Healing Starts with the Heart

Don’t you hate it when someone says, “I know how you feel” or you come across experts who haven’t met with you privately but are ready to diagnose or “fix” you and your grief. This ain’t that and that ain't this.

The Need:

Need — require (something) because it is essential or very important rather than just desirable.  The need feels like you will not make it through this pain if you do not have the desired object near you.

In grief there are things that we do because we need them as part of our healing process.  It is not uncommon for us to wear his favorite shirt for 30 days straight.  Because I need to feel his presence in my heart.

VS

The Want

Want — have a desire to possess or do (something); wish for.  I want this shirt.  I have found memories of him in this shirt.

Over time these needs even if they are strange to you. (i.e., not wanting to clean out their hairbrush) will slowly turn into wants.  I want to place his shirt under my pillow as it comforts me.

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In the beginning we can feel responsible for what has happened. 

My thoughts: “I should have been there.”

Now add on the fact that we do not know how to do this grieving thing. 

My Thoughts: “I don’t Know how to grieve.”

My friend these are your thoughts.  Trust me when I tell you that your thoughts are controlling this grieving process by sending you into areas of pain that you do not need to be hanging out in.

As humans, it is our privilege to think about what we are thinking about. We must learn that our thoughts, not our circumstances, create our feelings.

That our feelings are the most important thing to know and pay attention to. When we are willing to feel all the grieving feelings available to us as humans, we will move around in this grieving experience that is much less fearful and much more compassionate.

As we are willing to pay attention, we will discover the power we all have. That power starts with our thoughts and ends with our results. ~ True healing.

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We just shared this with a client this week because she is staying in bed longer than she ever has before. And it's worrying her husband. And she's been worried about it too because she's said she didn't want to get stuck in the debilitating depression. This exhaustion is so normal because grief consumes every fiber of your beam having to get out of bed, brush your teeth, make breakfast for your littles. This grief can make you feel the same amount of tiredness as if you would've run a full marathon because you are trying to live while grieving. And it's consuming every cell every chromosome trying to go to biology and remember the parts of the body. Every hair follicle grief is consuming every pour in your skin. It's   just  like you've been taken over by alien.

There's a lot of things that frustrate me, with being a Grief Specialist and working with grievers trying to help them through their grief.  We try to help them find their own personal path out and through it. But nothing frustrates me more sister dear then when I hear someone say, you will never get over this grief. You will never find an end to this pain. Grief never ends. You will feel this way for the rest of your life. That is so frustrating to me and to society that we buy into that BS because it is so not true. If anything was the number one lie that grievers are told it's that grief never ends. And I think that's why we struggle sometimes with clients that we meet prospective clients, when you, are doing a sales call and we are explaining the program and say that true healing is possible.  It's not they don't buy into the program because they think it's nice what we are doing.  It’s that they do not believe that they will ever heal from this pain.

I distinctly remember having a, a huge bowl of vanilla ice cream. Now that I think back on it, I probably was trying to eat away my pain. This was right after Austin had died and the very first spoonful of vanilla ice cream that I put in my mouth was, so sweet and so cool. And I could literally, it was like the vanilla bean were, jumping off my tongue and my taste buds. And I remember thinking, oh man, this is so good. And instantly right afterwards, feeling guilty that I was enjoying life for one minute. These were in the beginning stages of my grief for Austin. And when you, and I didn't know anything about grief, I had convinced myself that I was supposed to feel bad all the time. I was supposed to be in the grieving state all the time. And I didn't find out till much later that grief goes up and down that your emotions change, that you could literally enjoy something and still be grieving.

It's a concept. I don't think a lot of people think about the fact that love and hate can exist at the same time in our heart. Happy and sad can exist at the same time. That's where the term bittersweet comes from. We have opposite emotions or how we call them conflicting feelings. These can happen at the same time. And it's completely normal. It's natural, but people don't know how to interpret that. When it happens, they feel crazy, because it's like, how can I love this person, but hate them and don't want them in my life. How can I be happy that my son is going off to college, but then broken and sad. The minute the door closes behind him, conflicting feelings exist all the time.

We have to start prioritizing our grief. We do need.  No one wants to be without love. But when you have love and you have these relationships through death, divorce, and again, break up of a romantic relationship, you lose it. But no one wants to deal with it. They essentially want to throw their hands up or stick your head in the sand, be sad, be miserable or run out and get another love. We don't prioritize our grief and it will essentially bleed out into other areas of your life.

This episode was recorded just two weeks after the Uvalde, Texas shooting.  Sharon asks Erica to go back to the moment when she learned that Austin had died to help people understand what those parents might have been feeling in the moments leading up to finding out that their lives were about to be forever changed as a result of this tragedy. 

What is closure?  What does that even mean? What is closure and how did that come to be a term associated with relationships or brokenheartedness and why is it that I feel like you always hear it on the news? We gotta get all the newscasters together and tell them to stop using the word closure. Closure is a term used to describe the process of acceptance after the death of a loved one.

Is crying required in order to grieve?  Absolutely not. Isn't it funny how people think that if you don't cry, then you haven't grieved or they associate their grieving with crying. Like we put the two together. When people see you out in public and you're not doing the ugly cry walking around the grocery store, they say, oh, you're doing so good. You're so strong. It's so insulting because we are totally grieving.  Our hearts are broken. Crying is not required inorder for somene to grieve.

The Sisters discuss the choices that a woman and a man have to go through when making the decision of whether or not to have an abortion and the grief that is connected to that.   

The Sisters talk about the griever resisting healing, resisting the pain. In the first few weeks and months after the loss, the most important thing that the griever can be doing is allowing in the pain, but no one ever tells them that.  One of the ways is to  bring the grief up, like bringing it up when the time is appropriate. And one of the ways we do that is with a voice recording of Austin.  You can use pictures or videos of your loved one as well, it's just important to make sure it's being done.

Erica is 100% the poster child of what true healing looks like. True healing does not look sad. If you are truly healed from a broken heart, you are living your best life. You're living the best life that you can in honor of your loved one. That's what true healing looks like. The things that people say, the things that people do can be so funny when it comes to grief.  Grief is sad but when you do healing work you will be able to find a life that is worth living.

The Sisters interview Erin Burden owner of Yoga with Erin B.  Erin shares how she was so devastaed by the loss of her daughter Dakota who ended her life in 2018.  It was Erin and Dakota's plan to teach yoga together, however once Dakota's death Erin could hardly get out of bed because her grief was debilitating.  Her desire to get back into yoga was to keep her connection with her daughter but she soon realized it was also helping her with her grief.  Today Erin strives to work specifically with grievers based on her own experience.  

In Erin's words "Yoga and prayer have gotten me through. I know Dakota is with Jesus and am grateful for that. I love being able to share yoga, as I know it has helped with my healing, and can help other moms."

Here is my youtube channel link

https://youtu.be/BC5-dqg6YZs

http://www.yogawitherinb.com/ 

Prolonged grief is a condition that occurs, according to the medical industry, grief that lasts over a year. Prolonged grief is a disorder that was just added to the DSM five, the diagnostic statistical manual of mental disorders. The DSM five is, whatever disease you can come up with and until recently, grief was never in it because grief is not a mental disorder. 

www.healingstartswiththeheart.com

This year for mother's day, we're not gonna talk about the joy of being a mother. We're gonna talk about the pain of being a mother. The pain of being a mother to a daughter, the pain of being a mother to multiple daughters, the pain of conflict that comes along with being in a relationship with your daughter this year were gonna take on a tough subject for mother's day.

www.healingstartswiththeheart.com

Neutral not helping or supporting either side in the conflict. That's the adjective neutral, the noun, an impartial or unbiased person. Neutral can also be a color. What is getting to neutral in your grief? Erica and I often help grievers get to neutral. In the middle, not having an emotional reaction or emotional feeling one way or the other you're just there. You're just in a neutral state where prior to that state, you had a ton of emotions going on.

www.healingstartswiththeheart.com

Betrayal in your marriage could be a betrayal in a relationship. All of a sudden you discover sexual betrayal and suddenly you're plunged into loss and grief at such a deep level that you never knew could even happen.  There are so many layers to betrayal and they can go so deep.

www.healingstartswiththeheart.com