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Hi. My name is Julie Hasselberger.  I am going through some incredible grief and trauma healing.  My son passed away at 26 years old, and losing him left a hole in my heart.  Shortly after that, I experience some terrible relational trauma and felt myself in a spiral.   As I continue to seek what comes next for me at 59 years old, having everything change, I want to share the light and hope that is guiding me.  It is my goal to be of service in some way to others.  That being said, I hope you will listen to my stories and thoughts.  We are all on some level of self actualization, I think.   This is done, this podcast, out of my love for my son, for others, and for myself.

This episode will cover why being able to stay in the present moment is helpful to our connection and healing.  I'll share some tools that I am using, to manage stress, adhd, cPtsd, complicated grief, dissociation and depression.  Yes, I have all of those.  

What is our real "authentic" self.  How do we figure that out? 

What is the benefit to our lives, from practicing mindfulness and being still?

We hear alot about "be in the present moment" but what exactly does that mean?

In all healing modalities that I have found myself in, there is an element of finding peace and growth, in the present moment.  Meditation has literally transformed my ability to know who I am on the inside.

What are a few tools that can help dysregulation, and other trauma related symptoms?  I share a few of mine...

Meditation .

Gratitude work.

Journaling. 

Exercise. 

Yoga. 

Prayer.

Being in nature. 

Art work. 

Music. 

Caring for plants. 

Being with animals. 

Setting intentions. 

Affirmations. 

Vision boards 

Goal Setting 

Manifestation practices: abundance, financial wealth, health, family goals 

I am a student of manifestation, and believe in it so strongly. 

I wrap up the discussion of healing, with a chat about energy.  During my entire life I have always felt a deep desire to care and help other people.  I also seem to be able to sense and feel and see energy.  I have recently affirmed that I am an empath, and none of this really surprises me.  I have just been entangled with being a special needs caregiver for my son, 24/7 for 26 years.  Now that he has passed away, I am left just witnessing what has been around me this entire time.  Some of it, really not so great.  Some of it, maybe, lying dormant in a sense.  But understanding energy is new to me, and it is helping me heal myself.

 Stress, fight or flight, ages us and makes us sick.  So why not, I say, try living a life from the heart space.  Affirm what you believe you are worth, and do not settle for the breadcrumbs.   I am definitely in the middle of personal crisis myself right now, and spend time lost in the pain.  Which I am learning is also perfectly ok.   It is perfectly ok to feel and be whatever and who ever you are.   When I do re emerge from periods of low times, I am right back into the practices of spirituality, stillness, creativity, focus, love, gratitude, developing healthy boundaries, and accepting what my intuition is guiding me towards. 

This is what being human is.  Learning and being curious and accepting.  I am trying.   I am determined to lean into intuition and let it guide me, from the space of the very moment I am in.

Also,  I feel my son’s

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The Adapted Life, Finding Next

 Podcast 

Season 4

Episode 32

I have been wandering around in a place called grief and trauma.  As I write this, I can share that I most definitely am not the same person I was before my son passed away on January 12, 2024.  

For 26 years I loved and sacrificed for my son.  But there is so much more to my story that was going on at the same time.  Trauma, dissociation, depression, betrayal, confusion, and fear.   

What do I do now?  Which way do I go?  Certainly not to my early career dreams, because that is not my timeline anymore.    Come along while I explore and learn how to take brave steps into the new version of me.  What do we do next, after loss, after the remaking has happened. 

When Daniel passed away, I sat with my reality at age 58, that I had no idea who I was.  Or what to do next.   

 This episode is my evidence that I have a lot of purpose still to discover.  And that I am a woman independent of my story, but also empowered by my story.  

For the time being I will call my podcast, The Adapted Life, Finding Next.  It will forever be a place of love and compassion for my Daniel.  For what he taught me about life.  And for other women who may just possibly be like I was.  Surviving and caring for someone else, shrinking themselves because who has time, swallowing trauma and living on bread crumbs, metaphorically.    I am so grateful, and inspired.  I am still hurt and grieving. 

Could it be, that by dealing with some trauma, some other energy is now leaking out.   I just feel so many things, for myself, for others, and I love that my weird ness is not something to calm down, or quiet down, or shhh….   It is simply me.   

So, I’m adapting and learning.  Seeking and still also hurting and full of pain.  But the direction has changed.  I took back my power by affirming that, no, that thing was not ok.  

I am proud that I was a Mom and caregiver.  I am also seeking avenues for healing with my other children for what it has cost them.   

Thank you for taking the time to listen and connect.  

Keep working on getting closer to your inner light. 

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254 days ago, from the day I recorded this talk, my beautiful son Daniel passed away at the age of 26.  

The journey I am on now, is really bizarre.  There is no linear progression as far as I am concerned.  Having been my son's full time care giver for his entire 26 years of life, made an indelible mark on my soul.  In the loss of my boy, and the beautiful life we had caring for him, I am mostly alone and sad.  Talk about your loss of purpose.  The struggle is real.    

Sometimes I have hit days where I experience what I named "the stuck".  Where I completely lose all focus and nothing I try to do feels possible.  Like a numb dissociation.  So strange to be "just me" and not "me and Daniel".   

The adapted life, is still the adapted life.  Adapting to loss of the son who fostered the reengineering of our entire life style and value system because he needed care 24/7.  And then, blip...  I stand in my home, listening to the sounds of the house.  So quiet.   Stuck in the unknowing. 

Walk with me as I work through these days of grief.  I have found such comfort in connecting to people who also know the pain of tragic loss.  It remakes us into a new person.  A stranger when we look in a mirror.   That is very strange.  

And the pain doesn't end.  You grieve your person, and you also grieve the loss of yourself. 

That is where I am now.  Intuitively trying to navigate through a strange reality where I barely know myself now. 

Please visit my art shop on ETSY.com called "Daniel's Special Art".  It is the shop we created with our collaborative art pieces.  And also is going to showcase the watercolors and other pieces that have been my way to channel my pain.  A story. A journey.  A life well lived.  A life lost.   The work of getting unstuck. 

All of my heart to you, 

Julie Hasselberger 

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Even though I Grieve 

Even though I grieve

I can smile at your photo

Even though I cry 

I can feel grateful 

Even though I am broken

I can limp along today

Even though I miss you

I can create new memories now

Even though you were always here

I know that you are gone

Even though my house is quiet

I can still feel, and hear you

Even though I grieve you son

My love spans all time and space.

I will always be your Mom. 

You will always be my Daniel. 

Even though I grieve and hurt 

I am healed by memories of you. 

Dear listeners and friends, 

 This is the idea behind this episode .... I AM 213 DAYS INTO THIS GRIEF....  

So, I say to myself, each day.  “Wake up.  Breathe. Be grateful. Check in with yourself. What should I do next?”   Here I am.  Back in the comfort of my own words and hoping that somehow, I can find others who are learning to live with loss, and grief.    Are you there?   How can I help?  How can we help each other?   And I stop, make myself a coffee from my Nespresso machine, take the dog out, and hug my husband.   Then I wonder if I am having attention deficit because I forgot what I originally intended to do before I started making my coffee.    Ever have that happen to you? 

OK.  Keep going Julie.  BREATHE!!  Grief is like a getting a new skin.  A transformation into a new human being whose heart has been broken beyond repair.  The pain just becomes part of everything.  By osmosis grief enters every cell of your physical human existence and forms a new person.    It is this new you, that supports how you cope.  It is the new way you interpret the world.  It is you transformed in how you exist in relationships. 

As I have taken minute by minute, stepping along with this new " me " in my life after Daniel, figuring out what to do now has been really hard.  I feel like a tree with no trunk and just a lot of branches floating in the wind.  Nothing is grounded.  Nothing is landing.  

But here I am, and this is now episode 30 of a podcast project that I had hoped would help people who are caregivers, that has turned into "People who are caregivers whose person died".   

Please let me know if there is anything I say that connects with you, or make suggestions to help me.   I am so grateful to be here now.  And I hope you are too!!!  

Much Love, 
Julie A. Hasselberger 

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The Adapted Life Podcast 

Season 3 

Episode 29 

4 months of grieving.  This is a checking in, of sorts.  Before I begin, I would like to reach out and let you know that if you are also grieving, and that this resonates with you, please let me know.   Especially if you once had an overly full life of caregiving for someone who is now gone and you feel lost.   Or just that you feel lost.  

On the other side, having lost my son and experiencing this thing called grief, I’ve found myself in a crazy storm of adapting.  Of surviving.  Of figuring out just what the heck to do. 

I am surrounded by blessings, but also by endless triggers that remind me of what life was like caring for Daniel.  Most days I truly feel like I am losing touch with sanity.  I still dissociate often.  And this is where I am going through the motions, but do not feel like I am actually in my body, more like I am floating outside of it not connected to anything. 

I share a list of some of the things I've been doing. I GOT THE NUMBERS WRONG IN THE RECORDING.  PLEASE FORGIVE ME, FOCUS DOES NOT COME EASY THESE DAYS!

Trying.  Trying to find light when it feels so dark.   I talk often around here, about a vision that I had of Daniel…. In my vision, or dream, not sure, I saw his face and he was asking me if I could feel the light.  “Can you feel the light Mom?”  It was so real …. I woke up startled.  So I focus on light.  Light in the day. Light in the dark.  Light.  

Here is a poem I wrote about light.  The kind of light I imagine that shines from Heaven.

Light

The simple act of visualizing

Brought me to a brighter light

Glimmering. Radiant, white almost

Streaking in from the Spring morning

When I woke I knew the sun was out

Walking the dogs I was warm

Yet after my space of meditation

During which my pain released its tears

My eyes opened to a different light

So shiny and strong it was so

That I took a picture of the window 

Through which is was coming

The morning was no different 

Than other mornings I saw

How could it be so much brighter now

Pulsating and casting white radiance

Then a message came to my tired heart

And I lay my hands on its beating

The light was not from the outside 

It was coming straight from me. 

May 7, 2024

Missing my Daniel every second.

My YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQr7Ot0J0o6_gRnG_fJvzDg

Facebook
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opportunities please email : 
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The Adapted Life Podcast 

Season 3 

Episode 28

A new season.  A dark tunnel.  A lonely place.  A monsoon of tears. A red bird.  A sun rise.  A blanket.  A box of tissue.  A pile of cards.  An empty room.  The loss of a son.  The weight of grief.  One purple crocus.  Sickness.  A broken heart.  A hole in my soul.

This, my friends is a very difficult conversation I am going to be having with you, with my self.  Once again, everything has been traumatically changed, because we lost our precious son on January 12, 2024 to an unexpected sudden illness.

Think of this reality.  I spent 26 years, accepting and adapting to life as a special needs mom and caregiver.  I let go of my education and career, to be Daniel's champion. 

 We did everything possible to adapt and keep Daniel’s world in the best quality of life possible.  Relationships with nurses, doctors, therapists, etc. to provide medical care interwoven with his daily life.  I worked with DDS to set up a self managed vocational day program, where by not only could we bring resources to the house for Daniel, but I was also paid to be the vocational person getting paid to manage it all.  It was a wonderful arrangement and it took years to get it established.  We had just bought a new wheelchair van,  it's sitting out in my driveway with only 2000 miles on it.   We had summer of adventures planned for Daniel in his new van. 

 And now.  Quiet.  

Its all very painful.  

And snap shot to today, which is Friday, April 5.  It has been 84 days since that horrible January day.  

Grief is my new tethered spirit.  Grief, Love, Loss…. 

Everything, in my life, was interwoven with Daniel’s life.  

So, this is the first episode, of Season 3.  I’m a member of the “I lost a child” club.  The grief club.  The “I sacrificed my life to take care of my disabled son for 26 years and now he and that life have just abruptly stopped and disappeared forever” club. 

Thanks for listening.  I hope you will let me continue to share this journey I started into podcasting, and telling my story.  Our story.  I am sure there are many who are also grieving out there.   To you, I say, I can only empathize and place my foot next to yours so we can walk the new path together. 

Keep looking for those miracles and signs.  They have been showing up for me.  I know Daniel is telling me to “see the light”.   So I shall. 

You can connect with me via Facebook, Instagram, Youtube.   My business address is:
PO BOX 3611 Newtown, CT 06470

Daniel's Special Art is still on ETSY and I will keep it alive in his memory.  
I'm not sure what kind of things I will be putting out there, but I think it's so important to talk about what happens to caregivers in this kind of situation.  

Much Love to you all. 

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Episode 27  

As caregiver for my son, who is 26 years old, I have had quite a journey.  There have been times, when I felt completely lost and down, out of sync with who I am.  Not even knowing what my core values are anymore, aside from the tough task of survival mode. 

Part of self actualization, and striving towards a joyful life and soul purpose, is really taking stock of what your CORE VALUES are, and how your life is in alignment.  It's the "taking a look" inward, that happens, and realizing that if you focus on becoming more aware what feels right, and what doesn't . 

I talk about how I have not always been aware that things I was doing were not in alignment with who I was.  As I have made changes, expansion in so many positive ways has happened or still is just beginning to happen.   

I remain dedicated to caring for my son, of course.  I talk about how he and I may be two separate lives, but I am LIVING FOR THE BOTH OF US.   And, it makes so much sense for me to be living to my deepest souls purpose and core values, because I am a better Mom and caregiver to Daniel when I am deeply happy and fulfilled. 

It may not be possible to do all of the things you desire, but you can take inventory and try to do less of what doesn't suit you, and more of what does.   

I hope you enjoy the recording.  It is my raw and heartfelt feelings after almost 26 years of being a caregiver for my beautiful son, and Mom to all of my beautiful kids.  

I am very grateful for any ears that are listening.   

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In this episode, I had been pondering the work I've been doing on self-love and releasing attachments.  I asked myself, what does this mean to caregivers who carry with them a lifetime of changes that traumatically altered the course of their lives.  

While I do believe that letting go of attachments that result in negative results, is important, we also can't always do it so easily.   In accepting and sending love to these "attachments", we allow ourselves to heal, to learn from them, and to be aware and grateful for the positive ways our life has been enhanced by them.  Even though, yes, great pain.  Great grief.  

So often as I work on myself, I find concepts that become a bit convoluted and challenging.   This is is one of them.   As special needs parents, caregivers, we are literally attached to our loved one, because we are responsible for keeping them alive. 

The RSV Super Bowl Sunday Story.  I told the story of the very beginning of my trauma with my son Daniel, when he was 8 weeks old.   It is so fresh in my mind, and very hard to let go of.   In telling the story, I found myself feeling such appreciation and love and empathy for younger Julie.  and John.  And what they went through.    I sent that story some love.    But I believe it will be forever a part of me and who I have become as a human. 

I hope you enjoy the episode.   If you have a story that you would like to tell, or would like me to read for you, feel free to email me at [email protected] 

You can follow my you tube channel or instagram.   Sending love from my adapted life here in Sandy Hook, CT.      Keep moving forward with love and gratitude.  XOXOXO


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Hello my adapting friends.  Welcome to Episode 25 of The Adapted Life Podcast.

In this episode I wanted to talk about that word, health.  And its sister "self-care".  Taking care of our own health care needs is extremely complicated in so many ways.  We literally have our lives intertwined with the health care and well being of our loved one. (s). So there in lies the puzzle, you really always have to put your self second in a sense.  Getting to the point of taking your life back, in terms of making sure you are doing what you need to do, for you, is a huge step.   Especially when you are 25 years into this journey like I am.

I wanted to encourage you, walk the walk with you, and let you know that I get how darn hard it is to just get your teeth cleaned or getting to your annual mammogram etc.   I find that more of my appointments are missed, than actually attended.   but I never give up.  Most of power self empowerment has gained momentum as I have focused on loving myself, and realizing how much I am worth, and how much I matter.

So I hope you enjoy this little chat.  Please feel free to find me on Facebook,
https://www.facebook.com/julie.hasselberger/

On Instagram
https://www.instagram.com

On YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQr7Ot0J0o6_gRnG_fJvzDgAnd I would love it if you found time to share this podcast with someone who may need it.

Daniel and I have an art shop on Esty.com.  It is called "Daniel's Special Art" and there we sell merchandise that displays our collaborative and adapted art experiments and projects.   Would love to share that with you all.  Its a fun way to create and build something with your loved one, if you enjoy art.  Here is the link for the shop
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Thank you.   I look forward to chatting again very soon.  XOXOXO 
Julie Hasselberger 

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In this episode, I wanted to talk about finding space outside of caregiving to do something that your intuition is calling you to do.

As we know, carrying the weight of someone else's life and well being on our shoulders is a very heavy lift.  But this doesn't negate your passion and desire to do something that brings you joy, outside of the realm of caregiving. 

I have been working on pushing into my purpose, but sometimes I realize that I get slowed down, interrupted by life, and thrown off track.  So I started asking myself why, kind of like the 5 why analysis I used to use back in the old days of being an HR manager in a manufacturing company.

I want you to know, from my heart, that you are not alone.  I am not alone.  We are on a special life journey, that sometimes feels like we are on a different planet. 

I hope you are enjoying the "adapted life podcast" and I would love so much to hear from you.

You can find me on instagram @jhasselberger

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