Honor The Loss & Create Legacy

07/06/18 • 13 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 unresolved grief to find purpose in their pain so that they are able to embrace their new “normal” and sustain productivity at work and in life.

In my three prior episodes, I have provided you with a vast toolkit of resources to begin shifting you from grief to a place of gratitude when you are ready. You know that giving yourself permission to grieve is fundamental to moving forward. Next, I showed you how to stand firm in your faith and face your fears because you are not inadequate as Marianne Williamson describes in her poem but you are greater than you could ever imagine because of where you are right now. We talked about what therapeutic support means and how you have to be intentional about it to support you on this journey. And lastly, you learned how to leverage your emotions, invite them to tea or your favorite non-alcoholic beverage and then escort them out the door and take back your power.

Now, I want you to take the next step and start to transition from focusing on the death/loss you experienced to remembering and honoring the life of the person you loved or the thing or situation that no longer exists. Think about and focus on the essence of who your loved one was or what that special thing or experience meant to you, the values the person or thing instilled in you, the accomplishments gained by having experiences with that person or thing, the lessons learned, gifts shared, memories treasured and the legacy the person or thing left with you.

When you begin to think about showing gratitude to a life lived or a situation experienced without someone prompting you to do so, you are beginning to shift yourself from grief to gratitude. Remember that the reason you grieve is because you loved that person, thing or situation. They added value to your life and validated you. Grief can also teach us something about life if we allow it to. Repeat. I believe that after listening to my prior episodes and really applying the principles I discussed in your life, you may now be more open to this revelation of honoring the loss. So, I want to ask you a question - What can you use or what did you take from the experience you gained after having spent time with that dear deceased loved one or dealing with that specific situation?

Honoring the story about your loved one or your experience is synonymous with opening up to grief. When you are able to talk about it, healing occurs more successfully and rapidly. I want you to think of a way to deposit the value that you received from your loved one or experience into someone else’s life to not only help them to move forward but also to help you move forward. There is a quote from Thomas Campbell that says to live in the hearts we leave behind is not to die. Repeat. If the memory that you cherished about the person or that thing still lives in your heart, that person still lives with you or there is still hope despite your situation. After my mother passed away, my sister and I sold her house and divided all my mother’s remaining possessions amongst the two of us. We had given away tons of clothes, home goods, furniture, etc. but kept the things that were most sentimental to us.

Among the items I kept were my mother’s wedding gown and her wedding ring. I moved at least four times after her death but I never managed to let go of much of anything each time I moved. Normally when people move, they tend to declutter somewhat so that they can start afresh in the new space. That was not me. I wanted to hold on to my mother’s things for as long as I could as a reminder of her and the memories we once shared. Instead of decluttering, I just always rented an apartment home large enough to accommodate my things and her things that I took from my childhood home. And I carried around those items for 10 years. Finally when I moved back to Washington, DC in December 2014, 9 years after my mother’s passing, I felt it was time to determine if I really needed all the things I cherished from my family home so that I could begin to start to live in the present rather than the past. I specifically rented a space that was half the size I would normally rent to force myself to declutter to make space for other people and situations to come into my life. I became so overwhelmed by the lack of space and the amount of clutter and unpacked boxes around me that I hired a professional organizer in 2015 so I wouldn’t lose my mind because I had to bring my A-game to work in this new position in the C-suite.

When in doubt, hire a professional is my motto. Remember I said in an earlier episode that I realized my grief experience was God-orchestrated. Well, my organizer’s mother worked in a ministry that collected old wedding gowns used to make funeral gowns for preemies since t...

Previous Episode

Finding Purpose in Your Pain

In the second episode or part two of my story, I detailed how I sought therapeutic support while navigating through the wilderness of grief. But I want to go back and explain what therapeutic support means because therapeutic support is vitally important to help you to continue to move towards a place of gratitude, or even to find purpose in your pain after you have begun to give yourself permission to grieve. You have acknowledged that your all your feelings and emotions are normal and natural, that there is nothing wrong with you.

You have begun to accept that you can’t change the past and are beginning to take action to live out this new normal but also realizing that this is a cyclical process and you have to prepare yourself for the next thing that is coming. It is how life works. So, therapeutic support, what does that mean? The term therapeutic is an adjective meaning having a beneficial effect on the body and mind or producing a useful or favorable result or effect. Support is defined as the act of helping someone by giving love, encouragement, etc. or something that holds a person or thing up and stops that person or thing from falling.

When we seek therapeutic support, we allow others to hold us accountable, and we exercise good self-care – meaning we are aware and recognize the need to make time to care for and nurture our body, our mind, and our spirit. Time spent alone processing your grief will move you forward only so much. You must be intentional about taking action as grief never goes away. But life continues. Your reaction to your triggers and emotions are what change if/when you do the grief work. People tend to label emotions around grief as “negative” hence the grief avoidance society in which we live.

Those emotions include but are not limited to, fear, sadness, discouragement, jealousy, blame, revenge, worry, disappointment, frustration, anger, and guilt. However, what makes any of these emotions inherently negative except perhaps the way make us feel physically? May I submit for your consideration that there is no such thing as negative emotions.

How would your life be different if you were able to move from just coping with your emotion to leveraging your emotion for growth? A power principle that I gained from my Coach Diversity Institute training states Emotions show us the way. They point us to our next level of growth. What could you learn from your emotions if you fully embraced them and all of your unique life experiences? What would be different for you if you were able to use your emotions as a springboard to reach that place of gratitude after experiencing grief?

As a certified grief expert, I help clients process experiences that do not feel so great and help them find meaning and purpose in those events. I help them to understand their anchor and find purpose in their pain. Unresolved pain will continue to rear it’s ugly head until you deal with it. It is like waste, it must come out of the body in some form or fashion. Similarly, the pay we experience must come out of the body otherwise it is harming us. If your trauma or grief experience were tailor-made just for you, what would the lesson be? If your trauma or grief situation happened to make you great, what could you learn from it?

I believe my trauma experience was tailor-made for me. I survived my accident to make manifest the glory of God that is within me. From childhood, I have always been a deep thinker. I was smart, but I have also presented myself to the world as a closed book. I remember the first time in middle school when I saw the statue of Le Penseur in my French textbook. It portrayed how I saw myself perfectly – head down, hand under chin, sitting slightly bent forward deep in thought. I was never one to share my thoughts openly unless I was forced to share. Either I didn’t think my idea was smart enough to capture anyone’s attention or I didn’t think the receiver was worthy of hearing my breath. However, the day of my accident in 2005 was the beginning of my Awakening, my journey from Heather 1.0 to Heather 2.0.

My training with Coach Diversity Institute took the shame I felt about my traumatic experiences and brought my voice to light. Coach Diversity Institute placed the microphone in my hand to help me to begin to share my story with others and make a choice to live an abundant and purposeful life by leveraging my emotions to find my power or reclaim my power. I was reminded that I already knew how to overcome any challenge that crossed my path. It has taken me more than twelve years to get to this point despite...

Next Episode

Incorporate New Traditions Into Old Traditions

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 unresolved grief so they can find purpose in their pain and embrace their new “normal” while sustaining productivity at work and in life.

In episodes 1 & 2, I told my story about the event that changed the trajectory of my life and gave specific details of how I have navigated my 13-year grief journey. In episodes 3 through 6, I provided you with a vast toolkit of resources to begin shifting you from grief to a place of gratitude when you are ready.

Episode 3 explored giving yourself permission to grieve as one of the most fundamental ways to begin moving forward instead of remaining stuck in your grief.

In episode 4, I showed how you could stand firm in your faith and face your fears because there is nothing wrong with you. You are not inadequate as Marianne Williamson, Our Deepest Fear, describes in her poem but you are greater than you could ever imagine because of where you are right now and what you have gone through. I also talked about what therapeutic support means and how you have to be intentional about it to support you on this journey.

In episode 5, I showed you how to leverage your emotions, invite them to tea or your favorite non-alcoholic beverage and then escort them out the door and take back your power.

In episode 6, I showed you how to start to transition from focusing on the death/loss you experienced to remembering and honoring the life of the person you loved or the thing or situation that no longer exists.

Today I will show you the importance of Incorporating new traditions into old traditions as you navigate your grief journey. It is an opportunity for you to create renewed attitudes, behaviors and perspectives resulting in transformational awareness and actions. At this point, we have come to realize that we can’t change the past. Noted author Corinne Edwards says it best; we have to give up the hope for a different or better yesterday.

Stop hoping things would have happened differently or that things could be like they were in the past. Create new traditions to remember your loved one or that loss. The only point of power you have is right now. You can still include something old in the new tradition. Brides are even able to include something old on their wedding day. Maybe just tweak the old way by including something that puts your signature on the occasion.

You may be hesitant about changing an old tradition. You may be concerned that you are moving on from the person or situation or letting go of that memory. Without beating yourself up, I want you to allow space for you to open your heart to consider other possibilities. One of the new traditions I created after losing my mother was how I celebrated the holidays. From childhood to adulthood, my extended family all lived within a 5-10 mile radius of each other. We did everything together, sporting events, church, family dinners on Sunday, birthdays, anniversaries, holidays. You name it; we were together. After my mother passed, I didn’t want to see or be around anyone related to me. Not that I blamed anyone for what happened, but as an introvert, I just wanted to be alone with my thoughts for a long time. But I had little say over that because I wore a C-collar to mend my neck fracture for three months after the accident. Someone had to drive me everywhere, or I was always with someone which is hard after living alone.

The moment that I was able to drive again and eventually move from Louisiana to Arizona, I began to create my traditions. I decided for my sanity that I would spend one holiday by myself each year. No family. No friends. No one but me and whatever I decided to cook. My mother loved to cook, and I was very fond of her cooking. I had managed to learn how to make a few dishes just like she did. I would set the table for myself and enjoy the dish by myself in peace and quiet and focus on memorable times with my mother. My extended family and even the families that adopted me while I lived in AZ thought it was a bit extreme, but I had to create boundaries for my sanity.

As the years passed after my mother’s death, I begin to tweak the traditions again and starting coming home for the holidays more after my nephews were born. I had to make a new tradition to get back to the place of gratitude for appreciating being with my extended family during the holidays.

If you need a little inspiration to get to the place where you can think of something new, I encourage you to try this exercise. It’s called the 50 Smiles Project. Take just two minutes to write down everything that makes you smile. You can this once a week or daily. One of your ideas may help you to create that new tradition. One of the biggest roadblocks you will encounter when trying to incorporate new...