Gemma Spag (3:42)
Life for all the big and small moments that make up your whole world. DSW is there and we've got just the shoes. Find a shoe for every you from brands you love at brag worthy prices at your DSW store or dsw.com welcome back. We're going to talk about this week's mantra in just a few but before we do, it's time for my highs, lows and who knows. This is a who knows? It's a little bit different. I want to tell a story that I've been thinking about a lot as I've been thinking about this episode, considering grief and what it means to me. And it's a story about my granddad, one of the people that I've lost in my life. Recently in Queensland, we had a cyclone, Cyclone Alfred. And where I grew up was like hit pretty hard and like everyone was okay. But this tree like that we used to play in when we were kids kind of came down in the backyard. And the beach where we used to go with my family basically is all washed away. So it'll take a couple of months, weeks, however long for it to come. And I was looking at this footage of this beach being kind of washed away. It's called Crumbin Beach. And I was thinking about this time when I lived with my granddad for probably like three to four months and every single day I didn't have my driver's license. He was like 76. He would drive me down to the beach and he would sit in the car and I would be there for like sometimes an hour and just watch me to make sure that nothing happened. And then he would get me a McFlurry from McDonald's and drive me home. And it was just the most beautiful, special memory and thinking about what's been happening like up there, it just really reminded me of all those really beautiful times and how special it felt to have all the attention on me and how special it felt to know that he really, really cared about me. And it's so funny because these episodes are always so serendipitous. It's like they always know when to crop up. But before we break down this mantra, I do just want to say right now, if you're listening, I do feel very bonded to you in this moment. Even if I don't know you, I feel that we are all sharing probably a lot of the same feelings and experiences right now. And there's a lot of peace and comfort knowing that what is often dark, deep, I don't know, sometimes beautiful emotion joins us all. So I don't think anyone exits this life unscathed by grief in some form. And as much as we have the urge to run away from it, I think grief encapsulates all the beauty we possess as humans. I think it encapsulates our ability to love, how special it is to have memories, the bond we can experience with others, even our capacity to feel deep sadness. Basically, I think the extent to which we feel grief is often the extent to which we can feel any emotion. And a small part of that is quite special when you think about it. But let's get into it. It's time for this week's mantra. I honor my emotions as they guide me through grief. I want to begin by saying this, if it's not already clear, but grief does come in many forms. Our first thought often goes to the grief that, of course, we encounter with the death of a loved one. Because that kind of loss is so profound, leaves so many unanswered questions. You know, where does the love go? How do I live? How can we survive without them? What happens next? All questions we have and many, many more. It's very shocking. It's paralyzing. It defines every other experience we have, at least for a while. But I think grief is also appropriate and also needs to be acknowledged in the face of any loss. Loss of a relationship, a breakup, some might even say loss of a pet. Grief over a time in our lives that we no long. It's this intense love mixed with pain, and they're in this constant battle. Are we grateful for what's happened, or are we terrified and devastated that it's no longer there? You know, we do sometimes feel so lucky to have the memories and the moments. And then other times it just feels like this thing is so heavy, we're never going to get out from under it, such as being human. I think that is the definitive human experience right There trying to hold two equally large and heavy truths at once. But yes, there is a hidden beauty in it all. And when we honor our emotions and ride the roller coaster and hold on, just hold on for the dips and the highs, I think we can at least learn something. At most, we feel more in touch with the human experience and like this very deep pool of love that exists in each of us. And the truth is, we need to grieve if someone has passed. If a death has occurred, you need to grieve. Grieving is remembering. Grieving is continuing to hold space for the person and the good feelings. And in a weird way, we really do need that. Grief is definitely hard, but I think society's reaction to it is the main problem, or lack of reaction. That's what makes it so much harder. It often feels like the moment you start grieving, the moment someone passes, the moment that something ends, this, like, timer starts and you only have a certain amount of time to like, get over it before it becomes unacceptable. As a society, we are not very good at dealing with grief. We are okay with happiness, we are okay with anger, even grief. No, the moment you say to someone, oh, you know, this person is no longer in my life. My grandfather died, my mother passed away. Oh, you know, I used to have a sister, but she's not here with us anymore. You can see it in someone's eyes. There's like this immediate reaction for most people to like, shy away from it. Even though most of us have experienced something similar in our lives, we just can't talk about it. In Western culture in particular, we have such a clinical perspective on death that it makes it really hard to fully feel it. And we also don't have any of, like the sacred traditions or the holidays or the celebrations that other cultures do. We don't hold space for those who pass in the same way. You know, in Mexico, they have the Day of the Dead. In Japan, when I was there recently, I was in Okinawa. And they literally have people who they hire just to maintain the graveyards and make them into these almost shrines and monuments of remembering. Pitru Paksha is a 16 day Hindu holiday where families pay homage to ancestors who have departed from the material world. There's so many more examples. If you live in, like the US or the UK or Australia, or like in a very Western culture, what do we have? We have funerals where everyone wears black and then homemade lasagnas, and then nothing. People will show up for the day, but the support slowly fades away. You stay right where they Left you. You just stay still in that moment. And there is very limited space or opportunity to continue to celebrate this person. And you know what? Grief is too big to ever be held by just one person. It's a collaborative community emotion. It's something that needs to be spread across multiple souls. I really believe that. And you can't really do that the way you need to in practice in the society we have today. Like, you can't create community around your grief. There's not as many rituals. It's harder to talk about this shared emotion. Another element of this, I think, is that people don't want to look at grief for too long, because I think they know somewhere deep down that it's in their future you will grieve. One day there is this weird feeling of one day, one day I'll lose someone as well. And I don't want to know what that feels like before I have to. Don't spread it. You're contagious. I don't want to know. I don't want to be part of this yet. I don't know how to explain it, really, but it's something I've seen a lot, and I think it makes it a lot harder for people who are actively grieving, or just grieving in general, to feel like they can admit they're not okay and talk about it. Okay, let's get back on track, because what I really want to talk about now is the roller coaster of grief and letting the emotions that come with it guide you rather than pin you down. I heard this analogy the other day on a grief Reddit page. Strange place to hear it, but nothing I've come across can describe it better. Grief looks like this. Imagine you are on a boat in the middle of the ocean, and the ocean is calm and it's clean, it's beautiful. And then there are these strong winds, and then there are these huge waves, and your boat is hitting the big waves, and you are crushed on either side, and it just feels like you're drowning. It's chaos. It's terrible. You see no sun in the future. That might last for a few minutes, a few hours, and then it calms down again, and it's clear and it's beautiful. And you think, wow, this is gorgeous. And then you get hit by a storm again and the cycle repeats and the storm is still as big. The clear days are still as beautiful. You just get used to navigating the switch and you become a more experienced sailor to kind of use this analogy. So the stormy weather it's still scary, it still hits you just as hard. But you know how to deal with it and you know it will pass and you know that it's kind of part of the process. I think this analogy is a nicer way of saying time doesn't make it easier. It makes you more skilled. Every emotion you feel, that emotion is strengthening you in some way. Even if it doesn't feel like it, you're learning from it. It's powerful. And it's so powerful because the love you felt was as well. I don't know why, but knowing that, knowing that my grief is as big as my love was really helps me lean in. The other thing I like about this metaphor is that it goes against what we have been told about big emotions, which is that we have to feel them as little as possible. That our grief should be made smaller. We should working on making it smaller over time. I just don't agree with that. No, I don't agree with it. When we let ourselves feel and we say, okay, I'm gonna give you permission to take your time to roll through this, to let the boat throw me a little bit, let myself be immersed. The waves don't hurt as much and they pass quicker. Let your grief embrace you. You are allowed to actually feel terrible. Sometimes. It's kind of good to feel terrible and to feel so sad because trust me, you need to feel that way. And it allows the emotion to pass through you quicker than trying to fight it. I think it also allows you to be happier with the moments where you are just simply happy. If you let yourself grieve when your body and your soul needs to, you feel okay with being happy when the moment calls. I think you also fall into the natural rhythmic cycle of grief. It's bad, it's terrible, it's good, it's awful, it's terrible, it's a bit better, it's all part of it. But when you never let yourself feel, you feel none of it. Not even the highs that life promises us, not even the love that still remains. Further problems can also sometimes emerge when we feel multiple ways at once. So call it survivor's guilt, whatever you want to label it. It's this sense of feel, sadness, and also gratitude, joy, but also nostalgia. You don't just feel good, it's not just a one emotion anymore. The good thing to remember, though, is that it's actually incredibly rare to only feel one emotion at once. This is a crazy fact. Humans have access to some 34,000 different kinds of emotions. And I think Grief brings every single one of them to the surface and makes it impossible for you to ever just feel one at a time anymore. That's how incredible our capacity to feel is. So it's okay to be grieving whilst also being excited for the future. It's okay to be grieving whilst also feeling hopeful and nostalgic and joyful and peaceful. When all we have is grief or numbness, we may not be honoring our emotions well enough. Maybe it's guilt, maybe it's shame. But if your whole life is all grief and you think you owe it to that person to always be sad, I don't think that's how your loved one would want it. They would not want you to feel this way. They would say to you, seize whatever love or happiness you can find for me. That's how you can honor me. I don't need your attention 100% of the time. I know I'm with you subconsciously. I know I'm with you in spirit. It's okay to forget me for a moment when the moment is calling you. I want to return to a point I made before, because I don't think I gave it the space it required. How can we create a world where grief is not seen as something to get over, but something to integrate into our evolving selves? I believe this process starts with us. It starts with the holders of grief and it starts with taking that leap of faith and being honest when we're feeling a lot or not our best and creating that space or bridge for someone else to meet you where you are and say, hey, me too. I feel this as well. I have this beautiful friend, Stacy. And the reason that I think we bonded so quickly and immensely was because from the get go, we were open with our emotions and we were open with the day to day experience of grieving, but also the day to day experience of being happy and feeling sometimes okay, sometimes not, and getting to see all the emotional sides of something. Of course you're going to feel shy about it at first. The depth that it will bring to your relationships though, and the comfort it will bring you to know that someone else understands you is immensely gratifying and immensely special. I like this theory that's called the Continuing bonds theory. It's similar to what I was just talking about. And this theory basically challenges the outdated stages of grief narrative that we have to move through five stages and once we get to acceptance, we're never depressed again, we're never bargaining again, we're never in denial again. The continuing bonds theory is that for the rest of our days, we probably will continue to nurture an internal relationship with someone. We will find ways to continue to let them influence and guide us. There is not a discrete timeline or section of emotions that we are feeling all at once. At one point there is acceptance some days, there is deep sadness and denial other days. But if we find a way to integrate them into our lives, it feels like we can move through those emotions a lot easier. Find a way to stay connected with your loved one. Get a tattoo of them. Keep that framed photo on your desk so people say, who's that? And you can say, it's this person that I love. Don't be afraid to bring them up in conversation. You're doing people a service by talking about it. You never know who one day will think back to that conversation that you had about your grief when they are grieving and say, wow, I learned a lot from that. I learned a lot from that person. I feel better about discussing it because they discussed it first. I just think sitting with grief isn't easy. It's a process that asks us to be still with emotions that are very big, heavy, uncertain. But when we stop resisting that and allow ourselves to truly feel, we create space for understanding and for healing and for the possibility of moving forward without forcing our grief to be done. We allow ourselves to still feel it. And that's so important. Okay, so coming up, let's get personal. I'm going to share a bit about how grief has shown up in my own life and how learning to honor my emotions through it has changed the way I carry loss. Love the present moment, everything in between. So stay tuned. We'll be right back after this brief pause.
