What is validation and why is it important to someone who is grieving?

Validation is when you accept someone's emotions and experiences. How many times have you heard someone say "It's time to get over your grief?" This is an invalidation of your grief experience. There are messages everywhere about grief, and how people are to respond to grief especially when it comes to losing a child. Most of these messages are invalidating.

Why do we care?

Because when a person feels invalidated they question their reality and start thinking something is wrong with them. When the truth is nothing is wrong with them. This invalidation can worsen the grief a person is experiencing and can lead to worsening emotional health. Validation matters.

Validation is when someone feels confirms a person's emotional experience even when they don't UNDERSTAND the experience. The grief after the loss of a child is hard to understand. There are physical, emotional, and cognitive changes to the person experiencing it. The beauty of it is a person doesn't need to understand it to validate a person's experience.

A simple "I hear what you are saying." "I see that you are sad" is all that is needed to validate someone's grief.

Silence is validating too. Just being present can sometimes be enough.

Listen in to more tips and get a better understanding of validation and grief.

Biography:

I was living the average life. I was married with two children working in a profession that I loved. On June 19. 2011 that life was destroyed, and I became another person. My oldest son died unexpectedly. My son did not die from cancer. Chemotherapy killed him. It is a common experience, but I didn’t know that then. I thought that chemotherapy was going to save him. Almost immediately I felt betrayed by my profession because I was a counselor. I should have known how to handle his death. The loneliness started almost immediately. I felt so alone. I stopped sleeping and the people around me began to disappear. I knew I needed community. 10 years later I am finally in a place where I am trying to build the community that I so desperately needed when Christopher first died. We can’t change that our children died, but we can help each other through it. Join me in creating a community for grieving mothers to share our stories creating a sacred space for authentic grieving.

It is my mission for the podcast to provide grieving mothers everywhere a safe, sacred space where their grief is accepted. It is through the podcast that the culture of silence that surrounds the grief of the mother will be dismantled, and a culture of support will be created. It is our vision to create a community where we can share our questions, and concerns, and support each other.

I am here and I am listening. I am honored to hear your story.

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