Let's Talk About Grief

Grief is experienced when you lose someone or something that means a lot to you. You can go through a grief process when you lose your job, when a friendship ends, and even when that car you have been mothering all of these years is no longer roadworthy. Your life is unique so your grief and the way you express that grief are also unique. One thing is true for everyone…there is a lot of strength to be gained as you work through grief. With that strength, you can lift yourself up and help yourself work through any tragedy you're trying to process.

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Highlights:

Your Grief Is Real

Turning To Unhealthy Habits When You Grieve

Set Goal To Help Process Grief

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Transcript

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Bets Danko: 0:03

It's time to combine a guilty little pleasure with a new healthy habit. Kick up your feet and listen in. This is Wisdom. & Chocolate. My name is Bets Danko and you are listening to Wisdom & Chocolate. And today we're going to be talking about a subject that many people don't want to deal with, for good reason. That is grief. We're going to be talking about what grief is, what it is you experience while going through grief, and how to work through all of that. So I gotta tell you, this has already been a crazy morning. This morning I came out to my office and there were yellow jackets, very large ones, just flying around making a whole lot of racket on the front of my office. Yeah. It was 6:30 in the morning, people. This was like a really big warning sign because

they're not that active at 6: 1:05

30 in the morning. I come in here, and I don't know if you can see on the camera. Yeah, there's something hanging from the ceiling back there. A couple of weeks ago, a branch a very large branch fell off a tree here, and it went through the roof and through the ceiling. Luckily, by the time we got through the ceiling, it was only about yay big. But what fell onto the ground was much larger. Anyway, we are fixing that hole. We're cleaning up a whole heck of a lot of stuff going on with the roof right now. And to top it off, I have had so many large ants in here. It's like, what the heck is going on. And then I sit down to do this recording. And this morning, I'm a one person shop. Like, I'm doing everything by myself, right. And I can't tell you how many times I have hit the record button on the video on the audio, whatever, and thinking everything is fine and then I realized I've forgotten to do something. It got to the point where it was quite comical. And so now I'm a little giggly. Which, I don't know how well that will lend to the subject of today, but I'm hoping that it gives a little bit of a positive edge to this subject that a lot of people don't want to talk about. And that's grief. We're going to be talking about working through grief. And, you know, I think that a lot of people assume that when we're talking about grief, we're talking about the loss of another person. But in reality, grief has to do with losing someone or something that means a great deal to you. So you can go through a grief process when you lose your job. You can go through a grief process when your best friend is no longer your best friend. You can go through a grief process when the 1960 car that you have been mothering all of these years and taking care of just is no longer roadworthy. There can be grief definitions for you that are very different than the person next to you. Now, I've experienced grief on many levels. And the weird thing is that many times I didn't even realize I was going through grief. And so now as I'm talking about these things, I'm realizing, wow, I I actually know a great deal on this subject. And it may seem really weird that I wouldn't even realize I was going through grief. But let me explain because sadness is something entirely different than grief. But you can actually go through sadness while in the process of grieving. And so sometimes the sadness that you're feeling, you're like, 'okay, I can cope with this, this is fine it was just a job or it was just a car or, you know, whatever,' and you can talk yourself out of experiencing the emotions. You can sort of push your emotions to the side and essentially tell yourself that they're not important. And I think that I've done that many times in my life. And then several months later, feelings of loss come up in and now they're disjointed. I don't even realize why I feel a loss. And so as I'm looking back through my life, I'm going,'Gosh, that that happened a few times where I've rationalized myself out of my own emotions.' Who does that? Well, the answer is a lot of people do it. A lot of people do it, and perhaps you're one of those people, because we identify things that are negative or challenging to us, and we try to avoid those things. It comes naturally to us to behave this way. We don't want to feel unsettled, unsafe, uncomfortable...these are all things that don't feel good to us. So we are naturally wired to identify those things and get into offensive mode and try to eliminate those sensations. But sometimes the grief is very, very difficult to get over. I spoke to a mother and father years ago. Their adult son was found dead. And there were so many questions around that death, that they were having a difficult time getting over it. As a matter of fact, it was the father who was having the hardest time. And yet, they all had gone through, and all meaning all of the people who knew him, the the extended family, the people who worked with him, they had all gone through different levels of grief. But for whatever reason, the father was having the hardest time getting through the questioning stage. There had to be a reason. There had to be somebody to blame. There had to be something that he could hold on to that he could say, 'this is why I lost my son.' But, unfortunately, he was left without answers and so he was sort of spiraling in that grief mode for a really long time. And if you looked at the mother, the mother had gotten to the level of acceptance much quicker, she had gotten to this level of okay, this is my new normal, this is where I am now this is how I'm going to go through the rest of my life. She had gotten there, before he had. So she not only was grieving her son, but was also helping to support and lift up her husband who was having a harder time with it. That became an entirely new level of processing and another step in her experiencing the grief. So it's important to recognize that even though those those ways of experienced grief were very different, they were both experiencing that grief. It was real for both of them. And it was real for all of the people who knew this young man who had passed. Everybody experiences experiences the things that go along with grief, but in a different order, in a different way, that your life experience helps you to process grief differently. As a matter of fact, when my father passed away, my mother used to say, I don't think you've accepted his his death, I don't think you've worked through his death. But I had. I had in my own way. And this was difficult for my mother to understand, because her way of processing it was different than mine. I had learned to understand it, to cope with it, to live with it. And I'd gotten to that stage faster. And so this is actually something to note. A lot of people say that there are five stages of grief or seven stages of grief. There are two different levels of thought there. And some people say there are no levels at all. So let me let me break that down for you. All those levels or stages of grief, they are real for everyone. But they're not stages that happen in a linear fashion. Your way of grieving is going to be unique to you. That doesn't make it right, that doesn't make it wrong. That doesn't make it questionable. It just means your way of grieving is unique to you. And you can accept that. And you can feel good in knowing that you are on the right track if you are processing the passing of a person. So let's go to a job. When you lose a job, what is that going to look like? Are the stages going to be the same? Do you go through shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression? Do you start testing things? Do you go into the acceptance phase? Yeah. This is what's so amazing about it. It is grieving - exactly the same as when you lose a person - but it's just over something different. And a lot of people might say that that's no, because there's, there's more value to a person's life so you're gonna grieve it differently. No, not necessarily. If you're devoting a great deal of time and energy to a life that feels good to you, and it's around your job. All of your friends are at your job. Your value, your self worth, everything seems to be wrapped up in the into the job, and then that job is gone. Phew. There is a grieving process that goes on that very easily can take you to places of anger and bargaining and acceptance and but right back to shock. And it's important that we recognize that that grieving process is real. So if you are talking to somebody and you've just lost a loved one, and they've just lost a job, and you get angry because the person who's lost their job is going through their grieving process. You need to recognize it's the exact same process over a different thing. Devaluing their loss of job does not make your loss of your person any more valuable. I'm hoping that this is making sense to you that this is valuable information for you. Because I don't think that enough people spend time talking about this. And it's important that we do share our emotions, our feelings, and that we start understanding that all of these things have value. And they're important that we look at them, that we experience them, that we validate these things for ourselves. I'm going to talk about the chocolate moment. You know, it seems weird to talk about chocolate at a moment like this, but I'm going to talk about it because there are things that we do that are self destructive, when we are in the middle of a grieving process. And one of those things is all of the good patterns that we have been supporting that we've been working on that we've been putting in place, all of that kind of thing - all of those good patterns suddenly fly out the window, as if you now have a lack of importance - you're not as important as you were five minutes ago. And that's just crazy. I, you know, I'm sorry, I don't mean to devalue you by calling this this crazy. But listen to me for a second, the best way to recover from anything, whether it's an accident, a grieving process, you know, whatever the thing is, is to keep yourself strong mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually. So, when we're going for chocolate, let's say in a moment of crisis, it's important that we stick with the healthy stuff. Go for the antioxidants. Go for the darker chocolate. If you want a fix, have it be something that's more pure. And when I talk about fix, I'm talking about the chocolate, right? Because we we need something to lift us up. Well, I'm going to tell you about a chocolate that tastes Right? really, really great. I'm not going to tell you the brand because I'm not, you know, I'm not about bashing people who are trying to do a great job. That's that's not what I'm about. But I'm going to tell you about this chocolate because it was a caramel cold brew chocolate. And that just sounded amazing to me. I'm like, Oh my gosh, caramel and dark chocolate and coffee, what? Am I in heaven, right? And it was dark chocolate, toffee bits, ground roasted coffee beans. That just sounded amazing. But immediately when I picked it up, I noticed on the wrapper that there was nothing that said organic. There was nothing that said gluten free. There was nothing that said non GMO, right? Warning signals all over the place. And there was something on the label that actually said, oh my goodness, it said caramel, something caramel flavoring, natural caramel flavoring. So for those of you who are not gluten sensitive, that basically means there's gluten in there. And so caramel coloring, caramel flavoring, you know that that gives you a little bit of a red flag. So that was on there. It contains milk. It contains soy, and it contains something I had never heard of before and I've got to read it because I'm not even sure. Trag... trag... tragacanth. I had never heard of it. Didn't know what it was so I had to look it up. And apparently it is made from dried sap of a Middle Eastern legume. And this is fabulous. It's basically a binding agent - holds things together. It's used in making incense. It's used in making pastels for creating art. It's made for tanning leather, and treating burns. So it's got a lot of different things that are really fabulous for humans, right. But the one thing that not so good for somebody who has a gluten sensitivity is that it stimulates the bowels. Not super great. And if you have it in too high a quantity, it actually can not be super healthy for you. So when it's put in chocolate, that should sort of be a red flag, especially if, when you are in a depression state, when you're in a grieving state, you definitely don't take care of yourself. If you know that that's a pattern that you have, what are you going to do with chocolates in front of you, whole bar baby - the whole bar. That's definitely not what you want to have happening. So perhaps a bar like this isn't one you should reach for. But let me tell you something, I tasted it. I taste it in any way; did not eat the whole thing. Didn't do it. But I tasted it anyway. And you know what? It was delicious. It was absolutely delicious. It was like, Oh, my goodness, my tongue was like, in heaven. It tasted so good. And then after that one bite, wrapped it up, threw it away. kept the wrapper so that I could make sure that I wrote down all of the information off of it. But I threw away the rest of the bar, because it wasn't healthy for me. And this is something that we need to recognize when we are in a grieving state, that we still need to respect our bodies, we still need to respect our minds. And when it comes to the emotional state, we need to respect that too. And what does that mean? Well, you need to give yourself time to grieve. You need to cry. You need to get angry. You need to have those moments when you're feeling like things are not working out your way. And getting frustrated and angry about that. We don't want to keep those emotions in. You do need to talk about them. It's important that you recognize if you're going through a grief process, and you're sharing and you're talking about your grief with other people, people want to understand. They want to be there for you. But there may be a point, when the grief is so overwhelming for you that you need to seek out additional help. There is no - you don't need to feel guilty for doing that. There's no shame in doing that. And as a matter of fact, if you can process the pain with somebody who's qualified to talk about a grieving process with you, then you may be able to work through Grief never goes away. It just sort of floats further back in your mind. So what do I mean by that? I have experienced the grief of the loss of people in my life. And still to this day, and one of the persons was, oh my goodness, 30 years ago. It was a long time ago. But still to this day, I can find myself crying because this person is in my life isn't in my life anymore. It's not something that we should be embarrassed about because it doesn't go away for anyone. So if I start crying because of that person that passed 30 years ago, and someone walks in the room, Hey, are you okay? I just say yeah, I was just thinking about, you know, this person and I couldn't hold back my emotion. People do understand. They do. And I have had people go, didn't they pass away like 30 years ago? It's like, yeah, but you know what, I still miss them. I still have moments when I'm sad because they're not here. And that's okay. And it's okay if you know you're still in counseling 5,10 years later because you're still working through the grieving process. Allow yourself your own process. Allow yourself, the to express your feelings, to express your emotions, to talk to loved ones, to hire someone to help you work through. There's no shame in any of that. Now, as we're getting to the closing of this podcast, I just want to remind you that challenges and pain can actually lead to strength and there is a lot of strength to be gained when you work through grief and the strength is basically a reminder that you're okay. You have been okay. You will continue to be okay. And you can lift yourself up and help yourself work through this tragedy that you're trying to process. It could take a year. It could take more time, but you're going to make it through. And that's an important thing to So how do you make it to the other side of grief, where the grief is still there, but it's just a little further back and it's not constantly on your mind? How do you get there? Well, one of the things that you do, after you have expressed or even while you're still expressing your grief to other people, is set goals. And they can be little goals. Maybe your grief is such that you just don't even want to go look for a job. Because you were so attached to this last one, you're afraid of losing another one, you just can't get yourself out of bed. Well, maybe the first goal is to start looking online, just see what's out there. Maybe you put yourself on LinkedIn, and you allow the people who are looking for new employees, to find you, there's a setting that allows people to find you, when they're looking for someone like you, so that you can see that you still have value, that people are looking for people like you. Maybe your goal is to just get out of bed, get into the car, go somewhere. Maybe you make bigger goals. But start small, allow yourself the space and the peace that's required to just, you know, focus on you, right? It's important that you give yourself that opportunity. So make, make some of the goals very small, but eventually work up to something bigger because as you work through challenging situations, if you bring in positivity, if you bring in new goals, if you allow yourself to experience something new, you're sort of attaching these positive things to adrenaline that's going on inside your body while you're experiencing challenge. And what happens? It actually charges you up and creates more motivation. So as you are working through the challenges, you're feeding your motivation, and empowering yourself to get better at whatever it is that your goals have to do with. So maybe it's, you know what I need, like, I don't know, three months off cause this is just too much grief for me, and I just need to process it. So about three months off, I think I'm going to learn how to cook. I'm going to spend the three months perfecting a souffle. I'm going to spend the three months making the best sugar cookies on the earth, right? Give yourself goals that will serve you, that will motivate you, that will keep you empowered, and attach those goals to the challenging situations so that every time you start to feel the grief, it triggers your motivation. If you attach the positive to the challenge, and this is true if you're working out or if you are, I don't know, chopping down trees and hauling wood for the winter, like it no matter what it is, if it's a physical challenge, a mental challenge an emotional challenge, if you attach positive things to those things, then all of a sudden, every time that challenge raises its head again you are looking at the positive and you feel more motivated. It's science. Right? This is scientifically proven, it actually works. So in your grieving, allow yourself to grieve and then bring in goals to help lift you out of the grief and motivate yourself to continue on with life. Whatever it is that you're grieving is real, it's valid. Give yourself the space to feel those emotions. Give yourself grace, feel compassion for yourself. And allow yourself to avoid all of the shame so that you can share the emotions you're feeling with the people around you. People who are closest to you and the people who are paid to help people who are in your situation. There is no shame in looking for help and talking about what you need. With that blessings to each and every one of you. I hope that this message today served you and that you will be comforted by the thought that grief can come to a point where you can recognize. progress in your life again. I am determined to increase self awareness and help people to really value what it is that is special about who they are and what they can bring to the world. And with that in mind, I designed this fabulous program called Celebrate You to help you slow down and pay attention to what's going on in your life so that you can find value at every turn and design a life that is more fulfilling. So do a little extra, start celebrating you. By checking out Celebrate You on BetsDanko.Com and signing up today. Experience the wisdom that helps to motivate and empower you in relationships, business, family and most importantly, self celebration. Getting the picture? It's wisdom and it's all about you. Want to hear the chocolate? Tune into Wisdom & Chocolate weekly.