Legacy & Purpose
She Kept Going: How Ellen Flores-Abad Turned Loss Into Legacy — One Day at a Time
This is a love story. But not the kind that ends when the worst happens. This is the kind that gets louder.
Before the awards. Before the team of nearly fifty. Before the five businesses and the quiet mornings spent lacing up hockey skates in a cold arena before 6 a.m. — there was a promise.
It wasn't written on paper. It wasn't a business plan. It was something Ellen Abad and her late husband Donick built between themselves, shaped by two childhoods that knew what it felt like to go without — and a shared belief that they could make sure fewer families had to.
This is a love story. But not the kind that ends when the worst happens. This is the kind that gets louder.
Two Accountants, One Mission
Ellen and Donick came from different versions of the same struggle. Donick grew up in an abusive household. He was the only one in his family to finish school. Ellen's family was middle class, but as the third child, she carried consequences that weren't hers — her parents didn't want to send her to school, so she worked to put herself through. Both of them became certified accountants. Both of them understood, deep in their bones, what it means to fight for something no one handed you.
When they found each other, their love languages couldn't have been more different. Donick's was acts of service — he wanted to help everyone around him. Ellen's was quality time — she wanted him close. For a while, those two needs pulled in opposite directions.
"I told him, I get jealous of what you're doing," Ellen remembers. "You have no time with me anymore."
That tension became the turning point. They made a decision that would define everything that followed: instead of competing with each other's needs, they'd serve together. And something beautiful happened — when they both poured into other families, they found more time for each other, not less. Service became their love language. It was the place where Donick's heart and Ellen's heart finally spoke the same dialect.
They started helping families plan. Budget. Build. It wasn't about selling — it was about sitting at someone's kitchen table and showing them the path they wished someone had shown them.
When Everything Changed
By 2023, the Abad family was living the vision. Properties. Businesses. A retirement home already picked out. Every one of their three children — Timothy, Elle, and Jeremiah — had properties set aside for their futures. The scripture they lived by was playing out in real time: *"A good person leaves an inheritance for their children's children."*
And then Donick was gone.
A heart attack in the basement of their home. Ellen wasn't beside him when it happened — a detail that still echoes. Within three days, the Primerica business, the mortgage business, and the weight of three young lives landed entirely on her shoulders.
"People say the first year is the hardest," Ellen says. "For me, it was the second year. That's when the acceptance hit — that he's never coming back."
She was torn. She had a corporate career with a promotion to vice-president within reach. She had businesses to run. She had a team counting on her. And she had three kids who had just lost their father.
There were days when winning the day meant surviving it.
Morning Prayer and Moving Forward
Ask Ellen what keeps her grounded and the answer comes without hesitation: morning prayer.
"Without God, without my faith, you would not be seeing me or interviewing me like this," she says.
She doesn't sugarcoat it. She got angry at God. She asked why. She demanded a reason that never came. And then one day, her youngest child Jeremiah said something that stopped her in her tracks:
"The Lord took Daddy because he is needed in heaven."
It broke her heart. And somehow, it also held it together.
Ellen still doesn't have the reason. But she has her faith, her children, and the mission she and Donick built — and that combination, every single morning, is enough to get her out of bed and into the day.
What Winning the Day Really Looks Like
For Ellen, winning the day doesn't look like closing a deal or hitting a revenue target. It looks like being in the stands.
Timothy plays hockey — so she's at the arena before dawn. Elle has her sports. Jeremiah does jujitsu. Ellen runs five businesses, leads a team of nearly fifty, and holds licenses in mortgage and financial services. She even has a business back in the Philippines. But when she talks about what makes her feel like she won the day, none of that comes up first.
"As much as possible, I don't miss my children's activities," she says. "That's what winning the day looks like for me. I feel accomplished when I'm there."
Her kids are her trophies — not because they're competitive, but because of who they're becoming. They speak their family's native language with pride. They're walking in faith at an age when most kids haven't even started asking the big questions. And they know their father's story because Ellen tells it to them almost every day.
"They know it," she says. "They understand it. And they accept it."
Donick's Legacy, Alive in Every Room
When Ellen leads her team today, Donick is in the room. Not as a memory kept on a shelf — as a philosophy that shapes every conversation.
"Think about the best interest of the client." That was Donick's north star, and it's now the foundation of how Ellen builds, hires, and mentors. Service first. Always.
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She recently worked with a couple approaching retirement who had no plan at all. No budget. No roadmap. Ellen helped them refinance, set up a budget, and find their footing. When they left, she gave them one last piece of advice: "Don't go back to your old ways."
That's the kind of work Donick would have loved — practical, personal, and rooted in the belief that every family deserves a shot at stability. Ellen carries that belief into every meeting.
A Word for the Overwhelmed
Ellen has been asked a hundred different ways how she does it all. Her answer is always the same — and it's not what you'd expect from someone running a small empire.
Step back.
"When you're overwhelmed, take yourself away from the situation," she says. "When you're stuck, it's easy to do things you'll regret. Step back. See it from a different angle. Write down the problem. Then write down the possible solutions — you'll be amazed how simple it actually is."
And then she adds something that shifts everything: "Write down the things you're grateful for. You'll be amazed at how many there are."
It's not hustle culture. It's not grind-harder advice. It's the wisdom of a woman who has stood at the edge of the worst thing imaginable and found, somehow, that the view from one step back is clearer than the view from the middle of the storm.
Life Is Too Short
Ellen doesn't say this as a cliché. She says it as someone who lives with the weight of a wish she can never fulfill.
"I think I did not tell him enough how much I love him. I wish I had more time. I wish I was at his side when it happened."
People have asked her why she doesn't remarry. Her answer is quiet and absolute: "Our marriage was beyond romance. He's the only one who really knew me — whether I was happy or overwhelmed. I really love Donick, but I'm open to meet someone when the time is right."
She pauses.
"Life is too short."
It's not a warning. It's an invitation — to say the thing, do the thing, plan the thing. Tonight. Not next year. Tonight.
What Would Donick Say?
We asked Ellen the question we'd been saving. If Donick could see everything she's built since he's been gone — the team, the families, the children thriving, the legacy growing — what would he say?
She didn't hesitate.
"I think Donick would tell me, 'I'm proud of you.' I never expected that these things were possible."
And then she added the part that says everything about who Ellen Abad really is:
"He must be proud of me — because even after three years, I never replaced him in my life. He is the love of my life."
One Day at a Time
Ellen Abad didn't set out to become the woman leading nearly fifty people, running businesses on two continents, and raising three children who carry their father's mission in their hearts. She set out to serve families with the man she loved. When that plan shattered, she picked up every piece — not all at once, but one day at a time.
One morning prayer at a time. One hockey practice at a time. One kitchen-table conversation at a time.
That's what it means to win the day. Not to have it all figured out. Not to never feel the weight. But to wake up, choose the mission, and move — even when the person who started it with you isn't beside you anymore.
Ellen wins the day. Every single day. And Donick is watching.
Want to Contact Ellen?
Visit: www.ellenabad.ca
Ellen Abad is a mortgage specialist with 8twelve Mortgage and a team leader with Primerica in Nova Scotia. She is a certified Commissioner in Nova Scotia and a proud mother to Timothy, Elle, and Jeremiah. Her life and work continue the mission she and her late husband Donick built together — helping families across Nova Scotia plan ahead and build something that lasts.
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Written by
Kathleen Meredith
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