Heather’s Story Part 2 of 2

06/08/18 • 10 min

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...

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The Event That Rerouted The Trajectory of My Life (Part 1)

Hello and welcome to the first episode of 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. I am so excited to welcome you to this community where you will receive education and support while navigating on your grief journey. Community = Strength is what I truly believe.

My mission is to empower professional women to unmask their pain, leverage their emotions and transform their trauma into triumph. Each episode will help you give yourself permission to grieve and fully embrace the gift of now. You will learn that grief not only encompasses death but includes so much more. Anything that has a beginning and an end requires you to process the grief around it.

This podcast is for you if you’re a professional woman whether you are just starting your career, mid-career, or in the C-suite who has experienced the loss of a loved one, whether suddenly or anticipated after an illness and you feel stuck and unable to move forward and enjoy work, home/family or your relationships.

This podcast is for you if you’re a professional woman who is tired of feeling completely lost in life and stuck in your grief, unable to decipher your feelings or begin to accept the loss but everyone around you just wants you to bounce back and get over it.

This podcast is for you if you’re a professional woman who wants a community to engage with that creates safe space to explore your emotions around grief/loss which are normal and natural by the way.

This podcast is for you if you’re a professional woman who is ready to stop masking your pain, and focus less on the loss but are not sure how to embrace meaning and purpose in life again or for the first time.

I am Heather D. Horton. I am a Certified Grief Expert not only through training as a Certified Grief Coach and a Certified Professional Diversity Coach but also through years of personal experience with trauma and grief.

I will share more about my personal experience later in this episode. But first, I want to tell you a little bit about myself. Before August 5, 2017, I was a highly successful GS-15 attorney manager in the C-Suite of one of the most talked about agencies within the US Department of Treasury. I was on the verge of walking into the next level of management - SES - Senior Executive Series after serving 18+ years. But I left it all behind to start my own location independent grief coaching and speaking practice. And I have never looked back.

I am the co-author of an anthology entitled “The Roots of Holiday Grief: Transcending Loss During the Holidays and Beyond” which is available for purchase on my website - www.heatherdhorton.com. The anthology includes my inspiring personal story of loss, hope, healing, and gratitude as well as the stories of other resilient authors. I am also writing a book detailing my grief journey which will be available in Late Summer 2018. Personally, I love attending sporting events, horseback riding, traveling the world, supporting the arts, zip-lining in NC and spa retreats.

This episode is Part 1 of a 2-part series detailing my own story of my personal grief journey. Part 1 will focus on the accident/death that rerouted the trajectory of my life. Part 2 will take you through my 13-year grief journey and how I was able to transform my trauma into triumph.

I now invite you to journey with me to the year 2005. I experienced two unique tragedies that year that altered my existence. I was 33 years old, so all this occurred during my Jesus Year - Jesus lived as a man for 33 years on earth and then resurrected to heaven. The 33rd year of life is regarded as the year you are reborn in some sense. I wholeheartedly agree that I was reborn in a number of ways that year.

On May 17, 2005, a beautiful sunny morning, my aunt and uncle (my mother’s brother), two of their grandchildren, my mother and I were traveling via car from Atlanta, GA to Baton Rouge, LA after attending my cousin’s graduation from Clark Atlanta University. Shortly after 12 noon that day, my uncle fell asleep at the wheel on Interstate 65 South. I sat asleep as well on the front passenger side. It felt as if we were drifting versus taking a straight path. I awoke, still half asleep, to find the mini-van heading into oncoming traffic on the opposite side of the highway and alerted my uncle of our trajectory. Startled, he woke up, began to accelerate and overcorrected. The mini-van hit a pothole on the right side of the highway causing us to flip at least four to six times before coming to rest on its right side. My injuries were quite severe – fractured neck in two places, fractured right thumb, abrasions and glass cuts all down my right arm and on both hands and wrists. Unfortunately, my mother and my aunt’s injuries were ...

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Give Yourself Permission to Grieve

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...