New Ways New You ( Tendrils of Grief- Life After Grief)

Susan, your host, welcomes Donnalynn Riley to today's episode, Donnalynn has been coaching business people to become masters of their communication, relationships, and success for over a decade. From a career on Broadway to being the CEO of a multimillion-dollar corporation, her journey helped her understand and create strategies for managing emotions and surpassing every goal. Featured on FOX, ABC, NBC, and CBS, Donnalynn is now on a mission to inspire 42 million people to prioritize their joy and emotional well-being so they can show up as the best version of themselves!

Key Takeaways:

• Donnalyn shares her grief story that began many years ago but was recently re-edited with the death of her husband.

• Donnalyn talks about how hard it was for her to function through grief.

• Donnalyn lost her husband and sold her house in less than four months, she shares the ups and downs of an intense and terrible time in her life.

• First, Donnalynn put all her belongings in storage until she found a time when she knew what to do. She speaks of the emotional value of certain objects, and how her relationship with them is not the same; it evolves with her grief process.

• Are you willing to go through emotions rather than sitting in them? Do you feel that your suffering honors someone's death?

• Climb the emotional scale towards having more joy.

• To Donnalynn it was essential to find something to believe again.

• Give yourself permission to let go of what does not serve you anymore.

• When you have massive changes in your life, your identity shifts with them, and you end up wondering who are you now, leading the path for a new version of yourself.

• Just breathe! Fill your lungs, notice it, and pay attention to the air coming in and going out.

• Donnalynn explains a practice that can help you shift your energy when you feel overwhelmed.

Resources

Tendrilsofgrief.com

Email Susan: [email protected]

Meet Donnalynn Riley

Follow Donnalynn's blog

Follow Donnalynn on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

Susan, your host, welcomes Stephanie Zito to today's episode. Stephanie is an Intuitive Soul Purpose Coach who sees right through the stories and blocks that hold clients back from their desired success. Through intuitive insight and channeling their soul guides, she helps clients quantum leap and make the shifts to decide for their freedom and happiness.

Following her Master's in Conflict Analysis and Resolution, she worked in corporate teambuilding and provided transformative experiences for groups and teams in the wild. As a certified yoga and meditation instructor, Stephanie uses the power of yoga, breathwork, and meditation as transformative tools for her clients. Stephanie is also a transformative speaker, best-selling author, and This Passionate Life podcast host. Her mission is to help her clients find their inner spark and the freedom and healing of following their intuition.

Key Takeaways:

• Stephanie shares her grief story that started when she lost her spiritual/soul guide.

• Stephanie discovered her soul purpose through her journey and guidance from her exceptional mentor, who passed away.

• People can take what they need from psychic readings.

• Stephanie talks about the difference between a psychic medium and just a psychic.

• Grief is an aspect of love; we grieve because we love.

• Stephanie describes the steps people can take on their own to connect with their loved ones who have passed away: Use your senses, connect with something the person owned, connect with your elevated feelings of love, and enunciate your questions to your loved one.

• Stephanie talks about channel writing.

• Susan shares her experience with signs coming from her beloved Paul.

• With patience and time, you will find the connection with those who passed through love and trust.

Resources

Tendrilsofgrief.com

Email Susan: [email protected]

Meet Stephanie Zito

Visit Stephanie's Website

Follow Stephanie on Instagram, Insight Timer, and Facebook.

Listen to This Passionate Life Podcast

Access valuable tips to trust your intuition and take aligned action with my Activate your Intuition Workbook ($97 value), available to Tendrils of Grief listeners for free: https://bit.ly/theintuitionguide

Susan, your host, welcomes Catherine McNulty to today's episode, this time not as a guest but as a coach specializing in grief. In this episode, Susan and Catherine answer listeners' questions on grief as fellow grievers and share their insights and tips on navigating particular aspects of the grief journey.

Key Takeaways:

• Testimony: Losing a 16-year-old daughter to suicide and dealing with people's questions can be retraumatizing. Her mother finds herself avoiding talking about her daughter to prevent these saddening and disruptive questions. Feedback: - Guilt and shame are triggered by these comments, making the grieving process much harder. Sometimes people ask questions just to feel it won't happen to them. - Speak your truth! There is nothing impolite about educating people about what hurts you, setting boundaries, and guarding them. - You can always walk away from an uncomfortable conversation, and protect your energy. - Show the world who your daughter really was, and be inspired by your grief to honor the person you love! - Find your community and connect with more people.

• Testimony: A widow who has lost her husband to cancer is having problems communicating with his family that, while he was alive were disengaged, but as soon he received the diagnosis, got close and overly involved, disrupting the time between her and her husband. Now that he has passed, they want his things, that his widow wants for their children, who were always there for their father, in health and in sickness. She wishes to maintain the relationship because these are his children's grandparents. Feedback: - Do not feel bad for the way you feel! You are angry and resentful, you are entitled; it is your husband and the father of your children who passed away, don't give away anything that is going to hurt your heart. - Release your anger and resentment to them as a gift of love to yourself (not to them). - Set boundaries, grieve on your terms, following your timing; this is your story and no one can tell you what or how to be and do you! - It is OK to be distant from the parents of your husband, you can allow them to be part of the children's lives (depending on their age) without having to be involved in situations that are not good for you (it is also an opportunity to model healthy boundary setting to your children.) - Do what feels good to you!

Resources

Tendrilsofgrief.com

Email Susan: [email protected]

Meet Catherine McNulty

After losing her infant son in 2011, Catherine embarked on a journey to do more than survive grief. The loss forever changed the trajectory of her life and sent her looking for meaning and purpose in the life she was given. She channeled the love for her son into her own healing, self-growth, and personal empowerment. Today, she has created a framework for grief that disrupts conventional ways of looking at loss. She challenges her clients to step outside of a victim mindset and regain control of how they navigate grief. She teaches how to grow through grief and encourages speaking openly about grief to break down the walls of silence around grief. Catherine lives in San Diego with her family where she speaks, writes, and offers coaching to those who want to do more than just survive grief. She is a board member of Empty Cradle and volunteers at Miracle Babies and the Ronald McDonald House. Her business, Grief INSPIRED supports those who are grieving and guides them to create a new normal that honors the ones they've lost.

Visit Open to Hope

Visit Grief Inspired on YouTube

Susan, your host, welcomes Trish Springsteen to today's episode. Trish is a Creative Marketing Consultant, a multi-national award-winning mentor, speaker, award-winning international bestselling author, and WebTV host, specializing in creative solutions to Get Known and Be Seen, making it easy for your clients to find you.

Founder of the Purple Unicorn® Marketing Academy, Trish works with people to find the gold nuggets in your business to promote and market themselves. The best person to speak about your business is YOU!

Trish believes in her clients until they believe in themselves. From her personal journey, Trish knows how powerful confidence and self-belief can be. Trish is the author, co-author, and contributing author of 19 books, including Forever Changed By Suicide.

Key Takeaways:

• Trish shares her grief story which began on a particular day that started as a normal day and turned into tragedy when she lost her son, Craig, to suicide.

• Trish talks about the healing power of crying and the consequences of restraining crying.

• There are no accurate timelines.

• Repressing your emotions is causing your dis-ease.

• For people to remember her son's name was very important to Trish, she wanted his memory to stay alive.

• Grandparents not only lost their grandson by suicide but were also left to support their daughter in a situation that totally exceeded them.

• Trish lost Craig and, with him, the possibility of having grandchildren.

• Trish shares the tradition she started on Christmas, which involves setting up a small memory tree instead of a Christmas tree, where she hangs stars with the names of those she has lost, honoring their memories.

• Trish talks about her book, Forever Changed by Suicide, a compilation of testimonies of people sharing their memories and grief processes.

• Trish acknowledges that there is a pain that lives with her and will never leave her side.

• "I feel for you" sometimes are the only right words you can tell someone who has lost someone to suicide.

• Everybody's journey is different, keep that in mind, it is OK to feel how you feel; it is OK to grieve.

Resources

Tendrilsofgrief.com

Email Susan: [email protected]

Meet Trish Springsteen

Visit Trish's website

Follow Trish on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn

Schedule a Complimentary Conversation with Trish

Susan, your host, welcomes Geri Reid Suster to today's episode. Geri has 30 years of experience in business and management, specializing in acquisitions and creating operational excellence. This experience was gained by starting in an entry-level position at a directory publishing company and working her way up to Chief Operating Officer in the same field during a period of great consolidation in the industry. Known for building an outstanding work culture, Geri now consults with business owners seeking to do the same.

Personally, Geri has been living a nomad lifestyle since 2017, first in a 33' RV named Wallace and more recently, in a self-converted Sprinter Van dubbed Wufgang. She is the proud mom of two adult sons and spends much of her time in the Pacific Northwest among the trees. Geri is the author of Graceful Exits: Making the Case for Getting Good at Goodbye, where she explores a variety of exits, both personal and professional, from her own life and others to reveal what methods fail us and what methods allow us to flourish.

Key Takeaways:

• Geri shares her grief story by speaking about the loss of her parents, one sudden and the other anticipated.

• Geri talks about how to increase your chances of having a graceful exit.

• When accompanying a grieving person, you really just need to open up and hold space for his/her suffering.

• You can lead and show up however you want, but you can't control what others do.

• To protect the last precious moments of someone's life, boundaries need to be set with some family members. This is a beautiful way of honoring the person that is leaving.

• Geri dives deep into the concept of boundary-setting.

• You don't have to enact "Performative grief."

• How do you show up to a widow? Don't ask them how they are doing (that's an impossible question, if they are having a good day, they feel guilty about it, and if they have a bad day, they might not want to go through that) Try: "I am thinking about you", "I have this memory that I wanted to share with you."

• Ask yourself, "What would he/she tell?" when you need that special someone who is no longer there with you.

• You can do whatever you want, as long as it is authentic and comes from the right reasons.

• Remember: Grief is personal, and no one grieves the same way. There are resources, you don't have to do it alone. There is so much beauty in going through the experience of passing from living to dying.

Resources

Tendrilsofgrief.com

Email Susan: [email protected]

Meet Geri Reid Suster

Graceful Exits: Making the Case for Getting Good at Goodbye

Visit Graceful Life

Follow Geri on Instagram

Email Geri at [email protected]

Susan, your host, welcomes Michelle Ann Collins to today's episode. Michelle is the founder of Inhabit Joy, where she partners with individuals who have suffered grief, injury, or other types of loss as they recover, reclaim their wholeness, and build resilience for life's inevitable challenges.

After a series of losses, including the death of her mother, her husband's suicide, and continued estrangements from primary family members, Michelle combined the tools she had collected as a yoga therapist and wellness coach and studies in positive psychology, neuroscience, meditation and mindfulness, and spirituality to turn post-traumatic stress disorder into post-traumatic growth and resilience. With the addition of a certification in grief education and several bestselling books in which she shares her story, Michelle is helping others transform from barely surviving to joyful thriving.

Key Takeaways:

• Michelle shares her grief story when the love of her life died by suicide.

• Losing someone to suicide is a completely different grief.

• Guilt is involved in every death, even more in one that resulted from suicide.

• Thinking "If only" gives you absolutely nothing, you can't change what happened.

• Suffering happens in the space between where you are and where you want to be.

• Demystifying through the obituary, starting to talk openly about suicide.

• There are parts of society that believe that suicide is a sin.

• Change the term "committed" suicide to died by suicide.

• Let's talk about death more, we need to be better educated about it.

• Let go of the why.

• Michelle talks about her books and her mission as a Joy Spreader.

• Train for grief so that when you are faced with it, you will be ready.

• Michelle advises: You don't have to do everything all at once. Take care of yourself, and be your best friend. Get help!

Resources

Tendrilsofgrief.com

Email Susan: [email protected]

Meet Michelle Ann Collins

Visit Inhabit Joy

Surviving Spouse or Partner Suicide Loss: A Mindful Guide for Your Journey Through Grief, by Michelle Ann Collins

Supporting a Survivor of Spouse or Partner Suicide Loss: A Mindful Guide for Co-journeying Through Grief, by Michelle Ann Collins

Susan, your host, welcomes Kevin O'Connor to today's episode. Kevin published Two Floors Above Grief in 2022; his prior writings include personal letters, dissertations, articles, and anthologies, and he provides training at universities and professional settings. Kevin resides in Fort Lauderdale with his husband, Leon, and their family includes five sons and seven granddaughters.

Key Takeaways:

• Kevin shares his grief story, which started when he lost his father.

• Kevin's family worked as an undertaker at a funeral home, but that didn't make it any easier to process his father's death (even in some way might have made it harder).

• Kevin shares the last conversation he had with his father.

• People often have conversations with those who have passed.

• You figure out your life without the one you lost; it's like losing a limb in an accident, you will never forget about it, and you will learn to live differently.

• There is always a choice (even when it feels there isn't any).

• Kevin advises embracing each feeling and making space for the following.

• Kevin shares what motivated him to write Two Floors Above Grief.

• The value of communication today is certainly different from 50 years ago.

• Life and death go on simultaneously.

• Share your stories, there are treasures in them; you don't have to be an author to transmit them.

• Remember that sometimes what seems like the end is also a beginning.

Resources

Tendrilsofgrief.com

Email Susan: [email protected]

Meet

Two Floors Above Grief: A Memoir of Two Families in the Unique Place We Called Home, by Kevin O'Connor

Visit Kevin's Website

Check Kevin's more recent newsletter

Marv Weidner lives in the beautiful, mountainous Gunnison Valley of Western Colorado and volunteers with Living Journeys, a local not-for-profit organization providing services and support to cancer patients and their families and caregivers. He is a proud father and grandfather to his and Marty's children.

Marv's book, When the Rocks Sing, places the voice of a man who lost his beloved wife to cancer side-by-side with the perspective of the grief counselor who walked the road of rebuilding and resiliency with him. It addresses a variety of topics, such as harnessing resiliency, facing grief head-on, embracing loss as an integral part of life, staying present in the midst of trauma, listening in healthy ways, reaffirming or discovering a new sense of purpose, and much more.

Key Takeaways:

• Marv shares his grief story that began when he lost his beloved wife.

• Susan and Marv talk about how much they took advantage of the time they had with their partners before they passed away, their relationships got deeper and more intimate as a result of sharing this final stage of life on Earth.

• Ask yourself: Who do you want to be when you get to the other side of grief?

• Resilience: The ability to come back after a hard strike from life.

• Marv's purpose in life is to live with an open heart.

• Marv allows the feelings of sadness to show since he realized that when he tries to suppress the emotion, this sadness stayed longer with him.

• Remember, you always have a choice (even when it doesn't look like it).

• Marv realized he needed to get back into the world, he decided to travel, and he called this trip his "Resiliency Tour."

• Our loved ones are part of us at a cellular level, which is why it is not uncommon to feel pain at a physical level when we lose those we love the most.

• Marv talks about his book: When Rocks Sing.

• Marv wishes that grieving people can benefit from his story, feeling that they are not alone and receiving a different way of thinking about resiliency as a main aspect of grieving.

• Prepare your Grievers toolbox, including as many things that make you feel better and propel you forward in any possible way (even if it is small).

• Believe in yourself! You can repurpose and redefine your life.

• Marv realizes he became a better human being after being loved by his wife and also as a result of grieving her.

Resources

Tendrilsofgrief.com

Email Susan: [email protected]

Meet Marv Weidner

You can find When the Rocks Sing at Ballast Books and Barnes and Noble

Susan, your host, is joined by Barbara Kenyon in today's episode. Barbara knows what it is like to be widowed twice. The first time was after nine years of marriage when her firstborn child was only two months old, Barbara's beautiful husband was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and he died eight weeks later. Barbara's world came crashing down. She had to face the fact that her new life together with her husband and her son would never come to be, Through counseling and with the support of family, friends, and other widows, Barbara learned how to navigate the enormous challenges of widowhood, she learned how to take really good care of herself, she gained great clarity about what she wanted for her life, ultimately she courageously took the leap into dating again, and five years later she married Allan Kenyon, who at that time was the love of her life. For the following 30 years, with a solid background and counseling and coaching, Barbara had been helping widows, and widowers find joy and purpose in their lives. Suddenly and unexpectedly, her sweet Allan passed away in July, and Barbara was widowed once more. This time, she faced widowhood with the experience and maturity she didn't have the first time. In today's episode, Barbara shares some of her best tips for navigating widowhood and living your best life and references the motivational book Barbara and Allan wrote together, Fire Up Your Life Now: 25 Secrets for Creating the Life You Really Want.

Key Takeaways:

• Susan shares an important message for listeners.

• Barbara shares her grief story.

• Dating as a widow is fundamentally different from dating at another moment.

• Barbara talks about how common it is for widows to place their spouses who passed on a high pedestal; if they don't accept them as they were, grieving and dating again will be tougher.

• Step 1 when you are dating, proceed with caution with any divorced man, make sure he has found peace with that relationship.

• Three aspects can shift your dating energy: Be authentically you, know what you are open to, and ask for what you need.

• Barbara tells the story of how she met Allan.

• Susan talks about her dating experience and how she recently met someone special.

• Barbara describes the seven-step process for widows to start dating again and find what they want.

• Barbara talks about the biggest challenges that widows and widowers have entering the dating world.

• It takes perseverance to find the right person.

• Don't settle for anything; if you sense something is wrong, listen to your intuition. The little things now become the big ones later.

• When a relationship is right, it is easy!

• Barbara shares the reason why she is dedicated to helping widows and widowers date again.

• Barbara emphasizes the importance of focusing on the present moment.

• You grieve the way you live.

• Trust your gut and remember you can become the best version of yourself.

Resources

Tendrilsofgrief.com

Email Susan: [email protected]

Meet Barabara Kenyon

Fire Up Your Life Now: 25 Secrets for Creating the Life You Really Want, by Allan and Barbara Kenyon

After Widowhood: The Secret to Finding True Love Again, by Barbara Kenyon

Widows Dating Coach

Susan, your host, is joined by Kara Bowman in today's episode. Kara is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist who has advanced certifications in Grief Counseling, Trauma Therapy, and Thanatology, which is the study of death and dying. She also volunteers with Hospice of Santa Cruz County and trains others to work with those in grief. She has written a book called Heartbreak to Hope: Poems of Support for Grief and Loss.

Key Takeaways:

• Kara shares her grief story.

• We need to honor each loss differently.

• We live in a culture that encourages people to hide negative emotions and overvalues positive feelings.

• People don't like to see us grieving.

• Kara shares a short poem she wrote:

Love

Take good care of your precious pain

Wrap your strong arms around it

hold it against your warm chest

Rock it gently, telling it softly that it is loved,

it is needed, it is important,

it makes perfect sense,

and love it, just as it is, in all of its agonizing beauty.

• Intensity creates posttraumatic growth.

• Grief never goes away, it just shifts shapes.

• Kara talks about her role as a counselor.

• Susan lost her father when she was a child, and grief was never addressed.

• Kara talks about how developmental trauma unfolds.

• You can ask a grieving person: What is it like for you right now?

• Kara talks about her inspiration to write her book of poems.

Your Life

What are you going to do with your house?

Now that the foundation has crumbled

Are you going to let it decay while time and weather carry it toward the grave?

or are you going to rebuild more magnificently a palace that wouldn't have been possible without the footprint of the one that came before?

• There is nothing wrong about grieving, nothing to fix; it is another aspect of love. Just sit there with grief.

Resources

Tendrilsofgrief.com

Email Susan: [email protected]

Meet Kara Bowman

Hope: Poems of Support for Grief and Loss, Kara Bowman.

Grief Poetry griefpoetry.com

Learn more about Kara