Grief and Entrepreneurship
In 2008, I started to dip my toes in business. The following year, I registered and officially started VLV Photography, LLC. For the next six years, I ran a boutique photography studio. I had a high-touch business, where I conducted in-person ordering, provided finished photo art, and custom designs for my clients.
From start to finish, when I worked with my clients, I held a very high standard for myself. I started out shooting weddings, which is literally equivalent to running a marathon when you shoot solo (or so it feels like). At least, for me, I needed two days to recover because I expended a massive amount of mental and physical energy to keep up with the demands that photographing a wedding requires.
A few years in, I discovered that my first favorite was shooting high school seniors. I saw myself in so many of them; a zest for adventure, excitement for the future, and unbridled energy that felt both scattered and channeled. There is just something about being 18. It’s a year of transition that’s filled with so much emotion and, being in their energy was just that – energizing. Weddings created the same kind of “adrenaline high,” but on a much larger scale that was energizing at the time, but depleted me when it was over.
That’s all great, but get to the point, right? Lol!
I do have one. However, I think it’s important to understand that through all of those years, I was a griever. Through the highs and lows of entrepreneurship, I was grieving. And, despite the “high” being a photographer gave me, it was kind of that – an addiction. I was addicted to learning everything I could possibly learn about photography, equipment, software, business, etc.. However, I gave little interest in learning about myself. I wasn’t interested in digging internally to discover why I was struggling in the areas of self-worth, self-criticism, focus, motherhood, and then some. In hindsight, I was using photography as my STERB (short-term energy relieving behavior).
Despite having young children when I launched my business (all were in diapers, and the youngest was six months old), I poured everything I had into that business – less into myself, and, if I’m honest, being present around my children. I was neglecting what was really going on internally.
I had experienced post-partum after our second daughter. To add insult to injury, she was a November baby. Within two years, we had our youngest, a February baby. And, after having the youngest, the post-partum was so bad I went to my nurse practitioner, shared how I was feeling, and I left with a prescription.
I was never asked what happened in my life up to that point. I wasn’t asked if I was getting enough rest, or if I had support at home (which, I often didn’t because my husband was often gone a week at a time). I tried that pill for two weeks before I stopped taking it on my own. I never once received a follow-up from the doctor why I never refilled it. I stopped sharing how I felt to doctors from that day forward. What I needed, at the time, was a good life coach, someone to help me dig into my emotional shit. And, I know now, not just any life coach, one that specifically addressed grief. Grief was the most bottomless hole I was finding myself impossible to crawl out of on my own.
How Grief Showed Up In My Business
I would have days where I couldn’t get myself to do a darn thing. I had days where I questioned everything I was doing. I second-guessed myself ALL.THE.TIME. I looked to others to validate and give me the affirmation I couldn’t find within myself. I did not understand what intuition was or how to tap into my own. And, I had a pretty intimate relationship with constant low-grade anger and procrastination.
These feelings and struggles continued for another five years. FIVE YEARS! Oh my gosh! Ask me if I experienced more grief after going through the grief recovery method, and it’s a resounding yes because I realized what had been the missing piece for me all those years. And, I was filled with the regret of not finding GRM sooner.
Since that time, and since completing GRM and becoming certified in helping others in their grief, I’ve spent a lot of time digging into what was truly going on with me. I’ve processed a lot of the emotional baggage that was hindering my ability to grow and scaling my business in a way that exceeded all of my expectations. And, I’ve learned that wisdom only comes from experience.
Those early years of entrepreneurship laid the foundation for the business I have now. So many of the skills, lessons, processes, and internal work I’ve completed since have made me a more level-headed, knowledgable, and wiser entrepreneur today. Eleven years is a long time to commit to being an entrepreneur. Many that attempt it often don’t survive beyond three years. It’s taxing work. And, I argue, it’s often taxing because we don’t give one thought to who we were before entrepreneurship, and the ways our experiences have negatively impacted our lives and then address them, so they don’t hinder us.
The Disconnect
How we have learned to process our loss at an early age, and throughout life, have a direct impact on how we treat shortcomings, failures, or anything we perceive as negative in our business. Many entrepreneurial-geared programs and coaches focus on what needs to change in business because it’s easier (and sexier) than addressing the inner-work.
Also, the connection isn’t made that the issues we see in our businesses are a reflection of ourselves and the climate in our hearts. If you feel as though everyone is out to get you, life is unfair, people don’t respect you, and everyone is a cheap-skate; perhaps look in the mirror. Ask yourself if those are thoughts you are having being reflected back to you by external experience as a result of your internal one. Could it be because what’s at the heart of it is that:
- You don’t trust others.
- You have unresolved anger.
- You have self-worth issues.
- You lack boundaries.
- and more
due to, you know what I’m going to say – you guessed it! GRIEF! Grief causes us to feel all of these things, depending on what we experienced in our lives.
If you’re reading this and you’re not an entrepreneur, I bet you can still apply this message to your working life and the relationships you have with colleagues, as well as with your friends and family. I can only guess how much revenue grief caused me all of those years, and how much it has cost you in your business. Or, how much your grief has caused your employer, too, in lost productivity and focus.
It causes me to grief, to this day, having the awareness that I never met my potential for what was possible in my photography business either. So, I choose to look at it all as a stepping stone and part of my journey through grief. And, there’s still some gunk to unpack there, too, as it relates to my relationship with my children.
The blog post photo is an excellent analogy for entrepreneurship and life. Many entrepreneurs are walking on a shaky foundation. Many of us, including non-entrepreneurs, feel as though we’re walking on a rickety dock that is our life. At the end of the dock, however, is a small boat. You don’t know whether to trust the boat, though, either. That too appears to be in rough shape. Not to mention, will the waters always be calm? Surely they won’t be; we expect some waves, don’t we? Suffice this to say, the only way we know where life can take us is if we have hope, and faith in ourselves, that we can do hard things. For me, it was facing decades of grief. If this post resonates with you, grief is likely your culprit as well. However, you may not have perceived it as such until now.
You’ve walked the hard walk. Perhaps it’s now time to get on the boat?
What do you think? 
Do you think an undercurrent of grief may be the root of issues and inner-conflict you are experiencing in your business?
Have you become a master at busy-ing yourself in your business to avoid how you’re feeling. Or, are you aware of how you’re feeling is a problem but haven’t even considered that grief is the culprit?
Let me know in the comments below, or do you see the handy dandy “Leave a Message” button to the right? You can leave up to a five-minute message, and, if you enter your email, I can respond directly to you! Pretty neat, eh?
Narcissism, Empathy, and Grief
A narcissist, according to Merriam-Webster, is an extremely self-centered person with an exaggerated sense of self-importance.
Empathy, also according to Merriam-Webster, is defined as the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experiences of another in either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner.
According to the same resource, grief is deep and poignant distress caused by or as if by bereavement. However, The Grief Recovery Institute defines grief as the normal and natural reaction to a loss of any kind. It is also anything we wish would be different, better, or more, and the loss of hopes, dreams, and expectations.
The Narcissist in Your Life
Where does narcissism come in, then? If you have relationships with people (who doesn’t?), you may know of a narcissist or have one in your life. And in my experience, it’s grief-causing to understand that the narcissist in your life will always fit the bill for grief-like feelings around the relationship you wish would be different, better or more. Grief also exists in knowing that there is a loss of hopes, dreams, and expectations for the relationship.
I don’t know if a narcissist can change. They will always have a different view of themselves than how others perceive them. How do you get someone to change their perception of themselves? In short, I don’t know that you can. That’s self-awareness, I believe, that has to come from within themselves. Only you have the power to change yourself for the better and work through all of the feelings that arise. Unless, however, you cut them out of your life completely. Even then, the grief-like feelings don’t go away on their own by cutting the person out of your life. There will still be emotional incompleteness between that person and the relationship.
To better understand why you may be experiencing grief while in a relationship with a narcissist, read the following excerpt from this Psychology Today blog post:
Since an empathic response often involves an unconscious assessment of one’s vulnerability to experiencing shame, the narcissist’s inhibition of an empathic response (“unwillingness”) may simply be self-protective. This also points to the affective limitations that accompany narcissistic personality disorder. Narcissists do not consciously feel a lack of empathy or experience an unwillingness to empathize. Instead, in many situations where one might expect them to empathize, their limitations activate a sense of helplessness—an imagined vulnerability— followed by scripted responses to shame, such as shame-fear (fear of loss of face) or shame-rage (protection from some trauma or imagined trauma from the past).
Thus, if you are involved with someone whose behaviors are motivated by shame-avoidance, your task is to protect yourself since they will be consciously or unconsciously unwilling to empathize with you. Commonly, heartbroken people explain their relationship rupture as due to their former partner’s “lack of empathy,” concluding they had been in love with a narcissist. However, it is possible to respond to our own shame by attacking the other who could not provide what we needed in the first place, given their restricted emotional freedom. Instead, by accepting our disappointment and misdirection, and looking inside ourselves, we can learn because we have the emotional resources and willingness that enable us to do so.
And applying the last sentence to my life is what has given me the emotional freedom I desired that I saw came so naturally to the narcissist in my life. It should come as no surprise that GRM (the grief recovery method) provided me with new tools and knowledge to do just that.
I highly recommend reading the entire article. And, if you suspect someone in your life is a narcissist or not (or are perhaps curious where you fall on the scale), check out this quiz. For funsies, I took it and applied the questions to myself. I scored a 6, which falls into self-sufficiency: a trait that refers to how much you rely on others versus your abilities to meet your needs in life. I feel this is a very accurate result for me. I learned very early on in my life how to be self-sufficient. It’s also a trait that makes it hard for me to ask for help – as a life-long griever and otherwise.
A Solution
Of all of the people in the world, with all of the variety of traits, characteristics, and personalities we encounter in our lifetime, it’s vital to have emotional intelligence and awareness about ourselves. This self-knowledge empowers us to work through whatever emotional disturbance we bump up against that would otherwise have the potential to derail and emotionally block us in our lives.
Grief recovery has given me this emotional freedom, and it can provide it for you as well. After you learn what I have learned, and after you’ve worked through the hardest emotional loss of your life, you will view every other relationship (and person) in your life differently, with clearer goggles of self-awareness and emotional intelligence, as previously mentioned. You will also have the tools and knowledge to see those people and relationships for who and what they are – another griever who hasn’t addressed their emotional disturbances.
P.S. Do you want to work through a narcissist relationship that’s been a source of grief for you? Get in touch here.
Emotional Freedom
Did you know that you are able to apply grief recovery to relationships with the living, deceased, and also the relationship to yourself?
Throughout the past year, I’ve worked through processing what is emotionally incomplete. I’ve worked through relationships with several deceased relatives, some living, and also with my relationship with my inner-child, money, and alcohol.
In the United States, it will soon be Independence Day (4th of July). We collectively celebrate our societal freedom, meanwhile, many of us feel as though we are stuck in emotional jail? What a paradox!
Do you feel as though you are in emotional jail, despite having all of the freedom in our country that we’ve been blessed to experience? That’s normal and natural because grief is normal and natural. Feeling emotionally incomplete keeps us feeling as though we are imprisoned. Grief itself feels like this. Do you agree?
I felt as though I was in an emotional prison in the context of a certain relationship for many years. It wasn’t until I processed and worked through those feelings in an action-based, structured way, that allowed me to, once and for all, experience emotional freedom. I learned how to release all that I could not change, the emotional pain I was harboring, and process the grief I had around the loss of hopes, dreams, and expectations I had for the relationship.
Working through my relationship to alcohol enabled and empowered me to give up the emotional hold it had over me. It’s so easy to reach for a drink when we’re feeling stressed, bored, or upset.
Think about it – how often have you had a bad day and, a friend suggests going for a night out on the town to get your mind off of what’s bothering you? Or, do you resort to alcohol as a way to loosen up when socializing because, without it, you feel inadequate or uncomfortable? In a couple of weeks, it will be eight months since I’ve had a drink – even a sip of alcohol! I absolutely contribute the work I’ve completed around my relationship to alcohol, in grief recovery, to the fact that I haven’t felt the need (or, desire for that matter) to have a drink.
I am not anyone special. I am a griever just like you. I just happen to learn new tools and methods for finding my way to emotional freedom. And, every time I feel myself becoming emotionally reactive, I know that’s an area where I have some work to do.
Do you desire emotional freedom?
Are you a recovering addict – whether it be to alcohol, drugs, or otherwise, with at least a year sober under your belt and, are ready to work through grief, specifically, in a supported and guided way?
Regardless of the losses you’ve endured (grief is grief), grief recovery will help you complete what is emotionally incomplete –
I have two spots open right now for grief recovery online, one-on-one, if you are ready to do the internal work. Grief recovery is hope. And, if you’re a parent of a child struggling, know that, very soon, we will be able to work together online with the four-week Helping Children with Loss program. Stay tuned for more info on that!
And, if you’re not quite ready to work with me but are wanting to get to know me better and learn more about my teaching style, you can listen to my recently launched podcast, Grieving Voices. I am thrilled to give other grievers the platform and opportunity to share their grief stories as well. If this is you, please get in touch.
Have a safe and joyful independence weekend (if you celebrate)!
If You Wait Until You’re Ready
If you wait until you’re ready…
You will, forever, be waiting.
I self-published my book in September 2017. I had been talking about it for two years.
I talked about becoming certified in grief recovery. Within weeks I had registered.
I had talked about looking into reiki certification. Within weeks I registered.
My podcast, Grieving Voices, is launching this coming Tuesday, June 30th. I had been talking about this with some entrepreneur gal-pals for several months, and next week it finally happens!
There are many examples in-between 2017 and today of the negative self-talk going on in my head of things I want/wanted to do but never got around to – countless. I have filed so many ideas in the back of my mental file cabinet over the years.
However, when it has come to things I have been so sure about; those things I feel, in my bones, I am being pulled to do, my hesitation time has greatly decreased.
Nowadays, if I feel a pull at my heart, and I recognize it as an inner-knowing, I won’t hesitate to pull the trigger.
My intuition has not steered me wrong in this way – yet.
There are other goals/desires that have been stewing in my heart, too. And, I find myself pushing pause. Perhaps it’s just not the right timing. Perhaps, there is a better, more fitting offering that will come along? I don’t know, but for now – I wait. I’m leaning but I’m not feeling that pull, and I haven’t yet identified why.
You may be thinking: “What the heck?” I know I said that if you wait until you’re ready, you’ll be waiting forever. And, so why am I saying then, that there are goals/desires I’m being passive about? The difference between the things I acted upon and the things I haven’t is based solely on my intuition.
Is it your intuition talking or is it excuses that keep you from pulling the trigger on that thing you desire?
And, how do you know the difference?
Simple. What is the conversation going on in your head around it? If it is intuition leading the way, we will seek out and draw in education/support/guidance to make the thing we feel pulled to do – happen.
The podcast idea took me several months to execute because I struggled with all the things related to podcasting. It takes time and effort to create content on yet another platform. And, not to mention there’s a learning curve, which also takes time. However, my intuition was telling me: “Victoria, put your message where your mouth is!” If I truly meant that I wanted to reach a wider audience to share my message about the importance of grief education (like I was to everyone and myself) than I best do something about it. I needed to jump in before I was ready. Because I was never going to “be ready.” There always would’ve been another reason (i.e., excuse) to wait until I was ready.
Before I wrote my book, I was full of excuses (in my head). I didn’t know the path and, was getting wrapped around the axel surrounding the logistics, how-to’s, and what-not; not knowing that was keeping me stuck. Sometimes, we just need a guide or a coach to pave the way for us. Sometimes, we need to lean on someone else who’s a few steps ahead to shed light on the next steps forward. And sometimes, by George, we just need to jump headfirst and allow ourselves to become educated along the way – missteps, failures (i.e., learnings), hiccups and all.
There’s a caveat to all of this, however. We may lean on procrastination tactics while believing we are executing on our intuition, too. If we’re using education/support/guidance as a form of procrastination than we’re excusing ourselves from taking the leap. See the difference? I was notorious for doing this when I started my photography business. I jumped in head first, but there were leaps I avoided taking for years because I felt like there was always more for me to know. I know, today, that doing this stunted my potential right out of the gate. I was more invested in staying comfortable with what I knew at the time. I felt like I was a fearless person because hey, after all, I took the leap to be an entrepreneur. However, I was an entrepreneur that was comfortable with not playing a bigger game.
So, when it comes to working through the emotional “stuck-ness,” are you filled with resistance and hesitation? I get how fear of the unknown can derail even our best of intentions. However, this is what fear is: False Evidence Appearing Real. Our perception is given a lot of power in our decision-making. If you can be an observer of those fear-filled thoughts, acknowledge they’re just that – thoughts, you can choose to take, even the smallest action, toward the next best feeling, which could be the feeling of frustration. Do you see how frustration can move us into action? When I get so annoyed no one else is cleaning out the fridge, eventually, I get so frustrated I just do it. We can apply this idea of reaching for the next best feeling to every area of our lives.
I challenge you to dig deep into why you’re not doing certain things you feel pulled to do and then, pay attention to the monkey chatter going on in your mind as you go about your day. Keep asking yourself “why” until you get to the root of the stalling/inaction.
If you’re on the fence about grief recovery, I’d ask you: “what’s stopping you?” If the answer is financial, I encourage you to reach out. I never want money to not be a reason you don’t help yourself. Of course, I can’t do this work for free, but I am willing to work with someone who is willing to do the deep, heart work in their lives. Uncomfortable with technology and completing the program online? Again, reach out to me. I can explain how it all works and what to expect. Concerned about the time it will take? I know, as a mom, employee, and business owner, I am pulled in many directions every single day. However, what if I told you that last week alone, my phone time use was over 5 HOURS! FIVE HOURS!!! I would bet, if you added up your phone, tv, mobile time – you’d be pretty close to that, too (maybe even more). And, I don’t even watch much television! I think most of us have no clue how much time we truly waste in a day with our faces buried in screens. And, we wonder why our youth are married to their phones! Ha! We, adults, are just as guilty!
Do you see how easily we come up with excuses rather than legit, not-in-our-control reasons?
Sifting through the reasons from the excuses can be a painful pill to swallow. However, only a refreshing glass of awareness can help you choke it down. What awareness are you avoiding to recognize? What desire, placed within your heart, are you waiting to do something about until you feel ready?
More importantly – why?
P.S. The presentation I gave earlier this week is available. See the form below and please, share this with a griever that you know or love.
[et_bloom_locked optin_id=optin_7]https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yxhXU4UfWxPk-zD8_-myyXEUKv1Yr2AO/view[/et_bloom_locked]
If Not Now, When?
Typically, I don’t share content from my newsletter anywhere else. Likewise, I don’t share content from my blog to my newsletter, other than a round-up of the blog posts. A weekly newsletter and blog post since January 2019, and you can imagine the sheer quantity of words I have written during that time. I love the theory of repurposing content; however, I’m just not that good at doing it. Lol!
So, when I found myself struggling for content for today’s blog post, I found myself thinking back to this week’s newsletter topic on motivation. I feel like it’s a message for the masses.
While cleaning the fridge recently, my thoughts drifted to motivation. Cleaning out the fridge is something no one else in my home ever finds the motivation to do. Lol! Likely not uncommon in your household as well, if you share your space with others.
Motivation can and will go one of two ways. We are either motivated toward pleasure or away from pain. So, I guess you could say that if pleasure was to the right and pain was to the left, we will usually always take a hard right.
And, this is why, friends, no one else in my home ever cleans the fridge. It’s also why no one else cleans the shower unless I make a deal with one of my kids or spouse (because I really…really dislike cleaning the shower).
It wasn’t until the fridge got bad enough, as in noticeable ick on the back-side and week-old left-overs still inside.
Meet Motivation Half-Way
And, this is exactly how motivation shows up in our lives. There are days where I have to drag myself outside to get in a run. There are nights when I hop on the treadmill at 7:30 PM to move my body because it’s ugly out and, I haven’t gotten any movement in all day because I’ve been stuck behind a computer. And, there are days I get up before 6 am to do Pilates Live because I know if I show up Live, I enjoy it more.
We have to meet motivation half-way. We have to take, even the smallest action, or we risk falling into the same old patterns of behavior. This is how we uplevel our lives. This is how we crawl out of the ruts in which we find ourselves (often mid-life like I had), and this is how we find our way from pain to joy.
A friend once said: “How we do one thing, is how we do everything.”
I think she’s right.
We will never feel motivated to dig into our baggage. Only until we get really sick of looking in the mirror and physically see the pain on our face, or feel the ick building up in our hearts — do we force ourselves to find the motivation to choose differently. Or, unless our backs are up against the wall and we have no choice but to make a move. By not choosing differently we risk staying, with our backs up against the wall, of our own life.
This is not living; it’s fear in your mind winning over the desire in your heart.
We know (and act) upon what needs to be done in our external world. However, when it comes to our internal one, we often need a nudge, a fresh perspective, and more often than not, guided support.
Where, in your life, are you finding it difficult to meet motivation half-way?
If I could wave a magic wand and get you from Point A. to Point B., what action would it take to get to Point B?
How can I support you?
To meeting motivation half-way and going into the second half of 2020 with a resounding “HECK-YEAH” to create your best life!
P.S. Are you ready to create your best life? Let’s begin with the inner-work in grief recovery. I have availability to walk you through The Grief Recovery Method® Online, One-on-One. Get in touch via the Contact tab if you have any questions or would like to get started! Seven weeks and you’ll wish you would’ve gone through this program sooner! I know I sure felt that way.