Ep #23: How to Overcome Grief and Rediscover Your Strength

Ever felt like your life took a sharp turn into a pothole filled alley wondering when the road got so rough? Yeah, me too. After losing my parents and sister and enduring shattered friendships, I was drowning in loneliness. Like everyone expected me to just poof, magically be okay.

But newsflash, grief is messy. It’s loud. It’s quiet. It’s ugly. Sometimes you want to scream from the rooftops. That’s where I found myself. Identity ripped away, lost in a world that pretends sadness doesn’t exist. But guess what? That’s exactly what led me to become a wounded healer. My own journey taught me the power of facing grief, not hiding it. That’s what we’ll talk about today. The not so secret steps to overcoming grief and reclaiming your life, even when it feels like it’s already falling apart. Stay tuned.

Welcome to Overcoming Grief, a show for women experiencing profound grief and looking for support in healing and transforming their lives. If you are ready to heal after loss, create a new self-identity, take responsibility to do the hard things, and get massive results in your life, this show is for you. Now, here’s your host, Master Grief and Life Coach, Sandy Linda.

Hello wonderful listeners across the globe. How are you all doing? How are you working on the new year? Are you having a great start or a not so great start? Trust me, I get it. You get in through that mood swing. The holidays were here, and now here we are in January with the New Year.

However, today I am spilling the tea and dishing out some real life wisdom on the topic we’ve all faced at some point, overcoming grief, right? That was the topic of my show. Right? So picture me. I am your friendly neighborhood life coach. I’m about to give you some insight on the steps that have worked wonders for my private clients.

But hey, I’m not just a coach on a mission. I’m someone who’s been through the emotional roller coaster that is life. Trust me. It’s been quite the journey. A mix of incredible highs and challenging lows. You see, I’ve danced with devastation and faced numerous losses that turned my world upside down. Ever been there?

I know it’s tough. Let’s talk about society’s hush-hush about grief. Oh, I get it. People expect you to zip it up and keep it all inside. But sometimes you just want to shout from the rooftops. Right? I’ve been there. Feeling alone in a crowd, fighting with the weight of loss while society whispers to keep it quiet. In a matter of months, my identity got a makeover I never signed up for. Life went from loneliness to a new level of challenge, transforming me into a kind of wounded healer.

Now I’m about to break down the steps to overcoming grief and rediscover that strength within. It’s time to turn the page and embrace the healing journey together. So allow me to give you some little tips and bits that I am doing when I am working with my fabulous high achieving women clients.

So let me begin first. So for me, life took an unexpected turn for me after facing numerous losses. I chose to take the path of traditional bereavement counseling and read more self-help books. So I had a real life survivor of a grief marathon. The next step was to crack open my heart and started a blog. Then I joined Toastmaster to master the art of speaking. Because hey, why not?

Just when I was ready to conquer the world, boom 2020 happened. The pandemic hit, and suddenly I was back to square one solo and dealing with social distancing. Talk about a plot twist. It was me, loneliness, grief, and Netflix, trying to figure out this new normal. But hey, as I watched the news, I saw a silver lining. It turns out we’re not alone in this struggle. Others were sharing their stories and searching for healing. So back to my journals, per my therapist’s requests, to heal.

Now fast forward to a post pandemic world. Guess what? I decided to level up. Became a certified grief coach under the fabulous Dora Carpenter, my mentor extraordinaire. Now I’m here, ready to spill the beans on overcoming grief and turning that pain into power. So let’s dive into the adulting side of grief, especially the loss of parents and siblings.

The loss of a parent and a sibling can be a life altering experience for adults. Regardless of age or circumstances, it is natural to feel a profound sense of grief. When a parent passes, adults may find themselves facing a shift in their roles and responsibilities. The feeling of being an orphan can be overwhelming. The grieving process can also be complicated by practical matters, such as estate planning or caring for surviving family members.

Similarly, the loss of a sibling can be a significant emotional burden for adults. Losing a sibling as an adult hits differently. It’s like your go to partner in crime, the one who knows all your embarrassing childhood stories and still laughs at them, suddenly vanishes. Poof, gone. With them goes a piece of your history, your family dynamic, and maybe even a little bit of yourself.

It’s a reminder that we’re not invincible, and sometimes life throws you a curveball you weren’t expecting. But hey, navigating the feels and figuring out how to keep moving forward, even when the path feels bumpy. If you have recently lost a loved one, my suggestion is to find comfort with your grief advocate support groups or go to bereavement counseling for a much needed comfort and support. Because once you have recently lost, sometimes taking life coaching or any coaching services is going to be a little bit challenging because you want to have the ability to engage in the conversation of bereavement, which I did first. I mean, I did not get into the coaching side of it until I was ready and willing and open to invest my time with a coach that can allow me to get to the highest possible value of myself. So if you have done the bereavement counseling and are still feeling stuck with grief, let’s have a strategy call. We will leave it on the show notes.

So to cope with the complex of grief in adulthood, I have myself and clients unpack their feelings of grief. I always ask them are you angry or sad? Which one of those is more frustrating to unpack? It’s always anger.

I always unpack and get to the nitty gritty of the anger part. So when it comes to coaching with me, yes, we’ll do the hard things. Some are not ready to unpack and explore, and that’s okay. However, some are on a mission to get unstuck and clarify what it means to embrace new ideas without their loving parents or siblings presence anymore, or exes.

Another aspect of grief I also teach is women who have an unexpected divorce and are now frustrated with how to wrestle with the husband’s primary responsibilities. I offer them guidance to heal and start looking within themselves to create a new world without their loved ones presence. So here is something that I’ve been working on because this is such a great topic to engage the conversation with because when I interact

with the clients, I always ask them what would not being stuck look like to you? Because most of the time, they always say to me that they’re stuck in grief. So I always ask them what would not being stuck look like to you? For most people, it is the person who returns to work, has regained their sense of humor, attends social events, and can talk about things other than their loss or grief. However, I dive deeper in the recovery inside of the grief. I discuss the emotional factors associated with grief. Most of the emotions that come with grief are sadness, anger, guilt, and resentment.

When I inquire what feelings come up when they are experiencing grief, anger is the number one top emotion when faced with heartbreaking loss. We have thoughts on why this happened, how this could happen, and so on and so on. So anger and grief do create that cloudy thinking of judgment. I get to the root cause of the anger.

But sometimes, it’s always not straightforward because when you make several attempts to get to the primary cause of the anger, you may find yourself haggling with several issues. But I want to let you know that it’s okay. I always have them address them as they come, and don’t stop dealing with them. I always ask people to sit with their anger, write it out, or yell it out, scream to the mountaintop.

When you’re grieving, it’s completely normal to feel a whirlwind of emotions. It’s a journey that many of us go through. It’s okay to feel the way you do. Society may make it seem like we should keep our grief to ourself, but it’s important to remember there’s no shame in seeking support from the grief advocates or someone that is relatable to you that can have the conversations.

Because right now, nowadays, I am starting to see many more outlets that are talking about grief. Like I just was watching Anderson Cooper that’s actually opening up about his family’s loss. So it’s amazing how we’re starting to come into terms of what it means to release the grief and what other emotional factors that are associated with grief to allow us to heal and become more of a bold and brilliant human being.

So if you are ready to get unstuck, become bold, beautiful, and brilliant in healing through your grief, why not take the next step and join me on a strategy call or a mini-session where I unlock your hidden talents and lead you on the path to emotional stability and fulfillment? I will leave you the link for the mini-session with me before you jump on the program. Now, this is only for some. It’s for those who are open to healing and ready to dive deeper into the inner heart to release the anger, sadness, guilt, and rage that has been hidden and become fulfilled in personal and business life.

So I’m going to end here, and I just want to give you a chance to allow yourself to heal through the journey of grief because I know there are many options out there. There are so many people out there that are here to help or work through. For me, I’m just on a mission to engage the conversation, offer you some guidance because I’m not here to fix. I’m here to open your heart and mind to allow you to engage in the conversation of what grief means to you, and dive deeper into the emotional factors of it.

Because, for me, when the pandemic happened, I actually had to reevaluate my grief because all of a sudden, I got a chance to meet people who have gone through the multiple losses during the pandemic. Like I met a gentleman that lost his mother and then six months later then his father. I was like, oh my god, I found my tribe. That’s why I always ask people. There are many aspects of grief that you can go to work with, but most of the time, when I started, it was just a widow and child loss.

But now there is a great urgency for others to talk about the parental side, especially if you’re in adulthood, and sibling loss. Also I’ve dealt with divorced clients, which is also another type of grief, which I enjoy working with because it allows me to engage in the conversations that most society norms keep underneath the table.

So I look forward to you taking that first step in going on a mini-session. Call me, and we’ll see if you are a fit for this program. I want to say thank you so much for listening. Continue to leave reviews on my podcast, and have a wonderful and beautiful day. Bye.

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Thanks for listening to today’s episode of Overcoming Grief. If you’re ready to move into a new, rewarding life experience, and want more information about how to work with Sandy, visit www.sandylinda.com.