... my dead child... Sometimes I fall into the trap of what I believe other people must be thinking when reading my posts and ask myself this Q. Today I came across this song and something in me happened. I remembered why. And it touched me deeply. I actually cried just now as I was watching the 'only few' pictures we have from A'Mya.And I realised: Grief doesn't have to be 'fresh' to be felt Remembering matters because it is the only time we have with them This is the time when I mother my daughter A'Mya The only place she lives is in my heart and in my memory. By sharing her with you I keep myself sane and authentic And if this - by any chance - triggers you It is not because of my sharing or because of me 'still talking about her' It is because something in you is touched and this feels uncomfortable Because truly - you can imagine losing a child even if you say 'I can't imagine what you went through' you could - if you'd so choose to - but you'd rather not meet that pain and anguish that deep inside you, you know Because let's face it: Loss is inevitable Grief is a given you are human and bound to experience this On the other side of birth is death On the other side of a hello is a goodbye Embrace it, lean into it Grief is Love
emotions/feelings
Nathalie with Brooke Carlock on If This Wasn’t Enough Already | Episode 22
Today on the podcast I’m speaking with Brooke whose story could be one that movies are made of. She has experienced loss after loss culminating in a series of devastating and traumatic losses within the past 12 months.
Listening to Brooke telling her life story is both devastating and shocking, at the same time as hope-inspiring in the way she’s living her life after loss with fierce resilience at the same time as grieving.
She speaks candidly about the dark places she went through while grieving and how she got help when she was suicidal.
The truth is that there are people like Brooke who have no choice but to live with multiple traumatic losses. The question is: how do we meet them? How do we enable ourselves to hold space for someone and their situation?
Regarding the people who helped Brooke the most, she says:
I want to be strong, and I want to keep going and find meaning in things. I’m just like a go-go-go person and the most helpful thing for me was people saying: ‘Slow down and breathe. You need to feel this and not rush through it, not ignore it, not medicate it.
Brooke Carlock
About this week’s guest
Brooke Carlock has experienced more grief and loss in her lifetime than most. The deaths of her grandparents, sister, cousin, and sister-in-law before she turned 35, along with her extensive coursework in Human Development and Psychology, taught her the power of resilience. However, nothing would prepare her for the devastation to come in her 40s. In a span of four months, Brooke lost her father to an unexpected heart attack, her stepmother to suicide, and her beloved 10-year-old daughter, Libby, in a horrific car accident.
As a teacher and freelance writer, her daughter’s death led Brooke to relentlessly study the fields of grief, loss, trauma, and resilience in order to survive her own experiences. Currently, she is pursuing her Grief Educator certification.
Brooke is the founder of LiveLikeLibby.org, a nonprofit organization that provides dance scholarships in her daughter’s honor, as well as the creator of Grieving Mommy, where she blogs about her experiences as a grieving mother.
Brooke’s links:
Topics discussed in this episode
- Loss of her favourite grandfather when Brooke was 10-year-old
- Loss of her sister leaving behind young children, and multiple losses in the close family
- Divorce
- Most recently her father (heart attack), closely followed by her stepmom (overdose) and dealing with both funeral arrangement
- News of the terminal illness of her mother
- Loss of her daughter Libby through a car accident
- Dealing with the dark places in early grief and suicidal thoughts
Resources mentioned in this episode
- Autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR), here is an example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhRrXuBU8-Q
Links
–> For more information, please visit Nathalie’s website.
–> Subscribe to the newsletter to receive updates on future episodes here.
–> Join the podcast’s Instagram page.
Thanks for listening to HOW TO DEAL WITH GRIEF AND TRAUMA. If you’d like to be updated on future episodes, please subscribe to my newsletter on Nathalie Himmelrich.com
If you need grief support, please contact me for a FREE 30 min discovery session.
HOW TO DEAL WITH GRIEF AND TRAUMA is produced and edited by me, Nathalie Himmelrich.
Support this Podcast
To support this podcast, please rate, review, subscribe to, or follow the podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you.
Remember to keep breathing, I promise, it will get easier.
Nathalie with Miten on Life’s Trauma and the Healing Through Music | Episode 18
Today I have the pleasure to speak with Miten who I’ve known for almost 20 years through his and Deva’s music. Miten shares the traumas he’s experienced throughout his life and how he’s found the healing power of music.
Miten says:
If there is one thing, I would say that’s helped me, that is to sing. And as much as I can, I tell people, not just our community who are into singing anyway, but… church choirs. Find a choir, find a Gospel choir, you know – sing! Because when you are singing, your heart starts to lift, your burden lift, your spirit lifts. It’s not a joke, it’s real and it’s important and it’s a commitment.
Miten
The mantras hold a special place in my heart and my personal healing so I can highly recommend checking out their music on their website, Spotify or wherever you listen to music.
About this week’s guest
Miten was born in London and grew up in the 60s. He later went on to establish a successful career for himself in the 70s as a noted singer/songwriter, releasing several albums including one for Ariola Records under the guidance of legendary American producer Bones Howe. He toured extensively, opening for Fleetwood Mac, Randy Newman, Hall and Oats, Lou Reed, Ry Cooder, Fairport Convention, and The Kinks, among others. This period of his life was exciting but left him spiritually unfulfilled.
After reading a book of the discourses on Zen from Osho (No Water No Moon), Miten had an epiphany and began an inner search. He left everything he had known before, even selling his guitars, and traveled to India, embracing life as a member of the community that had gathered around Osho.
It was there he met his life partner, Deva Premal, and they are now renowned worldwide for their fusion of western music with Sanskrit mantras. Together they have presented their music in as many as 45 countries while accumulating accolades from such diverse admirers as Cher and HH the Dalai Lama, with album sales in excess of one million copies.
Website: Deva Premal and Miten
Topics discussed in this episode
- Childhood traumas
- Leaving behind his family, letting go of his life, his identity, and his career as a musician, and joining Osho’s ashram
- Healing through meditation, chanting, and being in presence of a Guru and finding music again
- The physical trauma of a double heart by-pass surgery
Resources mentioned in this episode
- Film: Mantra – Sounds Into Silence
- Tara Mangalartha Mantra with India Arie
Links
–> For more information, please visit Nathalie’s website.
–> Subscribe to the newsletter to receive updates on future episodes here.
–> Join the podcast’s Instagram page.
Thanks for listening to HOW TO DEAL WITH GRIEF AND TRAUMA. If you’d like to be updated on future episodes, please subscribe to my newsletter on Nathalie Himmelrich.com
If you need grief support, please contact me for a FREE 30 min discovery session.
HOW TO DEAL WITH GRIEF AND TRAUMA is produced and edited by me, Nathalie Himmelrich.
Support this Podcast
To support this podcast, please rate, review, subscribe to, or follow the podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you.
Remember to keep breathing, I promise, it will get easier.
Nathalie with Amie Lands on Child Loss, Cancer, and Life’s Trauma | Episode 15
Today I speak with Amie where she shares how her life started with the loss of connection to her father due to mental illness and the challenging relationship with her alcoholic mother.
Amie then became pregnant for the first time, but her daughter Ruthie died after 33 days.
At 36 years, Amie was diagnosed with neck cancer which was successfully treated. She then shares how they moved across the States and their truck caught fire with many of their belongings including Ruthie’s memories gone.
Dealing with all those extreme situations, Amie learned and practiced one thing:
I live in this moment. I try not to think too much ahead of what’s to come next or what so many call future tripping. I don’t put myself in what could happen and so I really truly live today. I have a calendar and plan ahead, but I really just try and be in this moment.
Amie Lands
About this week’s guest
Amie Lands is the author of Navigating the Unknown, Our Only Time, Perfectly Imperfect Family, and the Tending to Your Heart series. She is a cancer survivor, founder of The Ruthie Lou Foundation, and a Certified Grief Recovery Specialist®. Since her daughter’s brief life, Amie’s passion is offering hope and providing support to bereaved families. Amie lives in South Carolina, United States with her husband and their two sons.
Amie’s website: www.amielandsauthor.com
Instagram: @amielandsauthor
Topics discussed in this episode
- Early loss of her father through mental illness
- Early child loss and pregnancy after loss
- A neck cancer diagnosis at the age of 36
- Moving across the States and a fire that destroyed many personal belongings
- How to love somebody that isn’t part of your life
- Learning to ask for help
Resources mentioned in this episode
- The Me You Can’t See (show on mental illness, Apple TV)
Links
–> For more information, please visit Nathalie’s website.
–> Subscribe to the newsletter to receive updates on future episodes here.
–> Join the podcast’s Instagram page.
Thanks for listening to HOW TO DEAL WITH GRIEF AND TRAUMA. If you’d like to be updated on future episodes, please subscribe to my newsletter on Nathalie Himmelrich.com
If you need grief support, please contact me for a FREE 30 min discovery session.
HOW TO DEAL WITH GRIEF AND TRAUMA is produced and edited by me, Nathalie Himmelrich.
Support this Podcast
To support this podcast, please rate, review, subscribe to, or follow the podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you.
Remember to keep breathing, I promise, it will get easier.
Nathalie with Kelsey Chittick on Looking at Death Differently | Episode 10
Today I speak with Kelsey about the loss of Nate, her husband, and the journey Kelsey took as part of dealing with his loss. She believes that: ‘The bigger the grief, the luckier you were.’ Kelsey shares so many different nuggets of wisdom that I found it hard to choose one to share with you below. Her way of looking at death and loss is different too many and honestly is refreshing. It will invite you to open your thinking and feeling about grief and trauma in a way you might never have thought to be possible.
Here is just one of Kelsey’s nuggets of wisdom:
If you can take the bad out of dying, whether it is suicide or sudden loss or sickness. If you can trust on some level, there’s something bigger going on here. Just like when you’re having that child and you are birthing it, you’re in so much pain you think you’re dying. But there’s something bigger going on here… It gives you a little space to go: Maybe there’s a different way to walk through this.
Kelsey Chittick
About this week’s guest
Kelsey Chittick is a writer, comedian, and inspirational speaker. Over the past 14 years, she has performed stand-up comedy all over Los Angeles and speaks at events around the country. She is the author of the best seller Second Half – Surviving Loss and Finding Magic in the Missing, a book about the sudden death of her husband in 2017.
She is the host of Mom’s Don’t Have Time to Grieve Podcast and was the co-creator of KeepON, an inspiring and humorous podcast that explored how our greatest obstacles turn out to be our greatest gifts.
Growing up in Florida, Kelsey was an accomplished student and athlete—an NCAA Championship individual qualifier and captain of the UNC women’s swimming team. She was married to Super Bowl champion Nate Hobgood-Chittick.
Instagram:
@kelseydchittick
@momsdonthavetimetogrieve
Topics discussed in this episode
- Kelsey’s husband Nate’s death from an enlarged heart and CTE (Chronic traumatic encephalopathy)
- Dealing with the early stage and the physical experience of grief
- Grief happening versus deciding when to grieve
- Death being the greatest teacher
- Grief growing up with us
- Living the best life in honor of them
Resources mentioned in this episode
Links
–> For more information, please visit Nathalie’s website.
–> Subscribe to the newsletter to receive updates on future episodes here.
–> Join the podcast’s Instagram page.
Thanks for listening to HOW TO DEAL WITH GRIEF AND TRAUMA. If you’d like to be updated on future episodes, please subscribe to my newsletter on Nathalie Himmelrich.com
If you need grief support, please contact me for a FREE 30 min discovery session.
HOW TO DEAL WITH GRIEF AND TRAUMA is produced and edited by me, Nathalie Himmelrich.
Support this Podcast
To support this podcast, please rate, review, subscribe to, or follow the podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you.
Healthy Versus Unhealthy Coping Strategies for Grief
All of my clients want to know how to deal with their grief and the aim is often and understandably to stop the intense pain.
Healthy grieving strategies
If you have been reading up on it, you have found lists with healthy grief coping strategies, such as, for example:
- Sharing your feelings: Talking to friends about how you feel can help ease the burden of loss. Let friends know that you don’t expect advice or answers and simply wish to share your emotions or reminisce about the person you’ve lost.
- Keeping a journal: Writing your feelings and thoughts in a journal not only helps you process grief but also keeps a record of your progression through the grieving process. You can look back on how your view of the loss has changed over time, which can help you see that your bereavement is an ongoing process.
- Getting creative: Making art, crafting, and playing music are all ways to express your creativity and process overwhelming emotions.
- Setting aside time to grieve: Scheduling grief might seem counterintuitive, but putting specific time on your daily calendar to grieve can help you fully process intense emotions. Give yourself permission to cry, scream or otherwise display strong feelings during that time, and find a place where you feel free to let yourself grieve without fear of judgment.
- Avoid making big changes in your life: A major loss causes a lot of upheaval in your life, so it’s best to keep everything else as normal as possible. Hold off on changing jobs, moving, or making other big life decisions until you have worked through the grief process for a while.
- Exercising regularly: Add physical activity to your schedule to help you release energy as a form of grief expression. You can use a quiet walk or run to calm your body and emotions or punch and kick at a punching bag to work out anger and frustration about your loss.
- Participating in social activities: Being home alone can leave you immersed in your grief, so make a point to go out to lunch with friends or join a social group.
- Taking refuge in your religious practices: If you are a regular churchgoer, attending services may help you deal with grief. Private prayer, meditation, and listening to religious music are other ways to cope with the spiritual aspects of grieving.
- Reminiscing in a healthy way: Your good memories of the person who has passed on can be a comfort during grief. Spend some time looking through old pictures, reading messages from the person who died, or watching videos taken during your loved one’s life. You might also find it helpful to talk aloud or write messages to the person who has died, expressing your feelings directly to that person and maintaining a connection that transcends death.
- Memorialize your loved one: If the person you are grieving had an affinity for a specific cause or charity, consider volunteering or donating in that person’s memory.
- Spending time with pets: Animal companions provide unconditional love and comfort that could help you cope with grief. If you don’t have pets of your own, consider volunteering at a local animal shelter to walk dogs or socialize kittens so they are ready for adoption.
- Joining a grief support group: Being around others who have also recently experienced a major loss can help you share the burden of grief. If your loved one died of a specific illness, such as cancer or heart disease, there might be a local support group for people who have lost someone to that specific disease.
(Source: Three Oaks Hospice)
But at the beginning, in the raw grief period, even little things might be too much to handle.
Unhealthy coping mechanisms for grief
This is also when people often describe using other coping strategies.
Unhealthy coping mechanisms may include:
- Denial: refusing to acknowledge your loss or grief.
- Risk-taking behaviour: this could include acting without thought of consequences and acting out through unhealthy relationships.
- Substance abuse: turning to alcohol or drugs to numb your feelings.
- Over or under eating: using food as a tool to numb or distract.
- Obsessing/Controlling: since you could not control your loss, you may seek to control what you can.
There can be many factors, including low self-esteem, or a history of untreated anxiety and depression that can lead to unhealthy coping mechanisms. There may be a sense of emptiness or lack of safety that makes their loss feel intolerable and this inability to tolerate the emotions leads to those unhealthy behaviours.
Intense emotions – how to deal with them?
Tolerating intense emotions requires practice, patience, and support. This is where an experienced therapist can support you in working through those intense emotions. By guiding you to understand the grieving process and dealing with obstacles and grief triggers you can experience a resilient way and the belief that you can deal with your grief.
Listen to Kellie Sipos on the How to Deal With Grief and Trauma Podcast on how she dealt with her drug abuse following the loss of her daughter.
Photo by Salman Hossain Saif on Unsplash