132: What Grief Looks Like When It's Hiding in Plain Sight

I sat frozen at a table full of women cutting out pictures of diamond rings and vacation homes — and I couldn't put a single thing on my page.

Not because I didn't want nice things. But because somewhere deep inside of me, grief had quietly convinced me that wanting things was dangerous.

In this solo episode, I'm sharing one of the most defining moments of my life — the story of a vision board exercise at a business conference that changed everything. I was there for the numbers. For the strategy. I was not expecting a life coach to sit down beside me, look at my blank page, and say something I had never once heard from a doctor, a therapist, or anyone who loved me.

If you've ever felt yourself living small without fully understanding why... this episode is for you.

What you'll learn:

• Why grief doesn't always look like sadness on the floor — and what it looks like when it's quietly running your whole life
• The moment I realized I hadn't let myself dream in over ten years (and what finally cracked that open)
• The one thing that life coach said to me that no one — not my doctor, not my therapist, not my family — had ever said before
• Why "healing" doesn't have to mean leaving your baby behind
• The real difference between therapy and life coaching for grief, and why it matters for moms like us
• How your baby's memory doesn't have to live only in the painful places — it can be woven into your future, every single day
• What I finally put on that vision board, and what happened the following year

https://navigatingbabyloss.com/workshop

Free workshop for moms grieving stillbirth or pregnancy loss. Learn simple, trauma-informed practices to release guilt, calm the what-ifs, and honor your baby's memory with love instead of pain. Includes bonus Grief & Guilt Release Journal.

Download my FREE "Guilt and Grief Release Journal" at navigatingbabyloss.com/journal

WHERE TO FIND AND FOLLOW ME!

• Website-  https://www.jennifersenn.com
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• Instagram-https://www.instagram.com/navigatingbabyloss/
• You Tube-https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCz-2MCEY5PRiF6p6VB_2lxA

Transcript

Hello. I wanted to really just tell you a story about a really defining moment for me when I made the transition from being an actively grieving, bitter, angry, , living my life, small type of person too.

Looking at some possibilities and,, being willing to step out and live my life a little bit more, a lot more I should say.

It's my own story and honestly it's, it's kind of weird and embarrassing, but it is truly. That life changing, defining moment for me. So I thought it was important to tell you. So for most of my life, I ran a salon and spa. That was my world. It was my clients, my team, my business.

I loved it. I poured everything I had into it and I was really good at it. And I felt like I was thriving and everything was seemed to be going well. I thought, and I went to a business conference for the salon industry and I was really excited. I couldn't wait to get there and dive into my, my numbers.

I'm kind of a numbers nerd and I love like all things business and salon and marketing and all that stuff. And so , I couldn't wait to get there and learn all about more of that stuff for me. What I didn't expect was that there was a life coach at this event, which I thought, well, she's nice enough, but I, I don't know really what, what in the world would a life coach need to be at a business conference from?

It's, it has nothing to do with it. I just remember thinking like, what, this is weird. Like we're talking about sales and stuff. I don't know what, what she's gonna have to talk about that could be interesting, but, okay. We'll just, you know, I'll be honest, I was really skeptical and I just thought I would ignore her.

But the very first exercise they did, this was a three day event. The very first exercise they did was a vision board exercise. So I had never done a vision board before. I thought that was kind of like woo woo is kind of, you know, for people like dreamer people, I didn't think I was a dreamer type of person.

I'm more like numbers strategy, like just, you know, give me the facts. So I thought, okay, well maybe this'll be fun. So we sat down with the magazines, the glue sticks, the scissors, all the things. And I love, I do love arts and crafts. So how hard can it be? So I sat out, down at the table thinking, okay, this'll be fun.

I'm gonna do it. And then I froze and I sat there and I stared at that blank page. And as I looked around, every other single person there was loving it. They were cutting out diamond rings and fancy cars, and beach homes and vacations and all these things. And I just could not, I couldn't move. I couldn't find a single thing that I wanted to put on my page, not because I don't love nice cars and jewelry and vacations, but for me to put that on my page and say that that was something I was going to do or imagined that it was something I could do, I couldn't do it because I didn't dare.

And the thing is, I didn't understand why I couldn't do it in that moment. I just felt paralyzed, like almost panicky. 'cause I felt really strange and almost concerned for the other people around me who were happily making these vision boards. Like, how do you know? How do you know you're gonna be able to get that fancy diamond ring?

Or how do you know you're gonna make enough money to go on that vacation? My, my hand, I was just absolutely frozen. My brain would not even allow me to go there, so I just sat there. I sat there for a really long time. It probably wasn't a long time, but it was long enough that I felt strange and my page was blank and I felt embarrassed.

And that's when this adorable, lovely life coach was walking around, chatting, talking to everybody, and she came and sat down next to me. And she looked at my blank page and she just kind of said, what's going on here? Not in a pushy way, just more curious. Of course, like, not that I was doing anything wrong, just very calm and casual.

Something about the way she said it just instantly I could feel it in my stomach and I started just talking and what came out surprised me, maybe because it was actually coming outta my mouth for the first time, and maybe it was because of the reaction on her face, I don't know. But I realized it right there out loud that I had let myself dream about my future.

In years. Years, and I feel like I'm a pretty motivated, you know, confident kind of person, but I could not dream about my future. I let my future happen to me, but I, I was not going to put it out there that this is what I wanted for my future, because I'd done that once and it didn't work out so well. Not because I, I didn't feel that way because I didn't want things, but because somewhere deep inside of me, uh, a part of me believed that wanting things made me a feel selfish, um, and maybe ungrateful for what I did have, and then a b, the other part was that it was really dangerous.

That wanting things for the future was really risky. That was dangerous if you dared to say that you wanted something because it may or may not happen, and I got that lesson because I had learned in the most devastating way possible that the future is not a promise. The future doesn't it? It you have no control over it.

So I had lost my girls at 32 weeks. I was 32 weeks pregnant, and that loss taught me something that I had never even consciously acknowledged until that very moment is that you can plan and hope and dream. , You can do that, but it can still all be taken from you in a moment, in a second. So in order to prevent that, I stopped planning, I stopped dreaming.

I stopped letting myself want things, and I probably had spent at least 10 years that way, living inside of a bubble that I could control. Just day to day, just what's right in front of me right here, right now. Nothing too far ahead, nothing too big, nothing too risky, and I thought I was protecting myself.



So sitting at this table here I was, and I had this huge realization that I, it wasn't just me living my own life, small. I was cheating my husband out of the wife that he really wanted and that could show up for our future because I know I, I, he always wanted to go on vacations and he wanted to go and do things, and I wouldn't because I was too afraid to leave the kids.

I was too afraid of what would happen if they, if I left them, or what would happen if we left town. I was cheating my kids. Out of their mom who could be adventurous and dream with them and teach them how to dream and show them that it was safe to hope. And I was doing it all because this grief, 10 years of unprocessed grief had convinced me that this future was just something to be afraid of.

I just, I didn't even realize that it was happening, and that's the sneaky thing about grief that doesn't get addressed. It doesn't always look like you're crying or in a slump on the floor. Sometimes it looks like you're a perfectly functioning woman at a business conference who just can't cut out a picture of a vacation home.

And then this life coach said something to me that I had never, not once heard anyone say before. She said that I was allowed to want things, that it was okay to be sad and sit in my grief and to honor it, but that I couldn't let it run my whole life. And that's what she said. That's exactly what she said.

And I'll never forget it because it sounds so simple, right? Aren't these the things that we would, we would tell our friend, but we would never tell it to ourselves? And no one had ever told me that really before. Not my doctor, not the therapist I briefly worked with, not my family. No one around me. No one had ever really drawn that line for me.

Between honoring my grief and being controlled by it and hearing it made me feel a huge exhale.

My loss happened in 1999, so it's been 26 years. And at that time, there not to sound like a dinosaur, but there were no cell phones. There was no social media, there was no Zoom, there was nothing except a in-person support group that I really couldn't.

Get to very often. I had two boys, they were five and two, and they, um, and my husband worked, worked a lot of swing shifts at 12 hour shifts. So getting to a sup in-person support group wasn't that great. I did go to a therapist, not even, honestly, not even right after my loss because at that time you didn't just go to a therapist.

You only went to a therapist if you were. Borderline crazy. Um, but I did end up going after a few years and therapy is wonderful. It was very helpful. There's absolutely a place for it. And I wanna be really, really clear. But what I discovered that day and what I've come to understand so deeply since is that therapy and life coaching do completely different things.

Therapy tends to look backwards. It helps you examine your past who you are at your core. Understand it, make some peace with it, and it is really valuable work for sure. But life coaching. Life coaching meets you exactly where you are right now today, and it helps you figure out where you wanna go and what you need in order to get to get there.

What do you need to do to get there? Not in spite of what happened to you, but bringing it alongside you. Bringing it with you. And that's what I love about it. It doesn't ask you to dig deep and go down in the past and try to fix all that. It honors your past. It doesn't ask you to be over it. It just, it just asks, okay, this is where we are.

What do you wanna do from here? Here's where the, if the, your life is right this minute, this is what happens and we're gonna honor it. But it doesn't have to define your future, and you can still define your future, and that was the shift I didn't know I needed. I. I hired, I hired that life coach and I worked with her for years, and she is still, to this day, one of my most favorite people on this earth.

And working with her changed how I moved through my days, changed how I showed up in my marriage. It changed. How I parented and what I let myself hope for, and eventually it, it changed my whole career path because I knew without any doubt that this was what I was supposed to do to bring to other people, to the moms who are sitting at their own blank pages.

Who can't imagine cutting out a picture of a, of a vacation because their grief has quietly convinced them that dreaming of that is too dangerous. That's who I'm here for, and that's who I built all of this for. So if you're watching this right now and any of that. Uh, part of that story felt familiar. If you feel like you are living small without even realizing it, if you're keeping your world tiny and controlled because your loss taught you that your future isn't safe, I just want you to know you're normal and that makes sense.

Of course, you're, of course, that's what your loss te teaches you. It's one of the most natural things in the world to do after all you've been through. And it doesn't mean that you're broken. It doesn't make you weak. It just means that you are a mom who loved so deeply that the idea of hope in any form, again, feels terrifying.

But here's what I also want you to know, is that that blank page does not have to stay blank. You are allowed to want things. You are allowed to dream again. You are allowed to build a future that has your baby woven into it, every single part of it. It doesn't have to just be this thing that happened. It can be a part of your every day still.

Mine is still 26 years later because it defined who I am, how I do things, everything about me. Grief and hope can live in the same heart. I promise you that because I know it. I did end up putting some items on my vision board and I lived into every single one of them so much though, so that the next year I made another vision board with all new things,

if you wanna know more about what this looks like for you or to what it would might look like to work together and to try something different. I'm here, I have a podcast. I have a course and I have a community and there are so many ways to just take a little step forward.

To start releasing that feeling for you, because you don't have to do this alone. You don't have to heal on anyone else's timeline on what they think you should be doing. And you're not alone. I, there are so many moms who are right where you are, and I, I'm one of them. I'm still right where you are. I can be right there in a minute, but I also decided that I was not going to let this define and ruin the rest of my life.

So I'm so glad that you were here with me. And if you know another mom who needs to hear this, share this, share this with her, and I'll see you next time.

So take great care of yourself.