Ep. 73: Self-care for grief and growth [Part 1]
[28 MIN LISTEN]
Life has its seasons of ups and downs and, this year, I find myself navigating self care for grief, which is a topic that I know so many others struggle with too. Death is a natural part of life but that doesn’t mean it’s easy for our bodies to understand and process.
What does self care for grief look like? What is grief awareness? How do we grow through grief instead of letting it keep us stuck, sour and miserable? How do grief and loss change us? These are just a few questions this episode will answer for you.
If you find yourself feeling emotionally stuck, without a clear direction on your path forward through the feelings you’re currently experiencing, whether it’s grief, guilt or one of life’s random rough patches, you’ll want to give this episode a listen.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
What grief looks like and where grief is stored in the body (based on my personal experience)
Grief awareness and growing through grief
My four essential steps of self care for grief for myself and my family, including a brief look at my personal grief rituals and some of my trauma healing processes like using these healing journal prompts
Episode transcript:
This is an auto-generated, unedited episode transcript
[00:00:00] Welcome to The Life with Liz Podcast, the place to be if you wanna go from invisible to vibrant in your life, and embrace the power you didn't know you had inside of you. I'm your host, Liz Fleming, business owner, mom, military spouse, entrepreneur, founder, CEO, and life coach, who is passionate about helping ambitious women like you step into their power and their purpose on purpose so they can experience as much joy, success, satisfaction, and abundance as humanly possible. Now without further ado, let's dive right into this episode. Hello, my friends. It feels so strange sometimes to have such a bubbly opening little jingle for the podcast when I do share some very heavy topics like I am going to for this episode. So before you dive in, a couple of things. I want you to know this is a trigger warning for. Topics related to [00:01:00] death, grief, and trauma, because it's what I'm going through in life. And I felt really called to share an episode about how I'm managing through all of that. The second warning is there's gonna be a lot of swearing. I try not to swear seriously, but I've been a real wild deck of cards this year and. I feel that for full effect, an impact, that's just where it's gonna go. So I'm giving you the warnings. Now, put in your headphones. If you're around the babies, if you're sensitive to that stuff, you might wanna dip out. You can read the transcript, whatever floats your boat. So. Yeah. Okay. Here we are. Um, if I sound nasally, it's because it's just one of the many things that have found its way into my life, but I'm reaching a point where, and I talk a lot about this in my book, where I'm just choosing to do [00:02:00] shit instead of waiting for it to be perfect. Um. You know, I'm just gonna like, follow my intuition as always. And something told me that today was the day to share these stories. So I think it was like January when I told you all that. I was like, you know, uh, bringing the podcast back. It had been back for a little bit, but I also was gonna start doing weekly episodes and I had it all planned out, the topics were ready to go, and then. My life imploded, and for the last several months, it's been the most brutal eye-opening learning experience, and I just felt really called to make it into a podcast episode because I'm here to be real with you. I'm here to be honest, and I just hear so much from you about how the stories that I share help you because I keep it real. I'm just a human being [00:03:00] and. I wanna help other human beings. B. So here I am. Um, yeah, so speaking of people liking what I'm saying, I just need to like make a quick note that this podcast just hit 10,000 downloads. So thank you for everyone listening to my nasally gross voice today and my clear voice and all the other episodes. And. All that jazz. I mean, reading the show notes, reading the blogs, reading the emails. The messages, the replies. Uh, thank you so much. This is really, such a labor of love. So I wanted to just make a note of that. 'cause it just happened. It's a, it's a huge deal. So there is one good thing that came out of this shit storm of a year so far. Um, I sawn night crystal just moved. That is so wild. Maybe I need to wave it around my head. Let's cleanse out this energy. Okay. Um, so like I said. [00:04:00] As soon as I announced I was aiming for weekly podcast episodes, my life imploded. There was a significant and sudden death in our family. We lost our mother-in-law. Uh, my mother-in-law, my husband's mother tragically. It was so, so tragic on top of raising. Two children, a 3-year-old and a 20 month old sickness winter illness. Um, my daughter broke her leg. So navigating just life's ups and downs on top of experiencing a level of grief that I have never felt, my husband has never felt as a man in. The military who has seen a, a lot of death, um, in combat throughout his [00:05:00] 20 year career. Um, so both of us kind of experiencing these feelings for the first time while simultaneously having to communicate grief and death to a 3-year-old. Um, there have been some middle of the night er visits for other illnesses and like unrelated things. Definitely been experiencing some burnout from like parenthood and trying to nurture myself and, you know, just being slammed with sickness after sickness that the kids kept. So, uh, excuse me. Yeah, there's gonna be some of that here, but that's just like a high level of what's been happening and. It sucked. I mean, this has been the shittiest year since February. I feel like I've been clawing my way out of a deep, dark well that seemingly never ends from that tragic, unexpected loss of my [00:06:00] mother-in-law. Processing a level of grief I've never known. Watching my husband process the deepest chasm of grief he's ever known to sharing that grief with toddlers while caring for toddlers who are incredibly active, sick every other week, breaking bones, visiting the er, regressing, teething, pooping in their beds, peeing their pants while trying to keep my aging limping sweet dog going, maintain my coaching business and my other events. Business for women, and you know, my sanity at the same time, no pressure, Liz. None at all. No matter how deep that well goes, I keep finding that my face and my focus has been pointed upward towards the light. I think it's just who I am as a person. I don't know, there's just something in me I've learned. On this journey of [00:07:00] self-healing and as I've deepened, you know, my spiritual growth over the last half decade, that I've gotten a lot more comfortable with death and I've been able to see more of its beauty and you know, just find those pockets of light that have gotten me through. But I've never experienced a death so sudden with someone who is so young and. It just opened my eyes to a lot, but there's still that glimmer of, of light. Of course, my heart is shattered, but it's like as I'm grieving, I'm still actively choosing to look on the bright side because the person that we did lose would've wanted that for us. It's who she was. So I am finding as I move forward, there's little. Tells little bits and pieces that I'm putting together that are [00:08:00] helping me cope. So it's like this constant inner knowing that this is almost like a metamorphosis of epic proportions that's making me stronger. Like you, if this is something you've experienced or also experiencing or not, maybe you're just having a hard day or a hard phase of life, but. I like to think of it like that, like this is a transformation taking place. It's allowing me to experience a new layer of gratitude because no matter how hard things get, there's always something to be grateful for, especially with grief. I just keep leaning on the amount of love that we have in our life for us to be able to feel so shitty. That must be a big kind of love, and I'm so grateful for that this year. We are in numerology. We're in a universal year nine, which symbolizes endings and I'm a life path six in a year, six, [00:09:00] which is all about nurturing and love and relationships. So this has given me every reason to give up, you know, but I haven't, boy have I wanted to. There have been some days, seriously, some of my tantrums could put a three-year-old to shame. No joke. And I have an episode with, um, my Numerologist gal pal, Kaitlyn Kaerhart, all about numerology 101 and the power of using your numbers as a guide to navigate your life. Episode 74. Check that out. If you're like hearing me talk about numbers in life, you're like, what the hell? Just go listen to that episode and then come back to this one. 'cause it's gonna blow your frigging mind. Um, anyway, the point of me spilling my guts like this is. Because I started this podcast to be real with you. Life just fucking happens. Shit happens, and you have two choices. You can play the victim and wallow [00:10:00] in, so self-pity and self-doubt, or you can nurture yourself, honor where you are and fucking rise. Rise to the next level. See this as growth. If you don't, things like grief and guilt can latch onto you forever. Locking themselves inside of your body, seeping in and out like a poison, like a dark cloud. This definitely doesn't mean you should rush the pro process of grieving and mourning, especially the first year of a significant loss, but it does mean naturally and actively acknowledging what's happening inside of your body. Which we're gonna get into. So where is grief stored in your body? I don't know. I'm not a scientist or a doctor, but for me, in my experience, it, it's everywhere. It's all consuming mostly because I, you know, have a lot of [00:11:00] anxiety as it is. Um, I feel it in my brain. I feel it in my heart, uh, the most, and definitely like my stomach, my gut area. You can just tell when your systems are off. Not everything is grief and guilt, by the way. Sometimes it's just a bad day or a bad feeling. But I wanna tell you how I am showing up and I'm managing with self care for grief and all of life's other weird surprises right now. It hasn't been easy. Mm. I keep giggling. It sounds so insensitive, but it's just like. At some point, you just have to laugh. It's like, are you fucking kidding me? What the fuck? So it hasn't been easy. Um, but as a certified mindset coach, I've been able to constantly guide myself and my family through this. Hell fire using tiny rituals to regulate our nervous systems, release, release, release, and be on our way [00:12:00] to relief ultimately, and healing. So there's a few things that I've done. Um. With them. For me, and I actively practice this with my clients too, whether they've come to me for business coaching or just regular success and mindset coaching, but raising your awareness. The biggest factor by far and helping me is conscious self-awareness. I talk a lot about this in my book, but essentially your awareness is your gold mine. The key to unlocking your inner healing in a capacity of self-love and light you never knew possible awareness is, as the author, Michael Singer puts it in his book, the Untethered Soul Awareness is noticing that you notice, you wanna become so aware of yourself and your thoughts, your emotions, your feelings, that you can start to [00:13:00] pick up on the root cause. Awareness is everything. It's so important, and when you first get started it feels odd, but as you get more aware of what this feels like, what awareness feels like for you and your body, noticing that you notice what's happening inside your bo, your mind and your body, the more you're able to consciously and proactively redirect your thoughts and regulate your nervous system. So this is like a phase that I call, like let it marinate. So you're being in your awareness, you're raising your awareness, but you're, you're also like just noticing that you notice, like let it just be there. This is not toxic positivity. This is being a master of your own energy. We're not meant to suffer. Your awareness puts you back in power in the driver's seat of your life. So when you're letting your awareness marinate, you're asking yourself questions like, why am I so upset? Why am I [00:14:00] mad? Why's triggering me about that? What's the root cause if I were to pick a thing? The same goes for you. When you feel joy, be in that awareness. What makes this feel so good? Why does this make me so happy? Because that awareness reveals so many answers about yourself and your life and how you react and adapt to certain situations and emotions. And by being aware, you open yourself up to more of life's joys, and ultimately that relief, that relief that you're longing for that freedom. Mm, yummy. We want more of that. And then processing. And releasing is, it's the most important. So as you develop your conscious self-awareness, you start to realize all the shit you hold onto and harbor inside of your body. Take note of it so you can work to release it, not suppress it, release it, wonder why you're sick all the time. Wonder why you're constantly sore and achy. It's probably a trapped trauma [00:15:00] or emotion that you aren't consciously aware of or you are and you're refusing to confront and release the pain. And I don't take this lightly. I'm not throwing around these terms to be insensitive. I'm keeping this as clear cut and real for you as possible. Because while it may seem like rocket science, because there are gurus out there who wanna just take your money based on manipulating like your emotions, right? It's, it's not, this is stuff that you can do yourself, though it is easier with support, but you're not meant to suffer in your life. You can literally use your own energy to erase physical symptoms with a healthy mindset that allows you to manifest more good health and happiness into your life. There are so many techniques you can have in your back pocket to release stagnant, pent up energy from your shadow. As a coach, this is my specialty, dude. I love release work. I'm a true believer that if everyone just. [00:16:00] Was honest with themselves and consciously practice releasing what no longer served them. Every single day, the world would be like a million times happier place. People are so damn afraid to feel. They're afraid to feel bad. Everyone's so obsessed with feeling good. They don't realize that in order to feel good, they need to release what doesn't feel good and honor all the emotions that we get to experience. So to acknowledge. Those feelings. People are afraid to like do that, to revisit, but it's honestly a gift that we get to feel and that we have techniques like emotional freedom, technique, tapping, reiki, hypnosis, forgiveness, parts, integrations, meditation, shaking breath work, all at the touch of our fingertips to help us on this long ass journey. And I share my favorite techniques in my book coming out soon with tips for how to get started. So. Be sure to jump on my email list so [00:17:00] you know, when that bad boy hits shelves, uh, it's gonna be a good one, man. It's taken me years. It's finally getting out into the world. And then finally, the biggest part of this, oh my goodness, you guys, you just have to stop controlling every situation. You need to surrender to the process. Let what's unfolding unfold. Yeah, everything is energy, so be aware of yours. As you begin to shift, you'll notice the shift. You will feel it. Life will feel lighter each day, even if by only a scosche or two at a time. It will. And for more on emotional, I have an episode on emotional regulation techniques. I actually have a few, so scroll back through and see which ones there are. Um, I think it's around like the sixties and seventies episodic numbers. Somewhere in there. I talk about this stuff all the time, so you can't go wrong. Really. But [00:18:00] I feel that our emotions are such a gift. Even the ones that we don't like, they're full of wisdom, constantly feeding us information. But because we're so caught up in our own discomfort, we never take the bait. We never do. Just take the fucking bait, follow the feelings, all of the feelings. Your intuition will never lead you astray. Okay. Grieving in this way while watching my family grieve, especially my spouse, has required me to dig deep, deep dude to go to the deepest, darkest depths of my release work, which most of the time means surrendering to the process. Receiving what needs to be received and releasing the how for all the rest. Being an open channel, listening to him, to those that I love, listening to me, to my [00:19:00] body. I mean really yanking out the thorns and weeds and smoke and smog. We are straight Bush whacking this bitch so. It's been quite a trip. Been quite a year so far for me. But these few insights I shared, awareness, analysis, processing, release, surrender are how I've been coaching myself and my family through what's been the hardest, most unpredictable and shitty time in our lives, though I do wanna add too, 'cause it's coming to me. It hasn't all been bad. I'm dwelling on the bad in this episode to reveal that there's. Also opportunities for you to be aware of all the good that is also happening simultaneously, that you can also choose to point your face and your energy toward. Because there have in our lives also been beautiful moments this year. Too [00:20:00] old me would've self-sabotaged honestly. Uh, the shit out of this worst case scenario year, playing the victim blaming herself and spirits shaming. You know, her manifestations for these obstacles that keep popping up. And trust me, my heart is broken, broken. It will never be the same. Trauma and grief, they do that to you, but I know that. The past is the past and it cannot be changed. No matter how much I dwell, no matter how much I overanalyze, no matter how much I cry, so I release, I release, I release. I release what I can physically, mentally, and emotionally, and surrender to the rest because this me right here, right now, this me knows better. [00:21:00] The more I take care of myself and choose to keep my eyes focused on the light within, the easier it gets for me to go from grief, depression, and dread to relief. I've had every opportunity to choose the darkness, and some days I, I still, I'm there, but I know it doesn't serve me to stay there. And when I am there, when it does feel really dark, I. I am open and I listen. I let it come. I let it pass. My awareness and ability to let it go is ultimately what's making me stronger. Just like you though, I still have a lot of work to do, like this stuff that I'm telling you has worked. So greatly, [00:22:00] but there's still so much work to do. You know, like just because I practice these few things doesn't mean like life's all shiny and sparkly and new again. It's hard, you guys. It's so hard. I still have work to do, but I will say this, my silver lining is like I keep dreaming about floating in tropical beach water. Like a tropical sea with no waves for hours on end. And it's so nice. I mean, white sandy beaches have always been on my vision boards and I like really need a vacation. Maybe this means they're coming or maybe that means I'm already on my way. Hmm. Either way, it's nice not to have nightmares as much anymore. The more that I do this work, it's like the relief is all encompassing in my waking conscious awareness and also, you know, when I'm asleep and that is a next level type of relief to be [00:23:00] able to sleep. So finally processing and releasing the darkness and turning it into just a beautiful, bright, iridescent present. That's my goal, and that's all I keep thinking about. I visualize it. Visualization has been huge for me. Nature huge for me. There's just so many ways you can nurture yourself and cope. That are healthy and good for you, and that's all you can do. So if you're going through it right now, I want you to know I see you. I really see you. What you are feeling is normal. You're not broken. You don't need fixing. You need love. You need nurturing mostly from yourself, of yourself to yourself. I see you. I see you. I see you. I hope you see you [00:24:00] too. You are so beautiful and important and worthy. Don't let yourself slip away. Don't, don't let yourself go hold tight to who you are, your gratitude and what makes you great because brighter days are ahead. All you have to do is just remember to look up, okay? That's the name of our game. One step at a time. So in the show notes, I also share some support resources for anyone who is struggling with grief trauma, they're just going through a rough patch with their mental health. There's the National Alliance on Mental Health. Find a hotline, um, or a helpline, excuse me, is great. And then of course, the American Psychological Association has a whole list of. Numbers that you can call for free related to various topics from what I'm talking about. Grief, [00:25:00] mourning, trauma, but then there's also like postpartum military support, all of that great resources all linked in the show notes. Lean on your support systems inside of your family, your friends, the people that you know, like and trust. Certified life coaches who specialize in this type of work, and especially licensed medical professional professionals like counselors and therapists are key. You don't have to choose one or the other. They all go great together. We make a nice, lovely, delicious cocktail of support. And if that's what you need to get through, that's what we're gonna do. So I hope this episode was helpful for you. I know it was such a deep one, but I felt so called to share it from the deepest steps of my heart and my soul. I've been wanting to give you updates on this. In my life for the past several months, but I just didn't know how. I really didn't know how, and I knew that when I [00:26:00] wanted to or was ready to, that, I wanted it to be a teachable moment and not just like a, oh, woe is me, shit's hitting the fan, and blah, blah, blah. So that time has come and I feel like. With these few tips I've given you that you can really do a lot with them like I have, and we're all doing the best we can with what we have. We're all experiencing life with different backgrounds and different places and mindsets and experiences, and I just want you to know that I'm here for you. I see you. Please reach out with questions. Um, I'm here for you and I want you to know too. I'm okay. I am. I am. Okay. We are gonna be okay. We are so strong. I'm so grateful for all the love and support that I have in my life. Even though motherhood and being a military spouse and uh, an entrepreneur who works from home, [00:27:00] it is all so isolating. And sometimes I feel like I'm in a shrinking box. And then. I don't know, a sign or synchronicity happens. I see a number, I see an animal. The sun shines through my window, through that tiny little hole right onto my, my heart. You know, like it all sounds so cheesy, but there are, there are tells, there are little reminders that keep me aware. Remind me to keep my eyes open and my head up and I just, I hope the same for you. Did that go by too fast? No worries. You can always find me over at elisabethfleming.com for more information about my programs, events, and how you can take your learning further with me. If you loved this episode, leave a review. It helps more than you know. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'll catch you next time.
Resources mentioned:
**These are resources for residents of the United States. For support helplines in your country, please conduct an online search specific to your location**
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The content and material presented on this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It shall not be construed as medical advice. The information and education provided are not intended or implied to supplement or replace professional medical treatment, advice, and/or diagnosis. The creator of this content does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the creator is only to offer experiential information to help the reader in his/her/their quest for emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being. In the event you apply any of the information provided from this content for yourself, the creator assumes no responsibility for your actions.
