5 Years Ago My Brother Was Murdered
Five years ago my brother was murdered. And it happened on the same day as my daughter's birthday. Here is what I said in my victim impact statement at his murderer's sentencing.
5 Years Ago My Brother Was Murdered
5 years ago my brother was murdered.
Technically, it's on Friday.
But Friday is my daughter's birthday.
It's so hard to have both one of the happiest days of your life and the single hardest day of your life exist in the same date on the calendar.
This year's anniversary feels really substantial.
Because five years ago, it was also a Friday.
My phone had been on do not disturb most of the day so I could be present with my family.
I didn't see the missed calls.
When I looked down at my phone and I saw a message from a family member that said "911! Call me immediately!!!!"
We had just finished celebrating my little girl's fifth birthday.
Here is what I said of this moment in my victim impact statement at his murderer's sentencing:
I immediately called, where my uncle told me, "Your brother has been stabbed". I don't remember much else except asking, "how is he"? I can still hear his voice as it broke, "baby girl, he's gone".
I felt my soul crack in that moment. This animalistic cry escaped my mouth as I learned that my brother was murdered. My body shuddered and I cried harder as the black hole of grief consumed me.
When my children saw my reaction, they gathered around me, scared and wide-eyed, terrified and not knowing what was going on. My husband watched me, knowing that something horrible had happened, desperate pleas in his eye for me to tell him more.
I looked at him between sobs and said, "it's my brother. He's dead. He was stabbed to death. He was murdered."
I had no idea how much I would traumatize my children with these words. They both screamed, and crumpled to the floor as their bodies shook with tears and moans of pain.
It felt like my world had gone dark, betrayed by some evil that had taken away the innocence of my children and sucked the joy out of our home, along with what felt like all the oxygen in the air. We could not breathe. We could not sleep. We held each other and cried ourselves to sleep. For days, my children slept in my bed, scared of the monster that took their favorite uncle away.
You know, the person who you share the most DNA with isn't your parents or your children. It's your sibling.
It wasn't just any blood shed.
It was the same blood that pumped through my veins.
On Friday, it will be Nora's day.
She has lived an entire lifetime since that Friday five years ago.
This year she turns 10.
We will have cake, open presents, and celebrate her day.
And after she goes to bed, the walls of grief will come crashing down on me again, and I will cry and mourn my brother.
Growing old is not a privilege that all of us get to have.
The framework behind why this work exists is at TheoryOfHireability.com.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Theory of Hireability™?
The Theory of Hireability™ is Lindsay Mustain's framework for how hiring actually works in a competitive market. It reframes the job search around a simple truth: you don't get hired by applying more, you get hired by becoming the obvious choice before the role is even open. Hireability is built through visibility, relationships, and positioning as the Candidate of Choice - not through resumes stacked in an ATS.
What is the Hireability Gap™?
The Hireability Gap™ is the distance between what a candidate believes will land the offer (applying, tailoring resumes, chasing job boards) and what actually converts (relationships, visibility, being pre-vetted before the job posts). Most senior professionals lose six to twelve months of their search inside the gap. Closing it is the first step of Intentional Career Design™.
Who is Lindsay Mustain?
Lindsay Mustain is a former Fortune 100 corporate recruiter (Amazon, JPMorgan, and 14 others across 16 years) who has personally reviewed over a million resumes and hired 10,000+ candidates. She built Talent Paradigm to teach senior professionals how to land six-figure remote roles without submitting a single application. She is a 2x bestselling author with 20,000+ clients across 121 countries, featured in CNBC Make It, Business Insider, Entrepreneur, and Forbes.
What is Intentional Career Design™?
Intentional Career Design™ is Lindsay's methodology for building a career on your terms instead of taking whatever the market hands you. It covers the full arc: knowing your worth, building visibility, engineering the right relationships, and stepping into roles that fit your life - not the other way around. It's the operating system for people who refuse to be replaceable.
What is the Candidate of Choice™?
Candidate of Choice™ is the positioning outcome where companies compete for you instead of the other way around. You stop being one candidate among hundreds and become one of a shortlist that hiring managers already know, already trust, and are already asking about. It's the difference between chasing openings and having doors open before you knock.
Where does the Theory of Hireability™ come from?
Lindsay's father, Robert Fitch, was laid off after 25 years with the same company. He lost the house, got sick, and died when Lindsay was twelve. She built her career on the promise that no family should ever be blindsided the way hers was. Every framework she teaches exists so that senior professionals stop trusting the company to protect them and start building the leverage that protects them themselves.
How do I learn more?
The full six-figure remote career strategy is at SixFigureRemoteCareerStrategy.com. If you want to understand the 'why behind the theory,' the full manifesto is at TheoryOfHireability.com.
