Grief, Grieving Voices Podcast, Healing, Podcast, season 5, Takeaways and Reflections |
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
In this week’s New Year’s Eve episode, I reflect on 2024 as a year of laying the groundwork for future growth. As we look forward to 2025, I want to emphasize themes like introspection and personal development that can help us all prepare for a more balanced and fulfilling year ahead.
Reflecting on the past year often brings up negatives, but it’s crucial to focus on lessons learned. Inspired by Mel Robbins’ podcast episode about conducting yearly audits, I plan to engage with her seven-question exercise myself. This process encourages thinking about what we want to feel in 2025—like inspiration and fulfillment—and how to make those feelings a reality.
This year, I’ve discovered new passions. Lifting weights at the gym has given me incredible fitness results without relying heavily on cardio. Faith played an important role, too. Additionally, I’ve found creativity beyond traditional art forms and realized that solutions often hide within our challenges if approached thoughtfully.
Key takeaways from this journey include mastering time management, resisting impulse shopping, and ensuring there’s always room for fun amidst hard work. Trusting my intuition has been vital—it never leads me astray—and I’ll rely even more on it in 2025 and more that I share in this episode.
Give yourself some time and space to reflect back upon where you’ve been. We can glean so much gold from the past if we are not afraid to look at it.
RESOURCES:
Reflections and Resolutions: Harnessing Potential for 2025
As we stand on the cusp of a new year, it’s natural to reflect on the journey we’ve traversed over the past twelve months. In this insightful episode of Grieving Voices, our host takes us through a personal audit of 2024—a year dedicated to laying down foundations for future growth—and looks forward with optimism towards a balanced and fulfilling 2025.
Embracing Introspection and Growth
One key theme from this episode is introspection. It’s easy to get caught up in what went wrong or focus solely on challenges faced. However, as our host points out, there’s immense value in reflecting on lessons learned. This reflective process isn’t about dwelling on negatives but rather drawing inspiration from them—much like Mel Robbins’ approach in her podcast where she shares an annual seven-question audit exercise aimed at fostering self-awareness.
Key Lessons from 2024
- Fitness Transformation: The host discovered joy in weightlifting workouts without relying heavily on cardio exercises. This not only led to impressive fitness results but also instilled confidence that change can be achieved by stepping outside one’s comfort zone.
- Faith and Belief: A small miracle involving their son’s scholarship underscored the power of faith and belief—reminding all listeners that sometimes hope pays off when least expected.
- Resourcefulness & Creativity: Beyond traditional art forms lies creativity waiting within each problem-solving opportunity; often solutions are hidden beneath layers if approached thoughtfully enough!
- Time Management & Impulse Control: Effective time management combined with resisting impulse shopping became pivotal takeaways which allowed room for fun amidst hard work commitments throughout last year’s endeavors too…
5 .Trusting Intuition : Learning never steers wrong has been another significant realization along life’s path thus far – trusting oneself more deeply moving forward into next chapter ahead seems wise indeed!
6 .Metaphysical Support Awareness: Recognizing support beyond physical realm offers strength during challenging times; leaning further into spirituality might just unlock untapped potential awaiting discovery…
Grieving Voices Podcast, Podcast, Takeaways and Reflections |
Takeaways & Reflections | Grief Over Family Dynamics
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
What does family mean to you?
Who makes up your family? Not only those you claim by blood but those you choose, who show up when life throws curveballs?
There are reasons to grieve family; the family you wish you had and even the family you may wish you didn’t have, too. We can’t choose our family, but we have a say in their role in our lives. And, when a family is made up of less-than-loving relationships, we can even choose to fill the needs of our hearts by choosing to have people in our lives who feel like family.
Relationships are complicated enough, however, add in family dynamics, and emotions can often run high. What do you do when that happens? In this episode, I explore these questions and more!
RESOURCES:
CONNECT WITH VICTORIA:
_______
NEED HELP?
- National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
- Crisis Text Line provides free, 24/7 support via text message. Text HOME to 741741 to connect with a trained Crisis Counselor
If you are struggling with grief due to any of the 40+ losses, free resources are available HERE.
Are you enjoying the podcast? Check out my bi-weekly newsletter, The Unleashed Letters.
If you are like me, you’re wondering where 2022 went. I am just flabbergasted at how quickly the past year has gone. And I truly can’t believe that I’m sitting here talking about New Year’s already coming up and Christmas will have passed by the time you’re listening to this. And I’m hoping that you had a joyful, memorable, in good way holiday with your loved ones.
And that’s really what I want to talk about today is family, the grief over family dynamics.
- What do we do about it?
- How do we navigate it?
- Is families really been on my mind a lot lately?
I really just want to share how family dynamics is a huge contributor to our happiness really. And really, that happiness starts with each of us as individuals, it is no one else’s responsibility to ensure our happiness. It’s not your moms, it’s not your dads, it’s not your brothers, it’s not your sisters, it’s not your cousins, not your grandparents, you are responsible for you.
And as my dear friend harmony will say the circle around your feet is all that you need to worry about. And I’m not saying worry about knots, I don’t think that’s even exactly how she says it. But the person that you can only control is you and the circle around your own feet. And my goal really is to have you walking away live from listening to this introspective about what you bring to the family table. And for those struggling with the various family dynamics which I will describe very soon here. What do you do with those feelings when they come up? That really is grief over family dynamics. It’s the family you wish you had, the family maybe you wish you didn’t have.
- And what does family mean to you?
- Who are your family?
- Are you a bridge builder?
- Or are you a bridge destroyer within your family?
- And what do you do about these emotions when they come up?
So these are the topics I’m going to dig into a little bit more.
The family You Wish You Have
This is a hard one for so many people because it’s the loss of hopes, dreams, and expectations. It’s anything you wish I would be different better or more when it comes to family and my friend that is grief. And if you are experiencing those feelings that come along with that experience, you are a griever 100% of us are grievers. Argue if you will, I will argue that till the day I die that we are 100% all of us are grievers.
- Maybe you’re adopted.
- Maybe you’re an only child.
- Maybe you are a single parent.
- Or maybe you’re a child of a single parent.
- Maybe you have a small family with a little extended family.
I had a conversation with a client not that long ago who spoke to this actually the last episode of the podcast just also talked about this aspect of just having a really small nuclear family with very little extended family. That is my situation actually, I didn’t actually have a larger extended family until I met my husband. And that was so foreign to me. Getting together at Christmas, like the first Christmas, after we’d been married a few years and started having kids and siblings started to have kids, it was like I’ll just say 25 grandchildren 20, like 15, to 20, grandchildren all close in age, it was chaos. But I loved it.
When all the kids were little. And we all got together, it was an experience that I never really had growing up. I’ve very few memories of extended get-togethers. And since I was one of the youngest in my family, even my aunts and uncles, and things, there weren’t a lot of kids my age. So in some ways, I kind of felt like an only child because my brother was five years older than me, too. So there’s that experience, you grow up in the same household with your siblings. But you have a very different experience of growing up. My sister is nine years older than me, my half-brother is I want to say he’s 14 or 15 years older than me. So a lot of different family dynamics can cause us grief.
And when you have a lack of an extended family, and you just have a very small nuclear family, or maybe you don’t even have that nuclear family that you so desire, that can equate to a feeling of lack of support. The people simply aren’t there to show up for you when the shit hits the fan.
But here’s the thing. We can choose our family too. We can choose the neighbor that maybe also has no one in their life to look after them. To care about them. To worry about them. We could have friends that feel like family. I do. I wish the same for you too. But those relationships take nurturing and take vulnerability. Take authentic honesty. A wholehearted commitment. Just like a marriage of friendship takes commitment and loyalty. A lot of the same attributes that we contribute to a healthy, loving marriage. I think friendships are no different in that way.
The Family You Wish You Didn’t Have
Maybe you grew up around abuse or neglect. Maybe greed has created this great divide within your family. And there are some families you just wish you didn’t have as a result. There are so many scenarios, half-siblings age gaps, as I’ve described, blended families, adoptive families, step-parents.
- So in all of these descriptions What does family mean to you?
- Who are your family?
Not just the ones you’d claim by blood. But rather those who show up when the shit does hit the fan?
- Are there relationships in your life right now that feel a little distant but you still desire a stronger, deeper connection with them?
- Is that something you can nurture?
- Can you extend the hand first?
- Can you allow yourself to be vulnerable to create that deeper connection?
I’ll tell you in the work that I do with clients in Grief Recovery and being a heart with yours for so many. I go first and a part of me doing this podcast is me going first bringing the guests on that I do, they’re going first. They’re sharing their stories, to bring hope to your life. Which is my hope that we all keep hope burning in our hearts. So that even if just today, things aren’t going so great that there’s hope for a better tomorrow.
But as I started my own podcast Grieving Voices, that responsibility is yours and yours alone. So insane responsibility, which is not an easy thing for people to admit, is in their wheelhouse and in the circle around their feet. Are you a bridge builder? Or are you a bridge destroyer? Are you the pot stir of the family? Are you the Lord Baelish, like on Game of Thrones, that my husband and I have been watching the pot stir, the one that pits people against each other? There’s responsibility in that.
And there are waves and ripples of grief. Because of that behavior. It’s destructive, it’s hurtful, it’s harmful. And it breaks people’s hearts. I’m often reminding my youngest who can not throw her under the bus. But she’s at that age, she’s going to be 14. And that’s a really tough age man. I remember that age and it sucked royally for me. You just want independence, you’re desiring independence and more freedom and you’re coming into yourself more, things are happening in your body, you can’t control and hormones and all of that. And she’s not understanding how words can how the tongue can cut like a knife. And the repercussions of your words, and why words matter and how they matter. And reminding her that she has responsibility for the words that come from her lips.
And I’m often reminding her and all my kids that we have two ears and one mouth for a reason. And I think just in society in general we don’t know how to be a heart with yours, we don’t know how to listen, are so quick to criticize, analyze, and judge to use that tongue in a destructive way, maybe not even intentionally. I don’t think my daughter intentionally wants to say hurtful things. But I know the impact of that. I felt it myself. Whether it’s your sister, your child, your neighbor, your brother, your friend, or it’s hurt. And you can say 50 kind things in the one harmful hurtful thing you say is the one that sticks. This is just a reminder for myself, I am not perfect, by no means. I just think we’re in such a fast-paced world and fast-paced society, we’re so quick to be fast-paced with our lips and our tongue to what we say.
What Do You Do When These Emotions Come Up Within These Family Dynamics?
What I need to do and what I do practice myself is I excuse myself. I personally because within my Youmap which if you go to my website, theunleashedheart.com, look under services, you’ll see Youmap, my Youmap how I’m wired and how I’m my strengths are and what I value and all of these things that make me who I am. I am a very much, very much a thinker. And so I need to like get time alone to process and think and then I need I take that time for myself to do so and then come back to the situation. Not on an emotional high. Because I’m also a Pisces. And I’m also an INFP if you’re familiar with Myers Briggs, so I’ve just got the whole double whammy of sensitivity and emotional stuff going on. And I know that about myself. And that’s the thing about Youmap is my favorite quote, Kristen Sherry, the founder of Youmap said, the more you know yourself, the less you look to others to tell you who you are.
And so, for me personally, working through my own family dynamics, and working through all this stuff, and the relationships through Grief Recovery, I’ve really gotten to know myself really well. And a part of that is how I respond to stress. What do I need to do in those moments that I feel an emotional high, not in a good way. And that’s where excusing myself and walking away can be the greatest gift for everyone involved. And as long as you’re bringing intention is to collect yourself, emotionally regulate yourself and then come back to the situation more grounded and centered in yourself. There is nothing wrong with walking away if that is your intention. But if you are walking away to avoid running away from the problem itself, it’s only going to fester. We become the tea kettle, a stuffer of emotions. And eventually one day you will either implode or you will explode.
How Grief Recovery Helps Me & My Clients
Talking with my recent client, this has been their experience. Over 40, over 50 years of stuffing down of not speaking up, I’m not having the space in the safety to speak up about anger not even being allowed as a normal emotion to be expressed. They’ve become the tea kettle, and they had an outburst. But that was the only way they could feel heard. But in those moments, when you have these outbursts of anger within these family dynamics, for example, which is what we’re talking about, are you really being heard. Because what you’re saying is probably being received from a defense from a defensive person now, who’s probably not heard a thing, once they heard the word you, you did this, you do that you did this to me. It completely shut down. And the conversation has not become constructive. It’s become destructive. And it’s not taking care of resettling anything.
I’m still learning this, by the way, this is still a work in progress, and how we work through this stuff. And how I personally work through it is through Grief Recovery, I’ve actually had used I’ve used Grief Recovery, the tools of Grief Recovery, before going into a conversation that I knew would be challenging or difficult, so that I could emotionally get rid of all of that gunk I was holding on to and not bring that to the conversation. So I could come to the conversation, feeling grounded and centered, level-headed and emotionally regulated. I think so many of us make these decisions and approach these situations when we’re on this emotional high. But once you get to that point, it’s really hard to like have the awareness to like stop staring back. Assess, has to be a really quick mental process and emotion takes over forget it. It’s not going to happen. So a huge part of what you do about these motions is be proactive, create and voice boundaries at the moment. A part of that is maybe walking away like you create this plan for yourself. Well if it gets to this point, I’m just going to walk away this is what I need to do for myself. This is what I know about myself. One thing you could say is I don’t feel comfortable discussing this right now. If you want to keep discussing this I will excuse myself from this conversation. Especially if both parties are emotionally charged. Rehearse it in your mind, how do you want it to play out? But let go of the expectations of the person responding in a way that you desire. Because again, remember, we’re all bringing our stuff. We all have stuff, and we all have luggage. And we all bring it to conflict. And especially in family dynamics.

P.S. If you’d like to go deeper on this topic, with your own personal life, I am more than happy to assist you in doing so. I had a wonderful session with a client just the other day helping connect the dots in ways that they had never in over 50 years for themselves. We can’t see the label from inside the jar, as my dear friend Patsy says. So if you need help in doing that, I would be more than happy to be your heart with yours. Either in a group setting or one on one. Reach out [email protected]. And in the meantime, check out the rest of the episodes. My website, the Grieving Voices Podcast, the programs available, and how you can work with me. Maybe you just need an energetic tune-up with Biofield Tuning. That information is also on my website. My newsletter is coming out bi-weekly on Wednesdays The Unleashed Letters, there’s a subscription on my website for that as well. Where I share content not shared anywhere else. I also get a little bit more personal in there as well. So there are lots of ways that you can learn more about grief and about this topic, in particular. If you want me to dive deeper, let me know. I’m more than happy to do so. Or if you have a question, please submit it to me. I’m more than happy to answer it on a future podcast episode. So until 2023 hits us, I wish you a wonderful rest of 2022 and an amazing start to 2023 I have so much I look forward to and I hope you do too. Much love.
Grieving Voices Podcast, Podcast, Takeaways and Reflections |
Takeaways & Reflections | Be Your Own Hero
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
We are all going to die. However, none of us know when, although some may know how (as with a terminal illness).
One thing we can do for ourselves and our loved ones, not knowing when our last day will come, is to prepare for it. We will spare our loved ones from making many complex (and conflicting) decisions. You can be your own hero and that of your loved ones by taking ownership of your life as you’re living and in death.
Being your own hero means that sometimes, it pays to take chances and take your shot. It means advocating for yourself, creating boundaries, and accepting the consequences of your choices. It’s an act of choosing what is in your best interest and of service to your well-being.
Being your hero demonstrates self-love and, in turn, shows others what’s possible too.
No one can live your life for you; unless you do something about it, others will undoubtedly plan your exit, which may or may match your end-of-life wishes. And we are so afraid to talk about death and have these very important issues with loved ones.
This begs the question, are we more afraid of dying or living?
RESOURCES:
________
NEED HELP?
- National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
- Crisis Text Line provides free, 24/7 support via text message. Text HOME to 741741 to connect with a trained Crisis Counselor
If you are struggling with grief due to any of the 40+ losses, free resources are available HERE.
Are you enjoying the podcast? Check out my bi-weekly newsletter, The Unleashed Letters.
CONNECT WITH VICTORIA:
Talking About the Recent 3 Episodes
And I thought that was a fitting title because of the last three episodes. Episode 123, with Jen Kidwell, was all about planning your death and planning for good death. And her episode is called Death legacy in the law because she is a lawyer. And she’s also a minister. Episode 124 with Betsy Smith, I titled the Bulldog advocate and caregiver. And her episode was all about being the advocate not only for yourself but for your loved ones. And she shares her story of caring for her dying husband, and what she all learned from that experience. And now she’s shares that experience with others in a book and in consultations and things like that. Episode 125, with Tim Heale was titled glass half full approach to life. It just is his personal story of things that he’s kind of that he’s gone through. As a child, he always wanted to be a farmer. And that was a dream that wasn’t going to happen for him and found himself in the military. But again, that wasn’t a clear-cut path for himself. He had some rejection in there first. And losing his wife and best friend within a year was really the catalyst for a lot of change in his life, he found himself drinking more, and reached his own rock bottom, and found a way out. And it was, I believe love was a big part of it, because he and his best friend’s wife or widow ended up falling in love. And so I think that was a beautiful story of how two widows found each other, who were friends first. And he found his way into a glass-half-full approach to life, instead of a glass-half-full of booze.
Be a Hero for Your Loved One
And so what a lot what every one of these stories, and Jen Kidwell as well, because she talked about losing her grandmother and different losses that she experienced, too. But what I want to highlight in this week’s episode is how do we be our own hero? How do we do that? And I think there’s a few things I’m going to tie these things back to the previous episodes. But how can we be our own hero? Well, we can plan to die. And that may sound strange to hear. And I feel a little strange saying it, but we all will die. That’s not a shocker. We all know this. We just don’t know when or how. So if we can be our own hero and the hero of our loved ones, we can plan for that. We can get our affairs in order, we can make those really difficult decisions that are often left to our family and loved ones and take that burden off of their shoulders. There’s so many stories out there of family that believe they’re doing the right thing, but often maybe have regret after because they’re not sure. Because they didn’t know what their loved one would have wanted. Or especially in the instance of medical care, is it doing harm? Or there’s a lot of difficult choices that come at the end of life. And the people who are put in charge are often the ones left making those choices and those decisions for somebody else. And that is a really heavy burden to carry. And especially if you question it, yourself.
I know for me personally, when I die I’m putting this out there in audio so everybody knows I want my organs donated. Now I know that there’s someone very near and dear to me, who does not agree with that. And it is not my husband. So I could see there being some sort of fight, right? Like, if there comes a point where I want my organs donated, my husband knows this, but I’ll just say it, my mother does not. I can see her that would be a really contentious aspect of conversation, and maybe even caused some conflict in their relationship. And I don’t want that. Even though I’ve said it, many times, my mother knows she just believes that we should just be intact. And that’s her choice. And that’s her belief, but I don’t need my heart, I don’t need my lungs, I don’t need my liver, I don’t need my kidneys. I don’t need that stuff. It’s good to die with me. But what a beautiful gift to give someone else. But the gift of life. I mean, if you can’t do that, in your living life, and, or that opportunity doesn’t arise, it’s one last thing that you can do for society. It’s one less thing that you can leave your light and your mark on the world, and give the ultimate gift to someone else. And I think that’s a beautiful thing.
Plan a Good Death
So anyway, circling back to planning to die. It’s very important that we make those decisions for ourselves, and that we communicate those, most importantly, to our loved ones. And that’s actually one of the biggest mistakes that Jen had mentioned in our episode is that we don’t communicate those things to our loved ones. And so I think it’s very important that we not only have those things documented but then communicate what our expectations are to those we love. And if we take that one step further, let’s just say that you end up in a position of being incapacitated. Do you want to be incapacitated, in a hospital bed, or in a nursing home. And is that the kind of life that you want to lead? Not really living, that’s not living for many people. That’s the point of view of many people. That’s my point of view. I don’t want to be a vegetable, and alive just for the sake of being alive. I almost believe that keeps people in our lives from moving on themselves, it keeps people hanging on and not able to let go. If we allow ourselves to be put in that position, I think it is a disservice to our loved ones. Me personally, that is my personal feeling on that. I would never want my family or loved ones to feel any sort of obligation to me, to keep me alive and to keep me in that state. That is not what I would want.
So I’m also making that very clear on this podcast, anyone listening to this Sunday? So yeah, I really do think that part of being your own hero is planning to die. And what do you want that to look like? I’m an also an end-of-life doula. A death doula also is what we’re called. But I’ve learned a lot through that program and how it is possible to plan for a beautiful death. I didn’t think that that was possible. Before I took that program before I came trained in that work. I was doing that work even in high school, working in a nursing home, I was there for several of my the residents in the nursing home who passed away. And oftentimes they die alone. And so I just really want to highlight how important it is that we consider these things. When we’re alive. And we have the cognitive ability to make these decisions for ourselves. And what would you want your funeral to look like? Who would you want to be there? Or as you’re dying, let’s just say you have a terminal illness, which is really when this plan planning to die is even are so important. Because if you are on hospice care, that can be for several months. What do you want that experience to look like? What do you want to? What do you want your last memories to be with your loved ones? What do you want to create with your loved ones? What are the conversations that you need to have? So many things come into play in that stage of our lives.
Be An Advocate for Yourself & for Your Loved One
And I wish I would have known what I know now. When my uncle was passing away of terminal brain cancer, I did visit with him and we had a beautiful reconnection after over 30 years of not seeing each other and had this training before. I think I would have approached it even a little differently. I even remember, I even just had this thought the other day that oh, my gosh, I never even took my kids to see him. It didn’t even occur to me at the time, we had, again, we had six months. And in that time, I could have taken my kids to see him and I didn’t. And that actually just came up for me in the last few days. And I felt really brokenhearted about it because they’ve never met their grandfather, my dad, and they never will. And he would have been the closest thing to meeting their grandfather. Because they looked so much alike. And we’re very close growing up. So anyway, I just really want to highlight the importance of we make all sorts of kinds of plans as we’re living, but we really don’t think about or plan to die. And that is the inevitable. So a part of that, too, is being an advocate for yourself. You’re advocating for yourself as you’re thinking about these things that you want to happen when you die or before you die. And that’s a big part of Betsy Smith’s story in the Bulldog advocate episode. Because she had to make a lot of these decisions. And I guess I didn’t ask her if her husband had made a lot of the decisions prior to I imagine they had these conversations. But you don’t want to wait until that moment to have these conversations. You want to have meaningful conversations. And that’s the thing too, like what I’ve learned in the end-of-life doula training is that the conversations you want to be having when someone is dying, are not the logistics, you don’t want to be talking about your bank accounts, and the bills and all these things that need to be taken care of and need to be done and need to be addressed.
But these are things that you don’t want to have to have these conversations at that point in time. You want to have meaningful conversations you want to have, you want to laugh and you want to share stories and things like that. And so another aspect of planning to die is making sure that you have everything in order that your family have a binder like Jen talked about, have a binder with everything in it your bank accounts, your passwords, like everything. And keep the binder in the bank at safety deposit box or have a digital copy of it something too, just in case a fire, flood, you never know. In with Betsy story, I just, I called her it sound I said to her, it sounded like you were a bulldog. And she’s like, you know, that’s exactly it. And so that’s why I titled that episode, the Bulldog advocate and caregiver because she really had to be a bulldog. And it really brought me back to the time when my son had his accident. Or even when we have a loved one that has something traumatic happen to them. We are the best advocate for our loved one. We are the advocate oftentimes, because maybe our loved one can’t talk or maybe they’re a child, or maybe they’re elderly and more frail. There’s so many different circumstances where it is up to you, as a loved one to be the advocate. And, but also, again, if you’re planning ahead, you could have been your own advocate, you could have had these medical directives and all these things put in place for you or outlined for your family already. Again, so those decisions aren’t left to them was heartbreaking decisions that can be heartbreaking.
Taking Chances In Our Lives
When it comes to Tim Heale’s episode, the glass-half-full approach to life, an aspect of being your own hero on his story for me, is about taking chances. He took a chance on love again, he took a chance on trying to get into the military. He took a chance on being a farmer, like he took these chances. He bettered on himself. And I think like in nowadays and reality TV, I hear a lot, take your shot. He took his shot. And so often we don’t, we’re afraid of risk, or afraid of taking chances in our lives, in our own lives. And I think that’s an aspect of being your own hero, too, is taking chances. And being fearful, because often you will be, but doing it anyway. And accepting the consequences of the choices you make. And that is the juice of life. That is the juice of life. We learn either way. There’s no failure, it’s just all learning.
What this episode really boils down to, is, are we afraid of dying or are we more afraid of living? Living a life we didn’t really want? Living a subpar life experience? Or living alone? And I think these are some questions for all of us to ponder is, am I afraid of dying, or am I more afraid of living? Because life is hard. Life includes grief. Life includes tragedy. And heartbreak. Life is heartbreaking. So that is my question. Are you more afraid of dying? Because we don’t talk about dying. We don’t talk about death and grief and all these feelings that come up as a result of someone close to einstein. We’re taught how to acquire things or people not what to do and we lose them. And so are we afraid of dying? Or are we afraid of actually living? Because either way, there are so many choices we need to make. We make choices every day of our lives. Some big and some small. And I think so many of us walk around being afraid to make the wrong choice. And even in dying, there’s choices to be made. And we’re afraid to make the wrong choice as someone left behind. And so just think about your life, and how you’re living? And do you really feel like you’re living? Are you being your own hero? Are you taking chances? Are you taking your shot? Being afraid but doing it anyway? Are you communicating what you desire and what you want in your life to your loved ones? Whether that means while you’re living or as you plan for your own death. These are the conversations that are meaningful to have within our own hearts. And with those we love.
I hope you found this episode thought-provoking. And maybe it even, I don’t know brought something up within you that felt a little uncomfortable. And let that be okay. If something feels uncomfortable when you hear it, investigate that a little bit more. I know I am not completely planned for my own death, like I have a lot to do myself. So I am not perfect in this area either. And I have the documents to put into place. It just takes time. We need to make that a priority for ourselves so that it’s not a priority for our kids, or our loved ones or parents or however old you are. Whomever would be in charge of you in those decisions. So do yourself a favor. Do your loved ones a favor. Ponder some of these things. Listen to Jen Kidwell’s episode, and Betsy Smith’s episode and feel inspired by Tim’s episode.

P.S. If you are ready to be your own hero and address the pain of your grief, I am starting an online group program on November 30th, 2022. To learn more about the Group Support Program head to my website or you can learn more about this here www.theunleashedheart.com/group-support and I should be putting a waitlist up on the website as soon as November 30th comes around if you are interested in participating in another group that comes open because I don’t know when the next one will be open. So check out that program. It’s online group support for grief. Be sure to register using this link here And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.
Emotions, Grieving Voices Podcast, Podcast, Spirituality, Takeaways and Reflections |
Takeaways & Reflections | Spiritually Challenged: Releasing Anger & the Story
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
There are two camps of grievers; those who talk about their grief and share their stories and those who keep their grief and stories hidden.
Regardless of the camp, you find yourself in, there is one common denominator that is often present with most, if not all, grievers – anger.
There is a caveat to sharing your story, though. As we look for meaning in our experiences, including those that cause us grief, we can find ourselves repeating the story without ever getting into how the experience made us feel.
Depending on the grief experience, we may disassociate ourselves from those experiences, never feeling the feelings, and recite what happened when speaking our stories to others as if it were a recipe card. Repeating only the story does nothing to help us move forward in our lives — to move beyond the story.
Anger adds to the feeling of powerlessness over something that cannot be changed or undone. It can impact our spirituality, too. And, if we pay attention to when anger shows up for us, it informs us where our attention to the pain needs to be.
Over time, anger resulting from grief can chip away at our souls, our spirituality, and the essence of who we are. However, through Kim, Scott, and Christian’s stories, we learn how sitting in the emotional pain (and the anger) can be the fuel and the catalyst for change and growth.
If you are struggling with your grief, listen to this episode and then take a moment to reflect on your spirituality, anger, and the story you have lived.
What has your grief (and anger) been trying to tell you?
________
NEED HELP?
- National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
- Crisis Text Line provides free, 24/7 support via text message. Text HOME to 741741 to connect with a trained Crisis Counselor
If you are struggling with grief due to any of the 40+ losses, free resources are available HERE.
Are you enjoying the podcast? Check out my bi-weekly newsletter, The Unleashed Letters.
CONNECT WITH VICTORIA:
A Little Update About My Son
I do just want to give a little update as to what’s been happening in my neck of the woods. If you’ve been listening for a while, you know that my son had an accident back in November of 2021. And it’s still an ongoing process, he’s still somewhat healing I was I say somewhat because technically, his pancreas is still necrotizing, which really means it’s dying. But in the process of the pancreas dying, he experiences vomiting from time to time still. And so we’re just watching it, and he will be having another CT or MRI coming up here in a few months. And so we will see where things stand at that time. So I just wanted to thank you for any good wishes that you’ve sent his way. And I will continue to keep you updated on that front.
Launching Another Program This Year
I have another piece of news for you if you follow me on Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn, you may have seen a couple of hints here and there or if you follow my newsletter if you have signed up for my newsletter, The unleashed letters, which is a bi-weekly newsletter I send every other Wednesday. If you follow there, too, you may have seen some rumblings of a launch that’s coming up. I will be starting a group program on November 30, 2022, and if you would like to stay in the know when of all the happenings with that and be the first to know when you can register. Sign up for my newsletter. That’s the easiest way to keep up to date.
The Imprint of Fear and Feeling Unwanted To Finding My Voice
Going back to Kimberly Bell’s episode, one of the things that I jotted down as I was that if we believe our stories and our experiences are so unique, that no one could possibly understand, we are setting ourselves up for more suffering and disappointment.
And what I mean by that is anyone truly going to understand what you’ve been through? Absolutely not. Because you are in your own story, you have lived that story, you have lived that experience, and no one else has. And so if we focus on that aspect of no one knowing what it was like because they weren’t there, that is true.
But at the same time, if that is our reason for not sharing with others, if that is what we are using as a way to shut ourselves down from connecting with others, or if we’re using that thought process or that belief, of say, belief, if we’re using that belief, and really believing that is to be true, then we are only becoming more disconnected from those around us. And we are only isolating ourselves more in our grief.
And I say this several times, throughout other podcasts or in my writings that we can get so stuck on the story that we will repeat our story of what happened, this happened to me, and then this happened. And then that happened. And then this happened as if we were almost just reciting a recipe or reading something someone else gave us. And it’s this.
And I think we do that because we’ve assigned certain meanings to what happened. And our minds just want to understand it, our minds want to logically understand what happened. And so this process of repeating the story, really only keeps us in the story. If we feel like we have to share the story with anyone who will listen, any chance we get, there’s a clue there, that there’s probably something unresolved. There is a difference between speaking your story to inspire, to connect, to help someone else maybe connect the dots of their story, or to highlight a turning point.
But if it’s reciting just what happened, this happened. And that happened, and this happened. And that happened. What good is that doing? Anybody, you relive it in your body? If you haven’t processed that story. If you haven’t fully processed the story, every time you repeat it, you’re living it in your body. Again, as you’re speaking your story you might feel might have a flashback, or you might have a feeling in your body, your heart rate might go up your blood pressure might increase you. You might have these physical responses to what you are speaking out loud. And how is that serving you? How is that helping you move forward?
And this is what we can see oftentimes in support groups, especially in-person support groups, which could be online to where there is no outlined action
or purpose for the group. If it’s just this open sharing of the story. You might leave feeling worse about yourself. Actually. You might feel worse leaving because you are taking in that other person’s story. You’re feeling something so heavy of someone else shared.
There is no hierarchy of grief. There is no loss or experience that anyone can say is worse than this or worse than that.
There are certain losses we can’t even fathom experiencing. But there is no hierarchy of grief because we all grieve at 100% regardless of what the loss was. I just want to encourage you that to challenge that belief that no one could ever possibly understand. Because to receive compassion and empathy from another griever, or from another person who’s experienced loss, can do so much for the soul, can do so much for the griever’s heart.
And so if we come into the conversation, or to the room, or to the group, or wherever you’re going into, and you’re sharing your story, or you’re afraid to share your story, just remember that your grief is worthy of being honored and heard. But if you’re repeating the story, and it’s not moving you forward, you haven’t been moving forward, there’s something to dig into there.
Facing The Challenges in Our Life
Let’s skip the surface-level recipe card of all the crap that you’ve experienced. Let’s get deeper than that. Let’s go beyond that. How did that change you? How did that shape your life today? How is that changing you now? Talk about that stuff, the meat, and the juice, that is the experience of life, that is life. Because this stuff will constantly be popping up in and out of our lives we’ll always be experiencing loss and will always be having these experiences that shape us and challenge us. Some might be deeply wounding and others might just sting a little. But regardless, let’s go deep into these conversations we’re having or get the recipe card conversation, forget the repeat, and repeat. We’re in a boat conversation, right? Let’s talk about the deeper emotional side of grief when we’re sharing our stories. That’s where the connection is.
Anger After a Loss And The Anger Within Ourselves
Let’s go back to Scott Deluzio’s episode, he lost his brother while they were both on a deployment to Afghanistan, and he spoke a lot about his experience with anger after that loss.
Scott shares this “I put grief down and I picked up anger” I think that is so common with so many grievers and grievers of all kinds. Because you can lose a brother in that way on a deployment, but you can also be sexually assaulted or you can experience the death of a complicated relationship with a parent. And you might have a lot of anger towards that parent, and then they pass away and you still might be angry. There are a lot of things in life that can stir up anger within us. And a lot of relationships that can too. And so I think anger is one of these emotions that from a young childhood that is stuffed away, pushed down, told us badly, you can’t be angry, don’t show your anger at me type of thing.
I had a lot of misplaced anger within me. And I’ve actually seen glimpses of it every now and again, you know, if I’m working on something very intently, and I’m super hyper-focused. And then something comes to disrupt that flow or something malfunctions and doesn’t want to work, or he’ll be at software or the kid needs something, or the phone keeps ringing, or some distraction of some sort. Any kind of distraction that takes me off that hyperfocus train. Then I’ve been quick to anger. Because it’s so hard for me to get back. It’s really difficult for me to, get back on track when I’ve been derailed. I’ll say it that way when I feel like I’ve been derailed. Because I do personally know that my energy, I work in bursts. And I can knock out a lot of things in a short amount of time.
So when I’m in these productive mental bursts of energy, and things aren’t going right, then the ugly comes out. And so I’ve recently seen this, and I’ve caught myself in those moments of anger. Now granted, that’s very different anger versus grief anger. But at the same time, I can recognize that those moments of those, those anger bursts, when something isn’t going right or going my way or isn’t working or what have you. Those are far wide and in between, like those aren’t a common thing for me. Whereas when I was experiencing my anger from my grief, I was just angry all the time.
If something isn’t going right in your life and you’re angry about it, there’s your sign if there is something you are angry about, there is your sign that something needs to change. If you are not pissed about something, kudos to you. But if you are listening to the Grieving Voices Podcast it’s about grief, I guarantee you, you probably are pissed about something. So what is that anger guiding you to that you are not getting the message? You are not listening to that intuitive knowing within you. And that anger is either seething inside of you and you’re misplacing it and you’re projecting it elsewhere. Or it’s physically making you sick, there’s a clue. Look to your anger. And that’s what needs to change. And use it for fuel to do so. And your life can change.
Religion Versus Spirituality
Talking back to Christian’s episode last week, which was about religion versus spirituality. It is something that I’ve personally struggled with over the years, from childhood into well into adulthood. One thing Christian shared, and I wholeheartedly agree with this, is that spirituality is a part of us, it’s inherently a part of us. It is the essence of who we are. It is like, it is us like it is the core of our being. We are spiritual beings.
But what happens is, is grief happens and trauma happens. And it puts these layers against our spiritual selves, our inner physical selves, our emotional selves, like there are all these layers, then it’s almost like I imagined it looking like when you walk into like those mirror mazes. And you don’t know which way like you see your reflection and you think that’s the way to go. But it’s really not that, your reflections, you’re looking back at yourself but it’s an illusion. And I feel like, that’s what happens with grief and our spirituality is we can’t see the forest through the trees.
And so we may even cut ourselves off from our own spiritual essence of who we are. So then we might cut ourselves off from even God and religion, and walk away completely, which I had for several years. I wrote off God, I was angry with God. Why is there so much suffering in my life and the whole victim story I had down pat. But that was what was happening since my childhood and on, and I had never felt this connection to myself. Because so much was taken from me at such a young age that I didn’t even know my spiritual self existed. And so, it’s been a process of coming back to and rediscovering who I was.
The glimpses, like recognizing, again, those glimpses of my essence that I got when I was a teenager, and I was into like astrology and palm reading and all this mystical stuff. I was into that. And I loved collecting stickers because it was a form of play in it, it was childlike to me. And I didn’t have much of a childhood. It was a traumatic childhood. I don’t even remember a lot of it. And so I loved stickers as a teenager. And so I do today, too. I play with stickers today as an adult. It’s because I’ve learned how to reconnect to those parts of myself. I’m an energy healer. I’ve learned energy and healing. The mystical stuff. The stuff we can’t explain that I was into as a teenager but hadn’t allowed myself to really lean into that part of myself.
Grief is just really the impact it has on our spiritual souls. And how that ripples into the rest of our lives and what we do and what we become and what we do for play and how we show up in the world and all these things, right? But we don’t get that from religion. I don’t feel we do. Religion didn’t give me that. Its religion is an external thing. And spirituality is within. And so religion can be a pillar of growth and evolution and a foundation to start a spiritual journey. But I really feel like they are two separate things. That you can be spiritual, and have a religion, that there are many religious people who are not spiritual. The book says this, and this, and this, and this, and that’s it, right? But they’re not connecting with it. They’re not connecting with the words, they’re not connecting with what that means in their life. They’re not connected to themselves. They’re reading these words, but they’re disconnected from themselves. Because so many believe that you just gotta pray about it. All you got to do is pray about it. We got to pray and move our feet. The shortest line in the Bible is Jesus cried, he wept. And so many of us we’ve been private, we cry in private. And that’s so isolating.
And I even talked about how in the newsletter I even talked about how religion can be used against people. And so we have to be very careful about the advice that we give to people because we may be religious, or you might be a religious person, but not everybody is. And what if that person had religion used against them as a means to control as a means to manipulate? That person is religiously scarred. And we don’t want to inflict any more pain on that person who has experienced that type of grief.
In someone who has experienced that type of grief, and if you’re one of them, and you’re listening to this, I would recommend can start doing practices that help you connect to yourself spiritually, look into spiritual practice, and start connecting to the self. And if you find religion again, great, and if you don’t, that’s okay, too. In that episode, I mentioned that the soul is in the gut, and grief is in the lungs. And grief can actually be anywhere in the body. And generally speaking, to like, as far as pain, we might feel it in the left shoulder. And biofield tuning, which is energy sound healing that I conduct either online or in person. If you have a lot going on energetically in the left shoulder. That is where grief and sadness often are.
In Chinese medicine, they say grief is in the lungs, asthma, and different lung conditions. I believe that could be true. You can’t take a deep breath right? You can’t breathe, it’s like you’re suffocating in your own grief. And that makes sense to me, and that resonates with me, too. And as a teenager, I was dealing with a lot of gut issues. My soul was literally being chipped away. Spiritually, I have chipped away. And it makes sense to me to have that my gut was just screaming at me as a teenager.
How Powerful Breathwork Is
And so through breathwork, Christian talked about how connecting to the breath. We understand this powerful resource that we have within us in the breath. And I’ve personally experienced this with a friend of mine and I mentioned it during the episode too. I learned the power of the breath and how we can channel it to create so much energy within our bodies. It’s you can’t even imagine, I can’t even bring it into words, what that experience was like for me, but my hands are just vibrating, just talking about it. I feel the vibration in my hands. So we can’t destroy energy, but we can move energy and we can also create it within ourselves. So again, if you are low energy, you’re low vibe, you’re not living life in the full vibrant way that you wish to, look at where you’re at spiritually.
He also mentioned these two hurdles, that most people that he’s worked with or over the years have to personal freedom and empowerment. And one is being the victim. The poor be this relation to this poor me relationship to life, he said. And then also a struggle with forgiveness. And, he shared to give space to others is to be human. And get off of this self-righteous ego that we so often have, when it comes to forgiveness. I could have just an episode on victimhood and forgiveness, and actually have a chapter in my book about the victim mindset because I was stuck there for so many years. And I also coincidentally, and not coincidentally, had a real challenge with forgiveness. And so both of these things are actually addressed in the grief, evidence-based grief programs that I facilitate, and what I personally experienced myself that transformed my grief.

P.S. I highly encourage you to think about what I share today. Let it settle in your heart and reflect on it. Just take a moment to journal your thoughts after listening to this episode. What are your takeaways and reflections? I would love to hear your takeaways and reflections from this takeaways and reflections episode and I encourage you and I hope you share because I would love to know your thoughts on this episode. And I hope it was helpful. And also be sure you signed up on The Unleash Letters to get updated about the new program that I am launching this November.
Grieving Voices Podcast, Podcast, Takeaways and Reflections |
Takeaways & Reflections | How To Grieve
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
People say you have to move on or that you should “be over it by now.” However, no one tells you or shows you how to do it.
For me, after struggling to get beyond the pain of my trauma and losses for 30+ years, the Grief Recovery Method was the how.
Naysayers and doubters are welcome. 🤗 I was a skeptic, too. How could a process or method help me move on from the pain after sitting in it for 30+ years?
I went into it with some doubt, convinced I would, at the very least, learn new tools, knowledge, and information I could use to help others. However, what I got was so much more. The program and my experience through it (albeit emotionally challenging and, at times, draining) exceeded my expectations.
In this week’s episode, I explore the phrase “How To Grieve…” We all find our way through the messiness of life and the grief that comes with it. However, what if there was an evidence-based process that cuts through the crap, gets to the heart of the story of what happened (the emotion and what’s emotionally incomplete as a result), and brings with it peace within at the end of it. What would that experience be worth to you? Furthermore, what is doing nothing, or what you’ve always done, costing you?
RESOURCES:
______
NEED HELP?
- National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
- Crisis Text Line provides free, 24/7 support via text message. Text HOME to 741741 to connect with a trained Crisis Counselor
If you or anyone you know is struggling with grief due to any of the 40+ losses, free resources are available HERE.
Are you enjoying the podcast? Check out my bi-weekly newsletter, The Unleashed Letters.
💛 Would you like to Learn Your Energy Type? Free Quiz ➡️ HERE! ⬅️
SUPPORT THE SHOW:
CONNECT WITH VICTORIA:
Short-Term Energy Relieving Behaviors
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 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 straight 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 real sugary coffee drink to feel better if we’re having a bad day whether we reach for an alcoholic beverage or something sugary coffee drink that can be a STERB it can be something that you feel like you need to feel better at that moment. So I can tie everything to grief but I just remember a time to where my mom 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.
How to Grieve
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 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 are some other things that come up. Helpguide.org – has a post titled coping with grief and loss. It’s a helpful guide. 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, Ken Ross, the son of Elisabeth Kubler Ross, who developed these five stages, which was about people who are struggling with their own terminal illness diagnosis was on the podcast a while back. University of Washington healthy grieving, Counseling Center grief is in the first line here says “grief is a normal and natural response to loss”. That is what we share in Grief Recovery. Betterup.com has a blog post on how to process grief and find healthy ways to overcome loss And npr.org grief for beginners: five things to know about processing loss. So this 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.
Complicated Grief
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 if the year prior 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 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 where your dream will not be realized. Because something that occurred that makes that impossible.
And people might say, well, “nothing’s impossible” Well, for instance, 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. It’s a loss of hopes, dreams, and expectations is grief. To say that there’s a complicated phase of grief, I just feel like it’s all complicated. And I feel like too, this part that says “acute grief that interferes with daily function more than a year later” 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.
Fooling Ourselves and Believing We Are Fine
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, go about our lives. And we think we’re fine. If people ask you “Hey how are you doing? And you say I’m fine. In 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 to 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 trust me, I’m in the trenches of that. And it is no joke. Our grief grows with us.
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 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 a resolution to that if we’re continually searching for meaning to what happened, looking for the answer as to why like Why me, like if we’re always looking for that, or we’re looking to someone else to fill that gap, we haven’t addressed our grief. But we fool ourselves by 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 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. 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 ping-ponging, as this article says between the two and as long as you’re doing that, you are moving forward.
Move Forward with your Grief
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 her phrase many times, and I give her full credit. And she says “when you lay you decay”. 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.
Ram Dass shared, he had a coach or someone he 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 as 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’s not something that’s propelling you, okay? I’m feeling this way at 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. But to sit in that gap, to stay in the gap is not moving us forward either doesn’t move us forward.
It can be the thing that propels us. I think we just, as they say, people who are struggling with substance abuse disorders might have their rock bottom. 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 almost till I was 40 to come to the party. To realize that my potential was suffering 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, and it was costing me the ability to be the best parent I could be. It was costing me real relationships, and 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.
Grief is Always There
So many different aspects of my life were costing me by not addressing my grief by not 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. We are facing it every single day of our lives. 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 the shift that happened for me is I sought to change how I perceived my experiences, and how I felt about my experiences, I had to shift my perspective of my own story. It’s really hard to do by yourself.
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 Martika Whylly, Reid 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? The answer is yes, I do wish I would have come to that awareness before I had kids. I would have been a very different parent. I guarantee that. It’s so important that we learn how to grieve. Nobody knows how. We don’t come out of the womb knowing how to grieve but yes, we do. Yes, we do. Because as young children (under 3 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 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.
Emotional Expression
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 to begin to get canker sores, you know, bite your tongue. It cankers 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, that’s how stress manifests in my body. For some people, it might be increased blood pressure or heart disease.
We have enough stuff that happens to us traumatic experiences or just life itself, the pressures of you know, just being a human being in a 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, 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 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.
Virgin River Show
I’ve been watching the show on Netflix called Virgin River. And I actually finished all the seasons. 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, 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, 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 a typical day to day life.
Grief Recovery Changed Many Lives
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 how we feel with this about this new language.
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? 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.

P.S. At the end of November, I will be launching an online group program. And if you’re interested, stay tuned to 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 there too. So I recommend that if you’re interested in learning more about the online group program coming up be sure to subscribe to The Unleashed Letters or listen to my upcoming takeaways and reflections episodes.
Grieving Voices Podcast, Podcast, Takeaways and Reflections |
Takeaways & Reflections | Finding Our Way Home to Self
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
Finding our way home to self is the journey we’re all on in the physical plain. So that hopefully, when our time is drawing near, we will have experienced a life well-lived. A life filled with joy and more importantly, one of peace.
In this week’s episode, I share a bit about my journey finding my way home back to myself. And also discuss the stories of the three previous guests and a snippet of how they have been journeying home to themselves.
I don’t know that we ever fully “arrive” at feeling completely healed. There’s always more to discover. There’s always something that rubs us wrong that others do or say, which start to have less and less affect on us as we connect more deeply to ourselves.
Additionally, there’s always going to be grief and loss that will likely, for a time, send us in a tailspin. We have to learn to recalibrate and get back on track again. How we do that will vary from person to person. And, the why behind doing so is often the first step in doing anything about our current emotional condition.
In doing nothing, there is much to lose – even if you don’t feel like there is.
We are all a piece in someone else’s puzzle.
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Make Yourself a Priority
I believe we all have a divine higher consciousness self. It’s more than our intuition. It’s our spirit that yearns to be nurtured and listened to. It’s also important that as energy workers or therapists of all levels, we take time to step away from our practices, and daily obligations, and do something that fills our cups, lights us up, and provides an opportunity to experience an upgrade or up-leveling of our own consciousness, helpers need help and support to. So if this is you, make yourself a priority even for a day, everyone you serve or nurture will be better for it, including you. And this is also true for caregivers of any kind.
Recently, I was seated next to someone who reminded me of myself when I was in my 20s and 30s. As far as where I was in my life and how I was feeling. As this person shared about themselves, I was reminded of all of the things I found along my path of healing, that had been stepping stones to the next thing. But you know, I wouldn’t have known how helpful and healing those things were. Had I not followed my intuition when I was led to those things, gave them a shot.
The Work that I love to do is My Destiny
Early on in my personal development, which is really a lifetime exercise. If you think about it. I felt like there was something wrong with me, and that I was destined to feel like I was going out of my mind for the rest of my life. What I ended up discovering by following the breadcrumbs was that I needed to allow myself time to learn and the space to integrate what I was learning, which is really where the magic happens.
I also learned that I needed support and that no amount of time sitting alone on my couch, pondering my thoughts, when actually do anything to move the needle forward toward emotional wellness. Emotions have been both a blessing and a curse in my life. I feel deeply my own stuff, but I also feel the emotional energy of others too.
Webster’s Dictionary defines an empath as one who experiences the emotions of others, a person who has empathy for others.
Empathy – is the action of understanding, being aware of being sensitive to and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experiences of another in either the past or present, without having the feelings, thoughts, and experiences fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner.
Empathy happens to be my number one strength, confirmed through the YOUMAP assessment, which is perfect for my practice as an energy worker through Reiki and biofield tuning and as a grief specialist working with grievers. Add in that I’m an INFP personality type via the Myers-Briggs assessment and Pisces. And I’ve come to accept that the work I love to do was also probably my destiny.
My childhood built me just as your childhood built you. No matter what you’ve experienced, who you were, as a child is staring back at you today as an adult. There are bits of us that we can’t ever erase or change. We can’t go back in time and there are no do-overs. However, we can transmute those experiences and the energy those experiences hold by allowing them to move through us. So that reflection staring back at us feels more familiar. Feels more like home.
Peace as a Goal
I have 3 guests on my podcast the episodes that were just recently released, which are Stephanie Cerins, Kyira Wackett, and Ram Dass they all have found their way back home, to a sense of self that feels more whole, joyful, and peaceful. And for me, feeling peace has been my goal for as long as I can remember. To me, peace is the opposite of feeling as though something is wrong with me. And I’m destined for lifelong suffering. There’s an exhale I feel and just speaking the word peace out loud. The word itself feels soothing, doesn’t it? Isn’t it funny? How Our goals are never to be the angriest, most ashamed, saddest, or most bitter person on the block.
And yet, that’s the baseline for so many of us in our day-to-day lives. It may not be outwardly and outright expressed, but it’s there, whether in thought, action, or deed, and either towards ourselves or others.
What if peace became the goal and the baseline? Whew, that sounds like a home, city block, community, state, nation, and the world transformed to me, about to you? Well, guess what? A transformed world starts with each and every one of us. Just think about all the people you interact with on a daily basis. The postal worker, delivery person, co-workers, boss, neighbor, friend, spouse, children, bus driver, we all see a lot of people regularly. And we can either bring our feelings of anger, shame, sadness, bitterness, or any other emotion that is disrupting our ability to be kind to ourselves and others. Or we can bring the child in us who is curious, craves connection, and doesn’t judge.
Emotional Wellness
Sitting through the pain and suffering with support of others in a way that feels aligned for you, is the best approach to emotional wellness. There is a lot to be said and being able to sit with yourself and contemplation and reflection. However, it is often through prompting questions that the biggest aha is or experienced. Because we are so close to our own stories. Those better questions often do not occur to us naturally, because we have our ego, with all of its judgment and internal storytelling also in the mix.
On my recently released episode with Stephanie, her stepping stone to healing was Alcoholics Anonymous, but that’s not where she stayed. She continued to follow the breadcrumbs which led her to write specifically curated affirmations for clients, and later author two books. I have another guest on my podcast who is Kyira, her stepping stone was therapy for an eating disorder that developed in college and lasted for eight years. However, because of excellence became a huge driver for her, in part because of her childhood experiences. Becoming the therapist she wanted became another driver. Today she assists clients from lived experience, but more importantly from a state of peace within herself that never would have happened had she continued to carry shame and guilt. Finally, Ram Dass stepping stone was therapy in conjunction with a self paced online program for assisting him in processing as emotions. I believe men in particular are often left to the side.
When as a parent, there is a death of a child. The man should be the man the stoic pillar of strength. People often rushed to the side of the mother to console and offer condolences. And I imagine for any father that can feel like dismissal, and additionally, are certain expectations of how a father should respond to a child’s death aren’t far from people’s minds.
In truth for all people, emotions unexpressed causes to either implode or explode, resulting in dis-ease, further loss, more grief, and additional unnecessary suffering.
Finding our way home to self is the journey we’re all on in the physical plane. So that hopefully when our time is drawing near, we will have experienced a life well lived a life filled with joy in more importantly one of peace.

P.S. If you’re interested in learning more about the services I mentioned like Reiki and Biofield Tuning and YOUMAP be sure to check my website www.theuleashedheart.com. Or if your curiosity has been piqued and you want to listen to Stephanie, Kyira, and Ram Dass episodes you can visit my wesbite and go the Podcast Page Grieving Voice Podcast, you can see there all of my podcast published episodes.