60: Shifting Grief With Mary Anne

Losing her son to suicide was not something that was on Mary Anne's mind as she tried to support and help her son with his mental struggles.

In this episode, We are going to learn about Mary Anne’s layers of grief and how her process has changed as her grief journey has ebbed and flowed.

To cope with her grief, she sought help from a psychologist and took anti-depressants. She also diverted her attention to online stuff and traveling.  

However, when she got home which was when COVID started. She felt overwhelming sadness and crippling guilt. She even questioned her abilities as a mom.

Luckily, she saw Megan’s Facebook Group for  Grieving Moms.

Let’s listen to how this has greatly helped her in finding support and in moving learning to carry her grief.

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

59: The Importance of Resting in Grief

Grieving over someone’s death is greatly draining not only emotionally, but as well as physically.

In this episode, we are going to know the importance of how resting from grief helps you in healing.

You need to set a time for grieving and a time for mending.

Grieving is just like working out. You don’t workout round the clock. You need to rest to recuperate from the stress caused by exercise.  Just like grieving, you need to allow yourself to take a break. It will give you much strength to face if another big wave of emotion comes. 

Here are the points in this episode:

• You can set time aside.

• Set a timer every day.

• Tell your grief you are not ignoring it, but you will come back to it later.

• Think of it like a workout, you need to rest.

• Boxing up your thoughts and emotions.

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

58: Children’s Grief and Trauma with Samantha Colai,LMFT

Samantha is the therapist our children went to after the death of their little sister Aria. I have learned so much from Samantha and I wanted to have her on my podcast to share how we can support our children when we are grieving ourselves. 

She has so much wisdom, experience, and hope to share with every single one of you and your children.

Samantha's Website: Hope Rising Family Services

Recommended Book: The Whole-Brain Child by Daniel J. Siegel

If you want to schedule a 20-minute call with Megan go to www. calendly.com/cultivatedfamily/20

In this call- you can bring one struggle/thought/emotion on your grief journey, that you and Megan can work through together either with thought work or guided meditations.

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.

57: Needing to Know

Have you ever felt like you don’t know enough about exactly what happened with your child’s death? Maybe it feels like you cannot find any peace because there are too many unknowns for you? 

Today, I wanted to dive into how I needed to know everything, and how I began to process that when I was not able to know everything. This little shift in perspective was powerful for me. I hope it can be helpful for you!

If you want to schedule a 20-minute call with Megan go to wwww.calendly.com/cultivatedfamily/20

In this call- you can bring one struggle on your grief journey, that you and Megan can work through together either with thought work or guided meditations.

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

56: Fear

Fear is driving our world right now, fear seems to be something that stops us from taking action and doing the things we want in our life.

Fear definition from online: an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain or a threat.

When you lose a child, the fear, the terror, the horror, the awful horrific emotions, and pain are not something that is easily described. There is real and true fear there. Fear serves a purpose in our lives. It’s there to get us to move when we need to. When the fear is real because the fears you feared actually came true, how are you supposed to work through fear? How are you supposed to move forward?

This is a very deep question, one I can’t fully answer in this episode, and one I don’t have all the answers for. There is so much fear and terror and I’m so sad for that. I’m so sad for every single person who is driven by fear to stay in a place they don’t like to be.

I want to share some tools I’ve used to navigate fear I’ve felt in my life.

If you want to get on the waiting list for my next round of Life After Child Loss Coaching- go to www.lifeafterchildlosscoaching.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

55: How To Get Through Grief

How do we get through grief? It can feel so impossible. I wanted to share ideas that came to me of how we can learn to walk with grief and “get through” one of the most difficult experiences in our lives.

Listen in to hear the 17 ways I offer on how to get through grief.

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

54: Searching For Hope in Deep Grief With Pony Walker

I’m so excited to have one of my coaching clients , Pony here on the podcast. Pony has been a joy to work with. She’s so open and coachable, and willing to try anything I offer to her. Working through deep and painful things with grief is hard work, and I am so honored to be able to hold the space for Pony and help her process and work through so many of the things that have come up for her with the death of her daughter Jess. I’m so excited to introduce you to her and have you see a glimpse of the hope that she continually looks for even in the deepest grief.

-Pony’s story and how she came to know grief

-How her grief has changed in the 6 months that she’s been walking with it

-What Pony has learned about herself and grief

-How coaching has helped her

Her Recommended Books:

1. Child Loss: The Heartbreak and the Hope by Clara Hinton

2. You Are the Mother of All Mothers

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.

53: Building Your Support System

As a grieving person, it’s exhausting to be alive. It’s exhausting every single day. And then there are people around us who don’t understand or who don’t say the right things or don’t act the right way and that adds another layer of pain. It’s easy to think that everyone around you is stupid and should be doing better. That everyone around you should do better and know exactly what to do. It’s easy to get angry, hurt, mad, and begin to separate yourself from those who you thought would be good support for you because they said something that hurt you deeply. Even though you are grieving and you are the one in pain, it’s still up to you to build your support system around you.

-Building your support system is up to you

-Allow others to help in the way that they can

-4 different types of support people

-Notice who is helping instead of who is not

-Ideas of how to find support if you don’t have any in your life

Links to any resources:

It’s here again! Relief in Grief Retreat! This is a chance for you to connect with other grieving moms who are looking for support and tools to navigate the difficult journey of grief. If you are feeling hopeless and like things are never going to get better I want to encourage you to give this a try. It’s free and I promise there is nothing like this out there. I will do coaching, meditations, thought work, and also teaching about grief. You will get to be a part of this amazing experience with other moms who have also lost a child. I truly believe if you show up and do the meditations with me, and learn the tools I’m teaching you will start to feel a shift and change in your grief. This is for you if you are looking for hope, but don’t know where to turn. This is for you if you are feeling stuck and are starting to feel like this is just the way it’s going to be the rest of your life. Friend- there is so much more for you. Please come join me in Relief in Grief! To learn more about this go to www.reliefingriefsupportgroup.com 

This starts on July 28th, it’s so much more than a support group. You truly don’t want to miss this. Save your spot for free 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