It's Actually Okay to Be Okay

Grief doesn't have to be an endless journey through darkness. What if there's another way to look at loss—one that acknowledges pain while making space for joy? Marie Alessi, bestselling author, TEDx speaker, and Memorial Manager, joins us to shatter the most persistent myths about grief. Having lost both her father at age 20 and her beloved husband Rob after 12 years of marriage, Marie speaks with the authority of lived experience rather than just academic understanding.

"Everything around grief right now was heavy and dark," Marie explains, challenging the common narrative that grief is something from which you never heal. Instead, she offers a refreshing perspective: grief and joy can coexist. The journey isn't about avoiding grief or pretending it doesn't hurt—it's about giving yourself permission to experience happiness again without guilt.

Marie introduces powerful concepts like reframing our language (saying "there's a space in my heart" rather than "a hole"). Kathy feels that grief is a transformational opportunity similar to a caterpillar becoming a butterfly, and understanding that grief is "merely love with no place to go." This last insight provides a practical focal point—finding new places to direct that love.

Marie illuminates the opportunity within the pain. Through her books—"Loving Life After Loss," "Happy Healing," and her prompted journal "Sparks of Joy"—she provides practical guidance for moving from grief to relief.

Take the first step toward healing by changing your position both physically and mentally when negativity overwhelms you. Remember that your loved one would want you to embrace the precious life you still have, and give yourself permission to be okay again.

Contact:
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info@asiliveandgrieve.com
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To Reach Marie:
Website:  www.mariealessi.com
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Podcast:  Unsilence Grief

Credits: 
Music by Kevin MacLeod 

Copyright 2020, by As I Live and Grieve

The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. 

Transcript

Welcome to As I Live and Grieve

Speaker 1 0:01

Welcome to as I Live and Grieve, a podcast that tells the truth about how hard this is. We're glad you joined us today. We know how hard it is to lose someone you love and how well-intentioned friends and family try so hard to comfort us. We created this podcast to provide you with comfort, knowledge and support. We are grief advocates, not professionals, not licensed therapists. We are you.

Speaker 2 0:27

Hi everyone. Welcome back again to another episode of as I Live and Grieve To listeners around the world. Literally I check the stats all the time and we have listeners now in 110 different countries around the world, and that is. I'm just so happy about that. So, wherever you are in the world, I hope your day at least has been so far fruitful for you as you continue to heal in your journey through grief. I hope things are going well for you. If you need support, don't hesitate to reach out to your network. If you don't have a network, for heaven's sakes, reach out to me. I'm happy to support anyone that needs it. Okay with me today? Great guest I know I say it every time, but it's always true. Right With me today is Maria Lessie. Maria, thanks for joining me.

Speaker 3 1:16

Thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited about this conversation.

Meet Maria: Author and Memorial Manager

Speaker 2 1:19

Oh, that's great. It's going to be good. They're always good and I always get so much from the new friends that cross my path, and I think you're going to be no different. So I really look forward to like to say, because that is my number one title that I wear with pride- I am a mom of two teenage sons.

Speaker 3 1:51

I'm also a bestselling author. I have published three books and counting, and co-authored another three books. I think my sixth one is in the making as we speak, but it's just something that I love sharing with the audience. I'm also a TEDx speaker. I've done my talk Redefining Our Image of a Widow, if you want to look it up. I really love that one because I find it very, very important to talk about these labels, and I am also a memorial manager and a coach. So these are all my labels that I can share with you. To get started, Great.

Speaker 2 2:24

What kind of a manager was that again?

Speaker 3 2:26

Memorial manager, so I do celebrations of life for people.

Speaker 2 2:32

Oh, very interesting. I've not heard that title before, so that's very intriguing as well.

Speaker 3 2:37

We just came up with that because I find funeral director very dark and it feels very dusty and old-fashioned and it's not what we do. So I have started a collaboration with Tomorrow Funerals only late last year and the founder of it, kate Morgan. Her and my message are so aligned and even her slogan is funerals done differently. So we said how can we make this a more digestible and more suitable title? And we came up with this title memorial manager and I love it because that's exactly what I do.

Speaker 2 3:06

I manage the entire memorial service from start to finish, so yeah, yeah, yeah, funerals overall are changing and have been changing over the last few years. I know, when my husband died and we had his, we had his calling hours and then we had the funeral and I can use air quotes for that. It was more of a celebration of life.

Speaker 3 3:27

That's exactly what it needs to be. I believe in that.

Speaker 2 3:30

And I remember at one point a close friend of my husband's had come up to the podium. People were invited to come up and just say a few words, offer a memory or anything, and one of his really good friends came up and stood in front of the podium and then just placed a cup of Tim Hortons coffee a paper cup of coffee on the podium. I broke out in laughter because every day my husband wanted his Tim Hortons coffee. That was his one habit, even once he was in a facility on hospice and could no longer have anything to no more liquids unless they were thickened. Every day he insisted I bring him that cup of coffee so he could hold it and at least smell it.

Speaker 2 4:14

And his friend brought that in as his memory. And I burst out in laughter and immediately felt guilty and then very quickly, everybody said it's okay, and other people were laughing too, and it was.

Speaker 3 4:27

It was a wonderful moment. But isn't that interesting that people, it's like you know that, that feeling of guilt, it's such a learned behavior, because you're not supposed to feel like that, you're not supposed to laugh at a funeral, but that's exactly it, you know, that's exactly why we can come together to mourn a person's passing, or we can come together to celebrate a person's life, and you know, it's polar opposite from the energy. The energy shifts in the room when we come in to celebrate someone's life, and I believe that's what we need to do, because otherwise we reduce their entire life to their moment of passing, and I don't want to do that to my husband.

Speaker 2 5:03

He had such a beautiful life.

Speaker 3 5:04

I want to celebrate that.

Speaker 2 5:05

Yep and out of the many, many memories I have, that is going to be one of my favorite memories right there, because it demonstrates for me the impact he had on other people as well, so it was really important.

Speaker 1 5:18

I love it.

Myths of Grief Debunked

Speaker 2 5:19

So, memorial Manager, I like that a lot. Okay, let's get started. In your profile, I read a couple of things that really intrigued me, so the first one I would like to focus on is myths of grief. Now I know a few that, I think, are myths of grief but, I'm interested in your take on this.

Speaker 3 5:39

So I would get this started off with I'm a very big believer in changing our language around grief, because my whole mission is bringing more lightness into grief, changing the narrative of grief. Everything around grief right now or yeah, up until sort of recently, I feel things are changing right now was heavy and dark and the language was always like this will stay with you forever. You don't ever heal from grief. There is the five stages of grief. Uh, dr elizabeth kubler-ross never intended to be for grief, it was for anticipatory grief. She wrote them for terminally ill people. So that's one of the biggest myths, because I get asked this question quite a lot not so much lately anymore, luckily. So things are changing things.

Speaker 3 6:25

People are starting to understand that there is a different side to grief and my whole thing is I'm not trying to avoid grief or walk away from grief or ignore it. I know that grief and joy can live in the same house together. Like you said, you laughed. You know you first said laughing with a cup of coffee, and I love that because that's exactly such a reflection of what it's like. Things happen, we love. Things happen, we cry and before somebody passes, it's absolutely normal. Everybody understands the duality of it. Everybody understands that joy, happiness, sadness can all go hand in hand and happen simultaneously, or sometimes one after the other, every day, all day long. Once somebody passes, all of a sudden, there's this belief and now joy has gone, and now we're just sad, and now a grief will stay with us forever.

Speaker 3 7:10

I don't buy into that bs. That's their belief system, not mine. And my belief system around that is that we can choose what we want to do, and I often then get thrown that. But I didn't do for my husband to pass and I'm like my brain usually pauses when I hear that because I'm like, well, on a spiritual level, I believe you have, because my spiritual beliefs are we do have soul contracts. We do choose the life that we want to experience.

Speaker 3 7:39

But that aside, even if you don't have that belief, you can still choose what you do with it. And that is huge. That is really huge, because I think we are faced with this okay, my person has died, now what's next? What do I do with that? But not everybody asks themselves that question. They say come to society's expectation of how you deal with it, big quotation marks. And I did not buy into that. I made the choice to focus on joy, to create the happiest life possible for the boys and myself, because that's what Rob and I promised each other roughly three years prior to his passing that if something was to ever happen, that that's what we're going to do.

Speaker 2 8:18

It's great that you could have that conversation about that. And I think the times they are changing, so to speak. Conversation about that, and I think the times they are changing, so to speak. Even four plus years ago, when I started this podcast, there were only a few podcasts that had the topic of grief. Now there are dozens. Likewise, when we were first getting guests for our podcast, they were sometimes more difficult to find. So we would usually go to authors because if you wrote a book about it, you've got a story to tell or you've got a perspective. So we would usually go to authors because if you wrote a book about it, you've got a story to tell or you've got a perspective. And we always had luck with that. Now there are guests in abundance. People are more willing to share.

Speaker 2 8:56

They're more willing to talk about it, and I love that, because that was part of the reason that we did this podcast. We wanted to make grief and death easier to talk about, easier to have those discussions as a couple, easier to have discussions to support a friend and easier to just understand what you go through when you grieve and even the different types of processing and the different types of grief between anticipatory or complex or anything like that and it's working, it's happening, so I'm very, very excited about that.

Speaker 2 9:32

So, happiness and joy and I recently experienced another type of happiness and joy living together with grief is on a grief cruise oh, you did To the Caribbean. I was actually a presenter on this cruise and I thought, well, this is going to be interesting, because how is this going to work? I mean Caribbean, it's sunny, the water, the beaches are beautiful and everything. The days that we were at sea were the days that we held workshops and it was incredible to see these people that started out so timid, heads down, not wanting to share anything, and two days later, they've opened up, they're smiling, we're together for dinner, they're laughing, they're sharing memories.

Speaker 2 10:19

It was absolutely beautiful to see that happen, absolutely beautiful. So that was just another variety of it, and so if you think that grief and joy cannot live together, go on a grief cruise.

Speaker 3 10:31

Yeah, absolutely. I think anything where people come together that grieve. I have noticed that even in Facebook groups. I used to run a movement called Loving Love After Loss from 2019 until 2023. I used to run the movement called Loving Love After Loss from 2019 till 2023. And, like, even in there, it's almost like once you give people permission to heal, like things just really start to shift. And when I first started the movement very similar to what you said to the podcast I started my podcast in grief in 2019 as well, podcasting grief in 2019 as well, and I remember whenever we talk about grief in a room full of people who have experienced it.

Speaker 3 11:13

That's the big difference, because people often have an opinion about how you're supposed to grief, big quotation marks, and those are the ones that haven't experienced it yet. And I'm saying yet because we all will experience it sooner or later. It's that we, we have all in common we, we are born, we die. You know, that's just it. So when we have this moment of giving people permission to grieve, you see that relief that happens. It's incredible. Oh, sorry, I'm saying to grieve, to heal actually, because there is this belief that you cannot heal grief, and I don't agree with that.

Speaker 3 11:44

And I don't agree with that I don't agree with that we can heal yeah, and one of the most powerful things that anybody has ever said to me in such simplicity, because we're so used to, in the mental health space in particular, to say it's okay not to be okay. So align that here all the time and I absolutely agree with it. It's important, sure important to hear. What was even more so important for me to hear was when Christopher, who was in my group, said to me it's okay to be okay, Mind blown.

Grief and Joy Can Live Together

Speaker 3 12:12

Yeah, like yes, exactly yes In your grief, it's okay to be okay, yeah, good, and nobody tells you that.

Speaker 2 12:20

Yeah, yeah. And in addition to having someone give you permission, you need to give yourself permission. Yeah, you need to accept yourself and then you are well on your way to finding joy again. I agree, it doesn't happen overnight and I constantly tell people be patient, be patient with yourself, you know. Allow yourself time and you'll get there. Yeah, we'll get there and it may happen, you may not even realize that it's happening. And then, all of a sudden, you'll look back and you'll think wow yeah what a difference yeah you really will.

Speaker 3 12:55

So other myths of grief yeah, for me, one of the biggest one is what I just mentioned. You know that you don't feel from grief. I absolutely don't agree with that. And then again, with the language that we use. There's one that I hear all the time, that is there'll always be a hole in my heart. I don't like that saying because with a hole in your heart you wouldn't be able to survive. I don't know, they don't mean that physically, I get that, but I prefer language such as there'll always be a space in my heart for Rob. That is so different, and feel how the energy shifts when you say that when you talk about your loved one and you're like there'll always be a space in my heart for him.

Speaker 3 13:32

I think there is a lot to be said about the expectation that society has set over the past decades. There are cultures that do grief so well, like the mexicans, the japanese, that is, so many really beautiful cultures that celebrate the person's life. Yet we are in this, we are so stuck in this mud of grief, that darkness, that heaviness. The we can't move forward says who just listen to the language that you know. I'm always saying like, just listen to the language that you know. I'm always saying like just listen to the language that you use, change your language and your healing will start. It all starts with language. It all starts with how we talk to ourselves and it starts with allowing ourselves to heal.

Speaker 3 14:17

It starts with allowing ourselves to laugh and not feel guilty about it, not feel any shame about things. Because here's my biggest thing do the role reversal. If you put yourself in your husband's shoes and you look down on you, what would you want to tell her?

Speaker 1 14:32

Stay stuck in grief and cry forever.

Speaker 3 14:34

Or would you say live your life. It's so beautiful you still have it. That's the irony of grief we are grieving, we are hurting because of the physical absence of our partner, because of how his precious life would cut short, and then we do the same to our precious life. Why, yeah, like we still have that precious life. Why don't we live it for us, for him, for just out of appreciation for how precious life is?

Speaker 2 15:01

Yeah, like the celebration of life that you did, to celebrate memories and everything. Yeah, continue that. Live as if you're celebrating. Yes, yeah, yeah, kind of, carry it on, absolutely Okay. So I have said and in my way I know the difference that I will grieve until the day I die. Now, when I say that, I don't mean that I will be in a state of mourning until the day I die, but there are things about my life that I will miss, that I will, if I reflect on them, I'll have a moment of sadness until the day I die, because it's all wrapped up in memories. Okay, yeah.

Speaker 2 15:42

Having said that, I can also say that at this point in my life, I'm happier than I have ever been Beautiful Even when Tom was here with me because I've redefined myself. So that's one of those grief, joy things. It's a transformation, much like the caterpillar goes through. Grief, joy things. It's a transformation, much like the caterpillar goes through. It's like that initial part of mourning, that very, very devastating loss. All of those emotions and everything. To me it relates to the caterpillar in the chrysalis. Their bodies actually break down completely.

Speaker 2 16:15

And we kind of do something similar too. But I remember calling my daughter and saying Stephanie, I don't know who I am anymore. I feel like I have to redefine myself. Everything I had, all of my routine, it's all gone. The only thing I've left are physical things. I have my job, I have my car, I have my home, but I don't have any of those intangible things anymore. And that's what I need to redefine, and I did yeah I did so. We talk about that a lot on the podcast as well.

Speaker 3 16:47

Yeah, I just want to say to that quickly sorry, before we uh move on, because for me I used to run a healing journey called uh, who am I after loss? It's exactly exactly that. It is about redefining who we are, and it's almost like you have a blank canvas all of a sudden and you can choose whether you use the same colors again or if you use the same colors but in a very different setting, if you add some colors, if you take some away. It is really this whole look at your life as a blank canvas, and I know a lot of people go like I didn't ask for that blank canvas, I want my old picture back. You know I get that.

Speaker 3 17:22

However, there is so much opportunity in redefining who you are. There is so much choice that you can make and it can feel extremely overwhelming at first 100. I hear you absolutely, and you can do that in your own time. You don't have to paint the whole canvas in one, in one day. It takes time. You know, like every artist, they come back to the big picture, they add another layer, they let it dry, they change it, they paint over. They're like you know. There is this creative process when you allow yourself to see that from an opportunity perspective rather than a chore or something that is really heavy. Then things start to shift. I really love that you say that the redefining yourself. I definitely went through the process myself yeah, yeah and it's.

Speaker 2 18:09

And I did not say okay, I know who I want to be and that's where I'm headed. I had no clue. Yes, I had no clue so just. I really tried to get rid of all of the negativity in my life, even a couple of friends that I kind of disassociated with because they were so negative and they were bringing me down, and I want positive and so I did that that is a great buzzword now.

Redefining Yourself After Loss

Speaker 2 18:35

But I did, I focused on that and in doing that I also found that I was more open-minded and when an opportunity came my way, I was more aware of it and had a chance to say maybe I want to give that a try, nothing to lose, let's try it. And it's those little things. And then all of a sudden, here I am doing a podcast. Before I did it, I'd never even listened to a podcast Yet. There it was. So absolutely it's a whole transformation and we talk about that a lot, because I've even had people come up to me after I've said that and they said can you really say that You're happier than you have ever been? And I said, yes, I really can.

Speaker 2 19:17

And they said why. And I said some of it is situational. I'm surrounded by my family. That I love. I even live with my older daughter and her family and I just love that. It's so much better than living by myself and they asked me to come live with them.

Speaker 1 19:34

They wanted me to, so it was a gift and I just appreciate it.

Speaker 2 19:39

every day I'm doing something I love, I'm meeting such fascinating people, and it's all those things put together that have just made my life incredible right that is incredible.

Speaker 3 19:52

That's exactly, you know, the the hidden gifts and adversity that I often talk about. There is so much of that that we don't always see straight away. There is, uh, because everything takes time. You know the redefining yourself, the reinventing yourself, the choices that you make, choices that you make towards healing or not. And then, when you are at a space where healing is taking place, where you allow healing into your life, right there is this moment when you start turning around, and it's another one people often say, nothing prepared, prepares you for this, and I'm like, what does it? Because then you have this moment where you are in this healing space and you turn around and all of a sudden you see all these little milestones that happened in your life that actually did prepare you for that. We often don't see them straight away, or very rarely do we see them straight away. But then when we go through our healing journey and we turn around, I'm like, oh my god, here it is. I mean, robin and I have happiest marriage for 12 years before he died and, yes, we only had 12 years for the 12 years that we have in. I know it's very hard because I'm always like, don't compare, but you know what was 12 years is so much more than other people had in 40 years of their marriage, and I know that for a fact because this is one of my hidden gifts in adversity.

Speaker 3 21:13

My dad passed away when I was 20 and it was unexpected for me. I know now that he knew he was dying, but it was unexpected for me. I know now that he knew he was dying, but it was unexpected for me. I wasn't prepared for that and it was hard. It was really hard. I did not grieve well, I had no idea how to grieve. I had no support. Nobody knew how to support me in that, because none of my friends had experienced that. I felt all alone in this and, like I was the only girl it happened to at that age, I knew that was not true, but that's how I felt.

Speaker 3 21:39

So it was a very hard journey through grief and I learned a lot of things in that. For example, to always tell people what you think and feel about them, because you might not have the chance the next day, right, and it may have been slightly out of fear to start with, but then it turned into out of love, out of appreciation, out of gratitude, and that was the biggest wedding present that my dad could have given me, even though he was physically not around anymore, because we lived such a conscious and beautiful and present marriage and relationship. I really value that what Rob and I had and I know for a fact that he did too. You know, there was not one day where I didn't tell him how much I loved him, because I thought if I don't tell him I'm going to burst. I can't hold this in. There's so much love for this person.

Speaker 3 22:26

So that to me is one of the many, many hidden gifts and adversity out of my dad that I took into my marriage and then had a really beautiful marriage and then, when Rob died, I'm teaching the boys how to be present, how to celebrate life, how to make decisions based on life is so freaking precious.

Speaker 2 22:45

I know and a lot of that is that positive mindset that I spoke of If I had to go back and think of one thing that really resonated with me as I was trying to move forward and trying to heal. I love quotes from authors, from anybody. I'm a quote collector and I found a quote by Janie Anderson and I don't know the whole quote, but the last bit of the quote is that grief is merely love, with no place to go. That was my light bulb moment.

Speaker 3 23:18

Yeah.

Speaker 2 23:19

Because I thought that's what it feels like. I have this love. Tom used to be here and that's where that love went.

Speaker 2 23:26

He's gone and I still have the love in me, but there's no target for it. There's no place for it to go. So as I was going through this positivity focus in my life, I decided I needed to find places for that love to go. I needed it almost like re-homing an animal, and that was about the time that the podcast started and that's where a lot of the love went. It really did that's beautiful, that's beautiful the love went.

Speaker 3 24:00

It really did.

Speaker 2 24:01

That's beautiful. That's beautiful Grief, something easier to talk about. And we've done that, even myself, because decades when my mother was alive she planned everything in the most minute detail, including her death, her funeral, everything. And it's just, my brother and I are her only children, so my brother lived in Florida. I was the one that was here locally with her and she would want to tell me about all of these details. She would want me to know all of these things. I was terrified of the word death. I could not listen to her.

Speaker 2 24:34

I could not sit still and listen to her and I knew it broke her heart. But I would even. You know those escape calls they have when you go on a blind date and you have somebody calling you so you can pretend there's no one to speak to. I literally would have friends do that so that I could get away from my mother's conversation about death. It was that uncomfortable a topic for me. Yeah, I understand, and now here I am, I talk about it every day.

Speaker 3 25:00

I talk about it all the time and it becomes, you know, when you have lived through it. I always say there is such a huge difference between learned and lived experience. When you have lived through it it becomes normal. For me it's not uncomfortable, but I can feel how it's still uncomfortable for other people who haven't lived through it. So I'm going to give you a perfect example.

Speaker 3 25:14

Last night I went to the gym and I bumped into a friend of ours and him and his wife had their 20th wedding anniversary on the 1st of April and I was like, hey, how did you go? How did you celebrate? Wasn't it around? When he said around, when I said like, was it a big number? He's like, yeah, the 20th. I'm like, awesome, what did you do? And I was so happy for them because I still celebrate love Nothing has changed in that fact more than ever, actually, because of the awareness how precious life is so for me, I celebrated more than ever, not less because Rob's not around like even more so. And then I just kept walking on the treadmill and I'm like I could have I had this little niggle of.

Speaker 3 25:53

Did that make him feel uncomfortable, him knowing that I'm a widow, saying, oh, happy wedding anniversary, you know, and it's bizarre because I'm like I love love. You know I will always celebrate it and I know I have talked to a lot of widows that said it really hurts me when I see other people in love. I don't share that feeling. I'm really happy when I see others in love. And don't get me wrong, yes, there are moments where it stings a bit, where you know you go out and you see everybody, like, let's say, valentine's Day, you know they're all lovey-dovey at their tables.

Speaker 3 26:28

It does sometimes highlight the absence of your husband, sure, but mostly for me, I am just so happy for them because I just love love and I see a couple like I do things like that all the time Like there's a beautiful iconic sea cliff bridge here in the northern Illawarra so, people who know Sydney, it's just south of Sydney, it's beautiful, and I sometimes walk across the bridge and back and every now and then I see a couple walking hand in hand and I remember one moment vividly. They were just so together. You know what I mean. They were so beautiful and connected and I literally just walked past and I gave them, you know, warm my hands to a love heart and and I literally just, you know, showered love all over them just by my hand gesture, and they had the biggest smile on their face.

Speaker 3 27:11

And I am not shy to tell people and I am. I have done things like sitting in a restaurant and riding on a napkin saying you guys have that. You radiate love. This is so beautiful. Um, you know, don't ever take this for granted. You guys are just such a beautiful couple.

The Power of Positive Mindset

Speaker 3 27:29

whatever it is, whatever comes out of my heart, I just pour it onto a napkin and give it to them on my way out, or I tell them I do that all the time. My boys are so used to it. Of course they probably thought I'm a little bit crazy, but now it doesn't embarrass them anymore no, I'm actually really happy that it doesn't embarrass them anymore, which is really beautiful. So I think things like that are really important. Just share the love, like literally. I'm such a hippie chick in my heart.

Speaker 2 28:00

Nothing wrong with that at all, although it makes you a unique individual, I will say but it's just beautiful. So conversation has been kind of back and forth and everything but, I think for the most part. Uh, what listeners will get? What I would like them to get is the positivity, the love, the, the mindset, the fact that you can be grieving, have a smile on your face.

Speaker 2 28:25

You can still laugh. You can recall a memory and let it make you smile. Don't hold the smile back. Just let it make you smile and when someone asks, share the memory you know in the telling and speak their name and everything you can do to celebrate your loved one that you've lost. Celebrate yourself yeah, you're alive, you're living, and I loved what you said about imagine you are them looking down on you.

Speaker 3 28:55

What would?

Speaker 2 28:55

you think. What would you want to tell yourself? Give yourself permission to be happy. Give yourself to move forward. Yeah, it's incredible. So this is the time in the podcast I'm actually going to turn the microphone over to you and I'm going to let you speak directly to our listeners. Please tell them about the books you've written. This is your time to share with them anything you'd like, Sure.

Speaker 3 29:22

I'll give you a little bit of understanding of what the books are about, because then you can choose more wisely if or if not, or which one you would like to read. So my very first book is a loving life after loss. That book was written literally four or five months after rob died, so it was a book that came out of a. I'm going to give you that very, very quickly. I had an absolute break then in our kitchen one day, where the funeral was over, everything was done and there was no more okay, what's next? And I had this meltdown moment where everything just came crashing down on me and I literally just started screaming, like from calling it out to being louder to then screaming I just need peace and quiet. I just, I really crave just this peace and quiet in my heart. It was too loud around me and too much going on and the boys were fighting, and out of that meltdown moment I knew instantly I needed support in this.

Speaker 3 30:19

I started seeing a positive psychologist, which was incredible for me. I saw her for about four months and it was super, super helpful. She held space for me about four months and it was super, super helpful. She held space for me. She held space for my different breathing, wanting to focus on choice, on joy rather than the sadness, the happiness. She got it.

Speaker 3 30:37

And one day in our session she asked me when I talk about the expectation of people, it's like, what does breathing mean to you, marie? And out of nowhere I had this word empowerment come up. I'm like, wow, I didn't expect that word to come up, like grief, and I sort of explained it to her. There's this force that I felt when I had the meltdown and it just bursts out of you and some might call it primal screaming. But there's this primal force that comes with that pain that you can take to really build yourself up again. You can actually tap into that power of grief.

Speaker 3 31:10

And that's why I talk about the power of grief. And out of that I said to her I think I need to write a book about that. And she's like I think you should. That was the birth of Loving Love After Loss. I wrote about my story how I met Rob, how I fell in love with him, how we got married, our barefoot wedding at the beach, our pictures of everything our life story and then how he died and how I dealt with it.

Speaker 3 31:31

The second book happened a couple of years later, because I then started a movement with the same child, loving Life After Loss. I had the movement for about five years and in 2022, I wrote a book called Happy Healing. So I really talked about what happened after the first book. You know how the movement was born and then my seven-step process from grief to relief. It's in the book Happy Healing, the very steps that I use. So if you want something a bit more hands-on and not just the lovey-dovey story, I love my story, but I'm just saying if you need more direction on how to actually step through it, that's in Happy Healing. So you'll find that in my second and the third book happened as I was closing down the movement, as I stepped away from the movement and then went into speaking and coaching.

Speaker 3 32:14

More than anything, I put together a prompted journal called sparks of joy, so it's like 300 sparks in there.

Maria's Books and Resources

Speaker 3 32:24

So every single day there's still like only two or three lines nice, something that you can do, something that you you can actively do or think about and that brings you joy. And then there's the whole page where you can have your own notes in there. So the top of the page is always the one spike of joy and then you can journal in there. So it's a prompted journal and people who bought it almost everyone came back to get another one for a friend. They love that it, friend, they love that it's. It's such a nice little, uh, companion through life, and it's not just for people who've experienced loss. If you have a bit of, you know, a deep need for some more joy in life, that is the sort of thing that I would recommend. And then I've co-authored another three where I just shared my story and their books, where it was very aligned, and the fourth one that I write and publish myself will be coming out later this year. So yeah, watch that space?

Speaker 2 33:11

Oh, that would be great and I'm going to suggest that, as you get closer to the launch of that book, that you reach out to me, come back on the podcast and we'll promote that book a bit as well to get you out into the airwaves. Yeah, we'll promote that book a bit as well to get you out into the airwaves.

Speaker 1 33:27

Yeah.

Speaker 2 33:28

Well, this has been for me a very, very touching and very insightful episode. I've enjoyed this conversation so much. It has affirmed for me kind of the path that I took. That wasn't really a path. It was, oh it was truly a scribbled route back and forth and up and down and everything. Yet I just feel so good about where I am.

Speaker 2 33:54

And I know that the world is not done with me yet. I tease my doctor all the time and say you know, I plan on living until I'm 100 at least. But so you know, I've got a lot of years left to do things, to accomplish things. As long as my brain is working and I can talk and I can hear, that's fine with me. I'll be good to go.

Speaker 2 34:13

But for our listeners, I want you all to remember self-care, and one of the best ways for me is to think of something, whether it's a podcast, to listen to a book, to read a journal, to write in, whatever it is, pick one of those and do something about it for yourself, and to remember to celebrate yourself. When you find yourself getting mired down in all that negativity, the very first thing you need to do is get up and change position and in changing position also try to change your mindset. Try to shake yourself out of that negativity. It's going to take some work, it's not going to be easy, but, boy, I'm here to tell you it is so worth it. So do what you can to work toward that. Take every opportunity you have to find some happy in your grief, find some joy in your grief, go to a park and watch little children play.

Speaker 3 35:15

Go to the zoo.

Speaker 2 35:18

Go to the zoo and watch the animals cavort. Watch them do silly things. Watch silly YouTube videos.

Speaker 2 35:27

If that's what it takes to get you out of your funk, that's all part of self-care so I'm just going to repeat, remind listeners that information, contact information for marie will be in the podcast notes. So if you didn't have a pen beside you, don't worry about it, just read those podcast notes, it'll be there. Connect with her, go buy her book. I am going to order Happy Healing. I think that's the book I need right now, even though it's been seven years. I will do that. I think that's where I need to start with that one, and I'm going to check out the journal as well, because many people ask me about journaling. So now I've got a new recommendation for them as well. Perfect, okay, listeners, I have to say goodbye. I always hate this part. I get so into what we're talking about. I just don't want it to stop. I'm like a child that way.

Speaker 3 36:18

It's a goodbye for now.

Speaker 2 36:19

I will say farewell, it is just a goodbye for now, until next time, and I hope you join us again next time as we continue to live and grieve. Thanks so much, marie. Thank you, kathy.

Speaker 1 36:35

Thank you so much for listening with us today. Do you have a topic that you'd like us to cover or do you have a question from one of our episodes? Please email us at info at as I live and grievecom, and let us know. We hope you will find a moment to leave a review, send an email and share with others. Join us next time as we continue to live and grieve together.