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Nathalie Himmelrich

Inspiring Hope | Finding healthy ways of Grieving | Writer

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grief support

Nathalie with Katja Faber on Homicide Loss – Effect on the Victim’s Family | Episode 2 Part 1

July 4, 2022 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

‘I wish to be ok with it if for no other reason than I owed it to myself and I owed to my still-living children and those that care about me. Because they have a right to have a full and beautiful life, and having a mother that’s traumatised and overwhelmed by something that she has no control over is not doing anybody any favours.’

Katja’s story is extraordinary and has made waves in the media worldwide. Since the recording of this episode a few weeks ago the court case has taken place at the high court in Zurich, and the killer was convicted. We are planning to do Part 2 of this interview in a few weeks so stay tuned.

About this week’s guest: 

Katja Faber is the mother of three children. Following her 23-year-old son’s murder in Switzerland, she used her legal training to work closely with lawyers and the State Prosecutor to secure justice for her dead son. Through her writing at Still Standing Magazine and other grief-related publications, she hopes to break the taboo of homicide loss and child loss. She runs her own fruit farm and is an advocate of ecotherapy as a means of finding healing following a traumatic loss. Katja is a certified Compassionate Bereavement Care® counselor through the Center for Loss and Trauma in partnership with the MISS Foundation and the Elisabeth Kubler-Ross Family Trust.

  • Facebook
  • Instagram account 

Topics discussed in this episode:

  • Homicide loss – how a parent deals with the loss, the grief, the trauma, and the legal system
  • Self-care, writing, nature, family support, support groups 
  • Siblings’ grief, mothering living children who grieve their brother
  • Dealing with the media and the added pain caused by media coverage
  • Judgment or misunderstanding of the surroundings
  • Re-traumatizing the victim’s family through ongoing trials
  • The aspect of grief being to some degree public due to trials
  • How to continue living with the fact that the killer is still out there alive
  • The importance of accountability  

Resources and links mentioned in this episode:

  • Nathalie’s book Surviving My First Year of Child Loss: Personal Stories From Grieving Parents
  • The Compassionate Friends Facebook Groups

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. 

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.

Filed Under: podcast, child loss, emotions/feelings, grief support, grief/loss, grieving parents, mental health, trauma Tagged With: child loss, court cases and loss, grief support, grieving a child, grieving parents, homicide loss, katja, media and loss, murder, retraumatization, sibling loss

Nathalie with Rachel Tenpenny on Why and How Healing Is Possible | Episode 1

June 27, 2022 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

In this episode, we will be talking about child loss and loss through a divorce. I’m joined by Rachel Tenpenny, who is sharing her experiences and her insight that healing is possible.

I promise that if you will be here listening until the very end, you will know why she is absolutely sure that healing is possible. I’ve known Rachel for many years. In fact, since the first book I’ve written, Grieving Parents: Surviving Loss as a Couple, where I interviewed her and I still remember the things that she said, which are exceptional.

About this week’s guest

Rachel Tenpenny is a grief expert, emotional well-being specialist, and life-after-loss coach. With over 13 years of experience healing her own heart after her baby daughters died in 2008, she has helped hundreds of people find healing after life’s most painful experiences. Rachel believes grief is not forever and teaches grievers how to heal physically and emotionally with a unique and effective holistic approach to cultivating healing that lasts a lifetime. Originally from a small town in Southern California, she now lives in Northern Virginia with her two boys, Dustin and Colton.

Episode introduction

‘Whether healing is possible or not, is irrelevant. It has to be possible for me because this is the life that I want, and I am not willing to give up.’ 

Rachel Tenpenny gave birth to twin girls Aubrey and Ellie on June 24th, 2008. They both died a few days after their birth. Rachel talks to us about her grieving and healing story and how she came to strongly believe that healing is possible

Topics discussed in this episode

  • Why and how healing is possible
  • A society that does not understand grief and how confused we are about grief 
  • What does it look like when ‘grief isn’t forever’? 
  • We don’t have to be isolated in our grief
  • Debunking grief myths
  • ‘Time heals all wounds’: Time is just time, it is what we choose to do with time
  • Grief skills are life skills and need to be learned

Resources mentioned in this episode

  • Rachel’s website
  • Grieving Parents: Surviving Loss as a Couple (book)

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. 

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.

Filed Under: podcast, child loss, grief support, grief/loss, grieving parents, separation/divorce Tagged With: child loss, grief, grief and loss, grieving a child, grieving parents, healing is possible, loss

The Right Kind of Grief and Trauma Support

June 20, 2022 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

What is the right kind of grief support and how can I find it? This is the question that each and every one of you reading this will have asked yourself.

hands and coffee on table

Where to find support?

I did too when I was freshly bereaved. Luckily I had a wonderful General Practitioner who referred me to a therapist who I, being a therapist, didn’t have to coach on how to be with me, talk to me, and treat me.

Looking back, she was very supportive and, as I later found out, was also pregnant at the time. I don’t know where I would have been without seeing her and being able to have a sounding board checking on my mental health. She made me feel normal in a situation where I felt as if I was going crazy. She helped me gain perspective and start my journey of dealing with grief before my subsequent and traumatic loss of my mother through suicide.

Am I doing grief ‘right’?

My request for my therapist was to help me gain an understanding of grief and loss. I need to know if I was doing it ‘right’. Even though I understood it from a therapist’s point of view and worked with clients facing grief, I was well aware that going through the experience myself was a completely different pair of shoes.

As a couple, we also went to a grief support group led by the hospital at which I had given birth. This was very helpful for both of us. We got to meet other mothers and fathers, who had also lost a child. We could benefit from listening to their situations and their way of dealing with it.

So how can you find suitable support for yourself?

First of all, you need to decide and find out what it is that you need. The following question can help you:

  1. Do I need or prefer one on one support or group support or anything else that might support me?
  2. If therapy, do I prefer face-to-face, or am I okay with online therapy?
  3. If therapy, would I be better at seeing a male or a female therapist?
  4. If group support, do I prefer face-to-face or an online group?
  5. If group support, do I want to participate or prefer to be in the background?
  6. If neither therapy nor group supports me, what else supports me? Reading, writing, gardening…?
  7. What would you need to be able to incorporate the support that would be best?

Grief and trauma-informed therapy

If you are looking for a therapist and have experienced loss and or trauma, make absolutely sure that your therapist is grief and trauma-informed. What does that mean? Find out whether they have specific training in grief and trauma. You can either check their website on the about us page or ask them when you talk to them. There are multiple different forms of training for trauma some of the ones that I would recommend are Somatic Experience (SE) developed by Peter Levine and the Neuro Affective Relational Model (NARM) developed by Lawrence Heller. you can find practitioners around the world on their practitioners’ websites.

Finding the right therapist

Like any relationship, the therapist-client relationship needs to feel suitable to you personally. You might like to ask a friend for some recommendations. You could also ask for a referral from your doctor, midwife, nurse, or other healthcare providers.

In both of those situations, you still need to try them out to find out whether the two of you are a good fit.

Find out what the therapist offers a free introductory session or give them a call and ask for 10 minutes of their time to get to know them. (Book a FREE 30 min introductory session with me here.)

Then make an appointment. When you are there sense how this therapist fits you:

  • Does the therapist’s room make me feel at ease?
  • Do I get a feeling of being supported when I speak to them?
  • Do they listen to me, and do I feel validated and understood?
  • Do I feel at ease being there?
  • Do I feel like making another appointment?
  • Does the therapist ask me about my wishes, aspirations, reasons for therapy, and what I would like to achieve through being here?

These questions should be giving her enough information on whether you want to continue therapy with a specific person or try another one.

Grief group support

There are many different grief support groups out there and through the years of COVID people have become used to meeting online if in-person isn’t possible. On the support page, you can find different suggested groups or you can simply search them yourself based on the specific topic that you need support with, for example, pregnancy loss, child loss, loss through suicide, homicide loss, loss of a grandparent, loss of partner loss of a mother, loss of a father, etc.

Finding the right group

In the same way, as therapists need to fit your needs so does a group. If you like to participate in a group, it is good to choose a group that meets regularly either in person or online. If you prefer to stay in the background, there are grief groups, for example on Facebook, where you can read and comment if you like to.

Make sure that the general theme of the group is a fit for you. I personally have noticed that there are some groups who did not fit with me early on because they were too focused on religion. I needed a group that was filled with hope and showed me the potential for healing and integration.

Filed Under: grief support, child loss, coaching, counselling, emotions/feelings, from personal experience, grief/loss, grieving parents, health, trauma Tagged With: child loss, finding support, finding the right therapist, grief, the right group, the right therapist, trauma, trauma support, which therapist

How To Deal With Grief and Trauma

June 20, 2022 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

A new podcast is coming your way: How To Deal With Grief and Trauma

Podcast How to Deal with Grief and Trauma

You can’t go through life without experiencing loss and trauma the question is how do we deal and live with the grief and pain? Join Nathalie Himmelrich, grief expert and author, talking to people who have experienced grief and trauma first-hand. If you want to be inspired by others who traveled through their grief and trauma, found that healing is possible, and came out the other end knowing they can survive and thrive in life after loss.

The path to hope, healing & wholeness is different and unique for each and every person.
YOUR loss and YOUR trauma require YOUR grieving and YOUR healing.

This is s a podcast about YOU and YOUR Grief & Trauma.

Podcast Episodes – click here!

Hear it from those who know

How to Deal with Grief and Trauma is a podcast series interviewing YOU. It is about creating a voice for people to share their own personal experiences and start an open and honest conversation on the topic of grieving, dealing with grief and trauma, and healing.

Hosted by Nathalie Himmelrich – grief and trauma therapist – this podcast hopes to shed a huge spotlight on the magnitude of different losses and traumas and how each individual dealt with them.

What we will cover

How to Deal with Grief and Trauma is a conversation. Together, we will get to know a real person, their loss and trauma, and hear how they dealt with it, how they survived it, and how they integrated healing into their life.

I will ask the interviewee…:

  • to share their trauma and loss
  • about the resources and insights that have helped
  • and what their journey has taught them

Subscribe to How to Deal with Grief and Trauma:

…simply by signing up here or in the usual places where you listen to your podcast, such as:

  • Apple Podcast
  • Spotify
  • Stitcher
  • Google Podcast
  • TuneIn

Ask a question or want to be my guest?

To ask a question or if you want to be my guest on the podcast, email info@nathaliehimmelrich.com

And always – It’s ALL YOURS – TRULY – so stay true to your grieving and healing.

Yours truly, Nathalie

🚀  The podcast is being launched on June 21st, 2022 🚀 

Podcast Episodes – click here!

Filed Under: podcast, grief support, grief/loss, trauma Tagged With: dealing with grief, dealing with trauma, grief and trauma podcast, grief support, healing after loss, trauma support

The Pandemic of Grief and Loss

February 14, 2022 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

You and I are not as different as it might seem…

I will never forget my father’s first words on January 19th, 2012 as I finally reached him: ‘You have got to be strong now.’

I knew what he was going to say next and I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want it to become the reality we had been dreading: My mother was dead.

It was only 4,5 months after my daughters were born and the younger twin had died 3 days after birth.

By now, you might be wondering why I started this post with the statement above. Hear me out…

Have you been touched by loss?

In the past 2 years as we all dealt with the worldwide effects of a pandemic, a situation no one would have or could have imagined, we have all been touched by loss in one way or another.

From letting go of personal freedom to move to no longer being able to meet and be close with people, from losing loved ones, through separation of space, different views, ideas, or all the way to loved ones who died from Covid.

Loss upon loss

The losses that we all had to deal with or face, in one way or another, have made grief an experience closer than we might even fully realize.

  • loss of people through death
  • loss of personal freedom
  • loss of health
  • loss of income, job, career
  • loss of closeness and intimacy
  • loss of friendships
  • loss of freedom of choice
  • loss of ease with which we decided to go about our lives
  • loss of relationships
  • loss of humanity
  • loss of unity
  • loss of individuality
  • loss of trust in self, in others, in society, in …
  • loss of potential
  • loss of safety
  • loss of belonging
  • loss of connection through isolation
  • loss of clarity
  • loss of individual rights

… just to name a few.

Changes and letting go

The increase of fear and worry goes side by side with the changes we all had to go through. Changes inevitably bring emotions: some changes bring relief, others fear, uncertainty, and many if not all mean letting go of what we are or have been used to.

Letting go involves grieving what no longer is. Maybe the grief is subtle, and going under the radar of your awareness. Sometimes it shows up through physical, emotional, or cognitive symptoms such as, for example, a lack of motivation.

Are there any other kinds of losses you have experienced? I’d love to add them to the list. Share them in the comments below.

Photo Credit: Photo by Amin Moshrefi on Unsplash

Filed Under: emotions/feelings, from personal experience, grief support, grief/loss, health, mental health, separation/divorce, trauma Tagged With: covid loss, loss from covid, pandemic, pandemie

Grief 10 years on

January 19, 2022 By Nathalie Himmelrich 4 Comments

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)

  • The Purpose of Grief
  • How Did You Survive Child Loss?

7 years into grief (child loss)

  • The Evolution Of Grief: Grieving In The Seventh Year
  • Death Anniversary: The Body Remembers

6 years into grief (child loss)

  • The Birthday Of The Child Who Isn’t Alive

5 years into grief (child loss)

  • Learning To Live Without You

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

  • Gusts Of Grief – 4.5 years into grief seen through the eyes of a surviving twin (sibling loss)
  • You Have Got To Be Strong Now – reflections on my mother´s death 4 year into grief (mother loss)
  • Dear Child Of Mine – 4 years into grief (child loss)

3 years into grief (child loss)

  • It’s 3 Years Today That I Held You In My Arms: The First, The Last, The Only Time

2 months into grief (child loss)

  • Grief – A Very Personal Experience

Filed Under: child loss, family of origin, from personal experience, grief support, grief/loss, grieving parents Tagged With: death anniversary, grief 10 years on, grief and time, time heals

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