101: Using Colors with Mehnaz Khan

Mehnaz Khan is an Artist and a Color Psychology Specialist.  In today’s episode,she will share how colors affect the way we feel and the way we think.

Episode Pointers :

• Everything in the environment like every single element of a painting, a decor, or texture impacts the subconscious mind.

• Colors are not only visual stimuli but they can impact you both on a psychological and emotional level.

• Every time a color is processed in your mind, there are some chemical changes happening in your body.This why you can use colors to improve your productivity to cope with everyday anxiety, to enhance the quality of your sleep, and so much more.

• This is not going to fix the grief 100% because you have to do the internal work but this is a very it's a great supporting mechanism.

• Your home should reflect who you are.

• You need all the colors. So, when we create a monochromatic space or neutral space, you're living in one state of emotion which is not natural to human beings.

• Everything in the environment is a reflection of an internal.

• These colors are good at inducing sleep : light blue, light green, light pink.

• These colors energizes you : orange and yellow

Reach out to her through her :

Website : www.mehnazkhanstudio.com

Facebook: Mehnaz Khan Studio
Instagram :  Mehnaz Khan Studio

Her Favorite Book:
Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss

Struggling with the emotions of anger, guilt, sadness, and anxiety after the death of your child? Come join me and other grieving mothers in a 3-day workshop, Relief in Grief to help you learn how to process the emotions and thoughts that come with grief. This will be on July 14th, 15th, and 16th.You do not need to do this alone, get on the waitlist at www.reliefingriefsupportgroup.com

If you want more tools to help you, I have a workshop called Stop Talking Start Feeling, it’s a workshop that dives into emotions, what they are, and how you can begin to feel and process them and get them out of your body instead of stuffing them down. It also goes specifically into processing and releasing the emotions of guilt and sadness. You can get access to this workshop and all the extra things I have in there for only $27. Go to www.meganhillukka.com/workshop to check it out. 

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

Some links may contain affiliate links in which I receive a small commission if you decide to purchase something, this helps support the grief work I'm doing.

100: Who Am I?

“Who Am I?” is one of the sections of my  Life After Child Loss Program. It is a part of my C.A.R.R.Y.ing Grief Framework where the Y stands for You and learning to love yourself again. 

3 Parts of Who Am I?:

1. Who Was I?

• The person we were, died the day our child died. You cannot continue to be the person you were when you experience the death of your child. You are forever changed.

• The people in our lives have to grieve the loss of you as you were, and you also have to grieve that person.

• Take time to grieve who you were. Notice what were your strengths and weaknesses before your child died, because those are often magnified afterward.

2. Who You Are Now?

• You might feel that you are in a place of limbo, a no man’s land. Your world has turned upside down, and you hate who you have become. 

• You do not need to do this all alone. Find help and support and reach out to those you love to help you as well. 

•  Notice how you can begin to help yourself, giving yourself compassion, and then taking little steps forward to help yourself process the grief and pain you are experiencing. Learning why you are the way you are, without judgment. 

• Recognize that your grief journey is your own, and you do not need to compare it to anyone else's experience.

• Give yourself the permission to grieve in your own way that gets you to where you want to go.

3. Who Do You Want To Be? 

• It’s so hard to think about the future without your child by your side. If you believe so deeply that you are not deserving of a beautiful life because your child can’t live anyone, then it can be an incredibly difficult thing to think about.

•  If you don’t take a moment to think about where you want to go in your life or who you want to become, you will just keep plodding away and wake up one day and realize that 10 years have gone by in your life and nothing has changed. 

• Looking at who you want to be, gives you a goal post. Setting the goal post ahead of you gives you a direction to go and an idea of the steps you want to take.

• Start taking the little steps now towards that person, so that you will be that person because you are beginning to think like that person and becoming that person.

Diving into this question “Who Am I? is a very personal one. One of exploration, learning, and being super honest with yourself. You cannot dive into this question without being honest with yourself which can be so hard to do! You go this, my friend.

For the announcement of my 100th Podcast Episode + Birthday Giveaway, go to Grieving Moms Coaching and Community FB Page. FB live will happen at 2 pm CST.

Struggling with the emotions of anger, guilt, sadness, and anxiety after the death of your child? Come join me and other grieving mothers in a 3-day workshop, Relief in Grief to help you learn how to process the emotions and thoughts that come with grief. This will be on July 14th, 15th, and 16th. You do not need to do this alone, get on the waitlist at 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

99 : Suffering is Optional- Byron Katie and The Work

Episode Pointers:

• Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. The suffering comes in, when we resist what is. Whether it’s the emotion, the circumstance, the relationship, what is. The resistance brings suffering. 

Byron Katie’s 4 questions in “The Work”:

•  Go through a situation in your life that frustrated you or caused you a lot of stress.

•  Replay that as if you were there again, and pay attention to what was causing you the most stress or frustration. 

• Journal this out, and notice the thought that caused you the most stress.

•  Be as childish and judgey as possible  so that you can get clear answers of what was actually happening.

• Apply these 4 questions below

1. Is it true?

• Sometimes we don’t realize we are even thinking something even though we don’t believe it’s true. When you start to question, you can see how silly it is that you are thinking it, because you don’t actually believe it to be true. 

1. Can you absolutely know that it’s true?

• Taking a moment to think about and truly ponder if it’s absolutely true, gives you another chance to see if you are being honest and true with yourself.

1. How do you react, and what happens when you believe that thought?

• This is all about noticing how this thought makes you feel and act. What emotions come up for you? How do you treat those around you? How do you treat yourself? How do you feel that emotion in your body? How might you start to try to numb to hide that emotion?

1. Who would you be without that thought?
   
   - It always comes back to your identity, and who you are. Who do you believe yourself to be, and why do you keep holding on to a thought?

- Katie says to go back to the scenario and replay it again in your mind, and replay it without that thought and notice what happens. Ask yourself, who or what would you be without that thought? How would you treat others? How would you treat yourself? How would you feel without that thought? Drop all the judgements you have.

• The whole purpose of The work, and of all the work that I do, is not to judge or try to completely change your thoughts or try to stop yourself from thinking, but to bring awareness to what’s going on inside of you, of the resistance that you may have, and then giving you tools to choose thoughts and actions that align with who you want to be and how you want to live. 

• This gives you freedom and choice, and gives you the ability to choose your thoughts instead of just always having them on autopilot without even realizing what’s going through your mind.

Recommended Book:  Loving What Is by  Byron Katie

Byron Katie’s Website : www.thework.com

If you want to join my  100th podcast episode + birthday giveaway, please check the full details on www.meganhillukka.com/giveaway. I’m giving away some products that I’ve found very helpful and useful on my grief journey including some books, affirmation cards, and a journal, as well as some spots in my next Relief in Grief workshop (coming up in July), some spots to my Life After Child Loss Program, and a free 1:1 coaching call with me. 

Struggling with the emotions of anger, guilt, sadness, and anxiety after the death of your child? Come join me and other grieving mothers in a 3-day workshop, Relief in Grief to help you learn how to process the emotions and thoughts that come with grief. This will be on July 14th, 15th, and 16th. You do not need to do this alone, get on the waitlist at 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

Some links may contain affiliate links in which I receive a small commission if you decide to purchase something, this helps support the grief work I'm doing.

98: The Decisions You Make with KatRINA Ubell

Episode Pointers :

•  When we make decisions, we make them from the information that we have at the time. Our intention is to make a good decision. 

• On a subconscious level, we want to punish ourselves for the results that we didn't want. It’s easy for us to blame ourselves, or somebody or something

•  If we hold onto guilt that we did something wrong, then we just continue to punish ourselves and sometimes we think we deserve that. 

• You can let that guilt go and let it all be love.

•  Nobody needs to be in pain, nobody needs to be punished. 

•  Clean Pain helps you to move you forward. Dirty Pain keeps you stuck.

•  Grief is patient, it will wait for you.

• It's your thoughts about it that makes it so bad. It’s our thinking that's creating so much of the pain.

• It is possible that it was supposed to be this way and it was always going to be this way. If someone's life is shorter, that can just bring us so much peace.

•  Only a coach can truly hold space and let you process what's going on because most people just run the other way when we talk about emotions.

• Find people or a community who have the same experience as you. Just knowing that you've got this crew of people who will get it no matter what you say is so helpful. They're on your side and they support you.

Her Recommended Books:

• An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken

You can contact her through the following:

• Website : www.katrinaubellmd.com

• Instagram: @coachkatrinaubellmd

• Facebook : www.facebook.com/katrinaubellmd

If you want more tools to help you, I have a workshop called Stop Talking Start Feeling, it’s a workshop that dives into emotions, what they are, and how you can begin to feel and process them and get them out of your body instead of stuffing them down. It also goes specifically into processing and releasing the emotions of guilt and sadness. You can get access to this workshop and all the extra things I have in there for only $27. Go to www.meganhillukka.com/workshop to check it out. 

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

Some links may contain affiliate links in which I receive a small commission if you decide to purchase something, this helps support the grief work I'm doing.

97 : The Finality and Acceptance of Death

Episode Pointers:

• Acceptance is something that seems so hard to be okay with. You know the fact that your child died and yet something in you fights this reality. Because you don’t want to believe it. And maybe if you keep fighting it, it means it didn’t happen or it’s not true.

• You never have to accept anything. You don’t have to accept that your child died. You don’t have to accept that they are not here. You can fight the rest of your life if you want. 

• However,fighting and not wanting to accept the rest of your life seems so exhausting and causes so much suffering.

• When you accept the reality, you can begin to heal and do the work.

• Acceptance does not mean you have to be okay with the fact that it happened, or that you have to be okay with how it happened. For me, the beginning of acceptance means that you acknowledge that this did happen, and you cannot change it.

• Acceptance doesn’t have to mean that you are done grieving, and moving on with your life. It can actually mean that you are accepting that you will grieve the rest of your life, that you will miss them forever, and that you are willing to do the work of living fully while grieving.

• You do not have to suffer and resist everything in your life. It’s when you let go of the resistance of what is, that you can begin to make changes that help you.

• Acceptance will take a whole lot of weight off of your shoulders, and give you a peace to build your life bigger around your grief. 

If you want to join my  100th podcast episode + birthday giveaway, please check the full details on www.meganhillukka.com/giveaway. I’m giving away some products that I’ve found very helpful and useful on my grief journey including some books, affirmation cards, and a journal, as well as some spots in my next Relief in Grief workshop (coming up in July), some spots to my Life After Child Loss Program, and a free 1:1 coaching call with me. 

If you want more tools to help you, I have a workshop called Stop Talking Start Feeling, it’s a workshop that dives into emotions, what they are, and how you can begin to feel and process them and get them out of your body instead of stuffing them down. It also goes specifically into processing and releasing the emotions of guilt and sadness. You can get access to this workshop and all the extra things I have in there for only $27. Go to www.meganhillukka.com/workshop to check it out. 

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

96: Guilt

Guilt is a very normal emotion to feel because we think that is our  job to raise and protect our children, to keep them safe. It is also our job to  make sure they are okay,healthy, loved, and ultimately protect them from dying.

• The reality is, that we cannot protect them from dying, but it certainly feels like it's’ our responsibility and that we do everything we can do to prevent it.

•  I encourage you to process and feel guilt. The whole point and purpose is to move through guilt, so that you don’t get stuck and trapped in a cycle of guilt.

•  It’s easy to begin to attach to your child through this emotion(guilt). Other people think that, not processing and not feeling guilty anymore means you are letting go of your child. 

• Learning to carry your grief is all about learning to process and move through all of the emotions that come. Being okay with feeling and experiencing the painful and heavy emotions. It’s an experience that ebbs and flows. It’s learning to live with the grief you have, and then there is suffering. 

•  Guilt is not an emotion that serves you, and it only causes suffering. So learning to process the guilt through your mind and your body, can truly lighten your load in your grief journey.

•  Guilt is an energy, an emotion that needs to be felt and experienced first. It first needs to be processed in your body, before you can begin to choose new thoughts surrounding it.

If you want to join my  100th podcast episode + birthday giveaway, please check the full details on www.meganhillukka.com/giveaway. I’m giving away some products that I’ve found very helpful and useful on my grief journey including some books, affirmation cards, and a journal, as well as some spots in my next Relief in Grief workshop (coming up in July), some spots to my Life After Child Loss Program, and a free 1:1 coaching call with me. 

If you want more tools to help you, I have a workshop called Stop Talking Start Feeling, it’s a workshop that dives into emotions, what they are, and how you can begin to feel and process them and get them out of your body instead of stuffing them down. It also goes specifically into processing and releasing the emotions of guilt and sadness. You can get access to this workshop and all the extra things I have in there for only $27. Go to www.meganhillukka.com/workshop to check it out. 

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

95 : What are you focusing on in Grief?

Episode Pointers:

• In grief, we often focus on its negative side. We think that life has to be suffering, life awful and horrible for the rest of our lives. It’s also easy to think that people are rude, mean, and they don’t care.

• It’s easy for us to focus and give our energy to the people who are not helping us rather than those people who have helped, support, and comfort us in our grief journey.

• Here’s the thing about focus. The more you focus on something, the more you find more of it. 

• If you can find reasons to focus on to be grateful for the people who have shown up to help and for the things in your life that you still have, you can find gratitude and you can focus on the help you’ve got.

• This is not about toxic positivity or ignoring hard things, it’s about where is your focus? What are you noticing? Do you have a habit of noticing all the problems and how you are inadequate or not doing good enough?

•  This is how our brain works. It’s the way our brains filter through things that seem irrelevant or unimportant so we don’t notice them until we shift our focus on that.

• Take notice of how far you’ve come. Sometimes, it’s so helpful to look back and notice how far you’ve come. How much you’ve changed, and how much strength you’ve gained, when you have gone through something that you thought you wouldn’t be able to survive.

• It’s extremely helpful to notice and take a little time to focus on how I have gotten through, how I have been able to survive, instead of focusing on how I was messing up, how I wasn’t grieving correctly, and how I could be doing better.

• Take a moment and find the good in your life friend. What you focus on expands- remember that. You focus on the problems, all you will find are problems. You focus on the good things happening, you will begin to see more of that.

If you want more tools to help you, I have a workshop called Stop Talking Start Feeling, it’s a workshop that dives into emotions, what they are, and how you can begin to feel and process them and get them out of your body instead of stuffing them down. It also goes specifically into processing and releasing the emotions of guilt and sadness. You can get access to this workshop and all the extra things I have in there for only $27. Go to www.meganhillukka.com/workshop to check it out. 

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

94: In the Blink of an Eye with Tina Kadish

“This is the biggest challenge. I've had other challenges in my life but this is far above any challenge that I've had, and any challenge that I think I will have in the future.”

• Tina Kadish

Episode Pointers:

•  So you don't give up hope. And that's the thing. You keep fighting, fighting, fighting to the end

• I'm still trying to understand why. But I have to surrender, that my life will be without her for the rest of my life. And hopefully, I will see her again.

•  So my faith has been very important during this time, but it's been questioned. I've been questioning my faith. 

• I still believe in the power of prayer. I really do. And that's what gets me through the days.

• You’ve got to watch your anger in a sense. How are you channeling your anger? Are you channeling it in a positive way? Or are you channeling in a negative way? Nothing's going to come out of it. If I punch the top door out, right. I'll get in trouble. 

•  What I'm learning is that every day, you're going to miss them. Every day you're coping, it's like that you have pain every day. This is just the pain that is more of a sadness, of missing her. And knowing that every day for the rest of my life, she will not be with me anymore, I will not see her grow up, she will not, we will not be spending more time together. 

• Sometimes we tend to blame, there's always somebody to blame.

• I cannot live my life every day in bed, I mean I could, but I choose not to and wallow in self-pity. That's not going to be productive. Depression, I mean, you could get depressed about it. You know, and I try not to, you know, as well. 

• It's okay to be sad. It's okay to cry. It's okay to be angry. It's okay. But don't stay in that emotion every single day.

• We all have this anger. Think of it as like energy that comes up in your body. And we look to who we could direct this anger at. So sometimes it's  God, sometimes it's at our child, sometimes at ourselves, sometimes at somebody who kind of played a role in our child's death.

• I have other people that I love. So I also need to think of myself and live my life but there's also that survivor's guilt. Like, I'm alive, but she's passed away, it should have been the other way around. I shouldn't have outlived my daughter. You know, so that's an emotion too.

• Well, now I feel that I've changed is that every day, you want to be grateful. And that life is precious

•  I've always believed, don't hold grudges, love unto others, be grateful.

•  Spending more time with the people that you love is so important, and just don't sweat the small stuff. You get through this. I believe you can get through pretty much anything in your life. You really can. 

• Maybe this was meant to happen. It was my daughter's time. This was God's plan. Whatever it is, everybody's here for a period of time. Hers was cut short, for whatever reason. And that's, you know, a struggle. 

• And that's the thing, we are not in control. We have to let go, surrender and say, “Okay, God, you know, I don't know why, but I'm hoping that I'll find out the why.”

• Give yourself grace. Yeah, you know, give yourself permission to rest, self-care. That's another thing I've learned more is to care for yourself more. 

•  I've learned as I said, is to really appreciate every day that our life can change in the blink of an eye. And to be mindful, and you know, just go outside, and enjoy.

• Forgiveness is huge.  I don't want to hold on to that for you know, lack of forgiveness because it's going to hurt me. It's going to poison me.

•  If they feel alone in their pain, I would say find a community of support where others are experiencing the same thing because we can learn from each other. We can share tips, resources, tools, you know like you mentioned. So don't feel that you are alone because there's someone else going through it.

Her Recommended Books:

• On Death and Dying by Elisabeth Kubler Ross

• On Grief and Grieving by Elisabeth Kubler Ross

• It's Not Supposed to Be This Way by Lysa TerKeurst

You can contact her through the following:

• Website: www.lifeisideal.com

• Email: tina@lifeisideal.com

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LifeIsIdeal/

• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/tinakadish

If you want more tools to help you, I have a workshop called Stop Talking Start Feeling, it’s a workshop that dives into emotions, what they are, and how you can begin to feel and process them and get them out of your body instead of stuffing them down. It also goes specifically into processing and releasing the emotions of guilt and sadness. You can get access to this workshop and all the extra things I have in there for only $27. Go to www.meganhillukka.com/workshop to check it out. 

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