I’ve learned that if I don’t feel chaos inside of me, I create it, because maybe I couldn’t handle being alone with myself, or I couldn’t handle the feeling of calm or peace because I didn’t know how to be with it. I have not completely let go of this struggle, I’m still working through it now energetically and with a coach. Maybe it’s something I will deal with my whole life, maybe not.

I hope by sharing, that you can learn and know that there are many layers to each of us in our lives, and we are all continually learning. Sometimes you need to step back and take a break, but when you are doing the work, it’s lifelong. We never get to a place of perfection. And that’s okay, it’s part of the journey.

So- I’ll do the best I can to share with you how I realized that I was living from a place of suffering or struggle.

After her father’s death Gracelyn and her aunt Melody began working on a couple year project that they called Snapshots of Life After Loss. The goal of the project was to capture a variety and many different peoples grief at different moments in their lives.

She shares how each person’s story that she heard really helped her grieve her own loss, and showed her that everyone truly does grieve differently.

I talk a lot about feelings. I am a huge proponent of feeling your feelings, processing them, and holding space for them. But maybe something I haven’t talked about as much, is that even though you are feeling something, it doesn't mean it’s true or even real.

It also doesn’t mean you have to act from that feeling.

I would argue that it’s actually each of our own personal responsibilities to process our emotions and feelings so we don’t project them or vomit them onto other people in our lives. And this is why feeling your feelings and processing emotions is so absolutely important in your life.

Maybe, you are going along in your life, and you feel like you are doing okay, managing okay, things are kind of humming along, and you are like, well, my baby died, my child died, I feel kinda okay, do I need help?

So- when you are just like, I don’t know. Do I need help? Am I doing okay, or could it be better?

First, as the grieving mom, your grief is your responsibility and nobody else's. Nobody else can do the grief work for you, this is something that is fully and completely yours. So, it’s also not up to others in your life to tell you how you should handle it or how you are supposed to grieve. This is a deeply personal journey and process that we each have to navigate on our own.

Ok, I said this is a fine line, and this is the other side that I want to talk about. Your grief is yours and very personal. And it also affects those in your life around you. Your husband, friends, other children, whoever it may be. As a grieving mom so often it can feel like you are doing everything you can to hold yourself together and yet your world just continues to crumble around you. When you are in a relationship, everything can’t always be only about you.

Erin shares her experience with breathwork, how she was very weighed down with anxiety, even though she functioned and lived every day. She shares how when she first used breathwork, she didn’t realize that the elephant she felt on her chest could actually be gone. She got so used to feeling anxious she didn’t know she could feel any different.

One thing I’ve learned from grief is having hard conversations. I would say my whole life I ran from having tough conversations. I would rather sweep something under the rug, or pretend everything is okay when really it’s not. If I ignore it long enough it might become okay right?

Well- when Aria died, tough conversations were everywhere. Especially with my husband Justin. There was no way we could strive to have an amazing relationship and marriage and go through this incredibly difficult experience and not have hard conversations.

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.