As I Live and Grieve®
It’s time for grief to come out of the basement, or wherever we have stuffed it to avoid talking about it. When you suffer a loss you need support, comfort, and a safe place to heal. What you are experiencing is painful but normal, unique but similar, surreal but very, very real. As grief advocates we understand and want to provide support, knowledge and comfort as you continue to live and grieve. Host, Kathy Gleason; Producer, Kelly Keck. www.asiliveandgrieve.com
As I Live and Grieve®
Embracing Grief Through Spiritual Formation
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The journey through grief often challenges our deepest spiritual beliefs. When devastating loss shatters our world, many find themselves wrestling with profound questions about meaning, purpose, and connection. What happens when our faith feels broken alongside our hearts?
Becky McCoy knows this territory well. After losing her husband while eight months pregnant with their second child, she embarked on a decade-long journey of rediscovery—not just of herself, but of her spiritual foundations.
This conversation explores how spiritual formation offers pathways through grief that honor our full emotional experience. Becky shares how healthy anger acknowledges the wrongness of our loss, while teaching us that not all suffering has meaning or cause. This perspective liberates us from the exhausting cycle of guilt, shame, and self-blame that often accompanies grief.
We delve into practical spiritual practices—from traditional meditation and prayer to creative expressions like storytelling and art appreciation—that help us process grief in body, mind, and spirit.
For anyone questioning their faith after loss or seeking deeper meaning in their suffering, this episode offers compassionate guidance. Whether you're drawn to traditional spiritual practices or searching for new ways to connect with yourself and something greater, Becky's insights illuminate how spiritual formation can transform grief's darkness into unexpected wisdom.
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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.
Introduction to Weekend Wisdom Series
Speaker 1Welcome 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.
Speaker 2We are you not professionals, not licensed therapists, we are you special series that I introduced, oh, probably six weeks ago, where not only is there an episode released on Tuesdays but I release one on Saturdays, and I call that the Weekend Wisdom series. Those are just podcasts that. I think there's a little bit more of a lesson in there of some kind, whether it's additional insight, some extra inspiration or a very, very special story. I've tagged a few of my guests and put them in the Saturday series and so far the numbers seem like you're loving it. It is a limited series, though, so I think probably after maybe 13 episodes we'll see what happens, but keep listening, I really appreciate it. With me today is Becky McCoy. Hi, Becky, Thanks for joining me.
Speaker 3Yeah, thanks so much. I'm really excited to have a chat.
Speaker 2Oh, I'm really looking forward to this one. We're going to talk about spirituality and hopefully maybe our listeners might get a different perspective. I'm certainly open to it To get us started. To kick us off, would you just speak directly to our listeners and give them a little bit of your background, please?
Speaker 3Sure, I've kind of been all over the place geographically and emotionally and life experience-wise. Ten years ago in my late 20s, my husband died when my oldest was two and I was still pregnant with my youngest list was two and I was still pregnant with my youngest, and that kind of you know was a sharp turn in life I had not seen coming. Yeah, yeah, so the last 10 years has been learning how to be a single parent, learning how to live when everything that you had kind of counted on or planned on has disappeared. And yeah, I particularly one thing was really comforting to me my dad had actually died a couple years before that and writing had become a very therapeutic thing, and so that has kind of now turned into writing and speaking and leading retreats and helping other people also navigate what happens when life falls apart and how do you deal with that.
Speaker 2Yeah, I think it's interesting. There are a lot of people who, when they are devastated by grief and they finally kind of make it I hate to say through, because you're never really finished with it, but when you make it to a point, I guess that is kind of transformative. I kind of use the analogy of the caterpillar and the butterfly, and grief in that first devastating phase is like being in the chrysalis and your body is completely breaking down. You are just at the lowest of lows. But eventually there is a time when you decide you make a conscious or subconscious decision to move forward and you start to redefine yourself.
Speaker 2Yeah, that's kind of like the butterfly moment if you will, and many people who go through that devastation of grief are creating, or have created, a legacy in that they know how awful it is, how ugly, how hard, how painful it is and they want to try to support others and help them, kind of lift them up as they're going through that process.
Speaker 2You've done the same thing. This podcast is the same thing. Almost every one of my guests has reached that point. So I think it's really interesting and I so appreciate and respect the work that everyone is doing in this vein. If only this type of thing would translate to other things in society. But that's a whole different thing.
Speaker 3It's tough because you know you can try and explain grief of any kind. It could be the loss of a person or a job or a home, right but people don't get it until they've experienced it themselves Right.
Speaker 2And even if they say lost a parent, you know, and then they lose a spouse, it's entirely different. Losing my husband has been one of the most difficult things of my entire life, and I mean, I've gone through phases where I've been homeless. I too was a single mom, but mine was due to divorce, not death. I've lost both parents. I lost my husband, and I also lost an infant who was less than 24 hours old. Every one of those, each of those situations was entirely different.
Speaker 2I was a different age. I was kind of in a different place, mentally, emotionally. They're all different, so it's difficult to really summarize and say this is what it's going to feel like, because chances are it's going to feel different. Just know that you're not alone.
Speaker 3Absolutely.
Understanding Different Types of Grief
Speaker 2Now I read in your profile a phrase that kind of jumped out at me, okay, and that was probably when I immediately turned, sent you a message and said would you like to be a guest on my podcast? And that phrase was spiritual formation. You help people with spiritual formation. Yep, you help me understand and our listeners understand what that is.
Speaker 3Yeah, it's a phrase that comes out of the Christian tradition, but it is absolutely applicable to anyone's faith or spiritual life, and the idea is it is a set of practices that help you grow in your spiritual life and deepen your spiritual kind of awareness. I love the definition of spirituality that my friend Charlotte Donlon uses that it's how we connect with ourselves, with the people around us, with the world around us and with the divine, whether you call that God or the universe or whatever terms you feel most connected to. So spiritual formation is what are the things that help you with those different levels of connection? What are those things that deepen those connections, make them more meaningful? What are the things that help you feel settled and grounded? And this perspective, the formation word, that there's this ongoing forming of your spirit. There's this ongoing process that is always happening. No matter how old or young or wise or foolish you are, there is always this process happening, and so spiritual formation is just about being intentional, about that Interesting.
Speaker 2And we know that, again, initial phase of grief, there is a component, at some point, of anger, intense anger at whatever greater power, energy or whatever we believe in that that happened to us.
Speaker 3Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2Because we put our belief in that higher power to watch out for us, to guide us, to protect us, if you will. So there's this anger. How do you redirect that? How do you kind of pick it back up and restructure it, get back on track?
Speaker 3Well, I think the first thing to acknowledge is that that initial anger is really healthy, because you're recognizing that what has just happened is not right and shouldn't happen, and so it's okay to be angry for a while. People are always shocked when I describe that first night after my husband died and just all I could feel was rage. But that's okay, that's a healthy part of grief and it is healthy to let yourself feel that the problem happens when you let it kind of ferment and turn into oh the word just fell right out of my brain Resentment.
Speaker 2That's the word I was thinking of.
Speaker 3Yeah, so you like, let it turn into resentment, and that's when it starts to be just damaging to yourself. Right, if you hold on to that anger for an extraordinary amount of time, you will mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually see effects and side effects of that. It doesn't mean that letting go of the anger means that you're okay with what happened. It doesn't. You know, I'm not pleased that my husband died when I was eight months pregnant, right Like.
Exploring Spiritual Formation
Speaker 3But there comes a point when that anger isn't helpful. That anger isn't like you said. I don't I don't like to use the word through with grief either it's not something that you kind of come out on the other side with. It's a companion with you forever. It kind of gets smaller, or sometimes I like to say it gets smaller and smaller and smaller. That's not helpful for some people. Some people need to think of the grief as staying the same size, but that the container we carry grows over time.
Speaker 3So it becomes much more manageable and you have much more room for other things in your life. And so you allow that anger and it can be helpful to have a therapist to help you process that and recognize what's healthy anger and what's starting to turn unhealthy and then, as you allow yourself to feel, you start to allow yourself to feel other things. Sure, right, yeah. And there are so many emotions associated with grief and they don't come in any specific order and they don't.
Speaker 3Sometimes you circle back a few times, but one of the things that I have learned personally is that I have to let myself feel every single one of those emotions, especially the anger, because if I try to ignore it, it will hunt me down and force me to deal with it. Yeah, so I think a lot of people are afraid of that anger. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2I think in general, people are afraid of those intense emotions Absolutely, and I think somebody had said to me at one point that whatever emotions you feel, those are healing emotions, not emotions that will heal you.
Speaker 3Right.
Speaker 2But they are healing. It's a process. Absolutely, you have to go through those, you have to feel them, yep, as ugly as they are, and that's the ugliness of grief for me.
Speaker 3Yeah, yeah, those intense emotions, yeah, hopefully, you know, most people go through them move on to another one and over time the intensity will lessen yeah, I find it helpful or I encourage people not to think of emotions as good or bad Right, because if we feel a quote unquote bad emotion right, like anger or whatnot, we kind of try and correct ourselves like oh, no, no, no don't, that's bad.
Speaker 3Don't feel sad, don't feel you know, only feel happy, be grateful for the time you had with them, but that's not helpful, right? And so, seeing that all of emotions are human and normal and healthy, some don't feel good, right, like. I would hurt, I would rather have a daily phlebotomy appointment than cry Right. Absolutely, I don't.
Speaker 2I would agree with that.
Speaker 3I don't love it, but it doesn't mean that crying or sadness is bad, and so having to kind of reorient your perspective on emotion really help them not to feel less overwhelming or not to feel more manageable, but to have their place Right.
Speaker 2And you shouldn't stuff your emotions right.
Speaker 3Oh yeah, I mean that'll turn into chronic depression and panic attacks real fast. I know from experience, yeah, and a lot of us grew up feeling that way, that our emotions were too much for the people around us, or that if you're having these, you know what some people think of as negative emotions, you're not grateful or you're not behaving appropriately, and so I think it's really important that we shift our understanding of emotions as being normal, healthy, human things to experience.
Navigating Anger and Emotions in Grief
Speaker 2Yeah, one of the obvious pieces of evidence I can think of now as far as getting our emotions out are this new trend in these businesses where you can go and buy some time in a room and get like a sledgehammer or a big bat or something. And you just have a chance to just destroy stuff, yep, and that just kind of demonstrates you have to get those emotions out of you.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 2Now, if you're not prone to go to one of those places, especially by yourself, I really think you should have a friend go with you.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 2But you could always go somewhere, go for a walk in the woods, go for a walk in the woods and when you're by yourself, let out that primal scream. If that's what you need to do to get that rage, that intense emotion out of you, or sit down by a tree and cry, yep, you can do it in your own home as well. But sometimes I think, just being outside, surrounded by nature and everything, sometimes I think there's more to absorb that emotion.
Speaker 2Yeah, and then when you get home, you don't have that emotion in the same room.
Speaker 3Absolutely. Yeah, I have been so grateful that more and more people are talking about emotional regulation and learning the skills of how do you regulate your emotions. I remember when my mom's dad died later that day, her and her siblings gathered up all the candles like all the taper candles in the house and they just stomped and jumped all over them and I thought I was like nine that they've lost, They've gone off.
Speaker 3This is so weird. But now, looking back, the only way my mom had to explain it was oh well, it's easy to destroy and easy to clean up, because it's just wax and you can just sweep it up but also recognizing oh, that was a tool for emotional regulation. They had all of this grief and this anger and this sadness that needed to go somewhere right. And so's an you know for me, as a parent raising my children, as I'm grieving and they're grieving to find those things where I mean, we're not, you know, daily smashing candles. I actually don't think I've introduced that to them. I don't want to clean it up.
Speaker 2They might discover it on their own.
Speaker 3Yeah, but it's been really important to me for them, from a young age, to find the things that help them when they're feeling so overwhelmed by emotion.
Speaker 2Can you give us an example of something that maybe helps them?
Speaker 3Yeah, we actually, about five years after my husband died, moved into a house that's on a little pond. We're in the northeast part of the? U US and there's a little brook that kind of flows out of the pond in the woods and sometimes each of the kids they'll just go out into the woods and just sit by the water and they each at different times, find that to be really comforting and that's been really beautiful to see them advocate for themselves, like hey, I just need to go sit in the woods for a little bit. Like great, go for it, I'm so glad that you found something.
Speaker 2Yeah, now you have two children, yep. And how old was the older one when your husband died?
Speaker 3He had just turned two.
Speaker 2Okay, do they grieve that loss? Oh, have you kept that loss alive?
Speaker 3Yeah, Okay, yeah, we have. We made a commitment from the very beginning, even when my husband was still alive, because he was terminally ill, that we would share stories, that you know that, even though he's not with us physically, that his memory is with us and we're always sharing stories, because there are many, because he was quite a memorable person. But my kids also, both physically and in their personalities and their quirks, are so much like their dad and they just light up when I'm able to say, oh my gosh, I haven't seen that face since your dad made it. Oh, sweet, I love that.
Speaker 3Have a ton of memories on his own since he was so young yeah, but he still feels that grief and he feels that absence and he was able to verbalize. I'm just feeling all the grief stuff, right now.
Speaker 2Yeah, I love that you have not sheltered your children from grief it uh. My older daughter, stephanie, who helped me start the podcast, of course now she's middle aged. She made a comment at one point that she never attended her first funeral until she was in her early 20s Because I, as a parent, especially as a single mom, when there was a death of a friend or relative, I would not take them to the funeral home, trying to protect them from that grief. That's the way I was brought up, you know.
Speaker 2And then in talking about it with her afterward, I realized what a mistake that was because it made it harder for her to accept that death and she had to kind of learn about grief and everything at an age where by then it still would be difficult. But I think if we had talked about things like that when she was younger and when her sister were younger, it might not have been quite as difficult for them. So I love that you do that with your children.
Helping Children Process Grief
Speaker 3Yeah, and kids, really, they can process things much more deeply and in healthier ways than we expect them to Right. As adults, we are so overcome by our grief constantly that we're like, oh, I don't want my child to feel this awful thing Exactly. But kids don't feel it in that same way. It comes and it goes, and they deal with it when they're feeling with it or feeling it the most, and when they're not feeling it, they're fully present. And that's been a wonderful lesson for me too, to learn how to grieve in that way and that it's okay to have lighter moments and heavier moments. And they have been. You know my dad's funeral my son was, I think, three or four weeks old and my husband's funeral. We waited because I was pregnant and she was, I think, three or four weeks old. I attended my first funeral when I was three or four. I kind of joke that it's like a morbid hobby of mine to go to funerals because I've just experienced so much loss, but when it becomes normalized, people are less afraid to talk about it.
Speaker 2Right, and that's one of the things that I'm hoping this podcast will do is normalize it just a little bit.
Speaker 3That's wonderful.
Speaker 2I want to go back to spiritual formation again because many people grieving will mention that they've lost their faith. How do you start with someone like that to kind of help them with that perspective of spirituality?
Speaker 3Yeah, well, it depends on kind of how they're willing to explore. Some people want book recommendations so I keep a pretty extensive list of different books and resources like that. I personally see a spiritual director and that's kind of like a spiritual companion. It's someone who walks alongside you and you know from to use some Christian language is someone who, as you're talking, is listening for the Holy Spirit and helping to kind of nudge you and ask you questions and figure it out. But many spiritual directors aren't just for people who call themselves Christians and that has been really helpful because she has challenged me to try different spiritual practices and to explore and ask questions in ways that on my own I wouldn't have.
Speaker 3So, in addition to my writing, I'm currently training as a spiritual director because I think that there is a certain wisdom that spiritual directors have that I have found really helpful to receive, and maybe it's just trying all sorts of different spiritual practices. I think sometimes we get stuck thinking we have to learn and that's how we can handle our doubts or our questions. We just have to learn more and find the right answers. But sometimes we have to do something that's somatic, that's using our mind and our heart and our body. So that's kind of what my work has been focused on in the last few years is what are those spiritual practices that are helpful when you're grieving or dealing with different mental illnesses or you're burned out, because kind of physically and emotionally, they all feel very similar a lot of the time? Yeah, I'm sure they do.
Speaker 2Okay, a couple of questions jumped out to me as you were talking. The first one is when you say spiritual director, this is almost like a toddler question. That's okay. Is this a living human being? Yes, because often when the word spiritual is used, used they mean spiritual as in no longer alive. They're talking more about the energy component. Yeah, no, this is a living human.
Speaker 3So it's not a therapist, okay, and it's not like a clergy person, a pastor or rabbi or whatnot. It is someone who is dedicated to meeting with you, usually like once a month or every other month, so not super, super often that listens to your questions and reflects questions back to you and just helps you become more aware of what are you really processing.
Speaker 2OK, thank you for that.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 2And how do you find a spiritual director? I mean, I don't remember ever seeing a job listing.
Speaker 3Find a spiritual director. I mean, I don't remember ever seeing a job. Listing Spiritual Directors International is an organization that keeps a list of spiritual directors they're at the moment there isn't like a certifying board, okay. So that makes it a little tricky because some people will market themselves as spiritual directors right who maybe aren't trained. So it is worth asking you know, where did you get your training to become a spiritual director? But really it's about finding someone that you connect with, that you feel comfortable and safe with, and that may take a couple of tries. This, my spiritual director, is not the first spiritual director that I met with, because I needed someone who was really willing to go into very deep abstract questions with me. So all of that may feel really overwhelming but it is going to.
Speaker 3Yeah, going to that website would be a good place to start, absolutely, because those will all be spiritual directors who have received training.
Speaker 2Now do they also have their own training program.
Speaker 3No, so there's lots of different ways to get trained. All right.
Speaker 2And then the other question that popped up was you've mentioned spiritual practices, or something that your director may suggest for you. Sure, can you give us an example or two of what type of things those might be?
Speaker 3Sure, so I like to think about them in a few different categories. There are things that people probably already do. Maybe they meditate or they pray. Those are spiritual practices, for sure.
Speaker 3There's also the more like ancient, traditional Christian spiritual practices, and you know, I say that because that's where my background is right and different faiths will have their own ancient practices, but so there's like Lectio Divina, which is reading, whether it be scripture or a poem or a quote, and reading that over and over and over again and just being curious and noticing what comes up for you. Similarly, there's Visio Divina, which is looking at art and seeing what kind of jumps out to you. What questions are you asking, how are you feeling? Walking labyrinths is one of my personal favorites, and that can be paired with prayer and meditation.
Finding Spiritual Direction and Practices
Speaker 3And then I think of the more kind of abstract spiritual practices that we don't think of as spiritual practices but really are, because we connect us with ourselves, with each other, with the world and with the divine. And that stories, storytelling, whether that be between people, you know, sitting down with a friend and sharing stories, reading a great book, or, you know, I'm very invested in theater and musical theater on various different levels, because I find those stories to be so grounding and so inspirational. Food, travel you could call it pilgrimage, okay creativity, curiosity these are all spiritual practices a lot of them sound like adventures almost.
Speaker 2They sound like things that are very intriguing. So this whole spiritual formation sounds really intriguing to me. It really does, and I'm sure there are listeners out there that are kind of, oh, tell me more, tell me more. So I have one more question and then we have to wind down. I also noticed in your profile that it mentioned that you have kind of a different perspective on suffering. Well, please tell me, because suffering is just painful. So how do you get a different perspective?
Speaker 3Yeah, many of us, regardless of our faith backgrounds, kind of grow up or come to believe that suffering is either a punishment for something that you've done wrong or it's something to be avoided at all costs, because it's like a failure that if I have experienced loss or I have chronic illness or any of these things, that it is a consequence of my own actions.
Speaker 2Right.
Speaker 3Or if I had just done X Y Z, I could have avoided it. Yes, if I had just done X Y Z, I could have avoided it. Yes, and that is just as or even more damaging than the suffering itself. There's so much guilt and so much shame and as I've been doing the spiritual formation work, it just keeps coming up over and over again that suffering is just something that happens and it would feel nice if we could for sure say you know, God caused this to happen to me.
Speaker 1Or I could have prevented this.
Speaker 3If only I had, because it helps us feel like we're in control of something Sure sure Point fingers.
Speaker 3It's not my fault, yeah right and learning to let go of that and accepting that maybe not everything has a cause is really difficult and really painful. But when you can get to that point, it also allows you to let go of having to fix it and you're giving yourself the freedom, like we were talking about before, to feel the emotions. When you're not trying so hard to control and fix everything Right, when you're not trying so hard to control and fix everything, you are reserving energy for feeling and experiencing what you need to in order to kind of deal with and accept what's happened.
Speaker 2Yeah, I like that. Yeah, I can appreciate that. I really can, so thank you for that. Now the time has come, actually, where we need to start winding down and this is the point in my podcast that I will turn the microphone over to my guests so that my guests can talk freely to the listeners without me interrupting the questions. I may make a comment here or there, but generally it's your time alone to speak directly to the guests. So, becky, the floor is yours.
Speaker 3Yeah well, I love having conversations about all of this. The floor is yours. Yeah Well, I love having conversations about all of this. So anyone can feel free to connect with me on social media or my website. Everything is just Becky L McCoy, and I think Kathy said it'll be in the show notes, so that'll be easy to find. Yeah, I'm happy to point people to resources or kind of talk through some of these things. I have a book coming out in 2026 on spiritual practices for grief, mental illness and burnout. So it's 10 of kind of starter practices not the way because there's no difficulty level, right, but maybe 10 practices to start with if you're exploring this. So I'm hoping, along with that, I'll get back to podcasting. The podcast is called Sucker Punched and we just talk about those times in life that just seem to come from out of nowhere. So, yeah, I look forward to connecting with your listeners wherever they'd like to and does the book have a?
Speaker 3title. I interrupted you with a question. That's okay, not a firm title yet.
Speaker 2So we'll see. That sounds really good. And did you say that you are going to move toward becoming a spiritual director?
Speaker 3Yes, I am in training, so I will start taking directees sooner than later.
Speaker 2Okay, well, I would like to make a personal request when you finish your training, make sure you reach out and let me know, sure, and, as your book gets closer to its launch, to reach out to me, because I would love to invite you back again.
Speaker 3I would love that.
Speaker 2And talk more specifically about some of the spiritual practices that you are recommending, and by that time you'll probably be well established as a spiritual director.
Speaker 3Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2Yeah, I would ask that Again. Becky, thank you so much for today. I have learned a lot, but I've also, I think, really been inspired. My curiosity has certainly peaked, as I like to say, and I know how to spell peaked, at any rate to my listeners. Thank you again for taking the time. Hopefully you've stayed on long enough to catch this bit. Yes, indeed, becky's contact information, social media links, will be in the podcast notes, so don't worry about that. Just head to the podcast notes and you'll find them. They should also be live links, so you should be able to click right on them and be taken right to one of her social media connections or whatever it is.
A Different Perspective on Suffering
Speaker 2And I invite you to consider spiritual formation. It sounds to me like this would be a necessary component of that redefining yourself, because it covers so much area and you know, I kind of plowed through it blindly. You know, I like who I am and I've said time and time again that at this point in my life I'm happier than I have ever been in my life. I'm surrounded by my family, I'm close with both of my daughters, I'm close with my grandchildren and I'm loving life. Yeah, I've got some suffering in it, I've got some chronic illness and things like that, but overall I'm happier than I've ever been. If I could be even happier, I might want to check out spiritual formation.
Speaker 2I hope you take care of yourselves. I always say that self-care is vital when you're grieving, and if you are supporting someone who's grieving, try to help them take care of themselves too. Things will go more smoothly. They will be healthier and happier at some point. And, above all, I hope you find the time to listen in again next time as we all continue to live and grieve. Thanks so much, becky. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1Thank 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.