Speaker encourages women to ‘laugh too loud, hug too hard’

PALMER — People would understand if Abby Rike had just given up.

At times it seemed the joy would never return to her eyes after Rike lost her beloved husband and two small children in a head-on car crash.

It was the life she wanted, the life she dreamed of, she said. But it ended abruptly seven years ago today — Oct. 13, 2006 — when a vehicle traveling at more than 100 mph collided with the car in which her husband, Rick, and their infant son, Caleb, and 5-year-old daughter Macy were traveling.

There were no survivors.

“In a blink of an eye, the life I wanted was gone,” Rike said.

In that moment, she said she counted herself among the casualties claimed by the crash.

The Healthy Woman’s Advisory Council brought Rike to the Valley as the keynote speaker at a Healthy Woman Fair at Mat-Su Regional Medical Center Oct. 12.

Mat-Su Regional Marketing Manager Nicole Caldarea said the Healthy Woman program aims to help women make better choices for themselves and their families. She said the program includes monthly talks and events such as the women’s health fair at the hospital Saturday.

Caldarea said Rike is the first national speaker the hospital has helped bring to the Valley via the Healthy Woman program.

“Everybody needs a little inspiration,” Caldarea said.

People who purchased tickets to the event knew they were coming to hear Rike tell her story of life after unthinkable loss, so it probably came as no surprise that all 150 chairs in the room had a flier about her new book and a small box of tissue.

“It’s very easy to think you are always going to feel the way that you feel,” she told the crowd of women gathered. “You are not. It will get better. But it’s going to be really uncomfortable in the process.”

Rike mapped the route of journey back to joy for audience members. She said the road back began on Feb. 13, 2009, on what she considers her rock bottom day.

She had a long and “not very churchy” talk with God that day, she said. Rike said she asked him to “please make this better or take me home.”

Before that, she’d taken a year off, earned her master’s degree, moved to Louisiana and taught freshmen English at a school in Houma all in an effort to reinvent herself.

One of the well-intended “changes” she made was joining a gym. Rike said she faithfully paid her dues every month and even went to the gym one day.

The one day she went she met Vicky and Brady Vilcan from Season 6 of “The Biggest Loser.”

It was a blog post by Vicky on Feb. 12, 2009, that inspired Rike to consider going on a reality television show.

“I thought, ‘Maybe if I get healthy I’ll feel better,’” she said about why she considered being part of a national TV cast.

She said the scariest step was getting out of the car that first day to join the cast of “The Biggest Loser” Season 8 in May 2009.

“Life is too long to exist out your days,” Rike said. “Too many people just survive every day.”

Standing there in a sports bra and Spandex shorts with her starting weight of 247 pounds broadcast on TV was unnerving, but Rike said her focus was elsewhere. “Part of me could only think — ‘Sami Braddy is right there.’”

At the heart of her presentation were three keys to live, not just survive: count your blessings; dream a little; and be fearless.

“If it is possible to know joy and peace for me, it is possible for every one of you,” Rike said. “The seemingly impossible is possible one step at a time.”

She said she shares what she’s learned at Healthy Woman events around the country and in her new book, “Working It Out: A Journey of Love, Loss and Hope.”

Rike married again in November 2011 and the happy couple moved to the Nashville, Tenn., area.

She said she honors those she lost every day.

“By having a laugh that is too loud and hugs that are too hard because that’s how they made me,” Rike said.

Contact Heather A. Resz at 352-2268 or heather.resz@frontiersman.com.