loss, love— & grace

by Sydney Munteanu

images by Megan Crawford

Lauren Oscilowski is known as one of our local Whitefish cool cats. She’s got the best Paloma in town and owns the tasting room hotspot, Spotted Bear Spirits. Lauren is lauded by her friends and coworkers for both her soft demeanor and quick wit, her sparkplug creativity, and her ability to motivate. And most certainly, for making a damn good drink.

When I first moved to Whitefish and discovered Spotted Bear Spirits, it right away became my go-to for any “let’s meet for a drink” occasion. And Lauren— she was instantly put on my secret I want to be friends with her list.

When you meet Lauren, you’re immediately struck by her sweetness and her beauty all at once. At 5’11” and always stylish, she is a presence in any room. Add that to the fact that she’s created one of the most recognized drink brands in Montana in the span of just five short years, Lauren is, to me, how you would picture the definition of feminine strength. It’s certainly in her athleticism, her business savvy, and entrepreneurialism, but it’s also just in the way she carries herself.

image by Megan Crawford

So it was when Lauren started opening up about the not-so-strong moments on social media (as public a platform as any), acknowledging the end of an engagement, losing a friend to cancer, grieving a relationship, saying goodbye to a dear pet, and grappling with anxiety from trying to keep a staff employed while operating a hospitality business during a pandemic— and with an influx of town tourism to boot. It was in those moments where Lauren began to share just a peek into the window of her own dark side of emotions that I realized she had another strength: that of being vulnerable. So, for an issue honoring New Beginnings, who better to learn from than a woman who’s willing to say, after an immense year of grief, that they want to be more vulnerable?

Lauren found Montana as her home by the way many of us non-locals do; through a feeling. Lauren was living in Pennsylvania and recalls, “I hadn’t really found my community there. We moved when I was in the middle of high school, and I just remember not totally fitting in.” She stayed for a couple of years longer, enrolling at Penn State, and it was during the last three weeks of her undergrad, while working at the university’s Writing Center, that she befriended a fellow tutor who grew up in Polson. “Kristy casually invited me to come visit that summer. I don’t think she actually thought I would do it, though,” Lauren laughs. She flew out to Spokane, making a solo road trip through Priest Lake, and eventually made it to Montana for the 4th of July weekend to hang with Kristy. Lauren remembers calling her mom from a coffee shop, exclaiming, “I think I’m going to move out here!” That August, she packed up her car in Philadelphia and headed straight for Missoula, moving in as Kristy’s roommate. “That summer was so fun,” Lauren remembers. “I felt this real openness and friendliness with everyone. I would show up with basically zero gear to join a camping trip, and everyone would take care of each other. I always thought I would end up in a place that was a little bigger and that had more of a city component. But Montana held me. I think it was just the people.”

image by Megan Crawford

After two years in Missoula, Lauren moved to Coram for an opportunity to work at Glacier Distilling. She became the company’s lead distiller, tasting room/operations manager, and sales and marketing manager over the course of the next four years. “Nic [Lee] had just gotten the business up and running and needed help. I took an interview to work the tasting room,” Lauren recalls. “After a few months, I decided to take a course at Siebel Institute for brewing. Nic and I just really clicked as friends through that period. I remember seeing the excitement of his new business and all of the opportunity it had. We didn’t really know where it was going to go, but when I expressed interest in the distilling back-end, I was super fortunate that Nic was open to letting me pursue whatever aspects of the business interested me. And he really let me flow into those areas.”

In 2015 Lauren opened up her own shop, Spotted Bear Spirits, just off Central Street in downtown Whitefish. Today the business still runs its original tasting room but moved distilling operations to a larger facility in Columbia Falls last year in order to facilitate Lauren’s goals of growing the brand outside of Montana, into the Midwest, and beyond. “This year pumped the brakes on grand expansion, but only for now,” Lauren says. “I still have lofty goals. It’s just been tempered.” As it has for so many of us this year.

I asked Lauren about her experience running a business during covid. “I was actually in Hawaii when all of this started happening,” she says. “I had to call my team and close the tasting room down while I was still on my trip. And I remember the feeling as we were flying into Kalispell. The beginning of the pandemonium. Hawaii was almost a week behind, so I hadn’t fully been immersed in it yet. We landed and went straight to the supermarket. I was thinking— we’re going to run out of fresh produce!” Lauren laughs. “And now, of course, I still have a bunch of lentils and frozen broccoli in my fridge.”

image by Megan Crawford

Business aside, what did that feel like? Not just as an entrepreneur but as an individual entering a new reality? I wanted to know; I wanted her to share another peek into that vulnerability. (Her trip to Hawaii was, in part, a vacation Lauren gave to herself in the wake of a just called-off engagement.) Lauren didn’t skip a beat and proceeded to share unabashedly and openly.

“It wasn’t, actually, until a few weeks after being home that I finally started to feel the weight of everything that was happening. Not just covid, but my whole year so far. Before Hawaii, I was definitely grieving the loss of a relationship, calling off my wedding in January. And on an emotional level, I had been operating mostly at what I think was a baseline threshold. From that low point, I then went straight into a super elevated emotional state, dealing with the pandemic and my business. I was making decisions day-by-day with my staff and hearing the news that was changing daily about how we could run the business.” She explains, “I’m not typically in the tasting room, but I had to be then. I had to be with them [my team]. And I ended up working for three or four weeks straight until Whitefish went into lockdown— and that’s when I crashed too. It was like the pendulum had swung both ways. Hard. And I felt pretty lost in that moment.”

Lauren goes on, “At the time, it was pretty ambiguous. I’m a person who operates well with structure. I like early morning workouts. I like to have some sort of schedule to my day. Once all that went out the window, I didn’t realize how much of my fulfillment was from my work and my daily structure. How much of my life revolved around getting in my workouts and going to work. These were the cornerstones of my ability to show up and be present. But without them, I was lost without realizing how lost I was.” She provides an example, “You know how you hear those stories of people who really pour themselves into their work and then when they retire, they are like a lost ship at sea? That really became apparent to me. I didn’t want to be that way. I thought: Oh, wow. I probably need to work on cultivating something deeper right now.”

image by Megan Crawford

This loss of structure, followed by a summer of gas-brake-gas-brake as a way of operating, is very much the way Lauren described her following months. And I know this feeling isn’t lost on any of us.

When are things going to go back to normal? Ok, now we’re open. Just with social distancing! But how nice is it that we can enjoy time for hiking and camping this summer?! Wait. Is an employee going to get sick and we’re going to have to close again?

“2020 has been a full year of learning how to selfregulate,” Lauren declares. “I realized I needed to pour energy into other things in my life.”

I ask Lauren to explain what she means by this. “I’ve really been loving this idea of grace,” she says, going on to explain that she’s most definitely still grieving, still finding a way to process it all, but explains, “For me, grace means this idea of getting curious about where my thoughts and emotions are coming from. It means trying to observe a feeling and not trying to rush throughit. It’s one thing to observe and recognize a reaction in us, but it’s another to build a path through it. If we don’t let ourselves sit in that space, or really feel, to go to the root of what’s causing those feelings of trauma, then we’re actually not going to be able to move through it and rebuild on the other side. That’s been my experience.” Lauren acknowledges, “This year has been a lot of sitting and observing.”

For me, grace means this idea of getting curious about where my thoughts and emotions are coming from. It means trying to observe a feeling and not trying to rush through it.

To sit and observe can take many forms. What Lauren has found most helpful lately has been finding a few new rituals to ground herself. “I have a deck of oracle cards. If I find myself waking up in an anxious state, I’ll draw a card and try to journal about it. Or, I’ll just try to sit with an intention about it and really try to quiet myself,” she explains. Lauren also admits, with a grin, that she was able to spend a lot more time outside and on the trails last summer. A reconnection with Montana and the healing power of nature.

The year has been filled with so much grief. I keep bumping up against moments where I try to find the good, the silver lining, the positives and growth in all this grief. My mind wants to make sense of everything so it can move forward. Systematically compartmentalize to process. But maybe we are not always meant to make sense of things. Maybe some seasons we are meant to sit in our grief. To let it flow through us, out of us, and around us. Grant ourselves permission to feel everything. To soften.

— Lauren, posted on November 16th, 2020

To soften.

To find grace in our grief.

It takes a lot of strength to share, a lot of courage to sit with uncomfortable emotions. It’s the human in all of us that desires to just move past it, move past this year. “Let’s throw 2020 out the window— 2021 can’t come soon enough!” I’ve heardmyself saying it too. We’ve all been forced to deal, in one way or another, with our dark moments longer than we’d really like to. So how do we begin again when we clearly can’t just pour ourselves a drink, hurry up, and move on? When can we get a break in the clouds for some sunshine? Perhaps it’s by taking a cue from our friends like Lauren. To begin again is to acknowledge all that you are currently moving through. To begin again is to soften.

2021, here’s to a new view of life.

. . .

SYDNEY MUNTEANU is a communications and branding strategist with a passion for storytelling. She grew up in Colorado and received her B.S. from the University of Colorado, Boulder and left in 2012 to pursue a marketing career in Los Angeles. After 5 years of city life, the call back to the mountains was too great and she found (and fell in love with) her new home in Whitefish, Montana. Sydney has a marketing consulting business working with food & beverage, wellness, and women’s brands. Connect and find her work at backlabelbranding.com

image by Megan Crawford

But maybe we are not always meant to make sense of things. Maybe some seasons we are meant to sit in our grief. To let it flow through us, out of us, and around us. Grant ourselves permission to feel everything. To soften.