Who Am I Without You? Grief, Identity & Purpose

What happens when you lose someone you love but also lose the person whose approval helped shape your sense of who you are?

In this episode of What Triggers You?, I sit down with Ravi to explore the loss of his father to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), a rare and devastating neurological disease. But as our conversation unfolds, we discover that Ravi’s grief isn’t only about losing his father.

His father had an enormous influence on his life, his choices, and the person he became. Beneath the grief, we begin to uncover something deeper: how much of Ravi’s identity had become intertwined with seeking his father’s approval, and what happens to that identity when the person you spent a lifetime trying to make proud is suddenly no longer there.

Who are you when you can no longer receive the validation that helped define you? What does purpose look like when part of your drive was connected to being seen, recognized, or approved of by someone you loved? And can grief keep us connected to someone in ways we don’t immediately recognize?

We explore how Ravi’s father’s death became both a profound trigger and, in many ways, fuel for his search for purpose. That search eventually contributed to the creation of The RAD Motivation Podcast, where Ravi gives others a space to tell the stories and experiences that have shaped their lives.

This is a conversation about complicated grief, identity, approval, trauma, and the sometimes uncomfortable relationship between pain and purpose. It’s also an exploration of what it means to begin discovering who we are when the person we once looked to for validation is no longer there.

Because sometimes healing isn’t simply learning how to live without someone. It’s discovering who we are without needing them to tell us who we should be.