Word To Your Mothers welcomes guest Maria to the podcast. Maria is a dear friend of host Sondra Doty. Maria helps others by sharing on grief associated with event-based traumas, as well as chronic traumas (special needs, chronic illness and more.)
An educator for more than a decade, Maria is a speaker, facilitator and mentor for women's grief recovery; she's led Biblical finances and discipleship groups, and she's a support group leader for mothers and educators. Maria has been involved one way or another in youth and children's ministry for many decades and has a background in business administration, marketing, theological studies, communications, small group development, and education. She loves to read, write, travel, and have candid conversations with sincere people. Mara has been married for nearly 30 years and is a parent to three teens and young adults.
This episode is the first in a two-part series. In part one of Motherload of Grief, Sondra Doty and Maria start to break down getting honest with our grief. Even the two of them sharing stories and giving life examples brought up many emotions throughout the episode.
There is a way in life to embrace grieving in the now, but many times in our parenting role grieving has to be put aside for the sake of life happenings and keeping our little humans alive. Life keeps happening and we have to pick ourselves up very quickly.
So how do you grieve with hope while caring for children, household, jobs, and your partner? Pushing past the process can be tempting; it's easy to want to get to "the end result" or road of success and healing right not. However, being honest is the first step to sustaining help.
Honesty requires bravery and comfort. Maria shares examples of how she and her family have been walking this out in their own lives. Honesty is necessary for ourselves and others, though we do need to be careful with our honesty-especially with our children.
It's critical to have a healthy perspective of what grief looks like in failure, pain and how to walk that out into wholeness with God. Fear is a huge roadblock to honesty, because of so many emotions that can come up. The unspoken things are the things that can do the most damage.
Action step before listening to part two: Ask yourself weather you've been honesty with the grief in your life. What is or has been the unspoken that needs to come out? Sit down and give yourself the time to ask this question and write down what's grieving you. Maybe it's not something in the present time, but something from the past that is holding you back. Remember, be brave with your honesty! Step into something that can bring healing to those areas.
When we come back we will talk deeper into getting the appropriate help and engaging a community within that.
Episode Resources: GIST The Essence of Raising Life-Ready Kids, By Michael W Anderson LP and Timothy D Johanson MD (Book Sondra talked about in the episode.)
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