Episode 14 – Navigating Grief, Even When It Hurts

The VulnerABILITY Podcast

Pain: This week’s podcast centers on pain and navigating grief. In the wake of discovering her friend’s husband has lost his battle to cancer, coupled with the news of the mass shooting in Thousand Oaks, California, Marisa releases Episode 14 of the VulnerABILITY Podcast with a heavy, burdened heart.

What do we do when grief is so prevalent? In this episode, I ask this question and talk openly about grief. My hope is to allow both myself, and others, to grieve in our own ways. We can’t be afraid to let others in, even when it’s hard. And even though we’re facing both person and political pain in the current climate, we have to believe in (and focus on) community support.

Please feel free to reach out if you are grieving or if the content resonates with you in some way.

Highlights From the Episode:

[0:58] “Grief is something that we all experience… Sometimes when we go through these things, it’s so hard to talk about them. We find that we don’t really connect or relate to people who haven’t experienced it personally and we just feel this burden that we don’t want to share outwardly, or that people don’t understand.”

[1:30] “When we are caught in these painful moments it feels impossible to even want to reach out for help, to even want to hear good news.”

[3:35] “I think the most important thing is to show up in whatever capacity you can. Whether that’s picking up the phone and listening for three hours as someone cries to you, or reaching out to someone with a handwritten note, or just finding a way to support them in their grieving. [That’s] the first step.”

[9:15] “This [grief] is something that we’re never fully going to get a handle on. We’re never going to know, ‘Okay, this is how we navigate this.’ Because whenever we face grief, it’s so often unknown. It’s something that we didn’t see coming or didn’t expect, and now we’re, in a way, forced to handle it. But we’re not always equipped because we’re human.”

[12:25] “You show up and you let them know you’re not alone. And it doesn’t matter if you don’t know the right words to say, it doesn’t matter if you might not be their same religion… When we’re grieving, [the] most important [thing] is to feel love. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have the same political stance, if you don’t have the same lifestyle, if you’re not the same race, or sex, or [if] you don’t’ believe these same things — it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’re showing up.”

[14:45] “You trust that God will give you the words, or the ideas, or that He’ll put things into motion. So that even if you don’t know how to help someone that’s grieving, if you pick up the phone and call them, or show up… He will open it up so that things happen.”

[15:20] “The biggest thing people need when they’re grieving is to know they’re not alone.”

[23:15] “Meeting people where they are and just loving on them — we can never have too much love, we can never have too much care, we can never have too much support.”

The Biggest Takeaway:

There is hope that comes from even the most painful of situations. There is light in the darkness, and if we choose to cling to one another in these tough times—we will find it.

https://marisadonnelly.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Ep-14-Navigating-Grief.mp4

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