Grief

So like every, all of the things I just listed.

Grief.

Depression, self-sabotaging behavior, unresolved anger, usually from the parents because they're just confused and they're bitter, you know? And so that's where we kind of are starting off with Ian Ridley.

And Ian, played by Patrick Brommel, he is a former police detective who's working as an emergency dispatcher.

You're listening to After the Storm, where the healing begins on UK Health Radio.

I'm Brian D. Smith, founder of Grief to Growth and a certified grief guide, life coach and author.

This part of my journey began after the passing of my 15 year old daughter, Shana.

So I'm doing the work too.

But here's a question that's worth asking.

If these five stages were never meant for grief in the first place, Why won't this thing die? Why 50 plus years later are my clients still walking in the door telling me they're stuck on stage three or they skipped stage two? Well, I think it's because a wrong map still feels better than no map at all.

Grief is one of the most disorienting things a human being will ever go through.

You lose someone and the ground underneath your feet moves.

Nope.

Like, why do you do that? Grief.

Bad writing.

Usually bad writing.

What if something you've been carrying emotionally for years is affecting your health and you don't even realize it? Grief doesn't always look like sadness.

Sometimes, it looks like exhaustion, stress, anxiety, trouble sleeping, or simply feeling like you're not yourself anymore.

And grief isn't only about losing someone you love.

Hello and welcome to How to Deal with Grief and Trauma.

My name is Nathalie Himmelrich.

How to Deal with Grief and Trauma is completely self-funded, produced and edited by me, Nathalie Himmelrich.

Consider making a small donation to support the podcast.

Go to bit.ly bit.ly bit.ly capital G, capital T, and podcast.

So about today's guest.

Francis Weller is a psychotherapist, writer, and a soul activist.

Author of the bestselling, The Wild Edge of Sorrow, Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief, and in the absence of the ordinary, Soul Work for Times of Uncertainty.

Um, in the book The, The Grieving Body, like that's very, very accurately kind of depicted and talked about from like a medical perspective, like what's happening with your cytokine activity and your gut biome and if you're predisposed for, um, autoimmune conditions, right? Like, there is an interplay.

Grief is not just the emotional response that we have to a loss.

It is a bio-psycho-social-relational-spiritual process-

Mm

Hmm

... um, but there were no books about grief.

So the short version is on the one year anniversary of my own loss, I sat down at the kitchen table, and the book that is What Does Grief Feel Like? just poured out of me.

Hmm.

I have like women rising beach retreats as kind of my umbrella.

And then I have Defying the Gravity of Grief retreats, which are for moms who've lost a child.

And then I have the Relax and Renew Empowerment Experience, which is for all other moms.

grief or maladjustment or midlife or whatever else we're all facing.

And of course,

the widow Kirk, as our friend under the desk news calls her, wrote an op-ed for the New York Times on her year without her husband called What I Learned About Grief.

And I just want to say that I thought as somebody who, like, I feel pretty well versed in grief and has experienced a lot of grief in my life, I thought – there's no wrong way to grieve I really I really believe that there really is no wrong way to grieve and so I would I actually read this with a very open mind because people like have said really nasty things about Erica and I've been like you

know it is it does

Awesome.

So the book you published before, this was Godspeed, Poems, Grief, Healing, and the Human Condition.

What inspired you to jump from poems to romance? I noticed that you said that, you know, it was a good segue, the emotional undertones, and that you want to write more romance.

So what does the future of romance look like to you?