Why She Says Grief Is Good For You- with Tracee Dunblazier

You know you need something, you're just not sure what. You've been listening, you're doing the work, but there's still this feeling that you're circling the same place, like you're waiting for the thing that finally moves you. Now maybe you've thought about working with me one-on-one. Maybe something's held you back, the timing, the money, or you're just not sure you're ready yet. I get that. And I want you to know there's still a place for you. I built a resource for exactly this moment, guided meditations for when the waves hit and you just need to breathe. Workbooks to help you get out of your head and onto the page, ebooks on what near-death experiences tell us about the people we've lost, and whether they're really gone, a full course for widows and widowers who are ready to find their way back to living, and a full course for the evidence of the afterlife. And all of it is available for pay what you want. Nobody gets turned away because of money. I think these resources are valuable, but I don't want to hold them back because you don't have the money to pay for them. You don't have to wait until you're ready for coaching. The next step might be a lot smaller than you think. To find out, go to grief2growth.com/store. That's grief, the numeral 2, growth.com/store. And check out the resources I've made for you. So hi, everybody, this is Brian D Smith back with another episode of Grief 2 Growth. And today I've got with me Tracy Dunblazer. She's a Los Angeles-based spiritual empath. She's a shaman. She She's an 8-time National Award-winning author. Tracy is a multi-sensitive. She has a blend of intuitive information combined with different modalities, and that's provided the opportunity for many to achieve deep healing and create the success and peace that they seek in their lives. She's written a book called Transformative Grief. And I want to read one of the endorsements from it because it's from a friend of mine, Austin Wells. And Austin says, author and spiritual empath Tracy Dunblazer's Transformative Grief An Ancient Ritual of Healing for Modern Times, is an eloquent, straightforward lighthouse for anyone lost in the deep waters of grief. Sourcing from her professional and personal experience, she illuminates the inward descent of grief as an opportunity for deeper self-awareness and personal empathy. Through poignant exercises and introspective guidelines, the reader is guided towards navigating the depths of their grief and emerging a more conscious and heart-open soul. Austin calls it a master guidebook for anyone going through extraordinary change. So I, with that, I'm excited to welcome Tracy to the show today.

I'm great. I'm very happy to be welcomed. And just so you know, I have a, I have a brain cat. There's a cat in the background and when she wants to talk, there is no shutting her up. So I might pick her up and just over-love her for a minute. This is— here she comes.

Yeah, they can always tell. They can always tell when you're recording. They— my dog acts up too. She'll probably roll through here in a couple of minutes and she likes to whine. So We love animals here.

Good. This is Charlotte.

Hello, Charlotte. She's beautiful. So for anyone that writes about grief, I always have to ask, what inspired you to write a book about grief?

Well, I, my, I have, I have grieved every day of my life until I was about 50. And that was, there was from 35 to 50, there were some major turning points that really shifted it. But I experienced an enormous amount of grief from spiritual trauma, from different emotional traumas, from, you know, some physical experiences. But the spiritual trauma— I was born psychic and would constantly have night terrors and dreams that come from other times and spaces. And all of that grief, grief was always my salve to awakening, to accessing my faith, to reconnecting my— with my higher spirit, with the Creator. Grief was the way that I did it and then learned from that, from that experience. I, you know, have grieving every day. At some point, usually it was, you know, at night, and then daytime I wouldn't grieve, and then nighttime I would cry myself to sleep. All. And it wasn't something that I could speak with people about. I didn't want to get Western medicine help because I didn't, I didn't think they were going to help me access what, what was really going on with me.

Hmm.

And I didn't want to be told I was crazy. And I didn't want to be on medication. I didn't want to— there was a lot of things that I knew weren't right for me. And then I want to be clear, it's not right for me. That's not everybody else's story. So that's not a That's not a statement about mental health care. But it was, it was definitely my way. And it was from, from that process, I learned a lot about the spiritual process of grief and what it does for us, how it transforms our ideas, beliefs, experiences, it actually changes the neurons in our brain, and creates a space where we can repopulate our, our neural pathways with new, new beliefs, thoughts, and ideas. So it's really one of the ways that helps us relate differently to our memories. Because I don't know if— go ahead.

No, it's interesting that you identified that as grief, because typically think of grief as like a particular thing, like a particular loss of a person or something. But it sounds like you had a— you would, I think, what a lot of people will call it we call depression, which you're going through, but you identified it as grief.

Yes, well, the reason depression is a part of it, but depression is a relationship to something. And I find that people who are depressed, it's because they haven't allowed themselves the, the opportunity, opportunity to see and accept the truth as it is. When we are, when we're depressed, we are slowing down all of our systems to take a deeper look inside. And if we are willing to do that self-reflection, then our spirit leads us in that direction. But sometimes, and I'm not really talking about clinical depression, because clinical depression is something different, right? He's clinically depressed, their, their chemistry doesn't allow much shift. And so it would take an enormous amount of behavioral change, which is oftentimes impossible because they don't feel up to it. Right? They can't overcome the feeling aspect. But in general, we experience depression when we are slowing down to take, take, take a deeper look inside. And then we experience anxiety when we are speeding up to become vigilant in our perspective. Right? And those two things are a part of spiritual awakening. And spiritual awakening occurs when we— grief is always a part of our spiritual awakening. And when I say that, when people experience an extreme loss, the loss of a loved one, or the loss of a physical loss, disease, the loss of a house, any, any kind of loss of major relationship, but any— something that people have been relating to for a long period of time, when that goes away, it causes an internal shift that changes the endocrine system and oftentimes can spark what we call a spiritual shift or a spiritual awakening. And when that happens, our endocrine system, the pineal gland, the pituitary gland, the thyroid, many, you each, each one of our, uh, glands in our body that connect to the endocrine system carry a sacred light or sacred geometry. And when we have an awakening of those places, um, it awakens certain energy and information in our spirit, our soul, and that soul energy or information becomes a part of our consciousness. We become aware of it. And it is through that awareness period that grief often comes. Right? So when we— when grief— when I'm talking about grief, I'm specifically talking about the crying, the wailing, the, the enormous emotional response that comes when we, when we feel that loss or that opening. Our culture is the one that tells us it's about loss. Our spirit tells us it's about awakening and expanding and accessing more information and more truthful information about ourselves. The more we— whatever that truth is, whatever— I— each person has their own truth. And then there are spiritual truths. And each person will live their own truth. Going through each awakening, one after another and after another until they get to the common spiritual truth that we all experience. Wow.

Wow. So you said you were— I think I heard you were kind of always grieving. Did this start as a child?

Started as an infant. I mean, interestingly enough, this is very— it's funny, I've not thought about this. But my mother used to always say, oh, you were— I was such a good baby. I never cried. I never fussed. I was, I was always helpful to her. I was the youngest of 3. But interestingly enough, I never— I mean, I never spoke to her about my night terrors, the dreams that I would have, the spiritual experiences, entities, all kinds of strange things happened. And I would grieve my way through them and work through them on my own. And so during the day, I really was a good a good kid. I didn't cry much. I, you know, if somebody else was crying, I am an empath, so I could join them in that. But it was always— my desire was always to be an anchor. Yeah, my desire was always to be an anchor to keep them steady.

Yeah, that's, that's really interesting. Because I think I was like that as a child. I felt out of place and sad. But I didn't know for any reason. I wouldn't, I wouldn't have called it grief at the time. But I just felt like, you know, just out of place. And my parents a few times were, they knew that I'd stayed up all night and they didn't know until I was an adult why that happened. So yeah, I can relate to that.

Absolutely. I think too, that the other thing that oftentimes we, because we are, because we are, what's the word that I want? Our culture teaches us, we are indoctrinated to believe that grief is bad, it's negative, it weakens us. And so we don't allow it. And so we never get— because you don't— once you grieve, then you get to access what is the purpose of the grief, the deeper understanding that comes with what you're grieving about. But if you don't allow the grief process, you can never get to that information. And most people stay in anger or depression.

Yeah.

And anger is the next step. But eventually, that anger needs to give way to the expansive sense of crying or emotion that comes. And so we have to teach ourselves.

So you call yourself a multi-sensitive. What do you— what do you mean by that?

Stay with us. We'll be right back.

You know, one of the hardest things about grief, most of the people in your life just don't get it. They want you to be further along than you are. They get uncomfortable when you bring it up. So you stop bringing it up. And that's why I started writing. My Substack is where I go deeper. Thoughts I don't always get to in the podcast. Essays on consciousness, on continuing bonds, on what it actually means to carry a loss and still build a life. The stuff that used to keep me up at night written out in a way that I hope meets you in the morning. But here's what I didn't expect when I started it. The community that showed up, people who are doing exactly what you're doing, listening, learning, trying to find their footing, readers who comment, who share their own stories, who remind each other that none of us are as alone in this as we feel. And that's what the Substack has become, a place to go deeper with me and to find your people. It's free to subscribe. Find me at grieftogrowth.com/substack. That's grief2growth.com/substack. Or just go to Substack and search for Grief to Growth. I hope to see you there.

I mean by that, that I'm clairvoyant, clairaudient, and clairsentient, which means I channel, I hear things, see things. Sometimes have prophetic dreams, not all the time. It really, my experience, oftentimes I call myself a spiritual empath, instead of just an emotional empath, because I often take, that's how I read people as I take on their spirit, and I experience it and then go, oh, okay, I could recognize that. And so it's a, it's a way of being multidimensional. I believe that we are all this way, I just I came in with a deeper level of proficiency or awareness of it already.

Yeah. So when you say you're multi-sense, is it with people that are living, people that are passed, or both?

Everybody. I mean, so it's interesting because I— this, this— I really struggled when I started this, this work publicly and working with people, how to describe what it is that I do because I didn't— I couldn't limit it. There, I deal with everybody and any— I deal with everybody and anything. But you can't, you know, you can say that in an elevator pitch, but it's really hard to create a name. And I didn't, I didn't like the bad rap that psychics get by using the word psychic. Mediumship kind of implies a limitation, or an expectation that doesn't always happen. Right, just because everybody's got some dead people, and they don't always come through.

Right.

Oftentimes, they'll— some, some will have messages. But, you know, if somebody's there, and they've got a message, it will always come through. But people have this expectation, if you're a medium, that that is the only— that is the only thing that's going to happen in a session.

Right, right. So you're getting everything from everywhere.

Exactly.

Yeah. So in terms of your career, did you What did you have a job, a normal job, quote, before this?

Or? Oh, yes, I've had, I've had multiple normal jobs. I worked as a makeup artist, waitress. I worked in entertainment for a while. I did a cabaret show where I sang. And I've always, I've always been psychic, but it wasn't until I came to LA and started to tell people about it. And that's Paloma in the background, just FYI. She doesn't know, but the door is open for you if you want to go out. She's looking at me because she wants to go out, but she thinks that— that she doesn't know yet that the door is not open because she hasn't looked yet. Yeah, she will go look. So I would— what I was doing directly before this is I was doing special events for Donna Karan. So that was in the fragrance world. I was in the fragrance world. And I started doing this work with the public when I became a gift with purchase. If you've ever gone to the mall and bought a bottle of cologne and you get a gift with it. Well, I was— I started— they— when my boss found out what I did, he invited me to— sorry, he invited me to do readings for people.

Oh, wow.

And I had such a profound response to that. Like, I literally— people lined up out the door for the first 2 or 3 events that I did. And then people were having these cathartic, you know, tearful experiences with me just for the 5 minutes that we sat together. And so that was one of the things that really taught me about empathy and how deeply we need it and how indoctrinated we are to not do it. Because just oftentimes when people sit in my presence, they just unlock. And anyway, so that was my first experience of it. And that was about 25 years ago.

Yeah.

And I've been doing it, working with public, with the public since that point.

Okay. So were those mostly mediumistic readings or psychic readings, combination?

They would, they would— I mean, again, it's all for me, it's all the same thing. It's all psychic energy, you're reading what's what is in somebody's space. And for me, when I don't limit what that means to me, it could be whatever a person— I, I read to the degree at which a person is ready, willing, and able to receive.

Right, right, right.

So whatever comes through is what is what people are ready and able to receive. You could say that they were psychic readings. But psychic implies the psychic vibration, if you want to get technical about it, is, is it lacks emotion, which is kind of the point. It's, it's, it's one is able to see what's going on without feeling it. I always feel it. So, so I oftentimes would feel what somebody had going on. And then I would say, well, I, I feel X, Y, and Z. And they're like, okay, yes, those are, those are, those are things I've been thinking about, right? Because they weren't they weren't coming through a feeling place for them, but a thinking place.

Interesting. Yeah. So tell me about your business now, the publishing business you have.

Well, so Go Tracy Publishing focuses on spiritual tools for the 21st century. I create cards. I've got the book. I've got my rainbow Warrior Activation Deck. They're all tools to help people connect more deeply to themselves. The grief book, here's the Transformative Grief Book. This covers the point, the point of doing this, this, and this actually the Transformative Grief Book, I did not publish it, it's actually published through Red Feather Mind Body Spirit, which is Schiffer Publishing. But I did, I wanted to do this grief book, because we need to, as a culture, change the way we think about grief, and the way we see ourselves and our emotionalism. And we need to give ourselves much more space to much more often experience small grief responses to things so that when the big things come, it doesn't take us down. You know, or that we have beliefs about it that allow us to surrender to our grief for a period of time. And that we can still manage a life despite our grief.

Yeah.

Right. A lot, a lot of people feel like, if I ever let myself feel any grief at all, I could never stop.

Yes.

And right. That's, that's, that's a big one. And I, it will always stop. Grief, grief is finite. Whatever it is, it might be, you might be layered. Like, I mean, so for me, when I, if I had to break it down, I've probably been doing 10,000 years worth of grief in, in one 50-year lifetime. You know, of course, I'm, those are made-up facts. But yeah, but the idea here is that I, the, my grief that I experienced was multi-layered and multi-leveled and scanned many, many years back, not just this life experience for me. So I had to process those things. When, when, if we die in a state or condition that we cannot process our own transition, it will, it will stay with us until we can process it. Somebody, somebody's got to process it. And so that's, that's how I came into this life experience to process out these different layers of grief that I brought with me from another time so that I could, A, complete that work and B, better understand what grief is and how, how and why our world needs it today.

Yeah, interesting. So needs grief. Tell me what you mean by that.

We were— bad things are happening. It is happening, people. So we have to embrace the, the spiritual process of enlightenment that comes when we allow ourselves to feel what it is that we feel. And grief will shift how you see things. If more people were grieving rather than being fearful, we would not have the world that we would today. But they're not. They're getting angry, they're getting frustrated, they're wanting to bully because they've been bullied, right? So there's all of this dichotomy of going back and forth, and, and grieving takes both of those pieces and brings it to the center. And for whatever it is that you're grieving, it's going to, uh, after, after you've grieved, it opens up a new perspective on what was causing the conflict. Right? And we don't really give— we don't have, you know, religion in our, in our urban world today is not as popular. You know, that I've done a little bit of research on it. And a lot of the millennials, 30% of the millennials don't claim any kind of religion. They see themselves as spiritual. And they— and there's, you know, people in my field, Now there's a lot more of us, because people are ready to hear something that's not only one master related, you know, one person from one religion that governs all things. You can have the Creator and relate to the Creator any way you want. And you can relate to the different elements of yourself as a god and goddess in all the ways that you do in your own way. Right? And the more we, we have access to shifting the way we perceive our relationship to our highest self, the more things change. And grief is a part of that change. Like, it takes us from one level to the next level to the next level. Like, when you, you grieve and a door opens, then you grieve some more and another door opens.

Yeah. So you use the term transformative grief, and that really caught my eye when I saw the title of your book.

So what does that mean to Transformative grief to me means that when we grieve, it, it, it makes us the people we become. As the more and more we allow grief, the more and more it changes outdated beliefs or thoughts that we have about ourselves and others. It opens up our ability to be creative and visualize more deeply the world we want to live in, the life we want to have, the relationships we want to have, right? It's our agent of change. And it takes us from— I want to keep wanting to use the word concern, which is interesting, but conflict to peace. And, you know, I think for a lot of people, they stick in that position of being concerned about something. So they never grieve it. They never, they never touch it. They never walk to it. They just stand back and look at it and are concerned. You know, so that's— so transformative grief is recognizing that grief daily changes the person that you are. It allows you to more freely become the person you want to be.

So grieving then be feeling into it? Would that be another way of putting it? Absolutely.

Okay. Absolutely.

Yeah, because when you transform into grief, it's funny, as you were saying that, I was thinking about, you know, the people I work with. And, you know, inevitably, the grief is transforming them in some way, you know, and they often don't really see it. But I can see that it's like you said, it kind of, it's a reset, everything, everything's up for grabs. And it can be scary at first, because you feel like you're losing everything. But it's a, it's a, it's a chance to rebuild.

Yeah. One of the, one of the best— when I, before anybody knew I was psychic, I didn't— I mean, I've always had maybe one, one or two friends who kind of knew, but not really. And maybe I, maybe I had a friend that was into it, or had a— they were that way themselves. But when I came to LA, I only had one friend, and I started to meet people and I was, I was probably in my late 20s at the time, and I met these women that were at least double my age, and, and, uh, they kind of took me under their wing, and we would get together for weekly, uh, we'd do like psychic night at my house, and everybody would get together and play with cards or whatever, just have conversations about this stuff. And one of, one of these women, uh, said to me, you know, Tracy, when, when this hits you let it go, like, like scream loud, give into it, just be as loud as you can, cry out to the heavens. And think of it, the angels, the angels need to hear you. And somehow, that changed everything for me, because I had, you know, I cried myself to sleep at night, and for 30 years, nobody knew. You know what I mean? So I was doing a really good job at hiding it, trying to find all these other ways to balance myself when it really— when I really just needed to give myself permission to cry and, and be, be surrounded by people who didn't take it personally, who don't try to change it, who don't tell you to get over it. Right? There's all— there's all these archetypes that in our world of of experiencing grief and being deeply uncomfortable with it. So when she, when she told me to be loud and proud, I was— that was, that was the answer for me. And things that made me recognize the next time I had a bout of grief, it really made me recognize that I was in control. And I had never felt that way. I always felt that it controlled me. I didn't have control of my consciousness and what was coming to me. All of these dreams, all of these different things, all these things that I didn't really have any understanding of at the time. Crying loudly made me recognize that there was a deeper level of support that I could— that was palpable, if I could be open through my grief, and that I was in control of it. And that, and that on some level I wanted this. This wasn't something that was happening to me, it was happening for me. And that's, that's the most important thing, is when grief is not happening to people, it's happening for them, for their transformation, for their realization, for their, uh, opportunity to get new information and accept their circumstances and then get the resolution to the things they want to change about it.

Yeah, that's a really interesting way of looking at it. Because I think a lot of people would— well, I think almost everyone when they're going through grief, it's like, why is this happening to me? I, as you said, I don't have any control. In our society, we are very— we want to get people past it. Let's just get over this. And let's move through it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's just get this, you know, get this over with. I want to, I want to be fixed. I want to— and And then people around you get uncomfortable because no one likes to see anyone sad. So they're always trying to offer you solutions.

Exactly. That's one of the things, you know, one of the, one of the parts of the book I talk about is, you know, if you're experiencing a loss of any sort, and you have to be around your family at the holidays, or go to a party or deal with work, just going into work, sometimes it's— people are really comfortable as long as you let them off the hook. Yeah, you know, right now I'm really emotional, and I might cry. And I just want you to let— want you to know that I'm okay. You don't need to do a thing about it. Right? When you let people know in a what I'll call a sober time, right, when you're, when you're even, and you let people know that that happens, or that's gonna happen, or that you, you give them permission to be comfortable with it and to not try to fix it for you. Because there's nothing to be fixed because you're not broken.

Right.

You know, you are transitioning from one frame of reference in life to another frame of reference. And I find that every single transition I go through, it's always to something better. Always.

Yeah. Yeah. That's a really good point. It was interesting because I was just talking with someone yesterday who's, you know, a young person that just lost their first job and going through a transition. And I'm giving them perspective of someone 40 years older. And I'm like, you know, one day you'll see that there's something good in this. I said, I can't tell you what it is right now. But I can tell you what I went through this 30 years ago myself. And the time I thought it was the worst thing ever. But it's that perspective that we get once we've been through a few things that we understand. There's something, there's something good in this even, and whatever it is.

It always is. And again, when we when we tell ourselves, when we stay in the anger about it or the blame of others about it, because at the end of the day, you know, there are people are awful. Let's just say that people are awful and they're going to do some awful stuff. But at the end of the day, you still control your own destiny despite what others do. And when you know that, the ways in which that can happen for you will come and you will see them. If you do not believe that's a possibility, what, what you believe will show itself to you over and over again, until you've had enough grief experiences to shift your perspective and give you a little bit of light.

Right? You know, I know, you know, when it comes to grief, I would say our society is not really good about— they haven't equipped us to deal with it. And I know you have some practices in your book. So what are some of the practices that you offer people? Because people are like, I don't know how to do this. How do I do this?

So I love building altars. I love— it's the only time I really enjoy cleaning my house is I create a sacred space. And I clean it really well. And I set it up with items that I— that bring me joy. That's really what an altar is, putting, putting on the table for what you're willing to give up to the Creator in order to receive what you want in return. It's like an exchange. And so I have at the end of each chapter, there are 12 chapters, there are 12 suggested altars. You can do them any way which you, any way you want. I suggest a lot of different herbs for burning. I like to do a burning pot. With different herbs, sage, cedar, there's lots of recommendations. But I basically set my intention. If I've got a conflict going on, and I feel numb or neutral about it, that tells me that there's something brewing that I don't have enough information yet to fully grieve, I need more. So I asked for that I want, I want more information about this situation. And so I write that out. And I fold it up, I put it under a candle, I light the candle flame. Uh, if you can do it safely, I always use jar candles, uh, in case of earthquakes. And this has actually happened. There was, I had can— the jar candles burning in an earthquake and they just fell over and put themselves out with the wax. So I was like, okay.

Yeah.

If you, but if you can do it, uh, you, you don't have to have flame, but flame is very helpful when you feel stagnant. In your emotional body. Um, but once, once you start to take a physical world action towards your emotional goal, uh, what you, what you need to facilitate that will then come up. It will come to your mind because you have already— you've opened up the door and you say, please, please give me this information. How do I do this? What can bring me more of what I need in order to allow this energy to move through me. And that's, and that's the idea is grief is something from the Creator. It's energy that's moving through you. And then on the tail of that is this new wisdom, this new joy, and these new concepts that come to you. They go, oh, okay, well, that's, that's not really what I was seeing. That's, I'm seeing now this in this way, and it's totally different when you look at it from this perspective. Right, that's, that's one of the reasons why multiple people have multiple truths, because you can look at one thing from three, you know, different perspectives all around it, and they're all different, right? Right. So, uh, so alter creation is one. Um, if you just, uh, one of the things for people, like, if you do counseling with people, it's imperative that you have your own ritual for grief, that you give yourself permission to unload all of that. And so for somebody who has— somebody who has a job where they're constantly working with people or suffering from compassion fatigue, I recommend that you give yourself 30 minutes to put on some sad music, or even a sad movie, or even a a happy movie, something like comedy. Comedy, starting to laugh will also start the train of emotion coming and often will turn into tears, which will allow you to release that way as well. So giving yourself a, a definitive 15 to 30 minutes every day to do some deep breathing and listening to something that just allows you to just think or take an inventory of your day just if we will give ourselves just a little bit of time, it's not— it moves it pretty quickly. That's what I'm trying to get out.

That was, that was actually really interesting, as you said that, because I was thinking, I love listening to music, and all kinds of music, upbeat, you know, sad, whatever. And there's times I just want to put on something that's sad. And I talked to so many people, because I run these Facebook groups, and I'm like, what song do you like? What lifts you up? So people say, I can't listen to music anymore. It's just my son died, my husband died, I can't listen to music. And I find that to be so sad.

Well, that— and the reason why is because music is the one thing that connects to your right brain, which is your intuitive self, which is the access point of your grief.

Right, right.

And so they're, they're, they think that it's, it's keeping them together. But if they would allow just even 5 minutes a day, just allow a little bit of that stuff to come out. And then you can get up and go about your day. Sometimes, I mean, there have been many times, another type of grief that somebody can experience if somebody, if the people out there are an empath, it's called transpersonal grief. It's when, it's when you grieve for another person or the collective. So when 9/11 happened, I was here in LA, I had a a bunch of people in New York. I just moved from New York. And for 10 days, I grieved night and day, 24/7, all big eyes. I was a hot mess. But I was also not in resistance to that. I, you know, I just, I knew how to take care of myself. I knew it would eventually end. Crying for several days didn't, didn't intimidate me because I had done that many other times. But that's the one fear that people have, is if it starts, it won't stop. And it will always stop.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And you can always—

yeah, you can breathe into a new— you know, you can— if you're crying too, if you're crying and it's too much for you, take moments, take a few deep breaths, change your position, change your room. Your world will change, and you can do more later.

Right.

Right.

Yeah, I think that's really— it's fascinating that you said that, because I always— I keep running across these people say, I can't listen to music. And I'm like, that means you should be listening to music. Go ahead and let it out. Because people, they feel like if they let it out, they're not in control. So they're trying to stuff it down and hold it in.

Well, and I would say that the opposite is true. You, you are letting it control you when you withhold it. You control it when you allow it to come out. You control that. And using, using your vocal cords, like, uh, in my, my living, living in New York, I moved when I was 18, and it was, it was, uh, it was the '80s, and it was a deep time there. And homelessness had just shot up for the first time in many, like, on a whole other level, a whole other scale. And, uh, I would sing. I, I listened to gospel and I sang it at the top of my lungs. And that's, that's, that's the only thing that would give me even a little bit of solace when I was in, uh, in New York. I didn't— I cried a lot, but it was still— I was still in the habit of crying at night and, you know, uh, girding my loins during the day and, and, uh, not, not showing people where I was really at. So the singing really helped me to, to manage that differently.

So I, you know, I could see people going, sounds like she likes grieving. You know, she's like really into this.

Well, it is, it is, it is who I am. Meaning I was built that way, my chemistry. I mean, we can, we can there are 1,000 different things that I could blame it on. And they're all true. And it's just what I did. And I, luckily, I had the faith inside me to know that there was an endpoint, that I, that this was purposeful. And, and so I just embraced it. And yes, grieving actually, now, now that I am out of the victimized perspective of it, because that's You know, no matter how you slice it, when you are first really starting to grieve, and you've experienced a big loss that maybe triggered it, that there's a deep inner awareness that makes you focus on yourself, and you do feel victimized, it does feel like it's happening to you, and not for you. And, you know, you're talking to somebody who has, you know, 5 decades worth of grieving to look back on and say, You know, it happened for me, not to me. Right? That's, that's just, that's the wisdom of being at this point with it.

Right?

When somebody's starting, you know, I hope that, that, that I can inspire people to embrace it, even a little bit. Because there, there is nothing like the feeling of clarity that comes after you have grieved. It's like you wake up and the colors are different, things are different, and there's hope. Yeah, hope is hard to come by these days. So you got to take it where you can.

Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. And before we started recording, we were talking about the state of the world. And, you know, no matter who you are, you have your— there's bad stuff going on. And there are a lot of people are like, well, I just can't, you know, I'm going to turn it off. I can't, I can't be part of it. I don't want to feel it. I don't want to, I don't want to connect to it. And I think what you're saying is, you know, we have to lean into it.

We do. And here's the thing, that the whole 'I'm gonna turn off the news, therefore it doesn't bother me' is a fantasy. You know, I, I, I, I— yeah, that's just true. It just is a fantasy. We are, we are all interconnected, whether or not you know it, whether or not you have an awareness of it.

That was fun.

That was awesome.

Yeah. Well, just for anybody that— now we had a little technical glitch here right before we started recording. I was telling Tracy, I live in Ohio and I like it because it's like everything's kind of mild here. We don't have crazy weather, we don't have fires or floods or anything like that. And while we're recording, I looked out the window, I'm like, we have a storm blowing in. And of course the power went out.

Awesome.

Yeah, yeah. So always something. But yeah, appreciate you coming back. And we can finish this up. So we were talking about grief and how sometimes we tend to avoid it and how you really lean into it, encourage other people to lean into it as well, because it's a transformative process.

It is. I think that I call it everyday grief. I do a whole chapter on it. Oh, sorry. I do a whole chapter on everyday grief. Because if we don't give ourselves 5 to 10 minutes a day to sit down, you know, for especially for commuters, I mean, drive time, when I was working outside of the house, was, was one of the, one of the times where I did some of my best grieving was while driving, believe it or not. But it's a if you give yourself a few minutes, 5, 10, 15, whatever, whatever you can manage every day when you get home from work to give yourself that space to ponder about the day, whatever, whatever circumstance happened, whatever experiences you had, whatever feelings came up. You know, sometimes, you know, things break down, the coffee machine breaks, the car doesn't start, the cat's or dog's, you know, poop somewhere. Like, there's all these mundane things that as they layer up, they build in your emotions. And you've got to give yourself the opportunity to find— to release those emotions and find a real clarity about it.

Yeah, I like that. You know, that's a great way to build those muscles, to build that resilience. To grieve the small things that so that when the big things come, you've got the, you've got the practice, you've got the, you're not uncomfortable with those feelings. So I really like that everyday grieving practice. That sounds like a great idea.

Yeah. And you know that there's an end to it. Because, you know, even when you people talk a lot about waves of grief, and that's true, you know, if you lose somebody, I was watching I mean, I got sucked into Bosch, the show Bosch. It's good. I'm enjoying it. But, you know, he just lost his ex-wife. She was just murdered. And, you know, his daughter asks him, you know, does the pain ever go away? And he said, no. And it was interesting because I'm like, well, you know, I've lost all of my peoples other than I've got two sisters and a few cousins. And your relationship— grief changes your relationship to the departed. It changes it from them being here in the moment and you can call them and talk to them or touch them, to you have to call them and talk to them in a new way. You talk to them in your heart, you connect with them in a spiritual way. You still see them, you still feel their vibration, but it's you— you're— the grief awakens you to this higher frequency of energy on which to connect with them. Right. And once you have changed that relationship, you no longer— you're still going to miss everything that you had here with them. And depending on how close you were to them, you know, I think that my father died when I was 11. And it took me, you know, in those formative years, it took me until I was in my 30s to really stop blaming my mother, you know, because that's when you have, when you have a single parent raising adolescents, if one of the partners dies, it's a natural thing for the kids to blame the other parent who's left with them. Doesn't matter what, what the circumstances were, it's just they need, they need somebody to take it out on, and that other person is left to do that. Right. But, you know, what I have learned through all of the deaths of people that I've experienced is that your relationship changes. And once, once you have that first experience where you can recognize them in some way in spirit, the pain stops, the sadness doesn't necessarily stop, but over time, that will even change too. But it's, it's not— it's not— the expectation isn't ever to get over it.

Right.

The expectation is always to transition into what, what exists now.

Yeah. Yeah, I love that. And I love what you said about the relationship. Because I think a lot of times people, when, when someone dies, passes, we initially feel like it's the end of the relationship. And it's really the beginning of a new relationship, it might not be the one that we want. And it's going to be different, and it requires work. Yes, we can, we can get there. And, and you're right, the pain, you know, for me, it's been 8 years since my daughter passed away, was 8 years this past Saturday. And it's different, you know, it's different than it was, I still miss her, there's still sadness, but it's certainly different. And it's not, it's not as sharp, it's not as intense, it's not, you know, I don't cry every day, like I used to. So it does change.

It does change. And I think the other thing too is that, you know, the one thing, the good, the one good upside of big loss is that you can tell people to fuck off.

Yeah, yeah.

Right. When, when, when it comes to our little grief expressions, or our frustrations about our day, or, or whatever, we, we have to give ourselves permission to grieve and to feel what we're feeling without making it about somebody else or even bringing them into it.

Yeah.

You know, I think that the— that, and when you've experienced big loss, you've learned how to tell your loved ones, you know, no, no, I can't, no, I won't, I need time, right? These are all, you know, taglines that when you, when you've experienced something that trumps all other things.

Yeah.

You— it gives you permission to say no to people in ways that maybe you may not have prior, you know.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And that's something that you— that we have to learn when we're going through that. You know, we have to learn how to set those boundaries. We have to learn, like you said earlier, you know, if you're going to be in a situation where you tell people, okay, I'm going to be sad, right? Okay. So it's not on— it's not on you. It's not about you. If you, if you mention my loved one, you didn't make me sad. You know, you have to educate those people that it's not, you know, it's not your responsibility. And, and it's okay to be sad for a while, you know, for a long while.

I remember just after my mother died, she had cancer. And so for 9 months, we all, I have 2 other sisters and we would all go back and forth to Albuquerque to take care of her for 2 weeks at a time. And when I got back from her after, after doing that for 9 months, and then coming back from the funeral, I was living in an apartment, I was actually managing the, the, the 40 units here in LA. And a very good friend of mine who lived there, she came up and she says, you know, I'm so sorry. And I don't know, I don't know what she said to me. But oh, God bless her. It just, it irritated me beyond belief. I was so— I had nothing left. And she's like, she was just, she was saying everything that she was saying to me was every wrong thing she could possibly say. Yeah, she's in a better place. No, I don't care about what place she's in. She's not here, you know. So she's saying all of these things. And finally, I said, you know what, just stop. Here's the thing. I understand that this makes you uncomfortable. And you know what, that's okay. I don't need you to console me. The gift that you have that I love is you are hilarious. So why don't you just be you? Let's, let's have a drink and you just be you and make me laugh. And that's okay. That's what I need from you. That's what you can do for me. And she's like, okay, we call it the living gift because she, her mind just thinks in unique ways. And she would always just come up with these things that were hilarious. And we would laugh for hours. And so Once I gave her permission to, to be funny. That's the other thing people don't— they think it's like blasphemous to laugh at a funeral, or that, you know, when you lose somebody, that, that requires sadness. And it doesn't. You can, you can, you're going to feel manic, you're going to feel all kinds of ups and downs. Right.

Right. Yeah, absolutely. And I know I want to ask you about this. I know you believe in using crystals in your work. What's— what is— tell me about the crystals and how that helps.

Oh my goodness, I do. So here, just, just within hand's reach. Here's one. This is a citrine. This is a fantastic crystal for grief. Because it actually works with the third chakra, which is your power center. And your power center is— it's governed by your stomach and your intestines. And it's how you put your energy out into the world. It's how other people— how you require that other people perceive you. But it's, but it's, that chakra is one of the places that we grieve from. And so this crystal is a wonderful crystal, it actually draws in energy and helps to metabolize the energy. It'll each create, you know about crystals. I'm going to reach around you right quick here and grab some of my, I just, I have a new deck coming out of altar cards for crystals.

Wow. Okay.

And they're really fun. In fact, I'm going to— trying to do this so I don't look strange, but it's— I've got a whole deck, desk full of books that I got at my recent conference and have no room. Okay, so here's the deck.

Oh, wow.

Choose a— I'm going to choose a crystal for us all. And that's going to give us some energy and information. Okay, little message for us all, if that's okay.

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay. Oh, interesting. Okay, so this, this is a crystal called prasiolite. Hmm. And it is, it's got, it's a, it's a, it's a form of quartz. And it, uh, so which— it means that it has, uh, big crystals. It's a macrocrystalline crystal, so you can, you can, you can see the termination. Um, and its energy is about growth. It, uh, it's an incredible crystal to help, uh, metabolize your emotion, balance the emotion, open the heart chakra. One of the things that happens when people experience an enormous loss is they close their heart. They don't want— they feel like they're— they don't want to get taken advantage of. They don't want to— like, it shifts how you see people. When you open your heart, it allows a deeper flow of energy that you can see yourself much more from a, from a more peaceful perspective, right? Not from a— and it helps you process pain easily, but it helps you process it through your heart rather than keeping it just in your second chakra, which is what most people do. When you feel victimized, it's because you're, you're very close to the attachment of what it means about you to be emotional. Hmm. Prasiolite is a crystal that you can work with. And when I say work, you can hold it, you can keep it in your pocket. They come in all forms, cut pieces, pocket pieces, hand pieces. But just having it and holding it, keeping it in a pocket, having it with you. If you have anxiety, palm stones, there's a ton of palm stones in different, in different types of crystal. But working with it helps to shift to your energy. So yeah, that's, that's, that's what I just— I'm not, I'm not a very good salesperson today. But I just, I just finished a series of 4 different products. One is the deck, which is your— it's called the Your Crystal Allies series.

Okay.

And I— and each one of them, in fact, to the first one, it's not, it's not handy. Right now. The first one is called Your Crystal Allies: The 12 Best Gems and Minerals for Healing Trauma and Navigating Change.

Okay.

And that's out right now. You can buy it anywhere books are sold. But it's great because part— I have been a crystal collector for decades. That was one of the first things that I did through marbles. Did you ever play marbles?

Yeah, yeah.

I love marbles. And back in the day, they used to make marbles out of actual stone and not just glass like they do today. Um, but, uh, I, I realized that over the decades I have certain crystals that I have worked with that have companioned me in very dark periods of time and really helped me come out of it with, with wisdom and, uh, confidence and all of the, you know, just, it really carried me through some, some very, very deep times. Um, and so I wanted to, I have this huge collection and so I wanted to start sharing them with other people. And that's why I did the, the altar card deck and the books. And so the pictures that I've taken, you can actually work with that stone. And in the book, I'm actually talking about that stone and my experiences with it over the years.

That's awesome. Because I know a lot of times I've gone to crystal shops, I just get overwhelmed. And they're like, they all sound great, right? So I can't buy all of them. So, you know, everybody wants peace and, you know, everything that every— all the crystals do. So it's nice to have a guide to have somewhere to start.

Exactly. And yeah, it's so funny because I, yeah, I'm not, I'm not the manual writer myself. I, for me, it was like, I went to 12, I want 12, because that's, that's manageable. And I went, I wanted, and I wanted it for people because I know there are a lot of new people to getting into crystals. And it's, it's, it's, it's no longer niche as it was even 10 years ago. It's becoming much more popular and people are being exposed to it in a positive way. And I just wanted to give somebody like, not just thinking about the crystal and getting something from it, but really seeing it as an ally to bring that thing out in you. Yeah, right. Because that's what it will do.

Yeah. Well, Tracy, we're just about out of time. I really appreciate you doing this today. Appreciate your patience with a little technical hiccup we had. Remind people of the name of your book, Transforming— Transformative Grief, so they can find it, and where people can find you.

Great. Transformative Grief: An Ancient Ritual of Healing for Modern Times. You can buy it anywhere books are sold. And you can find me at TracyDunblazer.com, which is T-R-A-C-E-E-D-U-N-B-L-A-Z-I-E-R.com. Awesome.

Again, thanks for being here, and, uh, we'll talk soon.

Good.

Have a good afternoon.

You too.

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