Nathalie Himmelrich

Inspiring Hope | Finding healthy ways of Grieving | Writer

grief/loss

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

By Leave a Comment

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

Support the show:

Follow on socials:

Nathalie Himmelrich on Trauma and Its Impact on the Nervous System | Episode 40

By Leave a Comment

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.

Nathalie Himmelrich Trauma and Its Impact on the Nervous System

Todays Episode 

All trauma involves grief but not all grief needs to necessarily be or feel traumatic.

When is a loss also traumatic and when is it not? 

What are the differences between a traumatic loss and a non-traumatic loss?

Why and how does it matter? 

How can we support ourselves and others after a traumatic loss?    

All these questions and more are the topics for today’s episode.

Nathalie’s links: Website | Instagram

Topics discussed in this episode

  • Examples of losses that can be traumatic 
  • The difference between traumatic and non-traumatic losses
  • Symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
  • Trauma response in the body 
  • Polyvagal theory and its application to trauma
  • Nervous system regulation
  • The importance of trauma-informed, grief-literate professional care

Resources mentioned in this episode

  • Dr. Stephens Porges’s Polyvagal Theory 

Thank you for listening!

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

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

By Leave a Comment

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:

Mira Simone on Grief Literacy and Somatic Trauma Work | Episode 38

By Leave a Comment

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.

Mira Simone

I’m so excited to talk to Mira, an inspirational woman, dealing with the loss and trauma of her partner. I found her through Instagram, where she shares authentically about her journey through her voice that connects with many other grievers, not just young widows. She shares about Brian’s death which came very quickly, within 7 weeks of his second diagnosis, and how she finds her way back to living life as a young widow. 
 Mira and I speak a common language and share the purpose of teaching people to become grief literate and the importance of working with a trauma-informed lens, which for both of us is the basis of dealing with grief and trauma. 

About this week’s guest 

Mira Simone is a widow, mother, published writer, grief coach, and grief-literacy advocate. She is also a registered mental health occupational therapist in Ontario, Canada. In early 2019, Mira’s life was blown apart, when her partner Brian was diagnosed with an unbelievably aggressive cancer. He died seven weeks later, leaving her alone with their almost three-year-old daughter. Prior to Brian’s death, she worked in the mental health space. But it wasn’t until his death that Mira began to explore the grieving process. In 2022, she launched New Moon Mira, her grief coaching business, through which she supports widows and grievers in more intimate group containers and provides grief literacy training for grief-support people and healthcare professionals. She is currently in the early stages of writing a memoir, with support from the Canada Council for the Arts.

Mira’s links: Website | Instagram

Topics discussed in this episode

  • Growing up with her Dad’s chronic illness (Parkinson’s)
  • Mira’s husband dying from melanoma (skin cancer)
  • Relational (developmental) trauma triggered through the current loss
  • Traveling and going on adventures helped her to figure grief out on her own
  • Developing an understanding of grief and the nervous system

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

By Leave a Comment

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. 

Shannon Traphagen on Vulnerability and Loneliness as a Widow | Episode 36

By Leave a Comment

Shannon Traphagen

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 Shannon Traphagen about the loss of the love of her life and best friend from brain cancer. She so beautifully describes feeling rudderless and lost after having spent all her adult life with her husband. Before her husband’s diagnosis, they were on the road to adoption but due to his illness, they also lost that option. Shannon slept downstairs on the couch for a year to avoid the loneliness of the bedroom she had shared with her husband and the baby’s room across the hallway. She slowly worked her way back into embracing her life and now helps others through her podcast. Shannon speaks about vulnerability and loneliness, a topic she feels is not discussed enough in grief. 

About this week’s guest 

Shannon Traphagen, MSW, is a published author, motivational grief & loss speaker, patient advocate, and host of The Game On Glio Podcast. A show centered around the stories of brain cancer patients, caregivers, doctors, researchers, therapists, and grief and loss journeys. With a background in magazine publishing, social work, and modern media, Shannon is also walking through her own grief journey after losing her 45-year-old husband to Glioblastoma two years ago. She now helps others through her podcast and her own experiences, bridging the gap in communication between patients/families, widows, and the medical community. She is also the founder of Traphagen’s Trail Ride 4 Brain Cancer, a cycling fundraiser which has raised over $30,000 to date for brain cancer clinical trials. 

Shannon’s links:

Topics discussed in this episode

  • Miscarriages
  • The diagnosis of brain cancer of her husband led to the loss of adoption in the process
  • The death of her husband from glioblastoma
  • How to come to ‘I’m ok with this (loss)’ 
  • Vulnerability and loneliness
  • Secondary losses
  • Finding resilience through creating meaning

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. 

Subscribe for updates
    Built with ConvertKit
    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.

    Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Affiliate Disclosure

    Copyright © 2012 - 2022 Nathalie Himmelrich | All Rights Reserved