One thing I haven’t really touched on in the podcast yet is physical pain and health problems after your child dies. The absolute stress of what you are experiencing and going through absolutely affects not only your mental and emotional state but your physical state as well. I was so sick so many times after Aria died. My immune system was just not there because my body was under so much stress.

Here’s why making time to grieve is important. Imagine right now you are carrying around a heavy suitcase. It’s always there, and you are busy surviving every moment, and inside the suitcase, there might be things like anxiety, trauma, terror, inability to sleep, isolation, loneliness, overeating, not eating, anger towards anyone and everyone, health issues, not wanting to live. All these things can live inside the suitcase. And you’re carrying them around 24/7. 

When you don’t take the time to grieve, you just keep constantly carrying these things around, thinking that you don’t have the time, so you just gotta keep doing what you're doing, that maybe will time these things will get lighter and easier and maybe someday in the future, you will have more time to take care of yourself.

That’s a huge lie. The only time is now. There is no time in the future. If you’re not making it now, you’re not going to make it in the future. And as I always say, time does nothing. In twenty years, you’ll open that suitcase up and there they all will still be, anxiety, trauma, fear, panic, inability to sleep, health issues, overeating, keeping busy, whatever they are. Or maybe you’re taking medication now to manage them, but they are still a part of your life.

So, what if you made time for your grief? What if you sat down with that suitcase, and began lifting out the things inside of it? Taking care of them. Clearing them. Processing them. You still have to carry the suitcase of grief around for the rest of your life. This is something all of us whose child has died will do, but you can make the suitcase so much lighter. As you clear trauma, all sudden the suitcase is lighter, and you have more energy because you’re not trying to manage triggers all day long. You’re body can finally relax because it’s not alert waiting for the next threat and shoe to drop. Then you clear up your sleep, and you finally get a restful night of sleep for the first time since your child died, and you can’t believe how tired you’ve been because you have only been sleeping 3 hours or less a night. But now, that weight of that exhaustion disappears because you’ve taken the time to process your grief and get your body and mind in a place where they can fall asleep and stay asleep peacefully without medication or stress.

Dr. Jon shared his perspective on grief and his experiences. Talking about the type of how he’s looking at grief is so different than what most people would hear or see anywhere.

We also talked about how it's very common that if you are hurting emotionally, you go through a process that will enable you to not be hurting so much. And this common process is certainly a long and painful one.

Today we're going to talk about Mother’s Day. I shared in this episode that you have people in your life who are loving you and caring for you, but remember that you also get to care for yourself. You can take the steps forward holding grief and all the pain as valid, and also reaching for joy, and being present with your living children. It’s that dichotomy of grief and joy, pain and lightness, holding all of it together. It’s all okay to be there at one time. It doesn’t have to all be a pain.

Today we're going to talk about the anxiety after your child dies. I shared in this episode the three parts of anxiety. I definitely can go way deeper into this and really help move forward things with anxiety with you but I wanted to share a little bit, so that I could start being useful for you right now.

Shifts and changes of grief. Listen as Sally shares her experience of navigating the loss of her son - Joey - during the pandemic time. Joey was diagnosed with Spastic Cerebral Palsy and lived with Sally for 38 years.

How Sally grieved more and felt the intensity of her emotions of grief lead her to the Grieving Moms Haven group and learned that there are different tools that can help her.

Today we're going to talk about six reasons grieving moms get stuck inside of grief. I am excited about this episode because I think all of these reasons are things that stop moms from truly getting the help that they need. And my mission is to help encourage you to get that help, to get that support, to not do this alone, and to give you tools and resources to do that because this is the hardest thing you'll ever, ever walk through in.

You know when people come up to you and say you are so strong, I couldn’t imagine going through what you are going through, and you seem to be doing so well…and you feel broken and shattered inside and not strong at all?

Maybe you say this to yourself though. That you need to be strong for your kids. That you have a spouse that needs your help, kids that need your help, or a job that’s relying on you.

So you think you need to be strong, that you need to push through. Saying we need to be strong is one of the most damaging things we can say in grief, and as humans.

I get if you are using this strength and pushing through grief right now, you might be thinking, digging and pushing through is the only way I’m surviving right now, so listen in please, and I’ll share some reasons why we need to change our perception of strength, and how the current narrative around strength is a detriment to grief.