How to Transform Yourself During Grief by Empowering Others with Melissa Dlugolecki

Welcome to the Biology of Trauma Podcast, the show that provides professionals with the knowledge and tools for effective science based solutions for the trauma healing journey. I am your host Dr. Amy and I've done the hard work so you can stop your endless searching, have a roadmap for your own work and be able to help others more powerfully.

I remember the first time I laughed after she died. I felt guilty. I didn't listen to music. I was so committed to being in my grief because I thought that was the way to love her.

Welcome to this episode of the Biology of Trauma Podcast. I'm your host Dr. Amy and that was just one of the moments from this episode on Grief and Love how do you ever grieve the loss of a child? Melissa shares her journey on this episode because she has some important lessons to share on how she did just that. In this episode we will be answering the question what are the hidden challenges of grief and how do we navigate them? Here's what you'll Grief is a portal to your deep wounds, insecurities and traumas how to navigate grief as a family the hidden dangers in relationships navigating a grief together, the role of community in grieving how the fear of being too much plays a role what it looks like to be committed to our grief how to build your world after a life changing loss the relationship between grief, love and suffering the role of energy and getting stuck in the pain of grief and how to find purpose after pain with that. Let's get started. And as we get started on this topic, I want to give voice to what many of you listening may experience a degree of dissociation or freeze response if it speaks to an unresolved deep grief within you. So first I will invite you to take a moment and to resource yourselves. I have found by experience that the best resource that I can provide my body for hard conversations that I would normally dissociate is feet and stomach and that will give us the best chance of being able to stay present and taking care of our body in the process because we don't do overwhelm anymore. And I want to introduce our guest speaker. Melissa Delukalecki is a business coach and she has an experience that is a unique one, a hard one and it's even resulted in her realizing that people treat her differently when they find out her story as opposed to just knowing her as she is now. And Melissa lost her daughter in a medical case after about 4 months of age and at that time Melissa really committed to a deeper understanding of how our mind and bodies function optimally because coming out of that experience, you change, your life changes. And there is that period where nothing seems to make sense and you need to do some things in order to have your life make sense again. And so that's everything that she brings in together for her work, mainly around business coaching for entrepreneurs. And so, Melissa, let's just get started with a what would you want people to know about you?

First of all, thank you so much for the beautiful grounding and introduction. Really just honoring our bodies and our needs and the difficulty of these conversations. So thank you. I suppose that my mission is probably the most important thing to me. And while my vehicle is coaching business. So I think there's a big difference between the vehicles we use to get to our mission. My mission is really to empower people into their possibility no matter what they're going through, no matter what they're navigating. My life looks wildly different than it did 10 years ago. Beyond just the fact that I'm a bereaved mother, I was also an educator. I was in schools for 10 years. I thought I was going to be a high school educator through retirement. And I thought you either cared about business or you cared about people. And I didn't want to care about business because I only cared about people. And I'm a business strategist. But I really seek to help people with heart led missions to build their work. I'm just a stand for possibility and live every day to try to embody it as best as I can.

And tell us about where you live and why you live there.

Yeah. So this is my home in Tulum, Mexico. I came here for 10 days with a carry on three and a half years ago and I never left. I bought a house here. I have a dog here. It was probably very geographically healing for me. I am from Boston, Massachusetts, and that's where my daughter and I, we spent 99 nights at Boston Children's Hospital. And I ran five marathons, Boston Marathons for her. And I worked in school districts outside of Boston. Her funeral was in Boston. Her memorial tree is in Boston. And there was a tipping point in my grief journey where being as close to her as possible was what I needed for comfort. I would go to the hospital sometimes I would just sit out of a tree and I would go to the Bertucci's after she passed next to the hospital, just to feel like I felt when she was alive. But then there was a point where actually I needed to be in a different energy, in a different space, being by the ocean was very healing for me. Tulum has a very soft energy, whereas Boston is very structured, masculine energy. It just became very healing and I just fell in love with it here, so I stayed.

Yes. And we're going to get into kind of the different needs that we have at different stages of our grief journey. But, yeah, thank you for already bringing voice that and bringing that into the conversation. Maybe before we jump into the actual experience that you've had, it might be helpful for people to understand this condition and disease that your daughter had. Necrotizing enterocolitis is not necessarily a common word that everybody talks about around the dinner table. So tell us about NEC or necrotizing enterocolitis and just the disease itself so that people can understand more of the context then of what your experience was.

Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Necrotizing entercolitis, often called nec, nec, all capitalized, is a severely under talked about, but actually quite common disease. It's typical for infants that are born premature. That's where it's not typical, but that's where it mostly surfaces. The research around it has changed significantly since 10 years ago when my daughter had it. Now, she was diagnosed when I was pregnant with a heart condition, the same one I have. I have a scar here. I had open heart surgery, but I went on to play Division 1 college athletics and run many marathons. And it was considered a very simple repair. So my daughter was actually treated for a cardiac condition. We went in, it was actually March 22, so tomorrow will be 10 years. We went in for her planned scheduled surgery. Now she had been born, observed. We went home, but she wasn't growing and she was refusing her food, and the doctors just chopped it off to the cardiac condition. The morning she went in to have her full heart repair, they observed blood in her stool and decided not to do the full repair because of a possible necrotizing entercolitis. Now, it's a really long story to be as concise as I can. They put a PA band on her heart to basically constrict blood flow, like a rubber band type thing. And we were supposed to go home. Now, that was in March, and I left the hospital towards the end of June of that year without my daughter. What happened was she did go in for the full repair in May, but she had undiagnosed necrotizing enterocolitis. And so what happened is when the oxygen, when she was on basically the life support machine while she was having surgery, her intestines were really weak already. And necrotizing entercolitis is essentially when your intestines dissolve. And she lived for about another month after that surgery, but it was on what was called an ECMO machine, which is basically life support. She came off of that and lived, and then she went on dialysis. But towards the end of June, the medical team concluded that she had no chance of living and that she was beginning to suffer. She had had four surgeries at this point, and her first diagnosis of necrotizing entercolitis was actually on her death certificate. So she had never been diagnosed. And it really brought up a lot at the hospital. It was something, to be completely honest, that I clung to, in a way. Her doctor said her case is a catastrophe. And I don't know if that made it harder or if it could have been any harder, but that was a really hard thing for me to look at. All the what ifs, that was a big layer of my grief journey. But you can read more about necrotizing entercolitis. I have a blog on their website that kind of outlines her whole story. Because they were so focused on cardio that they were not treating her holistically. They were only looking at cardio, and gastro was considered underneath it in a hierarchy. And so even the gastro consult, the directions weren't actually followed. Last thing I'll say on this disease is that there is a lot of work being done, But I want to credit that to Jennifer Cambisar, who is a bereaved mother as well. Her infant son, Micah, died. Now, he was premature, but he died of necrotizing enterocolitis. He was a twin. The twin lived, but she wanted to make a donation to necrotizing entercolitis, and there wasn't even a place to donate. So she started an entire nonprofit and a worldwide movement now that brings in medical professionals from all over the globe. And they're really increasing the research, and they're actually really increasing, particularly how they link cardiac conditions to necrotizing enterocolitis, whereas previously they were not linked. But there was a very strong correlation.

Yeah, you're taking me back to my hospital and residency days where I was on the other side of that, Melissa. I was the one who was helping to take care of the babies and take them into the surgeries. And that necrotizing enterocolitis was something that by that time, we had more information on than when you were going through your experience. And that connection was better understood to the oxygen deprivation and the effects on the gut. And so when you have a heart condition, the gut is receiving less oxygen and there will be those effects. And we need to be looking at those effects and not just looking at the cardiac as a separate system of the body, but in its entirety. And wow, aren't there so many analogies between that and life? We can't be siloed. There is no such thing as siloed. There is just you. There's you. And whether that's you and your body and your mind, your emotions and your thoughts being all one, it's also you and your business. It's also you and your relationships. Like there. There is no siloed aspect of any of our life. It's all connected. Just like the heart and the gut were connected for your baby girl.

Yeah. Yes, Absolutely true. And in business, I say you have to really learn how to care for yourself and your energy, because you're not your business, but you are your business. And how you feel is going to significantly impact what you're creating. And everything is significantly connected. As you said, everything.

And you started this discussion around who you want to be in the world. And you're very mission driven.

Yeah.

And if we don't have that source of energy from within us, how can we ever really pursue our mission? We're going to be stuck in just doing, but not actually carrying out the vision that we feel that we have in the world.

It's so true. I love entrepreneurship, to be honest, so much, because I believe that it is such a catalyst for personal growth and development. It has grown me more actually, than probably grief, because arguably in my grief journey, I could get away with a lot because people felt really bad for me. So my habits and my things that weren't serving me and weren't supporting my growth, I could hide behind. If I'm being fully honest. When I got into entrepreneurship and really grew, and I humbly say my business has been very successful. I've coached over thousands of people and we've done very well. But anytime I wanted to take my business to the next level, it would require me to break through something that was holding me back in my life. Nothing to do with the business, but it was showing up in my business. Whether it was afraid of taking up too much space, that was a big one for me. I had a big fear of being too much after Laden died. I had a big fear of ruining things because I really questioned if I ruined it and I was at fault for my daughter dying and all of these things were actually showing up in my business. So truthfully, I used to be a mindset coach, but I found that I can take people so much further by coaching them in their business.

And sometimes that's the entry point. Right. And I even think of many of the parents that I worked with in the hospital where they might have been very much in the shoes that you were at earlier, where they never wanted to be in that place, they never had wanted or seen themselves having to go through that with their child. And then they have to. And that's along the same lines of our business or any other aspect of our life where we hit a wall. And this is as far as I can go with who I am right now.

Sure. Exactly.

If I'm going to go past this, it's going to require a different version of me. It's going to require new skills, new tools. It's going to require me to, to make some changes. And if I don't, then I just stay here. Which there's no blame in that. But that's just a person's choice of who do you want to be. And it's going to require a different version of us for us to show up different in the world 100%.

I think you bring up an important point about it not being right or wrong. Right. I think we all get to choose what we want. But just to bring it back to mission because I think I sidetracked us a little bit. But to bring it back to mission you have to have that. Why? Otherwise why, why would you go through the pain and the challenges and the discomfort and the kind of dying off version of ourselves if we don't have a why? Because I would say life is going to life and when life lifes it is my why that gets me to keep moving forward.

So how did your why change after your experience with your daughter?

I think a few things came into play. One, I'm naturally a teacher. I've always wanted to be a teacher. I always was into teaching and coaching athletics. Athletics I always said were my greatest teacher. And then grief and then business. When my daughter Layden was in the hospital, I wrote to her a lot. I just, I would, I've always been a writer. I love words and I would just write and write. And after she passed, I began fundraising for the Boston Children's Hospital, which was a very growth oriented moment for me because I'm giving money and raising money for the hospital where my daughter's case was termed a catastrophe. Right. And they were exploring medical malpractice. In fact I was told it was medical malpractice but not a winnable case. So by two different Attorneys. So I have this weird dynamic where I was angry, but I had promised my daughter Layden. In 2014, we were at Boston Children's Hospital, which was the year after the Boston Marathon bombings, and the marathon runs right by the hospital. So the energy was electric in the city. And I had run a marathon before, and I promised I have a video of my daughter Laden. I promised her that day because we were supposed to go home. They gave us a discharge date of that Friday after the marathon. So I'm thinking, we're going home. I took a video, I sent it to my brother, her uncle, and I said, later, next year, we're crossing that finish line for Boston Children's Hospital. And come the fall, I realized I didn't make that promise conditionally. I promised her we were going to cross that finish line. And if I don't do it because she didn't live, I made a conditional promise. And the integrity of my word is the most important thing to me. So I crossed that finish line with her ashes. Now, there's a component where you fundraise for the hospital. And so I started doing email campaigns and teaching things that I had learned from Layden, and they were called Lessons from Laden Shining Laden's Light. And I would send a weekly email. And through doing this, I was getting so many responses of how it was helping people in their life. But I was afraid. As I told you, I had a fear being too much. So it was a very contained email list. As my mission grew and I ran marathon after marathon, and they had me as an ambassador of the team, and I started sharing the story more, I got asked to speak at Gillette Stadium. I got asked to be in a lot of podcasts. I realized that I wanted to shine my daughter's light, and I couldn't fully shine it if I was holding it in, afraid to be too much. So that was the next level. I started my own podcast. I started writing more and speaking more, and I began mindset coaching, particularly for a lot of people going through grief. And so it really called me forward to begin taking care of myself again. All to shine Laden's light. Yeah. I often say she saved me.

It's a very common phrase that I hear people say who have some element of shared experience with you. Is that this experience? Awful, Horrendous. Never would have asked for it. And it also saved me.

Yeah. Yeah. Felt a lot of guilt saying that for a while. It's been 10 years now. It's been a lot of time. And I say I don't believe time actually heals, but I think time gives us the space to choose into healing and to do the work. But I really have come to believe that whether or not it was supposed to be that way, by design, I don't know, but that I'm on a completely different path in my entire life than I ever would have been otherwise. And that allows me to keep going. Because if Layden's life being lost is a catalyst for where I'm going to go as far as I can.

So what was the experience with Layden? What was the pregnancy? You said that they had had noticed that this heart condition was there before she was born. What did happen?

My pregnancy was super easy. I had just a cute little bump. I didn't feel sick. I was exercising, I was running like I was doing yoga. Labor was very easy, and she was very easy. We were in the hospital after she was born for a little bit of observation, and they concluded she wouldn't need to have surgery for about three or four years. They wanted her to get bigger and health, so we went home. But was very measured. Like, I had to measure her food. Now, in hindsight, this is a really hard thing. We're actually probably making her sicker because she had a sick gut and they wanted her to gain weight. So I had to. I would pump and I would have breast milk, and then we put formula in it to up the calorie intake, and they had me put vegetable oil in it to up the calorie intake. So really harsh things for her gut. And she was refusing her feeds. In hindsight, she was telling us, but I didn't know what she was saying, and I don't even know what to look for. So when I called the doctors and I said, she's not doing well, she's refusing her feed, she's getting really cranky. She hasn't been like this. She won't eat. And I. I don't know what to do. And they were like, all right, let's do the full heart repair. And then she was almost too good for her own good because they put the PA band on her and she wasn't like a problematic, fussy baby. They actually thought she was just high maintenance. Like, as long as she was being held, she was like, fine. So we were staying in the hospital and like, the healthy side of the 8th floor cardiac unit in Boston, there's the ICU side and then the kind of side where you go to recover and go home. They plan to send us home many times, but she never met the requirements of her weight discharge. So I actually was one that refused to go home. And I was told, that doesn't look good to have a successful surgery done and have a patient pending here. And I was like, I don't care what it looks like. We're not going home. But she wasn't sick. She wasn't showing signs of being sick. It was almost like she was overlooked in a way. But she was so sweet. She had the biggest eyes, and she was really smart. We would always, like, anytime her father and I would leave the room, we wouldn't even be at the elevator before we hear her, like, fake cry. Just enough for a nurse to pick her up. And the nurses loved carrying her. I mean, she was a healthy baby, like, presented very healthy. And she. She just wanted to snuggle. And she was, like, always held. I never have any doubt of how held she was and how. How loved she was. She had a full wardrobe, and the nurses loved dressing her up every day. It was like a game. Like, she was like a little doll. And then when she was sick, I really saw her strength and determination. So when she came out of her full heart repair surgery, she came off the ventilator. We gave her a bottle. Like, the next day, she took it down, but then her stomach began expanding. She went in for an abdominal surgery, and at this point, we actually couldn't hold her. And they put her on max dosages of morphine because at one point, she just had tubes coming in and out, like, everywhere. And they didn't want her moving. But she would still. I would have to whisper. She would hear my voice, and, like, her hands would go and her eyes would go, and her feet would kick, and they were like, she can't be on any more morphine. And it was just like her way of saying, I am here. And I was like, all right, Laden, I'm going to fight with you. And I put pictures of her when she was healthy. Like, 50 or 60 of them. Right? Her father called me Mama Rozzi. I took so many photos of her, but I put pictures of her all over the icu because at this point, she was unrecognizable. And I told every doctor, that is who you're treating. Don't forget, that is the girl you are treating. That is who came in here, that is who's leaving. And I was a tough mom. Like, I would be like, can we dim the lights, please? Because she's laying in the bed, and there's just these bright lights. It's like my ring light. That's on right now. And they're like, ma', am, we don't think the lights are the problem. And I'm like, I don't. I don't care. We're gonna dim the lights. She was a trooper. She was so strong and so sweet, and she was a gift.

And I really wanna speak into your intuition as a mom, getting to know her that well, where you knew when it was a fake cry and she just wanted to be held and just the fact that she. That's what she wanted most in life was just to be held. And that was her favorite spot and where she felt obviously the safest and her body was probably doing the best. And then, yes, the fact that the bright lights in her eyes will be bothering her and we do need to turn the lights because, yes, that is playing a role in stressing her body out more than what it needs to be stressed out.

Thank you. I always say at her funeral, I read her eulogy. I wrote. I wanted everyone to know Laden because she lived such a short life, but she was such a strong soul. And so I would tell stories so they get to know her. And I said, she was sweet, she was expressive, she was very expressive. You always knew what she was thinking. But I said the biggest thing she was love. And she taught me love on a whole other level, both in her life and in her death, because grieving, and I'm sure we'll talk more about it, but particularly in relationship, that was a whole other level of understanding what love is. But ultimately we had to make the decision to take her off of the ventilator of support. So she was in my arms when she passed. But the decision to put myself in that much pain, knowing that it was because she was suffering, because selfishly, I'm like, I don't care. I will stay in this hospital forever. And sometimes I still wonder, what if? But my intuition was really clear and I had actually. It's a long story, but this was actually very interesting, is that when they first took her off of the ECMO machine, the first life support, they said she was going to pass. And everyone in the family came in. Everyone came in. We said our goodbyes. We were in that room in the hospital where they put the family, and then they came in and they said, she lived. And I was like, what? And so I sprinted back. Now, I had read promises to her before she passed, and one of those promises was, I will fight this battle with you as long as you lead. Two weeks later, for the very first time in all of These interventions. She was laying there and there were tears coming down her face. Very first time. And it was Father's Day. And I remember I went to see my father and have dinner, and they said, how's Leighton doing? That was like a normal conversation, like, how's Leighton in the hospital? And I'm like, I don't know. She cried for the very first time today. And I was like, huh? And my intuition was telling me, but I didn't want to know. And it was three days later that the medical team met and gave us the news. They said that she has absolutely no chance of living and she's suffering. And so to let her go in her suffering, to know that my suffering was just beginning, was a new understanding.

Of love, for sure. And let's go there next. And before we do, let's just all check in with our bodies. Yeah. Remember that we have a body. You wanna feel your body. If you've got any strong emotions coming up, you can choose to either contain yourself, you can push them away. This is where I also love to push my fingers into the bottom of my feet. I'm really feeling my feet. So let's just take a moment and. And I encourage you also to write down your insight. So far, a lot of gold nuggets have been dropped. And so before we continue on, let's just collect those gold nuggets, write them down, so that we'll be more open and receptive for more gold nuggets. And again, this is, I find, very helpful for me to do whatever and all support exercises. So heart support, back support, neck support, feet support, stomach support. It's the support exercises for me that are usually most helpful during talks like these to keep from dissociating. And then afterwards, I do all my safety exercises, but the support ones are very valuable for during. All right, Melissa, let's go into this relationship and what you learned about the relationship between grief, love, and suffering.

First thing is, I believe that I understood what self love was in a way that I hadn't. It wasn't spa days. It wasn't. It could be. Sure. That wasn't, like, the root, the depth of it. And what was interesting was that so often when we're in pain, we actually reach for things that can compound the pain. Right. So foods or drinks or distractions. But I said, it's like when you're operating at 10%, you actually need to amplify how you fuel and take care of yourself. Like, more sleep. I started getting into juicing and holistic health and healing. I began studying gut health. Actually healed my gut. I haven't taken medication since 2016, whereas I used to have a. I used to carry Tums in my pocket. So it really started with a lot of self love and giving myself permission to ask for help and support. Putting up boundaries from when I needed time off, time away. Giving myself permission to just sleep all day when I needed to. Giving myself permission to speak about it and be okay if other people were uncomfortable. Trust that they could source the tools and set their boundaries as they needed to. So self love was a huge component of it. I think love for others began in many different ways. But even understanding that my grief counselor really helped me into is understanding grief teammates. This is something I speak a lot about, but that nobody could. If you look at a football team, somebody could be a really good quarterback. Tom Brady was an incredible quarterback, but he was made fun of whenever he tried to run the ball. So if we tried to put Tom Brady in running back in his career, he would have not been who he is now. Grief teammates kind of work the same way. We have to put people in a position where they can naturally and authentically give. So my. I have three brothers. For them to be the grief teammate that's called a listener was really hard for them. They're younger. This type of work is really hard on their sister. And they just want to fix. That's their urge. And to be a true listener, you actually aren't fixing. You're just. You're listening and you're letting someone go and you're not giving unsolicited advice or saying it will get better when or at least you're letting the person be understanding that my brothers were showing their love through being what was called a distractor. Let's go out to dinner. Let's go here. Let's go for a walk. Making me laugh because I needed to be distracted from my grief sometimes. So it became this really new kind of love of kind of looking at everyone and understanding them and being like. Instead of me asking you to do something that it doesn't feel right for you, I'm going to love you enough and ask you to support me in a way that works for you. And now you feel good. And now I feel good. That was definitely one big component. And then the other was particularly my partnership. I think our society just has gender roles and norms around grief where the male is supposed to take care of the female. And I give my grief counselor so much credit. She is an angel. But I remember her saying to me Melissa, a lot of relationships don't work because of the loss of the child. They don't work because of the expectation for the other person to grieve the same way you do. It's not actually the child loss. And so I had to really get clear. His way of grieving and navigating it was like going into the woods, going for hikes, being alone. He didn't want to be around Laden's things. And he had a daughter from his previous marriage, so going to spend time with her. So his healing left me alone. And all I wanted in my healing was to be with him and to be around Laden's things and to talk about her. So it was incredibly painful to not point fingers or ultimatums or be like, why aren't you doing this for me? And to be like, okay, my way of loving you through the most painful thing we've been through is to let you grieve the way you want. And you grieving the way you want actually feels like a knife is in my stomach. But I'm still committed to loving you so that you can grieve how you need to. That was hard. I wasn't this grounded and neutral at the time. It took a lot of work. But that was definitely so many things of love, so self love, loving others and what they could authentically give, and then loving someone enough to honor their needs, even when it was in conflict.

With my own, that's even what an element of that with Laden, right, where loving her enough that you knew when it was time to let her go, if she's suffering, I need to love her enough to let her go. And then being able to almost put the pieces of people around you with how they could fit in a certain role, that felt good for them, too. And being able to love them enough to allow them an authentic way for them to show up for you and you being able to love yourself enough to find those people and to figure out and ultimately come to what sounds like a sense of, I know that I can be okay.

Yes, 100%.

How did you get to that place? Was that an automatic place where you were at all along, or did you lose that sense of, I, I'm gonna be okay? What was your process of that sense of, I'm okay, I'm going to be okay?

I think that it's like a muscle that builds over time. People say it's easier after a year. I don't believe that. Actually, the second year was the hardest for me. This year has been hard because it's 10 is a big year. I just. It just hits. But the second year was very hard for me because people move on with their lives as they should, and that was a hard thing to. To recognize. Lena wasn't any less loved. I wasn't any less loved. People have their lives, and they're not waking up every day thinking, how can I take care of Melissa? I always say that in entrepreneurship, when people are hesitant to. I work with mostly online coaches. When they're hesitant to put their work out there, I'm like, no one's waking up every day and saying, how can I hire Sarah? You have to put it out there. And so I think my grief just really created this whole new level of radical responsibility. And I look back and I could cry thinking about the versions of me and how much pain I was in. I used to take a taxi to go sit at the Bertucci's by the hospital, by myself, and cry. I was so lost. I think this is important. I didn't want to move on because I thought if I moved on late, it didn't matter. People would think I didn't care. Care. And what she really taught me was like, the grief doesn't ever get smaller. So she's like, when you. When someone passes away, like, your whole world is like that circle, and your grief fills the whole thing. So Laden, my daughter, filled this whole circle. She said, as you move on, it's still the same size. You just build your world. You expand it, so the percentage that it takes up is less. And I think that's something that gave a concept that I then gave myself permission because I wasn't giving myself permission to move forward because I didn't want to laugh. Like, I remember the first time I laughed after she died. I felt guilty. I didn't listen to music. I was so committed to being in my grief because I thought that was the way to love her. And I had to learn elsewhere. When I joined the Boston Marathon team, that was a very big step for me. When I first went, I was head down there. We would train every Saturday. We'd go for long runs, and I'd have in my earphones and head down. Meanwhile, everyone's running, talking, laughing. They're sharing the stories, how the hospital saved their child. And here I am, like mine died. But beginning to find communities where I could be known as Laden's mom, I think is the best way to put it, allowed me to begin to open up my world. And as I built trust, doing so, and I built trust that I wasn't Betraying my daughter. And I hear this a lot. One of my good friends is a widow, and she's been criticized for getting remarried. And I said to her, if I have another child, I don't love Laden any less. But I think there is this part in our grief journeys where we have to give ourselves permission to move forward without knowing it's not moving on and it's not betraying. And in fact, when we really take care of ourselves, I'm able. Like me, being able to speak here is honoring my daughter a lot more than if I were too committed to my grief to move forward.

Such a powerful concept. And it's. I think it's so common, like you say. And people are so unaware that they can actually be committed to their grief.

Yes.

And be stuck in that sense of guilt, of it's not okay for me to move forward and to build my life, because then that would mean that I didn't care or I didn't love them as much as I know that I love them. And this is my way to prove how much I love them.

Right. Yeah. My business primarily runs through social media, and I couldn't even post on social media 10 years ago because I didn't want anyone to see me smile because they would be like, oh, she's happy that her daughter died. Like, these were the thoughts that I had. They weren't rational, but they were very real for me. Very real.

Power of the nervous system. It doesn't have to be real to feel very real.

Yes, exactly. Nervous system regulation work was a huge part of my healing as well.

Huge part.

I think another one was little things, like I didn't know how to prepare myself if somebody asked if I had children. Such a common question to be asked. I'm 40 years old, so I was 30 when I lost her. Such a common question to be asked in your 30s. I practice my responses because I didn't want to say no, but I was afraid of being too much for the other person and telling them what happened. And all of these things kept coming up again. And I think that there's a big sense of failure as a parent, instinctively, my job is to keep my child safe. That is, if you watch animals, that is. That is our instinct. Right. We will go to crazy lengths and find strength in us. We didn't have a rage in us. We didn't know how or whatever it may be for our child. And so I felt very much like a failure. And I felt very much, particularly with her case being termed a catastrophe, that I messed something up or I was being punished or I could have done something. I'll never forget meeting one of my friends. This was probably about three or four years after LA passed. She had a newborn and I went to go meet the newborn which was very hard for me. I couldn't be around children and I had to give myself that permission. So again that self love and just tell my family I'm not coming to Christmas, I can't be around again. That comes back to self love. But I went to meet a friend's baby and they made a joke like something around, well, we're keeping them alive, we're doing our one job and I had to leave. And so I think that just speaks to when you lose a child, you feel like you failed and you lose such an identity too. I would add I loved my identity as a mother. I was wearing maternity clothing but I didn't even need to. And I'm buying maternity clothing and putting maternity bathing suit, like putting it on. I loved being a mom and I bought my daughter Laden a book every single week before she was born and wrote her letter in it. I just, I couldn't wait. Like dear baby, and we didn't know if it was a boy or girl. Like dear baby, I can't wait to meet you at doctor's appointment today. Dear baby, this is a football book. Dear Baby, this is. What is that? Taco book or something? I forget what that big taco book was back 10 years ago, but I was like your mom loves tacos. And I just, I couldn't wait. I am a very maternal, nurturing person in general. So my identity loss was a big one because who was I now?

It was the loss of a really important identity that can really shake us up and make us lose our way and our mission for a time. Because everything can seem upside down. And it's in those times that I've seen many people naturally make decisions for their life that are unconscious at the time but end up being very powerful decisions that guide their life moving forward and it keeps them in a fear place for a long time where it's some kind of decision around I will never do this again. I will never be this hurt again. I will never open my heart this much and feel this much ripped apart again. And how did you navigate that aspect of your nervous system wanting to never ever feel that exposed and hurt again?

It's been a process, if I'm being honest. I really hope to be a voice that expands our definition and understanding of grief. Because I think when we Understand it more and we talk about it more, it has less power over us. But I think that what really allowed me to open my heart back up again, it's like building safety and doing so. And that probably started with my team and my clients. To be honest, I almost pushed away some of the closest people to me subconsciously, but have since changed that. But I think I really actually began to love the burn of love. And instead of defining that love has to always feel good, that love is going to burn. And just like we were talking about earlier, you need to have a why or a mission because things get painful or hard or uncomfortable, different depths of love, just like grief has a depth chart, I think love has a depth chart. I love everybody, but there are different depths. See people and I see their greatness and I wonder about their stories because nobody knows I'm a brave mom when they see me walking around. In fact, a lot of people just think, oh, it must be nice. She lives in Mexico. Typical blonde transplant from the United States living on the beach in Mexico. And they have no idea what I've been through. And that has taught me to treat everybody like they have a story that I don't know about, because I found that to be true. Everyone has a story. So in terms of learning to love again, one part was redefining love as something that always had to feel good. I'd say the second thing is loving myself so much that any other love is an expansion, not filling a need. If I look in hindsight, my previous relationships were filling a void in me. They were filling an emptiness. They were feeling a lack of confidence. They were filling, can I take care of myself? When I got to a place where I fully just loved and accepted even my quirks, Like, I'm so not perfect. When I love those parts about me, anything else is an additional. So therefore, if that addition were to be taken from me or gone, I would still be fine. I would still be whole and be complete. And then I think that would be the last component is self trust. Knowing that no matter what happens to me, it allows me to risk. In business, I've taken some risk. I've base planted. Not everything has worked perfectly. I've lost money, I've made a lot of money. But this allows me to know that I'll be okay no matter what happens to me. Allows me to love and to risk. Because loving is risking in ways I probably never would have before.

That's very powerful.

Love it.

Melissa.

Thank you, thank you.

Thank you for your vulnerability, for your authenticity. For letting your light and your mission shine. It's such a model for how to move through this. Not in any kind of way of oh, here's the perfect way to do it, but just what is possible to move through rather than get stuck.

Thank you for bringing it back to possibility because that is at the root of everything that I stand for. As I said, I believe everyone's carrying the story and my heart is truly holding space and love for your stories.

Thank you, Melissa, thank you for sharing your story, your love and your heart, and you the listener. Thank you for joining me for this episode on the Biology of Trauma podcast. Grief is often a trauma that gets stored and we get stuck. It is part of our healing journey to address that grief and it often surfaces as we seek to be more alive. There were several moments during this conversation that I felt that pain. Tears were coming down my face. I know you didn't see that and I'm wondering if that happened for you too. If I can ask you a favor. Take a quick second and leave a review for the Biology of Trauma podcast. It helps me know what you think of the podcast I create for you each week. And seriously, otherwise, how do I know? Take a quick second, please and leave a review for the Biology of Trauma podcast. In the show notes, I'll have links for you for resources related to this topic of Safely Navigating Grief Just as we safely open up a body that has stored trauma, safely is the keyword. The most important thing you can do to ensure you are doing trauma or grief work safely is to stabilize your nervous system first. There can be lots of reasons why our system is reactive, sensitive or numb. Just like if I were still a surgery resident and taking you in for surgery, we would both want your system stable for the surgery to be a help and not a harm to you. The foundational journey is a six week journey into your nervous system where I guide you through learning how to stabilize your nervous system. We walk through it together and I teach you 21 different somatic exercises followed by 21 different somatic parts exercises. We do both the somatic work and the parts work to lay the foundation. Then it is safer to do an exploration of past events or your childhood or buried grief. I will have the link to the foundational journey and would love to have you join me for the next one. You have daily exercises to do on your own and then I teach Live every day where we do the same exercise together. Yes, I go live with you every day so you don't have to do this Alone, we are stabilizing your system to do the deeper work safely. Grief impacts our diaphragm and so our breath, heart and gut. Our heart can feel like it is sinking in our chest and our gut does not get the rhythmic pressure changes that would naturally happen with our deep breaths. Gut infections start, we don't digest our food as well. Inflammation sets in which travels to our brain through the vagus nerve and creates the brain fog. You need gut support. You need gut support when you are carrying grief and when you want to heal that grief. I will have my link to the basic gut protocol to start with until further evaluation may be helpful. Speaking of which, you can have further evaluation. You can meet with one of my trained coaches for a biology of trauma health coaching session. You can have a session focused just on grief and gut health in fact and after reviewing your assessment forms with the team, the health coach will meet with you one on one and give you a view of your health challenges through the lens of stress and trauma. They will then co create a plan with you so that this plan is not overwhelming but exactly what you can implement right now with the time, energy and resources you have. In fact, you can also meet with one of my trained somatic and parts coaches for for a one on one session. I would use this if you are really stuck and need a breakthrough with helping your body feel safe with helping you feel safe in this often crazy world that we live in. And with that, I'm your host, Dr. Amy and until next episode sending you lots of love. Thank you for joining me today. If you enjoyed today's show, be sure to subscribe. We definitely will learn, laugh and sometimes cry together on this healing journey and you won't want to miss an episode. Give my podcast 5 stars. Share it with a friend or colleague if you felt an impact as it truly helps get the word out and breaking the paradigm of how we do trauma work. I look forward to seeing you back here next week. Until then, this is your host Dr. Amy sending you lots of love.

Ra.