Three Great American Women: How a Mother and Her Daughters Found Their Way Forward After One Big Loss

Jill Petrowsky was staring at her computer screen, mortgage application forms spread across her desk, when the weight of what she was doing finally hit her. Just months after earning her licence, she was making her first loan calls whilst her father’s absence filled every corner of the family business. The numbers on the screen blurred slightly – not from confusion, but from the strange collision of professional duty and private grief that had become her daily reality.

For the Petrowsky women, moving forward after losing Joe wasn’t about grand gestures or complete reinvention. It was about these smaller, messier moments – the way Gail found herself coaching clients through their own crises whilst navigating her own, or how Dava discovered that her father’s casual suggestion about home renovation work actually made sense when everything else felt uncertain.

When the Centre Cannot Hold

Joe Petrowsky died unexpectedly, leaving behind three women who had orbited around his steady presence in different ways. Gail, a life coach who suddenly needed her own advice. Jill, who had just stepped into the family’s mortgage business before losing the person who knew it best. Dava, working in fashion design whilst carrying her father’s persistent suggestion that she might consider general contracting instead.

The shock of sudden loss creates a particular kind of chaos – one that grief counsellors and family support specialists recognise as especially disorienting because it offers no time for preparation or gradual adjustment. Each woman found herself facing not just the absence of Joe, but the question of who she might become without his influence anchoring her choices.

Finding Sunshine in a Dark Place

Gail’s work as a life coach took on an uncomfortable irony after Joe’s death. Here she was, helping others navigate trauma and build fulfilling lives, whilst her own foundation had shifted completely. The professional skills that served her clients during personal loss – listening deeply, finding patterns in chaos, believing in people’s capacity for growth – suddenly felt both essential and inadequate when applied to her own situation.

‘You have to grieve,’ Gail says, ‘but you also have to find pieces of sunshine to put in your life whenever you can.’ For her, those pieces weren’t grand revelations but small salvaged bits of normality. A client session that felt genuinely helpful. A conversation with her daughters that moved beyond logistics into actual connection. The recognition that her own experience of loss, however raw, was deepening her understanding of what others faced.

Professional grief coaching approaches emphasise this balance between acknowledging pain and maintaining forward movement – not as opposites, but as simultaneous necessities. Gail discovered this firsthand, learning that her clients’ trust in her guidance didn’t diminish because she was struggling; if anything, her willingness to continue working whilst processing her own grief created a different kind of authenticity in her practice.

Full Steam Ahead Through Fog

Jill’s situation carried its own particular weight. Stepping into the family business just as the person who built it disappeared meant learning not just procedures and client relationships, but doing so whilst fielding condolences from customers who remembered Joe fondly. Every phone call became a small reminder of loss, every successful transaction a bittersweet achievement.

‘I almost had to put my grief aside,’ Jill explains, ‘but I needed to full steam ahead in this business, and I wanted to make my father proud.’ The pressure she describes – that sense of needing to honour someone’s legacy whilst barely understanding what that legacy fully entailed – creates a complex emotional state. Pride mixed with overwhelm. Determination clouded by uncertainty about whether she was doing things the way Joe would have wanted.

The practical aspects of inheriting a family business after sudden death involve their own complications, from legal transitions to client relationships. For Jill, the learning curve was steep not just professionally but emotionally – every successful deal was simultaneously an achievement and a reminder of the person who wasn’t there to see it.

An Unexpected Path

Dava’s transition from fashion design to general contracting began with one of those conversations that gains significance only in retrospect. Joe had suggested she consider home renovation work, asking her, ‘Well, is it really that different than fashion?’ At the time, the idea seemed random. After his death, it became something else – a thread connecting her to his perspective, a way of testing whether his instincts about her abilities had merit.

‘The truth is, it’s really not,’ she reflects. ‘It’s texture, colour and user all the way.’ The realisation that her father’s seemingly casual suggestion actually made sense provided an unexpected comfort. Not because it solved everything, but because it offered proof that his understanding of her wasn’t lost with his death – it could still guide decisions, still influence the direction of her work.

Career changes after family loss often carry this quality of being both practical and symbolic. Like finding opportunity inside adversity, each step can help mourners regain a sense of agency whilst honouring their connection to the person they’ve lost. For Dava, each contracting project became a small test of her father’s theory about her abilities – and each successful completion a quiet conversation with his memory.

The Awkward Reality of Moving Forward

None of the Petrowsky women describe their progress as linear or consistently upward. Healing, they discovered, involves as much confusion as clarity. Gail found herself crying during client sessions she thought she could handle. Jill experienced guilt when work distracted her from missing Joe, then more guilt when grief interfered with her professional focus. Dava questioned whether pursuing her father’s suggestion was genuine career development or elaborate avoidance of facing his absence.

Research on grief processing supports what the women experienced – that recovery involves not a steady progression through stages, but rather an ongoing negotiation between past connection and present reality. Each woman developed her own small rituals for managing this balance, from Gail’s daily moments of reflection before client calls to Jill’s habit of silently updating Joe on business successes.

The pressure to demonstrate strength, particularly for women managing both family responsibilities and professional obligations, can create additional complexity around grief expression. Each sister found herself navigating not just her own process, but also others’ expectations about how she should be handling loss – and how quickly she should be ‘moving on’.

Building Something New From What Remains

Months later, the Petrowsky women occupy a different emotional place than where they started. Gail continues her coaching practice with a deeper understanding of how professional competence and personal struggle can coexist. Jill has established her own relationships with the family business clients, creating continuity whilst adding her own approach. Dava has completed her first contracting projects, finding satisfaction in work that connects her to her father’s insight whilst allowing her own skills to develop.

Their story isn’t about overcoming grief so much as learning to carry it differently. Joe’s influence remains present – in Gail’s expanded empathy for her clients, in Jill’s determination to honour the business he built, in Dava’s willingness to trust his assessment of her abilities. The difference is that this influence now flows through their own choices and discoveries rather than his direct guidance.

They’ve learned to recognise the ongoing nature of their adjustment. Some days feel like breakthroughs; others like setbacks. Most fall somewhere between – ordinary days when missing Joe mixes with pride in their own developing competence, when his absence is both painful and, unexpectedly, a source of strength in facing challenges he couldn’t have prepared them for.

Their weekly family calls continue, a small ritual that acknowledges both their shared loss and their separate paths forward. The conversations cover practical things – Jill’s latest successful loan closing, Dava’s current project, Gail’s insights about helping clients through their own transitions. Much like other women who’ve faced profound loss, these updates to each other serve as updates to Joe’s memory as well, small reports on how the women he raised are becoming people he never got to fully know.