Grief Coaching and Spiritual Living

Navigating Grief and Finding Strength Amidst Loss

• Dr. Donna

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Grief can come crashing down like a tidal wave, leaving us to navigate uncharted waters. Join me, Dr. Donna, as I share my personal story of loss, including the heart-wrenching experience of losing my son. This episode uncovers the multifaceted nature of grief, not just through the loss of loved ones, but also through severed relationships, abandoned careers, and shattered dreams. You'll learn how grieving is an ongoing journey and why it’s essential to find a nurturing support system, whether through therapy, spiritual guidance, or community connections.

The path to healing is deeply personal, and I candidly discuss the hurdles of finding solace amidst those who may not understand profound grief. Discover how past traumas, like early parental loss and time spent in foster care, have shaped my resilience and capacity for finding peace. We explore somatic practices to address emotions stored in our bodies and the liberating power of expressing our true feelings. This episode is an invitation to join a compassionate community that encourages sharing and understanding, challenging societal norms that urge us to hide our grief. Join me as I offer insights and stories that aim to guide you towards wholeness and finding an abundant life even amidst the sorrow.

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Dr. Donna:

Hi, it's Dr Donna here, and today I wanted to talk about what it means to be a grief coach. Now, I have coached many things throughout the years. I have done readings on many topics, but I realize that people do carry a lot of grief for different reasons. They carry grief not just because of a loss of a loved one, but also because of a loss of a relationship or a loss of a job or a loss and grieving overall what they thought life would have been for them, and that is a grief within itself. We don't think about it, but a lot of us are living lives that we didn't plan to be living. We had to live our plan B. Some of us are living our plan C or D, but a lot of us are not living our plan A.

Dr. Donna:

Now, I know there's a saying of life is what happens when you're making plans, but when it comes to grief, and especially if you've lost someone that you love and that person is no longer in your life, you're now creating a different life than what you expected to have, and that can be hard. You end up trying to find a way to navigate through it all and it can become very overwhelming. Even with counseling, it could become very overwhelming. Even with counseling, it could still become overwhelming, and I'm all for counseling, I'm all for group support. I've done all those things. I needed all those things when I lost my son, because I had one child. He's my only child, you know he was going to have his own life, his own plans, his own career. I did not have plans for him other than to live a happy life and do the career that he wanted. So it wasn't like I had dreams that I projected onto him, but he was still a part of the plan and whatever I accomplished in life, he was my why, and so there were things that I was doing and I would have left to him. My legacy would have been left to him, and that is gone. So for us parents who have lost children, you know part of us is gone. Like I always tell people, when my son died, I felt like I was cut in half. I did not feel like a whole person, and I think that that also resonates for losing anybody that you love, whether it's a child, a parent, a spouse, a close friend. When someone is significant in your life, you and you lose them. Part of you will feel like it's missing you and you lose them. Part of you will feel like it's missing.

Dr. Donna:

Now, although I talked about all the different forms of grief, I do focus on losing a loved one more than losing a job or having a divorce or, you know, having another life-changing event. And the reason why I focus on the loss of a loved one because I identify with it. I lost my parents by the time I was 12. I didn't have parents. I had a brother who was unalived when I was 23. And that was a whole nightmare of a situation.

Dr. Donna:

I've had a lot of loss. I've lost friends along the way. I just lost two friends within the past, you know, 13 months to cancer. So I've experienced a lot of loss. I understand it. I haven't lost a spouse, I but I, you know, I lost parents. I've lost a sibling, I lost a child. I've lost friends. I've had a lot of loss. So I feel like what I had to learn for myself. I've shared with clients and I want to share on this channel. But I don't want to just talk about the gloom and doom of loss. I want to talk about the life after loss, that there is a life after loss.

Dr. Donna:

It took me a long time to find my way because I had to find what worked for me, and what I learned is the talk therapy was good. Once you find someone to connect with, it really helped. For me. It was a spiritual coach versus a psychologist or a psychiatrist, and it's different for each person. It may be your clergy, it may be a coach, it may be a therapist. It's what works for you. But I also learned how much grief we carry in our body. So I learned a lot of somatic practices, which I will share on this channel, some of the different exercises that I've done and some of the videos that I will do to help you make it through.

Dr. Donna:

You know everybody has their own time of grief. I believe that grief is always with us. I don't believe that a person can just get over it or should be over it. That, to me, is insanity. How do you get over someone that you loved and you lost? And you have to find a way to create a life after losing them. But you don't have to get over them. You can hold space for them, and that is something that I will also talk about on this channel now. I won't hold back and I will even mention stories about the people that I lost in my life and how they were so significant to me.

Dr. Donna:

And you know I want people to me and you know I want people to feel comfortable to post comments to share what they've lost. I want to create that community because I feel like in society we're afraid to talk about death and talk about loss and you know there's this need, especially with social media, to put on this facade that everything's great, everything's fine and I'm unbothered. And I still see a lot of that and that's disturbing to me, because you don't want to live a life of being unbothered. We're meant to feel, we have feelings, we have good feelings, we have bad feelings. I will do videos on feelings and emotions. I will do videos on feelings and emotions and you know I plan to do a video on the gift of anger that I experienced during the grief process. So I don't want anybody to feel like they have to hold back, because if you hold back on what you're feeling, you cannot heal right. You got to feel it to heal it and you shouldn't be ashamed if you're still grieving several years later.

Dr. Donna:

My son passed away 16 and a half years ago. He'll always hold a place in my heart. He's not going anywhere and anybody has a problem with it. That's not for me to worry about. It's okay to never get over someone, but it is very important to find a way to keep on living even though they are gone. So we will have those discussions and I just want to really create this safe place to talk about anything and everything when it comes to grief and life after loss and how to create an abundant life. And, yes, you can be happy, I am happy. In my life, I still hold space for the loss of my parents, my brother, but especially my son. That was like the final straw for me and for the dear friends who had an impact on my life, and I lost two very good ones to cancer.

Dr. Donna:

But it really is about moving forward and knowing that you can and, even if you don't, see a way. I remember when I first lost my son, I thought what am I going to do? You know, yes, I have a career and you know I can travel. I could do some things to keep busy, but how is life going to feel? And I just didn't know. So I'm going to talk about what I went through and the things that I did to survive, because I really had to find a way to survive. It was pretty scary at times. I I was in a dark place, which I think is normal. I was in shock. You know, people didn't know what to say to me. Sometimes people say crazy things like oh, I pray over my kids. I think a lot of people pray over their kids and pray for their kids and pray for their loved ones, and we still lost them.

Dr. Donna:

So it's, I want to talk about how to navigate dealing with people who don't get it because they haven't gone through it. I want to just talk about everything that it takes to live in this world after loss. So this is my intro video and the videos to follow will be different stories. I will talk anywhere from five minutes to 15 minutes, so I don't want it to be too long and I want to get to the point. Sometimes I ramble, but I want to make sure that you get the information that you need and you know it's important for me to be a genuine person in this. Yes, I'm a coach, but as coaches are humans and what I went through, I feel like I can really help people. I want to and I really want to be of service, and so grief is one aspect, but life after grief is really, you know, very important and life with grief I should say life with grief you can have a great life. I have done traveling, I've lived in different places, I've had great friendships relationships. I've done a. I've lived in different places, I've had great friendships relationships. I've done a lot and I found my inner peace and I found a way to make peace with everything to where I'm not triggered by the loss. It doesn't feel as heavy now, but I still feel the loss. But I also have a love for life and life can be beautiful despite what we've gone through.

Dr. Donna:

In my younger years I went through a lot of trauma. My parents died early. I was in the foster care system. I never experienced the love from other people that I got from my parents, but I found a way and having my son was so important because it gave me life. I had him at a young age and all of a sudden he wasn't there anymore. He passed at 23 due to a brain tumor that wasn't even cancerous. It was a benign brain tumor, but it was deep in the brain and you know. That's a whole story that I will share in one of the videos. So this is my intro video and I hope that you come along for this journey, because we all deserve to heal and be happy and to have an abundant life and to experience wholeness while grieving.