Nathalie Himmelrich

Inspiring Hope | Finding healthy ways of Grieving | Writer

family of origin

Meghan Jarvis on How a Therapist Deal With Grief and Trauma | Episode 41

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HOW TO DEAL WITH GRIEF AND TRAUMA is completely self, funded, produced, and edited by me, Nathalie Himmelrich.
Consider making a small donation to support the Podcast here. Thank you! 

For more information, please visit Nathalie’s website, join the podcast’s Instagram page, and subscribe to the newsletter to receive updates on future episodes here.

Meghan Jarvis

Another exciting conversation awaits you here today because Meghan and I have something central in common: our passion for grief and trauma. Speaking the same kind of language, our conversation flowed easily through her personal story of dealing with many losses and trauma, leading to her professional work with clients dealing with grief and trauma, especially in the workplace.    

About this week’s guest 

Meghan Riordan Jarvis, MA, LCSW, is an author, podcast host, TEDx Speaker, and psychotherapist specializing in trauma, grief, and loss. After experiencing PTSD following the deaths of both of her parents within two years of each other, Meghan began speaking on a larger scale about the importance of understanding grief and supporting grievers. Founder of Tacking Point Partners, Meghan, and her team consult regularly with companies addressing grief in the workplace. Meghan’s “Grief is My Side Hustle” platform includes her popular podcast of the same name, her blog, and her free grief writing workshop “Grief Mates.” Meghan’s memoir. “The End of The Hour,” will be published in December 2023.

Meghan’s links: Website | Instagram

Topics discussed in this episode

  • Meghan’s personal and professional relationship with grief and trauma
  • Childhood trauma: Death of a close family friend through drowning
  • Break-up, therapy… ultimately leading to Meghan becoming a therapist herself
  • The death of her Dad (2017) and Mum (2019) and the different reactions Meghan experienced
  • When and how do you know you need help? 
  • Grief in the workplace
  • Why people don’t talk about grief

Resources mentioned in this episode

  • Anderson Cooper Podcast
  • Trauma therapies: EMDR, Sensory Motor Psychotherapy, Internal Family System, Touch Therapy
  • Help Text

Thank you for listening!

HOW TO DEAL WITH GRIEF AND TRAUMA is produced and edited by me, Nathalie Himmelrich. Support the show

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Tori Press on When Grieving Dad Equals the Loss of a Challenging Relationship | Episode 39

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HOW TO DEAL WITH GRIEF AND TRAUMA is completely self, funded, produced, and edited by me, Nathalie Himmelrich.
Consider making a small donation to support the Podcast here. Thank you! 

For more information, please visit Nathalie’s website, join the podcast’s Instagram page, and subscribe to the newsletter to receive updates on future episodes here.

Tori Press

I’m honestly a big fan of Tori and you’ll be too as soon as you see her amazingly creative way in which she processes her life through her art. There is this one post about grief being a gift that keeps on giving which immediately drew me in and I was hooked. Tori and I had an immediate connection even though this interview was the first time we spoke in person. 

I’m so grateful to her deciding to share about the topic of grief in relation to a person when the relationship in life was difficult which is another place where our lives run in parallel. 

This is another exciting conversation that I am sure you’ll enjoy as much as I did.    

About this week’s guest 

Tori Press is an artist, author, and anxious human being. She spent 10 years as a graphic designer before quitting to create some space in her life.

In 2016 she bought herself a set of markers and began drawing pictures inspired by her yoga practice, mental health struggles, and everyday life. This decision started her on an extraordinary adventure of self-discovery and human connection. Her drawings help her cultivate mindfulness, gratitude, and self-acceptance–and she hopes they do the same for others!

She is the author of two books: How to Feel Better, a companion and workbook for dealing with tough times (including grief and loss), and I Am Definitely, Probably Enough (I Think).

Tori’s links: Website | Instagram

Topics discussed in this episode

  • The death of Tori’s death
  • The pivotal role of social workers and other support people
  • Having a grieving friend, someone to go through grief with helps to feel less alone and isolated and normalizes the intense experience of grieving
  • The use of art as a form of creative healing
  • Dealing with the loss when the relationship with that person was difficult

Resources mentioned in this episode

Thank you for listening!

HOW TO DEAL WITH GRIEF AND TRAUMA is produced and edited by me, Nathalie Himmelrich. Support the show

Support the show:

Follow on socials:

John Henry Parker on How Helping Troubled Veterans Helped Him Deal With Grief | Episode 37

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HOW TO DEAL WITH GRIEF AND TRAUMA is completely self, funded, produced, and edited by me, Nathalie Himmelrich.
Consider making a small donation to support the Podcast here. Thank you! 

For more information, please visit Nathalie’s website, join the podcast’s Instagram page, and subscribe to the newsletter to receive updates on future episodes here.

John Henry Parker

Today on the podcast I am speaking with John Henry Parker who has experienced multiple losses in his family. From avoiding grief and its emotionality altogether after the loss of his older brother Russel when John was just twenty years old, he could no longer do that when his son Danny died in 2009. Therapeutic writing and helping other troubled veterans as he calls them were his ways of dealing with his loss.

About this week’s guest 

John Henry Parker is a behavioral assessment analyst, writer, and audiobook narrator. For over 35 years, he has immersed himself in the work of personal transformation with a simple philosophy; Apply everything to self, first.
His passion ranges from writing, offering men’s transformational work to the philosophy in life of giving back and paying it forward. His passion for supporting and working with transitioning veterans and their families is in memory of his son Danny, who was killed in an adrenaline-seeking, excessive speed-related motorcycle accident after completing his military service. Danny was a Purple Heart Recipient and Combat Veteran of two deployments to Afghanistan with the Army 10th Mountain Division. John is a former peacetime Marine, and his father was a former Marine, Korean War Combat Veteran, and Air Force Reconnaissance photographer in Vietnam.

Check out John’s links:

Topics discussed in this episode

  • Growing up with an alcoholic father and in a ‘bad’ neighborhood
  • His mother’s Parkinson’s disease for 35 years
  • Significant losses: John’s older brother Russel through a motorcycle accident when he was twenty, and his son Danny (highspeed motorcycle accident) in 2009
  • Aunt Glady’s influence on John’s view on life: God is love, the gift of empathy, and the law of reciprocity
  • Working with troubled veterans 
  • Epigenetic trauma

Resources mentioned in this episode

  • Bruce Lipton, Joe Dispenza

Thank you for listening!

 If you’d like to be updated on future episodes, please subscribe to the 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. 

Clover Stroud on the Ambiguous Loss of Her Mother and the Early Loss of Her Sister | Episode 28

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Clover Stroud
Clover Stroud

HOW TO DEAL WITH GRIEF AND TRAUMA is completely self, funded, produced, and edited by me, Nathalie Himmelrich. Consider making a small donation to support the Podcast here. Thank you! 

Today on the podcast I am speaking with Clover Stroud, a British journalist, and author, telling us about her beautifully rich and colorful life, which also included deep trauma within her family of origin.
 She shares about the ambiguous loss of her mother who suffered a horse-riding accident and because of it became brain-damaged when Clover was only sixteen years old. Her mother was alive but no longer capable to fulfil her role as a mother. She required full-time care following her accident and died 20 years later. 

During their teenage years, Clover and her two years older sister Nell formed a close bond, as they first cared for their mother in their home. This role reversal had a huge impact on Clover’s outlook on life. Not even 50, Nell was diagnosed with cancer and died within a couple of years of their mother’s death.

Clover believes that what saved her life was to be creating and really going after life. One of her quotes from the podcast that I will keep as a reminder of our conversation is that grief can be a creative act. 

About this week’s guest 

Clover Stroud is a writer and a journalist and has five children. She writes about the way life feels, mining her own experiences to draw universal truths about what it means to be human. She never shies away from the big topics and writes with startling honesty about life, death, sex, addiction, motherhood, nature, grief, ecstasy, and suffering.

She started her career as a journalist at 24, and since then has written regularly for all the major newspapers and publications, including The Sunday Times, The Guardian, The Daily Mail, The Telegraph, Vogue, Red, Harpers, Elle, and she frequently appears on radio or podcasts as a distinctive and singular voice. She has published three memoirs, all Sunday Times bestsellers, and is working on her next book. 

Clover hosts a weekly author interview on her popular Instagram page @clover.stroud. 

Check out her website here for details on her memoirs. 

Topics discussed in this episode

  • Grieving the relationship with her mother after her accident and brain damage, the first loss, and caring for her at home with her sister as two teenagers
  • Twenty years later her mother died, and a new kind of grief
  • Two years later her sister’s cancer diagnosis led to her death

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.

Grief 10 years on

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Even though the time that has passed since death
does not determine the amount of grief left to be felt,
it still gives us information
on the length of time
we managed to survive without them.

Nathalie Himmelrich
From Nathalie Himmelrich´s private archives

What does grief and grief work look like 10 years on?

Today is my mother’s 10th year death anniversary. She died from suicide following years of depression, just 4.5 months after my daughter’s death.

First of all, it feels partly unreal that it’s already 10 years and partly I’m in sort of disbelief about the fact that she died at all.

Let me be clear: I’m cognitively absolutely clear that she is dead. And still, it’s somehow strangely unreal.

Grief still works through me

Today, I noticed feeling on edge, easily annoyed by trivial things. That’s normal and to be expected when the layer of ice over grief is thinned through an anniversary date. Honestly, I think my physical body is aware of and reacting in response to the approaching anniversary way before the mind catches up.

Feelings come and go

I let myself sit with feelings as they come and go, choose to look at memories and photos in honour of her, become teary looking at certain ones, plan to visit the cemetery, and leave ten roses for her. I feel restless, a bit lost, and let myself be in it. And then I do something else for a while and let it rest.

How long has it been for you? How do you feel around your loved one’s death anniversary? Share with me here.

Grief over time

If you want to read more about how grief changed over the years, you might find the following articles interesting to read:

10 years into grief (child loss)

7 years into grief (child loss)

6 years into grief (child loss)

5 years into grief (child loss)

4 years into grief (sibling loss, mother loss, child loss)

3 years into grief (child loss)

2 months into grief (child loss)

💭 I daydream…

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I daydream about … 💫 who they would have become ✨

Grief Quote by Nathalie Himmelrich

Last night I went to Ananda Mae’s parents’ evening at the school. Every parent had to introduce their child given it was a new formation of kids.

As I heard the other parents describe their child, mentioning their siblings, I went off daydreaming about AM’s sister, A’Mya.

Who would you have become? What would it be like for the two to go to the same school, or even class? To share friends, experiences, and birthdays?

Just the other day Ananda Mae had asked me to daydream with her about her sister. She asked exactly those questions. “Mum, would A’Mya look just like me?” “I imagine very similar, given you are identical twins,” I replied.

Go ahead, daydream

Daydreaming about a future that cannot be is a way of remembering. Remembering your loved one. Living a relationship, learning to be in a new relationship when the kind of relationship we would have wanted to live is no longer possible.

Whoever came up with the notion ‘not to grow up the child/baby who died’ (I remember it was a therapist 🤦🏽‍♀️ – not me though) was wrong. It is completely normal and natural to do so, at least in my experience and the experience of her surviving twin.

Thank you for being right here and now with me 🕊

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    Nathalie Himmelrich

    I accompany people therapeutically as a holistic counsellor and coach.

    I walk alongside people dealing with the challenges presented by life and death.

    I’m also a writer and published author of multiple grief resource books and the founder of the Grieving Parents Support Network.

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