Takeaways & Reflections | How To Grieve

Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, whatever time it is that you're listening to grieving voices today. Thank you for being here. And thank you for listening. Thank you for leaving a review if you have and if you haven't, I'd love for you to do so over on Apple podcasts if you would. And I love sharing those with others on social media so please share if you feel inclined to and if you find this episode or this podcast helpful and if you're kind of shy with sharing a review then please share it with someone privately that you feel could benefit from this episode or this podcast. So today is a takeaways and reflections episode and it's kind of been a hot minute since I've recorded one of these. This is really my busy time of year and between kids sports and full time work and clients and things. It can get a little a little bit hairy in the schedule so these I'm leaving for every few episodes when I feel like I've really got something to say so it's been a few episodes since the last one and in the meat since the last takeaways and reflections episode I've spoken with and shared conversations with Martika Whylly which was episode 115, 116 was with Reid Peterson and episode 117 was last week's with Phil Cohen and I'll kind of touch on each of those but what really is come to light today for me and you know this episode is probably going to go in a bunch of different directions because as I'm recording this it's the afternoon and I'm had entirely too much coffee. Typically I drink I drink a pot a day. Usually it's gone by 10:11am but or I take it on the road with me but I I've had to read because I drink a pot a day I've had to reduce my caffeine intake as you can imagine. And so I many years ago I started creating my own blend with TEECCINO and if you haven't heard of TEECCINO it is good for you stuff in there. It's figs and chicory and basically the thing I think chicory root is what gives coffee its flavor. And that's in Ticino but there's, it's kind of it's an herbal coffee basically. And it's got probiotic in there not prebiotic, excuse me prebiotic. They also have teas. But anyway, I've been drinking this for years. And it helps to lower the acidity of regular coffee and it doesn't give me the jitters. Like too much caffeine st coffee would like I have now because I actually met a friend for lunch and just had too much straight black coffee. So anyway, that's my tangent on coffee but I can tie that in grief because you know just like alcohol I suppose great that coffee can be a STERB for people short term energy relieving behavior, right? Or we might indulge in a daily you know, real sugary coffee drink to feel better. You know if we're having a bad day whether we reach for a an alcoholic beverage or something sugary coffee drink I mean, that can be that can be a sturb it can be something that you feel like you need to feel better in that moment. So I can tie everything to grief but I just remember a time to where my mom you know, she was struggling she would sit at the cot at the kitchen table and she would be drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes one after the other in you know, it didn't matter what time of day she could still be drinking coffee and I can't do that anymore. That used to be where I could drink coffee in the evenings but no way I got to cut myself off in the morning so drinking into the afternoon like today is I'm probably going to pay for it tonight but anyway, and if to Chino if you're listening you want to sponsor this podcast, please reach out to me. That aside, I do like Montana tea and Spice Company and no they are not a sponsor but again Montana tea and Spice Company if you're listening please reach out to me but I love your teas evening and MS in Missoula is my favorite blend. Anyway. Anyway, anyway, off of the coffee and t talk. Today

I want to talk about how to grieve. And I actually Googled it. And it's interesting what comes up and at the top of it, the search comes Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services. S A M. H. S. A 's national helpline for, which was created for family members of people with alcohol abuse or drug abuse problems. I find that interesting that when I search how to grieve that that's the first thing that pops up at the top. And I'll say that if you are struggling with substance use problems, or you have in the past or someone you know or love is, it's likely that grief is at the root of that. I'll just leave that there. But here's some other things that come up. Help guide.org has a post titled coping with grief and loss. It's a help guide dot from help guide.org WebMD. What is normal grieving? And what are the stages of grief? I've talked about Stages of Grief on this podcast before in fact, can Ross, the son of Elisabeth Kubler Ross, who developed these five stages, which was about people who are, you know, struggling with their own terminal illness diagnosis was on the podcast a while back. But what else University of Washington healthy grieving, Counseling Center grief is in the first line here says grief is a normal and natural response to loss. Yes, it is. Thank you very much for sharing that. University of Washington. That is what we share in Grief Recovery. Betterup.com has a blog post how to process grief and find healthy ways to overcome loss and PR grief for beginners five things to know about processing loss. So these one had me curious, and I clicked on it. And there is one part in particular that caught my attention and talked about if after a year, you feel stuck, you could be moving into what's called quotations complicated grief. And I just find that unhelpful to label any phase of grief because as if the year before, well, let me say this, too. They say complicated grief is acute grief that interferes with daily function more than a year later. And my thing is, when I think about that, and read that as as if the year prior wasn't, was uncomplicated, right, it's as if the first year is not complicated, right? And it's like, I think that has to be the most complicating gear because you're thrown into it, right? You're it's like, you feel like you're in a small fishing boat in out on the sea, and there's a storm, right, you just feel like you're being whipped each way and not knowing which way is up and it rocks your world, you are thrown completely off kilter when, you know, a big loss occurs, and doesn't have to be a big loss, either. I mean, that's the thing. It's like you can have a hope or a dream, completely be taken away by something that happens, you know, where your dream, you know, your dream will not be realized. Because something that occurred that makes that impossible. Yeah. And people might say, Well, nothing's impossible. Well, for instance, you know, my son wanted to join the Marines. And he had an accident that completely severed his pancreas. And that is impossible. He cannot join the military. He has a severed pancreas. So that is an impossible dream. That's grief as well, they're, you know, it's a loss of hopes, dreams and expectations is grief. So to say that, to say that there's a complicated phase of grief, I just feel like it's all complicated. It is all complicated. And I feel like to, you know, this part that says acute grief that interferes with daily function more than a year later, okay, so if it's after a year, and you're still having these issues, it's still just grief. And I don't mean just, it's still grief period.

And I think we fool ourselves into believing or thinking that we are fine. And so we go about out our daily lives, let's say 23456 years into grief after a loss, or after a dream is shattered, right? go about our lives. And we think we're fine. Back, people ask you, Hey, how are you doing? I'm fine. We say, Grief Recovery, we say fine as feelings inside not expressed. So if we haven't addressed emotionally, what happened in the past, it's always going to be there, it's always going to show up, whenever we get our feathers get ruffled by someone else, whether we're trying to make a living starting a new business, whether we become parents for the first time, or maybe first time to teenagers, because that's, trust me, I'm in the trenches of that. And it is no joke. Our grief grows with us. So to say that it somehow becomes less complicated, I think we're fooling ourselves into this narrative that we are fine. And we put on this front, that we are fine. When really, it's impacting every area of our lives, but we don't connect the dots, we don't see that the repetitive behaviors or the beliefs that we have about our grief, or our story of what happened or about our past. If we haven't found resolution to that, if we're continually searching for meaning to what happened looking for the answer as to why I Why me, like if we're always looking for that, or we're looking to someone else, to fill something to fill that gap, right? We haven't addressed our grief. But we fool ourselves believing we have because things might be going well, for a time. But as soon as that next loss comes, or as soon as someone says something that just really pains us or hurts us, we're pulled back in time. And if that happens, then that you have unresolved grief. There's something coming up there to be sat with. And if we don't sit with it, or we sit with it, and then we stay there. That's not good, either. Right? So one of the suggestions of that app? Well, that blog post is one that I'm talking about. And I'll put the link in the show notes so you can read it yourself. But one of the suggestions and I 100% agree with this, is you want to keep moving between feeling the grief, feeling the sadness and feeling the pain to restoration. It's feeling it's it's ping ponging, as this article says between the two and as long as you're doing that, you are moving forward. And I fully Can you I fully back that up. I believe that as well. One of my podcast guests here on the show, had said one time and I've never forgotten it, it's really stuck with me. I've used to her phrase many times, and I give her full credit. And she says when you lay you decay. And I'll put the link to that episode in the show notes as well, because it's true. She herself had gone through Grief Recovery. And it changed her grief, it transformed her grief for her. And it is true when we lay we decay. And so if we're not constantly moving that constant, I hate to say that. And if we are not in motion with our grief, then it's probably overtaking us. It's filtering into all areas of our lives. Or not working through it and processing it or not digesting it. You know, I think I mentioned this before and actually it came up in one of the episodes I think I'm trying to remember there was it came up with a guest maybe that episode hasn't aired yet. But where are we at did rom das shared? You know, he had a coach or someone who had been working with who has a program that talks about emotional constipation. And we become emotionally constipated in our grief. If we just sit with it way too long, like if we're wallowing in it.

And that's healthy for a time. It is healthy to sit with it. But if you're not coming to that restorative aspect of it, if it if it's not something that's propelling you, okay? I'm feeling this way in this moment, today is not a good day, you know, it could be an anniversary, the anniversary of the person's death or the anniversary, your life together that you started, maybe it's your wedding anniversary, or their birthday, you know, we have these special days that we share with people. And when those come around, and that person is no longer here, those are really difficult days, and rightfully so that person's not here, there's a void, but we can't fill that void with other things or other people ever. It just can't. But to sit in that gap, to stay in the gap is not moving us forward either doesn't move us forward. It can, it can be the thing that propels us, you know, I think we just like they say, people who are struggling with substance abuse disorders might have their rock bottom right. I think, for me, I had a rock bottom with my grief. And I think we all get to that point, eventually, where there's just only so much you can take emotionally, that was true for me. And I was pretty slow to the party. It took me until almost till I was 40. To come to the party. To realize that my potential was suffering I there was more cost to me not addressing my grief than I realized I had the cost of my potential, I had the cost of my ability to make money. I had, it was costing me the ability to be the best parent I could be. It was costing me real relationships, friendships. Because I took things to heart. I thought people were out to get me. I just analyze things to death. I spun my wheels on things that really didn't matter. So many different aspects of my life was costing me by not addressing my grief by not facing it head on. And you know, and I even say that out loud. I feel like people are gonna roll their eyes and like, What do you mean, facing it head on. I feel like I'm facing it head on every single day, I look in the mirror and it's right there staring right back at me, right? We are facing it every single day of our lives. The grief is always there. It's always staring back at us. But we can choose how we perceive it in our lives. And I think that's the shift that happened for me is I sought to change how I perceived my experiences, how I how I felt about my experiences, I had to shift my perspective of my own story. It's really hard to do by yourself. And, like my dear friend Patsy says all the time, she's been a guest on this podcast, too. You can't see the label from inside the jar. Just like every single guest or Tika Wiley, Reed Peterson, Phil Cohen, every single one of them sought support and sought help. And so it doesn't matter how you go about doing that, when you go about doing that. But I will say it's never too late. And it's never too soon. Do I wish I would have come to that awareness in my 30s? Yes. Do I wish I would have come to that awareness before I had kids. Absolute frickin loosely. I would have been a very different parent. I guarantee that it's so important that we learn how to grieve. Nobody knows how. Really, we don't come out of the womb. I take that back. I was gonna say we don't come out of the womb knowing how to grieve but yes, we do. Yes, we do. Because as young children, I'd say when I say young, I mean under three years old. We 1,000% express ourselves authentically. We know how to express ourselves. We cry. We throw tantrums. That is part of the growth. That is part of the development. 

Before we have words and language we have the ability Need to emotionally express ourselves. But the world around us shuts us down. Nope, your anger is not welcome here. Your tantrum is not welcome here, you're crying is not welcome here. You want to cry, I'll give you something to cry about. You want to be angry, go to your room. Right. As a society, we have not learned that emotional expression is a part of growth is healthy. And that there are positive ways that we can do so. And we aren't taught those positive ways that we aren't taught that all feelings and emotions are valid, that anger is valid. So if you're like me and you stuffed your anger, it's almost like you get you know, begin get canker sores, you know, bite your tongue, right? It canker sores or, or whatever you're going through Emotionally, it for me, it shows up as canker sores, I get stressed, I get a canker sore. That's, that's how stress stress manifests in my body. Some people it might be increased blood pressure, or heart disease. You know, we have enough stuff that happens to us traumatic experiences or just life itself, the pressures of you know, just being human being being a human being in relationship with people brings up a lot of stuff. And if we're not emotionally, working towards becoming emotionally intelligent, and understanding and knowing ourselves, and then half the battle is just knowing ourselves. Which grief makes really difficult. That makes grief makes that a difficult task. And knowing and understanding ourselves, especially in if you were a child Griever. And you've grown up with your grief. It takes a lot of skill and learning and education and trial and error to really kind of discern what you need and when you need it. When you grew up with grief. You know, I've been watching the show on Netflix called Virgin River. And I actually finished all the seasons. And my consensus is that is this if you haven't watched it it's kind of like this as US type of show which I never watched this as us but if you're a fan of this is us. It's the same Gallatin that shows in Virgin River. But anyway, I finished watching and I thought, What is the theme or what is like the similarities with all of these characters for the most part, and they're all emotionally intelligent people, like the characters are written as being emotionally intelligent, expressive with their emotions honest about how they feel. And I'm just thinking, Gosh, imagine if everybody talked this way. Imagine if society really was this emotionally intelligent. And I'm thinking this is not real life. This is not how society really actually is. But I spring this up because I think that you can learn a lot through the stories and how the show is written. And how the characters speak to one another. And dealing with situations I found it fascinating how grief is a real central theme of the show and how the show has been written to you know, the characters have almost been written around the aspect of grief and challenging situations and although a lot of the situations aren't like, like typical day to day life, some are but anyway, I just find it interesting, how emotionally intelligent all of these characters have been written to be and I think there's a character for everybody. 

You know, if you watch it, I think there's someone for everybody that will resonate with whether it's the character themselves or their story or what have you, but anyway, I found it to be a decent show to watch and it brought up stuff for me actually. As I, you know, some of the stories throughout, I just recommend it, I recommend it. To hear how, like I said, the characters respond and communicate with one another, I think there's a lot to learn in just how we communicate with each other, openly and honestly. And that's really what Grief Recovery is all about, too. It's learning new communication, and finding the language. And expressing it, how how we feel with this with the new language, right, we just we don't have the language around grief and Grief Recovery gave me that, it can give you that as well. And on that note, actually, at the end of November, I will be launching an online group program. And if you're interested, stay tuned to upcoming upcoming episodes, takeaways and reflections, I'll probably put in updates and things on that. But if you'd like to stay in the loop on those on that program coming up, then I invite you to go into the show notes. And I have a link to my bi weekly newsletter called The unleashed letters, where I share content not shared anywhere else, I get a little bit more personal there. And I share business updates and things like that. So I recommend that if you're interested in learning more about the online group program coming up. And otherwise, I think that's enough for me today. I hope you found this episode helpful. Maybe even a little entertaining. And yeah, check out the show notes for this article I kind of I've referenced in previous episodes with Karthika and Reed and Phil, who all individually share their wisdom of their experiences of finding their way to cope with their grief, and the healthy way that they found for themselves. Because there is no right or wrong way to grieve. But there is a way and people say you have to move on, people say you should just be over it by now. But no one really tells you how. And for me personally, I found the how with Grief Recovery. And that's why I'm so passionate about it. It's changed my life. It's changed countless other people's lives. And perhaps it could work for you as well. We don't know what we don't know. And when we've tried everything else, what else do we have to lose? Right? A lot, actually. Because every year that passes, our grief is costing us the pain of our grief is costing us. And so there is a way to move beyond the pain of grief will always have sadness, no doubt. But it's the pain that is really what is perpetuating the behaviors and the patterns and our beliefs that keep us from creating the change we desire, learning new tools, new skills, new knowledge and with action. Because knowledge without action is just knowledge. This program is all about empowering you and taking action. And that's a beautiful thing. So thank you so much for listening today. And I hope this message finds you well. And remember, when you unleash your heart you unleash your life. Much love.