ReFraming Life

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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By the summer of 2018, Adel and I had turned travel into something close to an art form, not about plans, but about presence. Barcelona was supposed to be a simple day trip. It became one of the most chaotic, most hilarious, and most revealing days we ever had together. A hotel booked for the wrong night. A missing backpack. The wrong train. The wrong station. And a locked gate at 1:00 in the morning. By the end of it, we weren't frustrated. We were laughing, the kind of laughter that tells you something true about two people. Joy in a relationship isn't just romance. It's resilience with laughter in it.

There is an old belief that the people we are meant to love are already tied to us by an invisible red string, across distance, across time, pulling quietly until we finally arrive. 

I used to think that was a beautiful idea. Nothing more. 

And then I met Adel. 

This is the story of what I've come to understand about soulmates, destiny, and the strange thing I call retroactive destiny, the way the most sacred moments in life only reveal themselves when you look back. Even after losing her, I don't feel like the string has been cut. It feels like it's tied to something I can't see yet.

It serves as a quiet introduction to the series My Soulmate Named Adel, a true story told across twenty episodes about love, timing, loss, and the moments that quietly change everything.

The hardest speech I've ever given was at my wife's Celebration of Life. I opened with: "One of us was sleeping with their boss." The room went still. In this episode, I share the partnership few people knew about, how Adel and I spent 24 hours a day, seven days a week together, not just as partners at home, but at work. We were us to the power of two. And what we discovered through all of it is something I didn't fully understand until she was gone: togetherness doesn't weaken strong relationships. It reveals them. Love doesn't need distance to survive. It needs alignment.

The stress had been building for weeks, a money issue, the kind that tightens your chest and makes you want to be right more than you want to be close. I felt my voice climbing. And then Adel looked at me with no judgment and asked just four words: "Are we still on the same team?" That was all it took. 

In this episode, I share what it meant to grow because of someone, not just with them. The ordinary riches of a Sunday morning coffee. The ER Valentine's Days under fluorescent lights. The business we built together, not out of necessity, but out of values. And the one question that kept us close, again and again, for 14 years.

For years, my wife Adel hid new clothes in the trunk of her car — not because she couldn't afford them, but because a previous partner had shamed her for wanting them. She only spent her own money. She earned more than he did. And still, shame found a way in. It followed her into our relationship before she ever said a word about it. In this episode, I share the small acts of trust that slowly undid that shame, the joint accounts we opened early, the bedroom fashion shows she'd put on just for me, and a Las Vegas afternoon that ended with a $10,000 slot machine jackpot, a pair of Jimmy Choo boots, and one of the most quietly beautiful moments of our life together. The real win that night wasn't the money.

The Friday after our first date, I told my sons I'd met someone very important to me. I felt the knot in my stomach as I said it. They had me exclusively for four and a half years, and I knew what I was asking of them. But I had made a promise to myself long before Adel: I would never bring someone into their lives unless I was deeply confident it would last. With Adel, I had no doubts. 

So nine days after we met, all of our kids were in a bowling alley together, two families cautiously orbiting each other, awkward and polite, keeping it light. And somehow, exactly right. In this episode, I share what Adel and I did, and didn't do, that made blending our families feel less like a strategy and more like a daily choice: just show up and love each other well.