254: Why and What I Do

254: Why and What I Do

I was just at the Bereaved Parents Conference and another mom asked me if I’ve done a podcast recently about what I do. The work I do. Have I actually shared deeply about it on here with you, I think I have at some points, but I do feel like things change and evolve over the years, so maybe now would be a good time to share with you what I do, how I help grieving mothers, and if this would be a good fit for you.

I literally hear moms saying, I need to find a new therapist, mine doesn’t understand grief, mine is not going deep enough, mine tried to tell me about the 5 stages of grief, mine isn’t helping me anymore, whatever it is. And if this is you, listen up too. Because this work could be exactly what you are looking for.

I want to first say, the reason Grieving Moms Haven exists, is because I wanted to figure out a way I could help moms. A lot of people start foundations, fund research to stop the deaths of kids in the future, and create physical products to sell like remembrance products. A lot of grieving mothers get passionate about preventing the deaths of future children from the ways they died. And I love that for them, it’s just absolutely not in my heart's path at all. Aria died. Whether she died of SUDC or choking, cancer, or a car accident, I have come to a place where I believe it was her time to go, and I have no energy to put into prevention and advocacy in that way. That’s just not my way. At the heart of my work is this. I want you to be okay. I want to help you heal. I want the mothers whose children have already died. Who is already experiencing this unimaginable pain to learn how to cope and process her emotions. I want to have a safe place for her to land, to grieve, to process, to share about her child without shame or worry of offending someone by talking about her dead child. I want a place where a mom who wants to move from surviving to living and then thriving can come and begin to take those steps. I truly want the moms whose children have died to be okay. Because I am okay, and I know what it’s like to be in horrific and painful grief, and I know what it’s like to be okay, and trust, being okay is so much better, and I want that for every one of you who want that. So this is at the very heart of my mission. Helping you be okay, did you know it’s okay to not be okay, but it’s also okay to be okay? The amount of suffering you have doesn’t show how much you love your child. Your love can be enough, you don’t need to suffer to try to prove it.

I also want to just share, that doing this work has stretched me in ways I couldn’t have imagined. Mainly because facing judgment and people emailing me pretty awful emails about what a horrible person I am and things like that because they think I shouldn’t be charging people for grief(to which I ask, do you say that to a doctor? A therapist? A massage therapist? An engineer? A McDonald's worker? Any other person who gives of their time and services they can be paid, but I’m supposed to work for free?) I think anyone who has ever grown a business will know what I mean that being an entrepreneur takes a different level of skill and even just determination. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve almost thrown everything I’ve done here away and stopped. I’m not here to complain at all, because I keep choosing it. It’s so incredibly hard to do this work, not because the work is hard, but because of everything that comes with it. But I keep going because I believe so deeply in what I’m doing. I believe so deeply in what I do works, and I keep focusing on you who is listening, who gets strength from this podcast, for the moms inside of Grieving Moms Haven who have the tools and resources to assist them, and of my 1:1 clients who I can tell are getting so much from our calls. So, I keep going, because I know this can change not only 1 mom’s life but hundreds of moms’ lives.

So, the first things I do are free things, the podcast Grieving Moms Podcast, has now  254

 episodes…and then my website www.meganhillukka has all the podcasts, plus other resources. 

I have given away countless hours of free coaching, and my IG, which I changed to grievingmomshaven, is a place where I share things about grief and what it’s like to lose a child and all the experiences that come with it.

But when you want to go deeper and be guided through grief, I have Grieving Moms Haven. This is for moms who want accountability, who want some direction, and who want to learn how to live again.

When you are a part of Grieving Moms Haven there are a few different things that happen. I think of it like the gym for your internal and emotional world. Most of us don’t have a problem joining a gym or knowing that we need to take care of ourselves physically. We want to look good and feel good in our bodies. But what purpose is looking good on the outside if feeling good on the inside is non-existent?

Grieving Moms Haven is the workout and stretching for the mind and heart, to help you learn how to process the emotions you are feeling since your child died, and teach you different perspectives of grief.

You can interact as much as you want with others inside, or you can do everything on your own and not connect with others. There are live calls every month, I think of them kind of like the live classes at a gym. I always loved going to the live classes because I knew I would do the workout if I went live. In this same way, if you’re struggling to make time for your grief and yourself, then coming to the live calls is a way for accountability, you can connect with others on the call, and you know you are getting this internal workout done.

Otherwise, if you like to do things in your own time, everything is recorded inside of there, so that anytime you have the capacity or energy for it, you can do a meditation, listen to the Life After Child Loss Program, or listen to the Sleep Again Program. 

If you’ve been listening to this podcast and you haven’t joined Grieving Moms Haven yet, you might be wondering how anything more could help you, but I promise you, the things inside of Grieving Moms Haven for the moms who actually show up and do the things are pretty life-changing. I’ve had moms who have been grieving for years and they’ve really numbed their emotions, and when they’ve hit rock bottom, they’ve gotten health issues, or they just realized that something needed to change, they joined Grieving Moms Haven and learned how to begin feeling their emotions and to finally let the heavy weight of grief begin to lighten and lessen in their lives. And also I’ve had moms who are very new to grief and they want every tool in their toolbox. They want to dive in right away because they know they can’t do this on their own, and they know that they have to dive into the grief in order to feel better in some way or form in the future(side note, this was me. I dove in immediately, and while each of our journeys will look different, I’m extremely grateful for my past self who basically put everything else in my life on hold except finding ways to carry grief, process my emotions, and learn how to flow with the dark and light emotions.

Okay so anyways, what’s inside of Grieving Moms Haven? There are programs and courses. These are things that if you want to do something learning style, you can go through a program on a specific topic. I keep adding to the content, but there’s a program on journaling, a program on sleeping, the Life After Child Loss Program, and in September, I’m doing the Free of Anxiety Program which will be live and then recorded so you can access it later inside of Grieving Moms Haven.

Then there’s my favorite part of Grieving Moms Haven which is all the mindfulness recordings in there. There are tapping meditations for anxiety, grief, guilt, depression, suicide loss, SIDS/SUDC loss, sleep, overeating, and all these types of struggles that come up after your child dies, and these tapping meditations help the process through these things. It’s like instead of just fighting this and thinking it needs to be here for a long time you can help it along with these tapping sessions.

There are meditations to help you connect with your body and feel emotions, breathwork sessions, and visualizations.

And then, there’s the community aspect of it. You can interact as much or as little as you want, but there’s a community area portion inside where you can share your thoughts about a program, share about your child, ask questions, and things like that. This is where you for sure can ask me any questions and I will answer them in there.

So I also offer a 1:1 6-week coaching package that is 6 weeks to Anxiety Free. It’s a 1:1 where we will focus on clearing and eliminating anxiety for you in your life, so you can be calm, in control, and free to go about your life as you wish, without anxiety holding you hostage.

In these calls, we can work specifically with what’s coming up for you and do parts of R.R.T. that help with things like panic attacks, anxiety, sleep issues, nightmares, overeating, guilt, feeling overwhelmed, and things like that. When I’ve done these 1:1 calls, it’s amazing what has shifted for the moms. One example recently, I’m not going to share the details of, but a mother had a situation that you would call traumatic, where she relived the situation and to recall the situation was very painful. After our session, she experienced almost a repeat of the situation though this time everything turned out fine, but she shared how she didn’t have a panic attack or it wasn’t even that big of a deal for her. She said she kept wondering at the moment how she was okay. How in the world was she fine and not having a panic attack?

This is life-changing stuff. Having a panic attack wipes your whole day out. Living with anxiety is so tiring and it’s hard to think or focus on anything else when you have this constant underlying anxiety. It’s hard to have any energy for what you need to do in the day if you aren’t sleeping at all, and if you’re in constant survival mode, you are just doing the basics to survive, and not truly live.

None of this is your fault, it’s the way it’s been, and it can change.

I also do a very limited number of 1:1 clients, and these are the clients that get the most personalized work because it’s just us on the call, and we go through what’s coming up for her that day. I think there’s a lot of fear around getting help or doing 1:1 that you will have to spill it all, or what if it’s the wrong fit, or what if it will be so painful, and I do think that this has been some people's experience in the past, but I want to read you a few things some moms have shared after 1:1 sessions with me:

“All I know is that something really shifted. I have waited to do the survey because I wanted to see if my feelings about the situation I had shared and worked on would come back up and they truly are dormant. I can have pictures without feelings. It's amazing really. Thank you so much....”

“After the session, I felt very calm and as if something had shifted in me. I usually feel very overwhelmed if I’m doing something beyond the normal day-to-day routine, but I felt calm and at ease not only after the session but also looking forward to the upcoming days.”

I felt more at ease/calm and my mind was “empty” which was nice, but also a little strange, since my mind is mostly occupied with thought. I also felt a little dizzy at the end. I also felt more at peace in my heart and emotionally in a good way.

You might be tired at the end of the session, but my intention is to leave you in a better place at the end of the session than what you came into the session with.

So, like I said, in the month of September we are focusing on the Free of Anxiety Program, and you can get 14 days free inside of Grieving Moms Haven when you go to www.grievingmomshaven.com. I don’t know how long this particular offer will be around. I change them up from time to time, so if you want to try it out completely free and see what Grieving Moms Haven is like, What I’ve found is that sometimes you can’t believe the internal landscape can be any different until you experience it. Like tapping, you don’t know how powerful it is until you try it. Many times moms tell me this is the first time they’ve experienced calm in their body since their child has died. What a gift is that? To experience peace and calm in the midst of the chaos of grief, and to know that it’s possible for you to feel this again. It might not be all the time, but that glimpses of hope and possibility are there, so you know that you won’t only feel horrible hard pain for the rest of your life. So again, go to www.grievingmomshaven.com to get access to the 14 days free, and start with a tapping session and see how you feel!

So if you’re living with anxiety you have these two options if you want to do something about it, and finally be free of it, you can join Grieving Moms Haven and join the group version, or you can do 1:1 with me for 6 weeks where we will do it personally for you.

I also host retreats, I’ve hosted one, and I’m looking into hosting one again this February in Florida. If you are interested in this next retreat go to www.meganhillukka.com/retreat and you will find a link to join the waiting list. Sign-ups have already started, so if you do want to be a part of it, make sure you go get on the waitlist the next time I send out an email with the chance to sign up!

The retreats are the next level and layer of support, in-person guidance, and a huge gift to yourself to spend the time grieving, thinking about your child, and then connecting with other mothers who get it without having to explain anything. In these retreats, all the food is prepared, I rent an Airbnb place and you just show up. We do yoga, meditation, tapping, and healing crafts, in this next one, each mom will get her own 1:1 R.R.T. session. It’s so amazing.

That’s it. It’s pretty simple what I do. Basically provide tools, services, and resources to help you process the emotions of grief, and learn how to cope after your child dies.

It’s way less of an investment than therapy, and I’ve had moms tell me that this was way more beneficial for them than years of therapy. I want to give you the tools to function, not try to make you reliant on me. 

Anyways, so much love to you all. Each one of you and your children and babies. See you next week!

Have you felt anxiety after your child died?

The racing mind, unable to sleep, waiting for the next bad thing to happen, unable to breathe, panicky kind of anxiety, whole body riddled with anxiety?

Watch my free video on anxiety and grief below!

So that you can think clearly, feel calm in your body, and live your life without the chains of anxiety.