45: Triggers and Anniversaries

It’s still crazy how suddenly your life can be flipped upside down and everything changed in an instant. Today I want to talk about triggers, death dates, and how to navigate them. Everyone will navigate them differently, but I want to offer some things that have helped me so that these days are not all bad.

There’s a quote I heard, never waste a trigger. I love this quote. Because we are triggered, we want to avoid things. We want to run away from it, and never look, or see something. Whatever our trigger is. But when you can notice your triggers, these triggers are just things that present to you, that can show you what you can work on if you want to work on it. I believe fully that triggers can be healed. That you can work through them and instead of being a trigger, they only bring up a memory instead.

-Different ways of coming to anniversary days

-Noticing the thoughts you are thinking surrounding the day

-Noticing the triggers and working with them

-What we have done for Aria’s death date

Links to any resources: When my daughter Aria died suddenly 4 years ago, I wondered if my life was over. My heart felt shattered into a million pieces. How was I supposed to go on without such an important person in my life? How can I breathe when I'm literally suffocating and drowning? It was difficult to describe my pain; it was an endless feeling of hopelessness.

I carried sharp, intense grief for years. I felt as if I failed my daughter as her mother, and was terrified it would affect my other children as well. Everything felt so bleak and empty. What was the point and the purpose of life?

It's difficult to describe this pain to someone who doesn't understand the depth and duration of child loss. There is something about this connection among us as grieving mothers, that we can speak without words.

If you are a grieving mother, and looking for connection, hope, and ways to move forward after the death of a child, join me in 3 days of grief support. In this space, you will find support, encouragement, and deep knowing amongst other grieving mothers.

Join to save your spot, go to www.reliefingriefsupportgroup.com. Again, in these 3 days, we are going to be walking through How everyone grieves differently, Emotions and stages of grief, and noticing thoughts patterns and emotions that come up for you in your grief journey. To join go to 

www.reliefingriefsupportgroup.com

If you are a grieving mother and looking for others who know the pain of child loss, come join my free Grieving Moms Community Facebook group: www.meganhillukka.com/community

44: Caring For the Child Within

We all come to grief with our own stories and experiences. As children, we may have had experiences that were painful and intense. These experiences may have taught us, that we need to put up a front, that in order to be cared for we need to be helpless, that in order to receive the love we need to be complicit, in order to not get hurt, we have to criticize others.

The little child within has reasons for doing that. It’s the way we can protect ourselves. This way of blocking painful or difficult emotions is the way as a child you felt you needed to protect yourself when you didn’t quite know any different.

-Importance of emotions and caring for ourselves and your inner child

-Getting super curious about your triggers and how that will help you be able to work through them

-ideas of things you can do to begin caring for your inner child

Links to any resources:

When my daughter Aria died suddenly 4 years ago, I wondered if my life was over. My heart felt shattered into a million pieces. How was I supposed to go on without such an important person in my life? How can I breathe when I'm literally suffocating and drowning? It was difficult to describe my pain; it was an endless feeling of hopelessness.

I carried sharp, intense grief for years. I felt as if I failed my daughter as her mother, and was terrified it would affect my other children as well. Everything felt so bleak and empty. What was the point and the purpose of life?

It's difficult to describe this pain to someone who doesn't understand the depth and duration of child loss. There is something about this connection among us as grieving mothers, that we can speak without words.

If you are a grieving mother, and looking for connection, hope, and ways to move forward after the death of a child, join me in 3 days of grief support. In this space, you will find support, encouragement, and deep knowing amongst other grieving mothers.

Join to save your spot, go to www.reliefingriefsupportgroup.com. Again, in these 3 days, we are going to be walking through How everyone grieves differently, Emotions and stages of grief, and noticing thoughts patterns and emotions that come up for you in your grief journey. To join go to www.reliefingriefsupportgroup.com

If you are a grieving mother and looking for others who know the pain of child loss, come join my free Grieving Moms Community Facebook group: www.meganhillukka.com/community

43: What Does It Mean to be a Mother?

Mother's day is right around the corner. I want to hold space for you if you are a grieving mother with no other children, a grieving mother with other children, a grieving mother who lost her child before they were born. Wherever you are in your grief, this day can be hard.

Today I wanted to ask the question what does it mean to be a mother? What does motherhood look like for you after child loss? What kind of mother do you want to be to your child who is gone, and your children who are here if you have other children?

-Loving someone opens us up to the possibility of pain

-Living is a choice we each have to make in our own lives

-Coming from a place of love

-Noticing the thoughts that might be circulating in your head

If you are a grieving mother and looking for others who know the pain of child loss, come join my free Grieving Moms Community Facebook group: www.meganhillukka.com/community

42: Are You Going Backwards in Grief?

You ever feel like you have finally climbed out of the hole of grief, things are going well, and then bam. You are back at the bottom again?

-Megan's story when she felt like she was going backward

-What does going backward mean to you?

-What thoughts are you thinking about going backward and how do those make you feel?

-Grief work is always peeling back layers

-You never go backward in grief, you are always walking forward with grief.

 If you are a grieving mother and looking for others who know the pain of child loss, come join my free Grieving Moms Community Facebook group: www.meganhillukka.com/community

41: Grief Comparison

Today’s topic is about grief comparison. There is so much comparison in our lives, especially in grief. Your grief is different from everyone else. You can’t compare the depth of your grievance to the other person. Comparison serves a purpose in trying to understand from a place of trying to understand. Comparison is like a judgment of who has it worse or who is valid in their grief.

The experience of loss is going to be different for each one of us. Focusing on your own journey can help on your grief journey. We have the right to grieve no matter what happened. You are right where you need to be. And each step you take is a step forward. Just keep taking little steps every day. You are never alone on this journey.

In this episode Megan discuss:

1. Why are they feeling that way towards you?

2. Why are they doing so much better than you?

3. Are compassion and empathy finite?

If you are a grieving mother and looking for others who know the pain of child loss, come join my free Grieving Moms Community Facebook group: www.meganhillukka.com/community

Photo by Milada Vigerova on Unsplash

40: Choosing Joy in Grief

In this episode, I want to talk about how each one of us has to make a personal decision on our own grief journey. How are we going to live in our grief and what choices we’re going to make? You’d think about how you’d become a better person after this traumatic experience. Will you be compassionate or have more love for others? But with pain and grief, comes peace and joy, if you want and look for it.

I’ve found so many blessings. Adversities are still there and it teaches us to be appreciative of the things and people we have around us if we choose to look for them. I still grieve, I still hurt, and I still have pain. But I believe in light and life. It’s not either-or, it’s both.

I’ll be discussing: 

·         How to process my emotions?

·         How to be compassionate for others

·         Learned to accept that every day could be our last day without the fear.

·         I can now find contentment in the little things. Smile with my kids, laugh at nothing, and at small things that count.