
With the tragedies for all the women in her
house, they have embraced counseling and its
value. We talked about social stigmas of mental
health in Canada and the United States. It is still
stigmatized in Canada she says, but we have to
talk about it. We all need to talk about depression,
talk about all the emotional tugs in our heads. She
feels she is upfront with her girls and honest about
her feelings. “If you do not deal with your emotions,
your emotions will deal with you.” Tosca says she
has learned to set boundaries and is starting to
accept that she is just as important as anyone else.
Life requires that she is diligent about taking
care of herself, working out, meditating, and
nourishing herself. She allows herself the negative
and the bad, embracing them and moving on. “I
know it is a bumpy ride, but I am not going down
with the Titanic.”