Grief and loss. A male perspective.

Keywords

Resilience – Grief - Loss - Self-care – Support – Moving Forward

In this episode of Resilience Unravelled Jarie Bolander, a sales and marketing consultant, discusses his book "Ride or Die," which is about his late wife Jane's battle with leukaemia and the simple to say yet hard to live up to meaning of "in sickness and in health . . . till death do us part."

Jarie talks about the importance of resilience in overcoming challenging circumstances and shares his experiences as a caregiver. Ha also emphasises the need for self-care and highlights the support he received from his loved ones during this difficult time. His book Ride or Die offers a unique male perspective on grief and loss, providing comfort to others who may be going through similar situations.

Main topics

• Using resilience to get through challenging circumstances.

• Learning to be comfortable with the unknown

• Taking incremental steps forward.

• Leaning into the discomfort and making decisions to move forward.

• The importance of self-care for caregivers

• Writing as a way to process experiences and cope with grief.

• The lack of resources and support for men experiencing similar loss.

Action Items

 Jarie’s book is "Ride or Die: Loving Through Tragedy, a Husband's Memoir."

   You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information here. Our upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.
Find out more about our innovative Resilience and Burnout solutions.   

Still Positive. From an HIV diagnosis to building affordable healthcare projects.

Keywords

Resilience – HIV – Grief – Loss – Caregiving – Affordable Healthcare – 30/30 Project

In this episode of Resilience Unravelled Julie Lewis, a 38-­year HIV survivor, and mother to Grammy Award winning musician, Ryan Lewis, talks about how she was infected with HIV in 1984 following a blood transfusion. She was not diagnosed thorough until the early 1990s when she was given three to five years to live. After years of silence about her disease, she found an unlikely community of friends to fight alongside and began using her story to make a difference. Her experiences as a woman living with HIV offers insights about grief and loss, caregiving, spirituality, and the importance of community.

More than 38 years later and she is living life to its fullest and her priority is to make quality affordable healthcare available to those in underserved communities. Through the non-profits she founded the, 30/30 Project and has raised funds to build 30 health facilities in 9 different countries including Africa, India, South America and the US for those who need it most can access quality affordable healthcare.

Main topics

• How one phone call can change the track of your life

• Navigating an HIV diagnosis

• Preparing your family for your death

• The importance of having a foundation for the future

• Building the 30/30 Project

Timestamps

1.     Introductions – 00.00 – 01.54
2.     Getting an HIV diagnosis – 01.53 – 02.30
3.     The 30/30 Project – 02.31 – 04.46
4.     Navigating an HIV diagnosis – 05.17 – 10.53
5.     Building a foundation for the future – 10.54 – 14.52
6.     The motivation for the 30/30 Project – 14.53 – 20.56
7.     Information about Julie’s book and contact information – 20.57 – 25.04

Action items

• For further information go to: https://stillpositive.com or read her bookf STILL POSITIVE. All net proceeds from the book will go to support the 30/30 Project Legacy Fund, which supports different organisations working to improve healthcare access and equity.

 You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information here. Our upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.
Find out more about our innovative Resilience and Burnout solutions.  

Grief, loss and resilience

Keywords

Resilience – Grief – Loss - Purpose

In this episode of Resilience Unravelled Dr. Russell Thackeray talks to Marv Weidner about his experience with grief after losing his wife to cancer in 2017. After he lost his wife, Marty, Marv was unsure how to find the resilience and sense of purpose to begin living his life again. With the help of Carol, a counsellor for over 22 years who specialises in grief, Marv learned valuable lessons about facing grief head-on, embracing loss as an integral part of life, staying present in the midst of trauma, de-stressing in healthy ways, and reaffirming or discovering a new sense of purpose. 

Marv discusses the intense physical, emotional and spiritual impact of grief, as well as the importance of embracing it rather than pushing it away and also talks about rediscovering a sense of purpose after loss and how living with an open heart has become his new purpose. Marv also discusses his new book, "When the Rocks Sing," which serves as a guidebook and handbook for those who have experienced loss. The title of the book comes from an experience Marv had on a rocky beach in New Zealand where he was able to hear rocks chattering against each other due to having a calm mind and clear heart The book grew out of journaling during the grieving process and has been both cathartic and thought-provoking for him.

Main topics

• Rediscovering a sense of purpose after loss

• Understanding and characterising grief

• Why embracing loss and similar challenges is an integral part of life

Timestamps

1: Introduction to Resilience Unravelled with Dr. Russell Thackeray - (00:00-00:06)
2: Setting the scene with Marv Weidner - (00:27-01:31)
3: Understanding Grief and its Nature - (02:49-04:50)
4: Characterising Grief and Dealing with Loss - (05:04-07:37)
5: Rediscovering Your Sense of Purpose - (10:08-12:30)
6: Writing as a Tool for Coping with Grief - (13:43-15:51)
7: A Guidebook for Grief and Loss - (15:22-16:13)
8: The Title "When the Rocks Sing" and Its Significance - (16:25-17:08)
9: Engaging the Grief Process and Finding Peace - (17:51-19:12)
10: Conclusion with Marv Weidner - (19:33-19:34) 

Action items

Contact Marv Weidner through Facebook

Read his book When the Rocks Sing

 You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information here. Our upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.
Find out more about our innovative Resilience and Burnout solutions.  

Sprinting towards life after loss.

In this episode of Resilience Unravelled, Jess Keefe, a writer and advocate for mental health and substance use disorders, discusses her personal experience with the issue after losing her younger brother to addiction. She highlights the need for science-based addiction treatment and challenges the stigma surrounding it. The conversation also touches on societal factors that contribute to addiction, including glamorisation of drug use in American culture and unfettered capitalism.

Jess and Russell discuss the conflicting messages in American society, where people are expected to be moral and responsible while being bombarded with toxic advertising. They debate the effectiveness of 12 step programs for addiction treatment, highlighting that it works best when individuals actively choose to participate and the lack of access to addiction treatment options is due to a complex system that prioritises profit over patient care. Effective addiction treatment involves ongoing support, medications, therapy, and social supports such as housing and jobs. The stigma surrounding drug use makes it difficult for people to seek help when they need it most.

Main topics:

•  The issues related to high overdose rates in the US.

• Why early intervention is important to prevent drug abuse.

• Jess own experiences with drug abuse.

• Why traditional forms of therapy, such as the Twelve Steps, are only effective for those who actively consent and want to participate.

• The different forms of talk therapy and medication that can be used to treat addiction.

• Why additional support such as career counselling and housing assistance is also important for sustained recovery.

• Why the current healthcare system is not well-equipped to handle addiction treatment.

 Timestamps:

1. Introduction - 00:00-00:25
2. Personal Experience with addiction - 00:30-03:02
3. Early signs and coping mechanisms - 04:50-10:21
4. Treatment options and efficacy of Twelve Steps - 15:14-17:04
5. Challenges in getting help and support - 21:13-25:04
6. Writing a book and target audience - 26:19-30:18
7. Conclusion and contact information - 30:52-31:52

Jess also discusses her new book "Remind Me 30,000 Steps," which follows her journey through grief after losing her brother. The book is for people who have experienced addiction or know someone who has, explores the psychosocial factors of addiction and drug use while also providing a human story that people can relate to. She hopes the book will help others who have experienced loss or are curious about the issue of addiction.

Action points:

• Learn more about Jess’s work as a writer and editor by visiting her website at jesskeefe.com.

• Read Jess’s book, "Remind Me 30,000 Steps: A Memoir of Sprinting Toward Life After Loss" for a practical and pragmatic insight into the human side of substance abuse.

    You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information here. Our upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.
Find out more about our innovative Resilience and Burnout solutions.  

Dealing with grief. The Suicide Club.

Alexandra Wyman is a pediatric occupational therapist working with children up to 18. In 2020 her husband passed away by suicide leaving her with a one-year old son. Her book The Suicide Club is about this experience and she wrote it to try to help guide others and in a way normalise the experience of the aftermath and loss of a loved one close to you.

The book is something she wishes had been around when he passed. She had lots of beautiful gifts but nothing really helped her through the business, the drama and trauma that can happen with other peoples grieving styles. Dealing with other peoples grief is a challenge because they often think by grieving so dramatically that somehow it’s helping you. But it’s really not – a trouble shared can be a trouble doubled sometimes.

People want to be helpful especially after a loss but people’s help is not always helpful. Often people will project their own ideas of grief or how to handle something onto others. It creates a sense of security and safety - if I grieve this way why isn’t everyone grieving in this way? There was a lot Alexandra learned about herself and how she liked to grieve and her grieving process did come under a lot of scrutiny initially so she had to navigate that as well. She feels that however you feel you need to grieve is absolutely OK and for someone else to have an opinion or to project that onto you is their stuff. Own what’s yours and try to set up boundaries around that.

Grief is individual but people like to moralise, contextualize and judge that you are not being sad enough, happy enough or down enough. People moralise about grief more than almost anything else and at times Alexandra was considered too cold, too businesslike and not grieving enough. People thought she was working through her process to quickly, that she should slow down because they thought she was trying to erase her husband. She realised she was a private griever. She would hold it together through the day for her son and then find time to let it all go in the evening. She also found that whilst she used to be a very big ‘huggy’ person after her husband died she didn’t want people to touch her. People wanted to hug her so that she could comfort them. They need to feel comfort from the person in the direct line of the loss. They feel comforted and can then continue moving forward.

Grief is a big emotion. It’s challenging and there is no right or wrong way to grieve. There is also no right or wrong way to deal with different types of grief. There can be a sudden loss or longer-term illness, the death of a child or suicide. Suicide has a lot more wrapped around it. No matter how prepared you are for someone to die there is always an element of shock even if you have been grieving for a while. When it comes specifically to suicide, there are so often things that we want to say to people and don't. With any type of loss part of the shock is that you don't get to say what you wanted to say to that person or you don't get to hear what you wanted to hear from that person.

Suicide is more complicated because there are also so many questions. How did we get here? Often there is an idea or a misconception that there are signs or that it’s planned. Alexandra has been participating in a local suicide support group and has come across two people where their loved ones did plan it but the most do not. When that happens it’s like ‘did I miss the signs’ or ‘what did I do’? We start to take responsibility as if the choice was not theirs and that I as the wife contributed to it. There is a higher level of responsibility that we put onto it and a lot of judgment and blame from society so it just compounds the ability to even grieve because you’re having to work through all of these items or parts of it that you can’t even unravel.

Alexandra feels that she needed the book to find out how to deal with other people’s grief. Her situation was complicated because there was some legal action against her and a possible case regarding the custody of her son. There was a lot of additional trauma that happened. Her husband didn't have a will and she didn’t know about anything that related to his job. It wasn't that they didn't communicate, it was just that they weren’t prepared. She needed to know that it was OK to set boundaries, to realise that she didn’t cause the situation or have to take the responsibility for someone else’s choice.

Suicide is a type of death that is no different to any other. Individuals who die in this way are in pain. Its not tangible but they are in pain and their pain is not any less because they decided to end their life to lose the pain. They didn't share the pain because they were protecting you from it in a way. It's a brave step to take. People say its cowardice but people close to it say it really isn’t at all. Its not bravery its just a solution or a removal of the pain.

Although Alexandra doesn’t agree with her husband’s decision she can understand how he got to it. That was a big shift for her and she was then able to start her healing by looking inwards, working through her own limiting beliefs and increasing her own toolbox. What messages had she taken on in regards to how she viewed suicide, her marriage, healing and personal growth? She had to work through those herself to get more clarity and healing.

Time is a component in healing but Alexandra also used a number of different resources. She tapped into everything she could and realised she needed different tools on different days. She encourages people to work through emotions because bypassing them just prolongs the grief. You have to sink into negative emotions and feel through all of them. Part of the grieving process is asking is it too early to move forward? We don't talk about death because we’re not comfortable with it. Alexandra feels that we should get things ready when we’re feeling happy and not wait for death to get things together. Think about your spirituality because this impacts the grieving process and it can change. Alexandra had a basis for what she believed but realised she needed to do a bit more soul searching to figure out where she really stood with this.

People can get stuck on the idea that life is linear – we like to say what life looks like to be successful but the reality is that life doesn't look like that. It’s unpredictable.  We don't know when things will things happen so we need to live our best life now and not put it off. If work or a relationship isn’t working for you or you aren’t happy, find something that does make you happy. We all deserve to have that level of happiness and joy.

Alexandra would encourage surviving friends and relatives to find something in their life that they can live for. This could be a person or a thing but whatever it is they have to work through their grief process for them. For Alexandra it was her son. She thought that he didn't deserve what had happened and that their lives did not have to be dictated by it. There will be days when you don't want to do anything and it hits you really hard and that when you need something to hang on to. The other thing is just to keep going. Sometimes it will feel that you have taken five steps back after you two hard won steps forward so you have to ride the waves and know you can get through.

 Find out more about Alexandra at forwardtojoy.com or visit The Suicide Club: What to Do When Someone You Love Chooses Death,

  You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information here. Our upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.
Find out more about our innovative Resilience and Burnout solutions.

Buddhism to navigate grief and loss

Kimberly Brown is a meditation teacher and author and leads classes and retreats that emphasise the power of compassion and kindness meditation to reconnect us to ourselves and to each other. Her teachings provide an approachable pathway to personal and collective wellbeing through effective and modern techniques based on traditional practices. She studies in both the Tibetan and Insight schools of Buddhism and is a certified mindfulness instructor.

Kimberly came to these practices after she struggled with panic attacks and other anxiety issues herself. She had a lot of therapy which was helpful and then found meditation and that acted as a complement to the earlier work.

The difference between the Buddhist and non-Buddhist traditions of meditation is that in the Buddhist practice there are also teachings that align with the meditation practices. These teachings are simply encouragement to understand reality, that all of us will get older, get sick and die, that we all have struggles and that nothing is permanent. This emphasis on seeing reality can be useful in alleviating the suffering that comes from wanting things to be different than they are.

There are some similarities between the Buddhist and Stoic views. One of the distinctions though is that Buddhism doesn't suggest that the fact we are going to get older, get sick and die is terrible and that we have to just ‘suck it up’. Buddhism says ‘well that s OK’ and once we know and understand that, we can live a very happy life with less resistance or things that we don't want.

Buddhists also approach grief and loss in a different way. The traditional westernised view is that it’s something that's not talked about, something that’s slightly embarrassing and that if we talk about it, it might happen sooner. Buddhism seems to integrate ‘passing on’ in a more obvious way so people are less ashamed to talk about it and to remind ourselves that life is brief and that we can use our words and actions to benefit ourselves and other’s. In the US there is a struggle to know how to grieve and how to talk about it. There is a superstition about it so people who are grieving have little access to tools to help them develop resilience in the face of that change.

Death is a natural part of our cycle and there are many different Buddhist views of what happens after death. Some like the Tibetan tradition really emphasise the idea of reincarnation - that we all have many incarnations as different insect’s animals and people and that we will again. Others such as the Japanese Zen tradition don’t have an answer for it.

Although we would not wish grief of suffering on anyone it is in the nature of life. It is neither good nor bad. It is the nature of being human and being able to be able to know that you might choose to live your life a little differently having realised how precious it is and what is really important to you.

In the Buddhist view there is an idea that is similar to psychological safety. They feel that each of us can become a reliable support for ourselves and that most of us learn this from the outside world – getting what we want, depending on someone else, managing or controlling everything that happens outside – and that somehow we can create a situation where we are going to be safe. We can do this to a certain degree but we are still going to get older, may lose our job or get divorced etc. The idea in Buddhism is to use the tools and practices it teaches such as compassion and wisdom to create a refuge in your own self. To start to develop a way to have resilience, to have tools as we are trying to control people and circumstances, almost all of which aren’t in our control.

The Buddhist tradition is to develop our minds so we have the ability to not get lost and develop the compassion to each other. Both mediation and compassion are processes and wisdom is an output of these but you can also cultivate wisdom. From the Buddhist view, wisdom is not just knowledge, it’s being able to ascertain and meet what’s happening in each moment and being able to meet it with an appropriate response and a beneficial action.

Resilience is a process that allows you to bounce forward and not just back every time there is a setback in life. An inherent part of the resilience process is learning. The easiest way to develop wisdom is to start to learn mindfulness, to be able to be present in what is in your senses and your thoughts. If you can practice this for a short time you will very clearly start to see the truth of life – that everything is impermanent. You hear a sound and it goes away, an emotion comes that goes away to. Everything is constantly changing so you start to see that wisdom of impermanence; you also start to see the wisdom of your own neediness, greed, dislike and disillusion to see the biases of the mind.

Finally, you start to see who you are. Someone who is constantly receiving information, creating ideas and thoughts and in each moment this is ever changing. We have the possibility of lessening our suffering and walking through the world in a way that is more beneficial to ourselves and others.

Kimberly’s new book is Navigating Grief And Loss: 25 Buddhist Practices to Keep Your Heart Open to Yourself and Others 

 You can learn more about Kimberly at her website, www.meditationwithheart.com. 

    You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information here. Our upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.
Find out more about our innovative Resilience and Burnout solutions.

Move from shame and blame. The benefits of collaborative divorce.

Nanci A Smith has been a divorce lawyer for thirty years and is currently based in Vermont, North East USA. She is an advocate for collaborative divorce, a new model and mindset, which will allow a couple to emerge healthy and wholehearted from the divorce process rather than bitter and resentful. Her aim is to change the paradigm for divorce away from the blame and shame adversarial process to one that's more consistent with people’s core values of integrity, individual respect, transparency and compassion.

She feels that when it comes to the divorce table, lawyers are trained in the adversarial system. They get the basics of the story, the clients are wounded, frightened upset, scared and are maybe even feeling betrayed. There are lots of intense emotions going on and lawyers are not trained to handle these emotions so they say ‘you go get a therapist, I’ll do the legal stuff and then we’ll go off to the courthouse. There is no chance for healing or personal growth. Nanci feels the gift of a divorce is the opportunity to transform and grow through it.

In the UK we are used to the process of mediation. Its an out of court dispute resolution process where you have one neutral person listening to both sides and trying to come to some sort of compromise that both sides can live with. It's a real opportunity for people who are on an equal bargaining footing and who understand the psychological and financial issues and are both ready to get divorced.

Collaborative divorce is like ‘mediation on steroids’. It offers the couple more support with two lawyers trained in the process, a mental health coach and financial neutral so it’s an inter-disciplinary team. It provides a safe place to have the really difficult conversations that need to be had at a time when they are feeling their worst and we are expecting them to show and be their best.

Many people have the idea that a marriage is just a thing that happens to a person and don't consider the parties that are involved - the relationship, children and the different roles that can change over time. Dr Thackeray feels that no marriage should last more than ten years without a reprogramming or reengineering because we get so comfortable and familiar and becomes so easy to stay together. It’s almost as if we need something to happen to make us look at the relationship maybe when we get married we should be thinking how do we ensure we want to stay together? What you want when you’re twenty or thirty is not necessarily what you want when you’re forty-five, or fifty or sixty. Maybe there is a case for us we to review   our relationships every ten years?

People step out of marriage for different reasons but in Nanci’s experience it’s usually because communication has broken down or people are just not being honest. They don’t feel secure enough to say what they mean and mean what they say. The failure of communication leads to a lack of accountability and people get entrenched into positions of misery and want to blame and point the finger at others. They are just not feeling satisfied but they don't have the emotional training to engage in difficult conversations about important things like Am I happy?  Am I satisfied? Am I feeling constricted about money? Am I not feeling fulfilled in my work? If you don't have the capacity for that or take the time to dig deep during a marriage you’re likely to end up at the divorce lawyers. There is a choices – do it yourself, go to mediation or through a collaborative process or go to court and make a public display of all your trauma.

People who are drawn to collaborative divorce process tend to be internally driven and motivated to grow. They have the idea that they don't want this to be a nightmare for everyone, they want it to be reasonable, amicable and civil and they don't want to lose their relationships with their partner and in laws. Because there are children to consider they want to have a there is so much grief and loss involved in divorce. If you can look at it through the lens of grief you might be able to have the opportunity in the collaborative model to see that this is the opportunity to ask yourself truly what do I truly want? What do I need? I want to be heard. I want to be able to love again, I want to have a good relationship with my children. I don't want my ex to hate me. I don't want to lose the whole concept of our family

Nanci feels we have to reposition it, reconfigure it and take feedback. If your outward and pointing fingers at your ex for ruining your life then its going to be a long haul through the divorce process, If you view it as an opportunity for a major life transition and don't let layers bully you through an adversarial process you can use it for personal growth and transformational change

Collaborative lawyers are not going to make it worse. They are orientated towards settlement and are not going to ask you to make major decisions about children or major financial issues until both parties are psychologically ready to be divorced. Often one person is ready because they have been thinking about it for some time but it comes as a complete shock to the other person so they are not prepared. With enough support Nanci feels the shocked spouse can come back stronger if you give them time and grieve the losses and realise that this is good thing, an opportunity to move into the next stage of my life confident, secure and feeling good. The process provides the skills to do this and in so doing set an example to your children about handling adversity and building resilience.

Levels of grief can vary but the grief is generally for the relationship rather than for each other. There are so many loses. You lose your best friend, lover, status as a spouse, maybe your home, time with your children, your extended family and of course money but you are also losing the dream. This is one of the hardest loses. Shock and denial are so string then you’re mad and struck by the unfairness of what is happening rather than your role as co creator of the dynamic that has led to this. You are also a co creator in the resolution that is going to work for both of you and your entire family. Many people get so stuck in their anger at being betrayed that it becomes solely the other person’s fault and they don't accept any responsibility for their own role.

Nanci is the author of Untangling Your Marriage: A Guide to Collaborative Divorce (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Oct 11, 2022). You can find out more about her at nancismithlaw.com.

   You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information here. Our upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.
Find out more about our innovative Resilience and Burnout solutions.

Grief Yoga. Healing through movement

Paul Denniston is a yoga teacher who specilises in learning how to move through grief or other difficult and challenging emotions such as anger or anxiety. He has created a practice called Grief Yoga that pulls together yoga, movement, breathwork and sound to transform pain or struggle and connect to empowerment or love.

There are many types of yoga. Hatha Yoga focuses on holding postures and breathing to quiet the mind and aid stability and balance. Vinyasa Flow Yoga on breathing and flowing from one posture to another like a meditation in motion. Kundalini Yoga uses different types of breathwork and posture to cause powerful transformations. Restorative Yoga is a gentle practice to help stretch and release tension and anxiety whilst Laughter Yoga is a mixture of laughter exercises and techniques blended with yoga stretching and breathwork. People have their own take on humour, but these are exercises that help release endorphins from the brain to facilitate more happiness. Paul uses elements of Laughter Yoga in his Grief Yoga practice because he feels there is a fine line between laughter and tears. Laughter helps the free flow of emotion to move through, especially the suppressed feelings we have beneath the surface, to allow the healing benefits to take place.

Having trained in the different practices, Paul realised that he was going to classes himself to help deal with his challenging emotions of anxiety and grief.  He created his Grief Yoga practice, a blend of different types of yoga, with the specific intention of releasing pain to fund more empowerment and love - it was a class that he would what to take himself! When going through training Paul was dealing with a lot of anticipatory grief because his sister was dying and he was having a hard time moving through the suppressed feelings he was holding onto. Although he didn't feel like laughter, it connected him to what he was feeling which was anger and sadness. Laughter gave him the release he needed to allow him to be more present with his sister and dealing with her loss.

Paul works with many people who have experienced and dealt with trauma.  The first step of the process is to become aware of the present, the body, breath and ways to befriend the body through gentle ways to move and stretch. The next step is about expression. A lot of the time we don’t have the words to express our pain, hurt, anger or rage so the practice of using the sound and vibration of the voice can start to move the pain through so we might not have to have the words to articulate it.

Paul spent decades trying to run away from pain, seek peace for himself and deal with his anxiety. He was going to classes for his physical wellbeing but he realised there was so much more beneath the surface. He then thought that if we channeled struggle and pain, we could use it as fuel for healing, If we hold onto pain in the body, the body remembers this and the trauma so it’s possible, in a compassionate space, to move the pain through so we don't have to hold to it inside. He feels that we can have physical pain in the body but that it can be a manifestation of grief that we are suppression. Because everyone grieves differently, it can manifest itself in different areas of the body such as the back, neck, stomach, pelvis or chest or even cause teeth grinding teeth at night if the grief is held in the throat.

Grief can come from many different aspects of change or loss so can be seen in many different ways - the loss of a loved one, a dream of what you thought was going to be, the ending of a relationship or even a sense of disappointment. It can also be a collective thing. People can experience grief when a famous person dies because of the way that person had touched them or through an event such as the pandemic or 9/11. Collective grief is rarely acknowledged and this can become challenging because grief needs to be witnessed by ourselves or by others. During the pandemic not being able to attend funerals meant we missed the healing of having our grief and loss witnessed.

Paul doesn’t necessarily believe in closure in the grief process. If we choose to love then grief is a part of the process. Each day is different but we need to move through the loss. One of the steps he focuses on is evolution – how we changed after the loss, how our life is different now, how am I different after loving them. With time things can become easier but its part of our life experience and process.

You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information about Paul here..Our upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.

You can find out more about Paul through his website Griefyoga.com

His new book HEALING THROUGH YOGA Transforming Loss into Empowerment is available from January and can be pre-ordered through Paul’s website

Life as our label. Dealing with grief.

Nicki Pike has been a mortgage broker in Alberta, Canada for over 15 years, She loves her job and being her own boss but over the last few years she has gone through several traumatic events that have had a huge impact on her life. She had fertility problems and difficulties conceiving a child, went through a divorce, suffered the loss of her mother after watching her battle with dementia and the,n a few months later, lost her brother suddenly when he had a fall and developed a haematoma.

Grief is different for different people but Nicki was surprised and scared by what she felt.  She had lost her grandparents when she was growing up so had experienced grief but it was nothing like what she was now feeling. Her mother had been her main help and support and they had been very close, so she found it very hard to watch her change every day before her eyes. Although she had anticipated her death. when it happened it was very sudden and unexpected. Nicki’s brother had struggled with the dementia diagnosis and already had addiction, alcoholism, anxiety and depression issues himself. When Nicki was told he had passed away, she thought he had committed suicide which actually gave her a sense of peace but then she found out he had died of a hematoma caused by falling and hitting his head.

Nicki felt very angry. Her mother and brother had both been relatively young and she felt robbed. Her brother had been clean and sober for two years so when he died so all the anger and feelings she had about her mother’s death also came back. She was in a very dark place. Her grief didn’t feel logical and rational. It was so raw and emotional that it surprised her. She could talk about what she was feeling but the raw emotion she felt scared her. The level of grief she felt knocked her over. She just did what she needed to do for her daughter but could do nothing more. She had never felt so emotional and describes the feeling as an impact zone - waves of grief that were so strong and close together she was left feeling as if she couldn't breathe and was drowning. Although the waves didn’t get smaller, gradually they became further apart so she felt she had time to breathe.

There is a lot of information about grief but lots of it is irrelevant. Nicki feels that we don’t talk about grief and loss and what we go through in the early days enough. We need to have an idea of hope and a path towards it but we don't need to have someone telling us it'll all be great. Logically, we know we’ll come out the other side of our grief and that we’ll get back to what will be a new normality without the person we’ve lost. Lots of people offer support at the point of someone’s death but then after the funeral it disappears. There is often so much going on at that point that the loss doesn’t really hit us. We need support later on, through anniversaries and things that remind us of the person we’ve lost. We need our friends to be there when everyone goes back home to normal life and our life has changed forever.

Nicki was a quiet child but when she when found voice she started to use it. A high school friend who she reconnected with after brother’s death told her she had always thought of Nicki as being strong and this started Nicki on thinking about the different labels she’d had through her life.  During her marriage her labels had been a lot more negative – demanding, emotional, crazy and high maintenance, and she had believed them because she’d heard them so often. Later on as she started getting different labels - grieving daughter, grieving sister, single mother, divorced woman, she realised that living under labels was not a good place to be. When you lose people, you often get reminded of how strong you are, that you’re still here and can still get to live your life. Nicki thinks that in the early stages of grief that's not what you want to hear. She didn't feel strong, she didn't want to be a survivor because in the early days all she could think about was that her mother and brother were gone. We can use these words and labels but need to consider if the person at the receiving end is in the right place to hear them - are we helping or hurting?

Some people may say we’re strong because that is what suits them and their narrative of you. It then allows them to deal with you in a certain way. But dealing with grief is about what we need, not what they need. Some people just don't know what to say.  They have a fear of experiencing it themselves, of not saying enough or too much, or of triggering an unwanted response.

You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information about Nicki here. Our upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.

You can find out more about Nicki through Instagram or Facebook

Building a life after loss. Healing from grief.

The latest episode in our Resilience Unravelled series has now been released, Resilience Unravelled -Building a life after loss. Healing from grief.

Julie Cluff is a speaker, author, international life and grief coach, and the founder of Build a Life After Loss. As a life and grief coach, she helps those who are grieving to rebuild their life after loss and is the author of the book Miracles in the Darkness, in which she shares her experiences with grief, including the death of her two youngest children in a car accident on Mother’s Day in 2007, and her journey back to hope and healing. 

Julie is based in Salt Lake City, Utah but is originally from Florida. She lost her brother to suicide when she was in her 20s and this was her first really devastating loss. Shortly after this, she went through another painful period when she was divorced from her first husband, which left her with three small children to care for. Then, on Mothers Day on 2007, she was travelling from her home in Texas to her in-laws home in North Carolina with her three youngest children. She didn’t feel at all tired but mid-afternoon she fell asleep at the wheel. She woke up between the east and westbound lanes of the highway and in shock tried to pull her vehicle back onto the road but then felt the wheels lift off the road. She can remember the vehicle rolling but then hit her head and couldn’t see anything. When the vehicle stopped rolling, she could hear her twelve-year old son James who had been sitting next to her crying. She knew he was alive and in pain but when she called to her other two children who had been sitting in the back of the car, Cary who was ten and David who was eight, she got no answer.   

When she started to come round and her sight returned she realised that they had been thrown from the car when it rolled. The police and ambulance crews arrived at the scene but Julie was stunned both physically and emotionally and wasn't unable to get to Cary and David. She was then taken to hospital with James but Cary and David were taken to different hospital and it wasn't until two hours later that she found out they hadn’t survived. The level of pain and grief she then experienced was unlike anything she had experienced.

Physically she was the least injured from the crash with a broken wrist and sprained shoulders but her injuries were more emotional including PTSD.  As well as the three children who had been in the vehicle with her she also had three older children who hadn’t travelled with them because of their school schedule. The accident had a huge effect on these surviving children. Julie wasn’t in a good place herself so it was very difficult to support them, She and her husband relied a lot on their family, friends, church members and neighbours who all came together to help. The whole family also sought professional help and saw a therapist to get some direction. Julie also went through two and a half years of therapy to help with her PTSD.

Julie feels that her previous losses informed her experience dealing with such a horrific accident.  As well as reaching out to friends and seeking professional help, Julie feels that what kept her going was the thought that she still had things to live for. She was in extreme pain and felt that it would have been easier to have died at that moment but she still had living children and her husband. It was difficult for her marriage but they muddled through.

The guilt was unrelenting. Julie feels that we don't talk enough about self-forgiveness which is as important as forgiving others. It took a long time for Julie to accept and forgive herself. Sometimes when we blame ourselves we need to accept that ‘it is what it is’ and then ask ourselves ‘now what am I going to do with it’? The thought that keep coming into Julie’s mind was that there was a reason why she was still here. When we lose someone we love, especially if we are involved in an accident and have survivor’s guilt, we need to see that there is a reason we are still here and tap into it. We need to look for a path forward and see the good that can still come from our life. Things can be different if we can work thorough and let go of the pain of a loss. The loss is still there but if we can work through the pain then we can look forward and see that although life is different it can still be great.

Grief is something we will all experience but most of us are uninformed about what is normal and what is not. Support often comes at the wrong time. There are lots of offers to help at the beginning but you often end up having to cope with everyone else’s grief. The offers tend to have disappeared later when you need it.  Support needs to be stronger than the challenge. We need to find the support systems that will be meaningful and encourage us to build hope. Julie knows how emotionally hurt she was when her brother died and her marriage ended but despite how hurt she was she was able to move through it and rebuild her life. Her thought was that if she could do it before it is possible to do it again. What we really need is strong hope – a certainty of hope so we understand that it is possible

When people talk about closure they are triggered into thinking they can never move on. The loss still exists therefore they cannot recover, but closure is not the closure of the relationship. People get confused and think that if they let go of the pain they let go of the person. They connect the pain with the person and we need to separate the two. Julie lives in love and gratitude to her children who died and lives in love and gratitude to those who are living – you can’t raise one above the other

You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information about Julie here. Our previous podcast episodes, upcoming guest list and are also available.

You can get in touch with Julie through her website buildalifeafterloss.com were you an find a weekly podcast and the option for a Free Discovery Consultation. Her book Miracles in the Darkness is also available.