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SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
This week, I had the privilege of hearing from Ed Owens, vice president of the Grief Recovery Institute, in a deeply moving episode of the Grieving Voices podcast.
As Vice President of the Grief Recovery Institute, Ed’s narrative isn’t just about loss; it’s about discovery—the kind that reshapes lives. From his military background to law enforcement tenure, he was schooled in emotional compartmentalization until life delivered its harshest lesson through his greatest loss: the death of his 3-year-old son, Ryan.
This wasn’t just a turning point for Ed; it was an unraveling—a catalyst that compelled him to seek healing beyond traditional avenues. The Grief Recovery Method didn’t merely offer solace; it provided clarity and purpose, revealing insights into male grief often shrouded by societal expectations.
Ed challenges us to look beyond labels like “toxic masculinity,” advocating for empathy over division. He sees our shared struggles as conduits for unity—emotional commonalities that can bridge ideological divides if only we dare to acknowledge them.
His message resonates with profound simplicity: Recognize your pain, own your choices, and rewrite your future—not as isolated chapters but as part of a collective human experience yearning for connection.
Join us in this conversation that goes beyond mere words into actions that echo across lifetimes. Let’s create ripples together, capable of washing away walls built from unspoken sorrows.
RESOURCES:
CONNECT:
- Website
- Email: edowens[at]griefrecoverymethod[dot]com
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CONNECT WITH VICTORIA:
Unpacking the Journey Through Grief: Insights from Ed Owens and the Power of Emotional Healing
Grief is a universal human experience, yet it remains one of our society’s most misunderstood and neglected areas. In an enlightening episode of the Grieving Voices podcast, we are offered a window into this complex world through the personal and professional lens of Ed Owens, Vice President of the Grief Recovery Institute. This blog post aims to expand on that conversation by exploring key themes discussed in the podcast and offering additional context and insights.
From Compartmentalization to Confrontation
Ed Owens’s background in military service and law enforcement epitomizes careers where emotional compartmentalization is often seen as necessary for survival. Yet, this approach can leave individuals ill-prepared for personal tragedies. It was only after facing his own profound loss—the death of his young son—that Owens realized how much unaddressed grief he carried.
The Turning Point
Owens’s journey underscores a critical point: sometimes it takes a catalytic event to force us out of our emotional defenses. For many people like him, traditional coping mechanisms—medication, substance use, or even therapy—may fall short when it comes to healing deep-seated emotional wounds.
The transformative moment came when Owens encountered the Grief Recovery Method (GRM). Unlike other interventions he tried previously, GRM enabled him to process his emotions constructively—a significant breakthrough leading not just toward recovery but also toward helping others navigate their grief.
Key Takeaways from GRM
Through GRM training, two revelations stood out:
- Lessons Learned: Every life event teaches us something invaluable; recognizing these lessons allows growth amidst pain.
- Self-Worth: Understanding that you are deserving of love—and have been loved—is crucial for self-acceptance.
Societal Reflections: Male Grief Under Scrutiny
The discussion with Owens brings attention to male grief—a topic frequently overlooked due to societal expectations surrounding masculinity. Terms like “toxic masculinity” can inadvertently stigmatize men’s emotional expression rather than encouraging healthy vulnerability.
Impact on Suicide Rates
One cannot overlook how societal pressures contribute significantly to higher suicide rates among men—an alarming trend suggesting that failing to address male-specific grief has dire consequences.
Overcoming Division Through Shared Humanity
In today’s polarized climate, divisions run deep across political lines and social strata; however, at our core lies an inherent ability for empathy based on shared experiences—especially those involving loss or trauma. By tapping into this shared humanity rather than focusing on what separates us could be instrumental in fostering unity within communities torn apart by conflict or misunderstanding.
Call To Action: Embrace Empathy Beyond Differences
Owen’s message culminates in a powerful call-to-action urging listeners not only recognize but embrace our commonality as humans who feel deeply regardless sociopolitical divides—to build bridges instead connections understanding thereby enriching both individual lives broader community alike .
Practical Steps Towards Healing
Here are some actionable recommendations gleaned from Owen’s insights:
- Engage with Your Past: Reflect upon your losses; acknowledge them without judgment.
- Seek Supportive Communities: Whether through organizations like GRIM or local support groups—it helps share stories find solace together .
- Educate Yourself About Emotional Health: Awareness around mental health resources can empower you take charge your own healing journey .
Ultimately , while each person ‘s path through sorrow unique , embracing tools such as those provided by institutions like GRI offers hope transformation . As we learn more about effective ways handle emotion pain —and encourage others do same—we pave way healthier future all involved .
For anyone seeking further information assistance regarding methods discussed here please don’t hesitate reach out directly via email at [email protected] visit official websites mentioned above . Let ‘s walk together towards brighter tomorrow—one where every voice heard heart mended .
Episode Transcription:
Victoria Volk: Thank you for tuning in to this episode of grieving voices. Today, my guest is Ed Owens. And before I go on my own spiel. I’ll just have you introduce yourself since I don’t actually have an official bio for you. Okay. Thank you for being here.
Ed Owens: Oh, it’s it’s great to be here, Victoria. I’m super thrilled. I’m looking forward to doing this with you for a little while. And thank you for the invitation. So folks for all of you listening. Thanks for tuning in. Obviously, these podcasts can’t happen without those of you that come back and listened and and tune in and We appreciate you. So my name is Ed Owens. I’m currently the vice president of the grief recovery institute. Which is kind of primetime prepayment method.
Now that’s just my current stuff. My life has had before all this. I had absolutely nothing to do with emotions. Emotions were not something I was comfortable with and helping people with recent loss was, like, not even on my radar. Very briefly, I had a dual career going on for most of my life. I was in the US military and would eventually retire at almost twenty one years from the Air Force reserves. Talk about more about that if you like to later. And then on the civilian side, I was in law enforcement for twenty three. So York City County State and with the feds for twenty three years. So I had this dual career going on. I’ve got professional background education also except none of it prepared me in life for dealing with emotional pain, brief, drama, whatever Trevor you wanna use, it’s all the same folks. And Yeah. But my path will eventually lead me here. So I’m a trainer with the Institute. I work my way up to a vice president of the Institute, and that’s now what I get to do. I get a look at reading people. All of this planet. And I’m just thrilled to be here.
Victoria Volk: And I am so grateful for the Griffin Care Institute and for John James and this beautiful body of work that he’s created because it changed my life. And I am certified as an advanced grief recovery method specialist at the Early Recovery Institute. So thank you for your contribution as Vice President, which must have been living under a rock because I did not know that. You were the vice president. So congratulations on that appointment. And obviously, you’re amount of great service and much service. So what was the loss that brought you to grief recovery?
Ed Owens: Sure. That’s a great place to start. Like I said, like, this is not something I ever thought I’d be doing. Whether it was military, you know, law enforcement, either one. Those were not jobs where we embrace emotions.
Right? Emotions can actually get in the way of getting the mission done or, you know, doing whatever we have to do in that terrible moment where you’re called to help somebody. Right? That’s not the time to be processing or dealing with emotions. So both of my careers taught me to compartmentalize and I just got really good at it. Both of my careers taught me to compartmentalizing and stuffing down all of that. And I could focus on what was in front of me, whether that was get the mission done or that was a call or whatever. And that’s not to say that life wasn’t happening that whole time. Right? Like all of us, we experience an enormous amount of loss events in our life, changes in familiar patterns of behavior in our lives that don’t feel good. Like, we got a lot of conflicting feelings around it. Like everybody else, I’m not unique, but I put it all in a box. Right? Or I’m all in a box. And I just did what society taught us. Right? I used all the same tools that we all were taught. To try and deal with stuff, keep busy, you know, grieve alone, all that type of things. I did all of that stuff. Right? And there’s a bunch of other stuff I’m not proud of either. I mean, like, I got into the bottle a lot, you know, especially in the military. And all of those losses kept accumulating. But to answer your question, the loss that brought me to the final, like, it all worked until it didn’t work. I’m not saying it worked well, but it was all working and I was able to survive life right, until the death of my three year old son. And that loss his death broke open. I would say broke open Pandora’s box all the stuff that I had been trying to carry around forever. And I was completely over with with the death of the man. And again, it’s not about getting into the details or anything else, but nothing I’d ever done in my life worked. Everything came rushing forward at the same time.
You know, world spun out of control. It spilled out into every relationship in my life. It literally felt like I was drowning. Something’s going on. And everybody told me, Victoria, oh, it’s a life sentence of pain. You have to learn how to live your new normal Right? And you’re never going to get over it and you never go you know, you’re gonna have to learn how to live with this and survive for the rest of your life. And as somebody who, like, with my careers and everything else, like, we need, I have to just survive. Now that’s not you you figure out a way to deal with this. So I went on a mission for five years to stumble around. Always looking and everyone kept telling me, I’m not gonna find anything, you know, or on one hand. You’re just gonna have to deal with this pain. Or on the other hand, but if you tried this, if you tried this, if you tried this, if you thought about this, like and I’m like, hey, I haven’t done that. I’ll give it a shot. Nothing actually worked. I’d might feel better for a day, maybe a couple of days, but it didn’t do anything with the emotional pain that I was carrying. And one day, somebody suggested Have you ever heard of degrees of carbonate? Like, nope. What’s that? I mean, because, like, seriously, like, I I did all things. Doctors put me on pills, didn’t like them. I felt worse. I I felt the first time, like, that must be what feels like be close to being suicidal. I’m like, I’m not taking those anymore. I did alcohol and I’m the pain, you name, and I did it.
And all the other stuff. Well, so lo and behold, my nope. So I had lunch. But somebody who’s a grief scrubber med specialist named by Russell, years ago. I’m like, wow. This I’m like, what I heard. Went home, looked it up. Oh, there’s certification training coming up in ten days. Now, I had no intention of being a specialist. I’m like, but I wanna go through this and they talked about, well, yeah, you can just do the personal work. So I signed myself and my partner up for it. I’m like, if I’m going, you’re going, well, let’s just for you. It’s not for me. I don’t need that. I’m like, well, if I’m going here, Helen, you introduced me to this, you know.
She’s actually her mom who’s suspicious. In all transparency. That’s my partner. That’s not. You interviewed her a couple weeks ago, I think. So we went together. And it was the last thing that I ever tried and the first and only thing that ever worked. And it still works to this day. And I’ve been able to use that in all of the other lessons that I’ve dealt with in my life. Go back and deal with, complete, and finish what’s unfinished. Hence, never stop working.
Victoria Volk: What was your greatest aha in the method that just surprised you? When you first if you can think back to that time.
Ed Owens: Sure. I can’t. I can’t. I had a couple of two big ahas for me. Number one was the realization that my son’s life and death top me more than I would have ever taught him as a dad. Wow. And so that was super powerful. That awareness. And the feeling. Right? Just the feeling around even his his life was a gift. And as painful as his death was, it was a gift in my life as well. And most people would be like, oh my god. How could someone say that? About the death of the child.
And I’m like, I can’t say that because it’s allowed me to become a better his example to me and what he taught me and what I’ve learned through this whole thing has allowed me to be a better dad to my opportunity. That’s allowed me to be a better human being and to show up in the world differently. And I attribute that all to that experience coupled with the method guiding me through it. The other thing was after he died, I had a lot of misplaced feelings of responsibility. Right? I was beating myself up. Like, I didn’t think I want the military at the top. I didn’t keep my son safe. I failed to protect him. I’m not much of a man. I’m not much of a dead. I’m not being all the things, right, that I was beating myself up around. And going through the process, you know, without giving it away to all of our listeners who haven’t been there yet. But part of it is we’ve taken honest, really raw, deep, honest, and mostly look at that relationship between our And when we’re doing that, we if anything pops in our mind or on our heart more importantly, right? We we included. And I had this memory, and I didn’t know what it was about, but I was able to discover what it was about. The memory was rocking my son. Every night, I had rock hit me in our rocking chair before I put him to bed and stuff. And he would look up at me and I’d see myself reflected in his eyes. And it was just it was one of my favorite memories when it looks like one of our favorite little routines that ended. And I always blamed myself. Right? I would really I mean, that was the worst of it. It was, like, all of the things that we should have been better or different, or if I could go back and change this x y z, this, you know, all that stuff, like, in the y’s okay. But to realize, Ryan only looked at me with love and aberration and, you know, and he looked at me with unconditional. And I didn’t believe after he died that I was worthy of love. I was worthy of committing. And so to realize that I am the man that I saw reflected in my son’s thoughts. That I am, that person and dad that, you know, that I can accept love. Love for myself and love for others. That was huge.
Victoria Volk: What do you think is the state of I I listened to a podcast recently that was all about the state of men in boys today. Talking it went from suicidal rates. It went from talking about the importance of marriage. For men talked about, like, even divorce, for example, is huge for a man because if And if they’re not in a relationship or they’re not committed with somebody, and they’re not a father, what’s their place? Right? And so the whole podcast was talking about these different aspects of of, well, why is the suicide rate becoming so high among men? And how can we address these various topics? And talking about like the, you know, the empowerment of women and how so many women went from depending, right, on financially and economically on their a counterpart and to support them. And how that has shifted and changed and the impact and the ripples that has had on men in our society today. And so I’m just curious If you can speak as a man, just speak to what your thoughts are on on all of on I know you haven’t listened to the pod. Maybe I should’ve sent it to you beforehand. I didn’t I just thought of that now. I should’ve sent it to you beforehand. I’ll send it to you after and I’ll link it to you. Yeah. Because I think it’s an excellent episode I’m not even sure why I listened to it, but it really had me thinking about all of this. Anyway, what are your thoughts on The state of men and boys today?
Ed Owens: Yeah, that’s a complex issue. We could spend definitely more than an hour on that. Just alone, but high level thoughts. Right? Let’s walk it backwards.
Right, from that place where there’s so much suicide. And that’s and that’s an issue across the board, right, especially in western cultures. It’s a massive issue. Right? And everything we’ve ever been doing to try and prevent suicide, it’s a little wind here and there, but we are not stopping the trajectory. Like, every we need to do something different. Vote can’t keep doubling and tripling down and putting more resources into approaches that have not changed where the trajectory of this issue. One of those things is people get to a certain point, generally get to your point. But I think we need to walk it from that. The point where everyone is aware to how did we get here? There’s a quote from the Veterans Administration at least years years ago what veterans is. I don’t choose suicide because I won’t hurt anyone. I choose suicide because I don’t know what to do with the pain. And that is a really, I think, an important way for us to frame how do we deal with this issue of suicide regardless of the reason. These people get to a point where they are so overwhelmed. They’ve carried so much stuff they’ve put into their little backpacks, their little emotional storage tanks. Everything they’ve tried doesn’t work. And it’s something, you know, people who are hurting lack the courage to wanna feel better. They don’t. They’re always trying. Even if it’s not a smart choice, they’re still trying to do something. But they’re adding tools. So the first place to really deal with this right away fast is how can we get more people the right tools that will help them have another option that doesn’t include taking their life. Because we it’s gonna be a harder thing. They’re both hard thing. Like, teaching people these tools and helping them to trust them is is a hard sell. And the bigger societal issue. Let’s walk it back. Let’s talk about it from a guy’s perspective. At least from my perspective. And yet, this is I’m one person. Right? I’m one person. There are what? I don’t know how many billions of guys on the planet. So, like, there’s gonna be other people who agree with me. There’ll be people who don’t agree with me, but this just my take on it. Right? There’s a lot of mixed messaging that’s out there in the world. There’s a lot of messaging that says to be male is to is toxic.
Right?
Victoria Volk: Podcasts even mentioned that, even that phrase alone toxic masculinity. Is Right. A terrible phrase.
Ed Owens: Right. It it is a terrible phrase. I’d say whoever created it it was evil of their intention to create that phrase. Again, we’re putting a very negative label on a half of the population of the species and saying that if you are male, you have this and therefore you are bad. Well, that message will be internalized. Like, if we introduce the younger we introduce that concept to little people, Right? That becomes part of their belief system. Who’s the greatest authority on the planet folks when we’re five years old? Mom and dad And if mom or dad well, if you know, whoever it is or society or their teacher or whoever, says, oh my god. Little Johnny, you’re a male. Nails are toxic. Nails are abusive. Nails are you know, mail energy is bad, bad, bad, bad, I mean, he’s going to believe it because he’ll take it in at a hundred percent true. And now you’ve been seeing they’re creating a situation, whether it’s Johnny or Susie who’s being told this. Johnny’s internalizing, oh, I’m that person. And Susie is internalizing and believing that Johnny’s a bad person Right? We gotta knock off the labels folks. You know, it it there’s a lot of other terms. But for this, but again, when we teach children very, very damaging concepts. At a super young age, they internalize it and believe it is a hundred percent true. I’m not surprised that the marriage rates down. I’m not surprised that all these things I mean, there’s a lot of issues. Again, like, we can spend hours on this stuff one of my degrees is is behavioral science. So, again, like, we could spend a lot of time.
Victoria Volk: Part two,
Ed Owens: Sure. Sure. But we have created a dynamic where marriage is no longer or even, like, seriously committed relationships. Like, it’s it’s not the thing. It, like, that concept is dying. In granted, societies have all been changing, maybe that’s what’s necessary. I don’t know. That’s not for me to judge. But what we do have is a lot of single parent helps. Right? For one reason or another. And there’s so much research that what is needed to help in a healthy way develop a young person’s life, trajectories, balance, all of these types of things. This is by part two. Like, part one is we’re teaching all these young people that half of the species is bad because they happen to be a male. Right? And then the other part of all this is we have and again, there’s a lot of research on this. The lack of both energies the lack of a male and female energy. Right? In in the upbringing of a child, Right? And in particular, there’s a lot of research around them. It’s the lack of a male and in certain minority populations and those types of things. The lack of that is detrimental, physically, socially life choices that you know, on criminal crime, like, the lack of that presence in a young child’s life is almost like we’re sentencing down to have a bad life of the future. And again, like, I’m not I’m not playing a finger. I’m not saying anybody’s bad at all. I’m gonna say, like, there’s any of research on this. We need to have you know, let’s say, like, it takes a whole village to reach out. Right? So, but in a whole village, it’s like there’s a lot of males and females that become positive, hopefully positive role models and examples of these sort of lives. And if we don’t have that, and we only get one half of this of the situation, of the story, or the whatever. Right? It’s not balanced. And depending on what that messaging is, you keep it toxic.
Victoria Volk: And I think as young boys in particular, would you say, and even girls, or however you identify yourself,
Ed Owens: Mhmm. If
Victoria Volk: you don’t feel that connection in community within your own environment, you’re gonna look for it somewhere. You’re gonna look for acceptance somewhere. And and vlogging somewhere
Ed Owens: Correct.
Victoria Volk: Might not be the most healthy environment conducive of someone choosing healthier choices for themselves.
Ed Owens: Right. Absolutely. I hundred percent agree with all that. And all of this mixed messaging, all these different things. The bottom line is it puts boys and girls and and women in conflict with their own human nature.
And then we could like, hey. This is the top of where you explore over. But the bottom line is is when there’s mixed messaging, there’s mix. It’s like, I’m not for anyone listening to this. Like, I am not an advocate that any one gender or the other is better than the other. I’m not an advocate that either one can or cannot do this or that. I’m not that I have one hundred percent that what is it you wanna do with your life? Alright. Let’s do it. Because we are all capable of amazing things where we are empowered, encouraged, nurtured, and loved on that path.
Absolutely. But just like empowering a young person and loving them and encouraging them and helping them can achieve great results, teaching them that this is bad, and that is wrong. All of those type of things. Like in a toxic way. And again, I’m not meaning to use that term a lot, but what we do on this topic is toxic.
It’s damaging. It’s very destructive. And a lot of people are in conflict with their own human nature on it because of the mixed messaging. They don’t know what’s true. They they’re trying to they try and force themselves to fit into a box.
The problem is that box is always changing. That that labels always change That dynamic is always changing. If you can’t go, I don’t know, a couple of months or you can’t go a month without there being something being changed. You know, or this is the new term. Stop using term spoke. Stop using label. Right? And we have to have an honest conversation that presents both sides. I used to one thing I’ve learned over the years in my career examples. There’s two sides to every story.
But the truth is always in the middle. No side when you talk to two people. No side is truth is a hundred percent. They have their their stake, their biases, their beliefs, and everything else. The truth is always in the middle. And we need to figure out where that is and that takes both sides working together to figure out what that is.
Victoria Volk: I hundred percent agree. But, you know, as we come to a conversation, we’re always going to think that our what is what we believe is the truth. Right? We perceive it as truth based on, to your point, our personal life experience.
Ed Owens: Yep. And our belief systems.
Victoria Volk: And our belief systems.
Ed Owens: Yeah. We’re responsible. Yeah. And again, like, we’re doing some some deep waters here and you can edit this out if you like. But I think that this is also part of the bigger issue we’re facing, you know, here in the United States and around a little. Like, we are so incredibly divided. And again, I’m not saying one opinion is different than another opinion. I’m not saying one’s right or wrong, one’s better than the other or less than the other. Right? I’m not saying that. What I’m saying is, we are so incredibly divided, right, across the spectrum. And for me, that’s worrisome. I mean, as a student of history, I love history and everything else, when people are divided, then they start to you know, minimize and demonize and attack each other. Right? I don’t care. I’m not picking size on anything, but when we when we do that and we see the we see the other people as less than worthy of us or that like, they’re the bad people that allows us to then dehumanize the other side. Decrease in us versus them mentality. And folks, all you gotta do is look at history anytime it’s in us versus them mentality. Similarly that results in silence, unrest, wars. Right?
Victoria Volk: It happens it happens on a micro scale in our in house Absolutely. Within family units. Is this on a bigger stage?
Ed Owens: It is. It is.
Victoria Volk: It’s just a bigger stage.
Ed Owens: But that bigger stage is also making it harder for the individuals within their own families. Exactly. Right? Because there’s so many I mean, there’s been a lot of issues that have happened in the last five years. And then we don’t need to get into the pandemic for detail.
We don’t need to get into all the stuff that’s going on. Right? Again, I’m I’m not wanting to get into different issues. I’m trying people to see the bigger picture. So, ma’am, Right?
And that bigger picture is, you know, we have, like, almost eight billion people on this planet and all eight billion of those people have their own individual unique belief systems, and people believe different things. And even if we kinda I agree with you that this is a good concept, I’m still gonna have different ways I why I think that’s a good concept. Like, we can’t even all agree on the same thing all the time. And these bigger issues are they’ve we don’t live in a vacuum. In your household or mine, like, we don’t live in a vacuum. It’s not close the doors. And our little world is kumbaya and, you know, It’s nothing but rainbows and unicorns. It is not the way this works. Right? Everything that we’re impacted by all the stuff we see over here and that comes into our family, it comes into our relationships with our friends and our neighbors, our communities, And when we’re looking at the other person and all this stuff is magnifying, you know, all of what’s going on, Of course, it it does impact those individual relationships, the ability to form close intimate bonds and form a partnership, whatever that partnership is. Again, marriage oh, there’s a million terms for all that stuff. Right? But it interferes with it. And it increases us versus them mentality, which creates more division. The more divided we are folks the more by the way, I’ll say that’s pretty lonely and isolated. But the more divided we become, the more conflict we will continue to experience. We’ve got to get to a point where we don’t see other people, in our own household, in our own family, in own neighborhood, and community, we have to get to a point where we see people consuming things. And all of us as human beings experience sweet, joyful, and wonderful things in whats. And all of us assume names, experience, pain, loss, or whatever term you wanna call it, grief, trauma, I think, again, is it? It’s pain. If it’s emotionally painful, right, or emotionally joyful, we all can do this us. What make that’s the one thing I fully believe about her that connects us as a human species. Is our capacity to feel emotions and to feel the outcome when things don’t turn out the way we hope to predict. And if we could see each other as another human having human experiences who’s also earning, we don’t have to agree. We don’t have to agree with their their all things would agree with their societal issues. We don’t have to agree with their belief systems. But if we can recognize that people are humans within we’re emotional beings. We have the capacity for this. And we can try and figure out how to connect at that level, and then I think there’s hope. There’s more of that color.
Victoria Volk: I think there’s one question that people could be asked that would unlock so much for people. And it’s when you’re disagreeing with someone or you’re finding yourself in conflict with someone asking them, what happened to
Ed Owens: you? Yeah.
Victoria Volk: I think it’s simple question that when we go to the doctor and we have the aches and pains and you and I both know it’s probably grief and trauma manifest staying in the body oftentimes and the doctor never asks, well, what happened to you in your life? No. And I think when we’re finding ourselves, feeling activated about something emotionally and feeling ourselves, I hate the word triggered, but activated. Right? If someone were to ask you, what happened to you? What makes you believe that to be true? Well, that opens the door for compassion and understanding and listening and all those things that build and deep in connection. And I think that’s one of the things you’re alluding to is that we’ve lost the ability to connect Yes. Why have we lost the ability connect? And one thing I say oftentimes, I’ve said so many times on this podcast, is that we can only listen to others and be there for others to the capacity and to the depth that we’ve allowed ourselves to go.
Ed Owens: Maybe.
Victoria Volk: And I think what I love for the world to be grief recovery. I’m gonna make that a new word. The world would be a totally different place if it was all grief recovery. It’s grief recovery, the world. And Mhmm. You know, I think that by sweeping our own doorstep is where we can start in our in homes, in our own homes, within our own communities. Is we’re not projectile vomiting all of our stuff, I think, on other people.
Ed Owens: A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Like, I can’t control the events of leaders all over the planet making choices Right? I can’t control that. You can’t control that. People listening to this podcast cannot control that, and it but it impacts us.
Victoria Volk: Mhmm.
Ed Owens: Right? We feel this very intensely. And so you’re a hundred percent correct. What we need to do is first individually make sure you call it, make sure your ports are swept. Right? I say we need to emotionally increase our capacity which means we need to emotionally get rid of things we’re carrying with this that no longer serve as well. Right? If it hey. If the pain you’re carrying for the last twenty years is serving me well, right. You can keep it. But if If it’s not helping, where it’s from spend my experience, it doesn’t help over time. Then let’s let’s emotionally get rid of some of that stuff. If it’s not serving your higher purpose, if it’s not serving your life well, if it’s not serving your relationships well, if it’s not serving you anymore, by keeping it. And if we get rid of that, then I have an increased emotional capacity now to be able to better be there for the people in my life. And whether that’s as a role model, as an example, I mean, I can’t count how many times, but I’m sure you’ve seen this too. Right? Where people say, god, you know, my this person in my family or my friends, like, after going through these these tools you teach, people have noticed the change in me. Like, this is very common because once you deal with this stuff and you have an increased capacity to better show up more fully in life, to be a better version of you, other people see it and ripples in a positive way. Wife. And that is, to your point, when we start with us, it ripples out into others. First, our little close nuclear family and friends and then it goes bigger and bigger. And again, that increased capacity that we have to better be there for others that allows us to make a difference in our communities versus I’m stuck with all these picky things that don’t feel good good. And the last thing I wanna do is get out into my community and do anything. I’m a little bit of work. I’m like, I’m home. I’m exhausted. Everything in life is a chore, a struggle. I just gotta get the day. And tomorrow is gonna be groundhog day. Or, again, we’re gonna repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Right? But that is not a life folks. That is not how you are designed to live. And if you find yourself in a situation where your life is about getting through the work day, getting through the things you have to do every day, being exhausted all the time, getting up and doing it again. If that’s your life, My heart aches free because we’re not supposed to be there. We are by design here to love other people and be loved in return. We are here to trust other people and be trusted in return. To human nature, We are here to form connections with other human beings and to have those connections be a source of positive love can, you know, part of a life. But what you’ve been experienced at this point is keeping you from experiencing life that way. You’re not living a life in line with your human nature. That’s not what for you.
Victoria Volk: As kids, toddlers even were taught cause and effect. Right? Oh, touch the oven, you get a burn. Right? Don’t do that again. You learn the first time not to do not to touch the stove.
Ed Owens: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: And it’s like, We have to understand that our words matter, our actions matter, that there’s a cause and effect.
Ed Owens: Yep.
Victoria Volk: And we can either be have a positive influence on the effect or we can contribute to the negative energy
Ed Owens: Yeah. Of Perfect. Yeah. Yep. And we also need to sit there when I understand that whatever choices that I make, or you make, or anyone listening to this, you know, we’re always a choice. I tell people all the time. You’re always a choice. Every day, you’re making thousands of choices. Mhmm. Right?
You’re always a choice. And that’s a good thing and a bad thing. It’s a sweet thing and a sour thing. Right? You can make a good choice. It has a good alpha. You can make a choice that maybe is not necessarily the best choice. And you’re getting less than an outcome. That’s ideal. And sometimes you make choices that can hurt other people. And again, like, there’s a whole loving myself, loving other conversation we could talk about too. But we have to also get to a point and I think there’s a lot of this missing in our society too. People willing to take ownership and responsibility for the choices that they make that might might be hurtful to another person. Again, I’m not saying that everybody makes choices whether it’s to have healthy boundaries in life, whether it’s not a good relationship. I need to get out of it. I mean, that’s gonna hurt. We all make choices that are the right choice to make But even when we make that right choice, we also have to folks be willing to take ownership and responsibility that I made that choice. Right? It’s not old. They made me do this. Mhmm. Now I chose this because I love myself enough to make this choice and not a but but an and I recognize that this choice Right? I have some ownership responsibility for how this is painful. Okay? I mean, it’s both things. That’s just one of the other folks. Otherwise, again, it’s us versus them. It’s we’re, you know, we’re playing this one up one down game all the time. And if more people would be willing to take some ownership or responsibility, even when I make a choice that’s painful and it’s hurtful, where it’s gonna cause knee pain, or other people pain, or my children pain, or something else, even when it’s a loving and correct choice, like getting out of bed waste. Change that example. You mentioned divorce earlier and not this whole concept. Even when that’s the right choice, we have to take ownership responsibility when we make that choice.
Victoria Volk: I know our time is winding down, but I really do want to give you the floor of the mic, so to speak, about something you and I both passionate about because I’m a veteran too, about the work that you are doing with veterans and the importance of grief recovery. Just in case anyone with some poll happens to listen to this.
Ed Owens: Right.
Victoria Volk: Well, you and I have both individually been working to do me on a local level, which is you know, door slamming in my face, but the importance of trying to bring grief recovery to the veteran community. And I would just love you to share what you’ve been working to do, what grief recovery institute has been working to do, and and where things are standing in there.
Ed Owens: So take a step back. So John was a big non veteran. So the first thing I wanted to hear is this whole thing was created by an old Vietnam combat vet. Right? So if you’re military and everything else and you’re thinking like, oh, I don’t know about this thing. You know, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. This was created by John with that was his background. He was also created from a place of he was hurting. He was emotional overwhelmed. He was about to take he contemplates taking his own life. And he wanted to find a different choice. Right? And I think that’s important about this military conversation. Is that this whole thing was created by a guy who was hurting, who wanted to have a different choice. Than what so many of his brothers and sisters would do. Alright. So that’s where we start with this. And the entire history, the grief recovery method, the grief recovery institute, we’ve been working with veterans and trying to work with veterans and trying to get this in front of them. The last eight years, take ten years, you know, we’ve had a lot of great inroads. Like, we’ve always done some good stuff with the military. Don’t get any wrong. But we’ve trained a few hundred, you know, chaplains and social workers and people within the military branches. Air Force and Army primarily, few navy, national guard, active duty, hand reserves, So we’ve been really fortunate to make some really positive inroads within the Department of Defense. We also made a lot of positive inroads and continue to train I would say, almost monthly people from the Veterans Administration across the country. And in the course, there’s different Veterans organizations we partner with and then train specialist with those organizations. And that’s all great. And we’ve made a lot of positive inroads. And so getting these tools and skills into the hands of veterans so that they have them to to use an easy aspect to rely on whether it’s a military service or whether it’s a personal relationships, which, by the way, the personal relationships is a high divorce rate and high alcoholism and all those other things. That is the behavioral outcomes and choices made because they’re hurt. When I hear people are going through all of these things, like you mentioned earlier, my mind and my understanding of things is what has happened. Right? I know that that going on is not happening in the vacuum. So that’s where we’ve really tried to do a lot of this. And there’s a lot of specialists like yourself. And others, right, who are either veterans or they’re not veterans, but they love working with veterans because their partners are veteran, or their dad and my dad’s or We gotta take our wins where we can get them. One here, one there, that type of thing. But I will tell you from the Institute’s perspective, we have trained. And in the last, I would say, eight years, a lot of specialists that are out there doing the work. Inside the military community and on a military basis. And we’ve had folks who in the military, who’ve taken a down range for those of you that don’t know what that term is, that means forward to pull out. Right? To hotspots. You know, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Middle East, still. There’s one maybe specialist that I know who was an advanced specialist like yourself, the word virtually. Doing things with the ships of fleet. Alright. So and doing what to what? So again, like, we’re slowly getting this more acceptable within the culture, military culture. And like anything else, it takes a long time to change the culture to any organization. Organizational behavioral changes challenging. Howard Bauchner:
Victoria Volk: And it’s not just veterans too. I mean, grief recoveries, kinda trick is starting to trickle into prisons and Yeah. First responders.
Ed Owens: Correct.
Victoria Volk: Wow.
Ed Owens: Correct. You know, we’ve got a write me a specialist working in all of those clinics, and jets, and hospitals, and senior centers. Stepary religious or spiritual type of group you can imagine. I mean, it’s going It’s very heartwarming to know that we have expanded into so many different parts of our society that historically we’re just not there. And we still have a lot of work to do. I mean, I still have people who tell me all the time when I talk to them, like, oh, well, what’s the roof cover method? I mean, again, it’s, you know, it’s We’ve been around for over forty five years, and that doesn’t mean that people know who we exist.
Victoria Volk: Exactly. Yep.
Ed Owens: And, you know, doing podcast like this helps to help raise that awareness. If you’re listening to the spokes and you’ve not had a chance, please you know, go to Victoria’s website, read up on some of this stuff. Go with every method, you know, dot com. And you can read it on stuff. The more that we become aware, that there’s other information, other tools, other skills. There’s things that we can do to educate ourselves and then make a choice. And we’re always a choice. Right? And I hope you choose to at least start learning more. And if it feels right, I always tell people all the time, folks you got to trust your intuition.
If your intuition says this feels right, I wanna keep looking. I wanna keep I wanna know more. And if your intuition says, now this is for me, then great. I wish you well, and thanks for at least being open for a moment to take a look at something. The more people can become aware of it, the more people that at least know there is something else, the more we can help. And by the way, we don’t just help adults. We help children. Getting back to this whole conversation, like, we were talking about earlier, like, folks we’ve got to do a better job. As adults, as positive male, and female both in the in the children’s lives whether that’s your family, your nuclear family, whether that’s your extended family, like we have to have be the positive role models. We have tools for you too so that you can teach them to children versus teaching them things which may or may not be the most helpful to them. Let’s create the confusing. Let’s create the issues. Let’s create a lifetime. I’ll try and struggle with it. Figure out what they’re they’re confident with their human nature. So we have those tools too. So, like, we do a lot of different stuff. And I would encourage you to at least pause and be curious. I think I wanna learn a little bit more about this. You know, that’s a great place to start. And then from there, folks you can talk to people like Victoria, you know, get on our calendar. Say, hey, tell me no, then let us have an opportunity to have a heartfelt conversation.
Victoria Volk: And I would add, what do you have to lose? Because like you said earlier, it’s what you’ve been doing probably isn’t working. Probably has been working for a long time. And that was me too, over thirty years. Right?
Like, I got this. I can DIY my my emotional trauma.
Ed Owens: Yeah. Right. I’m getting your again, I say that to people all time. Like, hey, look, if you like how your life feels, and you like how everything is and this is all good and it’s working for you? Okay. Cool. You can keep it? But the problem is most of the time when I’m talking to people, they aren’t happy. They don’t feel like they’re living as fully as they could be. They’re tired of feelings alone and isolated or sad or those days come around the calendar and it’s just ruins the week.
I mean
Victoria Volk: It’s like you said, surviving. It’s you can either survive or you can Thrive. Right?
Ed Owens: Right. It’s choice. Remember? See, there’s a theme here. It’s choice.
People can choose. You can choose to live your life in a survival mode, or you can choose to not let the experiences that we’ve had in our lives define us. Of course, we learn things from. Of course, we can learn. We can grow, we can become different people because of the experiences and the losses and the events in our lives would shape us. But folks, they are chapters in your life. They are not your life. And it doesn’t mean that whatever you’ve been through in your life is now the story of your life. You are a choice. You can choose how to write your own storing.
You cannot choose and control the events that take place in your life that impact you, you’re human. But you can choose how you show up after these things happen in reaction to what happened. It’s a choice to deal with the pain of whatever’s going on in your life or deal by the way, embrace and lean into the joy and happiness, it works both way. It’s a choice. Some people choose not to embrace and lean into joy and happiness and connection because they choose to isolate. That’s a choice. That’s a heart brain. Choice. Right? When I see that happening? But again, there’s a choice. We oops. How do you wanna show up? What do you wanna do?
Victoria Volk: The phrase that got me, I think, that resonated with me the most, was have the courage to take a chance to make a change.
Ed Owens: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: And it does take courage.
Ed Owens: It does. And people who are hurting their lack of courage, they just don’t know which choices they got. And again, we can only make the choices, but we can only, you know, choose what to do based on what I know. And I can only use the tools of information to make choices whether they’re good choices or not until I learn better skills and tools so I can make a better choice. Again, this whole thing boils down to that. If you like the way the tools are working great, if you don’t like the way they’re working, Let’s show you some other things that you didn’t know before, or maybe you’d heard, like, a piece of this here, a piece of that there, but we didn’t put them together. In a way that’s like, god. Why didn’t I think of that? You know?
Victoria Volk: That’s what I think about grief recovery is, why didn’t I think of that?
Ed Owens: Exactly. Right? So, yeah, we do the best we can. And this isn’t a judgment folks. All of you have been doing the best you can to navigate life with what you were taught up to this point. And that is not a judgment, right, at all. I just wanna give all of you just a big hug. And and because you’re listening to this, you’re curious about the potential tools and options. And things that you can make different choices with. And I applaud you for that. It’s because when you learn other information skills, tools, You can make different choices. You can have a different outcome. And or not, it’s choice. You can choose to be right and hold on to painful things that have happened in your life, or you could choose to be happy to join in type one. I hope you pick happiness. I hope you pick joy. I hope you pick connection, love. That’s what I would pick.
Victoria Volk: Beautiful way to wrap this up. I want to have I would love to have I desire to have a part two, possibly. I think after you listen to that episode, I’ll share it in the show notes like I said. Link your Great Recovery Institute also in the show notes and my information where people can find me as well. But where can people find me if they’re just listening to this where they can connect with you?
Ed Owens: So if you wanna connect with me, the easiest way is if you wanna put my email address in show notes. It’s n o ones, one word, at grief recovery method dot com. You can also go to brief for perry method dot com and go to the about us page. You’ll see about me. I also have a micro website on the on there. If you wanna just click my micro website, that allows you folks to send me a direct email message a calendar link to jump on my calendar if you wanna have a conversation. Love to talk to you about whatever news you wanna talk about, and you can read more about me that way.
Victoria Volk: And if you’re listening to this and you work with first responders or you’re in charge of first responder department or police department or EMS or veterans organization or hospice or anything like that and you want to bring grief recovery into your facility and organization and community. Mhmm. Ed’s your guy. Please reach out to him.
Ed Owens: I would love I would love to have a conversation with him if the audience who would like that. That’s conversation.
Victoria Volk: Yeah. The more people we get certified in this, the farther this can spread and I think that’s the goal here. So thank you so much for being my guest.
Ed Owens: It’s been an honor. I really appreciate the invitation. I look forward to part two. And for all of you that were listening. Thanks for tuning in.
Thanks for watching tuning in. See you next.
Victoria Volk: And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.
Grieving Voices Guest, Grieving Voices Podcast, Podcast, season 5 |
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
Uncover the Power of Healing and Transformation
In the latest episode of Grieving Voices, I had the pleasure to chat with Dawn Michele Jackson, a multifaceted professional and best-selling author who is passionate about guiding people from pain to joy after loss.
Dawn opened up about her personal journey through grief following a tough divorce at 30. She shared how she discovered the grief recovery method that revolutionized her life, allowing her to view past events not as setbacks but as stepping stones towards self-discovery and growth.
She delved into how unresolved grief can create barriers in all relationships and discussed how these tools helped her become more present for herself and her children. Dawn also recounted leaving nursing during the pandemic to focus on emotional healing, which led to writing books and facilitating retreats aimed at helping others heal their hearts.
For those feeling stuck in their grieving process or curious about transformative personal development opportunities – this episode is a must-listen!
Tune in now for an inspiring story of resilience, hope, and finding joy amidst life’s challenges. Don’t forget – your heart holds the key to unlocking a fulfilling life beyond grief!
Episode Transcription:
Victoria Volk: Welcome. Welcome to another episode of grieving voices. Thank you for tuning in. Today, my guest is Dawn Michele Jackson. She is an advanced grief recovery method specialist, an infinite possibilities trainer, women’s retreat facilitator, nurse, and an Amazon best selling author. And her primary focus is to guide individuals through healing their hearts transforming their lives and rediscovering joy. She is driven by her profound mission and is dedicated to helping individuals uncover their inner light and shift from surviving to thriving. With her nurturing approach, she skillfully supports her clients in healing their hearts and achieving mind, body, and spirit wellness. Thank you so much for being my guests today, and It’s nice to have a fellow advanced brief recovery method specialist on my podcast. It’s been a while.
Dawn Jackson: Thank you, Victoria. I’m happy to be here this morning.
Victoria Volk: Both of us have the same mission, helping people heal their hearts, that we know it’s possible regardless of what you’ve been through. And today, you’re here to share your personal story of going through a divorce. But there’s always more than that. Right? Because grief is cumulative and cumulatively negative as you and I both know.
But let’s start there. What brought you to grief recovery?
Dawn Jackson: So what brought me to grief recovery is I had done after my divorce at the age of thirty. My world kind of fell apart. You know, I had that white picket fence dream, and it was shattered. And I had a three and a half year old son. I didn’t really know how to move forward. So I realized that I could choose two things. I could continue to be angry about my husband decided he wanted a divorce or I could choose to heal and move forward. So I had done all kinds of workshops and retreats, you know, to try and heal the things that were hurting me. And not all of them provided a little bit of relief. None of them helped me feel completely better to the point of moving forward in a direction that I felt like I was thriving. And then I came across the grief recovery method. My mom had done the program and become a specialist and she referred me and my significant other to the method and he actually signed me up And at the time he did, I said to him. And I always laugh about this. I don’t have any grief. Because in my mind, grief was about death. Right? And I had lost a grandparent, but I didn’t have anybody else really close that had died. So that’s kind of the joke because I quickly learned within the first hour of the training that I was suffering a great deal of grief from things that it happened for my entire life. So my divorce is one of the first relationship I decided to work on and heal because I knew that to be, you know, an effective parent, I needed to you know, let go of some of the pain that was keeping me stuck.
Victoria Volk: And did you say your significant your husband at the time signed you up?
Dawn Jackson: No. My said no. So my husband I were divorced, but my son Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah.
Victoria Volk: Okay. And how has that relationship changed and shifted since you’ve gone through this method because you share a child, right? You still have to have some communication, I imagine, and
Dawn Jackson: So our son is now an adult and he’s twenty six years old. So I guess what changed for me is that I began to see our divorce is really a gift in my life because when we got divorced, I didn’t know who I was. I was a mom, I was a nurse, and I was a wife, but I had put so much focus on all of those that I didn’t really even know what I like to do, you know, for, you know, extracurricular activities. So for me, It helped me find myself again. My husband leaving was my catalyst for healing finding my authentic self, being able to create the life that I wanted. And at some point, I was able to go back to him and just be instead of angry, I found this peace inside and actually so much gratitude for him, for our marriage, for our child having a child together and for the divorce. And so I think that it’s allowed us to have a healthy relationship and I see that he also has a lot of gratitude for me. So I think that me changing, me healing, you know, has made it comfortable circle so that we can have a good relationship. And while we rarely talk to each other since our child is now an adult, during those years when he was growing up, it really helped us navigate our relationship smoother.
Victoria Volk: For those listening that this might be the first episode they stumble upon and maybe you’re hearing about grief recovery for the first time because I try and talk about it a lot through my episodes, but can you just share a little bit about what grief recovery is in your perspective? And, yeah, Yeah.
Dawn Jackson: So a great recovery is it’s an evidence based tool to help people move from a place of pain and just barely surviving to actually some recovery, which means being able to while you still have the memories associated with some type of loss in your life, you can move forward with the good memories versus having the pain in your heart that you continue to carry forward in everything you do because all the pain leaves us at a disadvantage in all of our relationships because we bring it forward. It’s kind of like if we can all think about our first love way back when probably we were a teenager. And our heart was completely open with that person. And then we got because most of us are not with our first love. So you get hurt. And then the next relationship you go into, your heart is a little less open. So that a closed heart creates problems in the relationship because we don’t show up in the same way. And then we have another person who’s had past relationships and their hearts a little bit close too. So by going through the act and the tools of the grief recovery method, we’re able to let go of some of that stuff that we’re holding on to that keeps us from being able to have the types of relationships and really the life that we dream about.
Victoria Volk: I say too, like for me personally going through grief recovery myself, it really made me a much more present and emotionally evolved parent I would say, like, I a better version of myself as a parent, I think, came as a result of going through grief recovery, would you agree that that was your experience too?
Dawn Jackson: Oh, I would totally agree. Because there was so much stuff that was kind of keeping me stuck, holding me back from being the best version of myself. That once I was able to do so much healing, I was able to show up in different ways for my child that I hadn’t been able to in the past. I mean, I remember right after my divorce for, like, months. I had a hard time just getting through each day. It was like, I knew I had to get up. I knew I had to take care of my child. But I was always looking forward to when do I get to go to sleep. I know I had nothing to do with my child. I just was so stuck in the grief of I failed marriage and feeling like I was a failure that I didn’t know how to navigate you know, being a single parent and I thought that he wasn’t in the picture. He was always in the picture. But just, you know, day to day not having him in the house anymore. And just navigating, you know, everything with my child without another person, you know, around was very difficult for me. So it took quite some time for me to figure out how to take steps in my life. To move forward and how to find that happiness again.
Victoria Volk: When you’re first going through the divorce in your relationship with your spouse at the time? Did you have a lot of your own friendships outside of the marriage? Like, girlfriends and things? Or was it where most of your friends, like, shared friends with him? And I what I hear a lot from women who have experienced divorce that come on my podcast, it’s, you know, it’s like you have your your together friends. And then when that relationship falls, you know, comes apart and you divorce, you lose a lot of people. In your list because of it? And was that your experience as well?
Dawn Jackson: So our closest friends were a couple that we hung out with all the time. So that was very, very difficult. And in fact, she was the one that I talked to almost every night, you know, crying wishing that something would change, wishing that he would change his mind, that we could stay together. And I know that was very difficult for her as well because we couldn’t do all those couple things together. So it was a loss for all four of us. Right? And then later they ended up divorced as well. So, you know, it was heartbreaking really because we were also close. We’d go on trips together and spend weekends together or kids were the same age, so they grew up together. So yes, I can relate to that. Luckily, since I was a nurse, I had lots of friends at work, and they really picked me up. And I remember they said, okay, well, we’re gonna go hiking this weekend, and I said, oh, I can’t do that. How long how far are you gonna go? Oh, five miles? Oh, I can’t do that. And the joke is we decided to go on the hike. I agreed And, like, I was way ahead of them on the trail, and so they remind me of that to this day, but it was really those friends that were able to help me get through the time because they could see how sad I was and, you know, that I just didn’t know what to do with my life, having lost. One of the most important people in my life.
Victoria Volk: You’d mentioned that your mom had gone through the method herself did she become certified as well?
Dawn Jackson: She did. Mainly, she did it for herself. She didn’t end up, you know, working with clients or anything, but she definitely gained a lot from the experience. So she was the one, the proponent of, you know, me going and checking out the program, seeing how it would help me because it had created such a change in her life.
Victoria Volk: And what drew her to to the method?
Dawn Jackson: I think, you know, just stuff from her past, from her childhood, that she and I don’t remember how she found it, but she just wanted to feel different. She just wanted to feel better. And you know, she I always grew up with dogs, two golden retrievers, and she’d lost so many of them, you know, by the time I became an adult. And that was just heartbreaking for her. So I think that was another reason that attracted her to the grief recovery method because she just wanted to find some peace and ability to move forward because it weighed so heavily on her heart.
Victoria Volk: Had she also been with your father when he had passed? Like, were they still together? No.
Dawn Jackson: They were no longer together. So they got divorced about the same age as my husband I got divorced. Like, my son was about three and a half, and I was about three and a half when my parents divorced as well.
Victoria Volk: Okay. So not only are you going through your own divorce, but it’s compounded by the divorce of your parents.
Dawn Jackson: Correct.
Victoria Volk: Yes. And you’re an adult at this point. And that can be You know what I mean? Like, it’s one thing to once you’re an adult in your parents divorce, I think there’s a whole different it’s so many different layers to that. Can you speak to that a little bit? How that maybe influenced how you felt about your divorce or what that was like, experiencing that from the perspective of a child? Mhmm. And as the person going through it.
Dawn Jackson: So I think, you know, probably a lot of people think this way, you know, when their parents divorce, when their young children, they think about their future and their partner, and they never want to go through a divorce. Right? Because they’ve experienced it and it doesn’t feel good. And while it worked out best for my mom and my dad, there was just part of me that always had wished they had stayed together, you know, that it had worked out in some way. So for me, you know, I had wanted so badly for my marriage to stay intact and then it didn’t. So that was pretty heartbreaking. I yeah. I definitely think that that added to my grief.
Victoria Volk: And maybe how you looked at your son. Right? And because you’re grieving I mean, am am I wrong to say that you were a grieving child, an adult child?
Dawn Jackson: Correct. Yeah. No. I would definitely say that I was. There were so many things, you know, about my childhood. I mean, you know, my mother was wonderful. She was always there for me. But there was just things about it like my parents divorce and, you know, both of them remarried and those things while they did provide a lot of happiness. There was also sadness because it wasn’t the intact family that I had hoped for. And then when I couldn’t give that to my son.
You know, I felt like failure.
Victoria Volk: Since you went through grief recovery and you’ve been working with clients, what are some of the things in going through the divorce that you share from your experience with the people that you work with.
Dawn Jackson: You know, I always share with people really how I felt right when it happened because what I notice is so many people don’t talk about it. You know, how devastated they are and how much their life feels like it’s been turned upside down and those days of not wanting to get out of bed and, you know, just wishing the hours away. I always share that with people because it’s I usually get a response, oh my gosh, like, I’ve felt that way before. Like, I just didn’t know how to know how to move on. Because unfortunately in society, you know, we’re just expected to keep moving forward. Keep busy, you know, one of the myths. And it’s kinda like when we go through a death. Right? We get usually the one or two days off of work and that’s it and we’re expected to come back and just be normal again. Well, it’s really no difference with divorce. I mean, divorce is a death too. Right? But a couple days, we don’t just feel better. You know, it’s just a reminder every single day when we wake up and we’re alone. That our marriage didn’t work out. And so I always share my personal stories about, you know, the way that I felt after my divorce and, you know, navigating being a mom as well, a single mom and the difficulties behind that.
Victoria Volk: Before we started to record you had shared about your father passing. And at that point, you had already been a certified grief specialist, advanced specialist. Is that correct?
Dawn Jackson: Yeah. Yeah.
Victoria Volk: So how having the tools now in your toolbox versus not having them before until you did. How was that experience? Did you find that that was your ability to cope and move through that? Grief different now that you had the tools?
Dawn Jackson: You know, when I went through my divorce, I really didn’t have any tools. I mean, I had some. Right? But I hadn’t really started my healing journey. So all I knew was I was angry, I was sad, I didn’t know how to move forward. I thought I would never feel better. And you know, when I lost my dad, while I still had some of the same emotions, I knew that I had some tools that when I chose to use them would help me move forward and feel better. So there was hope. Right? Because I knew that I wasn’t stuck forever. And, you know, like, I always remind my clients because we do the work when we’re ready. Right? It’s not like something happens in the next day, we do the healing work. It usually takes a little bit of time before we’re ready. And I always remind people that when it’s the right time, you know, you will do the work, but just make sure that you’re still willing to do it. Right? Because you know you have these tools. So you need to step into them when you’re ready. So like I said, it gave me hope. You know, after I lost my dad because that was pretty devastating to me as well. But I knew that I had a way out of the pain. So I was grateful that I had learned the grief recovery method before he died.
Victoria Volk: I think it’s one thing to have someone in our life who we look up to and value their opinions, such as our mother who suggests something that you know, and we and when we witness it changing their life. Right? It’s I think it’s easier to buy in to Right. Something. Right? So it was easier for you to buy into the grief recovery method because you had seen how it helped your mother and changed her life. Mhmm. So for those listening who have or hearing about Great Recovery for the first time who, you know, when we say, yes, you need to be ready to do the work. It also takes courage. You might not be ready. You know, you might not be ready, but you don’t get ready by not putting your shoes on. And taking action to do the work. Yes. You get ready by getting ready. You know?
Dawn Jackson: Right. No. Yeah. You totally have to have the courage. You have to make the decision to step through the fear. I mean, like, I have a great example that’s going on in my life today. So When I left my nursing job two years ago, I decided one of the things I wanted to do was try backpacking because my son has been going backpacking since he was a teenager. And so I decided to go on a backpacking trip with them. So fast forward, I haven’t gone on one since twenty twenty two. And so he called me up last week and said, hey, you wanna go on five day backpacking trip with me. And so, you know, he sends me some information about it, and I’m looking, oh my goodness, the elevation and, you know, the miles we’re gonna do and everything. So I’m super excited. And then, you know, the last couple days, I’m, like, have this fear. Like, oh, boy, can I do this? Like, I’m two years older, and it’s a lot of miles and how’s my back gonna feel? And, you know, so it’s a reminder of those things like, we have to choose to step through that fear. We have to choose to have that courage even though we don’t know how it’s gonna turn out. And I always, you know, ask my clients to have the courage because it is scary to try something new. You know, even if it is something that we think might work to help us heal the pain that we’re experiencing. And I noticed like after a few sessions. It’s probably halfway through. All of a sudden, I see on people’s faces when I’m working with them online. They just look more peaceful. It’s amazing. It happens every single time because they’re
Victoria Volk: so great.
Dawn Jackson: They’re so scared because they don’t know what it’s going to involve. They don’t know what’s going to come up. And the work is not easy and I always tell people that but I wouldn’t ask you to do something I never did. So I love that reminder that we have to continue even when we have fear to step through that and move forward. Take the steps that we need to take, have the courage so that we can feel better.
Victoria Volk: I often have to remind myself like I don’t grow in my comfort zone.
Dawn Jackson: That is so true.
Victoria Volk: Step out of my comfort zone. You know, speaking in front of people, so much fear. Right? Like, there’s so much fear speaking in front of people. Like, am I gonna forget what I’m gonna say? I’m gonna stumble over my words. Am I gonna embarrass myself? Like, all these things. Right? But you just you don’t grow, you don’t get better, you don’t it’s not practice make makes perfect. It’s practice helps you grow. And It does. And you have to practice that courage. Mhmm.
Dawn Jackson: Sorry to get a trip. I am. Yeah. We’re leaving happy to be nice.
Victoria Volk: Yeah. Because here’s the thing. You know, we we raise our kids for eighteen years. Right? We hope that we’ve done our job and they leave at eighteen and they start to go on their own adventures and finding themselves and all of this and that and To be asked, I just wanna say this, to be asked by your twenty six year old son. I have a nineteen year old son. But to be asked by your twenty six year old son, mom, Do you want to take this backpacking trip with me for five days? He’s asking you, do you want to spend time with me for five days? Mhmm. This I wanna spend time with you for five days. That’s what I hear. And I just wanna cry for joy with you. I just wanna cry with joy for you because I would do it just because of that.
Dawn Jackson: Oh, and even if I
Victoria Volk: had zero trading, like, just sign me up. If my son asked me, I would be, like, heck, yes. You might have to pick me up a few times, but heck, yes.
Dawn Jackson: Right. And that’s why I do it because for me, like, we since he was a little boy, I was hiking with him. You know, I used to live in about an hour from the Columbia Gorge in Oregon, so we had beautiful waterfalls and hiking trails and I took him hiking all the time. I have tons of pictures, you know. He would be like, how how much farther? And I so I’d have to have all these tree bags. To keep him occupied and he talked the whole time. It was so funny. And so then he grew up and has a love for the wilderness and it he likes to be out as far as he possibly can where there’s nobody. Right? And it’s a connection that we have. So when I get asked to do something like that, you’re exactly right. I’m doing it because I wanna spend time with him. Yeah. It’s such a great opportunity
Victoria Volk: because we aren’t promised tomorrow.
Dawn Jackson: No. We aren’t.
Victoria Volk: And I
Dawn Jackson: mean, the last few years, you know, COVID and everything. I think most of us realize that. And that’s another reason why I left my job that I really wasn’t happy at because I wanted to help people in a different way. And I wanted to have the time with the people I love to be able to, you know, do the things I wanted to do and, you know, not wait until retirement because I have lost multiple friends. They retired. And then within a few months, they were no longer with us. And so I just decided it’s time to live life now, not in ten years from now.
Victoria Volk: It’s a great segue. So let’s talk more about that because you were a nurse for thirty years. Right? Thirty years. Yes. What was the catalyst for that decision. Like, what made you just hit the word go?
Dawn Jackson: To the
Victoria Volk: safe health. Yeah.
Dawn Jackson: To the safe nursing? Yeah. So I used to live in Portland, Oregon, and that’s where most of my nursing was. And the last few years of living there, I just I felt miserable. I mean, I made really good money so I could do most of the things I wanted to do. But there was something missing. Like, once I began my healing journey after my divorce, I realized that there was so much like healing that most people needed that wasn’t physical. And what I saw was that the emotional pain was causing physical pain. In my patients. And there’s a lack of mental health resources really available to people. It’s like, well, we can send you to a therapist, but not everybody wants a therapist. A lot of people want other modalities and insurance doesn’t pay for it. And so I became more and more frustrated because I just didn’t feel like I was making a difference I wanted to make. So I thought it was the actual job. So when I moved a few hours away, I had a different nursing job. And what I noticed was I didn’t feel any better because I was still doing the same thing. I was still telling people we’re gonna put you on a new medication. And I wasn’t helping them address all the emotional stuff, right, that they’d experienced during their whole life. And it’s time I was working with veterans. So veterans are really, you know, specific population, and they’ve gone through so many things that anybody who’s not a veteran really doesn’t understand. There’s a lot of pain. Yeah. There’s a lot of emotions there’s a lot of experiences that they don’t share with anybody except for their fellow veterans and sometimes they don’t even do that. So COVID hit And we were short staffed even more. People were quitting left and right. And we were asked to do more with less. And I was noticing that I kept getting sick I just emotionally wasn’t in a good place. I was never sleeping. And my intuition, because I use it quite a bit, was telling me if you don’t leave, then you’re gonna get sick, like, really sick. And that’s gonna be the end of, you know, being able to do the job that you’re doing. And so I just sat with it and sat with it and, you know, the universe kept giving me these, like, signs. Like, you need to do this, you need to leave. You need to do something different. You need to follow your passion. And so finally, I just had it. And it was really hard to get to that spot, especially because I was raised that you have the good job, you have the good benefits, you know, and you’re super responsible. And so for me to leave, what I was doing, it felt super scary. But it just got to the point where it was too hard to not leave. And so the day I turned in my resignation, I can’t even tell you how different I felt. Like my life felt completely changed. I felt a weight lift off of my shoulders. I felt probably physically better than I had in a long time. You know, and of course, they said to me, well, how about we let you go part time? And I said, you know, I’ve asked for the last year and a half to go part time. And you’ve denied it. So no. Well, can you stay for a few more weeks? And I said, no. And I said, well, why not? I said because I’m going back back in with my son, well, can’t you put that off? And I said, no. So for me, it was like too little, too late. Like, it was time for me to take care of me. I’ve spent my life taking care of other people. You know, nurses, moms, women were caregivers. And so for me to choose me was difficult and yet it was the best choice I’ve ever made in my life.
Victoria Volk: What did you go to after you signed put in your resignation?
Dawn Jackson: So then I spent three months not doing anything except for taking care of me, and I would sleep till like ten or eleven, which I can’t do that now. I always wake up at, like, seven thirty just my body does, but I was so tired. That’s how exhausted I was. Emotionally, depleted, physically depleted. I felt like my soul had just dried up. So that’s what I did for the first three months. I went back back in with my son. To cure me. And then at the end of the year, I started figuring out what I was gonna do. So I decided to get my advanced brief recovery method certification. So that I could do the work online. And then I started planning some retreats, so I do women’s retreats as well. And I finished writing my first book. So it’s yeah. It’s my life has just turned around in so many ways. I’m I feel so full of joy now every single day. Versus it used to be just drudgery going to work because I didn’t feel like I was making the difference that I wanted to make.
Victoria Volk: I love that for you. And I what I wanna share with listeners is that, on par with what you said, my life changed when and I it sounds like for you too, like, grief recovery was the catalyst for you coming into yourself for you to become empowered in your decisions and your path forward, I feel the same way, like, everything that I’ve accomplished, like, you know, certifications and different trainings and working with grievers and energy healing work. Like, all of it was after I went through grief recovery Mhmm. Than the past going on six years. So it’s a catalyst for change. It’s not just to feel better for a short period of time, like we often resort to alcohol or drugs or relationships or shopping or gambling, you know, these herbs that you and I know about short term energy relieving behaviors. Speaking of which, What were your nerves while you were going through? What sounds like to me was burnout in your nursing career? How were you coping with that?
Dawn Jackson: I would say, well, during COVID, I mean, I think a lot of people can relate to this, like, you know, we thought the world was ending in an we didn’t know what to expect. So, you know, it was, oh, have that glass of wine every night. You know, and after a while, I was like, okay, this isn’t good. You know, I because I don’t typically drink like that, but that was one of them. And you know, it was coming on from work and having that glass of wine, keeping busy, I would say, you know, social media, like scrolling the news feed, Those were my big ones. I’m trying to think back. Yeah. Those were I would say my two big ones. I was, you know, I was so tired from work that I felt like I didn’t have time to do any of the things that I really wanted to do as just exhausted. So, like, you know, where I had moved a few years ago to some place that’s beautiful. It’s like in the mountains. We have so many trees and rivers and lakes. I’d love to hike. I wasn’t doing any of that. I wasn’t exercising. So probably food a little bit too. Because when I quit my job, I weighed, like, probably ten pounds more than I’ve ever weighed, and I’m a pretty short person. So you know, for me to gain that much weight, typically, I don’t really gain weight easily so that I knew that yeah, I wasn’t in a good space emotionally.
Victoria Volk: And it sounds like I think a lot of people go through this especially after you’ve been doing something for so many years, you know, it’s like a depression. Right? It’s you’re you’re depressed.
Dawn Jackson: Yeah. One of the things that I’ll share this, the grief recovery method helped me with was, you know, although I left my job And I was happy about that. There was a really painful few weeks months because all those coworkers have become my friends. You know, they were my tribe. They got me through COVID and all the difficulties that came along with that. I mean, every time we walked into work, there was oh, we have to change this protocol, we have to change that, and so to leave all those people and knowing I was leaving them, even shorter staffed was really difficult for me, but the grief recovery method helped me with being able to make sure that I was complete in all those relationships. So Like, I went around and talked to all the people I was close to before I even put my notice in. And I told them why I was leaving. I told them what they meant to me. How important our relationship had been. How grateful I was for them. And you know not one person said to me, I can’t believe you’re quitting. Everybody said, I’m so glad that you’re taking care of yourself. Because I told them why I was doing it. It wasn’t that I just really dislike this job. It was that I needed to take care of me. That was most important to me at this time, that time. And so it helped me leave that job and not feel like there were all these loose ends because I was able to communicate with all the people that were important to me.
Victoria Volk: What I also hear is that your why for quitting was much stronger than your fear.
Dawn Jackson: Yes. It was. Because I knew that I was getting the point I didn’t have a choice because the universe kept giving me these signs. And the fact that I kept getting sick and I couldn’t sleep and, you know, I just did not feel like I was surviving were big enough for me. It was what I noticed now too is, you know, I used to just get these really nice paychecks And while they meant something to me, not like my pay today, you know, when I’m working with a client, you know, a hundred dollars means more than thousand dollars she used to because I feel like I’m really making a difference. I noticed the transformation in people’s lives.
Victoria Volk: So what do you say to people who just doubtful that grief recovery can help them?
Dawn Jackson: So, you know, we always talk about what they’ve tried and, you know, I always tell them my stories. About how it’s helped me move forward. I’ve talked to them about their reservations. You know, oftentimes it’s money. But I also thank a lot of it’s fear. Like, they don’t know that this is gonna work. And so, you know, I always remind them that they deserve to live a better life than what they’re experiencing at the time. And that unless they, you know, take a step to move forward and to heal their heart, they’re gonna stay stuck in that same place. But I’m also very aware of, like we talked about earlier, that someone also needs to be ready. They need to choose to step into something. And so, you know, I give them a lot of space. You know, and I have people tell me, oh, I’ve been following you for like a year. And I’ve been reading your stuff and I keep clicking on your calendar link for a discovery call. And then they finally get to the point. They finally have that courage to do it because I want them to have that courage versus feeling like they’re being pushed into something. Because I as you know, we want them to show up fully. Because that’s the only way they’re gonna really heal.
Victoria Volk: Yeah. You can’t you can’t half ass this.
Dawn Jackson: No. You cannot.
Victoria Volk: You can’t. You can’t.
Dawn Jackson: No. It doesn’t work.
Victoria Volk: Yeah. Because, you know, as you know, it’s like you get into, like, weeks four to five, you know, it you know, they even tell us, like, you know, especially if you do in person work or groups or whatever, hey, you know, you warn them, like, you’re gonna wanna not put your shoes on and walk out that door. But, you know, that’s the time you need to. Dig within yourself and Mhmm. Find that courage to push through.
Dawn Jackson: Yeah. It’s hard. I mean, In some ways, I’m grateful I did it in the certification training, right, versus, like, seven weeks. Same? Because I wasn’t going to be leaving the certification training because that’s dummy. If I start something, I’m going to finish it. Right? So it, like, forced me to continue going through the process, which was really painful at the time, but you know, I wish I could I wish that there was some way to relay to people, like, yes, going through the process can be difficult, but when you get to the other end, the feeling is amazing. Like, not always right away, but you start noticing how your life is changing, how you feel differently. And there’s such a freedom to that.
Victoria Volk: I would like us to share our own personal experiences of going through this method, which is possible in the two day workshop, which Yes. Neither of us are trained to do. Correct? Correct. Yep. So we went through the certification, and that’s a four day process. So, basically, we’re kinda going through the two day workshop that’s available only from certain trainers through Discovery Institute. But can you please share your personal experience of going through the training and the program itself?
Dawn Jackson: So like I said, when I first ended up at the training, I didn’t think I had any grief. And within about an hour, I realized that there were a lot of things in my life that were grieving events. So first, it was difficult to look at that. I mean, it wasn’t that I never thought about those things I did, but when you think about them all together, one day, you know, it’s like, wow, I’ve been through a lot. And I think most people realize that. We’re not born and then we don’t have any of these grieving experiences. We all have them. There’s, you know, people always think about death. There’s deaths. There’s the time that you went to school when, you know, maybe your best friend was mean to you. They bullied you. You know, even those little things, those stick with us because they create some of our belief systems we have about ourselves, you know, even happy things like having a child that can be a grievance experience as well because it completely changes our life. Like, you know, you’re happy. You’re having a child, but then you go home and you’re like, oh my gosh. I can’t even go to the store, right, by myself. So all those things, you know, came up for me you know, the experiences in my life, the relationships that I had that were less than what I’d hoped for, and all the hopes dreams and expectations that I’d had that didn’t happen in my life. So it was overwhelming at first, but I think as the days went by, I just realized I am in the right place to heel, and this is such a supportive environment. And I’m gonna come out on the other side. Like, I started to realize Like, this is going to change my life. This is amazing work. So that was kind of my experience. And then, you know, for a while after I became certified it didn’t really do anything with it except I did do my own work. I mean, I think, to this day, I’ve done, like, twenty different relationships in my life. And I notice every time I do one, like, how significantly my life changes and I notice it in my relationships too because we all know relationships aren’t easy. Any type of relationship, they can be a struggle at times. But doing this work keeps me in a space where I can continue to learn and to grow and work together with someone versus wanting to just walk away.
Victoria Volk: I physically got sick. At my at my training. Like so I went down I flew down to Texas for mine. Okay. So it’s like, I think of it as the version of me that was on that plane going down there was not the same me that came back. And like, I’ve it was, you know, thirty plus years of grief that I had none you know, had stuff down and pushed down and so much anger and resentment and all this stuff was coming up. But I physically, like, both ends And and I came to that class. I was bound and determined and good for me that I had actually read the book before even going. Because yeah. I not because I’d actually tried to DIY this before I went to that certification, like,
Dawn Jackson: yeah.
Victoria Volk: I can learn this. I don’t need somebody to walk me through this. I don’t yeah. I’m gonna I’m gonna help people. Like, that’s why I’m doing this. I wanna help other people. Like, I don’t need this. Other people need this. And so I was reading the book and then I’m like, oh, yeah, I think I need this. And had another loss, actually, that came about at the same time. And I was like, yeah, I definitely need this. Mhmm. And Yeah. I was so sick. I Susan was my trainer and she ended up going and getting me drama mean and I was laying on the floor listening to her instruction. And yeah. And it turned out to be training experience for her that she she’ll probably never ever have again just the dynamics of the group, which was Mhmm. Really crazy. But, yeah, it was a very is very life changing, just that experience for me. Sandy Derby was there too at the at the same time, and she
Dawn Jackson: was Right.
Victoria Volk: Yeah, she was my ended up being my partner and yeah. It it was an amazing experience for me, but tell you what, if stuff was per it was like the purge before the purge, you know. And so it can I mean, our bodies speak to us?
Dawn Jackson: They do. I hear that story a lot that people get sick. It was, yeah, we’re trying to get rid of this stuff, but there’s part of us that’s, like, Is it safe to get rid of it? No.
Victoria Volk: And a different mechanism for me? Yeah. Can I tell you what? I couldn’t just hop on the plane and go I could have gone back home. But like you said, had that, I think, been in a group setting or having, you know, had to go somewhere? I you know, I can see where people would have a hard time sticking it out, but that is where the courage needs to come in and Mhmm. And our responsibility too as the as the specialist and the facilitator to hold people’s hands and meet them where they’re at and continue to show them the improvement that is happening. Because I think it’s hard to see it when you’re in it too. Right? Like, oh, I’m a mess. I’m not progressing. Like, this isn’t helping, but that Right. That is the work. Exactly. I had a client even say to me. She’s like, you know, people always say, you gotta do the work. You gotta do the work. And after she went through this program with me, she was like, I understand now. Mhmm. What the work is. This program is the work. Mhmm. That’s what I just
Dawn Jackson: yeah. I love how the certification, like, you you can become certified unless you do your own work because you’re right. Like, so many people think, well, this is for somebody else. I mean, I get people to reach out to me all the time and say, oh, my sister really needs this. My mom really needs this.
Victoria Volk: Mhmm.
Dawn Jackson: And, you know, it’s really hard because everybody needs this. We’re all griefers. We talk about that all the time. Right? Because we’ve all had grieving events in our life. It’s like, we can’t even sit down and watch a movie or show at night without seeing all the grief. Because once you know something, you can’t unknow it. And I feel sad that there just aren’t more programs like this that can really help people move forward, not temporarily, but permanently. You know? And I love this tool because you can use it for anything that’s happened in the past and for anything that happens in the future.
Victoria Volk: I’ve applied this to my relationship with money alcohol, my inner child. Mhmm. You can apply it to your relationship with food. Like, I’ve applied this in a lot of different ways and aspects of my life, and it’s remarkable what comes up.
Dawn Jackson: Oh, yeah. It definitely is. I always know when there’s some work I need to do, when some just keeps coming up. It keeps coming up. It keeps coming up. It’s like the universe knocking at my door. Hello. When you’re gonna do the work, But we know we always have those tools, and that’s why I love giving people. It’s like, you know, I’m gonna work with you for, you know, seven weeks, but then you’re gonna have this tool for the rest of your life and you don’t have to come back to me unless you want to, which, you know, from one of my personal stories is I went to a therapist for years after my divorce. And while there were things that helped me with, I don’t feel like I ever got any type of the resolution that I’ve gotten with the grief recovery method. It was like I just kept going back and talking about the same thing over and over and over again. So I love that this program this tool, this method doesn’t keep people stuck, you know, continuing to talk about the same thing, like, we’re helping you. Get to the point where you don’t have to keep talking about all the negative things because we’re gonna help you feel better. These tools are gonna help you feel better.
Victoria Volk: And it’s like algebra. You know, every lesson builds upon it self, the building on the week before, and towards the end, I think it, you know, starts to click. I mean
Dawn Jackson: Alright. Great.
Victoria Volk: But Hey, algebra. But might not be the best analogy, but it’s yeah. That’s I think that’s how this is so brilliantly made is that it you’re always taking just a little bit more of a step forward for the process. I always ask that option. Yeah.
Dawn Jackson: I would agree.
Victoria Volk: And we’re empowering people. And I would ask I always ask people like, What has it been costing you to not feel empowered? Yes. What is that costing you?
Dawn Jackson: Yeah, there is so much to helping people feel empowered. Because when people don’t feel empowered, they stay small. They seem to call us. Yeah. Exactly.
And they don’t put themselves out there, the gifts that they came here to share with others. So, you know, I always think because I’m all about grief and joy and how those go together, for me is, like, If we can heal the grief, we get to the joy. That’s exactly what happened in my life. I wouldn’t really find that joy because I was so stuck in all the things that had happened that broke my heart. And once I was able to work through that using the grid recovery method, now I’m able to find the joy every day. I mean, every day might not be wonderful but I can always find something that’s wonderful in every day.
Victoria Volk: Well, and then you can recognize what it is that, you know, if you start going down this slope of, oh, I’m starting to, you know, be a workaholic or Mhmm. I’m starting to want to drink that glass of wine at the end of the day, like
Dawn Jackson: Right.
Victoria Volk: We’re able to recognize that within ourselves. And like you said, you can’t unknow it. So You see it in other people.
Dawn Jackson: Oh, yes.
Victoria Volk: You see how people are coping with life. And, yeah, it’s grief is all around us.
Dawn Jackson: Hold ends. Yeah. I’m I’m very grateful for the grief recovery lesson. What it allows us to do how it allows us to move forward in life,
Victoria Volk: and it allowed you to write your your book
Dawn Jackson: Yeah. No. I wrote two
Victoria Volk: notes here.
Dawn Jackson: Your book. Yeah. Which I don’t have that. So I’d wanted to write a book for years. I have a friend that’s a publisher. She helps people self publish books. And she coaches authors, writers. And I’d done a few things for her, some projects but I really wanted to do my own book. And so when I started thinking about leaving my nursing career, I started writing a book, and it’s called Journey to Peace and Healing. So I finished it after I left my job and then got it published, but it’s really about how to, you know, return to that state of peacefulness of joy of love So I talk about grief. There’s a whole chapter in there about grief. It’s really reflective journal, so I have each chapter is kind of structured. There’s writing, and then there’s reflective questions in journaling space. Because I really wanted it to be something that an individual picked up and didn’t just read like they looked at their own life. They chose to take steps. To move forward instead of staying stuck where they are. So I was pretty excited when that was published because that was one of my lifelong dreams as well.
Victoria Volk: When I self published mine in twenty seventeen, it’s So when you hold the book in your hands, there’s just no feeling like it is there.
Dawn Jackson: No. There isn’t. It’s pretty awesome. We we got.
Victoria Volk: So what does your grief taught you?
Dawn Jackson: I would say my grief has taught me my strength. You know, my ability to overcome to change my life, to be more authentic. Stop me that there’s more than just surviving and that I can thrive, that I can have the life that I truly desire to live
Victoria Volk: and that you can do hard things. Yes. Like a five day hike with your son. Right.
Dawn Jackson: Yeah. That’s true. And, you know, really that I wanna make the most of each moment. I think for years, I just lived day to day, you know, through the drudgery, I didn’t really look forward to much. I didn’t see how important it was to make the most of each day, and I feel differently now. You know, I try to make the time for the people I love even if it means I’m not working today. I try to tell people what they mean to me because like you said, life is short. So, yeah, it’s taught me a lot. I’m very grateful. I wouldn’t be who I am today without all that different events that I’ve been through that caused me grief.
But now I can see the gifts and the grief.
Victoria Volk: You know, I’ve been doing this podcast for I’ll be starting my fifth year here at the end of the month, and all the conversations that is the theme is that there’s gifts in it. And when you’re in it and you’re listening to you know, podcast episodes like this or people are sharing their stories and you might say, oh, well, I didn’t go through something that hard. Like, my grief isn’t that difficult or I didn’t experience it that I didn’t have it that bad or, you know, if we kind of place our grief on a chart, you know, against other people’s grief and there is no hierarchy because grief has felt that a hundred percent regardless of who you are and what you’ve been through and you can’t say that one thing is traumatic for this person and it’s not for another. It’s it’s so individual and that’s what I think I love about What I think people might see grief recovery as is like this cookie cutter approach. Right?
And it it’s not it’s couldn’t be more it couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s because grief is so individual, Yes. And this method honors the individuality of your grief. And that’s what I love about it. It yeah, it’s just it allows your individual grief to be expressed.
Dawn Jackson: Right. And it doesn’t compare. I always Yeah. Tell my clients, you know, even if you and I shared the same parent, like say we lost our mom, I don’t know how you feel and you don’t know how I feel because we had different relationships with her and we’re different individuals. We’re unique. Our thoughts, feelings, beliefs, are completely unique from one another. So I was trying to remind people that because, yeah, it really bothers me when people compare because they might have you know, had one loss, but they, you know, we’re talking to someone who they feel has had a more significant loss. But you’re right. Everybody experiences their grief at a hundred percent. So it’s really important to recognize that
Victoria Volk: And even too, like like you to your point growing up in the same home and having, you know, the the relationships are individual. And so it’s I’ve seen so many times in the work that I’ve done with clients, but even people who come on my podcast, it’s like, you know, there’s so much turmoil within the families because there’s this expectation of, well, I feel this way, you should feel this way, Right. That’s the same we have the same relate we have the same parent or we have the same father or whatever it was, but the lived experience is so different, you know. And that’s Yes. Because the relationship is different. You know, you can be closer to one parent than the other parent and the in fighting that can happen because we just don’t accept that all relationships are unique in individual. Mhmm. And that’s what this program helps each of us honor within our own lives. And that’s what I love about it.
Dawn Jackson: Oh, I would totally agree. I always when I’m working with my clients, you know, not only do I take them through the method, but I also try and provide some education as the program does about how we approach people who are grieving. You know, if we’re on the other end of that. And you know, everybody says, wow, I’ve said some of those unhelpful things. Like, I know how you feel. I’ve lost my father. And so I always remind people, be gentle with yourself. But one of the best things you can say to someone is, I can’t imagine how you feel. Because grievers often don’t feel heard. They often feel like we’re giving them advice or we’re comparing our losses or we’re judging And so I just think it’s such a great reminder that we never know how somebody else feels. And by saying that, it gives them an opening to express what’s going on in their heart without feeling shut down.
Victoria Volk: Is there anything else that you would like to share that you don’t feel like you got to?
Dawn Jackson: No, I feel like this has been a great conversation with you. I really appreciate spending this time together.
Victoria Volk: Likewise. And where can people find you if they would like to connect with you?
Dawn Jackson: So my website is don michelle jackson dot com. And then I’m also on Facebook, I’m on LinkedIn. But, yeah, domichel jackson dot com is my URL.
Victoria Volk: One l, by the way? Yes. One l.
Dawn Jackson: Thank you.
Victoria Volk: I figured that out. Really quick. Yeah. And I’ll put the link for that in the show notes. But when do you have another retreat coming up?
Dawn Jackson: It looks like October. I’m working on that right now. Securing a house to do it in in central Oregon. So they’re usually fairly small, like, up to ten people, ten women because, you know, we lodged together. We spent a few days together. It creates great connection and healing. I used to go to retreats myself, and I just they were so important for me in my process and to have that connection with other women and working on ourselves and empowering each other, so that’s why I offer these retreats to other women.
Victoria Volk: And do you bring other modalities into the retreats, or can you share a little how you like, what is offered during these trades?
Dawn Jackson: So we usually look at things like our belief systems. I always talk about grief. Although they don’t offer the method because that’s something that has to be done over, you know, several weeks. But I do talk about grief. And then, you know, we kind of look at where people are stuck, where they’re stuck now and where they want to be in their life and help them create a vision for the future. I usually bring in an another person to help me because it’s really fun to have two different perspectives on things. So I changed that up a little bit each time. So I haven’t quite planned it, but it’s gonna be announced hopefully in the next couple weeks.
Victoria Volk: And you can find all that information on your website as well. Correct?
Dawn Jackson: Correct.
Victoria Volk: Yep. And your book, also the link to your book is on your website.
Dawn Jackson: Both of my books are on my website, and they’re also on Amazon. The paper back and the digital version.
Victoria Volk: And on social, you are in social media as well. Yep. Well, thank you so much for sharing in your grief recovery experience with me and my listeners. I always love having other specialists on that you know, we can kind of talk shop a little bit, but also share personal experiences because I have seen this method not only work through the lives of my clients. But when I have people that come on my podcast who have also experienced it, it it’s like you just have to experience it. It’s kind of hard to describe and explain in a nutshell even. It’s I guess in in one word, it’d be transformative.
Dawn Jackson: I would agree.
Victoria Volk: You know, that would that would be the easiest way, I guess, to explain it, but it’s such a it’s such a big word too. Right? Like, can it really be transformative? Well, yes, it can. Yes.
When you do that
Dawn Jackson: work, Yeah. And the more work you do, the more transformative it is.
Victoria Volk: Exactly. It’s you know, I mean, when you continue to, like I said, you know, applied it to my relationship with money and alcohol and various aspects of my life. It’s it’s amazing what you can uncover and discover about yourself. So
Dawn Jackson: yeah. Well, thank you for having me and really enjoyed this time together, Victoria.
Victoria Volk: My pleasure, and thank you for being my guest. And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life, much love.
Grieving Voices Guest, Grieving Voices Podcast, Pet Loss, Podcast, Where Are They Now? |
Maha Bodhi | Part II: The Pet Loss & The Surrender That Cracked Me Open
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
This week’s guest, Maha Bodhi, who previously appeared on the podcast in season 3, shares her experience of saying goodbye to her dog and the grief she experienced as a result. Having to choose what she felt was right for her pet versus hoping nature would take its course is a struggle many pet owners face when their pet reaches the end of their life.
Pet loss is one of the most minimized losses. Those who don’t experience pet loss, and many grievers, often see pets as being replaceable. Although Maha did attempt to replace Blake’s loss with another dog a month after his passing, she quickly realized it wasn’t the best decision for herself or the other dog.
In the following months, Maha was reminded of what she had learned through several Heart with Ears sessions with me, Victoria, while her dog, Blake, was preparing to transition. And that was that grief needs to be honored, felt, and addressed. One of the ways we can do that, which I had shared with Maha, is through the Grief Recovery Method, as described in The Grief Recovery Handbook.
Maha took herself through the method in the book and found tremendous value and relief. Although going it alone is not recommended for reasons explained in this episode, Maha gained new knowledge and tools that help her better support herself and others during times of challenge.
“The degree of your surrender is the degree of your success.” – Maha Bodhi
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CONNECT WITH VICTORIA:
Victoria Volk: Welcome listeners to grieving voices. Today, I’m excited to bring back a previous guest for a part two recording Maha Bodhi, we initially recorded, and you can I’m gonna link to the episode in the show notes, but it was from season three episode one zero nine, a quest for inner peace and freedom. And thank you so much, first of all, for coming back to record with me and the reason why I wanted to have you back is because since we recorded, you had a devastating loss that you’ve worked through and you’ve moved through. And so you’re here to share that experience. And also, what’s kind of just blown up in your world since in a good way. So thank you so much for coming back.
Maha Bodhi: Thanks for having me, Victoria. I’m so excited to be here. And I’ve been looking forward to our conversation to follow up on our previous podcast. So, yeah, I’m excited to be here.
Victoria Volk: I had actually met Maha initially at a women’s convention thing. And you’re a public speaker there and, I don’t know, we connected after and kept in touch, and I actually invited you on my podcast. That was that first episode. And after that, you had reached out to me because you blake, your dog was incredibly sick, and he was going to be passing. That’s why I wanted to have you back here too to speak to that experience because it hasn’t really been covered on this podcast before. But also because you’re kind of on the other side of it now, and I want people to realize the importance of that loss that it’s because it is so minimized in our society, and if you would mind taking it from here and just speaking to that experience.
Maha Bodhi: Yes, absolutely. So I really, you know, I’m a a yogi first and foremost, and I truly believe that the universe always gives you the right people at the right time in your life that can support you throughout your journey. And we have met in the Woman Business Summit in the Conference where I was a public I was, like, the inspirational speaker, the keynote, and that’s how we connected, and you have this great podcast in Europe. You’re certified in Grief recovery, and that’s kind of your area of expertise and your superpower. And when we did the initial podcast, I truly haven’t experienced a tremendous loss in my life, so I wasn’t able to really speak to that. And it’s interesting that we did our podcast and that’s it and we went our separate ways.
Maha Bodhi: And then my dog and he was such an important figure in my life. Like, my dog was or I don’t have kids and we were really we had such as deep on it and I know a lot of dog parents can relate to this, but we were inseparable where I go. He goes. I would always tell my friends he’s part of me like a limb. Like he’s just always with me. We travel together. We do yoga together. You know? I do everything with him. And if, you know, I have even if it’s a a work opportunity and they don’t allow dogs, like, I won’t go. Like, that’s how I refused to leave him behind. And when I got him, he was he’s a he’s a rescue. So we really didn’t know how old he was. They told me he’s two years old, and then I took him to a vet, and they said he the vet said he’s five years old. But we really couldn’t tell.
Maha Bodhi: But I had him for eight years, and I thought that I still had more time with him. So I was really I was not prepared. It was a shock to me, and it happened so quickly, so fast that I took him to the vet and they said he has kidney cancer and he has and he’s gonna and he’s gonna die. Like, be prepared to make arrangement. I knew that this was gonna be a big deal for me. And I knew that this thing can I didn’t want it to break me. So I knew that I needed support. And I wanted expert support.
Maha Bodhi: And so I reached out to you right away because I knew you were certified in Grief recovery. You also kindly suggested that I hire an end-of-life Doula, which I didn’t even know such job existed, which I am so grateful that it exists because it’s such noble work to help people in, you know, the most difficult time of their lives. And like you said, I really think that our dog’s passing the way is really underrated. Like, when you tell someone my dog is not like, oh, I’m sorry. And that’s pretty much it. But for me, he was my whole life. He was like my child, mine, everything. And like I mentioned, like, we wake up together, we sleep together with you. So then there’s this emptiness when he’s gone. It’s like, what am I gonna do when he’s gone? And I really wanted the support that I need. I wanted to process this in the healthiest way possible. I know it was gonna be painful. I know it was gonna be hard. And so I just needed support. And we did a few sessions together, and it was tremendously helpful. And the doula was because you’re not we’re not in the same physical location. So the doula was actually here in Los Angeles, so she was able to come over and really had really hold my hand step by step. You’re helping me there, and she’s helping me. So I really got incredible support, and I’m truly grateful. Because with pets, it’s not just that, oh, your pet is dying, you have to make a decision. The most difficult decision that there ever is is whether you help them cross over to the other side or you let kind of nature take its course. And that’s the most difficult decision. And I just felt like oh my god, not only am I grieving his loss, grieving his illness, seeing him suffering, but now I actually have to make this the hardest decision that I’ve ever made is like how you and it has to happen quickly. It’s not like, oh, you have time to think about this. You have it’s like he’s suffering and you have to think and it was against everything in my nature. Are you telling me that I’m supposed to, like, I’m just gonna say, like, kill my own dog, like, that’s not in my nature, that’s not. And but then you see him suffering And I and it was just like, okay, what do I do here? And that’s where you helped me. And she helped me.
Maha Bodhi: And I’m a deep meditator. And I tried to we even did Reiki with my dog together, and I really tried to tap into his energy. But I also knew him so well because of our bond. And I knew he was kinda done. He was done and who’s ready to go. And animals, they’re different. They don’t have the ego that we have the clinging on to the life that we as human have. Like, he knew that his journey was over and his soul was ready to leave his body and he was okay with that. And so I just had to hold his hand and help him pass through when I had to make that difficult decision with the help of the doula. So we did everything together step by step. I actually I didn’t want to do the unionization, but what ended up happening is that he ended up having seizures. Like really, really bad seizures. I could hear his, like, bone clicking. And I just was like, I can’t, like, if it was me and I’m having these intense seizures, I would want somebody to help me pass away peacefully. So that’s what I did. And it was an emergency because it was just hot. It was, like, at it was, like, at three in the morning and then and I called the doula. I mean, how amazing is she? She’s, like, I’m on call. My phone is, let me know, and I’ll come with you. And I call her, and we go at three in the morning, we go to the hospital, and the hospital was amazing, and I’m just so grateful that we even have these resources and we have these people and we have access to this support because I’m not originally from the United States and most other countries don’t have these kind of resources. They don’t have an animal hospital, an animal room, where you can go at three in the morning and the vet is there and the staff is there and and and they know what they’re doing, their pros, and they know how to help you. And they put me in a private room and we were there with him the whole time. And I will say that I don’t have regrets. I feel like I did the right thing to do because of my the meditations and the energy that I was tapping in. I just felt like this is this is just the right humane thing to do for him. And then we and in the hospital, they take they take the that they take the pet and they cremate him or whatever you decide you wanna do. But because I had my doula, I took him back. I took him back and we washed him at home, and we did a ceremony, and we did a vigil, and it was really truly healing for me. It really gave me that closure because it was really, really stressful before and I had to make the decision and it was just so and then once thou was over and I was really able to grieve and sit with him and sit with and pet him and he’s just there’s a put flowers around him and just meditate and process the pain. And I learned this from both of you to really give myself permission to breathe. It’s okay to cry. It’s okay to feel pain. And I would sit every single day and just allow myself to cry and sit and really create space. And I’m like, I’m just gonna sit here and I’m gonna and I cry and I but until I don’t feel like crying anymore, I’m not gonna resist it. I’m not gonna try to distract myself. I’m not gonna try to run away from this pain. I’m gonna honor this, this like that came into my life. And I will say that it was really, really healthy and I kept seeing you and I kept seeing the doula after a few times and until I felt like, okay, I think I’m now in a good healthy place. And I’m ready to take the next step of the journey. So really thank you to you, Victoria so much you played a tremendous role in this experience that I had.
Victoria Volk: Thank you for sharing all of that. What people don’t really may not realize, like, you didn’t and maybe many other people listening don’t. Is that because I’m an end-trained end-of-life doula, and it hadn’t occurred to me either, even in my local area to pitch myself as an end-of-life doula to support people with their animals passing. Right? Like, as an end-of-life doula, we have this training that can transfer into these other areas of people’s lives like pet loss. And so I’m glad that you I’m glad that I had that idea to share with you and that you took it upon yourself to do that.
Maha Bodhi: I did not even I have heard of, like, the birth doulas that helped bring life into the world, but I did never heard about end-of-life doulas. And I think people need to know that there is support available and there is a healthy way to process this. You don’t need to do it alone.
Victoria Volk: And had this end-of-life doula, had she ever helped others, as a service in with pet loss before?
Maha Bodhi: Yeah. She’s Verint.
Victoria Volk: Okay.
Maha Bodhi: Yeah. She’s Verint. She works mostly, like, with people that are past in the way, but also she said, oh yeah, with animals and she also said that it’s very underrated and people think, oh, it’s just a dog, it’s just a pet, but that loss is huge for me.
Victoria Volk: Well, and just like people who have a spouse. Right? A spouse passes away. That person becomes very much a fabric of your daily life. You have breakfast together or you have dinner together or you mow the lawn together, regularly what are all these activities, right, that you do on a day to day basis with a spouse, you were doing with your pet. And our pets are involved in our daily lives.
Maha Bodhi: So it. They don’t talk. They don’t, pets are just so unconditionally loving. And there’s also a chemical literally, a chemical withdrawal that happens because dogs are known to induce dopamine, induce those happy hormones in the brain and the body. They say just snuggling with your dog induces all sorts of chemicals that induce happiness, induce joy. And there is a chemical withdrawal that happens when I’ve been living with the stock for eight years I come home, and he’s jumping, and I’m smiling. Now when I come home, like, I don’t have a reason to smile. I don’t have a reason to giggle, to laugh, to run around because there’s no one there. And so that’s like literally a chemical withdraw that your brain has been used to your body has been used to inducing, and now it’s gone, and it really drops your energy. But I mean, like I said, because of the grief recovery, and, like, your support and we’re gonna talk about this in a little bit, I was really able to to process it in a healthy way.
Victoria Volk: And I do recall after he passed, you were looking for another pet, which is also our inclination. Right? Like, we want to replace that loss and
Maha Bodhi: Who said, don’t do it?
Victoria Volk: Yeah.
Maha Bodhi: I’m just gonna be really transparent. I’m gonna be really honest and I struggled with this a lot. But I was looking for another pet and you told me don’t do it because you’re just gonna replace you’re trying to replace your dog. And it just doesn’t work first. And I think you even sent me an article and I read the article And I just I’m just so emotional. And it hasn’t been, like, maybe a month since Blake, my dog passed away. And I just saw this furry animal online, and then he looks exactly like Blake. And I was like, I’m just gonna go and get this dog. And I went and I got this dog and I mean, it didn’t work out. Believe it or not, because I’m a dog lover. And I was like, oh, I will love any dog. It’s unconditional love, and it’s and even though I was aware because I was educated by you and I read the books and I understood that they say, oh, don’t just try to replace the dog. And I’m like, okay, this is a new dog. He’s a puppy. Right? Like, when he passed away, it was older, it was mature, so it’s a completely different energy. This is a one-year-old puppy active hyper different energy. We haven’t bonded, this is a new completely new relationship And so I even though cognitively, like, intellectually, I was aware of that, and still the reality of it was very different. And so it was very difficult for us to bond even though I tried. And I would walk him and we’d try to do training sessions, and we and we did all these things and he and he was very high energy. If I wasn’t breathing, it would have worked out. But he needed a lot of energy and a lot of attention that I didn’t have the capacity at that time to do. He was chewing everything, chewing the furniture, chewing the remote, chewing my shoes, and Blake was beyond that phase in his life. And so that dog needed more training, more energy, more. And if I was in a like I said, in a good place, I would’ve probably would be more ready for that, but I wasn’t. And it was because then what I was looking for was an emotional support animal. And what this dog ended up being, I was the one who needed to support the dog. And so it just it wasn’t fair for the dog. And the dog didn’t bond with me. So the dog, they’re highly intelligent. They’re so they’re just feelings. Right? They’re all, like, just intuition. They don’t intellectualize. And so the dog felt like this isn’t right. And so we tried for two months we did trainings. We hired professional dog trainers. And it was just the dog was so unhappy. Would distract the house, would it would try to bite me, would try to like, it was just the I can tell the dog was like, you’re not my mommy, I don’t wanna be here, and it was really sad and I had to rehome the dog. And I will say that I always judged people that overwhelm the dog. And I would always say there’s no bad dog. There’s only a bad owner. And this experience allowed me to change my mind about a lot of things. It was a learning experience, and it was my mistake that I didn’t honor the process grieving and I didn’t give myself time to grieve and I thought this would be just a quick fix and everything is gonna be okay and it wasn’t and it was really really hard and I was ashamed I will say to rehome him because people will come, where’s your dog? Where’s your dog? And I just feels so like a really bad person to say I had to overwhelm the dog. But guess what? The dog ended up having exactly the parent that he needed. Right? He now he’s happy. I even asked the new mom. I was like, is he chewing? It’s just like, no. He doesn’t chew in her house. He doesn’t do destructive things at her house. And so it was the energy. Just wasn’t the right energy. And ever since I haven’t, I haven’t gotten another dog. I was like, when the time is right, it’s gonna happen, and the right dog will find me, and I will find the right dog.
Maha Bodhi: But it’s definitely been a tremendously growth experience that impacted the work that I do. I’m an inspirational speaker. I’m a yoga instructor. I live with retreats and teacher trainings and all these things. And it really added a level of depth of my empathy, of my compassion, to people, to loss, to grief, and to understand it instead of running away from it. So I will say, like, before that, I was very focused on positive mindset, positive thinking moving forward And this was kind of the missing piece of the puzzle because the ying and the ying, that’s really part of life. And it is superficial for us to just focus on, yes, positive, positive and moving forward is a great way to live life. But we also really need to honor and process the darkness and process the grief. And there is multiple healthy ways to do this. And if you don’t and if you try to skip steps and you’ve tried to hack your way through it, it keeps building up, it’s building up, and it’s gonna come out one way or another, and you’re just gonna make mistakes. And that’s the beauty of life. It keeps nudging you in the right direction and it gives you exactly what you need until you face, what you need to face. And that’s how you move. And it’s called I’m sure you’ve heard the spelling post-traumatic growth versus post-traumatic stress, that’s how you choose to grow instead of stress and get stuck.
Victoria Volk: Thank you for sharing all that because I did not know that piece that you had actually gotten another dog in all of that experience. So thank you for sharing that. I mean, for people listening too, it’s it doesn’t have to be a dog. I mean, this can apply to relationships too, friendships, spouses. Like, I mean, this is what we do. This is our like, are instinct to do. We, like, we just wanna we wanna get over the pain. Right? And so we just wanna feel better and it just doesn’t work to push yourself through it or to sweep it under the rug and try to just
Maha Bodhi: Gonna come out one way or another, energy. It’s literally energy. And if you don’t give that energy time to liberate itself to process, to move through you, right? We know that saying about emotions or energy in motion, so they wanted to move, they want to. The energies want to be liberated. It’s us that keep them stuck when we resisted, when we try to cheat, when we try to skip steps, that’s when things get messed up. But if we allow nature to take its course. And we honor the process that’s where growth in learning happens. That’s where opportunity really happens. And it builds care and it makes you a better human in life and it makes you then better in relationship in your future because you’ve healed and you’ve processed what he’s processing and you’re not gonna dump your expectations and your pain and all the past information on this new relationship. So it’s not even fair to the new relationship just like with my dog. It wasn’t fair to that dog, and the dog was happier with someone else. And it’s the same thing like you said, with the spouse, with the relationship, with the human being. So we’re always trying to avoid pain as humans. It’s in our nature to do whatever we can do to avoid the pain, to run away from no one wants to hurt. Right? But it’s kinda counterintuitive that the caves you fear to enter, hold the treasures that you seek Joseph Campbell said that. And I always say that in my teachings, but leaning into the pain and processing the pain and allowing it to feel your feelings I mean, I can’t stress this enough to feel your feelings. And I’m not talking about to feel the story behind the feelings, but actually to feel the sensations of the feeling, and a lot of people don’t know how to discern between the two. So, like, feeling your feelings is, like, oh, I like, oh, I’m feeling I’m feeling sad. I feel I missed this person. That’s an emotion. That’s still you’re still at the level of the mind. But to feel the feelings, it’s this what is this sensation? This you’re missing this person or you’re hurting. You’re grieving. You’re you’re experiencing loss. What is how does that manifest physically in your body? It’s a physical sensation. So if I pinch you, The pinch, it’s a physical sensation. So is it sharp? Is it heaviness in your chest? Is it hollow stomach is it a fidgeting, a shaking in the legs. So it’s a sensation and it really took me a long time to get this. And so when we feel that heaviness in the chest, when we feel I sometimes I used to feel like my arm goes numb. And so what happens is that when we feel the sensation, the brain freaks out, and it’s like, okay, solution, solution, solution. Let’s run away from this. What do I? Because the brain is creative. Problem solving. Okay. Get another dog. Okay. Let’s go shopping. Okay. Let’s binge-watch. Okay. Let’s grab the drink. Let’s grab the alcohol. Let’s let’s do something so I don’t feel this sharpness, this numbiness, this heaviness. But the secret is that you actually wanna lean into it. You wanna sit with this. You wanna hold your own hand. And be like, I’m gonna be here. We’re gonna stay here and it’s gonna be okay. We’re gonna feel the feelings. And I’m not gonna abandon you. I’m not gonna neglect you like how everyone did in your life, I we talked about my upbringing in my past. And so we learned this abandonment. It’s really your abandoning yourself when you grab the drink, when you grab, you turn on the TV or you grab your phone. You’re doing what people who abandoned you did to you and you’re just repeating the cycle. But if you say, hey, you know what? I’m not going I’m gonna love you unconditionally. And I’m not gonna leave you when you’re hurting. I’m gonna be with you when you’re hurting. And I’m gonna feel the hurt, and we’re gonna be in this together. And then this tremendous liberation of energy happens. When you tell your brain, hey, you know what? You can go offline. You don’t need There’s no problem to solve. Okay? Just it’s okay. It’s safe to feel.
You can just be quiet and I’m gonna feel my feels. I’m not gonna try to fix it. I’m not gonna try to change it. I’m not gonna try to solve for it. I’m just going to feel it. It’s as simple as that.
Maha Bodhi: And the moment you wholeheartedly do this at the liberation of energy because that energy that’s being consumed and overloaded and trying to find an escape is now liberated. And there is this sense of freedom, and that’s where really true healing happens. And it’s almost like a superpower because you’re no longer afraid of the pain. And that translates in so many areas in your life, Victoria. I mean, it translates it in you not being afraid in the world anymore. You’re able to take more risks because you’re not afraid of the pain. You’re not afraid of rejection. You’re not afraid of doubt. You’re not afraid of uncertainty. You’re not afraid of the unknown because, hey, no matter what life throws at me, I’m I’m okay with that. I’m okay with feeling the feels. I’m okay with feeling the pain. And that translates into confidence in the world that translates and you’re really wholeheartedly showing up. Here I am, whole complete, not perfect, but whole and complete, vulnerable. Yes, I’m a human being. Yes, I have flaws, but I’m okay with that. And I accept myself unconditionally, and it all starts with leaning into the pain and allowing yourself to feel the sensations in your body and not running away from it.
Victoria Volk: So good. And when people listening, they couldn’t see what I was seeing unless they’re watching this on YouTube, but you kind of gestured to your left shoulder, which energetically is grief and despair. In biofuel tuning, that’s where we see often is grief and despair is off the left shoulder. So I just wanted to share that with.
Maha Bodhi: And when we worked together, you touched upon that because we worked and you would ask me these things where do you feel it in your body, and I didn’t even need to think about it. Like, I mean, right away, for me, it’s always my heart and then my left sided. And all and if it’s intense, like, when like, that it goes all the way down to my left arm, to my left fingertips, and normally I would freak out, before I learned about going for covering the pond how it manifests in the body and all these things and feeling the feels I would be like, oh my god my arm is going numb. Like, oh, let’s call the doctor. Let’s, what’s happening. Right? But now I understand this. And I understand what’s happening, and I just literally bold myself. Like, it’s okay. I know you’re hurting right now, and it’s okay.
Victoria Volk: So when you had this realization that this second dog was not going to replace Blake, that you had to do something for yourself to get to move through this. What did that look like? What was that process for you then?
Maha Bodhi: I rehome the dog and I just took a few moments. I just took it one day at a time to be honest. I took it one day at a time once at that time. And, I’m a yoga teacher. I have a very strong yoga practice, and I embody yoga, not just, I don’t know, like, a lot of people think yoga is an exercise. It’s stretching and exposes and it’s so much deeper than that. And for me, I embody it as a way of being I believe that yoga is a science. It’s a science of being in the world. It’s a science of living healthy in the world. Not only in your body, but in your mind and in your heart. And so when stress builds up in your body, when your arm goes numb, when your chest is hurting, that’s energy in your body. And when we move the body in a very specific way, in a very mindful way, you’re helping that energy to process. You’re helping that energy to move. So yoga is deeply connected to the nervous system. It’s connected to the mind, to the brain.
Maha Bodhi: So I had just had my practices, and I check-in with myself every morning I wake up and I’m like, okay, what is the diagnose? How am I feeling today? Because sometimes if you’re breathing too intensely and the body is too overwhelmed, you actually don’t wanna do the invigorating sweaty power yoga classes. You might wanna move a little bit slower and a little bit more gentle and do the more gentle flow. So I would every morning wake up and check-in with myself, how am I feeling today? Do I need to pick it up a notch? Do I need to slow it down? In the evening, I always journal to process my thoughts, so they’re not just floating in my head and overwhelming. So I always write I always start with gratitude because we do have a negativity bias that the brain automatically wants protect you from danger. So the brain is always looking around what can go wrong. And so practicing gratitude is grabbing the steering wheel and be like, no, no, no, yes. There are hard things in life, but there’s also really good things in life, and let’s not lose track of those good things. So I would right away start to write three things that I’m grateful for, and they could be as simple as, I don’t know. I had a a nice smoothy today. You know? It’s it could be just as simple as that. And then if there’s something that I’ve been struggling with, I’ll key I’ll start to process it and I’ll start to write it down. In the moment you start to write things down, you it creates a little bit of clarity and you will start to really see things and you start to see even patterns in your journal and you start to see, okay, this is just, me in my default state and I actually have control in in the way that I process information in the way I process the world.
Maha Bodhi: So I always say we see things not with our eyes. We see things with our mind. And it was Dr. Wayne Dyer that famously said when you change the way you look at things, the things that you’ll look at begin to change. Right? And so and that’s what journaling does for me. It changes the way I see things, it changes the way I process information, and it gives me an opportunity to make a choice because we always, always have a choice even though when it doesn’t look like we do, we have a choice.
Maha Bodhi: So those are my practices for the longest longest time, yoga, journaling, and my work, my work is really participating and helping people and being of service and contributing to society. And so because my work is deeply integrated with my personality, there’s I’m very fortunate. And you this. I used to work in the corporate world, so it wasn’t always like this. I used to have to be two separate people. I used to be have to be, Maha at home and then Maha at work. But because of now I’m so fortunate that I get to do what I love, and I am a living, breathing embodiment of what the practice of yoga is, there is no separation. So it’s either I’m either practicing yoga or I’m teaching yoga or I’m creating something around yoga. And that I really heal through the work. When you do meaningful, purposeful work, you heal through the work and then you see people come to me and I can be just saying something so simple and they come to me thank you so much. You have no idea how much I needed to hear that. I don’t know how you knew what I was going through. And I’m like, I didn’t. No. But you need but you heard exactly what you needed to do. And yoga is so universal that it applies to literally almost every person no matter what you’re going through.
Maha Bodhi: So really that’s that’s how it helped me through. It wasn’t until recently that I actually did the grief recovery program. And I know when we were working together, you were telling me, and it was honestly thanks to you because I didn’t even know it. It even existed. I didn’t know much about grief. I’m gonna say that during those things to you that I really am now educated. You recommended. You and you kept drilling it. You’re like because we log in and we’d have a session like this, and I’m just, like, complaining complaining complaining. Like telling you about all my pain and what I’m going through. And you keep telling me you have to do the program. And I think I was just in so much pain at the time, and enrolling in a program felt overwhelming. And I was like, oh my god. I am dealing with this, and now I have to do a program, and I have to, like, write things and all these things. And I was like, I just don’t have the mental capacity to do it.
Maha Bodhi: So again, I was trying to skip steps. Again, I was trying to cheat my way through. And like I just mentioned earlier, there’s it comes out one way or another. That energy is gonna be dispersed. It’s gonna slowed one way or another. So it wasn’t until very recently, and I think it’s been, like, more than a year since we did our sessions. And it wasn’t until very recently that I kept feeling this level of grief. And you know grief is not like, okay, my dog died and that was a horrible thing, but it’s not it’s not just that grief. It’s all the griefs that you felt from the day you were born, one on top of the other, on top of that that you never processed in a healthy way. So that energy kept building up, building up, building up until, the dog dies, and then it’s and then it’s an explosion. And so then that just kept happening. I just noticed that I’m very sensitive and I’m very easily I don’t like the word triggered, but I just I I just wanted to I I just wanted I’m like, okay. There’s something off here. There’s something off here, and it just won’t go away. And I noticed because of my love of awareness, this voice in your head or this pain in your body. If you don’t pay attention to it, it just keeps getting louder and louder. And louder until it forces you to stop and drop everything and look at me. That’s what it’s saying. It saying, look at me, I need your attention. And that’s really just reached a point where it happened, and I can’t tell you that it’s like a specific incident. I think it was just an accumulation of events. And I was like, you know what? I need to nip this in the butt. I need to find the source of this grief and process it in a healthy way. And I remembered you and I remember the grief recovery program. And I was like, let me look this up. And I looked it up, and I found the book, and I bought the book, and I started reading the book. And I just started doing the exercise because it’s literally a workbook and it’s a step-by-step workbook and I just kept doing it. And I’m not gonna lie to you even though, I’m in this field of healing. I’m a yogi and all these things. It’s not for the faint of heart, and I was nervous. And I honestly see the value of having someone like you a guide to guide you through. I just thought I was like, I’ll just do it by myself, and I just did it by myself. And in the book, they always say it’s better. So much better to work with someone, but they also give you an option to to do it on your own. So I just follow the instructions to do it on my own, and I drew the graph the timeline of my and it always usually starts with your parents because that’s, like, the oldest grief ever. It always starts there. And so I did that and I did one for my mother and I did one for my father and I was so scared and because they tell you to write things, to process, to write the statements. I’m like, are they gonna tell me to show them this statement?
Maha Bodhi: And I was like, I almost stopped at that point because I was my subconscious mind locked in that fear, just locked in and I stopped at that crucial point, which I’m not supposed to stop. And I stopped, for a couple of days, I stopped just like, oh, tomorrow, tomorrow. Like, you know, like, I’m just so scared. And then and then I felt that the energy. Right? It’s like it’s like it wants to be released, and it’s like I’m like I stopped in the wrong moment. And I’m like, this is not gonna go away until I cross the finish line. I need to cross the finish line. And I need to trust. I need to trust the process. This grief recovery program was built in the eighties or something. Right? So it’s time-tested.
Maha Bodhi: Over forty years. Yeah.
Maha Bodhi: I don’t know, like, how many thousands and thousands of people have been, you know, went through the program and it’s highly highly recommended. So I was just like, You know what? You have to trust to this and not trust your fear. They know what they’re doing. Let’s just finish it. And if it ever gets too scary, you could always stop. So then I finish it, and it’s funny the moment I opened the book. It’s like the only I read, like, flipped to the next state. Exactly. You should never do not send this letter to the person that you’re, you know, mad with or grieving with or and I was like, okay. There’s no confrontation. This is really more about me and my feelings and my grief, and my personal journey because really that’s what it’s always about. It’s your relationship with yourself more than your relationship with other people. It’s your relationship to the grief. It’s your relationship to the pain, not the person that caused the pain. And so I did I finished it all the way to the end and I instantly instantly felt a weight lifted off my shoulder, off my that literally, that physical pain that I told you in my chest, in my arm. It was like, like, lifted, like, immediately. And I was like, oh my god. Why did I wait this long? Why did I not listen to Victoria?
Victoria Volk: It’s never too soon. It’s never too late.
Maha Bodhi: And just because, like, well, why did I kept torturing myself for this long? You know, and I’m very strong. I’m a very strong person. I think that didn’t serve me because I’m like, I’m strong. I can handle this. I can do this. But there’s no reason to suffer. There’s no reason to power through this, and they talk about this in the book, like, if you have a cut, like, if you’re hurt, are you gonna wait? Are you gonna, like, oh, next year, I’ll deal with it. I’m like,
Victoria Volk: Let me just let me just let it let’s just let it fester and ooze with bacteria first.
Speaker 1: I’m strong. I’m tough. I’m gonna tough it out versus, like, you immediately wanted to clean it up and you wanna nurture and intend to and allow it to heal in a way that it deserves to be healed.
Victoria Volk: Well, and thank you for sharing that because I didn’t know that either. And so to have you share the testimonial of the process for you is beneficial for the listeners to hear. I do want to share that so I tried it alone too. I was just like you. However, I was not I wasn’t as what’s the word? I hadn’t evolved myself and my growth to the point where you had been at the time that you did this on your own, for me to have this awareness of myself to do it on my own. I tried to do it on my own and I realized really quickly that I needed, one, the accountability because for exactly the reason you said, Yes. Because this and even in the program when I’m working with someone in person or online, I tell them you know, next week, you’re not gonna wanna get on Zoom with me. You’re not gonna wanna put your shoes on and get out the door. And I’m telling you, do it anyway because when you’ve already pulled off that scab. Right? And if you don’t tend to that wound, this is when those old behaviors and these old patterns start to come back. And it can actually put you back in progress. Like, you can actually go even it’s like when you lose fifty pounds and then you gain a hundred. Right? Because you fall off the wagon and you just give up on yourself. It’s the same way in this work. And so I don’t encourage anybody to do it on their own for those reasons. Because it can
Maha Bodhi: Of course. I agree. Yeah.
Victoria Volk: However, you’re different. Everybody’s different, but you are in a different place in your own evolution of where you were too. Yes. And you were you I know I feel in my heart that had you felt yourself stuck in that place that you would have reached out to me.
Maha Bodhi: Yeah. Yeah.
Victoria Volk: Or another grief recovery specialist that you could have finished that work with?
Maha Bodhi: Yeah. Absolutely. Yes.
Victoria Volk: So I think it’s important for listeners to know, yes. Grab the book. Learn a lot because you will. You will learn a lot. But don’t go into it, adamant, hell or high water, you’re gonna do this yourself because you don’t wanna set yourself up for, first of all, that disappointment. Right? And then there’s shame in that too. Right? Gosh. Canning. I can’t do this. I just I can’t even heal. I can’t even do this myself. Like, you know what I mean? Then that
Maha Bodhi: Absolutely. Yeah. Now it’s it’s absolutely better to do it with with another person for accountability. Also for perspective to things that maybe you can see sometimes we get too caught up in our pain, in our shame, like you said,
Victoria Volk: Can’t see the label from inside the jar.
Maha Bodhi: Yeah. Exactly.
Victoria Volk: And for anyone listening to, it might be let’s say you’re in a household of people. Right? You live alone and not everybody lives alone. And so you might be afraid somebody might find your writings and things like that. Right? That can be a worry for some people. I actually just discovered an app. It’s called day one, and it’s for journaling with your voice. Okay. So for a lot of people, if they don’t feel like they can just for the journaling piece. Right? Like, I don’t suggest doing using day one to do this grief recovery work. But, I mean, if it helps you move forward and helps you get to a place where I can finally reach out for help. Right? Because sometimes we just need to realize, I can’t do this alone. I do need support because that was me for over thirty years. Right? I got this. Like, I can do this myself. You know, the DIY or that was me. But so how has this work going through that process now and being on this side of it, which I really fully wholeheartedly believed eventually some day you would circle back to. Because that’s what loss does. Right? It just kinda worms. Because I was even gonna ask you what loss like, what came up for you that would have been a better lead to the squad to you talking about that. But what losses came up after you lost Blake? But you just described that. But how has this work now? You mentioned briefly that it’s influenced or maybe it was before we started recording. It’s influenced your work and what you how you work with people today. But, yeah, what’s happened for you since doing this? How does it change things for you?
Maha Bodhi: Change my yeah, definitely with the work that I do, you know, I lead teacher trainings and these teacher trainings are trends formational, and they’re long, and they’re challenging, and they’re physically demanding, and it’s a two hundred hour train, and you go throughout and you go through this journey of ups and down. Sometimes you feel triumphant and sometimes you feel like, oh my god, this is too hard. And it could get emotional and your grief can come up because the mind and the body are deeply connected and we just talked about how the emotions manifest as a physical sensation in the body. And with yoga, what happens is that when you hold the pose because of the nature of the practice, you hold the pose, for a little bit longer than you would do in a gym and other workout. And you’re you’re guided to be present in the pose. And to quiet the mind because it is a meditation first and foremost and we add the poses to the meditation. So a lot of people get it mixed, and it’s just a workout. But if yoga is, first and foremost, the removal of the fluctuations that disturb the peace within the mind. That is the very definition of yoga according to Potentially in the yoga sutras. And so when yoga is taught, traditionally and properly, you’re in the yoga pose and it’s, yes, it’s challenging. Some can be very challenging. And you hold the pose, for a minimum five breaths. And you’re guided to breathe. You’re guided to quiet the mind. And be present to the challenge and not escape the challenge, which is literally a rehearsal. That’s why we call it a practice. Because it’s a practice for how to live life. It’s a practice of how to quiet down the mind and to be peaceful in the mind. And to be present in the heart and present in the body and present with the challenges and that’s how you kind of cross that threshold because it it challenges you to go be a little bit beyond your edge. Right? And that’s where growth happens. That’s where transformation happens.
Maha Bodhi: And so I see people when they struggle, sometimes you see people break down and cry, especially if they have trauma, if they have unprocessed grief, and they’re going through this journey. And there is this, they crying so sweet. They’re like, I’m so sorry and I’m like, why are you apologizing? Like, there’s nothing to apologize for. This is a beautiful opportunity for you to process what’s being demand it to be released, that your body has been probably craving a moment like this, a moment of liberation of this energy that has been stuck for, God knows how long in your body. And this is the only time that you’re able to be still enough and present enough and quiet enough for it to be released. So, cry. Go deeper into this pain. Don’t run away. Don’t apologize. Don’t try to fix it, don’t try to rush through it and just be with it.
Maha Bodhi: So literally what yoga is, it’s like an embodiment, a process, kinda a metaphor for your whole life. And so that’s the level of compassion and the level of understanding for me to recognize brief in others to recognize pain in others. And I know you know this. That loss is not always just loss of, death loss. So many things are considered lost, a grief of even just a dream you had, a potential that you thought is gonna be your future, and then it disappeared. That’s a loss. That’s a great losing a job is, you have to grief that. Losing that relationship. Even if it’s a brief small relationship, it’s the dream behind the relationship. That that’s what you’re grieving. So it can it can be so many different things and that just deepened my level of understanding of grief in that. And before that, before this experience that I had, I would probably be like, hey, you can do this, like, just breathe through it. Let’s you know, you’re stronger than you think you are because I’m such a motivational, inspirational person, but now I’m like b with this. Be present with this. I’m right here. I’m not running away. I’m gonna be here, and that’s okay. And I and I think that’s in a much healthier way. And like we talked about the balance of, yes, the lightness and also the darkness. And we wanna honor the darkness just as much as we’re honoring the lightness. And you see that symbol, I love it because it explains everything. Right? It’s the yin, the yang, the lightness, and the darkness. But within the darkness, right, there’s a little bit of light. And within the light, there’s a little bit of darkness. That it all belongs and it’s all part of the holistic experience, the holistic human journey. And once we understand that and we embrace that and we accept that as a whole. Really your life experience, the way you navigate through life, becomes way more graceful, way more peaceful, because you’re no longer grinding, you’re no longer hustling, any fix it mode, trying to change the world around you, and you’re literally flowing with the current. Right? Like, paddling down a canoe down the river and you’re letting that river kind of carry you through and you’re just in it for the ride. Yes, you’re navigating. Yes, you’re choosing where you’re going. But you’re literally trusting the current of life.
Victoria Volk: Trusting the current of life. I love that. Yeah. We have really difficult time trusting. Right? Trusting ourselves. And so we have a difficult time trusting others and trusting the process. Right? of of
Maha Bodhi: But that’s the level of them. It’s always trying to some. And the truth, it’s like so useless because that’s the energy that’s just being consumed and depleted and drained and really use useless way of using your mind, using your brain. It says that, like, the most sophisticated technology in the entire universe exists in your brain. Right? And no one gave you the manual. And everyone is using their brain in wrong. It’s so sad, but everyone is using their brain wrong, solve it, solve it, solve it. How can I fix it? How can I control the world around me? You cannot control the world around. People are gonna die, your heart is gonna get broken, bad, things are gonna happen, and good things are gonna happen and then you’re gonna grow and you’re gonna be stronger and you’re gonna succeed and you’re gonna laugh and you’re gonna love and you’re gonna be all these things are part of the human experience, but you trying to control it is a waste of energy is a waste of time. But being present for the experience and seeing what’s unfolding in front of you and then participating in this unfolding whether it’s positive or negative I’m not checked out. I’m going to participate. I’m here for it all.
Victoria Volk: And there are tools to help you do that.
Maha Bodhi: Absolutely. Yes. And I know you have you know your your grief program. I have my yoga program, and it’s not one size fits on. They’re all these they’re multiple tools and yeah. I’m a yoga teacher, but I need a grief recovery coach. I need an end-of-life doula too. Like, you need different things for different experiences that you have in your life. And there’s plenty of that. We are so fortunate to live in this day and age where we have, you know, access to resources and information.
Victoria Volk: And so please share with my listeners some of your tools and where can people find you and work with you. When you got cooking.
Maha Bodhi: I can
Victoria Volk: know you got something to know better.
Maha Bodhi: I will say that the most, like, in-depth and premier experience that you can have with me is my yoga teacher training. My yoga school was accepted by Yoga Alliance under elevated standard. It was unprecedented. They’re, like, a yoga they were, like, this is the fastest that we’ve ever accepted a yoga school. I put so much thought and so much work into it. And it’s really the work of my entire life that led me to this moment. So all the pain, all the grief, all the growth and all the strength that I accumulated in all the education throughout my life. And I truly believe that this is my offering to the world and this is the reason why I am here in the world is to teach the science of yoga, which is a science of how to be in the world. So it doesn’t really matter if you wanna be a yoga instructor, It’s a way to help you, like we talked about, navigate through life with more of a embrace, and you literally take your power back, you take your mind back, you take, control of your not external environment, your internal environment.
Victoria Volk: So where can people find you to learn that?
Maha Bodhi: Yogimaha.com. It’s my website. All my events are there. So my teacher training, the dates, all the details, how you can sign up, is there I lead yoga retreats, from time to time. So if there’s any upcoming retreats, you’re gonna see it on my website. I’m on social media, @yogimaha108, so you can follow me on Instagram, on Facebook. Yeah.
Victoria Volk: Thank you so much for sharing everything that you’ve shared today. And I loved this follow-up in this part too. I think it was much needed. Because we can see, we can have this bird’s eye view or this be the, like, the fly on the wall of a conversation of someone’s life. But to see it in this stent. Right? Like, to see the I always wonder, like, sometimes when I hear a story, oh, I wonder what happened to so and so. And so I think it’s important that we share the darkness in this light. Right? Because you had that in your first episode, but then life continues. Right? And it stuff gets are on our way and challenges happened. And so thank you for sharing about Blake and how that experience just really opened you up even more to this deepened learning and experience. So thank you.
Maha Bodhi: So honor Victoria. Thank you so much for having me, and I’m so glad we were able to have this follow-up.
Victoria Volk: Check out Maha’s website, yogimaha.com. I’ll put the links to everything in the show notes. And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.
