Ep #34: Resilient Grieving for High Achieving Women

Do you ever feel like you must always be strong, even when you’re grieving? As high achieving women, we often find ourselves navigating through life challenges with determination and drive. But what if grief threatens to break even the most power loving women? Let’s explore the emotional landscape that hard driven women face during loss.

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 beautiful souls. Happy April. Did anyone get an April Fool’s joke, or maybe it was not a joke for me. What happened to me is while I was driving, I was listening to one of my podcast shows, my favorite one. I was driving, my phone rang, and the navigation mistakenly answered it because I was trying to reject it because I was listening to a very good scene on the podcast show. I was like ah because it was an unknown number. I’m not answering to any unknown number.

So then, even though it answered, someone screamed out my name hello, is this such and such, saying my name. When I heard the woman, she came on the line, and she told me that my sister is in jail. So when she said that to me, I asked her to repeat that information. So she went on and said my sister’s full name, and that she’s in custody. In order to release her I needed to come up with the bail money.

So I was like okay, is this an April Fool’s joke or something? This is just odd for me. But I was like all right, let me just be curious. Who are you? Why is my sister in jail? Because I was not going to give up the answer that she’s no longer in this world. She’s actually passed. But I waited to hear her answers to the question like who are you? Why is she in jail?

So eventually, I guess when you ask questions, they are ready to run and hang up. So was it an April Fool’s joke? But in the end, it’s so sad that there’s so many scammers out there trying to manipulate people to drain out their accounts because they know their loved ones are either kidnapped or in jail. But this was just odd. I was just like wait a minute. Because once your family has passed on, it becomes public records. So it’s on Google. You would have known that when you said my sister’s first and last name, you would have known that hey, this woman is not living. Why am I calling her?

But it was such an odd phone call. I couldn’t believe it. It was in my head, and I was stuck at a light. I held traffic and stuff like that, but everything’s okay. But thank God, I have the wisdom to know that this is just crazy and odd. But that was my April Fools of the day. I’m okay. Here we are.

So today’s show I have another book to share and offer some actionable tools to inspire your grief journey. But before I continue, please join my insider community by hitting the subscribe button on my website and you’ll receive a valuable gift. Come and be part of the elite grief warrior squad. Be on the lookout for some exciting events.

So now I’m going to share here on the podcast that my first book is now available on Amazon. Please pick it up and leave a review after diving into the story. I will leave that information on the show notes. Also, I would greatly appreciate it if you can rate and review my show. Your feedback is invaluable as it helps me to reach and support more individuals who, like you, are looking to move beyond the stress of grief and design a purposeful life. By sharing your thoughts and experiences, you are precious to our community. You’re helping us grow and live with intention. Thanks for being a part of it.

So in this episode, I will be taking a closer look at the powerful insights and lessons I gathered from the book Resilient Grieving by Lucy Hone. They say what doesn’t kill you make you stronger, but what if grief threatens to break even the most high achieving woman?

I’m going to explore the emotional landscapes of high achieving women face during their loss. When you have gone through a mountain of losses, did people ever tell you how strong or resilient you are? When someone told me how resilient I was, I didn’t know what that meant. I was not ready to be strong because who can be strong during grief storms? I find that some of it it’s just that people just like to paint the picture and don’t know the behind the scenes of what we go through grief.

When interacting with people, I had mixed emotions of sadness, yet a little smile, but I didn’t believe I was resilient. But through this insightful book, I am going to uncover the true definition of resilience. What does it have to do with resilient grieving? I will explore how to harness emotions and cultivate a resilient mindset to find meaning in the pain. Additionally, I will share three tools from the book. Get ready to reclaim your string and emerge from loss a more empowered version of yourself.

So I know for the past two, three episodes, I’ve been talking about mindset, and I am so fascinated with how we can rewire our brain to heal through our grief. So this book came about during the pandemic. It was such a highlight for me to understand more clearly what it means. So, resilience is the ability to bounce back from hardship and difficult life experiences, especially through mental and emotional challenges.

We all have this mountain of losses that our mental and our emotional challenges, they derail us. Most resilient people make the necessary shifts to recover from loss and trauma. They go on to lead fulfilling lives and can even grow after setbacks. So I was like oh, so that’s what resilience means. But this book dove even deeper for me.

So if you do not possess resilience, it is a trait you can acquire over time. Just know that when it comes to resilience, you have two champions of resilience, the ability to respond and accept that unexpected curveballs are part of everyday life. As I was researching the book that did not talk so much about the stages of grief, I was able to locate a book that had alternative ways to heal through devastating loss. I love the title of it, Resilient Grieving: How to Find Your Way Through Devastating Loss. Now, Dr. Lucy Hone is regarded as a thought leader in the field of resilient psychology. That’s why I wanted to dive deeper into a book because I wanted to see what resilient psychology is.

When she went through her tragic circumstances, she was forced to look more closely at her grief. She gave a TEDTalk that’s one of the top 20 most watched talks. I think she has about 2 million views.

I enjoyed the book that broke down the grieving process, offering a unique view by exploring the impact of human resilience. She handles the topic of grief with tremendous grace and compassion. She never tries to indicate that it’s an easy and quick process. You know, the term that people say oh, just get over it. I always tell them to go to the next side of hell.

She offers a compelling hope and a solid counterpoint to the accepted wisdom around what normal grieving looks like. She could not believe how bad the grieving process was until she was on the receiving end of it. The resources about the five stages of grief meant well, but in all that advice, she felt like a victim, totally overwhelmed by the journey ahead. She felt powerless to apply any influence over her grief journey.

She wanted to be an active participant in her grief process. The book provides various ways to manage emotional wounds and heal through grief, emphasizing resilience over strength.

When I was going to my bereavement, they gave you the standard eight week sessions, and they gave you pamphlets and tools and offered you the stages of grief. When that eight week was over, I was lost yet helpless. I was still hungry for tools to help me with the deeper parts of my grief. But I went ahead and just went back to work, did what I had to do to deal with the necessary financial obligations and dealt with other obligations that I had to adhere to. So the grief was so deep, but I managed to just go to work and do my necessary tasks of the day.

But as the pandemic entered the scene, I was getting a roadmap to guide me through those devastating losses. Something about Resilient Grieving offers some truth. She quoted somebody who really touched my heart. I don’t know the person that quoted, but it was in her book and she quoted the person. “To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends is our way to become resilient in times of setbacks.” Ouch.

The word betrayal of false friends was like a wakeup call for me. Because losing friends hurts, and don’t get me wrong, even when it comes to death but when it comes to friends that you felt like it was going to be a lifelong friendship. It was a learning experience for me to be wise and choose better friends in the future.

But the quote is so deep, and maybe I’ll do a podcast on false friends and how to heal through it. But it gave me a chance to understand, to grow from it, to face it, that these people are not coming back and make it a learning experience and be wise enough to have better friends in the future, which I am already doing at this moment. I have a fellow grief advocate that I can engage in a conversation about the journey, especially I know people who have gone through multiple losses, and I can have the conversations.

Then in the book, she discussed the importance of our thought process when it comes to dealing with grief. Ding, ding, ding mindset. I did a podcast on mindset, and I also did the one on perfectionism. So I love what she talks about when she says how we think plays a vital role in how we feel and function during difficult times. How we look at what’s happening to us can make a huge difference in how well we pick ourselves up after setbacks. How you react to a situation shows you to think about it. It’s your thinking style that determines your level of resilience, your capacity to overcome challenges, and your ability to bounce back when things are chaotic.

So she has three habits of resilient thinking, and this is what I want to share with you, summarize it with you, and take it with you and learn from it because I feel like a thinking style does reframe one’s mind when faced with hardship. For me, I had to rewire my brains because I dealt with so many losses that my brain was like okay, wait a minute. Hold up where’s this person, where’s this person, where’s this person that you’ve been with for 40 years and blah, blah, blah.

So the first habit of thinking style is called realistic optimism. I know how to remain optimistic. But it’s about trusting the process, embarking on small steps forward in the belief that they will ultimately lead to success. The hopefuls focus on solutions when change is possible. They recognize the need to give serious thought to how they will deal with obstacles.

For example, I believe I can succeed, but accept that it’s going to be tough, just like doing this podcast. I feel like it’s going to go through but know that it’s going to be some challenges during the journey of doing this podcast. It’s been a journey. It’s been a pleasure to work with a great team of experts that’s been helping me in gaining massive knowledge on healing through this journey.

Number two is redefining hope. What are you hoping for now? So with the sudden loss of a parent or a sibling, you need to ask yourself a question about what are you hoping for now? It is a process because now the identity of being a daughter, a sister, a friend has been empty. Now the question you want to ask yourself, what is my purpose in life now that my family is gone? What are my new priorities, my new goals?

So these are the kinds of questions most people face in this transitional time. Transitions such as these can be unsettling. Most of us don’t enjoy the uncertainty that comes with transitions like this. However, if I want to live intentionally and make the most of my life, I will choose to see this time as a blessing and an opportunity rather than something to fear or avoid. I hope you can do the same when loss suddenly tips your life into a time of transition.

The last one is mindfulness. Oh, you know I love mindfulness meditation. But let’s talk about being present in the moment. Mindfulness is all about being fully aware of your experiences as they happen. It’s about tuning into our thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations. Guess what? Mindfulness can be a powerful tool for coping with grief. Try mindful walking. It’s simple yet effective.

As you go about your day. Pay attention to each step you take, if you can, because sometimes you’re listening to my podcasts or listening to another podcast show. If the weather permits, take a stroll outside and immerse yourself in the present moment. Notice the sights, sounds, and smells around you, take a deep breath of fresh air, and observe the beauty of nature. It’s a small practice that can make a big difference in helping you navigate through grief.

So go on that mindful, sunny day walk. Spring is here and there’s time to enjoy nature. The birds are watching, even those little critters. I saw a little animal on my nature walk. I was like oh my god. So those are the three resilient thoughts.

So I want to leave you off with all my high achieving women out there. When someone tells you how strong you are in your grief, they may not fully understand the weight you carry each day, the longing in your heart, the ache that never seems to fade, and it’s all real.

But here’s the thing. You don’t have to conform to anyone’s expectations of how grief should look or feel. It’s okay to feel weak, vulnerable, or emotional. Let yourself cry, be angry, and embrace your humanity, elevate your human experiences. Resilience and grief isn’t about pretending to be strong, my high achieving women out there, you power loving women. It’s about embracing your journey of post-traumatic recovery and allowing yourself to heal one step at a time.

You are not alone. Your strength lies in your ability to be authentic and true to yourself, even during grief. So keep shining, keep striving, and remember that there is beauty in your resilience. Thank you so much for listening and have a beautiful week. Bye. 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.