Episode 002- [Grief Unplugged Podcast] - Give Yourself Permission to Grieve

Hello & welcome to the Grief Unplugged podcast. I am your host, Heather D. Horton.  Grief Unplugged is a podcast that frees professional women from the blockages of grief to find purpose in their pain.  This episode is fundamental to your grief journey - giving yourself permission to grieve.  I will explore and unpack what is grief and the grieving process, identify the many faces of grief, and validate the uniqueness of your grief experience.

How do you keep going when you would rather stop waking up or crawl into a ball and never come out?  Give Yourself Permission to Grieve.  Grief is an inevitable part of life.  Remember that we live in a fallen world, where blessings and sorrows intermingle freely.  Grief knows no zip code.  It touches us all at some point in our lives in more ways than we realize or recognize.  It is unpredictable.  It is not mental illness or a sign of weakness. 

It is the normal and natural response to trauma and loss. It is an act of love and compassion to ourselves when you allow yourself to work through it.  Trauma, includes not only serious injury to the body, as a result of physical violence or an accident, but also experiences that causes severe anxiety or emotional distress or that causes great disruption or suffering in our lives.  Loss is similarly defined as the condition of being deprived or bereaved of something or someone.   Grief is like the trunk of tree, but it has many, many branches – they are endless. 

You may have recently experienced the loss of a loved one, be it a family member or friend, or years may have passed since the death occurred.  You may have just lost a job or been unemployed for some time.  You may be going through a divorce, just ended a relationship or need to end a relationship.  You may have now have an empty nest as you children/child went off to college or got married.  You may have a special needs child or be serving as the caregiver for a parent with dementia or cancer.

For any of you with children, do you remember your first-born’s reaction when the next sibling came along?  Maybe something caused you to lose sight of a dream you once held and you no longer can envision a way to get back there.  These are some of the many faces of grief – again, they are endless.  The most notable time where I had to give myself permission to grieve occurred after my mother and I were involved in a car accident 13 years ago.  I touch on that more in the first two episodes of my podcast that detail my story.  I suffered severe non-life threatening injuries but she succumbed to her injuries almost immediately. 

I will be even more transparent and tell you the latest thing that I had to give myself permission to grieve over – leaving my job to become an entrepreneur.  Although I knew that God had called me to help individuals navigate through the wilderness of grief, I had to adjust to no longer doing what I loved which was being a lawyer and working to create more diversity and inclusion to elevate others within my organization.  It was a great disruption to all of a sudden leave what I knew for the last 13+ years but I realized once I accepted that my feelings were normal and natural, I was able to see my greater purpose in being able to elevate others in a different way, a way that could save lives, empower communities and change the world.  I was able to give up the hope that things would have happened differently and focus on taking action to move forward and embrace my new normal.

I need you to give yourself permission to grieve.  Your family needs you to give yourself permission to grieve.  Your workplace needs you to give yourself permission to grieve.  Your community needs you to give yourself permission to grieve.  The world needs you to give yourself permission to grieve.  I say that because I truly believe that the mass shootings, murder-suicides and other violence manifesting itself in the world on what seems like every day no is because we as humans are walking around with so much unresolved grief.  Why do we grieve?  We grieve because we loved the person or that thing or situation that added value to our lives.  No one can tell you when or how long to grieve because your grief journey is unique to you. 

Often you hear that there are 5 stages of grief that everyone must go through as if you go through those 5 stages and it is over.  1. Denial; 2. Anger; 3. Bargaining; 4. Depression; 5. Acceptance.  The Kübler-Ross model, or the five stages of grief, theorized a series of emotions experienced by terminally ill patients prior to death.  Most times the stages don’t occur in order.  Some people never experience depression. Or they are angry before you may work through denial. 

Some losses/trauma may require the person to work through shock before denial.  There is no right order; your journey is unique to you.  No one knows the relationship you had with that person or thing but you.  Has anyone ever taught you how to grieve?  I believe the answer is No; why, because we live in a grief avoidance society.  A prime example is when I tell people that I’m now a grief coach versus being a lawyer, people look like they want to run from me.  When someone close to us dies or we can’t get out of bed because our spouse has asked for a divorce, you may only get a few days to plan and/or attend the funeral, or you start to exhaust your leave because you can’t deal with the pain.  However, when someone has a baby or needs to take off to care for a loved one, the mother and the father are allowed to take off work for months, or the caregiver can take leave under Family Medical Leave Act. 

On average, it takes about 5 to 8 years to recover from the loss of a loved one.  With the way society views grief, avoidance mode, you may ask how does one get past grief.  The only way out of grief is through it; you must take action and work through your grief to overcome it.  We want grief to be linear, but it is like a maze with dead ends and crooked paths.  Sometimes we minimize grief itself, but I would submit for your consideration that at least 2% of unresolved grief can affect every area of your life – physical, psychological, spiritual, and emotional. 

So how do you give yourself permission to grieve?  The Triple A Effect - Acknowledge, Acceptance and Action.  The first step is to acknowledge that you are grieving; that all of the emotions and all the feelings associated with your trauma/loss are normal and natural.  It is okay to feel the way you are feeling and no one can rush you through those feelings.  Your grief journey is unique to you.  The second step is to accept the reality of the death of the person, thing or situation – this may take awhile and that is okay. In order to accept the reality, Author Corinne Edwards said it best, you must give up the hope for a different or better yesterday. (REPEAT)  What I didn’t say is forget the cherished memories of your loved one or that thing.  I didn’t say deny those feelings or band aid the situation.  I am simply saying stop hoping that things would have happened differently.  You can’t change the past.  Think about it.  All you have is the gift of Now.  After you’ve have time to acknowledge the emotions, and accept the reality of the death/loss, then you must take action to move forward to living in the present.  Why?  Because grief never goes away – it is never eradicated, it is always there.  However, your reaction to grief changes as you start to work through your emotions.  20 years from now you can have grief bursts –uncontrollable, unpredictable outbursts of tears, some event may trigger you or there may be no trigger at all, and they seem to come at the worst of times.  That’s okay, I still have them myself.  The latest one was on mother’s day.  But know that crying is a miracle that leads to healing. 

You have an obligation to live your life for the rest of your life.  CPC Dora Carpenter lives by this mantra, Everything in life is temporary, including life itself (repeat).  Once you give yourself permission to grieve, you will start to focus less on the hole in your heart and more on honoring the life and legacy left with you.  In my coaching sessions, we take as long as necessary to walk through the acknowledgement and acceptance phases of you giving yourself permission to grieve. Imagine being free to move through the limiting blocks of unresolved grief in your life to a place of gratitude.

I want to thank you for listening to this episode. I hope you will join us for our next episode of the Grief Unplugged podcast.  To stay engaged with the podcast or learn more about my products and services, access my website at www.heatherdhorton.com. Also, please subscribe to the podcast so you know when the next episode is available and feel free to post a review, let me know what topics you want to hear discussed and share the podcast with your tribe.  In the future, we will feature episodes with guests who will share their part of their grief journey from a professional as well as personal perspective.  Until next time, keep moving forward.