Liza Hyatt is our return guest, this time sharing her perspectives on "Earth Grief," something she experiences along with millions of others around the world. In this heart-touching podcast, we explore what Earth Grief is, and how it's showing up individually and in the collective. We also explore compassionate ways to tend this kind of grief, including how each of us can creatively engage with it in the imaginal realm. Besides serving as a Grief Companion and Art Therapist, Liza is a dreamwork practitioner and discusses how Earth Grief may even show up even in our dreams; as well as how dreams help us tend to our collective grief. A fascinating and important topic!

Today's podcast focuses on how our intuition may serve us especially well during times of grief and loss. Our special guest is Betty Kovacs, Hospice and Grief Companion.  

During grief, when feelings can be most strong, we may experience "nudges" or prompts to make particular choices. Betty calls these "God Winks" and shares how she has learned to pay attention to these and how, as a result, her experiences with grief where intermediated by the Divine. With heartfelt intention, we can access serendipitous moments, as well, where we feel the presence of something greater than ourselves at work in the situation. As a Hospice volunteer and Grief Companion, she has witnessed this in others too, sharing wonderful "stories of how the Great Mystery works" from her lifetime of serving the bereaved. 

Dr. Jan and Betty also talk about how we can enhance our intuition which enables us to pay greater attention to the presence of the Sacred in our encounters with death and dying. 

GUEST BIO: Betty Kovacs taught special needs children for 25 years.  During this time she befriended an assisted living home in her area and visited residents over a thirty year period, often journeying with them through their final days.  She’s been a Hospice companion and bereavement counselor for the past nine years and is trained in the “Befriender” program as well as a certified Grief Companion through the Metta Center.

In this episode, we meet Courney Ronca, a hypnosis and healing arts practitioner and a grief companion with years of experience in the mortuary field. A unique combination of gifts and skills for a care provider! Courtney and Dr. Jan discuss the many ways that hypnosis can be helpful when it comes to not only grief, but all kinds of loss and life transitions, death and dying, end-of life-anxiety, pain management, and fear about "what's next?", i.e. the afterlife. 

GUEST BIO:

Courtney Ronca is a hypnosis and healing arts practitioner. She has a background in grief education, companionship, and mortuary science. Courtney combines her experience in deathcare, grief and healing arts to help those navigating significant moments of transition such as end of relationships/divorce, job loss, death and moving. She also assists those navigating end of life transitions and persons struggling with death anxiety. You can get in touch with her and find out more about her work at www.threshold-hypnosis.com

Dr. Jan welcomes Dreamwork Practitioner, Liza Hyatt, to discuss the ways that engaging in Dreamwork can be helpful and healing to people experiencing grief. They discuss:

•What led Liza to become a dreamwork practitioner and how she uses it in her own life

• What role Dreamwork can play in spiritual direction/companionship

• How talking about dreams with a trained Dreamwork practitioner can help someone who is grieving. Liza provides concrete examples from her own life that contributed to her healing journey after the loss of her mother and her father. 

ABOUT LIZA HYATT:

Liza Hyatt is a spiritual companion, grief companion, dreamwork practitioner, art therapist and mental health counselor with almost 40 years of experience serving others with advanced skills for assisting trauma survivors. She offers virtual individual and group sessions in dreamwork, and creative arts as spiritual practice, She brings interspiritual and eco-spiritual perspectives into all her work. A published poet, her 5th book, Wayfaring (Fernwood Press), celebrates ordinary moments of spiritual awakening. 

Her website is https://lizahyatt.com/

You can also learn more about Dreamwork here:

https://www.thenaturaldream.com/

If you are someone, or you love someone, who lives with chronic illness, this podcast is for you because grief is likely present. 

Our special guest is Maddy Marr, a wise spiritual guide and someone who lives AWAP ("As Well As Possible") with chronic illness, addressing with transparency, humility, and kindness, what it means to have grief around your illness. 

In this podcast, we explore how Maddy coped with her grief and how she helps others do this too. We discuss what the hardest part about chronic illness grief is; what makes this different from other grief experiences; and how loved ones can support their chronically ill griever.

About Maddy Marr:

Maddy is a Spiritual Director, Grief Companion, and Angelic Reiki Master Teacher. In real people words, this means: she supports people on their unique spiritual journeys through compassionate listening, developing spiritual practices and connections with The Divine and deeper self, and holds space for energetic healing/channeling. She practices with an interspiritual lens, and has a heart for people who are: deconstructing, navigating a faith shift, looking for their own path, queer, neurodivergent, and grief & trauma survivors. You can book her for virtual and in person sessions. When she’s not doing local vendor events or seeing one-on-one clients, you can usually find her either somewhere in the woods, eating gluten free ramen and watching horror movies with her partner, or curled up with her current hyper-fixation hobby. 

Website: www.maddymarr.com

Instagram: @griefghoul

In this episode, we explore how creative expression helps us process and navigate loss in a meaningful way. Dr. Jan hosts special guest Christine Hiester, a spiritual director and grief companion, and the creator/teacher of a new class offered by The Metta Center, Translating Our Grief: Creativity as a Language for  Exploring Experiences of Loss.*  Christine is a musician and self-taught artist who has guided creative and contemplative workshops and retreats for 15 years.

Topics of discussion include:
-Why we might want to tap into our creativity when we are grieving or while in mourning
-Why creativity be more effective than other methods of catharsis
-What forms of creative expression are helpful
-Why you don't need to be an artist to be creative
- Why words have limits that other creative languages move beyond
-How the languages of color, shape, form, movement, sound, and imagery, each employ a unique vocabulary of expression for our grief and pain
-How each of us can begin to tap into our unique creativity to better express our feelings of grief and loss

*This course is offered each January through The Metta Center. For updated information visit: https://www.mettacentertraining.com/upcoming-trainings.html

What does it mean to open to grief? To allow the reality of loss and the feelings of grief to sink into our experience? Dr. Jan hosts special guests Christine Hiester and Kelly Gest, both spiritual directors and grief companions, to the podcast to discuss this important topic. 

Together, we explore what allows us to open to our grief, and what prevents us from opening up to this potentially this transformative experience—on a personal level as well as a societal level. Each guest shares what encouraged her to open up to grief (instead of turning away from it or avoiding it), and how doing so became a beautiful journey of healing and growth. A transformation so unexpected that each now finds themselves serving others as grief companions, and helping others open to the deeper invitation of grief and loss too.

Some of the key concepts explored are:
• Why authentically entering into grief appears so difficult
• What we might fear about grieving
• The role of self-care and self-compassion in this process
• How and why standing together in our grief is so helpful

For further information on Grief Companion training, visit:
https://www.GriefCompanionTraining.com

Learn more about Christine Hiester here and how she supports others through Soul Companioning:
https://www.shapingtheriver.com/about

Learn more about Dr. Jan Lundy at her personal website:
https://www.janlundy.com/

Premier episode of the podcast, "Little Losses Everywhere (and some big ones too)" with Dr. Jan Lundy of The Metta Center and special guest Ashley Davis Bush, author and grief counselor. Their conversation focuses on the varieties of non-death losses that people experience throughout their lives; shedding light on the current losses so many people struggle with in these challenging times. Bush proposes a model of care and attention to assist people in recognizing these losses, attending to them with compassionate care, and re-engaging with life in empowered new ways. 

Learn more about The Metta Center which specializes in the training of Grief Companions, preparing compassionate companions to serve a world in need. 
www.griefcompaniontraining.com