Give Yourself Permission to Grieve

06/15/18 • 11 min

Episode 002- [Grief Unplugged Podcast] - Give Yourself Permission to Grieve

Hello & welcome to the Grief Unplugged podcast. I am your host, Heather D. Horton. Grief Unplugged is a podcast that frees professional women from the blockages of grief to find purpose in their pain. This episode is fundamental to your grief journey - giving yourself permission to grieve. I will explore and unpack what is grief and the grieving process, identify the many faces of grief, and validate the uniqueness of your grief experience.

How do you keep going when you would rather stop waking up or crawl into a ball and never come out? Give Yourself Permission to Grieve. Grief is an inevitable part of life. Remember that we live in a fallen world, where blessings and sorrows intermingle freely. Grief knows no zip code. It touches us all at some point in our lives in more ways than we realize or recognize. It is unpredictable. It is not mental illness or a sign of weakness.

It is the normal and natural response to trauma and loss. It is an act of love and compassion to ourselves when you allow yourself to work through it. Trauma, includes not only serious injury to the body, as a result of physical violence or an accident, but also experiences that causes severe anxiety or emotional distress or that causes great disruption or suffering in our lives. Loss is similarly defined as the condition of being deprived or bereaved of something or someone. Grief is like the trunk of tree, but it has many, many branches – they are endless.

You may have recently experienced the loss of a loved one, be it a family member or friend, or years may have passed since the death occurred. You may have just lost a job or been unemployed for some time. You may be going through a divorce, just ended a relationship or need to end a relationship. You may have now have an empty nest as you children/child went off to college or got married. You may have a special needs child or be serving as the caregiver for a parent with dementia or cancer.

For any of you with children, do you remember your first-born’s reaction when the next sibling came along? Maybe something caused you to lose sight of a dream you once held and you no longer can envision a way to get back there. These are some of the many faces of grief – again, they are endless. The most notable time where I had to give myself permission to grieve occurred after my mother and I were involved in a car accident 13 years ago. I touch on that more in the first two episodes of my podcast that detail my story. I suffered severe non-life threatening injuries but she succumbed to her injuries almost immediately.

I will be even more transparent and tell you the latest thing that I had to give myself permission to grieve over – leaving my job to become an entrepreneur. Although I knew that God had called me to help individuals navigate through the wilderness of grief, I had to adjust to no longer doing what I loved which was being a lawyer and working to create more diversity and inclusion to elevate others within my organization. It was a great disruption to all of a sudden leave what I knew for the last 13+ years but I realized once I accepted that my feelings were normal and natural, I was able to see my greater purpose in being able to elevate others in a different way, a way that could save lives, empower communities and change the world. I was able to give up the hope that things would have happened differently and focus on taking action to move forward and embrace my new normal.

I need you to give yourself permission to grieve. Your family needs you to give yourself permission to grieve. Your workplace needs you to give yourself permission to grieve. Your community needs you to give yourself permission to grieve. The world needs you to give yourself permission to grieve. I say that because I truly believe that the mass shootings, murder-suicides and other violence manifesting itself in the world on what seems like every day no is because we as humans are walking around with so much unresolved grief. Why do we grieve? We grieve because we loved the person or that thing or situation that added value to our lives. No one can tell you when or how long to grieve because your grief journey is unique to you.

Often you hear that there are 5 stages of grief that everyone must go through as if you go through those 5 stages and it is over. 1. Denial; 2. Anger; 3. Bargaining; 4. Depression; 5. Acceptance. The Kübler-Ross model, or the five stages of grief, theorized a series of emotions experienced by terminally ill patients prior to death. Most times the stages don’t occur in order. Some people never experience depression. Or they are angry before you may work through denial.

Some losses/trauma may require the person to work through shock before denial. There is no right order; your journey is unique to you. No one knows the relationship...

Episode 002- [Grief Unplugged Podcast] - Give Yourself Permission to Grieve

Some losses/trauma may require the person to work through shock before denial. There is no right order; your journey is unique to you. No one knows the relationship...

Previous Episode

Heather’s Story Part 2 of 2

Hello & welcome to the Grief Unplugged podcast. I am your host, Heather D. Horton. Grief Unplugged is a podcast that frees professional women from the blockages of grief to find purpose in their pain. This episode is Part 2 of a 2-part series detailing my own story of my grief journey. Part 1 focused on the accident/death that rerouted the trajectory of my life. Today, Part 2 will take you through my 13-year grief journey and how I was able to transform my trauma into triumph and shift from grief to gratitude.

While moving to Phoenix, AZ seemed ideal at the time. What I didn’t realize was that I had to start my life all over again. I had a support system in Louisiana, but now in AZ, it was just me. Anything or situation that has a beginning and results in grief that must be processed, or it will chip away at your joy constantly. Joy is something no one can take away from you, unlike happiness which can fluctuate on a whim. While I had a job, I had no family in Phoenix. I had to establish new friendships, find a new church, a new hair stylist, and learn my way around a city that was completely foreign to me.

That was a lot for me to take on when I was already dealing with one of the most difficult situations in life, losing my mother suddenly in a tragic accident. I had left the one place that I had known for more 30 years of my life. I had lived there all but three years of my life at that time. Were my silence and solitude worth moving all the way to the other side of the country away from everyone and everything that I was familiar with? As daunting as it seemed, my answer to that question was a resounding yes, because challenges are what I lived for. This was the opportunity to start my life anew, and I was going to chart my path, create my new “normal.” I began to immerse myself in seeking therapeutic support after moving to Phoenix. Time spent alone processing my grief only moved me forward so much.

There were a number of ways that I sought therapeutic support over the last 13 years on my grief journey – I tried a number of things because I felt that life was too short and I never imagined the day I would live without my mother so I wanted to live and thrive every moment thereafter. I engaged in physical therapy and massage therapy to recover from my injuries, seeing a psychologist/therapist, traveling the world, season tickets to sporting events, spa retreats, broadened my horizons by white water rafting, ziplining, feed my soul with Bible Study Fellowship International, using essential oils for physical and emotional support, leadership/empowerment/grief coaching, yoga and most recently The Dinner Party.

I will briefly share my experiences with mental health support, essential oils and the Dinner Party in this episode. There is much stigma around seeking mental health assistance, therapy, and coaching, in this country and particularly among marginalized communities and communities of color. When my mother passed away suddenly, it was like I lost my best friend. I needed to talk to someone, or I thought I would burst. I didn’t want to talk to anyone in my family because they were all still trying to process their grief in their way. It was in Phoenix that I first sought mental health assistance.

I have to admit I was more open to seeing someone in Phoenix because I was new to the area and no one knew me there or what I’d been through. I saw my therapist or psychologist biweekly for almost five years, or the entire time I was in Phoenix as she diagnosed me with PTSD as a result of the accident. I thought I had worked through my grief and that I was done with it once I left Phoenix in 2010 and moved back to Washington, DC. What I didn’t realize is that the last time I lived in DC (2004), I spent my final week in the city being a tourist with my mother. When I came back to DC in 2010, I started to grieve all over again as if I had never seen the psychologist.

I didn’t try to find another therapist immediately. Years later when I finally began to shift from focusing on the loss of my mother and began to focus on her life and legacy, I realized that I still had grief left to unpack and that I needed to heal my relationship with my father if I was ever going to move to a place of gratitude. So in 2016 specifically sought out a therapist/psychologist who also happened to be a coach that focused on healing that relationship, as it was affecting my adult relationships with men and my heart, is now open to love again.

In 2016, I was introduced to essential oils and started using them to maintain my emotional health, as well as my physical health, in lieu of relying on prescription and over-the-counter drugs. The results were so phenomenal that I became a doTERRA Independent Wellness Advocate. doTERRA, meaning "Gift of the Earth," offers an Emotional Aromatherapy System specifically formulated to provide targeted emotional health benefits and pro...

Next Episode

Lean Into Your Faith, Face Your Fears

Hello & welcome to the Grief Unplugged podcast. I am your host, Heather D. Horton. Grief Unplugged is a podcast that frees professional women from the blockages of grief to find purpose in their pain. Our last episode focused on giving yourself permission to grieve. But how does one maintain momentum after giving yourself permission to grieve?

One of the first steps is by leaning into your faith and facing your fear. Fear and faith cannot live in the same house. One of the powerful principles that I received during my training with Coach Diversity Institute states – We receive only as much as our faith will allow (REPEAT). Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see according to Hebrews 11:1 (NIV). Whatever your faith, belief is a powerful tool. Faith in the process, even in yourself, is powerful and important. For me, faith is everything; it is my foundation. In 2005, my faith and what I believed in was tested to the utmost.

On May 17, 2005, I was involved in a single-car accident that claimed the life of my mother one day after the accident and my aunt two weeks later when a relative fell asleep at the wheel while driving long distance. My injuries were quite severe but not life-threatening – fractured neck, fractured thumb, cuts, bruises, and abrasions. For weeks after the accident and the funeral, I kept asking God why am I here, why didn’t I die in the accident, how am I supposed to live without my mother, my best friend.

One day I was reading my devotional as I did most days after the accident to try and make sense of things, and the scripture of the day gave me a reason to keep living. It was John 16:33 – I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. In this world, you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world. I begin to recall other scriptures that I constantly used to ground myself throughout my life – No weapon formed against me shall prosper (Isaiah 54:17); I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me (Phil 4:13), God has not given me a spirit of fear, but of love, power and a sound mind (2 Timothy 1:7); For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future (Jeremiah 29:11);

All things work together for the good of them that love the Lord, that are called according to His purpose. That last verse, Romans 8:28, was, in fact, the exact scripture that my mother’s pastor spoke from when delivering her eulogy. What I began to realize as I focused on all of these verses was that the accident that I experienced was all God-orchestrated and that He had prepared me to go through if I was able to stand firm in my faith.

I want you to think about the last time you experienced trauma/loss, and I guarantee you if you look back six months, one year, two years, there were clear instances of things that happened that you now realize, oh that’s why that happened. God was preparing you for whatever you went through, or He prepared you for whatever you are going through or for whatever you are about to go through. God prepared me for the trauma I experienced in May 2005 and even when I survived Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, three months later. I had a lot of time to think while I recovered from my injuries.

When I looked back on my life experiences six months, one year, two years before, I could see clear instances of things that happened where I could say I didn’t understand it then, but now I understand why that happened. God was preparing me to live without my mother when after my unexpected surgery in 2004, my dad, not my mother, spent two weeks with me in DC helping me to recover. That had never happened before. Another God-orchestrated move occurred when I received a firm job offer in New Orleans when I was pursuing opportunities to work in DC after graduating from GULC with my LLM in Tax. What I didn’t know but came to realize later was that job in New Orleans gave me the opportunity to spend the last year of my mother’s life near her instead of being long distance. We saw each other almost every weekend during that time.

Because of these and many more God-orchestrated experiences, I chose to live that day. Knowing that my faith in God had prepared me to handle the trauma/loss that I experienced in 2005, that his plans were not to harm me, but to prepare me for my future, for such a time as this, healing began, and I could face my fear.

Fear is one of the many faces of grief and also one of the pitfalls of grief. Because we are dealing with new or unfamiliar territory after we experience trauma/loss, fear can cause anxiety and stress (another pitfall of grief) that keeps us stuck if not acknowledged. If not dealt with, fear can paralyze you. Let me remind you that fear and faith cannot live in the same house and you must choose one or the other. What is the purpose of fear? For some it is sur...