I have often taught to notice your thoughts, how your thoughts create your feelings and how as you notice what you are thinking in your mind and pay attention to the thoughts in your head, you get so much freedom and power back in your life to choose your thinking on purpose rather than be a the effect of what’s going on in your mind without you even noticing.
Well hello friends! I am excited to dive into today’s topic, it’s one that I’ve been leaning into and close to my heart. But I wanted to ask first, could you please take a moment to review this podcast? If it’s helped you and you are a weekly listener, please, go, stop right now, and leave a review. When you do that, send a screenshot to me at hello@meganhillukka.com and you will be entered to win a $100 Amazon gift card, that every time I reach 50 reviews, I will draw a name. So- go right now, leave your review, and send the screenshot over to me!
From my last episode series about Teaching Others About Grief I thought about how exhausting and draining it is to try to teach others about what grief is like. This episode is for you my friend. For when you are grieving and feel so misunderstood. How you don’t really understand what’s going on with you yourself, and how others in your life are misunderstanding you and thinking so many things about you like you should just get over it by now, why can’t you be your normal self again, why can’t you just move on already, you can’t carry the dead forward with you.
All of these things, at least for me, make me want to fight and proclaim that they're wrong, and let them know that they don’t understand, and that I’m glad they don’t understand but they have got it all wrong. To tell them that they are being hurtful and they are pushing horrific things on the griever and that they don’t know what they are talking about.
And yet, there’s a way of being that I’ve begun to feel into and be. Which is kind of weird and hard to describe, but I’m going to share it here. Maybe you will find this useful, maybe you won’t. Take what works and resonates with you right now. Maybe you want to fight and it feels good to try to explain and teach others.
So- when this episode is about letting go of the fight, I mean it in so many ways, letting go of fighting grief, letting go of fighting others about grief, letting go of the need to fight to show that you aren’t forgetting your child, and you are not moving on, and show to others how horrible this really is. Letting go of trying to be okay when you are struggling, and pushing back grief when it’s so intense and needs to be felt.
So the first side I want to dive into is from the perspective in relation with other people. Byron Katie says defense is the first act of war. It took me forever to understand that. But it’s so utterly and completely true. Defense is the first act of war. When someone says something to you, you might feel attacked. Someone tells you it’s time to move on, you feel judged, you feel angry, you might feel like they have no right to be saying that to you.
Then you try to defend yourself, to tell them they don’t know what they are talking about, to explain yourself, to tell them why they are wrong.
Then notice how you feel. The emotions it brings up in you. The energy it’s drained from you. I’m not at all saying that we can’t explain and teach and try to show others what it’s like to grieve, I believe it’s a really important thing to do. But notice how it makes you feel, and if you feel like you have to fight them. If you feel so much struggle inside of your body, how this experience might send you into a spiral that lasts for hours or days. Notice if you have the energy for that or not?
Is this worth it? What if you don’t have to fight? What if they can say whatever they want to say, they can believe whatever they want to believe, and you can be exactly where you are at the same time.
Notice the difference with defense. The emotions that it brings up inside of you, I can feel it in my body right now as I say this. I can feel the fight, the anger, the indignation that someone would say such a thing and think that of me.
And now, notice what it’s like to let go of the fight. To let go of the need to prove you are right, to prove they are wrong, to let them have it, even to try to explain. What if they don’t deserve an explanation? What if they don’t deserve the energy it takes for you to explain to them?
Notice what it would be like if you let go of the fight and need to explain to others. What would that give you? What calm could you find in your own grief journey because you let go of the defense.
I have taken this approach in so many areas of my life and it’s helped me step back and really not spend my energy fighting with someone when it really doesn’t matter. Sometimes the fight isn’t worth the fight and the intense emotions you have to face afterwards because of trying to explain to someone who doesn’t understand, or who maybe doesn’t want to understand.
Okay- remember, take that or leave that. It’s just really helped me in my life not only with grief, but so many difficult conversations or places where I do things differently than most other people. I just don’t feel the need to explain.
Ok- the other part of letting go of the fight that I wanted to talk about is in the sense of letting go of fighting grief. This does not mean giving up on life. This does not mean giving up. I know if you’ve been fighting and struggling it might seem like when I say letting go of the fight that it means the same as giving up. And this couldn’t be further from the truth.
When you fight grief, you are prolonging the suffering and the pain and the agony that you are living in every day. We’ve been taught that fighting is how we move forward. That we gotta fight to sink or swim. And there is a fight in grief, there is a battle, but it’s not against grief. There’s a fight to find your will to live and a reason to keep going. But grief is a part of the journey and a part of it.
When you welcome all of the emotions of grief into your life, it gets easier. It's releasing into grief and allowing it all to be there without judgement or needing to change it. That’s where the healing and processing happens, it doesn’t happen when you are resisting or fighting grief.
Don’t want to be angry? So you pretend you are not angry because it’s not good to be angry, but now you are just burying the anger deeper inside of you, so it’s building up, it turns into bitterness and resentment. Now you have to use energy to hold the anger down and pretend you aren’t feeling anger, meanwhile adding judgement on top of that why are you angry? You shouldn’t be angry, that’s not what good people are.
Wow- that’s so exhausting. What if you could let go of that fight, and just simply say, I’m angry. I have a lot of pent up energy in me that is anger, and I am going to release it, process it, work through it, and let go of the judgement of it, because anger is normal in grief and because I have anger, does not make me an angry person. (just a side note, what makes you a angry person is not processing the anger and shoving it in)
Ok- that’s all I have for today’s episode. I’m also super excited to let you know about something that I’m doing- I will have access weekly workshops teaching different topics like anxiety and grief, who I am i after child loss, how to get through grief, those kinds of topics. You can register for the workshop and it will bring you right away to the workshop, where you can watch it, and you will also get an email with the link so you can watch it anytime as well! You can check out these different workshops by going to www.meganhillukka.com/workshop and see what the week's topic will be and save your spot.
So- I’ll see you next week!
If you like this podcast, and found it helpful, I want to invite you come check out Grieving Moms Haven, my monthly community for Grieving moms, where you can learn positive coping mechanisms, find a safe space with others who understand, and learn life long skills that support you as you learn how to carry this weight of grief in your life.
There are group coaching calls where we do guided meditations, tapping meditations, breathwork, and just talk, knowing that everyone in the group is also walking the path of child loss
You can come check out Grieving Moms Haven at www.grievingmomshaven.com
This series is from my book I wrote on How to Help Your Grieving Friend. It’s written for others who want to understand how they can support and help someone who is living with the unthinkable.
I want to read a few chapters from this book in a series of episodes, because the message in here is so powerful to share. I remember a friend whose daughter had also died told me her therapist said that it’s the grievers job to teach others how to help them, or what it’s like to grieve.
It seems like such an unfair thing, and yet it’s true. You cannot understand what it’s like until it happens to you. And so, as the bereaved, the only thing we can do is to try to share what it’s like, and hope the people who love us and want to support us will listen in and try to hear what we are saying.
So- instead of trying to explain to others, because if you are anything like I was, I had no energy to explain or try to tell others what it’s like, share this with the people in your life who are trying to help you and trying to understand- especially if these episodes resonate with you. That way, you don't have to try to explain yourself.
This series is from my book I wrote on How to Help Your Grieving Friend. It’s written for others who want to understand how they can support and help someone who is living with the unthinkable.
I want to read a few chapters from this book in a series of episodes, because the message in here is so powerful to share. I remember a friend whose daughter had also died told me her therapist said that it’s the grievers job to teach others how to help them, or what it’s like to grieve.
It seems like such an unfair thing, and yet it’s true. You cannot understand what it’s like until it happens to you. And so, as the bereaved, the only thing we can do is to try to share what it’s like, and hope the people who love us and want to support us will listen in and try to hear what we are saying.
So- instead of trying to explain to others, because if you are anything like I was, I had no energy to explain or try to tell others what it’s like, share this with the people in your life who are trying to help you and trying to understand- especially if these episodes resonate with you. That way, you don't have to try to explain yourself.
This series is from my book I wrote on How to Help Your Grieving Friend. It’s written for others who want to understand how they can support and help someone who is living with the unthinkable.
I want to read a few chapters from this book in a series of episodes, because the message in here is so powerful to share. I remember a friend whose daughter had also died told me her therapist said that it’s the grievers job to teach others how to help them, or what it’s like to grieve.
It seems like such an unfair thing, and yet it’s true. You cannot understand what it’s like until it happens to you. And so, as the bereaved, the only thing we can do is to try to share what it’s like, and hope the people who love us and want to support us will listen in and try to hear what we are saying.
So- instead of trying to explain to others, because if you are anything like I was, I had no energy to explain or try to tell others what it’s like, share this with the people in your life who are trying to help you and trying to understand- especially if these episodes resonate with you. That way, you don't have to try to explain yourself.
Hello everyone! I’m back. If you didn’t notice, I took a few weeks off of everything from my work in Grieving Moms Community, all except my work and community in Grieving Moms Haven- that’s my monthly membership where we do calls with guided meditations and tappings specifically for child loss and all the emotions that come with it.
But I’m back with the podcast, and a renewed vigor to do this work, and get more focused on what I can do with the time I have, and the money I can put into doing this work.
So- right now, my focus is this podcast, my emails that go out, and my Grieving Moms Haven membership. I want to quick say, I’ve put everything I’ve created into this membership. My program I used to sell individually, group coaching calls, anxiety workshop, a month of journaling, tapping exercises for anger, guilt, sadness, anxiety, so many emotions, breath work meditations. Everything in one place for you to do what you can, when you can, at a very affordable price. I am also offering one month free in there, so you can try it out. Just go to www.meganhillukka.com and you will see it there and be able to get one month free.
I’m a little bit late on this episode, as in, last week could have been better, but I still want to talk about this because the new year can bring up so many things.
So many people are looking into the future, planning goals, planning what they want to do, all those kinds of things, and here you are, looking at your future and all you can see is horrific pain and misery.
It’s overwhelming and painful to say the least. If it helps you to plan goals and to have something to look forward to, I want to highly encourage you to do that. In fact, I think it can be good if everyone can have something that they can look forward to, even if it’s a very simple small thing.
But here’s the context I want to share this thought in. As a grieving mother, you can quickly become hopeless and weighed down heavily when you start going down the road of what your future looks like. Especially if you project where you are now on to your future, because you don’t know how you will feel in one year, but right now, it’s easy to look one year ahead and think you will feel the same exact way, or maybe even worse.
So it’s not useful to look into the future, it doesn’t help you at all. Not if you are looking too far ahead and just feel an overwhelming sense of sadness and despair.
So- here’s something I offer to the moms in my community. Imagine your future or what you can see in front of you as a horizon. If you have too big of a horizon, it’s overwhelming and you begin to think you can’t do this anymore, so narrow your horizon.
While everyone else is planning their year, maybe you need to shrink your horizon down to the next week, or day, or minute.
Maybe, that’s all you can look at and hold without going into the depths of despair.
It might seem silly, but grief and life can really just be brought down to moments. And sometimes it’s all you can do to get through this moment, and the next moment, and the next moment.
So with that, I want to encourage you to think about how far ahead you can handle to think. And once you decide on that, don’t allow yourself to think any further ahead, because you only cause yourself horrific suffering.
Because here’s the truth- you do not know how you will truly feel at a certain time, in a couple months, a couple years. It’s not super supportive to you to place all the weight and pain you have right now that far into the future, because you don’t know how you will feel then.
So just focus on where you are right now.
One thing that I do every year that I wanted to share on here with you, is I bring a word into my life that I will focus on for the year. A word that comes to me that feels right for this time in my life. I like to share this, because it’s not a goal or a thing to try to get to, but something that’s personal for you that helps you focus on what matters to you this year.
For example, last year, my word was Ease- for let it be easy. I’m really good at creating extra suffering and struggle in my life. So this word helped me continually refocus on how can I make things easier for myself? What can I let go of mentally, emotionally, physically that’s weighing me down where I can allow things to be easy?
This year, my word for myself is connection. I want to create connections in my relationships in my life. My husband, my children, my family, and friends. All of you moms here, the moms who join me in Grieving Moms Haven.
As we are walking and living a new year, I also want to acknowledge the pain it is to mark another year. Another year separating you from your child, from the time they lived, from the time they were here.
For me, each year marks how much farther I have to scroll back in my pictures to find pictures of Aria. They just keep getting longer and longer, and farther and farther away, and that hurts.
For those of you listening, whose child died in 2021, I want to send you a big hug. Going into a new year is so much deeper, because now you are living in a year that they have never lived in and never will. For that I’m sorry. I’m sorry for all of us living with this pain, and I’m always holding you and your child in my heart.
So- here’s to hoping 2022 can be a year of gentleness on your heart, and a time where you can hold compassion, gentleness, and love for yourself as you are walking the hardest journey one can ever be asked to walk. I see you there, doing the best you can, with the horrific pain you are carrying, and it still feels like it’s never enough. It’s a lot, it really is. So please be gentle on yourself and know that grief is very intense. You got this.
And if you want to join a safe space with others grieving mothers, get support by connecting with others, and learning coping mechanisms to help you through this grief, come join Grieving Moms Haven, where you can get a month free. Go to www.meganhillukka.com and you can find all the information there.
I’m so excited to be back here on the podcast, to be sharing and connecting with you. See you next week! Take care
If you want to dive deeper, and have a coach who understands grief, and triggers, and what it’s like to be walking with child loss grief, message me at hello@meganhillukka.com and we can chat about how I can help you on your grief journey.
Episode Pointers :
Using the word AND, helps expand your energy, awareness, and opens up things for your brain to register in a way that’s pretty amazing.
We don’t have to live in black and white. Let’s add the AND in there.
I’m feeling lighter today, AND I still miss and love my child.
I’m feeling lighter today, AND I’m so grateful I have a moment of reprieve.
I’m feeling lighter today, AND I know I will never forget my child.
I’m feeling lighter today, AND I am learning how to carry grief and joy.
I’m so broken, AND I’m learning how to get through this.
My life is over, AND I can take the next little step forward.
I can’t do this anymore, AND I have what it takes to dig deeper.
I’m falling apart, AND I’m grieving so I’m going to give myself grace.
If you are struggling with something, notice where you can add some grace to your story by adding the word, AND.
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 FREE ( limited time only). Go to www.stoptalkingstartfeeling.com to check it out.
If you want to dive deeper, and have a coach who understands grief, and triggers, and what it’s like to be walking with child loss grief, message me at hello@meganhillukka.com and we can chat about how I can help you on your grief journey.
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
Episode Pointers:
You know that the person is dying, but you do everything to make the situation comfortable. You provide until the end of life.
Each one of our stories is so personal to us and so, the grief is so deep.
There is no normal for grief, whatever it is for you is okay.
In grief, it’s not that you are necessarily ever going to be healed or ever just check the box that you’re over it.
Grief is gonna be there always. Once when we are kind of exhausted from the treadmill of trying to run away with grief, it will pop up.
Just because you’re not crying and you’re not outwardly showing those emotions, it doesn't mean that your grief is any less valued.
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Connect with Tricia through her :
Website: https://www.whenwisheschange.com/
Instagram: @whenwisheschange
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/whenwisheschange
Tiktok: @whenwisheschange
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 FREE ( limited time only). Go to www.stoptalkingstartfeeling.com to check it out.
If you want to dive deeper and have a coach who understands grief, and triggers, and what it’s like to be walking with child loss grief, message me at hello@meganhillukka.com and we can chat about how I can help you on your grief journey.
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
