A Response to Grieving Part I

[Intro] Hello and welcome to my podcast, Empowered to Thrive. I'm your host, Corinne Powell. I'm an intuitive guide and I absolutely love helping people to heal from within so that they can create a life that they love, a life that they enjoy.

We weren't meant to just tolerate and get through life. We were meant to thrive and enjoy the life we're living. Of course, we will have seasons and moments that are difficult and challenging.

And the beauty of it is that we can be supported in those moments. I am here to be an aid and a guide to support you. And I hope that you will enjoy not only today's episode, but some of the past episodes if you haven't heard them yet.

On this podcast, I talk about all things inner wellness. We also sprinkle in some spirituality and parenting. Because as a mom to three kids, parenting is a big part of my life.

I hope that you enjoy the episode and that there's at least one thing you'll pull from it and start to implement into your own life. If you want to follow me in other ways, you can find me on Instagram, @corinne_changeradically⁠, or on Facebook, Change Radically. 

Would you do me a favor and share this podcast with your friends if you hear an episode that resonates with you? And would you also go ahead and give me a rating and review my podcast? It would mean so much to me and I would appreciate it. I hope that you enjoy the episode and that we connect. 

---

Hello, friends. How are you doing? Today's conversation is about grief. And if you think about a time when you've been grieving, you and I both know that it's a heavy and a hard time. And I want to come to you really vulnerable, transparent, because I just recently walked through a season of grief.

I'm still on the fringes of it. And a part of me feels like there's a beauty in sharing before everything feels perfectly fine again. While I'm still touched by the grief, I wanted to share.

And I may not share lots of details, but I want to talk about grief in general. And it is through allowing yourself to feel the feelings that you can come through on the other side better. That may not make logical sense, but it really, truly does make a difference to not suppress, to not minimize and deny what you're feeling, to not dissociate and disconnect from your body and from your feeling states, but to actually feel them fully and deeply, surrounded by support, being able to reach out to people who love you, that is going to be a vital piece as you walk through a season of grief.

The nature of grief is that it's a lonely place. People only tolerate sadness and depression for so long before they start to get a little bit irritated and frustrated. And so, first, it's going to be important that you have compassion and tenderness towards yourself during your season of grief.

That you allow yourself to be as long as you need to. I know for me, I felt like maybe I should be better by now. Maybe what I'm feeling is actually compounded because of past experiences.

I was willing to consider that, but I also believed that in the end, truly, it wasn't compounded for me most recently. There have been other seasons of grief that have been, but this time around, it was honestly just me needing to give myself time to walk through it. And I recognized that because I was willing to touch in with my emotions, they actually felt really intense because I wasn't denying them.

I wasn't suppressing them. I wasn't dissociating and disconnecting from myself. I was embracing me in the process.

And yes, I was reaching out to friends, sometimes to share how I was, sometimes to just talk about something else. I think it's also important to give your body the time it needs to rest. When you're going through a season of grief, you will physically be more fatigued.

We're connected emotionally, physically, psychologically, we are connected. And so you will feel extra tired and giving yourself time to sleep, time to rest. I'm not talking about not being able to get out of bed because you're so depressed.

If that's where you're at, then reach out for help. I mean that if you feel like, you know what, I just need to take a nap each afternoon, I need to go to bed a little bit earlier, or if your schedule allows, you need to sleep in a little bit later. Giving yourself opportunities to sleep, to rest, and to continue to incorporate moments that are light and fun.

Sometimes when you're in the middle of grief, you don't want to do the fun thing. You don't want to get together with friends or see other people happy, but it's going to help to actually get yourself into those places where you're able to be playful, you're able to feel the sunshine on your face, you're able to be connected to other people. It's really a balance of feeling your feelings and also choosing to see the sunshine.

If the sun is shining, allowing yourself to experience and soak in the sunshine is very important to your well-being. It's not dismissing how you feel. It's feeling what you feel and choosing to say, I also want to experience joy in the middle of my grief.

They are able to coexist. Joy and grief, joy and sadness are able to coexist. Gratitude in the middle of your grief is so valuable.

It's not a pretend. It's a choice. It's a posture from deep within you that says, I will choose.

I will choose to see the things that are gifts in my life right now, even though I feel the sadness and I'm experiencing the disappointment. Friend, it is possible to experience both and to not be a phony or a fraud for it. You are allowed to have joy.

You are allowed to laugh. You are allowed to feel good, even if you're in the middle of grieving. Experience and let the grief surface as it needs and also allow the joy, allow the peace to be experienced.

And I think it's truly possible to grieve and to have peace at the same time. I don't believe that peace is experienced only when everything is okay. I believe that peace is a knowing that you are safe, that you are loved, that you are supported by the universe in every season of your life.

And so, friend, I want to leave you with a short intuitive message. I want to ask the source of love and light to right now illuminate your path, that you would know the way to go, that you would know the moments when you need to sit down and rest on the grass, and that you would know when you need to stand up and sprint along the path, that your journey would be full of sunshine. No matter what your healing journey is like, no matter what you're experiencing right now, whether you're in the middle of a season of grief or whether you're experiencing the best time of your life, I hope that you will be able to know that you are supported and not alone, that you are loved, you are noticed, you are not forgotten.

I am standing here asking that good things would come to you, that there would be a bend in the road, and that you would start to experience a change, that you would start to experience a newness of joy and peace, that you would feel fulfilled within yourself, that you would actually be able to skip down the path. And I don't say this to make it seem like you need to have your head in the clouds, but I truly do believe that even in the middle of the darkest times, you can still experience the sunshine. And I say that, friend, having experienced it myself, knowing that it is possible because I've lived it.

And if it's possible for me, then it's possible for you. So if you wish, you can hold on to that for yourself too. You can say, well, Corinne said she experienced it, and maybe I haven't yet, but I want to as well.

And perhaps you know it well. Maybe you've gone through really, really hard times and you've felt the sunshine. You've been able to experience peace and joy in the middle of disappointment, grief and sadness, in the middle of your hurts and your loneliness.

If you have, I'm so glad and grateful that you have been able to experience that. But I know there are some of you who haven't yet. And my hope is that in sharing a little bit from my own heart, that it will touch yours.

[Ending] We've come to the end. What did you think about what you heard? I hope that there's something you pull from today's episode and start implementing it into your life. Create the change that you want to see, the change that you hear about.

You have the opportunity to transform your life. And I'm ready to link arms with you and to help and guide you to the life that you want to live. If you resonated with what you heard today and it touched you, would you share it with your friends? Would you also go ahead and rate my podcast and write a written review? It would mean so much to me.

I hope that we'll connect, whether it's for a session or just to connect because I enjoy meeting new people. You can find me on Instagram, ⁠@corinne_changeradically⁠, or on Facebook, Change Radically. You can also always email me corinne@changeradically.com.If you have thoughts, questions, or anything that you just want to talk about, send me an email.

I hope that you have a wonderful week, but no matter what your week is like in the moments that are quiet, maybe it's when you pillow your head at night or when you're driving in the car or taking a walk, or maybe it's going to be in the midst of the chaos with your children or the craziness of work. I hope that you'll remember how significant you are, that there is meaning and value to your life, and that I, for one, am so glad that you're alive. 

Catch you again next week.