On February 11, Rachel Hollis learned that her ex-husband and father of her four children, Dave Hollis, had passed away – an unexpected tragedy that came as a shock to everyone who knew him. Not even 24 hours before that, she was talking to him at their son’s baseball game and everything seemed normal.
After a little more than two weeks of mourning, Rachel returned to her The Rachel Hollis Podcast on February 27 to finally speak about what’s been going on with the family since his passing. She titled the episode ‘Where Do We Go From Here’ and spent 13 minutes discussing her family’s life moving forward.
She started the podcast off by explaining how she had tried to make the episode several times, but was having a hard time talking about the situation. At the same time, she wanted to give her fans – who have been so supportive and loving of her and her family – at least some idea of what’s been going on.
With that said, she gave one disclaimer – “I’m going to make this episode and then I’m not going to talk about this anymore.” Her reasoning for this was because ‘my children’s father isn’t content for other people,’ adding that his death is ‘traumatic,’ ‘awful,’ and ‘just devastating’ – reiterating that it isn’t content.
While she understands that many other people are using the death as content because it’s trending, she finds it ‘grotesque’ and ‘deeply disrespectful’ to her and her family. After briefing everyone on his sudden death, she expressed her continued confusion and incertitude over what exactly happened to Dave.
“We still honestly don’t know what happened. I found out after the fact that he had gone to the hospital a couple of times because he was having heart problems,” she said – adding that it’s possible he had a heart attack. “Whatever he died from, we’re still in the same space, which is just deep grief,” she added.
She talked about the many different emotions she’s going through – as well as her children – as they navigate that deep grief, likening it to riding waves. “You’ll have a moment where it feels calm and then you get overwhelmed by a wave and then you kind of have to come back out of that,” she explained.
Rachel Hollis Says Kids Are Doing ‘As Well As They Can’
After talking about how her boyfriend had to help her out of a panic attack as she walked into the lawyer’s office to handle her ex-husband’s estate – she’s the one in charge of it – Rachel Hollis gave an update on how the kids were doing in the wake of the tragedy, since that’s something everyone keeps asking about.
“The kids are doing as well as they can. But that’s, you know…,” she said. “It’s like in these times people are like ‘How are you?’ and you’re just like ‘I’m fu***ng horrible, it’s not okay,’” she continued – adding that all four kids had different relationships with their father, but are doing as well as she could’ve hoped for.
She talked about how she’s allowing everyone in her family to feel their feelings and express them in ways they know how – something she has always believed in. For example, there was a time when her brother died and her son would make a joke about it, but then feel mortified for having made the joke.
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Since that was his way of learning to work through that grief, she wouldn’t let him feel any negativity toward how he was dealing with the pain – and that’s how she’s letting them navigate this newfound grief. “We’re just going to keep talking about it, we’re going to keep crying, and we’re going to keep saying good memories about him,” she said.
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