The Special Needs Mom Podcast

The Trojan Horse of Happiness

• Kara Ryska • Episode 223

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This episode continues our exploration of the often avoided topic: grief. I share a story about one of my special needs mom clients, “Diana,” who, through our work together, found acceptance and even a path to peace despite facing deep sadness and loss. This is her third conversation with me on the podcast and I am grateful she is back for again. 

We often think grief looks like constant sadness or that it follows neat “stages,” but it’s much messier—and that’s okay. Grief doesn’t have to mean losing joy; in fact, it can create more room for it. I explore how embracing grief can actually open us up to feel fully alive. If you’re looking for a supportive space to explore these topics, I’ve built a community just for that.

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Connect with Kara, host of The Special Needs Mom Podcast:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thespecialneedsmompodcast/
Website: https://www.kararyska.com/

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Speaker:

Hi, I'm Kara, life coach, wife and mom to four incredible and unique children. It wasn't all that long ago that my son received a diagnosis that had my world come crashing down. I lacked the ability to see past the circumstances, which felt impossible. And the dreams I once had for my life and family felt destroyed. Fast forward past many years of surviving and not at all thriving, and you'll see a mom who trusts that she can handle anything that comes her way and has access to the power and confidence that once felt so lacking. I created the special needs mom podcast to create connection and community with moms who find themselves feeling trapped and with no one who really understands. My intention is to spark the flair of possibility. In your own life and rekindle your ability to dream. This isn't a podcast about your special needs child. This is a podcast about you. If you are a mom who feels anxious, alone, or stuck, then you are in the right place. Welcome.

Hello and welcome to the special needs mom podcast. This is your host, Kara. I am glad to be with you today. This is an episode that it has been a long time coming. It's something that I think about a lot and that my hope is by the end of this episode that you have in some way taken on some new excitement. And I want to start the episode with a story, of one of my earliest special needs mom client. The backstory is I was a coach for years before I decided that I wanted to coach special needs moms. There's a lot of reasons that go into that, but suffice it to say. I was finally ready. And so I started coaching moms like me and this particular client, she brings a smile to my face. Every time I think of her, she is so strong and feisty and full of zest. And I just adore her. And she appeared in two episodes under an alias of Diana. She decided to come on with anonymity because she wanted to blast all the things without filter. And so these particular episodes are especially loved for that reason. So you can go back to find them. September 2023, and we will link the exact episodes in the show notes, but the titles one is regaining control and finding tranquility. And another one is impossible levels of support and acceptance. And this really is a good kind of summary of the work that we did together in her journey through coaching. And at the end of our engagement, we were connecting and kind of looking back and just noticing all that occurred as she. Essentially transformed how she was relating to her daughter and to her life and with a lot of acceptance and a lot of taking back control. And she leaned into the acceptance, which really then invited her to grieve what was prior to working together. She had not acknowledged the sadness aspect. of her life, because her thought was like, well, what's the point? Like, what's it going to do to open this huge, huge door to sadness? Cause certainly all the things that were really, really sad, we're going to go away. If anything, they were growing. So, what she never expected is that this was one of the missing pieces that opened up what I'll call, a little corny, but I'm going to say it, her pathway to peace. You know, that's the name of my program. I kind of had to fit it in there, but we joked, we joked at the time that if she knew when she was signing on to work with me, that essentially I would be walking her down A journey through sadness, grief, acceptance, and letting go of some of the things that she was holding onto, specifically anger that she probably wouldn't have signed up. And so we kind of joked about that, like it was a Trojan horse, the things she signed up for and ultimately then what she got. But in this case, it was a very happy ending. So that's actually the reason I titled this episode, the Trojan horse of happiness, because I was kind of thinking. A lot of people aren't going to be flocking to say, I want to listen to an episode about grief because we come into this conversation with so many different, connotations or beliefs around grief. And it just, you know, it's not a sexy topic. And so in case you were in, are in the camp that Diana was in, I tricked you and I got you here. So don't leave because there is good stuff here, and another kind of story I wanted to share is how I think grief is very commonly related to in our culture. I, this, it was so funny cause I was preparing for this episode and then this conversation I'm going to share with you happened and I was like, this is exactly it. I think this is the common experience. Many of us start with. So I have a new friend that I met through, some of the communities that I'm part of as a result of Levi's cancer and disability journey. And I was going to be meeting up with her actually kind of hanging out while Levi was at a support group. And she was going to be meeting with someone else. And so, you know, I didn't kind of want to like barge in on her party. And I was like, Oh, we can hang out, but I'll bring a book. So like you can do your thing. And she just casually mentioned, Oh, I need a good book for vacation. Like, do you have any recommendations? And I kind of laughed, I text her and said, well, I don't know that this is a great book for a vacation read because I essentially said, it's a book on grief. And she said, Oh no, I don't have any of that going on. Luckily. Now I put the voice inflection because it was in text, but I thought it was a really interesting answer. Because I think that's how a lot of us relate to grief. Like we either have it or we don't. And there's certain criteria that we use to say that we should have it or we don't. Here's what I will say is that I can know with certainty that what she has in her life is grief. Why? Because she's human. Okay. Not because there's anything unique about her because she's And like I said, because of the circumstances in her life, I'm going to say it would be impossible. To not have grief. So we're going to go into the details and if it doesn't make sense now, by the end of this episode, I think it will. So let's continue on. It's a long introduction, a long way of saying this episode is for you. you might remember if you have been here before that the last few episodes, episode 220 and 221 were kind of a, part one and part two episode, first one, talking about loneliness. And we talked about grief as it relates to loneliness. And then the second, episode two 21 is the antidote to loneliness. You have to go listen to it to learn what that might be. And today we're going to be just focusing on the topic, the broader topic of grief itself. It was funny as I was creating these episodes, I kind of looked at them all together and it was a little bit of a, like a chicken and egg thing. Like do we talk about grief first or loneliness first? Like they're so intertwined. And I finally decided that, I would do the loneliness first, and then we would talk about the broader topic of grief. And so grief is like I said, not a sexy topic. And I also want to say it's not a sad topic to me. It's a life topic. There's a quote that I want to share from Francis Weller. He has a really amazing book on grief. It is called the wild edge of sorrow. I love the name of his book and it's an amazing book. And what he says is there is some strange intimacy between grief and aliveness. And when I speak to y'all, you don't always use the word aliveness, but I think that's the experience that some of us feel like we're missing. He's feeling full of zest, full of life that, man, there's so many things that are really hard about being the moms to our children that I think it's quite easy to feel like a lot of the life has been drained out of us and then it's kind of hard to get back. So I want to say the quote again because I think it's amazing to set the tone for the conversation. There is some strange intimacy between grief and aliveness. And with that, what is grief? So I'm talking about this broader topic, but let's actually further define it. I've touched on it in the last two episodes, but I want to lean into even broadening the Even more. one of the ways I think it's so well defined is well, well defined, but actually so undefined is saying that grief is not about letting go, but letting in many, many, many, many, many things. When we think about grief, it's like, put it behind us, let it go, move on. And that's, I think, where we start to miss the mark on grief itself. It's about letting in, letting in what you say. Grief is the pain in response to loss. So this is, I think, where. start to lose people, but like, ugh, I don't wanna talk about the pain. I don't wanna talk about that, Kara. It's too hard. It's like already I can't deal with what I have, so stick with me here. Okay. The grief is the pain in response to loss. Now, loss is not just about death and dying. It's about the death or the loss of dreams. And I think this is where we start to really recognize the relationship between special needs or medical mothering, cancer mom, disability mom, however we most identify, we start to recognize the dreams that we had for our child or children, essentially. They are no more. Or another way of saying that is they have died or they are gone. They're inaccessible, out of reach. And in my own story, I can think back to when my son was two. And at this point in his life, he was known to be completely typical. He had full vision. He could run. Like I said, he could see. And he hadn't gone through the nightmares. that he has gone through. And so I, at that time had a completely different vision for his life and for my life. And part of my grief process has been fully letting that version of the life that I thought I would have. And then I thought he would have letting it actually letting it be. die, letting it be gone. You might think, well, you had no choice, but actually there's a lot of, I think, grasping and holding onto that we do, especially as We, as mothers are trying to teach and support these children and becoming the fullest version of who they are. And so I think it can be very slippery in terms of what do we let go of and what do we keep essentially persisting. So back to recognizing that loss is not just about death and dying. It's about the depth of dreams. And so we can see where grief would exist, certainly in death and dying, but also in the disability world, in marriages. in financial loss, and even just from transitioning from having little kids to big kids. And I think this is universal, whether there's a disability involved or not. So that's how I'm going to leave the definition. I want to be really clear. This is not a comprehensive conversation. I would be writing a book if I was aiming for comprehensive. I'm really looking at targeting this conversation to how it really applies and how it really matters to our lives as special needs moms. Okay. Now let's look at the other side. What is grief? Not. I'm willing to bet that you've heard of the five stages of grief, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. This is very, very commonly referred to. in conversations of grief amongst professionals, amongst all the people. And what I want to point out about this is that there certainly aspects of these five stages, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance are certainly part of grief. I wouldn't have any, argument over that. I think where we lose kind of some value of considering the five stages of grief is one having not recognized that the study, the work that this person did. So this model was based on work done by Elizabeth Kugler Ross, and she was specifically working with terminally ill. Patients who were facing their own mortality. So that's really where this potential stage model can be attributed appropriately. But when we then try to apply it to all the aspects of grief, that's when I think we're just, perhaps using the model in a way that it doesn't have as much value. I think when we think of stages, we think of order, we think of completion, like we've completed the stages and you'll hear, you know, as I further define what grief is not, that that's not how it works. And I think it can be very disorienting to an audience. Already disorienting experience that which is grief to think that there is an ordered process or stages to it. Okay. Other thing I want to point out in what grief is not is it's not constant sadness. And I say this one because perhaps it's where prior to kind of deep diving into these topics, both, you know, intellectually, but also experientially. And As I've become a griever is really picturing grief and associating with the sadness aspect only. I like a picture, a person, you know, raining outside with a cozy blanket, a cup of tea, huddled up in their chair alone, crying in their room. So what I want to say is, that's not grief, although it can look like that, but that's not all it is. I think that's the point I want to make here. Grief does not only come through tears. It's also expressed in a whole variety of experiences, which can include anger and outrage. And essentially I want you to consider it's like a untamable beast. It's going to be how it's going to be. And sadness is certainly one aspect, but not the only. And the third point I want to make about what grief is not is it's not a timeline or period of time. Grief doesn't end after a certain time period. Nor does it follow a linear path. Wouldn't that be great, man? Wouldn't that be great if we could put a formula in, do step one, two, three, four, and like dust our hands off and call it a day. Well, that's not how it works. And I think when we try to fit it into that, that's when I think again, we essentially don't get to experience the gifts of grief. Lastly, the thing I want to point out that grief is not is it's not a neat and tidy process that we complete. And I think that that last word is the one I really want to emphasize is that we need to consider that grief It's more like a door that we go through in entering a whole new world, and it's how we adjust to living life once we pass through this doorway. So that doorway is symbolizing something that we cannot change. And we may long for and want to change. And grief is the experience of learning how to live, fully live, given that we have entered a whole new world. Okay? So you can imagine that there's no completion point because there's no point in which you say everything in this new world That is exactly as it should be, because that's just not how things work. Before we move on, I want to touch on what I will call the gift of grief. So remember I said, okay, this is not an all bad conversation. This is a conversation about life. And so to put it shortly, the gift of grief is joy. There's a quote that I'm willing to bet most of you have heard in some capacities by William Blake. The deeper, the sorrow. The greater the joy and there was this picture as I was kind of just processing this, this episode more than many had many different iterations as I process my own thoughts and try to put them in some logical order to create this episode. And as I was doing this, I pictured this canyon, like within my own being, like kind of in my chest cavity, if you will. And Just pictured a canyon or a space inside of me that was getting eroded or eaten away and created deep within me. And so as this grief burrows deeper and deeper, it makes this open cavern that like literally feels like it's destroying. The core of who we are, and it would be easy to look at this canyon and see only the void that was left like this, the absence of who we once were. I want you to consider That the depth of this cavern creates space for something new. It's the opening that makes like a literal space for joy. Another picture I'm getting is, I'm sure you guys have all seen those like really beautiful, resin pieces of art. So I don't know, I feel like cutting boards were like. or coffee tables were like, it's some wood, something or another. And then people pour like beautiful shades of blue and white and ocean scenes of resin, that hard stuff. And they like use the, voids to fill in and then to polish away. And then they end up with this like beautiful piece of art. And it's beautiful because those cracks have been filled in with something that I'm going to call is like joy. So I want you to consider that to the extent that you let this grief in is to the extent that you have the potential to experience being fully alive, also known as joy. So let's address some fears in grief I almost think when I say grief, I almost feel like we could, interchange the words fears in enormous or big feelings and. One common experience that I both personally have, and I get to witness other people having is the experience that we will be swallowed whole or never come out of it, like that the sadness or the, the feeling that we're having is so deep. There was no end that can be pretty confronting. And so I want to just acknowledge that this is a common fear and just to normalize it. again, this points to that grief is not lessening our aliveness, but it's inviting us to experience a way greater depth, which then requires us to embrace both the sorrow and our vitality and the coexistence of both of them. So those are some fears that are very, very common in grief. Let's look at some of the temptations in grief, or I might even say some common pitfalls of where we get stuck in grief. First one is. The default response of burying it and encapsulating it in our bodies. Now go back to what I just shared about fears and grief. When we are confronting something that is so big, it brings up fear, a very normal and natural and understandable response is to encapsulate it so that we don't have to deal with it. And like I said earlier, In order to fully experience our emotion, we have to let it in. So this requires letting go of control. And it requires not containing it. I'll still tell you, this is not my favorite thing. I don't love that this is how it works, but I do love the experience, the gift of actually letting go of that control and stopping in the attempt of containing it because of the gift and the opening it makes for all of life. So, again, with that fear of what these big feelings come with, we have these instincts or these natural responses to bury it. So just something to watch for. Another temptation is trying to make things neat and tidy. I'm totally guilty of this. I think if you find yourself in whatever stage in life, but I'm, you know, you guys are probably Mostly all moms. And you know, you've lived enough life to be a mom. And so you've all had a childhood and we all have all the things that add up to Be our story to get us where we are now. And if you identify as someone who was a peacekeeper, someone trying to kind of keep things together in your family or in your home, or maybe even in your marriage, then the friction of letting things not be tidied up and like ended in a bow may be so deeply uncomfortable for you. that it may actually be inaccessible. And I don't want to say inaccessible always. What I want to point out is inaccessible into, like, jumping in with both feet. You may need to like tiptoe into the water, to be able to so this neat and tidy temptation, you'll notice it a lot when either you or people that are trying to comfort you will say the very cliche things like God only gives you as much as you can handle those kinds of things. And those are an attempt to isolate from the discomfort. In other words, kind of make things a little bit more neat and tidy because you know, it's not tidy is grief, unresolved pain, not very neat and tidy. And so Again, something to watch for. One thing I want to point out here before we move on to the next temptation and grief is the attempt to avoid or stay busy. in order to avoid the untidy experience of grief. even as like we physically think about making things neat and tidy, I picture somebody just holding on to create order in their home and so busy making things literally neat and tidy because the idea of slowing down and to have a stillness of presence is so deeply uncomfortable that again, we see this attempt to keep control. And to make things neat and tidy. Okay. Third, temptation and grief. Wanting to get to the other side, also guilty of this one. I think I'm guilty of all the things, it's fine. It's not a problem, right? Like, I'm allowed to be human, you're allowed to be human. And we're just giving language to very, very common experiences that we're all having. So, I think one of the reasons this is so alluring, Is that our culture is obsessed, like production and value and productivity. And so therefore is like ascension as in growth or improvement, creation, good, and anything else that's not that bad. And so when we look at grief, we look at what it takes to engage and slow down enough to grieve. It's really asking us to value something we haven't valued before. And that is what I'm going to call the dissension, like the leaning in to the grief. recognizing that. When we try to get to the other side, we're also trying to bypass all the middle part too, what we could call the messy middle. so just to notice temptations in grief is to try to get to the other side. And remember what I said earlier, there's no completion point of grief. There's no point at which it's finished. I will say when we fully integrate grief, I think there is a different experience. And so I think that's very, very possible. And so there is an aspect I think of like the other side, but I think what I'm pointing out here is the desperation and the forcing of, I have to get to the other side versus allowing yourself to be where you're at. Okay. Now, this is our last section here. And it's the needs we have in grief. And you're going to notice a lot of overlap from the prior episodes where I'm talking about loneliness. And connection. And I'm also broadening the conversation here. So first need I want to point out is being with people who can validate to validate the experience you're having, no matter what it is. And part of this validation is being able to be seen and to have the experience that you're being understood. I want to kind of put a cautionary note, a caveat here, because I think this is where a lot of us kind of fall into some tricky waters because we have some people in our life that we think should understand, but maybe don't. And then vice versa. We have some people that we would think, how could they understand or really validate But they do. And if you expect your family, your husband, certain friends, even certain special needs mom friends to be the people that can validate it, you may find that there's something missing for whatever reason. There's probably a lot. They may not be the people who can see it and understand it because of their own story and their own needs. And so I want to recognize that your need is to be with people who can validate it. And the gift you can give yourself is to. not expect all of the people to be able to do that for you I guess the encouragement here is to maybe take some of the rules or the, expectations out of the picture here. And I think a husband is a great example. I think, you know, it's very easy to be disappointed. In the way that your husband holds you and validate your grief. I think this is like a common, complaint or thing that's missing when I work with my clients and accepting that they may not be the people that can hold your grief in the way that you need them to and letting them and not making them wrong for that. I think it's a gift that you can give yourself and also them. Additionally, I think a lot of people limit themselves as in like, I'll use a therapist as an example. A lot of us think that we need somebody that has the same circumstances as us in order to be able to really understand us. And I want to say that is not true. So if you think you have to find a therapist. that can understand exactly what it's like because they are in your shoes, then well, one, you're going to be limited because many, many therapists will not have special needs kids. And I will say a good therapist is able to walk through with you. The things that you need and to validate your experience. And I also want to say some therapists cannot, I've had a therapist who was very much capable of supporting me in some areas, but there was some areas related to my child that I like literally watched her go into solvent mode. It was really interesting. So that was just a note for me. Okay. This therapist is not going to be able to support me in this space, but I was able to to get support from her. for many other things, the therapist I have now is just amazing. I love her so much and can sit with me in all the things. Is she a special needs mom? She is not. She has the skill to be able to sit with and validate. Okay. I think you guys get that point. Second need we have in grief is to provide for the part of you that needs safety and security. Okay. Oh, I feel like this is just like the most kind and compassionate thing you can do for yourself is acknowledge like, okay, this is like big deal. The thing that I'm grieving or the things that I'm grieving are deeply confronting and they're destabilizing and our human experience I think is fear and to acknowledge that, like you need to have safety and security to be able to do the work that you need to do in, I'm referring to is in grieving. And so that's going to be different things for many of you, what, does make you feel safe and secure or what gives you safety and security, but I want to point to being in a space because really this is emotional. Safety and security. We're talking about being in a space that you can describe as nonjudgmental, comforting, non anxious as in it doesn't need you to be anything else that you're not. And so I want you to consider that this is a need for you to have in grief. Another need is to be held in your suffering. Notice the last two, especially these really can't be done isolated on an island. This is pointing back to the experience of community, or in other words, really recognizing that we were not designed to grieve alone. So back to this need being held in your suffering. There's a quote from J. K. Park, who wrote a book called as long as you need about grief. And the quote is, the only way we can bear the unbearable is if we bear it alongside each other. Now, this one doesn't only bring me so much more comfort because it really, it dissolves, I think the unsolvable problem of like, how do we resolve this pain? Like we can't like it, it just hurts, but having the access to the comfort and the stability of being held. inside of that space, it makes it tolerable in the quote. I mean, it becomes bearable. And I think that is so important. And again, points back to this, texture of like really being tender and kind and generous to yourself, recognizing like, this is a need that we have as moms of these children and you know, how hard we love them and how hard it is to love them sometimes. So the point here in the being held in your suffering, it really acknowledges that like, we don't need people to fix our pain because they can't in many, many cases, most all cases, but we need people to be with us, holding, holding it with us. And this is the time where I'm going to plug. The pathway to peace community, because this is a place that is intentionally cultivated as a nonjudgmental comforting presence of women that do happen to be in the same circumstance, but that. It's a space cultivated to come exactly as you are, to be held and much more than that. But that is one of the things that we do. And that leads actually into the next need we have in grief. And that's to be able to tell the truth. Sometimes we lie to ourselves. Well, I don't think we lie to ourselves. I think we're afraid to actually acknowledge the truth of how we feel or how we think. And I think then like there's this fear, like if we call in the negative, we say it like it is, then it's like going to be like what manifesting it. But I want to say that it's almost like the opposite, that actually telling the truth is what allows you to let that thing go. It's the holding onto it that I think actually Manifest it more than anything else, or I should say not the holding onto it. It's the suppressing it and denying it and resisting it. So like this could look like the truth. This could look like when someone says, God only gives you what you can handle and you thinking. Yeah, but like, this is so much more than I can handle this whole, God doesn't give you more. It doesn't feel true to me. That is just a simple shift of you actually acknowledging that what feels true to you is this is more than you can handle. And I hope you can see actually like the integrating how you're actually experiencing something and telling yourself the truth allows others to see how you actually are, allows yourself to see how you actually are, how you actually feel. And then I want you to think of trying to connect with someone deeply, intimately over something that's not true. It's pretty difficult, but when you acknowledge the truth or the experience you're having, the possibility of creating a deep, meaningful connection exists. It's literally created in that moment. And the last need I want to point out is pointing back to one of the temptations and it's letting go of our obsession with productivity. It's recognizing it actually takes a lot of energy to be with these emotions, to give ourselves what we need in the experience of grief which many times asks us to step off of the train of productivity and drive, drive, drive, and asks us to let our emotions be what they are. which again is like losing a little bit of control and containment. It's not control, it's containment. It's asking us to not contain them, it requires us to loosen our grip on the things that oftentimes bring us comfort, maybe false comfort, which is like productivity, which is like showing up to work every day. Like nothing ever happened. I want you to notice if you've been around the podcast for a while, that I've had to do a lot of this, letting go of my obsession with productivity of letting episodes be maybe not necessarily the standard I would love them to be doing. creative solutions when I just don't have what I need to give. And hopefully I've done a good job of being transparent. I mean, I think it's a delicate line I tow in terms of like, I don't share all the details of my son's story, but I try to give a window into like the real life work that I'm doing right alongside you guys. So letting go of our obsession with productivity so hard, but it is so freeing as well. Okay. Well, I think that's a good place to land. And I want to leave you with this thought. I can talk about grief. We can learn about grief. You can think about grief all day long. But what I really want is It's for you and us to experience grief more specifically. I want you to experience the gift of grief, which going back to what I shared earlier is joy. Oh, I so deeply want you to have the spectrum. Back, because I know you're already doing the pain part and by bringing in a little bit of intention and support and intending to your needs and grief, I think you can create access to that joy that is missing for so many of you. And so grief work is not passive. It doesn't just sprinkle on you like magic fairy dust. It is an ongoing practice that's asking you to deepen, to attend. To listen to, and to be listened to. And I really want to recognize that this is a practice, something that we attempt to do over and over again, and likely will never be perfect. So if you have a space to practice, to deepen, to attend to, to listen, great. Keep doing that and share with me about what that is. I would love to hear about it. I think celebrating what's working. is something that I want to hear more of, but if you don't have a space, I do want you to consider that I have created and cultivated this space exactly for this reason. And community is the very intentional shift, this is no longer a coaching program, but a coaching community. The thing I want to encourage you with is that I have really designed this community to be financially accessible. So I don't know about you, but I think, you know, I hear different things here and there about whatever offer is out there. And I sometimes like, oh, I can't do that, whatever. I like disqualify it before I even entertain the idea. And I'm thinking of actually one group that I'm in right now that I'm so thankful I didn't do that for. Actually, I'm going to bring her to the podcast one day. Her name's Melanie and she's one of my coaches. And before I reached out to her, the story I had in my head is like, Oh my gosh, like she won't have time for me. All these reasons why it wouldn't work out. And I reached out to her and she literally opened up a whole new program for me because of the requests I had. And now it's, you know, we're going on a year plus of amazing, amazing support. So if you've thought about it, I really want you to think like, well, what stopped you from just learning more, from reaching out? I hope that you will invite yourself to move past that resistance and just explore. No commitments here. Just curiosity. I have. Thank you. In application process, which is essentially me just getting to know you a little bit, or you can even just contact me if you have a specific question. So you can find these links in the show notes, and I will look so forward to meeting you face to face with that. We'll see you on the next episode.