Healing from compounded grief

[Intro] Hello and welcome to Empowered to Thrive. I'm your host Corinne Powell. I'm so glad you're here.

No matter what type of day you're having, you're always welcome. I like having you around. This space is especially designed for the person who goes about life focused on everyone else while neglecting their own needs.

The person who says yes when inwardly they want to say no. The person who is frustrated at all they do because they don't receive much in return. If that's you, I'm going to put out some great ideas on how you can change those patterns and get unstuck.

Life isn't meant to be tolerated. It should be enjoyed. So let's get to it.

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Corinne Powell: Let's talk about compounded grief. Compounded grief is when we are experiencing grief because of a present loss, but the pain is intensified because it's rooted in a past experience that felt very similar to our present experience.

I'm gonna give you an example to help bring a little clarity to this concept. In 2015, I got pregnant with my third child. Very unexpected while I was using birth control that is 99 % effective. And it was at a time in my life where I...really was needing a break. I had two young children. I was a foster parent to another child. And I knew I was at my limit.

So I experienced a very difficult nine months, especially because I was pregnant with another girl. Whenever I've been pregnant with my girls, I am sick. Like when you feel like you have the stomach bug, the flu, I'm sick the entire nine months, all day, all night. So being a stay-at-home parent, I was stretched so thin that I didn't know how I could do this. And because of my own personal values, I didn't want to choose abortion, but I was at a crossroads where I really understood why sometimes somebody can't, they just don't feel like they can go through with that pregnancy.

It's just too difficult and I don't pass any judgment on because of that. For myself, the thing that I felt was I just have to figure this out. I don't know how I'm gonna do it, but I'm gonna do it. I went through those nine months. It was the darkest season that I had experienced in a very long time and it didn't end after I had my baby. It continued on for probably another couple years.

Why it was extra difficult, more painful, and even darker than it might have otherwise been is because it was compounded grief I was feeling. I was experiencing very similar emotions to what I had felt years back in 2002 when my parents had divorced. It was a very messy separation, a very messy divorce. There were six children involved. They had been married for 20 years. There was a lot of dynamics to it. And it was complicated and very messy. At that time, I was already a parentified child, taking care of many things that were adult responsibilities and I was only a teenager myself. I took care of younger siblings. I truly acted as their parent in multiple ways. I took care of my home, in doing the cooking and the cleaning. As soon as I was able to drive, I was driving my siblings to their various appointments. You get the picture.

I wasn't living as a teenager. I wasn't living for myself. My tendency was already to overextend myself, to meet the needs of others at my own expense, to not feel okay unless everyone else felt like, unless it seemed to me that everyone else was okay. But that time in my life only heightened those patterns. I hadn't fully healed from the traumas during that time. Traumas that were actually rooted in previous childhood experiences that were compounded during my parents' divorce were now compounded during the season of my life where I once again felt like I had to figure out how to make it when I was depleted and didn't have the resources I needed. When I had to make it and didn't have the supports that I longed to have. When I had to make it, when I had already said, I don't want to do this, I can't handle this. And somehow, I was just gonna do it. Somehow, it was all gonna work out. The ship was gonna stay afloat because I was gonna make sure it did. 

And that's how it had been back when I was a teenager. That's how it had been even years previous to that. And so, I went through that very difficult time and coming out of it, I started to heal even other layers. And so then, there's a lot of and-so's here, a few years ago my husband had a serious accident on the job he was working. And it felt like I was walking through another instance that mirrored these other times in my life that I just shared with you about. Except now, I had a new tool set. I had resourced myself, and I had released some of the stored trauma from my body. So I was walking through this present experience in a very different way. 

The grief didn't feel so compounded. It felt more relevant to the situation that was at hand. I reached out to friends. I now had a community around me of friends who truly were supportive because I had reached out in some ways during that difficult time with my third pregnancy. But I didn't have the same supportive community. And I also didn't reach out in some of the same ways. I knew how to support myself on a very practical level, making sure I had space and time to recharge, to release. I understood ways to release the trauma from my body, whether that was vocally, whether that was through movement, whether that was through verbal processing with a friend who cared, making space and time for myself to rest.

I was no longer figuring out how can I get through this? What can I do to suck it up and get through it? How can I grin and bear this? No, it was a truly different experience. It was a time to receive. To put out but not put out more than I felt like I could and to put out and then to allow myself to actually recharge and refuel before I was putting out again. It was a time when I actually reminded myself that, Corinne, you're walking through something that you know. This mirrors what you've gone through, but it's not going to be the same, it?

I could feel it on the cellular level. And were there facets of it that even now I would do differently than I did a few years ago? I'm sure. But it was strikingly similar and yet different because of the healing, because of the new layers of healing. Because I was already on the healing journey when I had that third pregnancy. But now I was at a different part.

And that's how it goes for us. We heal and we heal some more. And sometimes grief is crushing and there's no way around it. And other times grief is more crushing than it needs to be because it's compounded. Compounded because of a past pain, a past trauma, a heart wound that hasn't yet been resolved. That is still actually causing us its own set of heartache, its own level of pain. And once we can look at that, once we can offer and receive healing in that area, then the present situation will still hurt. It will still feel excruciating, but it may not to the same degree. I would actually say confidently, if it's compounded grief and you're able to heal some of the previous pain, you're able to release some of the stored trauma from your body from the previous experience, guaranteed it won't hurt to the same degree.

It will still hurt. It will still be a grief you have to walk through. It will still be a heartache that we cannot get around without moving through it. But it won't be to the same degree. So if what I shared is causing you to reflect and wonder, and you come to this place within yourself where you recognize, know what, I think I identify with the idea of compounded grief. I think there is compounded loss. There's something going on below the surface, Corinne. We can talk about it. We can delve into it ever so gently. Guided by my intuition, not going to any place you don't want to go to until you are ready, until you are okay with it. That's how I work in my sessions. With your permission, we go to different places. 

So reach out if I can be of a support to you in this way. And as you reflect, I also want to let you know that it doesn't mean that there's always compounded reasons for the heartache and the grief that we feel. Sometimes it's just crushing and that's all there is to it. Other times it's compounded. Thank you for letting me share some of my story with you as well.

[Ad] Would you like to explore this topic in more depth? I've created a digital product for you that goes into the topic of grief and grieving losses. In fact, today's episode is actually an excerpt from that course. If you'd like to access it, you can follow the link in the show notes.

And in this course, you'll find that there's a downloadable/printable workbook, which will offer you readable content as well as journal prompts, and a series of video lessons that are formatted in the same style that you heard today. If you want to go to the show notes and check out that link, you'll also be able to find the other digital products that I offer.

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