Since it’s Pediatric Cancer Awareness Month in September, I have a very special guest on today, Sahar Shariati, to talk about their story before and after her son was diagnosed with pediatric cancer.

In this episode, Megan shares some experiences in Grief that are very common and normal. What you are experiencing is very personal and Deep. No one can quite understand your Grief because it's your unique experience, and the guilt you feel needs space and time to process. So, it's okay to be where you feel the guilt, move through guilt, and allow it.

You are a grieving mother experiencing grief, which is an entirely normal and natural response to loss. So be gentle and kind with yourself as you are grieving, allowing yourself to rest when you need to. And I hope that you can use whatever will help you.

When you learn to process the emotions, when you learn to be with the emotions instead of needing to numb them, whether it’s with food, or alcohol, or drugs, you are much better off, than just saying, there’s no wrong way to grieve. When you can make a conscious choice to face the emotions and process them, you get to make more choices in what pain and consequences you want to deal with in your future.

I see this over and over again how harshly these mothers judge themselves in their grief. They are doing it wrong, they are not enough, they wonder what’s wrong with them, and it goes on and on of how they put themselves at the bottom, and underneath it all, believe that they are not worth the effort, or that they don’t deserve to be taken care of.

I want to put a stop to this belief that you are not worth it, because you are. You are completely worthy and matter as you are.

Today I brought my husband Justin on today, to talk about our life, and life after the death of our daughter Aria.

Here’s some things we talked about:

We’ve been living in our bus for almost 11 months now. How would you describe, to those who are listening that maybe don’t know what we are doing, or how we are currently living, what we have been doing for the last 11 months.

There is no amount of talking or ignoring that can override your human innate reactions and responses that you don’t have any control over.

It’s when you actually deal with the trauma that everything can change.

What if I told you, that the anxiety you feel every moment, or the fear you’ve been living with for the last 10 years, or the constant on edge feel, or the checking on your husband all night long terrified he will die in his sleep like I did, or the family vacations that are ruined by your anxiety. What if I told you that could not exist?

Sometimes we focus solely on one area, and forget that there are other ways to support healing in our bodies and minds, and not always just healing, but growth and movement in our capacity to feel and experience what is happening in our lives. It’s like the ability to navigate through the difficult things we are working through in our lives. The reason I use all of these pillars is because each one has something amazing to offer, and sometimes we lean more on one than the others, but each one of these pillars can be incredible tools to help you process the grief in your mind, and in your body.

Suzanne Leib shares her story of the death of her son, and how she began to grieve his death many years later. She shares about the anxiety she’s lived with, and how she’s learning to sit with and feel her emotions.