Have you ever found yourself frozen between two worlds after a devastating loss – yearning to plan and dream of the future, but feeling guilty for imagining a life your loved ones won’t be part of? If you’re a natural visionary who has always enjoyed planning and goal-setting, losing someone special can shake that gift in a unique way.
As a visionary myself, I understand the struggle of wanting to move forward while feeling anchored by grief. It’s a tension that many of us face, caught in a web of fears about creating a future without our trusted advisors and supporters.
But here’s the truth: your visionary spirit isn’t lost. It’s just being transformed. Your ability to envision possibility is still there, waiting for the right tools to help it shine again. In this episode, you’ll learn how to navigate the unique challenges visionaries face in grief, and how to turn your pain into purpose.
Get the Explorer’s Mourning Journal Workbook: A companion for your grief journey with prompts, open spaces, and gentle guidance. Click here to get it straight to your inbox!
Take my Grief Archetypes Quiz to discover what your ideal grieving process looks like!
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
- Why losing a loved one can shake a visionary’s natural gift for planning and dreaming.
- How to recognize that your visionary spirit is still alive, even amidst the fog of grief.
- The unique challenges visionaries face in grief, such as guilt, decision paralysis, and balancing ambition with loss.
- Why your fear of moving forward is a sign of deep love, not a flaw in your grieving process.
- How to transform your journals and reflections into seeds of possibility and purpose.
- The power of grief-informed ambition and using your drive to achieve to create meaning from loss.
- How the 21-day morning journaling prompts in “Overcoming Grief” can help visionaries move forward with purpose.
Listen to the Full Episode:
Featured on the Show:
- Are you ready to navigate the mourning process and connect with your emotions? Click here to get my Mourning Journaling Workbook to help you embrace your internal grief, expressing it through writing!
- Overcoming Grief: Championing Through Multiple Losses by Sandy Linda
- Want to know your grief archetype? Take this quiz to find out!
Full Episode Transcript:
Have you stared at old photos? Caught between admiring memories and fearing what comes next? If the thought of building a new future after loss feels overwhelming, you may need a gentle push to transform that fear into your future story. 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, creative humans. Welcome back to our grief recovery series. If you joined us on our last episode, we explored the explorer archetype, whose souls who find healing in their sacred thinking space in those quiet moments of reflection. And the message I received from so many of you who finally felt seen in your journey. They touched my heart deeply.
Today, we are stepping into something that feels very personal to me. When I lost multiple family members in close succession, something happened that I didn’t expect. I was always a planner, the dreamer in my family. My mom was my biggest cheerleader. I can still hear her voice saying, “You got this Sandy.” My father, he was my financial advisor, always helping me to see the practical path forward. But when they were gone, I found myself frozen between two worlds. I always knew what I was doing, but now I was scared to move forward. It was impossible to find direction.
I share this with you because I know some of you might be in that same space right now, that place where you want to move forward, but guilt and fear keep pulling you back. Because what I discovered is that being stuck isn’t the end of your story, it’s part of your journey. Have you always been the natural planner, the dreamer with a map in hand, and big goals lighting the way. You don’t just imagine a better future, you work to build it. But what happens when the map suddenly feels blank?
Let me tell you about a fascinating pattern I’ve noticed in my years of working with myself and some incredible women, especially those who are natural leaders and creatives. There’s a special person I call the visionary. Today’s next archetype I will discuss is visionary. You know how some people are natural planners, the one who always had a five-year plan, who could see possibilities where others saw obstacles. Well, losing someone special can shake that gift in a unique way. As one of my clients, a brilliant entrepreneur, put it, “I have lost my sense of direction. Where I once planned confidently, I now fear looking ahead.” This makes the visionary grief journey so unique.
Before your loss, you enjoyed a strong partnership with your loved ones. Perhaps your mother cheered you on or your father guided your decisions. You were the dreamer and there were your trusted advisors and supporters. But now you might find yourself in this conflict, still yearning to plan and dream, but feeling almost guilty for thinking about a future they won’t be a part of.
I remember sitting with a woman who lost her mother. She told me, “I have all these business ideas, these dreams, but every time I get excited about them, I feel this wave of guilt. Like I am betraying my mom’s memory by imagining a future she won’t be a part of.” Here’s what’s fascinating about visionaries. They are often drawn to concrete tools and actionable steps even in their grief. It’s like they are looking for a road map but no clear direction. And you know what? That’s not just okay. It’s a strength. Your need for clarity, for direction, for tangible ways forward, that’s your visionary nature speaking even through the fog of grief.
The real magic happens when visionaries realize that their gift for future thinking isn’t loss. It’s just being transformed. Your ability to envision possibility, it’s still there. It’s just learning to link your loss into a new future, one that honors both your loved one’s memory and your own continuing story.
Does this resonate with you? Are you feeling that pull between wanting to move forward and feeling anchored by your loss? Because if you are, I want you to know something. This tension you’re feeling, it’s not a flaw in your grieving process. It’s a sign that your visionary spirit is still very much alive, just waiting for the right tools to help it shine again.
I want to pause with you for a moment. Understanding that your visionary spirit is alive is one thing, but navigating the challenges that come with it, that’s where the real story unfolds. As I work with some amazing visionaries, it strikes me that there are unique difficulties that seem to arise when those who are forward-thinking encounter deep grief.
Let me share with you my experience that might help you feel less alone in this. As someone who walked this path through multiple losses, I found myself caught in a web of fears about creating my future. After losing my parents, I stood at the edge of a dream, creating my business. I had left the corporate world, started freelancing, and could see this beautiful possibility ahead. Guilt held me back with each step forward. I kept thinking, how can I celebrate business wins without my mom’s proud smile? How can I make big financial decisions without Dad’s wise counsel? And I know I’m not alone in this. Through my work with other visionaries, I’ve seen how these challenges show up again and again.
There’s this deep, honest fear that by building a new future we are somehow disgracing our loved ones’ memory. One of my clients summed it up perfectly when she said every time I achieve something it feels both wonderful and heartbreaking because they’re not here to share it.
Then there’s the weight of making those big decisions alone, whether it’s launching a new project, moving to a new city, or even just planning next year’s goals. Decisions that once felt exciting, now feel heavy with the absence of our trusted advisors.
And let’s talk about something we don’t discuss enough. The exhausting dance between ambition and grief. As visionaries, we are natural achievers, creatives, doers. But grief? Grief doesn’t follow a business plan or respect our timelines. Sometimes it shows up right in the middle of our biggest opportunities and that’s okay.
I see it so often, this perfectionism and grief, thinking we need to do grief right before we can move forward. Add multiple losses to this equation, like many of us have experienced, and it can feel like trying to navigate through fog while building a bridge at the same time. But here’s what I want you to hear. These challenges aren’t signs that you are failing at grief or that you lost your visionary spirit, they are proof of how deeply you loved and how brave you are trying to move forward. Your fear of moving forward? That’s love speaking. Your anxiety about decisions? That’s wisdom seeking new roots. Your struggle to balance ambition and grief, that’s your heart learning to hold both joy and sorrow, and that’s a strength not a weakness.
In fact, this delicate dance between joy and sorrow can become the very foundation of what I call grief-informed ambition. Let me share something powerful with you. For seven years after losing my family, I filled journal after journal, pouring out my heart onto paper. At first, it was for me, a way to keep memories alive, process pain, and dream ahead.
But something unexpected happened in those quiet moments with my journal. Those words, born from loss, began to whisper of possibility. As visionaries, we have this remarkable ability to transform our pain into purpose. My journals became more than just a record of grief. They became the seeds of my book, Overcoming Grief. Never in my wildest dream did I imagine becoming an author. But grief has this way of unveiling strengths we never knew we had.
There’s this chapter in my book called New Level, New Devil that I want to share with you. Because it speaks directly to where you might be right now. Here’s a quote from the book. When you start a new level of happiness, a new devil will try to oppose you and create division and offenses. Keep walking in love and forgiveness and keep your heart tender.
This isn’t just about moving forward. It’s about moving forward with wisdom earned through loss. Your visionary nature? It’s not diminished by grief. It’s enhanced by it. You now see the world through a lens of both possibility and brilliance. Yes, your cheerleaders may no longer be physically present, but their love has become part of your inner reach.
I held back for nine years before finally self-publishing my book. Nine years of doubt, of wondering if I had the right to share my story. But here’s what I discovered and what I want you to hear. Your future-oriented nature, that beautiful visionary spirit of yours, it’s not just about planning ahead anymore. It’s about creating meaning from loss, building bridges between memory and possibility.
This is what I call grief informed ambition, where your drive to achieve meets your depth of understanding, where your business plans are infused with compassion, where your goals are anchored in both honor of those you’ve lost and hope for what you can create. Your loved ones may not be here to cheer you on in the ways they once did, but their love has become part of your foundation. And from that foundation, you can build something beautiful and something they never could have imagined for you, but would be so proud to see.
If you have taken our quiz and discover you are a visionary, I am especially excited to share something close to my heart. Something I created for souls like you who are ready to transform your grief journey into purposeful action.
My book Overcoming Grief, Championing Your Way Through Multiple Losses, holds special chapters that address the visionary spirit in you. There’s one chapter in particular that I want to tell you about. This chapter is called Move Like a Champion. This chapter was born from those moments when I was facing what felt like unending darkness. But here’s the beautiful part, it’s not just about surviving those moments, it’s about learning to champion your way through them.
And at the end of this chapter, I’ve included something special. My 21 days of mourning journaling prompts. These aren’t your typical prompts that just ask about your feelings. No, these are crafted questions designed to help visionaries like you bridge the love of your past with the dreams of your future. I have seen these prompts help so many visionaries move from feeling frozen to flowing forward with purpose. And I wanted to make sure you could access this support in whatever way feels most comfortable for you. Overcoming Grief can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or Kindle format. The paperback is great for taking notes, while the Kindle offers instant access. We will leave you the link to the book on the show notes.
As I have explored the visionary path together today, I hope you are feeling something powerful stirring in your heart. That recognition that your ability to dream and plan isn’t lost. It’s just being transformed into something even more meaningful. Before we wrap up today’s journey together. I want to remind you that being a visionary in grief isn’t just about moving forward, it’s about moving forward with purpose, wisdom, and the love of your dear ones created into every step you take.
Next time, I’ll be exploring another fascinating grief recovery archetype. And I have a feeling some of you might resonate with that one too. Now, you don’t have to wait until the next episode to understand your unique grief recovery style. Right now in our show notes you’ll find a link to our special quiz. It’s my gift to you, a tool that can help you understand your current position in your grief journey and what resources will serve you best.
I want to leave you with this. Your vision for the future isn’t diminished by loss, it’s being refined by love. Your loved one’s spirits aren’t just watching over you, they are wrapped into every dream you dare to dream. I want to remind you that understanding your grief recovery style is the first step in turning your loss into an unwavering sense of purpose. Thank you for joining me in this visionary theme recovery session. Let’s continue our journey together next time exploring a different approach to grief recovery.
As always, remember to grieve with grace, nurture your inner strength, and lead with courageous hearts. Have a beautiful, wonderful 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.
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, creative humans. Welcome back to our grief recovery series. If you joined us on our last episode, we explored the explorer archetype, whose souls who find healing in their sacred thinking space in those quiet moments of reflection. And the message I received from so many of you who finally felt seen in your journey. They touched my heart deeply.
Today, we are stepping into something that feels very personal to me. When I lost multiple family members in close succession, something happened that I didn’t expect. I was always a planner, the dreamer in my family. My mom was my biggest cheerleader. I can still hear her voice saying, “You got this Sandy.” My father, he was my financial advisor, always helping me to see the practical path forward. But when they were gone, I found myself frozen between two worlds. I always knew what I was doing, but now I was scared to move forward. It was impossible to find direction.
I share this with you because I know some of you might be in that same space right now, that place where you want to move forward, but guilt and fear keep pulling you back. Because what I discovered is that being stuck isn’t the end of your story, it’s part of your journey. Have you always been the natural planner, the dreamer with a map in hand, and big goals lighting the way. You don’t just imagine a better future, you work to build it. But what happens when the map suddenly feels blank?
Let me tell you about a fascinating pattern I’ve noticed in my years of working with myself and some incredible women, especially those who are natural leaders and creatives. There’s a special person I call the visionary. Today’s next archetype I will discuss is visionary. You know how some people are natural planners, the one who always had a five-year plan, who could see possibilities where others saw obstacles. Well, losing someone special can shake that gift in a unique way. As one of my clients, a brilliant entrepreneur, put it, “I have lost my sense of direction. Where I once planned confidently, I now fear looking ahead.” This makes the visionary grief journey so unique.
Before your loss, you enjoyed a strong partnership with your loved ones. Perhaps your mother cheered you on or your father guided your decisions. You were the dreamer and there were your trusted advisors and supporters. But now you might find yourself in this conflict, still yearning to plan and dream, but feeling almost guilty for thinking about a future they won’t be a part of.
I remember sitting with a woman who lost her mother. She told me, “I have all these business ideas, these dreams, but every time I get excited about them, I feel this wave of guilt. Like I am betraying my mom’s memory by imagining a future she won’t be a part of.” Here’s what’s fascinating about visionaries. They are often drawn to concrete tools and actionable steps even in their grief. It’s like they are looking for a road map but no clear direction. And you know what? That’s not just okay. It’s a strength. Your need for clarity, for direction, for tangible ways forward, that’s your visionary nature speaking even through the fog of grief.
The real magic happens when visionaries realize that their gift for future thinking isn’t loss. It’s just being transformed. Your ability to envision possibility, it’s still there. It’s just learning to link your loss into a new future, one that honors both your loved one’s memory and your own continuing story.
Does this resonate with you? Are you feeling that pull between wanting to move forward and feeling anchored by your loss? Because if you are, I want you to know something. This tension you’re feeling, it’s not a flaw in your grieving process. It’s a sign that your visionary spirit is still very much alive, just waiting for the right tools to help it shine again.
I want to pause with you for a moment. Understanding that your visionary spirit is alive is one thing, but navigating the challenges that come with it, that’s where the real story unfolds. As I work with some amazing visionaries, it strikes me that there are unique difficulties that seem to arise when those who are forward-thinking encounter deep grief.
Let me share with you my experience that might help you feel less alone in this. As someone who walked this path through multiple losses, I found myself caught in a web of fears about creating my future. After losing my parents, I stood at the edge of a dream, creating my business. I had left the corporate world, started freelancing, and could see this beautiful possibility ahead. Guilt held me back with each step forward. I kept thinking, how can I celebrate business wins without my mom’s proud smile? How can I make big financial decisions without Dad’s wise counsel? And I know I’m not alone in this. Through my work with other visionaries, I’ve seen how these challenges show up again and again.
There’s this deep, honest fear that by building a new future we are somehow disgracing our loved ones’ memory. One of my clients summed it up perfectly when she said every time I achieve something it feels both wonderful and heartbreaking because they’re not here to share it.
Then there’s the weight of making those big decisions alone, whether it’s launching a new project, moving to a new city, or even just planning next year’s goals. Decisions that once felt exciting, now feel heavy with the absence of our trusted advisors.
And let’s talk about something we don’t discuss enough. The exhausting dance between ambition and grief. As visionaries, we are natural achievers, creatives, doers. But grief? Grief doesn’t follow a business plan or respect our timelines. Sometimes it shows up right in the middle of our biggest opportunities and that’s okay.
I see it so often, this perfectionism and grief, thinking we need to do grief right before we can move forward. Add multiple losses to this equation, like many of us have experienced, and it can feel like trying to navigate through fog while building a bridge at the same time. But here’s what I want you to hear. These challenges aren’t signs that you are failing at grief or that you lost your visionary spirit, they are proof of how deeply you loved and how brave you are trying to move forward. Your fear of moving forward? That’s love speaking. Your anxiety about decisions? That’s wisdom seeking new roots. Your struggle to balance ambition and grief, that’s your heart learning to hold both joy and sorrow, and that’s a strength not a weakness.
In fact, this delicate dance between joy and sorrow can become the very foundation of what I call grief-informed ambition. Let me share something powerful with you. For seven years after losing my family, I filled journal after journal, pouring out my heart onto paper. At first, it was for me, a way to keep memories alive, process pain, and dream ahead.
But something unexpected happened in those quiet moments with my journal. Those words, born from loss, began to whisper of possibility. As visionaries, we have this remarkable ability to transform our pain into purpose. My journals became more than just a record of grief. They became the seeds of my book, Overcoming Grief. Never in my wildest dream did I imagine becoming an author. But grief has this way of unveiling strengths we never knew we had.
There’s this chapter in my book called New Level, New Devil that I want to share with you. Because it speaks directly to where you might be right now. Here’s a quote from the book. When you start a new level of happiness, a new devil will try to oppose you and create division and offenses. Keep walking in love and forgiveness and keep your heart tender.
This isn’t just about moving forward. It’s about moving forward with wisdom earned through loss. Your visionary nature? It’s not diminished by grief. It’s enhanced by it. You now see the world through a lens of both possibility and brilliance. Yes, your cheerleaders may no longer be physically present, but their love has become part of your inner reach.
I held back for nine years before finally self-publishing my book. Nine years of doubt, of wondering if I had the right to share my story. But here’s what I discovered and what I want you to hear. Your future-oriented nature, that beautiful visionary spirit of yours, it’s not just about planning ahead anymore. It’s about creating meaning from loss, building bridges between memory and possibility.
This is what I call grief informed ambition, where your drive to achieve meets your depth of understanding, where your business plans are infused with compassion, where your goals are anchored in both honor of those you’ve lost and hope for what you can create. Your loved ones may not be here to cheer you on in the ways they once did, but their love has become part of your foundation. And from that foundation, you can build something beautiful and something they never could have imagined for you, but would be so proud to see.
If you have taken our quiz and discover you are a visionary, I am especially excited to share something close to my heart. Something I created for souls like you who are ready to transform your grief journey into purposeful action.
My book Overcoming Grief, Championing Your Way Through Multiple Losses, holds special chapters that address the visionary spirit in you. There’s one chapter in particular that I want to tell you about. This chapter is called Move Like a Champion. This chapter was born from those moments when I was facing what felt like unending darkness. But here’s the beautiful part, it’s not just about surviving those moments, it’s about learning to champion your way through them.
And at the end of this chapter, I’ve included something special. My 21 days of mourning journaling prompts. These aren’t your typical prompts that just ask about your feelings. No, these are crafted questions designed to help visionaries like you bridge the love of your past with the dreams of your future. I have seen these prompts help so many visionaries move from feeling frozen to flowing forward with purpose. And I wanted to make sure you could access this support in whatever way feels most comfortable for you. Overcoming Grief can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or Kindle format. The paperback is great for taking notes, while the Kindle offers instant access. We will leave you the link to the book on the show notes.
As I have explored the visionary path together today, I hope you are feeling something powerful stirring in your heart. That recognition that your ability to dream and plan isn’t lost. It’s just being transformed into something even more meaningful. Before we wrap up today’s journey together. I want to remind you that being a visionary in grief isn’t just about moving forward, it’s about moving forward with purpose, wisdom, and the love of your dear ones created into every step you take.
Next time, I’ll be exploring another fascinating grief recovery archetype. And I have a feeling some of you might resonate with that one too. Now, you don’t have to wait until the next episode to understand your unique grief recovery style. Right now in our show notes you’ll find a link to our special quiz. It’s my gift to you, a tool that can help you understand your current position in your grief journey and what resources will serve you best.
I want to leave you with this. Your vision for the future isn’t diminished by loss, it’s being refined by love. Your loved one’s spirits aren’t just watching over you, they are wrapped into every dream you dare to dream. I want to remind you that understanding your grief recovery style is the first step in turning your loss into an unwavering sense of purpose. Thank you for joining me in this visionary theme recovery session. Let’s continue our journey together next time exploring a different approach to grief recovery.
As always, remember to grieve with grace, nurture your inner strength, and lead with courageous hearts. Have a beautiful, wonderful 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.
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