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Nathalie Himmelrich

Inspiring Hope | Finding healthy ways of Grieving | Writer

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pandemie

53 Erica Messer Normalizing and Acknowledging Pet Loss Grief

October 2, 2023 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

Erica Messer

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: bit.ly/SupportGTPodcast. 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.

About this week’s episode

Today’s episode is about the impact of pet loss. Pet loss often goes unacknowledged, is compared with other losses, and then minimized or is met with statements that invalidate the grief that is experienced. ‘It was just a cat’ and other unhelpful comments undermine the real experience of the grief pet owners go through. Both Erica and I describe the connection we had with our cats and how their losses have affected us. Erica’s cat Wolfgang had such an impact on her life and when he died, she could not find suitable support to help her navigate her grief, so she created a beautiful card deck. Erica’s mission is to support others in dealing with pet loss and normalize pet loss grief as a valid sort of grief.     

About this week’s guest

After the sudden passing of her cat, Wolfgang, Erica couldn’t find a simple product to help her cope, so she created her own: Pet Loss Grieving Cards. Thus, her company Wolfie’s Wish was born. Grieving Cards have since won “Best New Product” at the Superzoo tradeshow. When she’s not paw-sitively rocking it in her business, Erica enjoys performing pop and rock covers on her harp or scratching and mixing on the turntables.

Erica’s links:

  • Website: www.wolfieswish.com
  • Instagram: @wolfies_wish

Resources mentioned in this episode:

  • Pet Loss Grieving Cards

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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Filed Under: podcast, creative healing, grief support, grief/loss, mental health, pandemie, pet loss Tagged With: acknowledging pet loss grief, erica messer, normalizing pet loss grief, pet loss, pet loss grief support, wolfie's wish

Nathalie with Pinky on Creating a Legacy After the Loss of Her Son | Episode 9

August 22, 2022 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

Nathalie with Pinky on Creating a Legacy After the Loss of Her Son | Episode 9

Today I speak with Pinky who lost her son due to inflammation that affected his heart when he was just a few months old. The birth and the loss of Leonardo both happened during the Covid pandemic and both Pinky and her husband understandably felt extremely isolated in their grief. Pinky dealt with her grief by joining a grief support group and seeing a therapist. Someone she had met through a group on Facebook gave her the book Surviving My First Year of Child Loss as a support resource.

Here is what Pinky shares about how reading the book affected her:

I felt like I was not alone in this journey. My feelings and my behaviours…, sometimes I thought I was crazy, but after reading the book I understood that it was pretty common, I was not crazy. I learned some very helpful coping mechanisms from parents in the book. I couldn’t find any similar resources in my native language Vietnamese.

Pinky

About this week’s guest

Huong Lan ‘Pinky’ Vu is a communications professional who has lived and worked in Vietnam, Singapore, and the US. After the passing of her first son, Leonardo Vu Massa, in October 2020, she and her husband founded the Leonardo’s Smile Fund to support orphans in the SOS Children’s Villages Vietnam. She and her sister also translated the book Surviving My First Year of Child Loss: Personal Stories From Grieving Parents into Vietnamese with the hope to help bereaved parents in Vietnam have access to this helpful resource.

Topics discussed in this episode

  • The sudden loss of her son Leonardo during the Pandemic
  • Guilt and doubt, self-blame
  • The power of peer support
  • Reading Nathalie’s book Surviving My First Year of Child Loss: Personal Stories From Grieving Parents helped Pinky understand her grieving experience
  • The project of translating the book into Vietnamese
  • The difference in grieving between men and women

Resources mentioned in this episode

  • Nathalie’s book Surviving My First Year of Child Loss: Personal Stories From Grieving Parents
  • Order the Vietnamese book
  • Child Bereavement Support (Singapore) and the Facebook Page
  • Leonardo’s Smile blog

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.

Filed Under: podcast, child loss, grief support, grief/loss, grieving parents, pandemie Tagged With: child loss, grief and loss, grieving, grieving a child, grieving parents, relationship, Surviving the first year after child loss

We Must Learn to Look at Grief, Even When We Want to Run Away by Dr Puri

February 24, 2022 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

Must read article

It just seemed that the writer speaks grief and healing language with the absolute same tonality as I do. Here is what she wrote:

Can we instead move forward with grief? Can we find a way to integrate loss into life, to carry it with us? Can we feel tragedy together, without an artificial line between those who are ready to move on and those who can’t see a way out?

Dr. Sunita Puri

If you have read my article on our collective grief, The Pandemic of Grief and Loss, stating that we all have more in common than we might like to think.

Grief has been moved into the center

To some degree, I’m grateful to the pandemic for having moved ‘dealing with grief’ into the front, right, and center of people’s lives, a necessary human experience that has been and is so overlooked until we are forced to deal with it sooner or later in every human being’s life.

Many of my client’s challenges are how people are dealing with them, some of which you might be very familiar with: avoiding them by crossing the street, avoiding talking to them, giving them time alone to grieve (usually far too much), or simply by not mentioning the loved one’s name.

Has this changed since grief has moved into the center stage? I do hope so.

Article link:

We Must Learn to Look at Grief, Even When We Want to Run Away, by Dr. Sunita Puri.

Photo by Mulyadi on Unsplash

Filed Under: grief/loss, pandemie, trauma Tagged With: covid, grief, pandemic grief, sunita puri

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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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