67: Do You Need To Talk About "It"?

Hello, friends, and welcome to Grief Guts and Green Smoothies. I am your host, Melissa Dugalecki, and I am so excited to be here with you all to chat about ways in which we can all get through different adversities, challenges, and loss, and how getting outside of our comfort zone and maybe having a green smoothie or two can help us do so. We will cover different topics, ranging from interviews to recipes to sharing my own stories of my grief journey and the loss of my daughter, Layden. And I'm honored to be able to share her light in hopes of helping you spread yours. Now let's dive in. Hi, friends, and happy Mother's Day. Happy belated Mother's Day. Happy bereaved Mother's Day. And hugs and support to you. If it's a holiday that you don't acknowledge, I completely understand that. And given the season and the timing, I'm going to take today to really talk about Mother's Day versus Bereaved Mother's Day. And beyond that, if neither of those days really apply or resonate with you, how my changed relationship with both of them can help you understand how things might change in your life. So that feeling of, will this ever get better? Will this ever feel different? How will I get through this? If you ever experience those feelings, whether it's, you know, right now with what's happening in our world, right, with COVID or maybe a loss in your life for something different, I'm going to give you some insight into how that will shift. So it is with extra compassion and support and love today that we dive right on it. All right, guys, those of you who are regular listeners, first of all, thank you. But you probably noticed I took last week off, and I probably take about three or four weeks off of the entire year. That's it. About 52 weeks from the podcast. And for me, it's about, you know, authenticity and alignment with. Which is probably not surprising. But, you know, the truth is I get asked all the time, is it easy for you to write? Is it easy for you to speak? How do you do it? Communication is definitely something that I enjoy in the sense of it flows pretty naturally for me. I really, I've studied it. I've committed my life to studying it. My mom will tell you I've always been a talker and I really, actually, this is interesting. I believe organization and my love for organization plays into communication because what I do, a real quick overview of a process is I take an experience or a circumstance in my mind. I quickly organize and kind of put into Little maps and then share that out. So it combines a couple of things I really like. It's not just the processing portion that you receive, which is writing or speech. It's the processing that you don't see that I actually really enjoy. That's more of the internal. Now, my point is that it's this entire processing experience that happens through sharing. I love it. I believe it is my duty. It's my service. It's what I can do to best impact in my time here, and I'm committed to it. And it can be really challenging. You know, I get writing blocks sometime. It can be tiring. Speaking about things that are exhausting when I'm already exhausted can be really hard, which is why many of you probably feel or notice when you're having a hard time, you kind of don't want to talk about something, right? Because when we're going through it, we're already exerting so much emotional muscle to get through it. And to process, to then report back and talk about it, can be really hard. Now, it's also why it's very healing, which is why coaching or counseling or any ways that you can process and move energy is powerful. So last week, as we were approaching Mother's Day and coming off of Bereaved Mother's Day, I had a lot of things that I was processing. I had the privilege of speaking at a Bereaved Mother's Day brunch, a virtual event. It was amazing with one of my previous guests, Lisa Price, who is a bereaved mother who has started an entire network and community for bereaved mother. So if you're interested in learning more about that, if that applies to you, let me know. I'll absolutely connect you. But I spoke at this brunch, and I'll be honest, until this year, I have not really acknowledged Bereaved Mother's Day. I don't really like it because I feel like, well, bereavement and grief, it's already isolating enough. Now you're going to kick me out of the real Mother's Day? Like, screw that. No, thank you. Right. In. In time and more recently, I've really worked to understand that it's not one or the other, it's both. Right. I believe Bereaved Mother's Day really honors the unique force and strength and love of loving a child who's no longer alive. And that experience. And I believe Mother's Day more traditionally and untraditionally honors the way that we, any human, serves in the role right of Raising another generation of quote, unquote, mothering. And I think that surpasses any religion, any age, any gender norms. Right. Any certain family dynamic, but really speaks to the act and energy exchange itself of being committed to raising and nurturing the next generation as a child. And so for me, I was in this space last week of really kind of coming off of this vulnerability hangover, which I've spoken a lot about in these episodes. Right? This vulnerability hangover of putting myself out there to a group of bereaved moms. And There were about 40 women, and some of which have been on this grief journey longer than me, some shorter. Didn't really matter. It was sharing with them, tools, sharing with them, building their world, building relationships, teammates, all the things that we talk about here. And then it was anticipating the pain of Mother's Day. And at this time right now, I've got this extra kind of layer of loss and grief surfacing as I prepare to leave Boston and go out west for an unknown period of time. But that means leaving the safety and comfort of being close to my church, to Layden's tree, to the hospital. So there are all these things going on here. And I share this because I really like to take you guys on the journey. I want to be transparent. I want you to know if you are at times having a difficult time sharing or processing something, it probably just means that you've got to do a little bit more work processing it yourself. And that doesn't have to be a race, that doesn't have to be pressure. That doesn't have to be anything that you judge. Right? It's awareness, right? We talk about this all the time. It's just all about awareness. It's not right or wrong. So, you know, a couple of things I really wanted to point out in this past couple of weeks, right. Is acknowledging that sometimes it can be exhausting to share when we're still going through the processing period. Which is why I allowed myself the space to let you guys catch up on previous episodes or re listen to a favorite one last week as I went through my own processing of wow, how did I go from I didn't even acknowledge brief Mother's Day to I was just a guest speaker about it. How did that happen? And I want to talk about that with you because so often people I support, whether it's in grief or not in grief, right through my life coaching work, have a feeling of, will this ever change? Right? Will this ever change? And I'm here to tell you that it will. But it doesn't mean it's easier, and it doesn't mean the pain goes away. Now, I want you to visualize the concept that I've taught of building your world, right? And if you aren't sure about it, listen to that episode. Shoot me a message, please. This is going to be so powerful. Shoot me a message for the visual on building your world. If you don't have it, I will send it over to you. It would be my absolute pleasure. Now, in this concept of building your world, I talk about physically adding things or people into your life, that your grief doesn't actually get smaller, but that you build your world. So the percentage in which it takes up is reduced. So rather than taking up 100% of your world, it begins to take up 80%, and then 70, 60, 50, 40, whatever it is, right? And sometimes you might pause and you might be like, you know what? I want grief to take up 30% of my life because I'm not ready for it to take up any less than that. I see you. That was me. I was like, laden needs to take up this much space for me. And that was in my grief. Now, what shifted was Laden takes up space in ways a little bit different than just in my own pain and grief now. But believe me, Layden still takes up, you know, a big percentage of my world, the majority of my world. And I think that's how she wanted it, and, hey, that's how it is. So. But I want you to think of this concept of building your world, right? So we add in new hobbies, we add in new activities, we add in new communities, we add in new circles and social groups, and we begin expanding our world. Now, I want you to think of that on a deeper level. And this is a little bit less tangible. It's not quite as physically accessible. But I want you to think about building your world on an intellectual and energetic level where you begin building and opening up to other truths. This is a concept I teach all the time. When people take things personally, right? When I take. When I take things personally, when we assign a tone, right? Have you ever read a text message and all of a sudden you've got this tone assigned to us? And I can think of three or four people right now listening to this who are going, oh, my God, she's talking about when I did that this week. I'm not talking about when. We've all done this throughout our entire lives, and hundreds and hundreds of people I've coached on this, right? We read a text message or an email and we assign a tone, right? And I'll. And so what I do is I ask people to step back and I'm like, can you assign maybe another tone? Right? Because it could easily just say something like, hey, Melissa, did you get this done today? Or hey, Melissa, did you get this done today? Or hey, Melissa, did you get this done today? Right? And we have these three different tones that make a one message, like, really different. And now we're exhausting ourselves because we are assigning one tone to it that's probably being signed because it's a trigger inside of us. Okay, I'm off tracking here. I'm going to come on back to you. Pulling myself back into you guys. But what I want you to do in this concept of what else could be true, what other tones could there be? That story you're telling yourself of the person that didn't call you back because they're a total jerk and, you know, they're inconsiderate. What else could be true? What might be happening in their life? What I'm actually teaching in these situations is essentially expanding your world just by like one moment though, right? Expanding what else could be true? Expanding the truth that you assign to this moment. And for me, I practice that on a different level where I really expanded. What else could be true around bereave Mother's Day? What else could be true around how I navigate Mother's Day? And yes, that pain is still there. That initial pain, just like that initial grief, that initial loss, right? And building my world, that pain doesn't get any smaller. I just expand my world to create space for other truths, right? For other experiences in my life, for other energies, right? It all comes down to energy. When you're facing this, will this ever go back to the way it was, or will this ever hurt less or will this ever be different? My answer is yes. Not because it's going to lessen or you're not going to care, but because you have the infinite power to begin to expand the energy you assign to whatever quote, unquote it is. So on Mother's Day and on bereaved Mother's Day, what I've done is those days don't hurt any less. Those days, they knock me down a bit, right? And they lead right into some significant anniversaries for Laden, right? Three days after Mother's Day was the anniversary of the beginning of the end. Essentially. That's when the wheels fell off and I feel like I was completely blindsided. Things went from we're going home to you're going home in a delay to another delay to another delay to you're not going home. She's not going to live to. She did live to. She's not going to live, right? And so this roller coaster. So I feel all these feels and it's not that any of that has gotten less, but it's that I've over time expanded the energy that I've brought to and assigned to these stories and these experiences. And I've only been able to do it as I was ready and as I was willing. But I want to tell you guys, as you continue to show up, whether it's something like a conversation you have with somebody, a fallout in a relationship, whether it's a holiday or a trigger or a milestone, that feels like, will this ever go back? Will this ever feel okay again? It's probably not going to go back to the way it was, right? I say that all the time, like with COVID like, we're not going to go back to the same world, guys, but we're going to expand our world and we're going to grow through this and we're going to learn through this. So I encourage you to use that tool, that strategy, add it to your toolbox to really begin to think about how can I expand this experience? What else could be true? What other energy can I bring to this now? It's not quite as like, accessible, right, as building your world in a more tangible format with actual activities and hands on things. So master that concept first. And please, if you want the visual, send it to me. I would be honored to share it with you and support you as you master that. You'll be able to apply it in the less tangible format of in any given moment, being able to expand energy, the energy you bring to something, the energy you receive from something, to take off that bias, to take off one lens, to remove our triggers and to have a much more holistic, expansive, right. Or lack of being redundant. Don't want to be redundant, but that's really the word for a more expansive experience. And that's how we navigate our challenges and our heartaches. We don't wait for them to go away. We expand the energy that surrounds them and that can look so many different ways. If this is something you want to talk more about, let me know. I love, love, love talking about this stuff. I love nerding out, I love jamming out on it. It's so fun for me, right? It's this processing, it's this organization, it's this mapping that's what I love. So thank you guys and I am going to encourage if there's any ways that you can help spread this work. I'm going to be speaking about neck in the coming weeks. This is Neck Awareness Month. Neck Awareness day is actually May 17th, not next week. Next week I'll be hitting circling back on ego and confidence and teasing out the two. That was a big, that was a hard thing for me to tease out, right? Ego and confidence. I'm going to have a guest come on that I'm super excited for you to meet and we're going to talk a little bit more about neck in hopes that we can raise awareness and spread this work. So the most helpful thing you can do to help shine Laden's light and be a part of this mission and this expansiveness is to just simply rate review the podcast. You can do that with, you know, a little star, a little message you can do on Spotify and itunes, and that just helps us spread this in the world. So when people are looking for supports in their life, in their healing and grief and whatever it may be that this shows up as an option for them. So thank you so much, friends. I appreciate it. My heart is with you. I truly felt the expansiveness of our community, of our love of the sacred space on Mother's Day Number Reeve, Mother's Day and beyond. So thank you so much for being here with me, for helping shine Layden's light and for allowing me to support you in shining to be your best and brightest self. Because nothing means more to me. Talk soon.