Some moments arrive without announcement, and you spend the rest of your life replaying them, searching for clues you didn't recognize at the time. The last real conversation. The unexpected laugh. The surge of energy that felt like hope returning, when it was really something else entirely. A gift. A goodbye wrapped in light.

In this episode, you'll hear about Adel's final rally, the days when her spirit flared bright one last time. We talked about everything and nothing. She wanted to protect us all from the sadness she knew was coming. And in those final hours, we didn't fill the room with fear. We filled it with love. 

This is the hardest episode of the 20-part true love story: My Soulmate Named Adel, and the one I'm most grateful I lived.

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https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/reframing-life/id1876090703

Some truths arrive without sound. You don't hear them coming, you just look around one day and realize everything you thought you knew has quietly rearranged itself while you were busy surviving. In the hospital, Adel and I found a rhythm we never wanted but desperately needed. The beeping machines. The thin blankets. The way she'd look at me without saying anything, and somehow, I understood everything.

In this episode, you'll hear what that hospital room taught us about love, not the loud, declarative kind, but the love that sits beside you in silence and refuses to leave. The radiation appointments. The new routine we built together inside those walls. The moment she called out for me to stroke her hair. And the quiet, unspoken truth settling over both of us, even as we refused to name it. 

Part of the 20-part true love story: My Soulmate Named Adel.

Subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts so you never miss an episode.
https://open.spotify.com/show/6nKm4EerZk1sfsCR6yUMZU
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/reframing-life/id1876090703

Some rooms change you the moment you walk into them. You don't know what's happened yet, but you can feel it. The air is different. The person you love is sitting there, and before a single word is spoken, something in you already knows. That afternoon, I walked into our office carrying takeout for dinner. I walked out carrying a new reality.

In this episode, you'll hear about the call that ended the illusion we'd been holding, eight tumours. Then ten more in her brain. The DNR Adel tried to sign but couldn't. A seizure beside the Christmas tree, and the moment I yelled "Don't leave me now", and she heard me. This is the episode where everything changed. Part of the 20-part true love story: My Soulmate Named Adel.

Subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts so you never miss an episode.
https://open.spotify.com/show/6nKm4EerZk1sfsCR6yUMZU
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/reframing-life/id1876090703

There's a strange grace that comes when the unthinkable begins to feel like everyday life. The fear is still there, but moving alongside it is something that looks a lot like hope. In the months after Adel's diagnosis, we didn't slow down. We moved forward. Not despite what was happening, but through it, together.

In this episode, you'll hear about the moments that carried us: a Halloween surgery where the OR team arrived in costumes, Adel quietly taking control the morning her hair began to fall, a week in Los Cabos where strangers saw nothing but a woman with beautiful salt-and-pepper hair, and the day she posted four words on Facebook: one year cancer free. Part of the 20-part true love story: My Soulmate Named Adel.

Subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts so you never miss an episode.
https://open.spotify.com/show/6nKm4EerZk1sfsCR6yUMZU
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/reframing-life/id1876090703

There are moments that divide a relationship into before and after. Ours arrived quietly, not as a dramatic turning point, but as a phone call I somehow already understood before a single word was spoken. I couldn't get to Adel fast enough. And in those three minutes, love stopped being abstract. It became the only thing that mattered. What followed wasn't fear; it was quiet, focused, determined courage. 

And it changed everything.

Most people don't ask it out loud, but I hear it. 

Why would you share something this personal? 

The honest answer has two parts. 

The first is a promise I made to Adel: that what we had wouldn't fade into memory, but would live on for anyone still trying to build something real. 

The second is something I've learned to be true again and again: that the deepest connections, the truest joy, come from choosing to stay open. Even when it costs you. This is why I'm telling these stories. Not to teach. Not to preach. To show what's possible when you choose to stay open, even when it's hard.

Some of the most beautiful seasons of our lives only reveal their true meaning in hindsight.

Not because anything went wrong in the moment…
 but because we later realize we were living inside a chapter that wouldn’t last forever.

In this episode, I take you back to the summer of 2018, a time when life with Adel felt full, expansive, and open in every direction. We travelled to Budapest, where she reconnected with her childhood story of leaving Hungary under extraordinary circumstances, and then to Tuscany, where a simple vacation quietly turned into something much bigger.

That trip changed how we saw our future.

We began to imagine a different kind of life, one built around experiences, travel, and fully living in the present rather than waiting for “someday.”

And like so many dreams we created together… it felt completely possible.

What we didn’t know at the time was that we were living in our final season of normal life. A season filled with gratitude, laughter, and possibility, one that would soon give way to something neither of us expected.

Looking back now, I don’t see that time as something we lost.

I see it as something we were lucky enough to fully live.

🎙 My Soulmate Named Adel is part of the ReFraming Life series, true stories of love, loss, and what it means to be human.

Someone once told me they had stopped celebrating their first date anniversary after they got married. They figured the wedding had replaced it. 

I sat with that for a while, because Adel and I never saw it that way. 

Every Wednesday, for more than fourteen years, I would turn to her and say: "Happy weekversary." Not every year. Every week. 

Because we believed you don't wait for the big moments to celebrate love. The small moments are the big moments. They're the ones that become your life.

This is the beginning of a 20-episode true love story.

My name is Kent Waugh. And the woman who changed everything I thought I knew about love was named Adel.

She was the only person who responded to my dating profile — one response, to 20 very specific things I had written about what I believed and what I was looking for. She answered every single one.

What followed was 14 years of something I can only describe as soulmate love. The kind that asks you to become more than you thought you were. The kind that reshapes you, quietly, from the inside out.

This series — My Soulmate Named Adel — is the true story of that love. 

What it looked like. 

What it required. 

What it taught me. 

And what it left behind.

20 episodes. One true story. I'm glad you're here.

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It was early 2006 when our plane landed in Mazatlán, one of our first real trips together, just the two of us. Adel brought a camera, and since photography had always meant something to me, you'd expect I'd never put it down. 

But somewhere in those early days, I stopped. Adel noticed before I did. When she asked me why, I sat with it for a long moment before the answer came: every time I looked through the viewfinder, I was framing the moment for someone else, and I lost the sense of being there with her. I didn't want anything between me and being fully present. Not even a lens.

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