Takeaways & Reflections | Evolving with Grief
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
Grief can either suck the life right out of you or, it can build you into the most compassionate heart for others who will look to you to lean on for support in their grief.
They say grief shared is grief diminished, but many people find sharing their grief difficult. Some turn to writing as a way to express and soothe the soul like I had and like my guest, Faith shared, in episode 59. Or, they turn to others in support groups or friendships, only to be let down or disappointed, as my guest Sherrie was and talked about in episode 58.
There is one question I encourage you to ask yourself; one that I challenge you to ask yourself. If you have listened to episode 59, then you may already know what it is. If you haven’t, then listen to this week’s episode because I mention it again.
Also, this episode is dedicated to the founder of The Grief Recovery Method®, John James, who passed away on 8/10/2021, only three short months following his cancer diagnosis. GRM changed my life and, I will forever be grateful to James for creating this beautiful gift out of his own grief. What a gift to humankind he was and will continue to be to the many hurting hearts who feel led to doing the deep, inner-work through GRM. His legacy will endure; I do not doubt that. Love + Light, John. 💛
RESOURCES:
- Ep 58 | Sherrie Dunlevy
- Ep 59 | Faith Wilcox
- The Grief Recovery Handbook
- The Wheel of Life by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
- Grief Recovery Online or One-on-One Program
Today is the takeaways and reflections episode where I’ll be talking about Episode 58 with Sherrie Dunlevy, and Episode 59 with Faith Wilcox. Sherrie had lost her infant son 29 days after his birth, and also her beloved pet. And so she talks about each of those losses and the impact they had on her as well as her experience of going through grief recovery and how that changed her life. And Faith talks about the loss of her 13 year old daughter. She was diagnosed at the age of 13 and died 365 days later in her mother’s arms of cancer. And the curious thing about that is she didn’t know she had one year to live when she was diagnosed. But I think it’s an important question to ask ourselves, what would I do? If I knew I had one year to live?
People are Often Consumed with Their Own Grief
Starting with Sherrie’s episode, she brought up a very important topic that I want to bring up in this takeaway’s episode and she talked about her this desire that she had when she lost her son. She thought that time that followed, she was really struggling with why she felt abandoned, why people weren’t there for her that she thought would have been or should be. And she said she came up with a few reasons why this happened. One was it hit too close to home, that if it happened to them, thinking about that makes them sad, it’s just too sad for them. Another reason why she came up with why people abandoned her was they never had to deal with a situation like that before. And they just didn’t know what to say. Also, people really want to say something, but don’t know what to say, or afraid to say the wrong thing. And they want to help and they want to do something, but they just don’t know what to do. And so it’s easier to do or say nothing than the wrong thing. And one thing I would like to add to that is that, I think also too, people are often consumed with their own grief, consumed with what’s going on in their own lives. Maybe not even grief at the time, but just the just all. Especially women or head of households, you wear all the hats. For me personally, I can just say I have days where it’s just feel so scatterbrained, it’s hard to focus, my attention is pulled in many different directions and, and so trying to hold the capacity for compassion and empathy and trying to hold that space for somebody else. In a really trying difficult emotionally challenging time. I’m struggling in my own mind, I’m probably not the best suited person to sit with you during those days. But also I think it comes down to communication. If I am feeling that way if I am because here’s the thing, too, in that situation that would cause me grief is like a really want to be there for you, but I just can’t right now “this is what’s going on, this is how I’m feeling, this is what I’m experiencing”. You know, and I might feel like it’s nothing in comparison to what you’re feeling. You know, the person that just you know is going through a loss but all the same. How do you do to be there for somebody who you really want to be there for? and yet, just you don’t have the capacity to do it. And
How Can I Help?
I think it’s where we tend to complicate things, we overcomplicate things, and sometimes we think that we just need to do these big grandiose gestures, or these big expressions of our love and care. But sometimes it can just be as simple, “I don’t have the brain capacity today. I hope I do tomorrow. But in case I don’t, know that I’m sending you love, know that I’m sending you a hug“. Maybe you put that in a card, and you mail a card to that person? Or maybe you send them a fruit basket? It can be something small, a small gesture. Maybe if they have a pet, maybe it’s like, “Okay, I know, I need to disconnect a bit. I need to, like reboot my brain.” But maybe you don’t have a pet. Right? And so maybe that person that had a loss, has a pet. “Hey, can I walk your dog, it’d be good for me, it’d be good for your dog, and it would help you out.” Right? So I think sometimes we have to think outside the box, and maybe a little bit creatively about how we can be of service to other people when we really, really want to, but no, we’re just not there yet in full capacity, but still want to do a little something. And if you are feeling in full capacity, you know, mentally, emotionally, physically, all of those things where you can be there for other people, then it’s like, by all means balls to the wall, I mean, put all your effort and energy into that, because you wouldn’t be surprised how life-giving that can be for somebody else, and for you as the giver of your time and energy. And it doesn’t even have to be a financial expense to do anything special. I just encourage you to think about maybe what you would like, I think that’s also where we tend to overcomplicate things. It’s like, “what would I appreciate today? what would I really like? what would lift my spirits? Or what would be helpful to me today?” .And then do that thing for that person, or somebody else who is going through a challenging time, who don’t have to be grieving something. Just maybe it’s a challenging time, right? And, you know, all of this desire for Sherrie to find why people abandoned her is kind of what led to her writing her book, “How can I help?” your go-to guide for helping loved ones through life’s difficulties, and it is on Amazon. And I did link to her book in the show notes of her episode. So I do highly encourage you to check it out, and to listen to that episode in its entirety.
There’s a Clarity That Can Come From Grief
And I’m going to go through a few more things that Sherrie and I talked about. Next, I’d like to share just how contrast really shows us what we do want. And therefore, it’s a knowing of what we don’t want. And we had talked about during our episode about this post traumatic growth. And I had heard this term before, but I think it’s true in that when you go through something traumatic, or you have a really difficult, challenging experience, loss of a loved one or just natural disaster. Things like that we realize, what we don’t want, like, “this isn’t working for me, that’s not working”. How do you know we start to think about what we do want. And so there’s a clarity that can come from grief. It is a clarifier that brings us to our awareness, all that probably isn’t working in our lives, things that we would desire to change. Even if we don’t know how or what that looks like. You can feel it in your body. Your body responds to what isn’t working, if we just kind of tune in. We just take a moment to tune in to what our bodies are telling us because our bodies are always speaking to us, especially in grief. Especially with that post traumatic growth journey that all gravers go through
There is No Timeline to Grieve
And because there’s no timeline to grieve, I think that experience or how long that experience takes is very different for everybody. I think it also relies on how open we are to learning something new, to see in our lives and other people from a different perspective. I think one of the beautiful things about grief is it brings us more compassion, we become more compassionate people, I believe. And so it’s really leaning into that compassion for ourselves first. Because it’s really hard to give others compassion, when we don’t have it for ourselves. It comes back to that old thing. You can’t pour from an empty cup, right? I think that is one of the lessons that Sherrie had received in her grief, and what made her seek out grief recovery, help in the grief recovery method, and I just loved how she shared her experience in that, she said it has the most amazing tool, and it was the best gift that she had ever given herself. And I would wholeheartedly agree for myself personally. Grief recovery has been the gift that keeps on giving. I certified in March of 2019, in Austin, Texas, and I was just telling someone about it the other day. And I was telling this friend, there are pivotal moments in our lives. Times where we can think back and, and think well, that conversation or that bumping into that person or, being in the right place at the right time, or that choice I made or that decision. We can pick out these moments in our lives that are very pivotal to us, that really changed the trajectory of the rest of our lives, where we understand and are aware that had I not done that thing, my life would not be where it is today. A happenstance conversation, and I’ve had so many of those instances, just the perfect conversation at the perfect time, or hearing something exactly when I needed to hear it, or stumbling upon a resource or something that would inevitably change my life. And that was grief recovery, to be honest, which opened the doors and led to many other things such as Reiki and end of life doula and the clients that I’ve been working with in Reiki and what I’m learning starting to learn now to further my Reiki and deeper my practice there with crystals and sound healing.
We evolve with our grief, we are always evolving with our grief. It’s just truly sad to me, I feel sadness when I see people, especially online, often in the grief community, that feel like their life is destined to be how it is today. I was that person who thought my life was going to be how it was, and I was going to feel how I was going to feel for the rest of my life. You can’t see the label from inside the jar. Right? I mean, that’s another quote. But it’s so true, it’s really hard to see a path forward when you’ve tried something and it didn’t work or you’ve tried that thing and it didn’t work or or you constantly feel like you’re judged, criticized or analyzed. And that’s what grief recovery is absolutely different. The approach is different in its individual, because you’re an individual like it is individualized to you, because your grief is unique to you. I could go on and on on a tangent on that but grief shows us what needs to be healed, grief is a clarifier it and it will force you to evolve.
Grief is Like a Sinkhole
I think eventually, unless you are unwilling to surrender to what it has in store for you, the gift that it could give you and I can just see the eyes rolling because when you are deep in grief, you do not want to hear how there’s gifts in grief, you don’t want to hear that there is purpose to your suffering, like you just don’t want to hear that stuff. I didn’t want to hear that stuff. But eventually, there comes a point where you just get sick and tired of being sick and tired. And like my friend Sherrie said in her episode, and honestly, we had recorded that many months back. And I had never forgotten this phrase that she said, but when you lay you decay, and if that’s not true of so many other aspects of our lives, whether let’s say you have a cancer diagnosis. Of course, there are days where absolutely all you can do is lay. But if you just laid, right, if you just laid and you’d never got up and you never had a reason to get up, or you never tried to get up, you never even tried or, granted, there’s all kinds of scenarios and situations. This is a very blanket statement, but that statement lay or decay. It’s like our bodies are meant to move. And, I don’t I’m not even sure who said it. But a body in motion, stays in motion like the laws of physics or something. I’m not sure. I think you get the idea, though, of where I’m getting to, but we must stay in motion. And that’s true with grief too, or you do get stuck. It’s like you’re in a sinkhole. Grief is like a sinkhole, it’ll swallow you whole. If you let it ,grief will force you out of your comfort zone and bring change whether you like it or not. The more you fight these changes that grief will bring in, the more resistant you are to these changes, the more your suffering will persist. And that was no different in my grave.
Grief Recovery is About Addressing the Pain
I had many days where I cried more tears than I thought I could ever possibly cry. When you’re crying from sadness, it’s much different than when you’re crying from pain. Just like Sherrie had mentioned in her episode. She said you will someday at some point cry so much that you’ve cried enough from the pain. And I agree, I think there comes a point where you just run out of tears and crying from the sadness is much different. And I think it’s once you actually process that pain, and you work through that pain, what left is the sadness. That doesn’t go away. You know, grief recovery isn’t about getting over or putting behind you the person that passed away or the relationship that is less than loving, grief recovery is about addressing the pain. Any sadness you feel isn’t just going to go away, there’s still going to be that empty seat at the table. And just this week, as I’m recording this, on Tuesday, the founder of grief recovery passed away from cancer after three months of senses diagnosis. And for me personally, it’s a very sad loss. It’s a sad loss for all of us grief recovery specialists, I believe, because he founded something that is incredible, that has changed and impacted all of our lives. And I am in awe of the legacy that he has created and his left. And I feel deeply honored to be able to carry on his work and his creation of the grief recovery method in the work that I do with my clients. Again, it’s the gift that keeps on giving. And it was an incredible gift that he has given me. And so I dedicate this episode to John James, who created the grief recovery method out of his own pain in his own sorrow. And if you are interested in learning more about his story, I encourage you to pick up the book the grief recovery handbook. It is linked in the show notes. And if you don’t see the show notes, or don’t go to the show notes, you can also find the grief recovery handbook on Amazon. And I highly recommend it.
Voice Out Your Feelings
Moving on to Episode 59 with Faith Wilcox, she shared her story of her 13 year old daughter being diagnosed with cancer and actually passing away in her arms 365 days following her diagnosis. And this was over 20 years ago, she just recently published a book, which is also linked in the show notes for Episode 59. It’s called “Hope as a Bright Star”. And it was developed from her writings that she wrote at the bedside of her daughter, and what she had learned throughout that whole process of sitting with her daughter in that year, in and out of the hospital, chemo radiation treatments and also navigating being a parent to her daughter’s sister as well. And the dynamics of how you function as a family when you have such a sick child and you’re in and out of the hospital. And I can’t imagine what that’s like, I cannot even imagine. I resonated with what Faith had shared about how writing was such a pivotal healing tool for her. Because I too, have been writing since I was in my teens and I journaled, I wrote poetry. I found much comfort in expressing myself in that way. And I think for a lot of introverts or empathic people, we find that it is much easier for us to process our feelings. We often do internally, but it’s a great exercise in expression, to give your feelings a voice in some way. And so for me, it was always writing. And that was the case also for Faith. And she gives some tips for other parents at the bedside of a loved one, going through the same situation that she experienced.
What would you want to do if you only have one year left to live?
And I just thought when I was listening back and editing, I just thought to myself, like, had she known she had one year to live? Would she have made different choices? What would she have wanted to experience? I mean, what a good question to ask yourself to get some fire under your butt. You know, if you had one year to live, you were told today, you have one year to live? What would you want that year to look like? I don’t know about you. But I feel very overwhelmed by that question, to be honest. Because I feel like there’s so much more that I have to offer people and want to do in my life. I think grief in that question is a clarifier. I have a pretty long bucket list. I don’t know about you, but I do have a bucket list. And I seem to be adding to it year after year. But it is a daunting feeling isn’t it? To think if you were given only one year. Probably many of the things that you might have on your bucket list aren’t things that you would probably prioritize.
Maybe it’s putting your feet in the ocean or feeling the beach, sand in between your toes for the first time or swimming with dolphins. I’m reminded of a story of Jeffie which is shared by Elisabeth Kubler Ross and her book “The Wheel of Life” , a memoir for living and dying. But she shares the story of this little boy named Jeffie who is dying of cancer and was sick much of his young childhood and the last thing he wanted to do was more cancer treatment, more chemo and radiation and he just wanted to go home. And so his family took him home, and when they got home, the one thing he wanted to do was to ride his bike. And I’ll actually share this, you’ll hear the story of Jeffie brought up in a future episode, I had the privilege of having a conversation with Ken Ross, who is Elisabeth Kubler Ross’s son. And I brought up that story because I was moved to tears when I read it. But Elizabeth’s life is just one of many stories. She was actively doing her work, but it’s like the amount of work, the amount of accomplishments that she had in that time, is just, I’m in awe. So anyway, I was made to think of that story of Jeffie. When I thought of that question, what would you want to do if you had one year left to live and turns out with Jeffie, he knew intuitively, that he had but a few hours at most. In fact, he wanted to go home so he could die at home. That story was just though a beautiful example of just this little child, young child taking ownership of the kind of death he wanted to have. And I just think, imagine if we had that kind of authority, and took that authority to have that kind of conviction when we’re alive, right? not when we’re on our way out. And so again, it just comes back to that whole question. And my biggest takeaway from Faith’s episode is, how would I want my next year to be if I knew I had one year to live? And so that’s, that’s the question I want to leave you with today to truly ponder on, and think about, and what do you want your next year to be? Like? If you are grieving right now, what do you want your next year to be like.
P.S. In case you don’t know if it is something that you want to move forward working through your grief, I offer grief recovery, both online and in person, and both one on one and in a group. So if that’s something that is of interest to you, I encourage you to please reach out to me at Victoria at http://theunleashedheart.com or you can head to the show notes. And there will be some links to my social media there and you can send me a message. I highly encourage you to do that. If you have any questions or reservations about moving forward in your grief, because you got one life to live? And how about we make the most of it. Right? Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode, which as I mentioned, I’m dedicating to John James, the founder of the grief recovery method, and the grief recovery Institute. A program that has very much so changed my life and has been the gift to me that has kept on giving. If you would like to learn more about this amazing program, I encourage you again to reach out to me check out the show notes. And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love. If you liked this episode, please share it because Sharing is caring. And until next time, give and share compassion by being hurt with yours. And if you’re hurting know that what you’re feeling is normal and natural. Much love my friend.