Ep 100 | Self-Love Through Grief

Grieving Voices Podcast, Podcast, Takeaways and Reflections

Takeaways & Reflections | Self-Love Through Grief

 

SHOW NOTES SUMMARY: 

When you’re in a place of self-loathing, self-love likely won’t come naturally and will be challenging to prioritize and do. However, when grieving, self-love must be a non-negotiable aspect of grieving to grieve well.

In this week’s episode, I cover the eight dimensions of wellness courtesy of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMH), which collectively address our whole well-being. These aren’t areas that need to be addressed all at the same time. However, small shifts can equal significant gains by integrating even small changes into your life. And, over time, these small shifts will be cumulative (just as grief is cumulative) and progressively move you in a positive direction and create momentum that way.

Grief impacts every area and aspect of our lives; our ability to make money, physical health, regulate emotionally, spirituality, intellectual capacities, social interactions, home, and work environments, and how we view and function in our occupations. It behooves us to look at these areas more closely and see what small steps we can take to improve the situation and, in turn, our lives.

By taking steps to shift our lives in these eight areas, we are demonstrating the best kind of love we can give ourselves during grief experiences and other challenging times – love of self. Because when we make ourselves (and these aspects of ourselves) a priority, everyone wins.

RESOURCES:

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Grieving Voices 100th Episode

Today is a very special episode because this is my 100th episode. And that’s not including the trailer. Thank you so much for being a part of this journey with me if you’ve been listening for a while. And if you’re new to the podcast, I hope you stick around. I just had in the last week, I think seven or eight applications beyond March 2023. I can go into June, y’all. I mean, this has been the most fun experience. I’m so glad I started this podcast. I’ve connected with so many people, amazing people with sometimes heart-wrenching stories, oftentimes heart-wrenching stories, but also stories of underdogs who have somehow picked themselves up and made a choice in a decision to forge ahead. Onward and upward. I’ve always loved underdog stories. I’m you know Steve Hartman. Have you ever listened and listened to this you have caused me so many tears over the years, his stories just seem to like pull at my heartstrings. And so to the stories of my guests, and so 100 episodes, thank you, thank you to the guests. Thank you to your listeners. And I am more driven to continue with this podcast than I’ve ever been. If I could do two episodes a week, which I know I easily would have the content to do so. And the guest to do so. I would but at this time in my life, that’s not an option for me. Perhaps someday it would be or perhaps if I monetize or get this podcast, monetized, that may be an option. But for now, that is not the case. So anyway, 100 episodes, thank you for being here. It’s been a journey. And if you’re a podcaster out there listening to this, you know how difficult and how challenging it can be to get to 100 episodes, it takes conviction, it takes consistency.

And for most of us who are doing this out of a labor of love, it really just takes devotion and love. And every week I pour my love into this. I call it a project that really is a project of my life. And I’m very much enjoying this really I do truly enjoy this podcast. Otherwise, we won’t be here. 100 episodes and right. This is an extra special episode because it is also my son’s 17th birthday. His name is Xavier and my only son. I do have two daughters as well younger than him but he is my only son. And it’s a very special birthday because there was an episode A while back and I can put it in the show notes where I shared how things were pretty scary there for a while for us and our son because he had had an accident, weightlifting and we’re just so very grateful and thankful and blessed that the things that happened happen the way they did and he’s still here with us and we can celebrate his birthday and really, truly celebrate his life and just even picking out his card in the aisle of the card aisle, I was moved to tears because knowing that there was that possibility that we may not have been celebrating his birthday. And so if you are a parent, squeeze those little ones are the big ones, like my husband tells our kids, even when you’re 50 years old, you still want a hug from you. So you’re just never too old for hugs. That’s how what my husband says. But I digress. This is a celebratory episode. And I think a perfect theme as well is that and I didn’t plan this.

And so this is why it’s a little different to this week is there’s actually two episodes back to back with guests, which is what I used to do. And then I just felt like each episode needed its own takeaways and reflections because there are often very different topics and things that are shared and talked about that I’d like to dive deeper into. And I was just finding it was really difficult to do that between two episodes into one. So I switched up the format. And now I do a guest episode followed by takeaways. But if I had done that, then as takeaways episode wouldn’t have been the 100 and the 100th. And I wanted it to be the 100th episode. So I did switch it up this time, because it’s my podcast, and I can do that. But I didn’t plan this.

Takeaways from Episode 98 Amy Metcalf and Episode 99 Wayne Forrest

And what I didn’t plan was that both Amy Metcalf from Episode 98 Don’t abandon me shared the same sentiments as Wayne Forrest from Episode 99. That is what their grief taught them. And both of them said, my grief taught me to love myself. Now, I can probably say the same thing to be honest, because I first really worked through my grief within the last three years. It’s still very fresh in my memory, how I was feeling before I addressed my grief. And I am daily reminded of how different I feel today than I did more than three years ago, I really do think that when we’re deep in grief and fear feeling sorrowful, and incomplete emotionally, with relationships in our lives, whether the person is dead or alive, there isn’t room for love for ourselves. There isn’t room for that love. And for many children growing up in homes of chaos grief and trauma and just a lot of disruption and negativity and lack and victim mindset and all of those things. There isn’t room for self-love in those environments either. And so what I’m really finding is that most people, and I could probably dig up a lot of the notes that I’ve taken for the guests over the past over. Well, June will be oh my gosh, yeah, next month will be two years I’ve been doing this podcast, and I can guarantee you most people have shared that loving themselves was a challenge. They just didn’t know how but when you neglect yourself and you’re just kind of living, not really thriving. And you one day realize that that’s not what you want for the rest of your life. It really does take radical self-love to climb yourself out of that pit and think about self-love and what I wanted to share in this episode today.

It goes deeper than just taking bubble baths or a walk in nature or even just taking time for yourself. It’s more than that. It’s so much deeper than that. And you know, when you’re in a place of self-loathing, self-love can be really challenging. It can be overwhelming to you even the thought of what that even looks like and when you feel like you’re just your life is kind of going off the rails where do you even begin? And so I really wanted to provide some tangible things that you can do and look at in your life when it comes to self-love. And these are things that I found myself doing over time. And not all at once. And so when I was thinking about what I wanted to share about self-love, what came to mind were was The eight dimensions of wellness essentially called The Wheel of Life, The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA for short, have a wellness initiative that pledges to promote wellness for those with behavioral health conditions by motivating individuals, organizations and communities to take action, and work toward improved quality of life, heart health and increased years of life. Now, when I read that promoting wellness, for those with behavioral health conditions embodies a whole lot of things. But I would say that grief really falls into that because grief impacts our behaviors, grief impacts our health, and it actually impacts all of these eight dimensions of wellness, that SAMHSA talks about. And so I really want to dive into each of these ones by one, because I think they’re important. And I truly believe that this information is a good starting point for someone who doesn’t know where to start. And so when we focus on the certain areas and then focus even further on each of those are something that we can do today, what we feel is aligned with who we are in each of these different dimensions, we can start to see progress and we can start to climb out of that pit. Let’s dive in. And the first one I’m going to tackle is not well actually I’m gonna list them all first.

The Eight Dimensions of Wellness or The Wheel of Life

  • Emotional Wellness– it’s the ability to cope effectively with life and create satisfying relationships. Emotional wellness, involves being able to cope effectively with the difficulties of life, grief included and being emotionally aware, and having healthy relationships with yourself and others. And people with healthy emotional wellness are confident, have control over their feelings and behavior, and have good coping mechanisms for dealing with difficult situations, such as grief, and also building resiliency allows us to overcome the hurdles in life. Again, grief included, and so emotional wellness includes having healthy relationships, being able to ask for help, and being resilient, which is a word that kind of rubs me the wrong way a little bit because we don’t choose resiliency, I think resiliency is something we become being aware of your feelings, expressing your feelings to people you trust, seeking support with upsetting emotions, learning your strengths, working on things you want to improve the ability to express a wide range of emotion, emotions, such as happiness, sadness, anger, joy, fear, frustration, gratitude, and developing assertiveness and having a positive self-image. Now, I will say that the Grief Recovery method for me personally addressed all of these, every single one of these things that I mentioned, helped me to understand myself better and ultimately, really gain emotional control of the emotional disturbances in my life, I became more emotionally. What’s the word aware? I suppose in a lot of ways, yes. I just feel like my personal experience. I just didn’t understand the highs and the lows. And I think sometimes too, we can mistake these highs and these lows, especially the lows for depression when really, it’s grief. It’s grief that’s been unaddressed and it’s cumulative. And it’s years and years of grief that’s just been swept under the rug. And so I think for a lot of people that can appear like depression, and we can have bouts of depression. I’m not dismissing that and there’s also clinical depression too. However, I think that if we nip it in the bud, you If we can catch those symptoms early, the earlier the better, of course, but I will say that it’s never too late either.

 

  • Spiritual Wellness – And it’s about having a sense of purpose and meaning in life that revolves around your personal beliefs and values. spiritual health can involve a connection with nature, self-reflection, meditation, prayer, and being spiritual, healthy means you have strong values, a feeling of inner peace, and meaning in life. spiritual wellness includes making time for activities that enhance your sense of connection to yourself, nature, and others. And one thing I’ll say about making time for activities that enhance your connection to yourself in grief, we are often so disconnected, that we become disconnected from ourselves. And we also become disconnected from others because of that disconnection from ourselves. And so spirituality can really be a gateway into moving through your grief. And that was actually my personal experience. Having a relationship, healthy relationship with nature, discovering your values, principles, and beliefs. I mentioned that being part of a like-minded community, helping those who are in need, accepting others for who they are having a greater purpose, exploring your personal values, searching for meaning for your life, and being aware of how your values may differ from others, religious or otherwise spiritual activities and practices, taking time for yourself and embracing silence and solitude. And it’s really difficult in grief, to embrace the silence and the solitude sometimes, because often when we are alone with our thoughts and our feelings, it can be very overwhelming and very uncomfortable. And so that’s why we often well, deep in grief, or any other strong emotion, that is deemed as negative, and I’ll put that in air quotes because even anger is a valid emotion, we try to numb out or dismiss or kind of forget that we’re having those feelings and so we distract ourselves

 

  • Intellectual Wellness – which is about exercising the mind, learning new things, and expanding upon one’s knowledge and skills, being intellectually healthy can help you with mental growth, which helps with your concentration, memory, and critical thinking skills. And anyone who is grieving can tell you, that those things pretty much go out the window. So this is not something that you’re going to tackle. Everyone’s timeline is different, right? But this is not something that you’ll likely tackle. In the first few years even after a loss, a devastating loss, or a grief experience. I think this is something that naturally will develop over time, and likely, when you first start to honestly I think there’s sometimes people a lot of griever say, it’s like, you wake up one day, and you just feel like the sun has come out. And you might have some of those here and there. But when you can wake up and you feel like the sun is truly out, you’ve kind of gotten to the lighter, the lighter side where things don’t feel as heavy, where you can talk about what happened, or about the person or the loss and it’s not debilitating you it doesn’t take you back to the pain of the experience of the pain of the relationship. And that really is the difference that you know when you’re starting to heal is you can talk about it not like it’s a recipe card. That’s really dismissive that’s an I get a sense of dismissing when I hear people talk about things like it’s a recipe, it really is, sharing the story, but connecting with the feeling of it. Yeah, I felt like that at that time. But you know what, I’m feeling really good. I feel healthy in all kinds of ways. If you’re articulating it differently than how you used to, then you know, you’re making real progress in that intellectual wellness area. And so intellectual wellness includes using your creative abilities, exercising critical thinking skills, being a lifetime learner, and engaging in books, articles, or other content that interests you. Exploring public or community events, focusing on your skills and learning new ones, being able to develop analyze problem-solving more, and challenging yourself mentally with games, puzzles, or even learning a new instrument can be one of those, and also having a positive self-image which often in grief goes out the window, you feel like a hot mess, you probably look like one too, and your confidence is just kind of down the toilet. Again. I just I mentioned that because grief just takes over every aspect of our lives, including our self-image.

 

  • Physical Wellness – which involves eating a healthy diet getting enough sleep during your regular physical activity, and preventing and managing illness and health conditions not being physically healthy can lead to numerous health problems and diseases. We all know this and developing a healthy lifestyle and making healthy choices will improve your overall wellness. Obviously healthy behaviors that we all know are getting regular exercise, feeling comfortable with your body, seeing your doctor regularly, keeping your blood pressure at the optimal level, eating healthy food, and being aware of how sleep and stress affect you. That’s including grief, making your own choice about your physical health, stress reduction, developing healthy habits, seeking medical care when appropriate, being responsible with alcohol, cigarettes, and other substances, taking any medications prescribed by your doctor, and understanding how your body works. And again, like in grief, you probably will need a lot more sleep than you used to. Because grief is exhausting. It’s taxing on the body, both mind and spirit in all of these areas, it’s taxing on the body. So it’s giving yourself that grace, which is self-love. Accept where you are that day. And it is often day by day, one day you might feel like going to a yoga class, and then the next you might feel like just taking a nap both are okay, like that you don’t need anyone’s permission to take a nap. I personally don’t nap I never have. But I have noticed because I know when I’m paying attention to my body. Now when I’m pushing, pushing, pushing, and I can forget when enough is enough I can I have actually taken a nap in the past three months, there was one day where I just succumbed to the nap, which I never do. But when you become more in tune with your body and how your body operates and what it needs, honor that, listen to that intuition, and give that to your body that is self-love. And you know, often with caregivers and caretakers, this is a really difficult hurdle, because where is the time? Where do you take the time for yourself? And then when you do get that time, which is maybe not a lot? How do you want to spend it? Do you want to spend it exercising? Most people may not. But you can actually combine several of these things. If you go walk by the river, you’re out in nature, you’re that’s feeding your spiritual body if you’re listening to a podcast that inspires and uplifts you, or teaches you something new that’s working your intellectual health, and you’re working your physical health by walking. So you can actually tackle many of these areas at one time just by thinking a little bit creatively about what will serve you the most if you do have just a little bit of time.

 

  • Environmental Wellness– which refers to being in a nurturing and healthy environment, as well as having awareness and respect for the environment around us the environment around you can greatly impact how you feel, I always say quite often, actually, that we are products of our environment as children. And it really truly is important as adults to recognize how those environments have impacted us have formed the beliefs that we have. And by challenging those beliefs, you find your truth by creating an environment as an adult, that is one of support that feels good to be in is going to serve you greatly when the challenges do come. And when grief does enter the room because it will it just it will. It’s inevitable. And so the environment around you can greatly impact how you feel. For example, people who live in countries that have a lot of rain and cloudy days might suffer from seasonal depression, which affects their emotional health and social health, spiritual health possibly even more. I live in North Dakota, which is what do we have like? It starts snowing in October, and November, often we’ve had snow for Halloween so and it’s usually pretty cold. But the clouds start to settle in November for sure. Usually, and it doesn’t end until probably April. So almost half the year we are in bitter cold temps, cloudy days and it is stuck indoors. I mean, you’re not stuck indoors. I mean you can go outside and we do have some sunny days in the winter. But it’s not uncommon for people in this area to have vitamin D deficiency. You know, people in the northern hemisphere often have vitamin D deficiency. And what I’ve learned is that vitamin D deficiency is actually linked to pancreatic cancer and people of European descent do have higher rates of pancreatic cancer. And they found that it’s linked to vitamin D deficiency. So it’s very important to think about your environment and where you live and how it is impacting your health and well-being. I personally cannot wait until I am a snowbird when my kids are all gone, and we can go south somewhere warmer for the winter. That is definitely my goal in my life. So environmental wellness includes making sure your home is decluttered spending time outside, maybe if it includes using eco-friendly products or recycling, if that’s in your area, having a peaceful home environment, involvement in the community, and being aware of how you might contribute to pollution. For some people, that’s a huge factor or a deep concern for environmental awareness, and being aware of climate change and how human beings impact the environment.

 

  • Financial Wellness – refers to being financially literate in charge of your finances and responsible with your money, struggling with finances, and having an unsettled financial situation is a problem that can cause a lot of stress to you in the family grief. I mean, how often do losses occur and the person didn’t have the financial means to even pay for their own funeral or didn’t have life insurance. These are things that impact everybody. Because if you don’t have that nest egg or that life insurance to cover your expenses someone’s paying for that really, I mean in grief impacts our financial situation anyway, because if you’re a caregiver, you got medical bills, terminal illness, like all of that is a huge stressor for people sometimes, because grief impacts our productivity in our work, many places only offer like, say a week of vacation time that you can take when someone dies, let’s say it was your spouse and your spouse was the breadwinner, but you did work. And so you have to, you’re almost expected to return back to work and be as productive as you were before the loss occurred. And that’s just not realistic. And so I think companies need to be more supportive and aware of grief and loss, and the impact that it has on their employees and on the company as a whole. Because globally, grief impacts our economy by the billions of dollars. And so this is an important issue not just for the individual and their family, but also the community and when in where they work in the business that they are in, in the business itself and the businesses that those businesses are in business with this trickles down. So maintaining a budget and monitoring your spending, seeking out professional financial help if needed, exploring ways to save money, being financially responsible paying bills on time reviewing credit reports and bank statements being financially literate, as I mentioned, are things that probably won’t be happening right out of the gate, especially when a loss occurs. But you can prepare for challenges in life by doing these things today, I use Credit Karma. It’s free. It’s an app that helps you keep track of your credit score, it alerts you to things that might not be of your doing, you can kind of pinpoint well if a credit card was opened, and I know I didn’t open it, I can see that, you know, my credit card, credit score, dip, suddenly, that’s something to look into. And so it’s an easy way to track your financial health, as your credit health. So that’s one thing I use the auto deduction for savings, you can set up an auto deduct to put a certain amount even if it’s just 25 bucks a pay period to put into a little nest egg. There are all sorts of tips. I mean, you can probably Google financial tips, and you’ll find dozens and dozens of them. But it can be really difficult in grief to get a handle on this area of your life. But it’s really important because it does add stress.

 

  • Occupational Wellness – involves having a fulfilling and enriching occupation, whether that be professional work or academic and a common cause of stress for many Americans and grief is that their jobs and the demands that come with them or that they’re in the wrong occupation altogether. Having a work-life balance is extremely important to overall health and wellness. So achieving this by having a job that you enjoy and are passionate about is very important. And it’s also important to have a positive work environment and be surrounded by people who support you and your goals. So taking personal satisfaction in your occupation, work-life balance, learning to communicate effectively with other people developing good work habits, exploring career opportunities, or volunteer opportunities that you’re passionate about setting career goals, learning mistakes, and moving forward, challenging societal expectations and fighting against barriers, especially, for example, barriers for women in the workplace, that can be a huge area of grief for a lot of women. I’ve recently had a couple of conversations with women whose podcast episodes won’t be airing for a while. But this was a topic of discussion. And especially if you’re a woman of color, which one of my guesses was and so it’s another facet of grief that is often not talked about but can have a huge impact on our lives. And when we’ve gone through a devastating loss or grief experience, we often are faced with our own mortality. And so we ask ourselves those questions like what do I want to be doing with my life? How do I want to spend the rest of my days on this earth and so often, we start questioning what we are doing with our lives, it is self-love to pursue, what that can look like for you to pursue what alignment looks like for you, I could do a whole episode just on alignment, I feel so aligned, sitting here recording this podcast right now. It feels good. It feels like it’s serving my soul and my spirit, it’s fulfilling to me, I feel like I’m giving something that can help people, and can have an impact and a positive impact. And I know that oftentimes, my episodes probably shake something up within the listener. And that’s good, too, because it opens you up to asking those deeper, bigger questions. And it’s in asking the questions that we discover deeper answers. And once you have an answer to something, once you know something, you can’t unknow it. And when that’s about yourself, the only thing left to do is to take action.

 

  • Social Wellness – And that involves having a strong support network feeling connected to other people and having a sense of belonging, feeling isolated, lonely, or disconnected from others can lead to negative physical and mental health outcomes. This is where grief can be very isolating, and we don’t heal on an island. A lot of these that I’ve talked about already involve other people, we can’t do grief alone, you can but you’re not going to be very successful at overcoming the challenges that come with it, it’s going to be harder, longer, more challenging road and path for you. And so by addressing and looking at these various areas of wellness, little by little you can impact your own life and make these little changes, healthy relationships we make with family and friends are essential to our well-being. And so some of these things that you can do might include taking part in a club or a social group or volunteer group focus on maintaining social connections by keeping in touch and staying connected with others, being able to interact with a diverse group of people being aware of your impact in your community, understanding sex and gender roles and stereotypes surrounding them. Being able to draw boundaries with yourself and others having a strong support network of family, friends, coworkers, and peers, developing positive relationships, having good communication skills, and being able to reach out to others for support and ask for help when needed.  And often in grief. When you’re looking for that person, to be your person, your heart with yours, it can be really difficult to have that be family or even sometimes close friends. It depends on the relationship, of course. But one of the things we talk about in Grief Recovery is typically that person that can be your heart with yours is someone that doesn’t have any skin in your game, someone that’s not going to be impacted by what you have to share. Because if you can’t share openly with that person, then they might not be the best person to share your grief with and so that’s if you can’t be open and honest about what you’re feeling and experiencing completely, even if that does involve that person that’s where it might be helpful to have almost like an outsider. And that is where therapy or seeking support in a different fashion is beneficial for people because those people don’t know you from Adam and have no skin in your game. They’ve got nothing to lose. And that’s what they’re trained to do is to be a heart with yours like myself.

 

Those are the eight dimensions of wellness, also known as the wheel of life, when I think when you don’t know what to do, and you don’t know where to start, this gives you exactly what to look at in your life, the areas of life that may be causing some more additional grief for you, and seeing how you can turn that around seeing where you can focus even just a little bit on each of those areas, and start seeing that the change that you want to see and happening in your life. I think it’s really important that we think about self-love and not just the things that are often mentioned like the bubble bath and self-care type of things. This is like self-love, to me really is about embodying the best aspects of yourself and outwardly expressing that but also nurturing that from the inside out. And so it really is inside job self-love is an inside job. And I had a lot of issues with self-loathing, I am my own worst critic, this did not come naturally to me, there are still areas that I have challenges within these different dimensions of wellness, that is life. And everything that comes up that rubs us the wrong way or that bumps up against our energy is just an indicator of something that it should be curious about that why is that? Why is that, you know, upsetting me? Or why is that causing this reaction within me?

So it’s really just taking a step back. And the more you do this stuff, the more that you work on these areas, the more you’re able to do that to take a pause, to step back, be an observer and less, less reactionary and more deliberate and intentional with a response. And this happens over time. It’s not an overnight thing. But you can get there, every ounce of me believes that you can get there, you just have to decide, just take a look. Just be an excavator of your own life experience and start digging, stay curious and be your own best advocate. And boundaries have a lot to do with that. And like I said, I learned a lot about boundaries, going through my own experience with grief and addressing it. Learning where I didn’t have them, I wouldn’t have known a boundary. If it slapped me in the face. We learn these things as we start digging, but you won’t, unless you start digging. So when it comes to grief, make self-love your priority.  And look at these various areas and see where you can make the changes that can propel you into your best higher self into the version 2.0 of you that is standing triumphant in spite of the grief, the loss, and the trauma or whatever it is that you’ve experienced, where you can be your own hero.

much love, victoria

P.S I hope this was helpful. I wish you all of the best in the week ahead. And I thank you so much for listening. If you did find this helpful, please share it with someone and leave a review. If you care to maybe even a couple of lines, I would like I read every single one. It makes me feel like this is really having an impact when I hear from the listeners. And if you’re interested in diving into these areas Through Grief Recovery and my program it does grief differently where we’ve looked at your values. And that’s a lot of having to do with boundaries as we identify your values. And we do that in the work that I do with clients. And so if you’re interested in that head to my website, theunleashedheart.com, and remember, when you unleash your heart you unleash your life. Much love. 

 

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