im 21, fairly new to FIRE. whats your favorite FIRE advice youve ever received?

I'm aware I'm grieving right now, so this may not make sense.

My cat died on Wednesday. He was 2 years old, and it was very sudden. We went in thinking he'd be ok, to leaving without him. We fought so so hard for him. The chances of this happening were less than 1%. His death was incredibly traumatic.

Since then, I don't see the point of a lot of things. Sure I like travel, restaurants, and a nice home in a city I love. But at the end of the day, all I really want is to be home with my family. To live a normal, simple life with the people I love. I just wanted more time with him. I already hated that works dominates our waking hours, but now I especially loathe it.

I had plans to FIRE before - work hard, save up, and bail once I could provide a good quality of life for my family. Now I feel like I can just throw out 1/3 of the things I budgeted for. I don't need to own a house or live in this city to be happy. Obviously I'd be happier if I could have it all, but right now life feels extremely precious. There's no time to fuck around. I need to be with my family as much as possible, before our short lives are over.

I'm aware making big moves while grieving is a bad idea. I want to do something about all this though. The world feels like it's getting worse, scarier, and more turbulent by the year. The last 4 years have been miserable, but at least I spent 2 of them with him. I want to have kids, but that makes leanFIRE feels especially irresponsible.

Also, I felt like if I had saved more, then I could've have afforded the extremely rare, risky surgery that might have saved him (though his quality of life afterwards was unclear). But doing it now would've wipe out everything we had, and we were already excellent savers.

It's horrible, but I felt like I shouldn't go into debt for a questionable surgery and consequently endanger the rest of my family. But what if I have a kid and they'll need medical care that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars? Or if my partner needed it? Of course I'll do whatever it takes. But then leanFIRE feels wrong, because I could've saved and prepared for that exact situation ahead of time. I'm aware this is catastrophizing, but this already happened to me. The worst luck.

So my questions are:

1. Has anyone changed their lives dramatically to achieve leanFIRE? What about after loss?
2. How do you feel about no longer accumulating wealth, when things are so uncertain and socking away more money feels like a way to protect your family?
3. Related to 2, how do you plan to handle major events that might go far beyond your budget?

So after doing brief research several several months ago, i decided to stay on the silver 94 plan for 2027. But with all the new info i kinda want to revisit the issue.

Ohio

Head of household thanks to elderly mother on socialsecurity

Own house

Male 47 good health, never see doc and no scripts

Leanfired. Only uncontrolled income is about $12k in interest/dividends at fidelity

Overall goal = fill up the standard deduction bucket with interest/roth conversions, and fill up the zero percent capital gains bucket with tax gain harvesting

The last time i reviewed this strategy it was pretty "iffy" with no concrete answers. So here is my new plan and wanted to run it by you folks. Qualify for expanded magi medicaid. After evaluation month, do the capital gains bucket at the end of the month and report the same month. Spend the rest of the year reporting either interest/dividends or roth conversions to meet the min "work" requirements.

Its either this, or try to live in the wee sliver between 138% and 149% yearly income to stay on the silver 94, and pay around a grand a year in premiums.

I really dont want to YOLO a month a year and just hope i dont get the fall/widow maker that month to go the medicaid route.

Spouse and I are frugal & wary about lifestyle creep, but I almost never hear concrete examples about households as big as ours. We have four kids (elementary through high school) and live in a VHCOL city (can’t relocate anytime soon for multiple reasons, including employment + extended family). What kind of ballpark numbers would someone working toward lean fire want to think about in our shoes?