Meet our Founder.
Hi! I am Andi Zemenick and this is my story.
In October 2022, I lost my beloved husband Joel to suicide and my world crumbled in an instant. With my heart shattered into a million pieces, I was unsure how to do life without him. I was lost and broken. My family and friends tried to support me the best they knew how, yet I still felt an intense loneliness in my emotional chaos. The trauma I went through was unlike anything I had ever experienced or knew how to face.
I was so alone in my grief.
For the next few months, I wandered the globe in search of my soulmate. I packed up our home, our surfboard business, and a few personal belongings, and I set out on an uncharted mission to heal my heart. I eventually landed on the Mexico Pacific coast where Joel and I often snuck away for our favorite surf vacations. It was here that I began putting my life back together — the very place we were married in that same year.
My first year in Mexico was the darkest of my life. I faced every emotion imaginable as a new “Suicide Widow” so I began to focus on my healing. My trauma was intense and my grief was relentless. I went to the ocean daily where I screamed and searched for answers I was never going to find. How did this happen? What did I miss? What happened to our dreams? Why? Why? Why?
That is when I began to hear a constant mantra that would change my life forever.
“Turn Pain into Purpose, Andi.”
It was there in my friends’ small condo overlooking the Bay of Banderas that I heard my calling and The Light Within Us All was born.
Over the next few months, I was able to piece together a proven framework and an incredible team of practitioners who had helped me “do the work.” We scouted locations that would provide privacy and serenity and where care is intimate and focused. My vision included our love of the ocean so others hurting could learn to ride the set waves (las olas) of grief. I added holistic modalities such as mediation and yoga with traditional clinical therapy to round out a program that fully encompasses the mind, body, and soul.
Within a few months, we invited our first group of courageous widows to Mexico to share in this unique experience. The transformation we witnessed with that first group was profound! I knew this was just the beginning of something that could change so many lives.
Now, we are on a mission to take our healing retreats worldwide. We also now serve other surviving family members including parents, kids, and siblings who have been left behind after suicide.
I know that my beautiful Joel is with me every step of the way on this journey. His love was so big while in his earthly body and now he continues to leave his mark on every event. I am honored that I can share his big, gregarious smile with our guests and I that I get to carry his legacy forward. He is so proud of the work we are doing.
I invite you to join us for one of our upcoming retreats. It is my promise to you that you will be cared for, held, and heard during your time of pain.
In Light and Love.
andi z.
In loving memory of Joel A. Zemenick
March 29, 1972 - October 9, 2022
#flythehawk
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