Grief and the Cycle of Life, Death & Rebirth

[00:03] Intro: Welcome to the Heart Soul Wisdom Podcast, a journey of self discovery and transformation. Moira Sutton and her amazing guests share real life stories, tools and strategies strategies to inspire and empower you to create and live your best life. Come along on the journey and finally blast through any fears, obstacles, and challenges that have held you back in the past so you can live your life with the joy, passion, and happiness that you desire. Now, here's your host. Create the life you love. Empowerment life coach Moira Sutton.

[00:58] Moira : Welcome to season three, episode 58, Grief, the Cycle of Life, death and Rebirth with our special guest, psychotherapist and grief recovery expert Edy Nathan. Edy is an author, public speaker, and licensed therapist. She is certified as a sex therapist, hypnotherapist, and certified EMDR practitioner with more than 20 years of experience. She earned degrees from New York University and Fordham University with postgraduate training at the Ackerman Institute for Family Therapy. She practices in New York City. In her expertise as a grief therapist, she interweaves her formal trainee as a psychotherapist with breath work, guided imagery, ritual and storytelling. Trauma, abuse, and grief can cause the soul to become imbalanced. The goal of the work is to find emotional calibration or balance, to defy the depth of darkness and the grip that grief often has on the psyche. She believes that everyone experiences grief throughout their lives. Grief is not just about the death of a loved one, but the losses that we experience in our lives. Edy teaches you to dance with your grief. To know your grief is to know yourself. Whether it is the loss of a loved one or the loss of a limb or the loss of the life you once knew, it is your soul that offers the answers to relief and healing. An essential element in her practice is to offer clients the chance to combine psychotherapy with a deeper, more spiritual understanding of the cell. She is dedicated to helping people understand their grief, cope with the fear and the struggle that holds them back, and to learn to live life fully. So, without further ado, it is my pleasure to introduce you to Edie Nathan. Welcome, Edy. I'm so happy that you're here. Edy, I know one of your taglines is bumpy rides are merely waves in the air. We all meet waves along the way. And this is third time a charm for you and I, so I am thrilled that you're here.

[03:08] Edy : Me, too. Third time is a charm for sure.

[03:12] Moira : So we're riding the waves and we're charming. Something like that. Eddie, can you start by sharing from your book? I know that you want to read something to start this interview. Can you just read that before we start and dive in?

[03:27] Edy : Absolutely. Thank you. This is the beginning of the first chapter. During one of my long, early morning walks, I saw a large sandhill crane standing at the water's edge. The bird was big and awe inspiring and grand. When I was about 10ft, from its magnificence, I stopped walking and faced it squarely. Since birds in the wild are often fearful and protect themselves at all costs, I felt it was best to keep some distance between us. It seemed the best way to honor its beauty. The crane was standing on one leg, something birds at rest often do. I find it hard to believe that they can put all their weight on one leg and still look so graceful. My heart was racing with an excitement when I saw the crane, especially because it has allowed me to enter into its space in my desire to stay in the moment, calm myself, and perhaps communicate to the crane that I had no ill intent. I spoke to it softly, saying, you are so lovely. Thank you for being here with me. As I was speaking, our eyes, neck, and an understanding took hold. We were secure in the scene we were creating. She innately knew that I would not hurt her, and I knew that my presence was okay for her, too. And then something unexpected happened. She jumped toward me. Strangely, she jumped toward me while still on one leg. Now I was really curious, so I inched a bit closer while we continued to hold each other's gaze. She jumped toward me again, which felt like an invitation, and I took another tentative step toward her. We engaged in this dance until we were about 3ft apart. That's what I saw, but I had not seen before. She only had one lake. The other one was gone, just gone. What a beautiful life lesson she was sharing with me. She was there to remind me how resilient we can be as living beings. She was an unlikely survivor in the wild, and yet, with only one leg, she could fly, jump, swim, and feed herself. The lesson the crane taught me that day has filtered into my own dance with grief, loss, and trauma, and it has assisted me in working with clients and given me a reminder that healing, even in the most challenging situations, is possible.

[05:59] Moira : That's just beautiful. That really sums it up, doesn't it?

[06:03] Edy : Yeah, it does. So I appreciate you allowing me to start with that.

[06:08] Moira : Wow, that's beautiful. And it's interesting, too, because when you mentioned that we had three cranes that flew over our home just two days ago, just the magnificence of them, but wow. And how old were you when that happened?

[06:22] Edy : That happened really as I was writing the book, so 20 16. 20 17, 20 18. Because the book came out at the end of 2018.

[06:33] Moira : Yes, animals do teach us a lot of gifts that they give us and nature every day. So that's beautiful. That I just love that. So thank you. So, Edie, you are an advocate for the human soul, and you see value in grief. Can you share how you feel grief and loss play an important role in regaining our souls? Big question.

[06:59] Edy : It is a big question and thought provoking because we want to avoid grief at all costs, because we know that when we stand in it and with it, it means we've lost something. We can't pretend it doesn't exist, even though we will try our hardest to do so. What I like to think about grief is that since we can't avoid it, how about inviting it in when it's present? How about having a conversation with it as you feel it presents? And it may not be because of the loss of a loved one. It may be because of the loss of the self, which we've just gone through. In terms of the Pandemic, so many people have lost their senses of self and also regained a new lens about the way they want to live. So I see grief as an unexpected ally. I see grief as a teacher. I see grief as opening us up. And yes, do the wounds hurt and do we bleed emotionally, physically, spiritually because of it? You bet. And it offers us a chance to take ourselves on in ways that we could never imagine and change the way we want to live.

[08:33] Moira : Wow. Would that be you're talking about the pandemic? Do you think people, the Ukraine and Russia, that would be advice for them to invite in the grief so they can heal? What would you say to that?

[08:47] Edy : I would say that right now, what's going on in their brains? The amygdala, which is like the front of the brain, the front of the head, almost like the forehead, if you will, that amygdala is where feelings exist. And for the people of Ukraine right now, the amygdala, though, is the holder of feelings and actually helps us to understand the feelings that come in and go out. It's also a warning place in our brain when there's an emergency and the bell is ringing and it's like, okay, there's something going on and we'd better react, then it actually shunts the feelings that we might be able to access. And right now, because it's what I imagine, I haven't spoken to anyone who is in Ukraine, but their minds are clear on one hand and scrambled on the other hand. They're trying to survive and they're trying to figure out what they're going to need to do to just make it to the next day. And when you're in survival mode, I don't know that you're feeling grief. You're just surviving and you're doing what you've got to do. And sometimes it is herculean strength for all people to just learn how to wake up in the morning and go stand in a line to get some bread or soup and protect the people you love. And are they in grief yet? Probably not. They're just in shock and they're traumatized and their brains are spaghetti, but not so spaghetti that they can't be in survival mode.

[10:45] Moira : You talk about neuro connections in the brain and having a better chance of finding balance, which is something I know what you're saying, they're in survival and they're shocked. They're not even in grief yet. Or they could be in both. And how they can engage in the present moment would be, I guess, what you just said. If you're standing in line, just maybe be grateful that you have food for your family, your family is there, or your loved ones that are still survived around you. Is that what would you say about grief and brain change as an agent? Because we have neuroplasticity in the brain.

[11:18] Edy : So we know that we absolutely do, yeah. And the neuroplasticity that happens in the brain happens because we have changed behavior. The neuroplasticity right now that may very well be going on in their brains has nothing to do with changing the way the brain is holding on to grief, but really how the brain is holding on to survival and that they are in power mode. And yeah, the brain has the ability to change because they're looking around and based of course, we're seeing pictures through the advent of news shows, so who's to say what they're really seeing? But certainly whole cities look like they've just been grounded, they've just been completely just slaughtered. You can't un-see what you see. And the brain is trying to tolerate what it's interpreting what it's seeing. And it's like a now what? And the brain and the body may very well be out of sync, not on when one of our beautiful gymnast, Simone, talked about having the twisties and that her mind and her body felt like they were out of sync, it may very well be that the mind and the bodies are feeling out of sync. They're doing what they've got to do, but there may be a disconnect with what's going on with the body. And this is part of survival mode.

[13:01] Moira : And then we have the heart connection to where people work with that whole realm, with the heart Institute and things, which is I'm very passionate about that coming from the heart and let's go from the heart to forgiveness. You talk in your book about the forgive perspective and how do you incorporate this into the dance of grief? Is there a question someone can ask themselves to lead into forgiveness and healing to start that process?

[13:27] Edy : The first question, which is a great question around forgiveness, is do I believe that to be in forgiveness means I need to forget the pain I've had where I'm in? And the answer to that question is absolutely not. The idea, though, of having to walk through your life feeling the agitation and the anxiety and the anger that goes with vengeance or goes with I've got to get back at that person, or goes with regret, is devastating to the soul, is devastating to the heart. And so to be more heart centered is to think, I'm going to forgive an action. Because to forgive it is not to let them go, but to understand that perhaps they come from their own trauma, they come from their own pain. Or someone who didn't have a chance to say goodbye to a loved one. Perhaps that loved one did not want to be seen in their end of life phases.

[14:42] Moira : I know in my own life, people who have had cancer and in the end, they don't want certain people to be their younger children or that because, like you said, they don't want to be seen like that. They want to be remembered on a different level.

[14:54] Edy : That's right.

[14:57] Moira : You talk about regret there. What's the difference between guilt, shame and regret? And how do people navigate through depression and these feelings, how they label them? Do you have a difference how you define each one of those?

[15:10] Edy : Sure. So shame is about how you feel about yourself. Guilt is about something you've done, and regret is wishing you'd done something differently. Shame is about the self. And you walk around when in shame thinking, I'm bad. Those are the cognitive messages. I'm not good, I don't even like myself. I shouldn't have done X, Y and Z. I'm ugly, I'm gross, my grief is bad. It's about the way you feel and see the self. Guilt is, I just did something and I feel badly for having done that. Regret is, I feel badly for having done that. I wish I had done it differently, I wish I'd had a different lens, I wish I hadn't been so angry or I wish I hadn't gotten into that argument in that moment and I can't go back and correct it. That's how regret feels.

[16:44] Moira : Very heavy.

[16:45] Edy : Yeah. Often and often in all three of those arenas, regret, guilt and shame, there's many scripts that feed it. And the idea here is that changing the way that you think about it, changing the way you hold it in your body, can certainly implement change. And that neuroplasticity that you were just talking about and what we know is breath changing the way that we hold information and exercise, yoga, different types of meditation. I cannot sit and do meditation. Quiet. Not a quiet meditation. I need to be on the move, I need to be walking. But that doesn't mean that I can't have experiences in my meditative walking, like the crane story, because I was on a walk and it was on one of my walks and there was this sandhill crane. Perhaps if I hadn't been contemplative and I've been busy in my crane, I would have completely missed the sand hill crane standing there.

[17:55] Moira : So we talked about story and so we have a story around guilt, shame or regret. And we have this our thoughts are always in that arena or they dip into that arena. How do we interrupt? Like, interrupt the moods, the thoughts that we have so we can change and shift into positive thoughts and new behaviors that service in a higher way.

[18:17] Edy : Well, the first step is wanting to sometimes we get so used to a behavior that we hold on to it because it's what we know. And I don't want people to hold on to what they know if it hurts them. I want them to think, what would my life be like? And this is part of a developing story and creating the story, an imagined story. What would my life be like if and creating the what if and where am I holding the sadness, the depression, the guilt, the shame in my body? And even doing a body scan, being aware of where there's tightness, your body will speak to you if you listen, but you got to listen. And where there's tightness, where there is agitation for some people, there's a lot of agitation in the lower back and there's grief. I just left my home and sold it and left New York, and I started to have lower back issues. I've never had lower back issues. And I realized I needed to really have a conversation with my back. Now, there were other things that were going on, but I truly believe that what was going on with my back was further exacerbated by the stress and by my grief, even though I knew that I was doing what I needed to do. But the grief of leaving what I knew, it was affecting all different parts of my body. This leave taking one was my back. And so it's about taking care of medically, what you need to take care of, but also realizing that there are emotional components. There are emotional components for people who suffer with migraines. Again, not saying that you shouldn't look at the medical components, but there's a yes and here. And that's what's important to understand.

[20:21] Moira : So as you work through that, did your back pain go away as you honored? What conversation came up for yourself?

[20:27] Edy : Yes and no. I still needed medical intervention. However, the healing that is still taking place with my back, I believe is happening faster because of the emotional work that I've done with my back.

[20:45] Moira : It's doing the work and doing the healing work.

[20:48] Edy : Right, but understanding that sometimes you need a collection of helpers, and sometimes it's physicians, or sometimes it's spiritual healers, because we also lose faith often when we're grieving and we go into what I call I haven't coined this phrase, but it's a spiritual emergency, and there's just such a deep desperation, and it's overwhelming. And because you've lost a sense of connectivity with something that perhaps you were connected to, it takes a union of folks from medicine to your own self talk to perhaps healers to bring healing to you.

[21:41] Moira : I know that when sometimes I have anxiety, that comes up. That's the term I'm using. I feel anxious or something, and I'm like, and I'm not conscious of why that comes up, but I do the work. I go within and check out things and talk to spirit because I'm like, there's nothing for me to be anxious about. What is this? And it's something to do and to go in and to do the work, for sure. Now, you use that term dance in your book many, many times. I love to dance. I have a dancing background. How do the patterns of movement that we experience interact in the active process of mourning and healing? One you just shared, I think I would think is like even walking. That's a certain dance. It's movement. But expand on this whole dance metaphor that you use in your book for process of mourning and healing.

[22:33] Edy : When we think about grief, the last thing we want to do is create a partnership with it, right? It's like, stay as far away from me as possible. I don't want to know you. I don't want to feel you. And yet it lands, and it comes in a way that just holds you hostage, and it's like, no, I don't want you. So the theory and the theme of the book of the dance is when you partner with something, you actually diminish its power over you, and you get to listen to it and hear it and allow yourself to be curious about its reason for being around you. And grief is an unexpected ally, for sure, as it helps us to grow. It is also like our fingerprint, as individual as we are. So there's no one way of saying, this is the way to grieve, and you got to do it right. There's no right way, and there's no wrong way. But dancing with it, partnering with it, is very much part of what I see is a necessary step to having an allegiance with something that all you want to do is push away. And what we know is like, anxiety when we push it away, when we are ashamed of it, what we do is we actually give it more power, and it gets bigger if we say, oh, you know, yeah, I see you. There you are. You label it, you name it, it has far less power. And so that's part of this grief dance. Partner with it, see it, engage with it, and give it boundaries. Like, you're not allowed in right now. But you know what? I've got a beautiful box that's in my mind, and right now, I'm going to put anything that comes up around my grief into that box, and I'm going to have a date with you later. I can't have you right now in my world because I've got to do some work or I've got to go to this conference or I've got to go pick up the kids. And so in a way, what you're doing is you're saying, I'm going to pay attention. I'm going to dance with you. I'm going to acknowledge your presence, and I promise you later on I'm going to sit with you.

[24:59] Moira : That's a powerful exercise. Would that be part of that naming and taming your thoughts? Would that fit in with that? Absolutely, yeah.

[25:08] Edy : Absolutely. Yeah.

[25:10] Moira : And I wouldn't think it has to be perfect. Like, thank you for being there. I don't like you right now. You're black or you're white or you're gray or purple.

[25:19] Edy : Yeah, I don't like you right now. It's still engaging. I do liken it too. Like if you're with a partner and you're doing and you're really dancing and you come from a dance background. So if you're with a partner and you're doing the twist and they want to do, I don't know, some other movement, that's not the twist. It's like either you say, okay, I want you to do it my way, do the twist with me, or you say, wow, you're doing it differently. And that's kind of cool that we can be two different people who are dancing together, and yet we're not fused by the dance. We're actually showing each other that we can do the dance differently and still appreciate each other.

[26:08] Moira : So that would be, I would think, a self discovery exercise you can do each day with your behaviors to create the time to dance with yourself.

[26:17] Edy : Absolutely.

[26:20] Moira : I love that I can see myself dancing with my soul partner and husband. We just do our own thing, and that's like communication, but with that whole metaphor analogy. That's just beautiful. Edie, how is your psyche affected when a person is engraving pain, sorrow, or depression? And how does a person start to begin to transform that pain and that grief into grace? Because I don't think people really understand around the psyche what happens when you're in those states.

[26:57] Edy : Sure.

[26:59] Moira : Another big question. I'm a big chunker. I'm a little chunker. I'm not a big chunker. I put everything in there. That's the little chunker from NLP.

[27:11] Edy : And I love the word chunk. I love the idea of the chunk because that's exactly how you get to grace. It's one chunk at a time. It's one tiny movement, one tiny moment at a time. Grief is not linear. It is the most nonlinear experience we can ever have. And that's why I talk about the eleven phases and that they move in and out and they're inconstant like the moon or constant in that you know that they're going to show up, but you don't know that there's any order. And sometimes they layer and sometimes they quiet. And the idea of the psyche getting to grace is that grace will come in and there's a sense of calm, there's a sense of being centered. There's a sense that indeed you have come back to the south, but forever changed. This is not in the book, but it's something that I would add if I were to ever rewrite or redo the book. This is very much the hero shiro journey. And the hero Shiro's journey, Joseph Campbell called it the hero's journey is very much you start out in your ordinary life and then something happens. Something happens that just changes you. And it's the loss of self, it's the pandemic, it's the loss of a loved one or maybe it's all three. Because of that you end up kind of going into your brain and saying, what is going on with me? What is happening with me? What is going on with my psyche? I don't even feel like I know who I am. And you're extremely distraught. And that's where we talk about the psyche and the soul and the things and the parts of us that we haven't wanted to look at, our insecurities, our shame, our guilt, our inability to get out of a numbness that we are in. We end up in this cave. And it's a metaphorical cave and it's where we start to tangle with those shadows which are like archetypes. So it might be the mom. And you know, if I mention the word mother in any language, I don't have to explain what that is. We all know, I don't care where you come from, I don't care what your socioeconomic background is. For all people, we know what mother is. Now, some of us had great relationships with our mother, some had fragmented, some had poor relationships and some people never knew their birth mother. And those are shadows, the parts of ourselves that we haven't wanted to look at, that we meet in the cave and that's where we kind of tangle or do a tango, the dance with those parts of ourselves that we haven't really wanted to look at. And they come in one at a time. And it's not as if the cave experience is just a one off, it happens over and over again. But once you tangle with one of those aspects and one of those aspects might be, I'm not going to dance with my grief, but grief is there. And the archetype of loss, the archetype of grief is incredible, especially when you don't want to see it. And you come out of that experience with a little bit more knowledge and then there's an assessment. Who's my friend? Who's been close? Who's left? I do talk about this in the book and even create some diagramming like who are the people in your globe prior to your loss and who are the people now? And you'll see that there are often differences, sometimes not at all, but often there are huge differences in the people who stayed, the people who got closer, and the people who are no longer even in your orb. And this is part of the cave experience. And you come out, you're forever changed, you are forever changed. And you choose your allies, you recognize your enemies, which is always good to know. And though you may look the same walk the same, talk the same. Who you are is forever changed. And that is the true hero's journey. You are in Metamorphosis.

[31:55] Moira : And we are here. Either way, my belief is for our soul to expand and learn and grow just like anything on the planet to grow.

[32:05] Edy : Absolutely, yeah.

[32:06] Moira : And I believe that everything is a gift, even if you don't see it in the moment. We're given the opportunity in our challenges and obstacles along the way to move through that and be a person who's grown.

[32:22] Edy : Yes. And growth for you is going to be different than growth for someone else. And there's no template for growth if you see one thing differently and it's changed the way you can live in the world so that you have a life worth living. Great.

[32:45] Moira : It's wonderful. You talk about you defined or the little GS. Tell us what this process is that you share in your book.

[32:56] Edy : Sure. The big G's and the little GS. So the big GS, we all experience the big GS. I just talked about selling my house. That's moving. Okay, so that's a big G. The big G is the loss of a loved one. Of course, a big G is terminal illness. A big G is divorce. So I'm giving this is just a minuscule list. Then we've got the little GS, and this is going to sound probably really benign, but a little G could actually be, I had a bad haircut. Well, for some people, a bad haircut where their brains go is, okay, so what? I had a bad haircut, it'll grow back. But for other people, if their identity is very closely linked to the way they look or to having perhaps beautiful hair, they may actually take a hit. And it's interesting, and I bring up something that could seemingly be benign, but it can definitely feel like some part of your persona was cut off. And I talk about this because when the little GS happen, loss of a job can be a little G or it can be a big G that can depend upon your age, it can depend upon your education. So again, I define these loosely because they're personal. But what happens with the little GS is if you don't really deal with them as they come in or recognize them as they come in, then they accumulate and they pile on one another and they can certainly turn into a big G, which can be a crisis of the heart or the mind or the soul.

[34:58] Moira : I know that also in my own life. Our car, which has been a great car rope for many years, it more or less had a problem with some circuits just in the last two weeks ago, and we took it in. They fixed one circuit, then the next circuit was going. And I said to Cliff, I said, that's reflecting us. Where are we out of our energy zone where we sort of. Like and said, let's just really explore that. That's being a gift for us to say, hey, go rest or go take time away from work because we have all this information around us all the time, right? What are some techniques that you would share or a technique for challenging the patterns and moving through external conflict in our lives? So when that happens, is there an exercise that you would say to one of your clients for them first just to be able to maybe try to identify or not try identify what's happening? And then what would be the process there to deal with external conflict in our lives? Because things pop up.

[36:05] Edy : Things do pop up and they're surprising, and they can cause us to go to places that we don't expect to go to in ways that we are surprised about. And when anxiety comes in, oftentimes there's anger closely associated to it. And so if an external situation occurs where you're feeling anxious, the first thing I suggest is ask yourself what you might be angry about. Ask yourself, is there something going on within me that I have yet to express? Sometimes the anxiety is so overwhelming that you can't get to the question because your heart rate is up and sweats rolling down your back and you're not able to focus and maybe you're sweating or maybe your mouth has gone dry. And that's when I really want you to stop. Because oftentimes when you feel like you can't breathe, if you couldn't breathe and you weren't breathing, you wouldn't be alive. So the first thing I want you to do is take a breath and hold it and hold it for as long as you possibly can. Because guess what? If you can hold your breath, you're breathing. If you can let it go and you're telling your brain, oh, you're telling me that I can't breathe, that's not true. I can breathe because I can hold my breath. And then what I want you to do is just try to breathe in and out and in and out. And then I want you to find something it could be a piece of if you're wearing jeans, I want you to try to count the threats. Or if you're in a car, then I want you to look in your car and say to yourself, okay, let me count the stitching on my seats. And the reason I want you to concentrate on something external is because that external concentration actually can leverage against the anxiety you're feeling and bring you back to some normalcy, bring your heart rate down, stop your hands from shaking and getting your breath back to you.

[38:29] Moira : I love the breathing part that just so centers you. And when you're mentioning doing something, I looked over at my egg chair, my meditation a chair, and started counting the bamboo part around it.

[38:41] Edy : Yeah, it works. And what I love about it is you don't need anything you don't need anything. Wherever you are, if you were outside, you could count and you were walking by grass, you could start to count each thread of the grass. If you're walking and you're walking on concrete, then you pick out the white specks. If you're driving, I often say to people, stop driving. If you can pull the side of the road, do so. If you can park, do so. Because I want you to get back to yourself.

[39:22] Moira : And also get back into your body.

[39:25] Edy : Well, absolutely. I love the clarification. So thank you. When I say get back to the South, I'm talking about the mind and the body and the psyche. It is the complexion of all three that goes into that psyche.

[39:41] Moira : Yeah. Thank you.

[39:43] Edy : Thank you.

[39:45] Moira : What do you mean by the term driver management? And you talk about the health risks of driver isolation and loneliness as you just talked about driving. I thought I'd jump into that one. I know it's not the same, but that's where I went.

[40:02] Edy : Driver isolation.

[40:06] Moira : And loneliness. Because I know our listening audience, I know who they are and a lot of their life stories, and some of them do really feel that isolation in life at times and loneliness, even if they're with loving families, you can be in a loving family or relationship but still have that going on.

[40:28] Edy : So let's talk about isolation and what isolation makes us feel okay, because isolation makes us feel like we have no connection to anything. Isolation makes us feel like we're an outlier and no one cares. And we don't have any kind of corrective messaging within us that says you're not alone and there are people you can reach out to if you dare. Isolation can also come upon you when there are people around you who are acting as if they understand what you're going through, but they don't. And you get very angry with them because though they look like they're trying to help, their helper mentality is actually making you feel more alone. And so the idea here is to find your own voice around the isolation. Especially, and I talk about this in the book, especially if people are saying things to you like, why aren't you over this? It's been six months that you have the wherewithal and hopefully the healing to begin to open your mouth and say, I am going to heal in my time, not yours, and I wish you weren't so uncomfortable with the time it's going to take me. And that kind of movement, that kind of I have a voice, is so powerful and can help you not feel so isolated. And that may be we talked about that hero's journey, and I'd like to go back to that, the realization that maybe this person is not going to be so close to you anymore because they need you for their own comfort, often and unconsciously often to do it differently or better because they're uncomfortable with your loss and how it's changed your position. This often happens in partnerships when one person has lost a partner and they were part of a bigger group. And that bigger group does not necessarily of couples know how to deal with now a party of one and you don't want to be treated differently, but somehow inherent in the loss that the support is there until things begin to shift. And often times people realize that they will not sustain some of those relationships that they once had, but new ones come in and those are great. And if this is not an all or nothing statement I'm making, I'm just saying this is another lens and it's good to have the spectrum and understand that there is one.

[43:47] Moira : I like that finding your own voice and being able to do that might be hard for a lot of people to really state the boundary of it's, your healing, and if somebody else is uncomfortable with it, that's yours. But I know I teach boundary quite a lot where be able to say no or this is my time, or whatever that is.

[44:10] Edy : Right.

[44:11] Moira : But finding your own voice to say that, I love that. Let's talk about journaling. Journaling can help us move through these feelings of anxiety and fear and stress and sadness. Do you incorporate that with your clients, with the work that you do?

[44:26] Edy : Oh, absolutely. Journaling is phenomenal. And we know that writing can be a creative outlet for whatever one is going through time and time again. When I say writing, I'm not talking about writing on the computer or your iPad or your phone. And I know this may sound oh well, it's a different generation and I get that. But there truly is something about taking a pen or pencil in hand and writing. It does activate different parts of the brain in really good ways. And I'm a big believer in actually writing and drawing. And drawing, yes. Having colored pencils. You don't have to be an artist. You can just write X's across the page. You can just draw a picture of your anger and it can just look like a modern painting. It doesn't matter. It truly does not matter.

[45:48] Moira : I used to have the conversation with myself and that's true. My writing is really quite atrocious. I could have been a doctor. That was the story. Right? But I couldn't be a doctor. I don't like medical stuff. But either way. But still, I still do journal and write because it is a different process. I might not be able to read it later, but there you go.

[46:10] Edy : Maybe you were just meant to write it.

[46:13] Moira : Yeah. Your book is so wonderful. I read it and thank you. I will be putting that up for people. I would love for you to read another excerpt from your book because you started with a beautiful one with Crane that you'd like to share with our listeners as we're coming to the end of this heartfelt conversation today.

[46:31] Edy : Edie okay, thank you. And yes, it was so heartfelt. So use your grief to learn about who you are to yourself and to share your knowledge of the grieving process with others. Meanwhile, create the life you want. Be the person you believe you can be. Feel your heartbreak and your breath and know you'll find your own kind of grace in that. Grace is you. Endings are beginnings. If you've taken one small piece from this book, and it's helped, that is your cherished beginning. The relationship you have with your loss will change over time. You'll become stronger, develop a greater sense of self and learn that you are more than your grief. In this profound journey, you will learn to dance with each new challenge as it presents itself. You will take on your soul in very big ways and in little ways, and you will live the life created by you. As my dad always said, don't look at where you are as an ending. It is nothing more than a new beginning. Remember the sandhill crane at the beginning of the book? She had survived in the wild with only one leg. Trauma and loss does not affect the self. And like the sand hill cranes, you had to find a certain strength to survive in the wild nature of grief. Within these pages, you tested your resilience as you learned to fly with a metaphorical missing leg, needing your strength and your potency. The part of you that knows the wound of loss quiets finds its space and regenerates into a new and exciting knowledge of self. As a result, the stance of self discovery allows for full use of the many parts of you. So you can fly with the intimate grief that is by your side, yet is not who you are. Navigating through the darkness allows you to find your own personal light. The image of the sandhill crane is a reminder of what's possible. Fly with what you have learned. Be curious for what will come next and know that you've met within you a personal strength that comes with knowing the selves. Through trauma and loss, your spirit has been given the opportunity for self discovery. Learn the twin gifts of grieving and grace. One dance, step at a time. One dance, step at a time.

[49:12] Moira : Edy, that's just beautiful.

[49:16] Edy : Thank you.

[49:19] Moira : One of the mantras, not mantra. What I have here with my dragonflies in my office is free your spirit and dance with life that just fits in with what you just shared. But you are eating. I feel like I wanted to stay there, but I also know that you're going to have a special gift for our listeners, which is very special to me, that they have a gift from each show because I honor them in their time and the wisdom of my guests. For them to step into that next part of their life, especially if they're grieving or they're in depression or for them to create this new dance in their life. If you could just share that, that would be wonderful.

[50:02] Edy : Certainly when you go onto my web page and you give me your contact information and you say, I heard you on this wonderful podcast, and Moira Sutton was the podcast interviewer and host, then just let me know that, and I will send you a journal that you can write in for one month. And you will also get a downloadable CD. It's a CD, but it's a meditation. It's an active meditation, and that's what I'd love to give you.

[50:45] Moira : Beautiful. Thank you so much. Ed. Thank you for today sharing from your heart and your soul your wisdom on grief and the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. Namaste.

[50:59] Edy : Namaste.

[51:08] Outro: Thank you for listening to the Heart Soul Wisdom podcast with Moira Sutton. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Please join our community at Moirasutton.com and continue the discussion on our Facebook page. Create the life you love. You will be part of a global movement connecting with other heart-centered people who are consciously creating the life they love on their own terms. Together, we can raise our consciousness for the greater good of human humanity and for our planet.