Grief Runs In The Background

In today's episode I share what grief over these last 3 months has taught me, given me, and made me realize. I share today's episode with a heavy but hopeful heart -- heavy because grieving your favorite person is the most painful experience, but hopeful because if I can help one person not feel so alone on their own grief journey - that's a win.

If you enjoyed today's episode, please help me spread the message by leaving a rating/review + sharing with a friend! 

Don't forget to shop your She Glows merch @ https://she-glows.creator-spring.com

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the She Glows Podcast. If you are here, it's probably because you're a personal growth junkie and you thrive off of learning new ways to become the best and highest version of yourself or you're looking to start. I'm your host, Brooke Petrez. Now let's get ready to glow.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Hello, hello. Welcome back to a new episode of She Glows. Life is like a crazy roller coaster. Somebody sign me. I am just going through the motions every single day over here.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

So as much as I've really been wanting to get back to an episode every single week, I just cannot commit to that right now, unfortunately. However, I was sitting down to do some work, and over these last three months, I have really realized how not only painful and heartbreaking and earth-shattering and devastating and just fucking terrible this grief has been for me. It's also been eye-opening in so many ways because my main goal, and I want to say my biggest passion, is to help people, hence why I am a recovering people pleaser, but that has always been my big goal, and over the last couple of years, I've really just kind of questioned in how that would look. You know, I got certified to be a breath work coach so I could help people heal trauma. I never fully dove into that, however, I would still like to, however, I don't know how that's gonna look, and you know, I've been a coach before and all of these things to help people, and it's never like fully taken off for some reason or another, but through this grief journey, I have just been having the biggest call to help people through grief as I'm literally trying to get through my own. But for me, it is the heaviest thing I've ever had to carry, and I want to help people to learn how to do it in a way where they are not completely losing themselves or go off the deep end or to like the point of no return. Um I just want to share light on my grief journey and in hopes it helps somebody else, I guess. So I've come up with or I want to say so many ideas have come to me um with how I can do that. So I'm just sitting here working on a few different things, a few different projects around that, and I was like, okay, let me let me record another podcast episode. Tomorrow is Wednesday, that's typically when my episodes drop, so why not just record? And so today I just kind of want to talk about how grief lives in the background, you know, grief is constantly lingering in the background, it's constantly going in the background of your life, and I really believe that that is why grief comes in waves. You know, after a loss, it's just constant, it's a constant wave, and from there I just feel like it comes in waves, you know, it comes and it goes and it comes and it goes and it comes and it comes and it comes and it goes, and then you're numb, and then you're angry, and then you're still in so much shock and disbelief, and you're just fucking lost in the wave of grief, and I was thinking the other day how I finally felt like there was some sort of momentum coming back in me taking care of myself for like three weeks. I was killing my workouts, I was eating so good, I was logging everything, I was tracking everything, I was being like really graceful with myself while still being like very disciplined, and I was just like really showing up for myself in such a healthy way, and then all of a sudden, one week rolls around, and where I'm just like feeling so heavy that I can't even explain it. I get completely knocked off my routine, I get completely knocked off my discipline and my habits, and I'm like, whoa, what the fuck? Like, how is this so heavy at the drop of a hat? And I came to the realization that's because grief lives in the background, and even when you're showing up consistently, even when you're like really starting to feel something other than grief, it's still running in the background, and it and grief is heavy. So even if you are like showing up and like things look and feel a little bit better or a little bit different, a little bit lighter, a little bit easier, whatever it is. Grief is still going on in the background constantly, it's still living there, it's still showing up there, and it is heavy, so it is taking its toll on you without you even realizing it. And then that wave comes and it crashes you down. I don't want to say that to discourage anybody going through grief. If you think that you're doing, you know, amazing, and then you feel like, oh my gosh, does this mean like uh the other shoes are about to drop? I'm not trying to say it in a scary way, I'm not trying to say it in a defeating way. I am saying it in hopefully a reassuring way that if you are in the same position that I was just in where you felt like you were getting some sort of normalcy back, and all of a sudden shit comes crashing down, and you no longer feel that energy, that that um that discipline, that consistency, that that momentum that you had, there's nothing wrong with you. Grief is just living in the background, and now it's becoming the star of the show again. I want you to know that it's okay and that that is normal, and you really have to lean in to what grief is asking of you, and lean in to how it's being present in your life. If it is making you feel extremely tired, extremely lethargic, extremely anxious, extremely moody, give yourself that space, give yourself that time, give yourself that rest so you can move through it, so you don't completely shut it down and shut it out. If there's anything I learned about grief, especially with a big loss, is that you can't shut it out, you cannot block it out because that is only going to push it back even further, and it amplifies those feelings and those emotions so much more that when that wave does crash and finally breaks a barrier with you, it is going to feel so much heavier. And listen, this is all still so new to me. My grandmother was my biggest loss by far, and it's only been three months, and I still fucking hurt every single day. I'm still in so much pain all day, every day. I still think about it 24-7. I still vision her in my head laying there dead every single day. I can still feel how cold she was every single day, I can still hear her laugh, I can still see her smile, all of it, every single day. It's still so fresh to me. But I'm sharing these things because these are the things that came up for me with grief over these last three months, and if I can just shed a little bit of light on them for somebody going through the same thing or struggling with the same thing, and it can make you not feel so alone, then that is why I'm sharing this. Because grief is such a lonely fucking journey, and I don't really know if it's talked about that much. It might be I've never had to be this involved in the grief world before, but it is very fucking lonely because one there is just nothing anyone can say or do to make this situation feel any better. Of course, it's so nice to hear from loved ones and to be consoled by them because you know that they just genuinely care for you so so so much, and they're also probably in pain over the fact that you are in pain, but to be so brutally honest, it just does not help, it does not help, and as much as it's nice getting comforted from somebody you love and care about, you nine times out of ten, like you want to isolate, and if you don't, that that is just like my story. I wanted to isolate, and I do still feel that way from time to time, like when grief is just like really washing over me. I do not want to be around anybody. Um I do not want to be around anybody, I do not want to talk to anybody, I do not want to see anybody. I just want to sit in my sad girl grief so hard. And also, I just want to process all of those things by myself. But like I said, there's nothing anybody that can they can they can say or do that really makes me feel any better, but also in my brain, I'm like, even if you've experienced grief of a great loss or grief in general, you still don't know what I'm feeling, like that is how I feel, and I want to let you know that if you're having fucked up grief thoughts, that's okay. One, you're not the only one. Two, you truly can't help it. Okay, you truly cannot help it. If I could share with you every crazy fucking thought that I've had since Jenny passed away around grieving her, you might relate if you're going through the same thing, but you also might think I'm crazy because grief just has its own wild identity of its own, and it really just is so unique. So if that's you, girlfriend, if you're thinking crazy wild thoughts, and you're like, where are these coming from? Whoa, that is so not me. Ride the wave, sister, because I get it, I feel you, and it just is what it is. Grief really has you thinking some fucked up things sometimes. When I really think about my grandma being gone, like it's been a little bit easier for me to live my day-to-day life. One, I think, because I was so physically tired, physically and mentally, and emotionally, and spiritually, and all the things, tired and exhausted of grieving all the time and crying all the time and feeling so heavy all the time. I decided to start flooding my days with all the things that I want to do in order to like be productive and take care of myself, and it's still very hard, and I'm still very distracted, and I don't have a good thought process. I am like forgetting things middle of doing them, mid-sentence. I'm feeling very, very foggy, which I've been studying a lot, and there is a neuroscience behind like feeling a tremendous amount of brain fog when you're grieving. It's because grief really just runs in the background of your life all day, every day, and it truly is just so heavy, like mentally and physically, and spiritually and emotionally, that it does really cloud your brain, and it really does make you feel heavy in your body. So I have definitely had a lot of brain fog over these last couple of months, but I got to the point where I was kind of over being sad all day, every day, and I've kind of forced myself into getting back to the things of like moving my body and you know working online and creating some things and like this getting back to my podcast because it it was too heavy for me to keep just sitting in it. So, not to say that that is the right or the wrong thing to do because I do feel like I kind of put my grief on the back burner for a little bit so I could just get through life for a little bit because it felt like I couldn't do both. So that's kind of where I'm at right now with my grief. I am like letting it live behind the scenes basically as I just work in the front areas of my life so I can feel like I'm moving forward and taking care of myself to some sort of capacity. Like I said, I'm not saying that's right or wrong. There are so many things that I want to do to really dive deeper into my grief so I can helpfully heal through it, but I'm not quite there yet, to be honest. Like I started with a grief therapist and it just like did not hit for me whatsoever. I really do want to start going to a grief group. So now that we are back from a million in one travel adventures, I'm gonna start seeking a grief group near me. Um, over like the next month or two, I still don't fully feel like I'm ready to dive into that fully because I know that that is going to take a lot out of me, and I really missed just living my life for a little bit. Um, but that is that is something that I am going to be incorporating. I'm just trying to figure out how to navigate my every single day without completely going off the deep end and without completely like completely going off the deep end in grief and without completely letting myself go. So that's just kind of where we're at right now. I still on the on the daily, like I said, am just in such such disbelief that she's really gone. So there's a part of like living in that delusion that kind of helps me move along my everyday, but then there's also when like those waves hit and I really can't push them away. I am fucking spiraling. I'm like, what in the actual fuck? There's no way, there is no way, and lately I've been cutting off my spirals because I am so scared of what's on the other end of that spiral if I keep going. Um all this to say, if this is you, because what's really fucking crazy is the fact that grief is so present in so many people's lives that I am super close with right now that it's almost scary. Um, two of my closest friends just lost their nana and their mom, and you know, having having to go through my own grief and know exactly what it feels like, I still was not able to find the right words to share with my close friends about their grief, and you know, like just extend my condolences, like because there truly are just are not the right words, and that's just like so shitty. That's like I was talking about earlier how when you love somebody and you watch them have to grieve, that is also so fucking painful, and it's just so crazy being in the situation of knowing it firsthand and feeling how I feel, and still not being able to articulate it because I already know that there are no words or actions that could truly make them feel any better. Um, and that's what I said earlier: like, there's nothing anybody could say or do, and it's just like honestly, such a wild time all the way around. That is also another thing that's really hard to navigate through, and something else that has come up for me recently is the fact that, like, Ginny was my mom's mom. At first, my mom was going through grief peacefully. She was at peace that Ginny was at peace, and now that things have like settled down and she's not having so much to do around taking care of what she needed to with like Ginny's estate and things like that. It is all hitting her and coming crashing down on her, and she is really going through it, and that truly fucking breaks my heart because one that's my mom, and I would never want my mom to feel the pain that she's feeling, but two, it's like how do you console somebody and make them feel any little bit better when you are also going through the hardest grief you've ever been through, you know? So it's just been such a wild time, and like I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, I have just been learning and going through so much around grief that I really want to share it all. Because, like I said, if I could make somebody feel a little less alone in their grief, that's what I want to do. Because what I found in sharing my grief online, and kind of like sharing my grief out loud with my audience on social media, is that there, even though there's no right words that you could say to make me feel better, there is a huge comfort around the grief community online, and it's just like it's like a silent comfort, and I don't really know how to explain it, but if you've been a part of it, you definitely know what that feeling feels like online. It's like when you watch a video about grief on social media of somebody like sharing a picture of their loved one, and they have like a caption on the picture with a super sad song, you feel that so hard, and you can just relate so much that it feels comforting, and so I have been loving that aspect of grieving out loud, which if I can give somebody that comfort by doing this, then I'm so grateful for that. One thing that I one saying that I have loved over these last couple of months is and I've always been a really, really firm believer in this when somebody passes, is become all the things you loved most about her because. How special is that? Clearly, they meant something to you for a reason, and so you have a lot of special things about them that you love. Why not become those things? You know, because if somebody were to ever give me a compliment saying, like, wow, you're just like your grandma or you're just like Jenny, like that would make me feel so connected to her, one and so grateful for her, but two, just like so proud, like truly so proud. And I was thinking about it today when I was in the elevator because if you knew her, you just knew like she was just like such a vibrant light, she made friends with literally everybody. She was a chatty little Kathy, she loved making friends, she always had a little joke, she always just wanted to be like seen and heard and laughing and giggling. And when I right before I got on the elevator today, I was like chit-chatting with one of the maintenance guys, and we were just like joking and laughing, and I was just like, How nice is that? Like, we always have like a little joke and laugh, and I don't even know if we know each other's names, but I was thinking once I got on the elevator after that interaction, how I am a modern day genny, like that is so genny coded, and that truly just makes me so happy, and it reminded me of that quote, become everything that you love about her. And if that could just help someone going through their grieving process and going through probably the hardest time of their life, then I am forever grateful for that because if there's anything that I've been so appreciative over these last three months, is finding little things that give me a little bit of peace, give me a little bit of joy, give me a little bit of anything to move me through this grief instead of pushing me off the edge uh until no return. So that is what I have to share on today's episode. All grief related, of course, because that is just what I'm going through heavily right now, and also my biggest goal is to help the next person. I truly think that that is just a big part of why we're here on earth, and so if there's anything that I shared today that could just help one person, then mission accomplished. If you are going through a great loss and you are on a grieving journey yourself, I truly, truly, truly just want you to know that you are not alone, and if you ever need somebody to talk to, I am so here for that because what I found is that sharing my grief out loud and sharing my stories about Jenny and my grandma has felt so good and therapeutic for me. So if I could be the listening ear for you, I will absolutely be that. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode of She Glows. I will catch you here next time.