Hi, I’m glad you’re here.
I’m documenting a year-long self-care sabbatical after losing my daughter, sharing what grief, healing, and rebuilding a life actually looks like. A self-care sabbatical is my year long commitment to self-care, healing, curiousity, reflection, and rebuilding a life after profound loss.
My name is Amy Olesh, and I’m a Northeast Ohio girl, born and raised. After relocating to Lexington, Kentucky for six years, I found my way back home to Hudson in 2019 — and in ways I’m still discovering, coming home has been part of the healing too.
For twenty years, I built a career at Sherwin-Williams. Before that, I ran my own painting contracting business. I’ve always been someone who shows up, works hard, and figures things out. What I didn’t know how to do — was how to live without people I love.
Grief is forcing me to find a way to do that.
If you are navigating grief, burnout, reinvention, or simply wondering who you are after life changes you, you are in the right place.
What Brought Me Here
In 2025, I lost my daughter to breast cancer. She was 33 years old.
There are no words that fit that sentence properly, so I won’t try to dress it up. What I can tell you is that losing her cracked something open in me — and in that crack, I found a choice. I could keep moving through life the way I always had, performing and producing and pushing through. Or I could stop. Really stop. And let myself heal.
I chose to stop.
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I want to be honest with you: this year is not a graceful montage of healing. There are days that feel impossible. Grief is sneaky and relentless — it hides in ordinary moments and ambushes you when you least expect it. Just today, a mammogram technician reviewed my history and said, “I see you have two daughters with the BRCA mutation.” I started to sob. “I only have one now,” I told her. She had no way of knowing. That’s how ambush grief works. It lives in the places the world hasn’t caught up yet.
I share that not for sympathy, but because if you’re having one of those days too — the kind where something small cracks you open in the middle of a Tuesday — I want you to know you’re not alone. I’m right there with you.
At the end of 2025, I retired — and I gave myself a gift I’d never given myself before: a full year to tend to my mind, my body, my heart, and my spirit. I’m calling it my Self-Care Sabbatical. This blog is what’s coming out of that year.
The People Who Are Holding Me Up
Healing, I’ve learned, is not a solo act. I couldn’t do this year without the people who show up for me — sometimes weekly, sometimes just when I need them most. My acupuncturist, my therapist, my reiki master, my masseuse, my doctor, my physical therapist. And my daughter Courtney and my dear dear friends, who sit with me in it without trying to fix it.
I used to think asking for help was a weakness. This year has taught me it might be the bravest thing I’ve ever done.
Who I Am When I’m Not Grieving
I am, at my core, someone who loves to gather people. Before grief became the lens I saw everything through, I was the person hosting family dinners and throwing dinner parties — the kind where nobody leaves early and the wine bottle somehow empties itself.
I love to travel. I love being in nature. I love a hard hike that earns a view. I love reading — the kind of books you stay up too late for. I love the beach, a glass of dry red wine, and the particular peace of a quiet morning that belongs entirely to you.
I share my home with two cats named Sophie and Fitzy, who have no idea how much they’ve helped me this year.
And more than anything — more than the career, the travel, the dinner parties, all of it — I love my family. They are my why. They always have been.
Why I Started Writing This
I started this blog because I needed somewhere to put it all — the grief, the growth, the slow mornings, the hard days, the small moments that quietly shift something inside you. Writing has been one of the most honest things I’ve done this year.
But I also started it because I have a feeling I’m not the only one carrying something heavy. Maybe you’ve lost someone. Maybe you’re exhausted in a way that sleep doesn’t fix. Maybe you’re just starting to wonder if there’s another way to live.
If any of that sounds familiar — you’re in the right place. Pull up a chair. I’ll pour the wine.