Radio interview/Mental Wellness Wednesday segment (Nov 2022) featuring life coach Rebeccah Silence on coping with grief after losing a loved one. Rebeccah promotes her book Coming Back to Life and shares practices from her emotional-healing coaching: distinguishing anticipated loss (prepare, say what matters) from blindside loss (allow grief, avoid blame), asking someone who is dying "what do you need?", expressing feelings through letters, and feeling core emotions (anger, fear, grief, joy, excitement). She grounds advice in personal experience (survived cancer) and pandemic-era increases in collective grief.
If there is a death in the family or death of the loved one, let's talk about that and ways to kind of get through that.
Of course, death makes room for new life and birth and new possibility. But in the face of the grief, you know, gut punching you to the max, it isn't necessarily something you want to focus on. That, okay, there's new life coming. There's new possibility coming, right? And we can't skip the step of the grief. I think some people go into like an idealistic, optimistic, oh, it's going to be okay. And you can skip the grieving process that way, or they can go into such a dark, deep grief that they forget that there will be more life. Life isn't over.
Mix 102.5 the best mix from the 90s to now. It's Big Papa in the Afternoon. It is a Mental Wellness Wednesday. Life Coach Rebecca Silence RebeccaSilence.com tougher together a breakthrough podcast and a book coming?
A book. The presale is official. Go right to RebeccaSilence.com to check it out and pre order. The book is called Coming Back to Life. And Health Communications Incorporated is my publisher. I feel super excited and grateful to provide this book, this life's work of mine, to all of you. And the pre order is ready whenever you are. And this, the whole point of the book, coming Back to Life is to live now while you can, and to learn essentially how to use your emotional pain and trauma and past to your advantage. That's really the point. You can use it all to your advantage and you can have your life feel how you want it to feel, regardless of whatever happened and move forward, creating a clear future. That's what you want, no matter what you're going through or have gone through or are afraid you might go through and grow through. So you know, my trauma, my life almost sometimes doesn't even feel real. Like I really could be the craziest, worst Lifetime movie you've ever seen. And instead of it being a sad story, I wrote this book to show possibility in the face of trauma, adversity, cancer, rape. All of what I've been through has literally, as cheesy as it sounds, gotten me to the place where I get to serve without fear, pretty much any case in front of me. And I truly live my dream life and I want that for everyone. So it's coming back to Life. Go to rebeccasilence.com pre order and I can't wait for it to get into your hands and your hearts.
I can't I can't wait either. Again, it's Rebecca Silence dot com. We're talking about traumatic events and, and going through them and whatnot. I personally have known, I know three people that have had serious deaths with, you know, death is always serious, but deaths in their family, people that were close to them and because I was close to them, you know, it's been affecting me. And there seems to be a lot of death over the last six months or so. Just, just in general. I realize it's kind of. It's a morbid topic, but at the same time, it's something that everyone's dealing with. If there is a death in the family or death of the loved one. Let's talk about that and ways to kind of get through that.
Absolutely. And it really isn't just the past six months. Right. It's the past two years. I mean, we always go through seasons of our life where there's death. Sometimes it's people, sometimes it's relationships, sometimes it's job. But the pandemic, I really think a blessing has been no one has been immune. Like you're saying, it's different when it's distant, when it's not that close to you and you know about a death or a loss or a tragedy, but it isn't directly impacting you. Pandemic had us all directly impacted and then I think, just heightened the fear around loss. And the magnitude of death, I think is hitting us harder as a result of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine and the wars going on all around the world. Right. But I think there's two perspectives that I would like to speak to here. One is the perspective of what do you do when you know it's coming? Like a cancer diagnosis that's terminal versus what do you do when it's a blind side? Because either way, it still sucks. Either way, it's how. Either way, there's how to get through and go through as you grieve. And, you know, again, we can't escape the. The seasons of birth, death and rebirth. And of course, death makes room for new life and birth and new possibility. But in the face of the grief, you know, gut punching you to the max, it isn't necessarily something you want to focus on that, okay, there's new life coming, there's new possibility coming. Right. And we can't skip the step of the grief. I think some people go into, like an idealistic, optimistic, oh, it's going to be okay. And you can skip the grieving process that way, or they can go into such a dark, deep grief that they forget that there will be more life. Life isn't over, right? So when you know it's coming, I think that gives us even more opportunity to say all the things that we would want to say, to do all the things that we would want to do to make sure on our end we're really clean, like squeaky clean in being who we wanted to be in this relationship. Now I will say that we don't have to wait for the crisis or the diagnosis to make the decision to say all the things we want to say, to do all the things we want to do to be squeaky cle on our end, right? Like, make right of the top 10 people that matter to you and this week or for the next 10 days, one person a day, tell them how they have impacted your life, what they mean to you, why you love them so much. Right? Like, that's a. That's a great process. We don't have to wait for the diagnosis or the crisis or the car accident or whatever it is. Now the next piece is, I think, as someone who had cancer and statistically pretty minimal odds, which is mostly where coming back to life the book came from. One of the best things that people did for me and not very many did. You were one of them. Gary was ask me what I needed. If you know someone that's dying, ask them, what do you need? What do you want? How can I support you your way, Right? We tell the story about us where you asked me that and I was like, I need some music. I'm literally dying in bed and can't move and I could use the music. And you bought me a brand new ipod, loaded it up. The first song I heard was Fight Song. I could not believe that, like, that song was written for me at that time. And then you gave me flowers. I mean, I came home from chemo to this ipod and flowers, and I asked for it because you asked, right? So I think we make the mistake of trying to support people the way we think they would want to be supported in the face of death and no, like, ask them what actually would take care of them, right? So the other side is, what do you do when it's a complete and total blindside? And I think that I'm going to give you three pieces. So when it's a complete and total blindside, you know, I really believe. And you don't have to, but just consider that the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth is literally bigger than us. So don't Go into finding someone or something to blame. And I'm not saying it happened for a reason, but I'm saying it happened. So we need to find a way to make peace with this is a reality that I can't argue with because if I try to argue with it, I'll only suffer more. Right. So you can decide in the face of the blind side to not blame the and to not suffer and to truly feel your way through the grief, which is just loss. There is a loss and you have got to feel it. My work is about the practice of emotional healing. I am an emotional healing coach. Most people don't want to touch their emotions with a 10 foot pole. I was at the airport last week with a pastor and she was joking with me that her therapist is mad at her because she doesn't want to deal with her emotions. And I said, well, you're sitting next to the number one emotional healing coach in the world. And I think this is God telling you we have work to do on your emotions. We just started cracking up, right? And you know, I am just saying you can't skip the part where you connect to your emotion. And there are only five. Anger, fear, grief, joy, excitement. Everything else is fear and drama that's stuck and toxic underneath disappointment, grief, underneath frustration, anger. Whatever it is for you, you've got to feel it. And that is the way out of suffering. And I love this process of writing a letter to that loved one knowing their spirit will still hear you. You don't need the person in front of you to heal. You don't need that literal physical closure that you wish you had. I wish you had it. And create that for yourself when and where you can. But sometimes it's just not available because there was some blindside, something happened and all of a sudden they're gone. And we literally don't know when the last time we get to say I love you or goodbye is. We literally don't. I treat every single coaching session like I may never see that client again. That is part of my practice because it's happened too many times where someone got confronted or something happened and I don't see him again. So I treat every single session like it is the last one. I do my best to treat every single interaction like that could be it. Not because I am afraid or morbid, but because I want to be my best while I can.
No, absolutely. And it's a mental wellness Wednesday. It's life coach Rebecca Silence Tougher Together Breakthrough podcast. Brand new book is available for pre order you can go to rebeccasilence.com and take care of that. Rebecca, thank you so much for the time. I definitely appreciate it. We'll talk to you next week.
