Susan, your host, is joined by Dean McMurray in today’s episode. Dean — “The Military Medium” — is an internationally acclaimed psychic, medium, healer, dowser, and ordained minister. His story, so powerful and so authentic, is unlike any other psychic medium out there, and it’s why people from all across the globe are drawn to him for readings and personal Guidance.

Dean spent most of his childhood in northern Minnesota; he developed a deep love for nature and his country. That love of country inspired him to enlist and serve 24 years in the United States Armed Forces. Dean’s service brought him overseas on several occasions, the last of

which awakened his psychic abilities and set him on a new path in life, a new mission with new marching orders.

After returning from his last overseas tour, Dean’s deceased grandmother paid him a visit. She had a message for him: you are a medium, Dean, and it’s time to get to work. There were no words. No sound. But the message was as clear as any he’d ever heard. It came straight from his grandmother’s immortal heart to his own.

Dean retired from the Army and enlisted in a new service — he devoted his life to developing these newfound psychic abilities in service to others. Today, Dean conducts readings for clients

throughout the world, teaches mediumship classes, presents at regional symposiums, conferences, and workshops, and is currently working on his first book.

Key Takeaways:

• Dean talks about his story.
• Dean shares how he found out he was a medium.
• “How can I serve today?” this is how Dean describes his mission.
• Dean knew his father was dying one year before he passed away.
• Dean explains why he believes we are all vessels.
• Dean thought there was no way he would be a full-time psychic medium.
• Dean talks about grieving his identity as a soldier.
• Dean shares what most people who passed away want their loved ones to know.
• Dean insists everyone can be a medium.
• Dean wants everyone to remember: Love never dies.

Resources

Tendrilsofgrief.com

Email Susan: [email protected]

Meet Dean McMurray

Visit The Military Medium

Follow Dean on his YouTube Channel

Susan, your host, is joined by Marie Scott in today’s episode. Marie is the Creator and Founder of Happy and Healthy After Widowhood. After losing her beloved Dave of almost 30 years, and her mom the same year, she went back to school to learn more about the link between food and cancer. After becoming a certified health coach, Marie now coaches widows and widowers using her 7 Steps to Healing After Loss, a unique roadmap to finding a new purpose after a devastating loss. After her health transformation and getting off all meds, losing 20 pounds, reversing pre-diabetes, and through her life transformation of becoming an author of three published books, an international speaker, and a wellness coach, she has many testimonials and is now happily married again to the second great love of her life, Jeff.

Key Takeaways:

• Sugar feeds cancer.
• Marie talks about her loss and grief as well as remembers the wonderful times she got to spend with him.
• Everyone has the right to choose to die with dignity, to choose quality over quantity of life.
• Susan talks about how Paul didn’t want treatment and did it for everyone else.
• Marie shares how her husband worried about her having a life again.
• The first thing that goes missing with grief is laughter; once you reencounter your laughter, healing begins.
• When you do something for 30 days in a row, it becomes a habit.
• Writing a book is a labor of love! Marie shares how she wrote her first book.
• Marie shares how she met the second love of her life.
• Widows have an incredible amount of love left to give.
• Marie shares how she started a career as a coach.
• Marie talks about the 7 Steps of Healing.
• Marie talks about her next book named Cooking with a Side of Kleenex.
• “Find a sense of community” is Marie’s advice for anyone grieving.

Resources

Tendrilsofgrief.com

Email Susan: [email protected]

Meet Marie Scott

Happy and Healthy After Widowhood

Marie Scott Wellness

“7 Steps to Healing After Loss”

Susan, your host, welcomes Cat O’Brien to today’s episode. Cat is a 45-year-old single mum to a thirteen-year-old with additional needs. In November 2020, Cat’s partner Jon died suddenly and unexpectedly of a stroke. Cat struggled in her early grief and shrank back from both society and her usual life-loving self. After three months Cat returned to work, where she founded the Rail Industry Bereavement Support Group (UK) and began working with bereaved people on living with grief. Cat believes that as a society, we don’t talk about grief enough. She also believes in the power of sharing one’s personal story as a means to break down the barriers that prevent people from learning how to be a good ally to someone who is grieving.

Key Takeaways:

• Cat shares her grief story that began when her soul mate passed away.
• Cat remembers the moment she got to hold her beloved partner’s body after he passed away.
• Cat realized there was no getting back to normal.
• We are not OK with the fact that we are all going to die, and as a result, we don’t talk enough about grief.
• We don’t know the end of the stories we tell ourselves.
• Respecting other people’s grief is sometimes difficult since different people can have different grief stories and perspectives over the one who passed away.
• Cat suffered from the fact that she had no place in her partner’s family grief story.
• Cat talks about goal setting and gratitude.
• Susan and Cat talk about dating and sex while grieving.
• Grieving people need significant support; they can just go back to work three days after their life is turned upside down.
• Remember the power of storytelling that can work as an element of preparation for someone at any given time.

Resources

Tendrilsofgrief.com

Email Susan: [email protected]

Meet Cat O’Brien

Follow Cat on LinkedIn

Susan, your host, welcomes Natalie Olson to today’s episode. Natalie is a Life and Wellness Coach who focuses on the importance of daily routines, habits, and patterns and how they play a much bigger role in our lives than we think. She specializes in helping bereaved men and women establish a “new normal” after loss that includes balance, happiness, and healing.

Natalie tells us her story of how she tragically lost her best friend at a young age, how her coping impacted her life (both negatively and positively), and how she got to where she is today.

Natalie is the founder and owner of Waves of Change Coaching, and it is her mission to help those who feel trapped in their current season of life step into the life they truly desire. There is so much we cannot control in life, especially death, but by changing the focus to what can be controlled, like our daily thoughts and habits, we reclaim our personal power. It is never too late to change your habits, and change your life.

Key Takeaways:

• Natalie shares her grief story of when she lost her best friend.
• Natalie realized that after the loss of her friend she was falling into different unhealthy habits in order to escape her reality, she was not enjoying anything.
• Sometimes there are no right answers that will help your grief process.
• Coaching saved Natalie, she learned to identify her emotions and expand her toolkit in order to deal with her feelings in a better way.
• Helping others is a great way to help yourself during the darkest moments.
• Susan and Natalie talk about how to deal with holiday parties when grieving.
• Learn to ask for help.
• There is no pressure; no right and wrong for navigating grief.
• Death is completely out of our control, and losing control feels very scary and hopeless; remember you have the choice to do one thing today that helps you heal, and honor what your body and soul are telling you.
• It is OK to be selfish, especially when you are grieving.

Resources

Tendrilsofgrief.com

Email Susan: [email protected]

Meet Natalie Olson

Visit Waves of Change

Follow Natatlie on Instagram & TikTok

Email Natalie at [email protected]

Susan, your host, welcomes Wendy Lichtenthal to today’s episode. Wendy Lichtenthal, Ph.D., FT is the Director of the Bereavement Clinic and a clinical psychologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. After experiencing loss at an early age, Wendy found herself driven to address the suffering of grieving individuals. As a licensed clinical psychologist, her practice focuses on helping cancer patient helping cancer patients and their families cope with loss and adversity. Over the last two decades, Wendy’s federally-funded research has focused on understanding how bereaved individuals find, or struggle to find, meaning in their lives and their loss. This has led to the development of Meaning-Centered Grief Therapy (MCGT), a manualized therapy that aims to enhance bereaved individuals’ sense of meaning so that they can learn to co-exist with their grief. MCGT helps grievers recognize their ability to choose their attitude in the face of suffering, to choose how they construct narratives related to their loss, and to choose how they maintain a sense of connection to the person who died. It also assists them with finding their lighthouses in the sea of grief, that is, their “whys” for continuing on, despite their pain.

Key Takeaways:

• Wendy shares her grief story that began during her childhood being “superstitious” and having recurrent thoughts about death.
• Wendy learned to embrace that there is no control over whether you lose someone.
• Things are happening to us all the time, we have the ability to be the narrator of the story and to find the meaning we want these events to have for us.
• No answer will satisfy the question: “Why did this happen to me?” or “What could have I done to prevent it?”
• Find your reasons to move forward.
• You don’t need to ask permission to lean on to your story, you own your narrative.
• You can grieve in your own way, it needs to be meaningful to you.
• Susan talks about how grief changed who she was.
• Ask yourself: Who am I now? What matters to me? What did this loss mean to you at this moment? Who was this person to you?
• Wendy talks about how she helps people who are grieving by assisting them in finding and making meaning in their lives using Meaning-Centered Grief Therapy.

Resources

Tendrilsofgrief.com

Email Susan: [email protected]

Meet Wendy Lichtenthal

Follow Wendy on LinkedIn

Susan, your host, is joined by Liza Spiridon in today’s episode. Liza Spiridon is an empathic numerologist, having studied Numerology for over 25 years. She has been using Numerology to help herself and her clients create ease, joy, and abundance even when life is not always a “high vibe.”

She also has a deep love for animals and worked in the veterinary field as a veterinary nurse (RVT) for over 10 years, specializing in canine rehab.

She continues to assist her clients by utilizing their strengths and talents. Through Numerology her clients have a deeper understanding of themselves as well as others. Numbers are not just in a person's chart, but in our businesses, home addresses, street names, and much more! Numbers are the window to our true essence!

Key Takeaways:

• Liza shares her most recent grief story when her mother was diagnosed with cancer.
• Liza didn’t have the time to really grieve as she needed.
• Liza shares how numerology works on a collective and personal level.
• Susan talks about how each year of her life had a sort of theme, a topic that kept appearing in different forms throughout the year.
• Liza analyzes Susan’s numbers.
• Susan remembers when her husband Paul, started to see the numbers 9-11 recurrently and felt it was a bad sign.
• Liza’s intention with numerology is to create ease.
• Grief stays with you, it just changes.
• Liza explains how numerology can help people with their grief.
• Liza shares the methodology of her practice as a Numerologist.
• Liza suggests you honor yourself and where you are at any given moment.
• You are not alone in your grief.

Resources

Tendrilsofgrief.com

Email Susan: [email protected]

Meet Liza Spiridon

Follow Liza on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Susan, your host, welcomes  Kate J. Meyer to today’s episode. Kate is an author, a public speaker, a professional counselor, and an ordained minister. Kate is the author of The Red Couch, a novel just out in the summer of 2021 about missed expectations and seeing how the past doesn’t define but informs you. Kate’s book: Faith Doesn’t Erase Grief is a get-help-now manual on loss and grief at the intersections of faith and psychology, helping spiritual readers see loss more clearly. A fan of NaNoRiMo writing goals, she lives in western Michigan with her husband and two chocolate labs, Rocky and Duke.

Key Takeaways:

• Kate shares her grief story
• We never know when we are going to need to know about grief and how to navigate it.
• People need permission to grieve in their own particular way.
• Kate and Susan talk about how society imposes ridiculous time periods for grieving.
• Our grief experiments with different changes as life go on.
• Susan shares her experience this fall, being the first one alone after her husband died and now that her daughter went to college.
• In most situations in life avoiding pain is ok, but not with grief. While grieving, we have to walk through our pain to be able to release it.
• Susan confesses she was angry at God.
• We are allowed to question and express our anger.
• God created our emotions, He won’t be surprised by them.
• Things just are - we assign value to them.
• Grief is a whole being experience.
• Kate shares her inspiration and hopes in her book: Faith Doesn’t Erase Grief.
• Faith and grief can coexist; you can be angry at God and still keep your faith.
• Doubt is an essential part of faith.
• Kate shares her advice for those who feel they have lost their faith: Hope is a cushion, it doesn’t fix the problem, but it helps in sustaining and supporting us.

Resources

Tendrilsofgrief.com

Email Susan: [email protected]

Meet Kate J. Meyer

Find more about Kate on Instagram and Facebook 

Visit katejmeyer.com

Faith Doesn't Erase Grief: Embracing the Experience and Finding Hope, Kate J. Meyer

Susan welcomes Nicola Mercer to today’s episode. Nicola is a transformational health coach, supporting women in business to transform their health into wealth by building confidence and self-worth using her successful framework of mindset, movement, nutrition, sleep, and stress. Her vision is to help normalize a healthy lifestyle for families, so kids grow up having healthy habits modeled to them, value themselves, and live with health and happiness.

Having been made redundant from the corporate world in 2021, Nicola made a big decision to pivot her career and enter the entrepreneurial world, launching Life Now Coaching. Nicola is a certified health coach and qualified personal trainer with over twenty years of expertise in one of the world's largest sports brands leading successful projects and teams. She combines her corporate leadership experience with her journey of living with mental and physical health challenges to support other women to build healthy, happy, and strong lives.

Nicola has learned through the power of moving her body daily and putting sustainable habits in place the positive difference this can make to how you feel, think, and live. She advocates that living a great life and achieving the success you desire results from how you take care of your mind, body, and soul.

Key Takeaways:

• Nicola shares her grief story.
• Waiting for someone to die is just horrible, losing that special someone also means that his or her suffering has finished.
• After someone who was suffering passes away, the first feeling is relief, and consequently comes immense suffering.
• PTSD is a common diagnosis for caregivers of terminal patients.
• Grief doesn’t go away, it becomes a part of who you are.
• Nicola talks about how to help someone grieving by sharing techniques and valuable advice.
• Susan shares how she focuses on the beautiful story that comes with her grief, it was the end of a loving relationship filled with great memories.
• Death is another stage of life, instead of funerals we should do a celebration of life.
• You can choose how to transit your grief, you can decide what is the possible healthiest way to process your loss.
• How do you want to feel at the end of your life? What would equal a happy life for you?
• So many of us live in the past or the future, forgetting our present moment.

Resources

Tendrilsofgrief.com

Email Susan: [email protected]

The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing, by Bronnie Ware

Meet Nicola Mercer

Follow Nicola on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Life Now Coaching

Find more about Nicola’s free challenge to build your self-worth and know why you should take care of yourself for a strong and healthy life.

Susan, your host, welcomes Gwenda Lambert to today’s episode. Long before becoming an Advanced Grief Recovery Method Specialist, Gwenda was drawn to helping people navigate loss. She had experienced 17 deaths by the time she was 21 as well as being the daughter of a Gerontology nurse.

Her greatest loss came in 2012, a loss of health. She experienced a Post Traumatic Stress diagnosis that completely sidelined her. She was unable to focus or hold a thought. She was unable to sleep or actually even feel safe enough to leave her home most days. Even in all the chaos, she knew she had to find out what was going on. Basically, all those traumas and emotional losses including deaths and loss of trust that were locked in a room burst out. While she is well versed in the death and dying part, grief and embracing all those messy emotions still needed work. She had tried many different modalities from Yoga and somatic work to talk therapy yet it wasn’t until she found the Grief Recovery Method, a simple, yet not easy, four-step process that allows you to get a lay of the land of your own emotional landscape, that she was able to embrace her incomplete relationships and trauma that held her back in ways she wasn’t aware of. Now she wants to share that emotional freedom with you.

Key Takeaways:

• Anger, loneliness, and confusion are all part of grief too.
• Gwenda talks about the brain after experiencing trauma.
• Grief not only comes from death.
• Laughing and crying are both expressions; if you are not comfortable around tears you need to ask yourself what is wrong with you with this emotion.
• Gwenda explains how she ended up with post-traumatic stress disorder.
• Everyone grieves differently.
• Self-care is never selfish.
• It is hard to be supportive sometimes, we need to learn how to support people.
• Allow yourself to feel how you feel because if you don’t, it will come out in an unexpected way.
• Grieving is not necessarily being strong but it is courageous and brave to do what you can each day.
• If you got through the first year after losing someone and you are still standing, prize yourself, it is not easy to grieve.
• Practice self-attention, pay attention to yourself, and learn to treat yourself with compassion and respect.

Resources

Tendrilsofgrief.com

Email Susan: [email protected]

Meet Gwenda Lambert

Learn more about Gwenda

Email Gwenda at [email protected]

Today, Susan, your host, welcomes you to another episode of Tendrils of Grief Podcast. In this episode, she shares her thoughts about going through the upcoming holidays while grieving. You would say that holidays are tough enough when someone is grieving but unfortunately, there are a lot of pressures that add to the pain of grieving during this particular time of the year (parties, gifts, celebrations…). Susan shares the best tips she has compiled over the years of grief and podcasting.

Key Takeaways:

• Susan acknowledges the suffering of going through the holidays while grieving.
• Tip no. 1: Be clear about how you want your holiday experience to look and feel.
• Tip no. 2: Communicate your wishes to others. (They don’t know how you feel.)
• Tip no. 3: Set limits when visiting.

• Tip no. 4: Don't be afraid to say “No.”

• Tip no. 5: Surround yourself with the right people.
• Tip no. 6: Make self-care a priority.
• Tip no. 7: Ask for help!
• Tip no. 8: Be kind to yourself! (This is the most important tip, and not only during holidays.)

Resources

Tendrilsofgrief.com

Email Susan: [email protected]