Build A Life After Loss Podcast

The holidays are upon us. Memories are heightened during the holidays therefore you tend to create more memories during the holidays than any other time of the year. The traditions, the music, and the celebrations all create memories.

All those memories come flooding back when the lights show up, the music starts playing and many of the sights and sounds of the past are replayed in the current.

You’ll have many opportunities during this time of year to process through the memories and the emotions associated with those memories. Your reaction to this flood of emotion may be to freeze, flee or fight.

Don’t panic! There’s nothing wrong with you if you have any of these responses. It might not feel comfortable but it’s normal and you can get through it.

In today’s episode we’ll talk about grief during the holidays and releasing sadness, what that looks like and how to make the process a little more manageable.

Be sure to join us at buildalifeafterloss.com for all the latest on grief, hope and healing.

(Music: Cozy Place by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon)

As human beings we are wired for progress. Whether you recognize it or not, you desire and crave progression. In fact, you crave it so much that you sometimes ignore our progress. “It’s not enough”, you say. But what if it is enough? What if all you need is a reframe, a different way of looking at it?

One of the many challenges of grief is the backward feel of it. As soon as a loss occurs you immediately feel crushed under the weight of the pain of loss. The change is so big and drastic that you wonder how you can ever escape out from under the burden of it. Progress seems unlikely and even impossible.

In today’s episode of the podcast, we’ll talk about balancing out the need for progress with the need for rest and healing and how to measure your progress even in grief.

Be sure to join us at buildalifeafterloss.com for all the latest on grief, hope and healing.

(Music: Cozy Place by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon)

Hope is crucial in your healing process. Without hope it’s hard to have a direction and it’s difficult to move forward in any meaningful way. Hope is everything.

But you may be confusing expectations with hope. Or you may lose hope because your expectations were dashed. Plus, hope is way more powerful and profound than merely wishing.

Hope is pure. It’s looking toward the future with expectancy of good things happening. It’s bright, encouraging and invigorating.

True hope does not force things or have a measurement on exactly how and when it shows up. True hope knows that good things can happen in the future and could actually be even better than we can imagine.

In this episode we explore the relationship of wishes, expectations, and hope. We look at the dangers of entangling expectation, wishing and hope and how to untangle them for the best outcomes.

For more on grief, hope and healing, visit buildalifeafterloss.com.

(Music: Cozy Place by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon)

Cindy’s life was not what she planned for even from the young age of 5 living with abuse. Facing multiple losses throughout her life, including losing her home after a divorce and financially devastating medical bills following her son’s brain tumor diagnosis, Cindy discovered ways to continue to champion herself through the difficult hardships of life.  Despite these traumas, she continued to look for ways to survive. She approached life with a determination to live from a place of knowing that she is worth taking care of and the people she loves are worth fighting for.

Cindy Benezra is an author, inspirational speaker, entrepreneur, and sexual abuse advocate. She is the author of the newly released memoir, Under The Orange Blossoms.

Cindy is the founder of CindyTalks, a platform where she discusses healing tools and stories of hope for other trauma survivors. She engages with her readers through honesty, humility, and genuine care for those who have walked a similar path.

Cindy is also the co-founder of a luxury event company, where she spends much of her time creating beautiful spaces for some of the most important events in people’s lives. Her eye for style and design has won Elite Events numerous awards and spotlight features. Currently, Cindy and her husband reside in Seattle, Washington, and are parents of four adult children.

For more on grief, hope and healing, visit buildalifeafterloss.com.

(Music: Cozy Place by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon)

One of the most challenging aspects of grief is its unpredictability. One day you may be feeling like things are improving and the next day you wonder if you’ve made any progress at all.  One week you begin to start feeling a little optimism for the future and the next week you’re sure you will feel terrible and depressed forever.

How you think about these ups and downs makes a huge difference in their impact on you.  When you experience the unpredictable, and yet very predictable downs of grief, it is easy to feel extra discouraged and even despair. Your hopes of healing feel dashed in a moment when new memories appear and cause you to spin in the sadness of grief.

Take courage in that it is all part of the process, which we’ll be talking about today on this episode of the podcast.

For more on grief, hope and healing, visit buildalifeafterloss.com.

(Music: Cozy Place by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon)

This week we welcome Krista Isaacson to the podcast. With tremendous faith and hope, she traveled the painful experience of losing her seemingly healthy 2 year old daughter overnight to cancer. She speaks to the overwhelming experience of losing a child, the tremendous impact of having friends and family love and support us in our experience and being open to hear the whisperings of God in the process.

Here’s a little more about Krista:

Krista M. Isaacson is an award-winning writer, founder and president of the Reality Writers online guild for nonfiction authors, and inspirational speaker. But most importantly, she is a felicitously married mother of six children—including a daughter who has earned her angel wings—and soon-to-be-spoiler of her first grandbaby.

Originally from the California Bay area, she and her family currently live in the shadow of Utah’s beautiful Wasatch Mountains. She loves vintage boutiques, pumpkin spice, painting fairy-tale murals, and her mountain bike named Breezy. Her library is her favorite room in the house, but her dearest hope is that one day you’ll find her in London mudlarking for treasure on the foreshore of the Thames.

You can find Krista at KristaMIsaacson.com and on Facebook and Instagram @KristaMIsaacson.

For more on grief, hope and healing, visit buildalifeafterloss.com.

(Music: Cozy Place by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon)

Loss and grief shoots you headlong into disruption. Your life feels shattered in pieces and unrecognizable. But it’s not just your life that feels unrecognizable, it’s you. You feel different. You feel unrecognizable.

Loss by death, divorce, or a host of other causes, forces you to interact with life differently. It causes you to question what you believe, how you previously saw things and even who you are.  It sets into motion a period of rebirth because it’s not possible – as much as you wish it was – to go back to the way things were and by extension the way you were.

As you move through the grief of loss, you move into a void, a questioning of yourself and an opportunity to view the world differently. Without conscience intention, you may begin to view the world from the lens of pain and darkness. And that’s understandable and yet not a place you want to stay. In this episode we’ll explore the hopeful patterns and principles of rebirth and transformation following loss and the void.

For more on grief, hope and healing, visit buildalifeafterloss.com.

(Music: Cozy Place by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon)

We all have a tremendous desire to be understood.  Which is interesting because I wonder if we even truly understand ourselves! Creating understanding between people is such a challenge because of the limitations of language. Then you add body language and inflection, and it is all left up to interpretation.

The problem is that we can’t fully communicate what we think and feel and that goes out and is interpreted by someone who thinks and feels differently than we do. We really need to give ourselves and others grace in trying to understand each other but that’s so hard to do because of our deep desire to be understood. It’s a conundrum that we explore on this episode.

For more on grief, hope and healing, visit buildalifeafterloss.com.

(Music: Cozy Place by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon)

Well-known author C.S. Lewis wrote in his book A Grief Observed, “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”  He goes on to the feelings of grief that resemble fear.  Even in the experience of grief feeling like fear it also creates more fear. Grief and fear are emotions that are close in their vibrational quality which is why they so resemble each other in their expression. Yet they are different.

In this episode of the podcast we look at grief and fear, how they inform each other and how we can be clear in our separation of the two. In being clear in the separation we have more power to understand our experience and influence it for our ultimate benefit.

For more on grief, hope and healing, visit buildalifeafterloss.com.

On January 18, 2003 at age 25, Vinney Tolman died in a public restroom. By the time his body was discovered, he was cold and stiff. Paramedics arrived on the scene and confirmed him dead. As they transported him by ambulance in a body bag to the mortuary, a rookie paramedic followed a prompting to open the bag and start measures to revive him at the astonishment and warnings of his co-workers.  Just before they arrived at the hospital, they shockingly had a faint heartbeat.

Vinney laid in the hospital braindead and in a coma for three days. What happened during those three days changed his life and changes the life of those who hear and read his story. Best-selling author Richard Paul Evans wrote about Vinney’s new book, The Light After Death, “this book was literally life-changing for me. It not only explained why the world is the way it is right now; it gave me hope in what’s to come.”

Listen in to this important episode as Vinney shares his experience of dying and coming back.  He learned life-altering and fascinating principles while he was on the other side that bring comfort and healing to our souls.  I hope you will feel renewed peace and hope as I have from this remarkable story.

After you listen, be sure to click here and order his new book, The Light After Death: My Journey to Heaven and Back

Vincent Todd Tolman was born in Arlington, Texas, and has since traveled around the world, living in both Cambodia and Thailand. He loves animals, meditating and spending time in nature. His greatest priorities are his relationship with his Creator, his family, and the people he meets. He currently lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, with his wife, Andrea, and their two children.

You can connect with Vinney at Www.LivingGodsLight.com.

For more help for grief, hope and healing, visit buildalifeafterloss.com.

(Music: Cozy Place by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon)