Grieving Voices Podcast, Takeaways and Reflections |
Takeaways & Reflections | Struggle to Strength
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
Through the challenges and struggles of life, we often find our strength and learn what we’re capable of as we search for meaning in our pain.
This episode shares two stories of the tenacity it took to dig deep, while also acknowledging the need for help and support and seeking it for themselves.
Rachel battled with her husband for two years as he fought hard to beat his cancer, only to lose his fight to ALL (acute lymphoblastic leukemia) in the end.
Eric battled the struggle of guilt after finding his daughter after she took her own life when she was 15.
Two very different stories but similar in how the human spirit is capable of finding strength through struggle.
It is my hope that Rachel and Eric’s stories, although very different experiences, help you to see yourself through their struggle. And that you, too, feel hopeful that you can find your strength on the other side of the struggle.
RESOURCES:
Today, I’m going to be talking about Episode 61 with Rachel Engstrom, Life as a Cancer Wife, Widow and Never a Mother-to-Be, and how she shares the story of her husband’s diagnosis and death two years later, as well as how she found her way to feeling better. And Episode 62 with Eric Hodgdon, Opening the Door to a Parent’s Worst Nightmare, and how he went from struggle to strength. He describes a defining moment that set him on a path of empowering and leading himself through his devastating and life-shattering loss.
Human Spirit is Stronger than Anything that Can Happen to It
When I’m hearing the stories of Grievers who come on my podcast, I try to put myself in their shoes and through their story, feel what might have been like to go through that experience. And what struck me about Rachel’s story is the time that from diagnosis until her husband passed away and still holding on to hope that entire time that he would go into remission, and he would be healthy again. But we never really know when our time is up, or when we’ll receive a diagnosis that could drag on for years and years. I know people who are on dialysis, or who have been on dialysis for many years for their kidneys. And it takes a toll on people’s mindset. This is where the human spirit is remarkable in adapting to our circumstances. Whether you’re a child who’s being abused, or an adult who’s going through a terminal illness, the human spirit learns to adapt. And I think we find our resourcefulness in times of struggle and challenge. And that’s just what Rachel and her husband did. They found their resourcefulness and had support come in to help them. Her parents had lived with them for quite some time during that period. And I just imagine that had they had kids at that time, that would have been even more helpful. And I think we get so scared to ask for help and support. In those times, we think we can do it all, or we should be doing it all, especially as mothers and nurtures, we think we should be doing it all. And I personally had many challenging times asking for help and support of others. I’m only learning now in my later years that support is really where it’s at. Whether it’s in grief, in our grief or in our businesses, just bringing on support in and help which I did this year which has been incredible. So I think that is probably one of the lessons that I’ve learned in my grief recovery and talking with other gravers and hearing their stories. It’s in the support that you find your own strength in a lot of ways because when you are able to take a break, when you are able to just step back for a moment that can help to recharge your own battery and tackle the next day. And that’s a huge takeaway in Rachel’s episode, and in many episodes. I wanted to highlight that it’s important to ask for support, and whatever that looks like for you.
Be Compassionate to Others
I love this one line to where a friend of hers had told her you can choose to be bitter or better. And that was kind of a turning point for her. She didn’t want to be bitter anymore, she wanted to be better. And after her husband’s passing, she started to pick up the pieces. And really wanted to find some meaning in her experience and it ended up writing the book: Wife, Widow, How I Navigated the Cancer World and How You Can Too. And I’ve talked to many Grievers who, through their stories, through their experiences, you want to find meaning for what you’ve gone through, you want to make something of it. And that’s been really a common thread. And also, among all of the guests that I’ve had, whether that’s helping others, or in a quiet way, it doesn’t have to be writing a book or it doesn’t have to be becoming a grief recovery specialist. It can just be a more compassionate friend, or spouse or what have you. Because I do believe that the more challenging experiences of our lives have makes us more compassionate people towards others. And after a year in of this podcast and listening to people’s stories, the other tip I would give to as the quickest turnaround to feeling better is to helping others. And that was really a turning point for me personally as well. And that’s been Rachel’s work as well. She’s really been an advocate for acute lymphoblastic leukemia and, and really just cancer in general she’s really tried to raise awareness and money as well. So there are many people doing amazing things in this world because of the challenges they’ve experienced. And Rachel is one of them.
Heal Yourself First
There is another aspect of Rachel story I want to share in that what if someone with whom you are in a relationship with is diagnosed with a terminal illness, and you are, let’s say the significant other but it’s been a less than loving relationship. You’re probably going to experience a lot of conflicting feelings about that. There’s a part of you that feels like you should help that person, you should be there for them till death do you part, you would want the same for yourself, you would want that person to help you if it were you or support you if it was you that was diagnosed with a terminal illness. But truly, if it’s a less than loving relationship, I can see where during Rachel’s episode she had mentioned that one of the nurses had told her that 70% of marriages or couples separate during cancer. And that struck me but in all honesty, it doesn’t surprise me because I think there are a lot of less than loving relationships out there. I think there are many people who get into relationship who haven’t healed their own wounds. And so you have two people that come together with their wounds, not healed emotional wounds. The other person can be someone who’s either going to help you evolve and grow and challenge you to do that and maybe in hopefully you do that together. Or you can be like the child that picks the scab and you can do that for each other where it’s just kind of a toxic thing. It’s like you don’t know how to be with someone else.
As long as you have this wounded inner child in you. And we’re all walking wounded inner children, as adults, until we recognize that our past and the behaviors that we resort to as adults, and the problems we see in our lives, that are usually repetitive. We find ourselves in the same bad relationships or you find yourself with the same cycle of money issues time after time, or you find yourself abusing different substances, different stage of life. These are the things that are still there, when you get into relationship with someone, marry someone, unless you can recognize and have that awareness of what your issues are, and you work through them either together as a couple, to grow through it. Or you work on that beforehand, which I highly recommend. I would recommend to anybody who is thinking about getting married, to go through grief recovery. You know, they have these pre-marriage classes and things. But I think that the most significant thing that you can do for your future and your future life with someone is to work on your own crap. And that’s what grief recovery offers. It’s a gift to you. But you have to be willing to do the work, of course, and many people are not. And it’s just where you’re at at the time where you look for someone else to heal those wounds for you, you looked for someone else to give you the love that you should be giving yourself. And I could go on a tangent right now, but I’m not, I just wanted to highlight how can it be that in a terminal diagnosis, couples can just shatter. And I believe that’s why it’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
Be Your Best Advocate
There is such a level of intimacy and struggle for the person that is both the supporter and the caregiver, but also the person who is the one that is diagnosed. It’s reckoning, it’s an awakening. I’ve never been diagnosed with cancer, but I imagine it is a great awakener. And it’s grief, it is grief. Imagine the grief that it causes someone to just have learned while you have six months to live. It is capable of knocking the wind out of the sails and sinking the heart of even the strongest person you know. And I do think that how you’ve handled challenges in your life before that experience or before that diagnosis is a precursor to how you handle the harder stuff that comes your way. And maybe thinking about how you’ve done that in the past, how have you handled challenging parts of your life in the past. And do you want to be emotionally prepared? and I don’t even know that anything can really prepare you to be honest, I don’t think anything can. Nothing can for this life altering diagnosis, these changes, or these big losses that we experienced, like I’ll talk about next with Eric story, nothing can prepare you for that. But I do feel there are tools out there that can help to support you in discerning what it is you need and helping you to become your best advocate for yourself. And we will learn those things by digging deep into ourselves. And also I want to say that, the worst thing is always what happened to you because no matter what, you will always experience it at 100%. There are no half Grievers out there. So just keep that in mind. So please check out Rachel’s Episode 61: Life as a Cancer Wife, Widow and Never a Mother-to-Be because there’s so much more to her story than I even covered here today. But I do like to keep these takeaways episodes kind of brief, there is definitely more to his story. So I hope you take a listen.
Every Parent’s Worst Nightmare is Losing a Child
Now I’d like to share my takeaways from Episode 62 with Eric Hodgdon, Opening the Door to a Parent’s Worst Nightmare. In 2014, his 15 year-old daughter, Zoi, had taken her own life. And as he shared the story of how he learned about how that was done, I listened so intently. And I could visualize the story, I could visualize the moment as he was telling me, and it literally broke my heart. I have a 16 year-old, a 14 year-old, and a 12 year-old, and just even thinking about it makes my eyes welled up. I cannot imagine. That is why I titled his episode, which I struggled with, on what to title it, but it really came to me, that would be any parent’s worst nightmare. It would just be your worst nightmare. Doesn’t matter how it happened, but just stepping into your child’s bedroom, expecting them to be in their bed, asleep, or falling asleep. And just the unimaginable instead is what you find. It truly hurts my heart. So it was a difficult episode for me to listen back when I had to edit it. But it’s so important for me that I personally edit my episodes because well one, it’s usually a few months from editing. I’m usually a few months out in editing from when we initially record. And so I feel like I need to hear it again in order to freshen up on the story and avoid it to be able to articulate what it is that I felt when I first heard it. And to hear it a second time because I hear every Grievers story a second time when I go to edit. I walk away from editing, just amazed with the tenacity of the human spirit. We can endure so much more than I believe we give ourselves credit for. But in the moment, and the moment of that deep despair and sorrow. It’s really hard to see three? five? ten? years into the future, maybe even tomorrow. And this is why I’m loving in doing this podcast so much, that the people who come on this podcast brings hope to other Grievers. But here’s the thing, if you were listening to this podcast, that is you too. That is you because you can take so much more than I think you give yourself credit for. There comes a time where you can only take so much. And I think that’s when most people seek out help and support. And I’ll come back to the first part of this episode where I talked about support and help and how important it is. But for Eric, and for many gravers, it does take having this moment within ourselves, I meant for more than this. My life is more than this, more than this sorrow, more than this anger and more than this pain.
I want my life to be fruitful and thrive. I want to thrive and I want to make something out of this crap that I’ve been handed. I do think there are many of us that come to that place too. And unfortunately, there are many who stay in that place of sorrow and pain. And feel like this is just how it is. This is just what life is going to be. This is my new normal, they say now but it doesn’t have to be. You have so much power of choice. You don’t even probably realize it because grief does make us feel like we don’t have a choice. But we do. You do, you do have a choice. And that’s what Eric talks a lot about in his episode. There was a defining moment where you felt like he heard Zoi’s voice. He did. He said he heard Zoi’s voice. And she was in so many words, I’m just paraphrasing, but just like “snap out of it, Dad, snap out of it.”. And when we are so deep in it, it’s really hard for us to do that. Sometimes it’s a prayer that you just say out loud. And something happens within you, something turns within you, something flips.
We Thrive by Supporting Each Other
And that’s really when my life kind of flipped, when I finally surrendered. And I started to pray. To be honest, I hadn’t stepped in a church and many, many years. And it happens differently for everybody. It doesn’t happen for everybody, of course, because there are many Grievers out there who are still feeling hopeless. Again, that’s the premise of this whole podcast is to bring hope to people. I think it’s fitting that he titled his book, A Sherpa named Zoi. And it’s because of what he has learned about himself through her, and through that experience. And not to mention what he also learned about Zoi herself through stories that people shared with him after her passing. So we have an impact on people and we often just never realize it. And that was one of the things Eric and I talked about. And it’s so unfortunate that we don’t feel like we can share with other people while we’re alive and well, how much that person means to us, or how much impact they have in our lives, or they have had on our lives. And just feeling this gratitude and expressing it for what they bring to our lives and what they mean to us and being grateful for the connection itself, because we are beings that thrive on connection. And again, it comes back to the support and feeling supported. And there’s so many people who I know, that walk throughout their lives and don’t feel supported. And I can offer my support in a thousand different ways. But as a person, they don’t feel it within themselves. That’s a really unfortunate space to be in. And I think a lot of it comes down to trust. We also have to trust that we are supported. It has to come within us first before we can feel it from other people. And that’s what so many things, obviously, love, connection. If we’re feeling disconnected from ourselves, which often happens in grief, how can we then feel connected with others?
Continue Living for a Reason, Find Something to Live For
Feeling really begins when we start with self exploration, when it comes to grief. And I want to share a quote that Eric had shared during the podcast episode. And he said, “just because your loved one lost their life doesn’t mean your life is lost, too.” And I thought that was such a beautiful, poignant thing. And it’s true. And that’s easy for me to say that it’s true, because I haven’t lived that experience. So don’t take it from me take it from Eric, who’s lived it. He’s lived that experience. And many guests on this podcast have lived through terrible experiences. And if they would have settled for the fact that their life was lost too, their gifts that they could have given the world wouldn’t be out there. So let that settle in a minute. And just think about what your hopes and dreams were before grief, before the loss that you’ve endured. What were they before? They’re still there, there’s still life left to live. And I hope that Eric’s story gives you hope that it’s still possible to move forward. I hope Rachel story gives you hope that it’s still possible to create a life that you love, even if it’s the love you lost, even if it’s your child, Eric has become an amazing mentor and leader in helping others really find their own strength through their struggle.
P.S. I encourage you to check out Eric’s website, you can find it at erichodgdon.com. And I think just looking at his website, you’ll feel that he really made something out of this tragic, terrible loss that he’s experienced. And there are so many tips too that he walks through on our podcast episode. He talked about the pressure that teens feel today and shared tips around that, as well as being a parent of a teen. It really was a great, great conversation. So I hope you check it out. And I do hope, again, that you find hope in through their stories. Like Eric said, gratitude played a huge role in what he was experiencing when he was deep in his sorrow. And he had to constantly remind himself that gratitude of what is in my life right now. And so that is the question for you today, what is in your life right now that you can just feel so grateful for? of what is today in your life. And it was thanks to him that he shared about the Five Minute Journal, and I’ve now been using it for three months. I love it, I absolutely love it. It’s become part of my morning regimen. And I highly recommend it. And I do link to that in the show notes of Episode 62 of his episode, and I will link to it here as well. So and as well as to the episodes, both 61 and 62. You’ll also find in the show notes, and I, again, encourage you to listen to those.
P.S. I just want to share about an energy quiz that I’ve launched a little while back. And if you haven’t gone to my website, theunleashedheart.com, you can find a link for that either on the top banner, or it should pop up at some point. And it takes less than 90 seconds, it has 10 questions and at the end you’ll discover your energy type, and what to do with it, and how to nurture your energy type, what drains it, all of that stuff. I think it’s a very informative quiz, and the results are very informative. And I think it would be beneficial and helpful especially for Grievers who often feel their energy being drained. You’ll have a PDF that you can resource that you can use to figure out what nurtures and what drains your energy, what your energy type is. And I just am really proud of what I created with that. And so I would love for you to enjoy it as well. And it’s free. You’re not going to get any further emails from me. For my newsletter or anything like that, it’s you’re just getting the guide. And if you wish to join my newsletter, which is bi-weekly, every other Wednesday, which is filled with content not shared anywhere else. There is a link in the show notes to that, if you would like to join that. I would love to have you in my sacred space I call it it’s where I share things I don’t share elsewhere. So I’d be happy to have you. Until next time, take care and remember, when you unleash your heart you unleash your life. Much love
Grieving Voices Podcast, Podcast, Takeaways and Reflections |
Takeaways & Reflections | Evolving with Grief
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
Grief can either suck the life right out of you or, it can build you into the most compassionate heart for others who will look to you to lean on for support in their grief.
They say grief shared is grief diminished, but many people find sharing their grief difficult. Some turn to writing as a way to express and soothe the soul like I had and like my guest, Faith shared, in episode 59. Or, they turn to others in support groups or friendships, only to be let down or disappointed, as my guest Sherrie was and talked about in episode 58.
There is one question I encourage you to ask yourself; one that I challenge you to ask yourself. If you have listened to episode 59, then you may already know what it is. If you haven’t, then listen to this week’s episode because I mention it again.
Also, this episode is dedicated to the founder of The Grief Recovery Method®, John James, who passed away on 8/10/2021, only three short months following his cancer diagnosis. GRM changed my life and, I will forever be grateful to James for creating this beautiful gift out of his own grief. What a gift to humankind he was and will continue to be to the many hurting hearts who feel led to doing the deep, inner-work through GRM. His legacy will endure; I do not doubt that. Love + Light, John. 💛
RESOURCES:
Today is the takeaways and reflections episode where I’ll be talking about Episode 58 with Sherrie Dunlevy, and Episode 59 with Faith Wilcox. Sherrie had lost her infant son 29 days after his birth, and also her beloved pet. And so she talks about each of those losses and the impact they had on her as well as her experience of going through grief recovery and how that changed her life. And Faith talks about the loss of her 13 year old daughter. She was diagnosed at the age of 13 and died 365 days later in her mother’s arms of cancer. And the curious thing about that is she didn’t know she had one year to live when she was diagnosed. But I think it’s an important question to ask ourselves, what would I do? If I knew I had one year to live?
People are Often Consumed with Their Own Grief
Starting with Sherrie’s episode, she brought up a very important topic that I want to bring up in this takeaway’s episode and she talked about her this desire that she had when she lost her son. She thought that time that followed, she was really struggling with why she felt abandoned, why people weren’t there for her that she thought would have been or should be. And she said she came up with a few reasons why this happened. One was it hit too close to home, that if it happened to them, thinking about that makes them sad, it’s just too sad for them. Another reason why she came up with why people abandoned her was they never had to deal with a situation like that before. And they just didn’t know what to say. Also, people really want to say something, but don’t know what to say, or afraid to say the wrong thing. And they want to help and they want to do something, but they just don’t know what to do. And so it’s easier to do or say nothing than the wrong thing. And one thing I would like to add to that is that, I think also too, people are often consumed with their own grief, consumed with what’s going on in their own lives. Maybe not even grief at the time, but just the just all. Especially women or head of households, you wear all the hats. For me personally, I can just say I have days where it’s just feel so scatterbrained, it’s hard to focus, my attention is pulled in many different directions and, and so trying to hold the capacity for compassion and empathy and trying to hold that space for somebody else. In a really trying difficult emotionally challenging time. I’m struggling in my own mind, I’m probably not the best suited person to sit with you during those days. But also I think it comes down to communication. If I am feeling that way if I am because here’s the thing, too, in that situation that would cause me grief is like a really want to be there for you, but I just can’t right now “this is what’s going on, this is how I’m feeling, this is what I’m experiencing”. You know, and I might feel like it’s nothing in comparison to what you’re feeling. You know, the person that just you know is going through a loss but all the same. How do you do to be there for somebody who you really want to be there for? and yet, just you don’t have the capacity to do it. And
How Can I Help?
I think it’s where we tend to complicate things, we overcomplicate things, and sometimes we think that we just need to do these big grandiose gestures, or these big expressions of our love and care. But sometimes it can just be as simple, “I don’t have the brain capacity today. I hope I do tomorrow. But in case I don’t, know that I’m sending you love, know that I’m sending you a hug“. Maybe you put that in a card, and you mail a card to that person? Or maybe you send them a fruit basket? It can be something small, a small gesture. Maybe if they have a pet, maybe it’s like, “Okay, I know, I need to disconnect a bit. I need to, like reboot my brain.” But maybe you don’t have a pet. Right? And so maybe that person that had a loss, has a pet. “Hey, can I walk your dog, it’d be good for me, it’d be good for your dog, and it would help you out.” Right? So I think sometimes we have to think outside the box, and maybe a little bit creatively about how we can be of service to other people when we really, really want to, but no, we’re just not there yet in full capacity, but still want to do a little something. And if you are feeling in full capacity, you know, mentally, emotionally, physically, all of those things where you can be there for other people, then it’s like, by all means balls to the wall, I mean, put all your effort and energy into that, because you wouldn’t be surprised how life-giving that can be for somebody else, and for you as the giver of your time and energy. And it doesn’t even have to be a financial expense to do anything special. I just encourage you to think about maybe what you would like, I think that’s also where we tend to overcomplicate things. It’s like, “what would I appreciate today? what would I really like? what would lift my spirits? Or what would be helpful to me today?” .And then do that thing for that person, or somebody else who is going through a challenging time, who don’t have to be grieving something. Just maybe it’s a challenging time, right? And, you know, all of this desire for Sherrie to find why people abandoned her is kind of what led to her writing her book, “How can I help?” your go-to guide for helping loved ones through life’s difficulties, and it is on Amazon. And I did link to her book in the show notes of her episode. So I do highly encourage you to check it out, and to listen to that episode in its entirety.
There’s a Clarity That Can Come From Grief
And I’m going to go through a few more things that Sherrie and I talked about. Next, I’d like to share just how contrast really shows us what we do want. And therefore, it’s a knowing of what we don’t want. And we had talked about during our episode about this post traumatic growth. And I had heard this term before, but I think it’s true in that when you go through something traumatic, or you have a really difficult, challenging experience, loss of a loved one or just natural disaster. Things like that we realize, what we don’t want, like, “this isn’t working for me, that’s not working”. How do you know we start to think about what we do want. And so there’s a clarity that can come from grief. It is a clarifier that brings us to our awareness, all that probably isn’t working in our lives, things that we would desire to change. Even if we don’t know how or what that looks like. You can feel it in your body. Your body responds to what isn’t working, if we just kind of tune in. We just take a moment to tune in to what our bodies are telling us because our bodies are always speaking to us, especially in grief. Especially with that post traumatic growth journey that all gravers go through
There is No Timeline to Grieve
And because there’s no timeline to grieve, I think that experience or how long that experience takes is very different for everybody. I think it also relies on how open we are to learning something new, to see in our lives and other people from a different perspective. I think one of the beautiful things about grief is it brings us more compassion, we become more compassionate people, I believe. And so it’s really leaning into that compassion for ourselves first. Because it’s really hard to give others compassion, when we don’t have it for ourselves. It comes back to that old thing. You can’t pour from an empty cup, right? I think that is one of the lessons that Sherrie had received in her grief, and what made her seek out grief recovery, help in the grief recovery method, and I just loved how she shared her experience in that, she said it has the most amazing tool, and it was the best gift that she had ever given herself. And I would wholeheartedly agree for myself personally. Grief recovery has been the gift that keeps on giving. I certified in March of 2019, in Austin, Texas, and I was just telling someone about it the other day. And I was telling this friend, there are pivotal moments in our lives. Times where we can think back and, and think well, that conversation or that bumping into that person or, being in the right place at the right time, or that choice I made or that decision. We can pick out these moments in our lives that are very pivotal to us, that really changed the trajectory of the rest of our lives, where we understand and are aware that had I not done that thing, my life would not be where it is today. A happenstance conversation, and I’ve had so many of those instances, just the perfect conversation at the perfect time, or hearing something exactly when I needed to hear it, or stumbling upon a resource or something that would inevitably change my life. And that was grief recovery, to be honest, which opened the doors and led to many other things such as Reiki and end of life doula and the clients that I’ve been working with in Reiki and what I’m learning starting to learn now to further my Reiki and deeper my practice there with crystals and sound healing.
We evolve with our grief, we are always evolving with our grief. It’s just truly sad to me, I feel sadness when I see people, especially online, often in the grief community, that feel like their life is destined to be how it is today. I was that person who thought my life was going to be how it was, and I was going to feel how I was going to feel for the rest of my life. You can’t see the label from inside the jar. Right? I mean, that’s another quote. But it’s so true, it’s really hard to see a path forward when you’ve tried something and it didn’t work or you’ve tried that thing and it didn’t work or or you constantly feel like you’re judged, criticized or analyzed. And that’s what grief recovery is absolutely different. The approach is different in its individual, because you’re an individual like it is individualized to you, because your grief is unique to you. I could go on and on on a tangent on that but grief shows us what needs to be healed, grief is a clarifier it and it will force you to evolve.
Grief is Like a Sinkhole
I think eventually, unless you are unwilling to surrender to what it has in store for you, the gift that it could give you and I can just see the eyes rolling because when you are deep in grief, you do not want to hear how there’s gifts in grief, you don’t want to hear that there is purpose to your suffering, like you just don’t want to hear that stuff. I didn’t want to hear that stuff. But eventually, there comes a point where you just get sick and tired of being sick and tired. And like my friend Sherrie said in her episode, and honestly, we had recorded that many months back. And I had never forgotten this phrase that she said, but when you lay you decay, and if that’s not true of so many other aspects of our lives, whether let’s say you have a cancer diagnosis. Of course, there are days where absolutely all you can do is lay. But if you just laid, right, if you just laid and you’d never got up and you never had a reason to get up, or you never tried to get up, you never even tried or, granted, there’s all kinds of scenarios and situations. This is a very blanket statement, but that statement lay or decay. It’s like our bodies are meant to move. And, I don’t I’m not even sure who said it. But a body in motion, stays in motion like the laws of physics or something. I’m not sure. I think you get the idea, though, of where I’m getting to, but we must stay in motion. And that’s true with grief too, or you do get stuck. It’s like you’re in a sinkhole. Grief is like a sinkhole, it’ll swallow you whole. If you let it ,grief will force you out of your comfort zone and bring change whether you like it or not. The more you fight these changes that grief will bring in, the more resistant you are to these changes, the more your suffering will persist. And that was no different in my grave.
Grief Recovery is About Addressing the Pain
I had many days where I cried more tears than I thought I could ever possibly cry. When you’re crying from sadness, it’s much different than when you’re crying from pain. Just like Sherrie had mentioned in her episode. She said you will someday at some point cry so much that you’ve cried enough from the pain. And I agree, I think there comes a point where you just run out of tears and crying from the sadness is much different. And I think it’s once you actually process that pain, and you work through that pain, what left is the sadness. That doesn’t go away. You know, grief recovery isn’t about getting over or putting behind you the person that passed away or the relationship that is less than loving, grief recovery is about addressing the pain. Any sadness you feel isn’t just going to go away, there’s still going to be that empty seat at the table. And just this week, as I’m recording this, on Tuesday, the founder of grief recovery passed away from cancer after three months of senses diagnosis. And for me personally, it’s a very sad loss. It’s a sad loss for all of us grief recovery specialists, I believe, because he founded something that is incredible, that has changed and impacted all of our lives. And I am in awe of the legacy that he has created and his left. And I feel deeply honored to be able to carry on his work and his creation of the grief recovery method in the work that I do with my clients. Again, it’s the gift that keeps on giving. And it was an incredible gift that he has given me. And so I dedicate this episode to John James, who created the grief recovery method out of his own pain in his own sorrow. And if you are interested in learning more about his story, I encourage you to pick up the book the grief recovery handbook. It is linked in the show notes. And if you don’t see the show notes, or don’t go to the show notes, you can also find the grief recovery handbook on Amazon. And I highly recommend it.
Voice Out Your Feelings
Moving on to Episode 59 with Faith Wilcox, she shared her story of her 13 year old daughter being diagnosed with cancer and actually passing away in her arms 365 days following her diagnosis. And this was over 20 years ago, she just recently published a book, which is also linked in the show notes for Episode 59. It’s called “Hope as a Bright Star”. And it was developed from her writings that she wrote at the bedside of her daughter, and what she had learned throughout that whole process of sitting with her daughter in that year, in and out of the hospital, chemo radiation treatments and also navigating being a parent to her daughter’s sister as well. And the dynamics of how you function as a family when you have such a sick child and you’re in and out of the hospital. And I can’t imagine what that’s like, I cannot even imagine. I resonated with what Faith had shared about how writing was such a pivotal healing tool for her. Because I too, have been writing since I was in my teens and I journaled, I wrote poetry. I found much comfort in expressing myself in that way. And I think for a lot of introverts or empathic people, we find that it is much easier for us to process our feelings. We often do internally, but it’s a great exercise in expression, to give your feelings a voice in some way. And so for me, it was always writing. And that was the case also for Faith. And she gives some tips for other parents at the bedside of a loved one, going through the same situation that she experienced.
What would you want to do if you only have one year left to live?
And I just thought when I was listening back and editing, I just thought to myself, like, had she known she had one year to live? Would she have made different choices? What would she have wanted to experience? I mean, what a good question to ask yourself to get some fire under your butt. You know, if you had one year to live, you were told today, you have one year to live? What would you want that year to look like? I don’t know about you. But I feel very overwhelmed by that question, to be honest. Because I feel like there’s so much more that I have to offer people and want to do in my life. I think grief in that question is a clarifier. I have a pretty long bucket list. I don’t know about you, but I do have a bucket list. And I seem to be adding to it year after year. But it is a daunting feeling isn’t it? To think if you were given only one year. Probably many of the things that you might have on your bucket list aren’t things that you would probably prioritize.
Maybe it’s putting your feet in the ocean or feeling the beach, sand in between your toes for the first time or swimming with dolphins. I’m reminded of a story of Jeffie which is shared by Elisabeth Kubler Ross and her book “The Wheel of Life” , a memoir for living and dying. But she shares the story of this little boy named Jeffie who is dying of cancer and was sick much of his young childhood and the last thing he wanted to do was more cancer treatment, more chemo and radiation and he just wanted to go home. And so his family took him home, and when they got home, the one thing he wanted to do was to ride his bike. And I’ll actually share this, you’ll hear the story of Jeffie brought up in a future episode, I had the privilege of having a conversation with Ken Ross, who is Elisabeth Kubler Ross’s son. And I brought up that story because I was moved to tears when I read it. But Elizabeth’s life is just one of many stories. She was actively doing her work, but it’s like the amount of work, the amount of accomplishments that she had in that time, is just, I’m in awe. So anyway, I was made to think of that story of Jeffie. When I thought of that question, what would you want to do if you had one year left to live and turns out with Jeffie, he knew intuitively, that he had but a few hours at most. In fact, he wanted to go home so he could die at home. That story was just though a beautiful example of just this little child, young child taking ownership of the kind of death he wanted to have. And I just think, imagine if we had that kind of authority, and took that authority to have that kind of conviction when we’re alive, right? not when we’re on our way out. And so again, it just comes back to that whole question. And my biggest takeaway from Faith’s episode is, how would I want my next year to be if I knew I had one year to live? And so that’s, that’s the question I want to leave you with today to truly ponder on, and think about, and what do you want your next year to be? Like? If you are grieving right now, what do you want your next year to be like.
P.S. In case you don’t know if it is something that you want to move forward working through your grief, I offer grief recovery, both online and in person, and both one on one and in a group. So if that’s something that is of interest to you, I encourage you to please reach out to me at Victoria at https://theunleashedheart.com or you can head to the show notes. And there will be some links to my social media there and you can send me a message. I highly encourage you to do that. If you have any questions or reservations about moving forward in your grief, because you got one life to live? And how about we make the most of it. Right? Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode, which as I mentioned, I’m dedicating to John James, the founder of the grief recovery method, and the grief recovery Institute. A program that has very much so changed my life and has been the gift to me that has kept on giving. If you would like to learn more about this amazing program, I encourage you again to reach out to me check out the show notes. And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love. If you liked this episode, please share it because Sharing is caring. And until next time, give and share compassion by being hurt with yours. And if you’re hurting know that what you’re feeling is normal and natural. Much love my friend.
Grief Stories, Grieving Voices Podcast, Takeaways and Reflections |
Takeaways & Reflections | Does Everything Happen for a Reason?
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
Does everything happen for a reason?
How much of our lives is left to chance, and how much of it is a reflection of our choices?
I explore these questions in this week’s episode and more. Larry and Michelle shared their stories of love and loss and, although their stories of grief are vastly different, there are a few things incredibly similar in their stories: The willingness to love and be loved.
Listen to this week’s episode and reflect on the choices you’ve made, the chances you’ve taken, and the beautiful gifts that you’ve gained as a result.
RESOURCES:
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Hi, there. Thank you for tuning in to grieving voices today. This is Episode 57, takeaways and reflections. And today I’m going to be talking about Episode 55 with Larry Indiviglia called Choice and Chance and, Episode 57 with Michel St. Jean Widows Don’t Sleep: Walking the Path of Cumulative Loss.
Making Choice to Take a Chance
As I was thinking about these two episodes, the one thought that came to my mind was, especially when talking about Larry’s episode is, his life by choice or is it by chance? And especially in grief, many people may say that everything happens for a reason. And as a griever, you don’t want to hear that. You don’t want to hear that there’s some reason why your loved one is no longer with you. That’s the last thing that you really want to hear. Have you ever thought about though how the moments that happen in your life, how they come to be? So much of what we experience is because we made a choice, because we chose something that had an impact and there’s cause and effect. So you make one choice, and this thing happens, you make another choice and this other thing happens. But like in Larry’s story, it really revolved around making the choice to take a chance. And for Larry it was taking a chance on love. But if you really think about it aren’t all of the losses we experience in our lives, due to making a choice to either commit to that person or move to that place or befriend that person, it all comes back to taking the chance, making the choice and taking the chance. And like I said, whether that be love or that be a friendship, or a move. We all make these choices. Larry shared how he took a chance on love and ended up having an eight month relationship with a woman who ultimately passed away of cancer. And he would do it all over again in a heartbeat. And I think for any Grievers out there, I’ll speak for myself, I would rather have had that experience of loving that person and being loved in return than never at all.
Freewill is Having the Ability to Choose
And especially as a parent, which is the greatest love I think anyone could ever possibly have the privilege of experiencing. I don’t know what it’s like to lose a child, but I do feel for myself. And I think any parent would say this, that you would rather have had that child in your life than I’ve never had them in your life at all. If they were to pass away, if you were to lose them. Love in all its forms is a great teacher for us. And that’s where I think a lot of people can use the phrase, “everything happens for a reason“, and I struggle with that. I struggle with that phrase because I don’t feel like there has to be a reason for us to to grow or evolve. But I do feel like we are presented with experiences that shaped and challenged us, and it’s what we decide to do in those moments. It’s what we choose to do in those moments. It’s essentially what freewill is, having the ability to choose. And we can choose to grow from those experiences, or we can choose to lay in decay, like one of my future guests shares in her episode coming up, when you lay, you decay. I’ve never forgotten it when she said it. And so Larry shares his love and loss.
There are No Stages of Grief
And, as does my other guest, Michelle St. Jane, in Episode 56, she took a chance to fall in love, she first took a chance to leave her family of origin to go all by herself, I believe, 16-17 years old. And to see the world, she wanted to see the world, she ended up falling in love, again, took a chance, ended up getting married and having children with him. And he ended up passing away, very suddenly, and unexpectedly. And there was one part of her episode that really stuck out to me something she said, “I hear your heartbeat”. When she’s talking about her husband, she said, “I hear your heartbeat but you’re already gone”. It’s in the hospital realizing that, although he’s there, physically, His heart is beating. But he’s already gone. He was brain dead, he had an aneurysm in his lungs. And she had to make the choice to take him off life support. And raise a nine- month-old, a five-year-old, and a six-year-old on her own. And I know many women end up in this position, many husbands, and many significant others end up in this position of you know, of loss and then are having to raise children or even just carry on without children. It’s like, there’s no manual for that. There’s no manual for grief. And she said, “grief helps us to know the direction we want to go in”. And I completely agree if we’re open to it, but we have to be open to it. We have to be open to what it’s telling us, to what our bodies are telling us as we’re going through this emotional roller coaster. I do want to highlight one thing she said and she mentioned during her episode, she mentioned about the stages of grief and I just want to reiterate that there are no stages of grief.
I actually have Ken Ross, Elisabeth Kubler Ross’ son, who will be on my podcast coming up. And we’re going to tackle this very topic of the stages of grief because it’s as mother’s work that was misinterpreted about the stages. So anyway, I just want to reiterate that there are no stages. Her work was about terminal illness and these phases that people go through when they’re diagnosed. And that’s not saying that people don’t have anger and they don’t have denial and all these things in grief. There’s just not this linear path of grief in the form of stages. Another common thing that Michelle brought up during her episode that many Grievers experiences around the same time every year, when that loss occurred, you have these same familiar feelings that come out of the woodwork. They can appear out of nowhere seemingly, and she said every year or three days in October, when her husband had gone into coma. Even 25 years later, she said she still had those same angry thoughts and feelings and it was pulled back to the past. Again, every year, she had a choice to be pulled back to that past again. And eventually she did find a way to not find herself in that position again. But again, it comes back to making a choice, she had to make a choice to look at another October in a different way, experience October in a different way. And it was through this cumulative healing, all these different things she was doing that helped her find her way out of that rut every year.
Every Loss is Cumulative
And so I really encourage you to listen to her episode on how she managed to find her way through all those October’s and where she’s at today, because I think it’s a really great illustration of a woman who has endured many different types of losses, which are cumulative, every loss, it’s cumulative, it stacks up on each other. And we have an opportunity to learn from these things. And it’s not to say that happened for a reason, so you could learn these lessons. It’s just life, it’s just life, it seems like such a simplified thing to say, like this just life, like there are so many people I’ve met and come across who will say that death is just a part of life. Well, that’s life, right? And some of the people say that, truth be told, haven’t experienced a lot of loss or trauma either. And so, we have to be careful, because words matter. The words matter that we say, especially to Grievers and around Grievers, and about grief.
I want to circle back to Larry’s story about love and loss because there are many people who, if presented with that same situation would have turned the other way, would have walked away. And how about the love of his life who took a chance to go on a dating website knowing full well that she had cancer and taking a chance in doing that. Knowing her worth as a human being despite what she was going through with her health, that love was the answer, love was something that could carry her through her days, love was the antidote to what she was going to experience. And I commend, first of all, the awareness of knowing your own worth as a human being, because we’re all worthy of love, right? Regardless of what we’re experiencing, who we are on the outside what we look like, we’re all worthy of love, even if we have stage four cancer. And so I think it’s incredible that she found somebody who was willing to walk beside her in that. And so I commended Larry in that episode, because it takes a lot of personal commitment to stick beside somebody through their good days and their bad days when essentially you really don’t know each other really well. Right? It’s not like they were married for 15-20 years, and then she developed cancer diagnosis. So I just found the story itself pretty incredible that he was willing to go extra mile with her in the love that he wanted to give her, and she to him. I think it’s a beautiful thing.
To Love and Be Loved in Return
And if people who are going through something like that can find the worth in themselves, to take a chance on themselves, and then find someone to take a chance on them. I think it’s an absolutely beautiful thing but it makes you really think about if you’re not someone who is opening your heart to love. Why is that? I mean, there’s fear and rejection. And certainly I’m sure many people or she had people rejecting her, when once they found out she had cancer, or maybe that was what she led the conversation with. And they were like, I’m gone. Or maybe she gave them an out. Maybe upon meeting or talking, she said, “Hey, I just want to let you know I have stage four cancer, totally understand if you don’t want to, you know, walk with me through this“. I’m thinking back. And I’m just curious how many times that happened. But if you’re going through cancer right now, if you’re experiencing a diagnosis now, and you don’t have love in your life, maybe let this story inspire you to take a chance on yourself, to allow somebody to take a chance on you, too. One of the things that Larry said was “you can’t unconditionally love, if you don’t love yourself first“. And I do think it probably takes an incredible sense of self love, for someone to have that love to give someone that you kind of learn to know, through cancer. So, I encourage you to listen to that episode if you need a little inspiration in the love department. And even if you don’t, it could be friendship, too. You don’t have to walk away from a friendship if someone gets diagnosed with cancer because you’re scared, or because you’re fearful, you don’t know what to say. Just be honest about those things. “I don’t know what to say, I’m afraid what’s going to come up for me if I sit with you through this?“, Because that’s natural, that’s normal. Does it take a special person to sit with someone through the most trying and challenging times?, Of course it does. Is it especially challenging too during cancer treatments and all of these things that someone is going through, plus the emotional roller coaster for them? It is, absolutely it is. How beautiful of an experience it can be and what you could miss out on. Larry said “the ability to choose his hope for the future“. That is the hope, the fact that you have the ability to choose. And I’ve said it several times in my latest posts on Instagram but grief makes you feel like you don’t have a choice. But we always do, we always do. Because even doing nothing is making a choice. The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is to love and be loved in return. And I think that was a great message from Larry’s episode. And I will end it there.
P.S. I want to share that I have a new energy quiz. You can learn your energy type. And if you go to my website, https://theunleashedheart.com, the link is in the show notes. You will find a link to the energy quiz under the Reiki tab. So if you go under services, and then Reiki and then you’ll see energy type, just click there and to get started to find your energy type. It takes less than two minutes and you get a handy dandy document to download that helps you up level your energy and find also what nurtures and leaks too.
If you are enjoying the podcast, please consider leaving a review or a five star rating. If you want to listen more inspiring grieving stories you can visit here. Or you can visit www.theunleashedheart.com for more information. If you have grieving stories that you wanted to share you can message me at [email protected] and you can also find me in Instagram and Facebook. If you liked this episode, please share it because sharing is caring. Until next time, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life, much love.
Grief Stories, Grieving Voices Podcast, Takeaways and Reflections |
Takeaways & Reflections | Preparing for Love & Tragedy
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
I share my favorite takeaways and reflections from Ep. 52 with Staci Bartley and Ep. 53 with Tina Ginn, exploring the importance of learning from the past and having the forethought for preparing for the future.
Life is messy, and we can learn from our messes, and we can clean them up, too. If we could learn how to re-frame the challenges of our lives by asking ourselves better questions, I do believe we would spend far less time emotionally suffering. Staci, through early teen pregnancy and three marriages, she’s learned this the hard way. And, perhaps that is the way? The mishaps, hurdles, and pivots that we find ourselves in are a part of the journey. But, I guess the better question is: Why does it take so many of us so long to get the memo?
Just as it takes us a while to realize that messes are a part of life and that we are capable of learning and cleaning them up and preventing future ones, so too, it takes us to learn a little too late how ill-prepared we are for tragedy or disaster.
Whether you want to learn how to prepare for love, tragedy, or disaster, the last two episodes are for you, and this episode includes my highlights.
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And this week, I will be reflecting on my conversation with Staci Bartley, which was Episode 52 broken hearts and broken dreams. And Episode 53 with Tina again, preparing for the worst. And I want to start out by saying this is season two. And thank you for your support for sharing. I would absolutely love it if you would take a moment to leave a review, or a five star rating. If you love this podcast, if it’s beneficial if you’ve gotten something out of it, if it’s helped you in any way, it just helps more people find it. And that is the goal to spread the message of hope to share people’s grieving voices. And to let people know that they truly are not alone.
Messes Are Different Than Failures
I want to start out with Staci’s episode. And I got connected with her through actually her brother in law, David Bartley, who was on the podcast a while back, he spoke about his story around planning to attempt suicide and talked a lot about suicide prevention in the two episodes. I was actually one episode and I broke it up into two parts because it was such a much needed good conversation. So I will actually link in the show notes to that episode just because suicide prevention is so important. David connected me with Stacey. And right away, we hit it off. And if you haven’t listened to her episode, I highly recommend it. If you’re in a relationship with someone, lover otherwise, I think there’s something to be learned from what she shares. And I just want to highlight a few of the things that have that stuck out to me. There was one point where she said, How is this situation going to add to my life in the future? Who is it that I am becoming? And when you find yourself 16 and pregnant? That’s a big question to ask yourself. And I’m not sure anymore at what point she asked herself this but I imagine many times over as I have to, like, what is this situation going to add to my life in the future? And who is it that I’m becoming? Because if we you know like to admit it or not every situation or experience that we find ourselves in is an opportunity to learn from I like how she said that messes are different than failures.
Because I think so often we can look at things that we’ve done in our lives or decisions that we’ve made or ambitions or goals or things that we’ve wanted for ourselves that we just don’t see come to fruition and we look at that as a failure and we can feel like a hot mess in the process. But if we are in a situation where we ourselves are just really struck, we’re on the struggle bus right you can be on the struggle bus and there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s just a part of learning. And I think that’s the difference in looking it’s really a good reframe, when we think about failures is how about we think of them as just messes and messes. You can get out of messes you can clean up and failures you can learn from too right there. It’s it doesn’t have to be this all or nothing mentality when it comes to taking a risk or taking a chance or trying. The mess of it is in the train. And I just really liked how she kind of talked about that. Then she says like, there is no such thing as failed relationships. They don’t exist. It’s just messy. It’s just messy relationships. And I think that’s a good reframe again, because it’s not pointing blame. It’s looking at it from a bird’s eye view, like, what’s my mess? What’s your mess? And what is this mess that we’ve created together? Right?
Love Is A Permission
In my grief recovery work, there’s a client that is realizing that, you know, we all bring our messes, I brought my mess, she brought her mess. And I can look at that with compassion. And I can look at that, like, well, everything that happened, it wasn’t all my fault. Because it’s really easy to for some people to take on the responsibility to take on all the blame in the relationship to make excuses or minimize the other person’s culpability or responsibility. But it does take two to tango, right? A relationship does take two people. And so when you have two people who have messiness in their lives, and you bring them together, it’s just one big messy pot, right? So she says to a relationship are attracted into our lives, and they help show us the places inside of ourselves, that contrast that work and don’t work that we’re shutting down, putting up with going along with not showing up, constantly nudging us. And I just think that’s so beautiful, that is so true. And she said that relationships are the best personal growth vehicle on the planet. And I would agree that they are definitely a personal growth vehicle. But the best? I don’t know about that. I think, personally, Parenthood.
And I know she’s a parent, too. But parenthood has been a huge personal growth vehicle for me. But again, those are those are relationships too. Right. So I guess at the crux of it, relationships, no matter what kind they are, are the best personal growth vehicle. So yeah, I guess she is right, you know, I do agree. And she says love is also permission. And I think that’s so true permission to, if you really love someone, you will let them be who they are. Let them feel what they feel. And let them share what they need to share, and be open to hearing it. And, you know, my husband and I have been married, it’ll be 18 years, and we make a good team. And good friends first, before anything else. And I think that was the foundation that we’ve built our relationship on, was a strong foundation of friendship, and just that kindness to one another. And, you know, it can get hairy with kids and responsibilities and obligations and moves and job changes and all the things. But at the end of the day, you know, when I climb into bed, and I reach for his hand and he reaches for mine, because we do we hold hands as we fall asleep, that is my piece, at the end of the day, to know that at no matter what life throws at us, no matter what we experience that I have his hand in mine in mine is in his that we’re there for each other as a good friend would be and as a partner would be.
And and it’s that permission along the way to be the to venture and to be the best version of ourselves to be supportive of the other’s growth and be supportive of just that nurturing really, it’s the nurturing and kindness of the other person just like you water of a flower. Or you plant a flower from seed and you have to water it and you nurture it and you pick the weeds and it’s like that in relationships too. You have to be willing to do those things for each other and sacrifice and give and give and take. I say to like we have two hands one forgiving and one for receiving it can be really hard for some people to receive. And it can be really hard for some people to give. I just really enjoyed this conversation, she’s learned the hard way, how to navigate the mess of relationships. And she says emotional. It’s like emotional weightlifting in the gym, you have to learn how to own your emotions, be a demonstration of support, and coming back to supporting the other person’s growth is who are we to tell anyone, they had to be a certain way or do a certain thing. And so, I know, sometimes I’ve seen this happen where one person outgrows or outpaces the other person and, or can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink. It’s kind of the same idea. It’s like, you know, if one person’s on this journey of self discovery, and you know, and we each have our own experience that we need to work through, and process.
Lease Option For Love
And I think if we find ourselves in situations that grow us, and we put ourselves in the way of challenge that will grow us. It can happen where you outpaced the other person. And I personally choose to lead by example, in that way. And I can tell you, when it comes to grief, my husband’s learned a lot. He hasn’t had experiences like I have, but he’s learning a lot about grief, through me, and through how we talk to the kids, when it comes to different situations and things. But me doing my work. My personal work has made me a better spouse, and how I communicate because it wasn’t always that way. And so you make a mess, you clean it up. That’s what I tell my kids. That’s what I often have to remind myself when I mess up. And I think to a big thing in my personal relationship with my husband is that we are not afraid to call each other out on our shit. When I’ve messed up, he calls me out on it, and vice versa. And we talk about how, you know how that made me feel or how, what I can work on. And it’s still, after 18 years, it’s still a process, it’s still, that doesn’t end.
I think sometimes people just get tired of the work get tired of the work it takes to clean up messes in relationships. But if you don’t really learn how to do that, you’re just always going to be cleaning up messes. And yeah, she says, take out our emotional trash and leave it there. Right? There was one line to she said, You can’t hurt me. That’s my job. And I think, personally speaking someone who’s their own worst critic. I don’t know that my husband could say anything to me, that would hurt me. If I really think about it as much as I probably hurt myself with what I tell myself. You know, so it is my job. That’s my job to hurt me. And it’s also my job to fix me. You know, we don’t if you’re going into a relationship with someone for them to fix you, you will be sorely disappointed. There was one line to where she said that when it comes to her when it came to her grief. And what she learned was that you stay in motion. Her mom had said the son doesn’t have to shine outside in order to shine inside. And that was when her father had passed away.
Oh, and I want to circle back actually to how she found her way to love again was something she came up with called a lease option contract for love. I thought it was absolutely brilliant. Because for someone who’s not ready to dive into the whole potential of another marriage or relationship again, what’s the next step? Like what’s a stop over to that and she came up with a solution of the lease option for love. I just think it’s brilliant. So much goodness in her episode talking about grief talking about the relationship, messes that she’s endured and and made it through and being a single mom several times, and I just admire Staci so much. And I just really highly recommend listening to her episode.
Preparing For The Worst
My conversation with Tina, again, was equally enlightening and actually quite inspiring as well, because she brought up many examples of why we are so ill prepared for tragedy, whether it be loss of a friend to cancer, which was her experience, a car accident, losing her job, divorce, estrangement with her children. But it’s these things that happen that we often can’t, don’t have a lot of time to prepare for. That we end up having to address at some point, right? These, the logistics of our lives, and how we realize how ill prepared we are for these experiences when they they hit us. And she said, you know, you end up with these should have could have whatevs. And you’re no better off. And you end up having to have the stress and the frustration, especially when it’s a loved one who passes? Or what do you do if their social media accounts? What bills do they have? How did they pay their bills, you’re having to navigate all of that. And when that person is ill, or sick and can’t respond or can’t share that information? It’s really challenging. But even more important than that, instead of having to have those conversations, you could be connecting with them and having really rich conversations that could be a better use of that time that is so fleeting.
Do you really want to be talking about the bills that need to be paid, and what day the garbage man comes. So all of these things Tina shared in her episode in and why she’s so passionate about the work that she’s doing. And in creating the app, your backup plan, she’s also has in the works, it’s called the emerging blueprint, which will be available at the end of July, or in July, some time 2021. If you’re listening to this at a later date, through our conversation, I realized how ill prepared I am, you know, I have my, you know, passwords and all of that in a place that my family knows. But aside from that, they have no clue. When does my podcast go live? How does that all work? Like I have a VA now? What’s her email address? They don’t even know like, I’m not sure what my family would do. If something happened to me, it would be absolutely. really stressful. It’d be incredibly stressful for my family. And so I really have given it some thought, since my conversation with Tina, how can I prepare so that it whenever it does happen, whenever something does happen to me, and I don’t have to die, that’s the thing too, like, I don’t have to die, I can end up in the hospital for three months, you know, you just never know. And so it’s that just never knowing when or what will be that we have an opportunity to have that for thought, like take this opportunity to have the forethought to think about how you can make the lives of your loved ones easier. By simply preparing, preparing for the inevitable, preparing for tragedy, preparing just for the worst. That’s what the episode title is preparing for the worst.
Take The Opportunity To Plan & Prepare
I’ve actually said to my husband to it’ll be an absolute nightmare if something happened to him too, because I have no idea where like, he has stuff written down but like the different accounts and what happens with this or what do you want, like what do you want to happen with your things? like where do you want these things to go like, Special Collections or you know, like these items and things and so I think we always wait for these conversations until it’s too late. And that was really the whole message of Tina’s of our podcast of our recording is that you know, we have the opportunity to plan and prepare. So we best take it, address the logistics before something happens. Because you really lose out on time for connecting and I think that Whereas she really brings a lot of the passion into what she’s doing right now with this app, because, you know, losing that friend to cancer, having a car accident that ended up ultimately, she ended up losing her job because she couldn’t function the way she had due to concussion and just physical limitations that she was having. She realized the importance of time.
And there is no time like the president, we’ve all heard that right. And when things happen, it’s like they happen in the blink of an eye. This is her passion. And this is what she brings to this app. And I look forward to digging into the emerging blueprint once it’s available. And I will come back to the show notes and put those the link in there for that as a resource. And again, don’t wait until the person is dying. At that point. It’s too late to prepare, as Tina had shared, you don’t want to should have could have would have all over yourself.
P.S. If you are enjoying the podcast, please consider leaving a review or a five star rating. If you want to listen more inspiring grieving stories you can visit here. Or you can visit www.theunleashedheart.com for more information. If you have grieving stories that you wanted to share you can message me at [email protected] and you can also find me in Instagram and Facebook. If you find it helpful please share it because Sharing is caring. And until next time, give and share compassion by being a heart with yours. And if you’re hurting know that what you’re feeling is normal and natural. Much love my friend.
Grief Stories, Grieving Voices Podcast, Takeaways and Reflections |
Takeaways & Reflections | Finding Purpose & Turning the Page
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
We often find our purpose through our pain. Or are lead to our purpose through our pain. Either way, there’s often a strong, deep desire to find meaning through the terrible life experiences we’ve gone through.
I’m no exception to that, and many of my guests aren’t either. Darren created AfterCloud, a “life-tech” app for capturing life’s most precious moments and memories to make it both easy to do so, and in the process, create a legacy. It’s also used in music therapy and has a lot of potential for many different types of scenarios. I could even see it being used by someone who wishes to document their rehabilitation process and journey after a tragic accident. They can then share their thoughts, feelings, etc., with whomever they choose.
My other guest, Arielle, has found her work in Hospice care to be enriched and deepened by her life experience with grief and loss.
Both guests, including myself, have found a way to turn the page on our grief. When we stop putting one foot in front of the other, that’s when we get stuck on the page. We find ourselves ruminating in the story of what happened when we avoid digging into how it made us feel at the time. Furthermore, not delivering the communications to those who have hurt us, only further roots our grief more deeply into our hearts.
The beautiful thing about grief recovery is that it enables grievers to turn the page, address all of those emotions, and deliver those communications without ever speaking to the other person. And, if the person has died, it’s still possible! And, to me, that’s the amazing gift of grief recovery – it’s a means, framework, and evidence-based program for turning the page.
RESOURCES:
So today is Episode 51. And it’s takeaways and reflections of Episode 49 with Darren Evans which was lost and legacy and Episode 50 with Arielle Arbushites widowed by suicide at 29, and three times not a mother. So first, let me get into Episode 49 with Deron Evans, we talked a lot about his app called after cloud that he had developed with the inspiration of his son and from their experience of his mother in law and his son’s grandmother. Slowly declining from actually not slowly it was quite, it was a more rapid decline because she had Lewy Body Alzheimer’s. And in preparation for today’s episode, I actually well, and I think it’s very timely because just in the last couple days here on the news, it is now June 8 2021. This episode will air in a few days. But the FDA just recently approved. It’s called aduhelm. And it’s also known as adieu botching this totally ADO Canyon Mab. I don’t know who can pronounce these drugs anyway, half the time. Anyway, they just recently the FDA just recently approved this. And it’s the first of its kind treatment since 2003. And it’s the first therapy that actually targets the fundamental path though physiology of the disease, which affects 6.2 million people in the US which I was really shocked when I read that number because I’m like, that’s a really high number of people with this debilitating disease. It just takes so much from families and individuals. And I’m going to link the article where I found that information in the show notes, so you can check that out if you like.
A Life Enriching App – After Cloud App
But coming back to Darren Darren’s episode and his after cloud app. I mean, it’s really being it’s being used in the music arts like music therapy, he said he had mentioned in his in that episode, if you haven’t listened to it, he mentioned music therapists using this with their patients to capture these moments that wouldn’t be captured otherwise, so the family can see the benefits that this therapy music therapy is the impact it’s having in their loved ones lives. But his story of how this was born, I think in touch all of us, it’s applicable to all of us because we all love and we all lose someone eventually who passes and what a beautiful way to capture memories and letters. You can send messages. You can pre plan messages to be sent on birthdays and anniversaries and you can really help to create a memory bank, a scrapbook for family in essence, a digital scrapbook. You can even capture in the person’s words and in their voice. What do they want to experience at the end of their life, you know, if they’re getting closer to that time, especially, you know, terminal patients. So you have it in their words there. It’s their voice sharing, though, you know if you can have that conversation, but first, you have to be able to have that conversation, right. And I could probably do a whole episode just on having the difficult conversation.
But I just think that this app is applicable to so many aspects of our lives, to capture the joy and the sorrow, right? everything in between, like Darren says, it’s a life tech app. And, you know, a part of his branding in his messaging for it is, it’s her voice I miss the most, I wish I could hear her again, I wish I could hear her one more time. And isn’t that what we often say to ourselves, after we lose someone, like, I wish I could just hear his voice one more time or her voice, I would give anything, right? And like he said, If you capture it, now, it’s there for future generations, we have it for the future. You can leave that legacy for your loved ones. I personally have downloaded the app, I did present it to a family member who, you know, I think there’s some skepticism, I think, for some people with putting information out there on the web, or in an app or anything like that. So I do sympathize, and recognize that for some people, that’s not a very comfortable thing to do. And, you know, perhaps I can bring Darren back in, or what I can do a blog post follow up, and, and he can share some of those things. Those objections or those concerns that people might have about that part, you know, putting all of your stuff, you know, into an app. I can see where that would be a real concern for some people.
But I think just like anything, you have to weigh the benefits with the cost. And, you know, what is someone going to do with someone’s singing happy birthday? You know, what is someone going to do with a picture of you and your loved one? on vacation? You know, you can choose to put in at what you want, it doesn’t have to be, you know, you’re not putting in your social security number or anything like that, you know, so there are different apps for that, actually. I have a guest coming up that shares an app that’s specifically for planning for disasters, and like, if something happened to you so and that is a valid question that I’m hoping to, you know, share with you all as well. But with after cloud, it really is just a life tech app, just like many of the apps that we already use, we always have to put in our information for that. And, you know, for many of the apps that we use, we have to include or date of birth, and some even it’s kind of freakish, right? When you when you’re scrolling on Instagram, or whatever, and all of a sudden, you start seeing ads for something that you like, download it in the App Store. And it’s like, wait, wait a minute, what someone watching me, you know, or even having a conversation with, you know, texting with someone, and all of a sudden you start seeing ads, I really do live in an incredible technology advanced time. I can’t even imagine what it will be like years from now. But it comes with responsibility, right? And I know that there are people wanting to create good quality, safe apps and other things that people can access that benefit their lives and enrich their lives. And Darren, and the after cloud app is no different. It’s a life enriching app, maybe as well, instead of just a life tech app.
Mental Health to Emotional Health
There was another point in the conversation where Darren talked about this idea that you know, when you go around the band, and in the UK where he lives back when growing up and things he would hear this term like going around the band, he said that would be equivalent to going to the psychiatric hospital. And it’s worth mentioning and noting in this episode because I don’t know that the shame or the stigma that existed, then or maybe still does when maybe people still say around the band in the UK, I’m not sure. But I do believe that this shame or stigma still exists today, in the US and all over the world. And I think that’s it’s wonderful that mental health has become a topic of discussion, a huge topic of discussion in light of COVID-19. And this idea of mental health, you know, what if we actually called it emotional health? Because that’s really what it comes down to? Doesn’t it? Like, met like, emotionally, we can have breakdowns and breakthroughs, right? but and all of that the grief and the sorrow and the joy and the pleasure, like all of it exists and in the same time and all of that embodies emotional health. So why do we call it mental health? Because we cannot heal. When we’re stuck in our heads. It is the mental aspect of healing. That is keeping us stuck. That is keeping so many people stuck. You cannot heal the heart with the head.
So why do we continue to call it mental health? How about emotional health? And maybe that’s the next blog post I write or, you know, my next stick I get on my next soapbox, I suppose, which I have been speaking up more about that, you know, let’s call it emotional health. Because I think just the word mental. Is I don’t know, it just carries the shame with it. I think too, like people will use the term mental, like, he’s gone mental or she’s mental. Or I feel mental. Like, I feel like I’ve just, you know, I feel like you’re crazy and grief. You do? You feel like you’re going crazy. And, you know, if someone said to you, how’s your mental health? How are you doing mentally? Like? Doesn’t that feel different than if you were to say? Well, how was your heart? And how are you doing emotionally? It feels different, doesn’t it? When I say the two and compare the two. And it’s going to because one feels supported? And one the person may feel more seen and heard. And the other? If I say how’s your mental health? How was how was your mind? How was your mental state? I would feel judgment. I would feel criticism, I would feel analysis. These are all the things that grievers don’t want to feel.
But this is often how society makes Grievers feel criticized, analyzed and judged. And so this is where words matter. Words matter. I think we should just get rid of mental health. We should hashtag emotional health. That’s my new hashtag. Really, I mean, think about it, right? And I think especially in early dementia, when it’s unknown, what is going on with someone that especially if they’re younger, because you just don’t expect these symptoms, you don’t expect those things you don’t expect Alzheimers in younger people, but it happens. It’s you know, it does, it happens. And you know, to the outside world, it could look like they’re going kind of mental. They’re kind of lose it and it’s a debilitating disease. It’s debilitating. And it robs people of everything. Everything. And the thing is, is they know what’s happening. They’re very aware of what’s happening. Especially early on, right? And so I just think especially in the arena of Alzheimer’s, early onset Alzheimer’s late onset, it doesn’t matter when those early symptoms start to show up. It can be helpful to take a step back and look at the behaviors like what are they doing? Are these repetitive? Is it? Here’s the thing, again, they know what’s happening. So no one’s more frustrated than they are right? So you don’t have to be captain obvious. But because that makes them feel shamed, right? that makes them feel like something is wrong with them, which there is, but there’s a medical reason. And so it’s, I imagine, it probably takes years and years for someone to be diagnosed. Because for so long, we just, oh, it’s part of aging, you’re just getting forgetful. I’m like, in my early 40s, I can tell you that I forget a lot of things.
And it’s often though, when I have so much going on, at the same time, my energy and my attention is diverted in so many different directions. It’s not any wonder that I become forgetful. This is different, you know, this is different. And, yeah, I think if you start putting the cereal in the fridge time and time again and forgetting where you live, there’s maybe something more there to explore, you know, but it’s a wonderful thing that there is this new advancement in this drug that can hopefully bring some hope to people. Because I really think that with such a disease like Alzheimer’s, that is so debilitating and can drag on for years and years and years, to be given a little sliver of hope that me would mean so much to people. So if you are wanting to capture your loved ones moments and your own and create your own legacy in a digital way, check out myaftercloud.com. And I will definitely be putting that in the show notes as well.
Grievers Don’t Need New Terms
Up next, the episode for takeaways and reflections is Episode 50. Again with Arielle, and there’s a phrase that she mentioned several times in her episode, and I want to bring some clarification to it and just maybe describe and explain it a little bit more. But she mentioned disenfranchised grief, which actually was a term that was coined in the 1980s by Professor Dr. Kenneth Boca, or dhoka dhoka. I think it is I can’t read my own writing. But talk in relation to a divorced woman whose ex husband had died. And I think she was a student of his or something. I want to bring up again how the grief recovery Institute defines grief and as the loss of hopes, dreams and expectations, and anything we wish that would have been or could be different, better or more. And so when we talk about disenfranchised grief, it’s usually related to a death that others may not see as emotionally significant or like a breakup of a marriage or relationship or friendship. And it can relate to our emotional response to a change in someone we may have never even met. It might be the loss of a pet, a home or a job. It can even relate to abuse or a personal assault on your body. The list of things we might grieve are endless. And rather than creating a new term to describe these things that can be emotionally impactful. It would be far better if we simply expanded that establish mindset about what grief really is.
Grievers don’t need new terms. They just need to be recognized as people dealing with loss of any kind, plain and simple. New terms don’t help people move through a grieving experience. And if anything trying to apply different terms only adds to the confusion and conflicting feelings a grievers already experiencing and at best, this terminology only provides a label to define the problem, but does nothing to solve it. So when I hear terms like disenfranchised grief, so when I hear terms like disenfranchised grief, I just want to scream. It’s grief. That’s all it is at the end of the day. It’s grief. It doesn’t need any other buzzwords or phrases or terms or anything of the like is like I’ve mentioned it does nothing to solve what’s really going on. And that’s my take on the whole thing actually it’s my the grief recovery Institute take on disenfranchised grief and other terms about actually have a blog post talking about these different terms. And I will link to it in the show notes. Because I really think it’s important that we call it for what it is. And it’s just four letters. It’s all we need. We don’t need anything else. Because it’s all these terms and everything that’s really keeping people stuck, I think too.
The Term “Disenfranchised Grief”
Circling back to my conversation with Arielle disenfranchised grief came up because of her personal experience of losing her spouse at the age of 29 to suicide and she had that experience of feeling it was disenfranchised grief, because, you know, it’s often minimized, especially in the case of suicide. It at one point in the interview with her she mentioned something about, you know, did you people would say, did you notice anything? Like they would say, did you notice anything but what she heard was, what they might as well have said instead was didn’t you notice anything almost like, well, I must have done, you know, to internalize, and I can imagine how that would feel like I must, then I must feel like I did something wrong, right? because I didn’t notice anything, I got, implying that I should have noticed something, right? Like, it’s implying that I was wrong in some way, like, I did something wrong in not noticing. So I totally heard that loud and clear. And I think that can be the experience for many people.
And when it comes to suicide, unfortunately for her, she worked in the space of hospice and end of life and things like that. And so the people that work in that space, have that level of compassion, because they, you know, they see death and work around death on a regular basis. And she did say that was a very good environment for her to be in as she was navigating that loss. But also, later, when she ended up having three miscarriages, all very different miscarriages, too, I highly recommend listening to the episode because she really does explain how different each loss of those babies were, and the different impact they had. And we talked a lot to also about how women who are experiencing and even couples, even even the significant other who are going through that type of loss, how there needs to be more compassion brought to that experience. You know, like she mentioned in the episode, you go to pay your copay, and you just had to, you know, deliver a baby that was not going to be going home with you, right? And, but then you got to go to the front desk and pay your copay, and there’s all these women with their big bellies, and happy and you know, there just needs to be more compassion and maybe a different method of care for someone who is just experienced a loss, maybe for the second, third, fourth time. Because grief is cumulative and it’s cumulatively negative, and every single loss stacks up on each other.
Blogging and Writing
And what really, she talked about what really got her through, was starting to write in when she lost her husband. That’s what she started a blog a week later, and she blogged for every day for 365 days. And she still continues to write. And it’s really been a therapeutic way for her to work through what she had been feeling. And also, more importantly to I think, are equally important is to communicate to her family and loved ones, what she was going through and what she needed, and what how others could support her. And because if you think about it, it’s a lot easier to write that out on a blog and say, Hey, read this. And you’ll know where I’m at, rather than having to repeat yourself over and over and over. Just one place that you can point people to. Yeah, that’s where you pour your heart out. And I’m not saying y’all have to start a blog. I’m a writer too. And so that resonates with me, that’s kind of what I did too. And, but it is very therapeutic. And maybe it’s not writing a blog, maybe it’s, you know, that’s why you see a lot of people too that turn to Facebook, and different groups like that to share and open up and all of those things. And that can be great.
But what’s different about social media and that dynamic is just like in when you’re at the grocery store, just like when you go into the post office, you’re gonna run into people who aren’t prepared to hear what you have to say, who maybe don’t want to hear what you have to say, who maybe hear what you have to say, but then say the wrong thing or don’t know what to say. And so they say something hurtful or harmful. Ultimately, you have to find what works for you, what feels good to you. And you know, when there are harmful things that can make you feel better, but aren’t very good for you either. And that’s those are sterbs short term energy relieving behaviors, which I’ve mentioned, in an episode. I have a whole episode devoted sterbs. But blogging and writing was a healthy outlet for her.
There’s Privilege in Finding Things – Find That Resources
And I want to bring up to and this is the point that she brought up and I want to highlight also because there are people listening who may not have access, he may not have internet, he may not have access to resources and poor people, or organizations, or certain books or whatever it may be. I mean, there’s privilege in finding things. And in being able to find things that help you heal. And obviously, as a master social worker, Arielle had the tools and the access and the education for things that would help her emotionally and feel supported when she was going through those losses. And for those that don’t have that education backing, you have to look for it, you have to find it elsewhere. And I know I did. I had hired a life coach at one point. And again, there’s privilege and even saying that, right? So I think there is an especially to coming back to emotional health. It’s trying to create access, and means for people to learn, and grow and educate themselves. This is, I mean, even just this podcast is my way of sharing and giving back for free. I give it freely. I bring people on the podcast who have, you know, some terrible experiences in their lives who have turned their lives around to bring hope to other people.
I don’t take sponsorships. This podcast doesn’t pay me in monetary but I get so much back from it emotionally and just feeling fulfilled. And I just really enjoy it. And I like connecting with people one on one and hearing their stories and sharing their stories, and creating the graphics and writing, you know, the show notes and I do all of that. I pour my heart and soul into this because I really feel the message is important. And many people have a cellphone, most people have a cellphone. That’s the one thing a lot of people have. And so if you have a cellphone, you have access to podcasts, right? And there are so many podcasts out there, there’s so much free education out there, it’s blows my mind. And that’s another incredible thing of the time we live in. And if you don’t have internet at home, you can go to your public library, you can access blog posts, you can listen to podcasts, I think probably to even at the library, there’s so many points of access, I think that people don’t consider as a way to educate and learn and grow and learn from others. So I think that, yes, access to emotional health resources is a problem. I do feel like maybe it just takes a little out of the box thinking to find those resources.
Or in maybe it’s a part of it is just educating people on where they can find those resources. So check out your local library. And I’m going to bring a podcast again because I know you’re listening to this but I didn’t start listening to podcast probably until within the past year and a half. And I’m kind of hooked although I do love crime. True Crime podcast crime junkie is one of my favorites. And but yes, there’s so much I mean you can look up any so many different topics, YouTube, I mean, yeah, the library of internet resources is abundant. So, and yes, not all resources are good, not all resources are probably helpful. But find something that resonates with you and find more of it. I think the information out there, sometimes we just need to get a little creative on on where we’re looking. That’s my rant on that.
When We Are Stuck On The Page
I do just want to share one thing that if you haven’t listened to our rails podcast episode yet, I’m just going to read this one portion of what she had said, we only see the moment that we’re in the page that we’re on. And I was really stuck there on those particular pages of grief for a long time, not understanding that the pages would flip. And at some point, I would be feeling differently. And this is what happens to so many grievers. We get stuck on the page, we can’t see a future ahead. It’s unknown. So it’s scary. We don’t know how we’re going to go on without that person. Or if it’s an less than loving relationship, we don’t know how to move on with that person. That can be grief, too. And we get stuck there. And actually, just this week, I had a client of mine share a talk about a group that they’re in and how, especially for men, it’s not particularly acceptable to share your emotions and share how you’re feeling and express yourself and talk about grief. And I just had to say, Well, those aren’t your people, you got to find your people, you got to find those that support you. But also to a shared, you know, we do get to a point, when we don’t feel like we have to share all of that stuff, like we used to, we get to a point where the emotion has been addressed.
So therefore we’re not, we don’t have that same emotional response, when we start talking and telling the story. That’s what healing is. That’s when you know, you’re healing, when you can talk about it. And you don’t end up a pile of mess on the floor. You can talk about it, and you don’t get pulled into the past and start crying and you know, getting emotional and feeling those same old familiar feelings that you were so used to feeling because you felt them day in and day out for so long. That’s what healing is, when you get to the point where that’s not the same reaction. That’s not the same pattern of behavior. That’s when you know you’ve been doing the work. And the only way you get past that the only way you can get through that. The only way that you can have a conversation in the future and not be pulled back into those same responses is by doing the work. That’s it, that’s you have to do the work. And that’s what grief recovery is grief recovery is addressing the grief, the four letter word that is given all kinds of labels, that is only thought to be just about death. But there’s so much more as long as we are treating people like they are in a mental health crisis. Or as long as we’re treating the mental health crisis, like a mental problem, like a logical problem, like a brain problem. We’re not going to see solutions. We’re not going to see progress.
And we’re not going to see people getting emotionally well. If this message today resonates with you, I don’t want you to lose hope. Don’t lose hope. Look to your community for resources, people that you know, for the support, find your people. Find what works for you, that help that can help you heal because your future depends on it. Even if you don’t have a master’s degree, or have developed a really amazing app, your life has purpose. And we often find our purpose in our pain, such as keep putting one foot in front of the other. Just keep Moving forward every day, little by little. Because just like grief is cumulative, and it’s cumulatively negative. So is healing. So everything that you’re doing, to move yourself forward, that’s cumulative, too, but in a good positive way. So keep doing those things. And remember, you always have this podcast to come back to.
P.S. There’s tons of other grief podcasts out there to inspire and to help you feel like you’re part of a community. Because grievers are everywhere. We’re everywhere because grief is everywhere. You just never know what the person walking by you on the street is going through. If you want to listen to more episode of grieving voices click here. Thank you for listening. And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.
Grief Stories, Grieving Voices Podcast, Takeaways and Reflections |
Takeaways & Reflections | Intuition & Pulling the Weeds
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
We come into this world knowing how to grieve. We naturally know how to express ourselves to get our needs met. Then life happens, along with generational teaching that creates the perfect storm for adult issues.
So much of what is wrong in our lives, as adults, can be traced back to our childhoods. That goes for possible health concerns, as well as our mental, emotional, and spiritual health.
Adulthood is a childhood re-enactment. And, considering that research suggests that our brains develop in response to the environment in which we are raised or in as children, it makes sense that we find ourselves resorting to those points of reference in adulthood. And often, they’re not very healthy points of reference.
I look forward to digging into this topic more deeply and, explore this further with future experts. In the meantime, listen to this week’s episode and see if you can connect some dots of your adult life experience to your childhood.
As long as we are medicalizing mental health, we’ll continue to see the same issues repeated in our society. We must pull the weeds. And the roots, I believe, are in our childhoods. And, I don’t care if you had the most idyllic upbringing. Because no parent is perfect, and every last parent resorts to what they know. And, in my experience, when it comes to grief, there’s a lot of misinformation and myths playing out in the world.
RESOURCES:
This is Episode 48 takeaways and reflections from Episode 46, with Rachel Pozzesi the grief and impact of chronic illness, and Episode 47, with Crystal Partney, finding hope after the loss of her sister by suicide. And I’d like to start out with Episode 46 with Rachel, I have actually happened to know some people who deal with chronic illness who well, even at one time myself, I had felt like something was wrong. I had physical symptoms. This was probably the start of 2014, hindsight, I know what the problem was then. But at the time, I felt like what is happening with my body. It felt like my body was retaliating against me. I had hair loss, fatigue, body aches that were really unexplained. Yeah, and I was doctoring and trying to figure out what the world was going on. I had weight loss. In one month, I had lost like nine pounds, I was dealing with bloating and constipation and just so many different things. And when I look back on that time now, I can tell you that it was grief. It was just all grief for me. I had my youngest was starting kindergarten. And I had come to the decision that I was going to close the business that I had poured all of my blood, sweat, tears and money into for the past.
That time, it was probably close to seven or eight years of just MMA actually closer to eight, eight years, nine years, eight to nine years of just learning and education and then just kind of establishing the foundations of what I would need to run a business or photography, business. And any anyone who endeavors to be an entrepreneur, recognize the work and the effort it takes, and the stamina, and the ambition, all of those things. And it can take a lot out of you. If you don’t have the support and mindset for it right? And early on, in the beginning of my business, I didn’t have a lot of support in terms of a guide or mentor or anything like that this was you know, Facebook was just kind of becoming a thing and even years into my business, I didn’t even have a Facebook page until one of my wedding clients was you know, prompted me to start a page. And anyway, it just takes a lot out of you and I loved what I was doing. I felt really energized working with my clients. And I learned so much and in those years, things that I use today that I’ve that really helped me become the entrepreneur I am today truthfully, nothing is wasted. That’s what I say nothing is wasted and but in hindsight, coming to that decision.
Dealing With Chronic Illness
From the time I made the decision to when I actually implemented the decision was another year. It really was not an easy decision for me to make. I mean the decision itself was but the person process of actually letting go and and doing that. It was a grieving process. It was a grieving process. It’s like you that was my baby that my business was my fourth baby. And you know, Rachel has a business herself she coaches, women, particularly I believe in helping them really live their best lives and her education and knowledge, of course comes from her personal experience, which often does often people in business, create businesses out of their own personal experience. And she dealt with chronic illness for much of her later teen life into adulthood still currently, obviously, with chronic Lyme disease. I mean, there’s a bunch of different things mentioned, I mean, I just couldn’t even listening to her. I’m just like, that’s a lot, you hashimotos it’s like one thing led to the next thing to the next thing, mold, toxic toxicity, all these things, and it took her years to, like, really pick apart what was really happening. And the grief that she experienced during that time of people in her life and, in her circles, and who didn’t believe that, you know, who didn’t validate really, what, what was happening and what she was experiencing.
And, you know, at the time when I was going through my bout of what I call midlife crisis, which is what I boil it down to is that what was happening with me physically, I’m sure there were people who were like, Oh, my gosh, here we go again, there’s, you know, another issue another doctor appointment or whatever, and, there were validating things that were found. In fact, I had colon polyps that were removed. So maybe the midlife crisis kind of saved me too, you know, because my dad passed away of colon cancer when he was 44. So, and it’s very prevalent in my family, although it’s not genetically tied to the family, so that’s good. But anyway, I also found that I had epstein barr, reactive I was epstein barr reactive. And my research led me to understand that it’s like mondo, epstein barr is mano in its mano in your body, that’s reactivated but it’s not mano itself. So it’s like your body thinks you have mono. So honestly, there isn’t a whole lot of information on that, that I could find and, and what to do about it and how to manage those symptoms or, really what it is. I think it’s still one of these things that is not an anomaly, but just really not really researched. So that’s kind of where that stands. I really don’t know anything else about that. other than that, I related to parts of Rachel story in that I felt like I was going crazy, and she did too.
Listen To Your Intuition
And then you feel invalidated. And when you feel invalidated and when you feel like you know what you’re not getting, you know, you know, in your gut when the doctor you know, they don’t know everything, right? And you know, when your gut like, No, I think I need another opinion or that just doesn’t sound right to me. I just encourage you to listen to that Rachel does too. It’s if she would not have listened to her intuition. She would have her appendix would have ruptured and she would have been much more in a in a much more dire situation than what she found herself in which was emergency surgery. But just listen to your intuition. When it comes to your body, your health only, you know best. I don’t care if the doctor has 18 years of education and experience or 28 years or whatever. They don’t know you like you know you. And so I would just encourage you and I think Rachel would to to listen to your intuition. If something doesn’t feel right. investigate it. Get another opinion. And I actually there was an episode I did with. And she’s 17 years out with metastatic breast cancer, and she’s shared the same message, you know, she’s listened to her intuition and really helped her like going through living with cancer really has helped her to really tune into her intuition, and do the best thing that she can for herself and do her research and find the best option for her. One thing I’ve learned, through conversations with good friends who are more on the natural path train, and through Rachel and just my own personal experience, my own life, is that the one thing that the medical field doesn’t really address when it comes to like women and women’s health is this, the whole picture is the whole picture. And, you know, when it comes to the hormones, like hormones are huge for women, of course, men too, but they’re an essential part of our bodies, like they’re so much a part of every system of our body, that it pays to investigate what’s happening with our hormones.
And, you know, with women, we have all these different options for you have the birth control pill, which actually a friend just recently shared with me as she was reading the book, beyond the pill. And the information that she’s gleaned from that is, wow, the changes that it creates in your body and the things that it does to your body. And what I’ve personally learned in that regard, too, is, you know, how do we really know what’s happening with our body? If we’re taking this artificial thing, right? this thing that’s supposed to be part of our reproductive health, but yet, how healthy is it? And so anyway, I think it just comes back to doing your research and finding the best viable option for you. And that goes for women’s health that goes for just health in general health and wellness, mental health, everything, all of it, it’s a human being, you got to see the whole picture. And one thing I know that a good another good friend recommended is to have your levels checked by a naturopath, who, I mean, they’ll check everything, the stuff that the regular doctors will not check for, but again, plays such a vital role in what could be happening because of those levels being low, such as magnesium or calcium. Well, they check your calcium, but there’s just so much more, there’s just so much more that they can look into like just by checking your spit, you know. So, anyway, listen to your intuition. That’s the main message I got from Rachel.
And really, you just never know what people are dealing with. When you walk when you pass by people on the street people in your family who seem like they’re not like they’re struggling, you know, it’s, it could be their health and health. If we don’t have our health, nothing else matters. It doesn’t matter how much money you have, it doesn’t matter your zip code or your address, or your yeah, it doesn’t matter your economic status, your skin color or anything it if we do not have our health, nothing else matters. And I think it’s very important to look at the whole picture of our health, mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, all of it the whole picture. So that is my takeaway that I would love to that I wanted to share from Rachel’s episode so much more. Check her out at rachelpozzesi.com. That’s r a c h e l p o zz e s i.com for more information on everything that she can help you with, and that she is working through herself and coaching women. I will also put in the show notes, a link to her previous episode. And more you can see all the links in the show notes from her episode, because there were several Especially if you have Lyme disease, if you’re dealing with any other issues that she may have shared in that episode, a lot of good resources that came out of that episode. So check that out.
Losing A Sister By Suicide
So next up, I’d like to share some insights from Crystal’s episode where she shared about the loss of her sister by suicide. And if you don’t recall, or if you haven’t listened to it, back in November, there are two as a two part series, two part podcast episode with David Woods Bartley, episodes, 21 and 22, which I’ll also link in the show notes. But he specifically talked about his experience with attempting suicide, and talked about suicide prevention. And it was a really good conversation, it was quite lengthy. So that’s why I split it up into two podcast episodes, but highly recommended as well. In addition to Crystal’s episode, she shared her personal experience again, like, as, you know, losing her sister and but there was more of lost than just her sister, she had also lost her father and a nephew who was stillborn, I believe. And so a lot of loss in a short period of time for her, which I often find, not necessarily in a short period of time. But in doing these interviews over the past year, almost now, I’m approaching Episode 50, and my one year anniversary of this podcast, so again, thank you for listening.
But what I’ve learned to be true with most guests is that it’s not just one loss they’ve experienced several or many losses. And, you know, if you think about your lifetime, and you think of all the different ways that loss happens in our life, whether it’s moving, or your parents get divorced, or you get divorced, or let’s say both, let’s say, as a child, your parents got a divorce, and then you had to move and do all those things that what happens when your parents get divorced. And then you get married, and you get a divorce. You know, like all of these life events, create grief in our lives. And this is why I’m so passionate about grief education, because people don’t see their life experiences causing grief they don’t see the the patterns in their lives of what they’re doing to feel better, as being caused by grief has been motivated by grief motivated to feel better but because of the grief right? And I see this, I’m really looking forward to having some conversations coming up. One in particular with he’s a retired lieutenant colonel and greenbrae. And he’s a TEDx speaker. And he’s been on all kinds of TV programs and everything, but I really look forward to talking to him about mental health in the VA community, the veteran community, because there’s all this talk about mental health, mental health, mental health, and in 2019, I’d gone to a VA mental health summit, and had a booth there and listen to the speakers and I was in rooms full of social workers. And not a once was the word grief, even spoken. Everything was about suicide prevention.
The Truth About Suicide
Let’s talk about suicide. But what is the truth about suicide is that when there’s suicidal ideation, there is more likely to be grief in that person’s life. And so if we can address the grief we take care of the suicidal ideation if it’s because of grief. Now, granted, there are chemical things that happen within the brain, and I’m not a neuroscientist. I’m not a PhD, whatever. And I haven’t like done all those research or whatever. But what I know about grief is that when we pull the weed, and we get to the root of the problem, all of these other things in our lives seem to fall into place. And in fact, I mean, I just think of one client I had, who lost her father, all through COVID. And she could not even before grief recovery work. She could not even get within a block of his house. Not even within a block without breaking down crying And being emotionally upset for hours, maybe even days at a time. And it wasn’t until after grief recovery, that she has been able to go into the house. And she’s actually going through, and cleaning and going through his personal belongings and things and, you know, organizing and doing all those things that the children are left to do when the parents pass, right?
So those are things that she really struggled with before grief recovery. And as long as we attempt to medicalize, and drug grief, we will have these issues, we will have the issues of mental health, we will have the needle not moving forward. And we will continue to see these problems that we’re seeing. And because this trickles into addiction and all sorts of other things. Granted, like I said, there are medical conditions, and mental illnesses that, you know, obviously need and require medication. That’s not what I’m talking about here. What I’m talking about, is what so many millions of Americans are dealing with that is normal and natural. That is causing anxiety that is causing heart problems that is causing heart disease and strokes. And these it’s this extended long period of grief that is unaddressed that is debilitating people in their lives. And so that’s why I’m so passionate about this stuff. Because I see grief everywhere. It is everywhere. It is everywhere. And it impacts every area of our lives.
And so when I see stories or hear stories of suicidal ideation, I want to ask, What happened to you? What have you experienced in your life? What has gotten you to this point? And is there a way we can get beyond this that doesn’t include medication? like can we address get to the heart of the problem? Can we get to the root of the issue and pull out the weed. If we think of our heart as a garden, let’s tend our gardens. Let’s pull the weeds. That’s what I’m saying here. Let’s pull the weeds. One aspect to of our conversation is that I want to highlight and bring up is she mentioned her three year old daughter because this was you know, her aunt that passed away and before that it was her grandpa and and so she has children I just want to share this reflection is that as children, we come into this world knowing how to grieve. We do we cry when we’re hungry, we cry when we’re sad, we cry when we’re in pain. We know how to share our feelings, like it’s natural to share what we’re experiencing in the moment we’re experiencing it. And it’s life itself. The evolution of getting older and growing up and being in our environment and learning from our caretakers how to respond to the world around us.
Adulthood Is Childhood Reenactments
And what I have learned about the brain is that the brain actually responds to its environment. The brain actually develops as when we’re children, the brain develops around what is in our environment. The environment shapes our brain, like literally like wires, our brain as a result of the environment we are in. And I’ll have to look for the book that References This. And there was a podcast episode I listened to with this doctor who has been doing this research. And I just found it fascinating, but it makes total sense. And this is why I believe adulthood is childhood reenactments. Because all of these experiences in childhood are wired in our brains. And our brains are us, right? Our brains are a part of us all our lives. And so it makes sense to me that adulthood would be a reflection of what our brain experienced as a child. And it’s a file Bank of resources and mental references and things that we fall back on the belief systems the everything that we take in the information that we take in shapes, our beliefs, and our patterns of thought and our experiences shape our thoughts and all of these things right? and so it’s all stored in there and as children and that’s what we fall back on as adults.
And so, before life gets a hold of us as children, we naturally know how to grieve. It’s just that we lose that instinct, we lose that ability because we, our brains get reshaped, we get formed. Well, I guess this is how it’s done. I guess this is how we talk about grief. I guess this is how we deal with it. We don’t talk about it. We stuff it down. And we get angry and all but anger isn’t okay, so we can’t get angry. So I’m going to stuff anger down, you know. And so the this is, how like our childhoods. Our childhood is where we need to start when we’re thinking about the problems we are experiencing in adulthood. And so that’s my riff on that. But it is a great episode. She’s very much about suicide prevention and helping families after loss by suicide. And additionally, we got connected because she was putting together a panel of speakers to discuss mental health. And I believe she was going to get me a link for that if, because this was held back in March. But I think it’s all wonderful information. So I’m going to see about getting a link for that again, and I’ll put that in the show notes of Episode 47 of Crystal’s episode, and then also in this episode, as well. So that is my episode today.
P.S. Thank you for listening again, as I approach Episode 50. It’s very exciting. It’s so exciting. Definitely a labor of love. And I’ve learned I’ve greatly greatly enjoyed this. So thank you so much for tuning in. And if you loved these episodes, love grieving voices, I hope that you would take two minutes to review and rate. I would greatly appreciate it. So remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.
