Survived to Thrive Podcast
A podcast designed for survivors of suicide loss. This podcast explores the unique grief experiences that accompany a loved ones death due to suicide, shares insights on how your brain processes this kind of loss, and offers worthwhile and valuable tips you can start today to gain a more joyful and fulfilling life even though your loved one died.
Survived to Thrive Podcast
Episode 85: What We Can Learn From The Olympics About Grief
Have you ever wondered what it takes to rise from the depths of despair to the pinnacle of success? This episode of the Survived to Thrive Podcast promises to reveal the extraordinary resilience and perseverance displayed by Olympic athletes, particularly focusing on their journey through grief and loss. With the recent 2024 Summer Olympics as our backdrop, we dissect the inspiring journeys of Tara Davis Woodhull, Gabby Thomas, and Sha'Carri Richardson. Tara, who battled thoughts of quitting, soared to win gold in the long jump, exemplifying the power of persistence even when progress seems impossible. Gabby, a champion in the 200-meter race, shows us that behind every triumph is a story of relentless hard work and dedication, through Sha'Carri, we learn that all of this hard work is not in vain. By drawing parallels between their stories and our own struggles, we uncover valuable lessons on the human capacity to overcome grief, including from suicide loss.
In this heartfelt episode, we reflect on the profound impact of these athletes' achievements, urging listeners to find motivation and strength within themselves. As we navigate through the emotional terrain of dealing with loss, the dedication and resilience of Tara, Gabby, and Sha'Carri serve as powerful reminders of our own potential. Tune in for an uplifting and empowering discussion that not only honors the remarkable feats of these Olympians but also aims to provide hope and inspiration for anyone enduring tough times. Remember to share these moving stories and leave a review on iTunes to help spread the message of hope and resilience.
As always, thanks for listening!
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Website: https://www.survived-to-thrive.com/
Email: amy@survived-to-thrive.com
You are listening to the Survived to Thrive Podcast with Amy Miller, a podcast for survivors of suicide loss. In this weekly podcast, you will learn more about your unique experiences and gain insights on your brain and how it processes grief and loss due to a loved one's suicide. While suicide grief comes in all shapes and sizes, Amy shows you that you still can have a life full of joy and fulfillment even though your loved one died. You don't have to just survive anymore. You can thrive.
Speaker 2:You are listening to the Survive to Thrive podcast with Amy Miller, episode 85, what we can learn from the Olympics about grief. Hey friends, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for being here today. I appreciate you joining in each week listening. I hope you had a fantastic week. I hope you took some time, took care of yourself, did something good and generous for yourself. You know, I don't think we do enough generous things for ourselves, especially when we're going through grief. So if you haven't been doing that for yourself lately, I would really highly encourage you this week to do something generous for yourself. Okay, I feel like it's important. It's important to make ourselves a priority and really show ourselves some compassion and some love, and I think there's nothing better than giving ourselves some self-love. We so deserve it. We need it. So I encourage you, if you haven't done already, do something very generous for yourself this next week. All right, friends. So we are just coming out of the 2024 Summer Olympics. The closing ceremonies have happened. Usa was the top of their game this year. They did a fantastic in medals this year. I think they took over 120 medals overall and I'm not going to lie, I'm pretty obsessed.
Speaker 2:I love the Olympics. I think the Olympics teach us so many things that are just powerful lessons in human capacity, in the will and determination and the strength of the human spirit in achieving great things. It's just very inspiring. I think the Olympics really teach us a lot about, you know, keeping ourselves encouraged teaches us a lot about our capacity, teaches us a lot about our will to do great things, and it's just amazing, inspiring. And I think it's important for us grievers, as we're going through loss, to see this in the human being, because here's the truth Each and every single one of us as a human being is going to go through difficult and challenging times in life, right, and I think the Olympic athletes, when you really dig deep and learn about their personal resilience, their experience in life, their fails and everything that they've gone through to get to the point where they end up, is just inspiring. And I think that you know we can use a little bit of their inspiration as we're going through such a difficult thing as suicide grief. So I wanted to talk about that today in this podcast.
Speaker 2:All right, so there's a few athletes I really wanted to bring up in this episode because I mean, let's just face that they are like super humans, in my opinion. They are just incredible examples of how to do life. I just am blown away by them, and there's a few I want to mention today because there's just powerful lessons that we can learn from them.
Speaker 2:The first one I want to talk about is Tara Davis Woodhull. I mean, come on, I don't know if you've been able to see her compete in this Olympic Games, but if you have not, I highly recommend going on YouTube, googling her name through their search engine, and find her and watch her compete and, you know, watch the support of her husband as she's doing it. It's just amazing. There's just it's incredible to watch. And you know, the thing I learned about Tara was how she was wanting to give up. She really didn't want to do this. After, I think it was a few years ago, she was thinking about quitting. She felt like she was at the top of her game and that was the furthest that she could go, but she didn't quit didn't quit and she wouldn't have known that she would be capable of becoming a worldwide champion if she had quit, if she would have just gave up.
Speaker 2:And it just makes me think about all of us as human beings, especially when we're going through grief and we're going through such difficult times and hardships, and we wonder if this is it, if this is what we just need to settle for, if this is the best that we can do, and so we just settle and we quit, we give up, we don't continue to progress, we just kind of stay stagnant and stuck. And I believe Tara taught that lesson this year that if you stay stagnant, if you give up, if you throw in the, you don't know what you're going to be capable of in the future. And in her case, she became an Olympic gold medalist in the long jump. And so if you're feeling like giving up, if you feel like quitting, if you feel like this is the best it's going to get, look at Tara for a moment and and use her as a reminder that you have more capacity than you even know. I just love this lesson from Tara.
Speaker 2:Okay, the second athlete I want to talk about is Gabby Thomas. I mean, hello, she is just, she's just an all around amazing person. Right, she's got a degree in is it neuroscience or something? She's a Harvard grad. She's just. She has a master's degree. She's just an impressive human being all around. But she's also the Olympic champion in the 200 meter and I am just always so impressed by the track races and just how much dedication and work and behind the scenes stuff that they have to do in order to achieve that greatness. And you know she taught me two big lessons. You said after winning that no one really sees all of the hard work. They only see the less than 20 seconds that she displays all of that hard work on and she achieves that Olympic gold medal. But it takes hours and hours and time and dedication and just pure motivation right To really continue to work hard to develop what she needed to get in order to become an Olympic champion. Another thing that she brought up which I thought was such a good lesson, and I just want to read it for you because I think you know what she says is really, really a lesson. She says, quote truthfully, I had been envisioning myself winning that race over and over again the entire time that I was in Paris. So in my head when I got into the starting blocks, I had already won the race. I believed that I was an Olympic champion. Okay, and I just think about that.
Speaker 2:I think about how, you know, her envisioning herself winning, her believing that she was an Olympic champion, is such an incredible and powerful lesson for those of us who are in grief, because I feel like sometimes, you know, we lose faith, right, we lose faith in ourselves, we lose faith in the experience of grief, especially when we're going through really difficult parts of our grief experience. You know, some survivors will tell me, you know, I felt like I was doing pretty good and then, all of a sudden, I just got swallowed up by another wave of grief and I just I'm unsure if I'm going to be able to get my head above water. But I want you to remember Gabby Thomas and when she said that she just had it in her head, right, that she had already won the race, right. And I want you to do the same. When you're in your grief and you find yourself taking a step backs or steps back, or you're being swallowed up by a gigantic wave of grief, just envision yourself having already gotten your head above water, that you've already made progress, that you've already pushed through right, and just know that you have the capacity to do it, that you have the strength, that you have the ability, you have the know-how. Okay, I think it's such a great lesson, such a great lesson in teaching us that you know, never lose sight of the goal, never lose sight of the idea that there's better times ahead, that you're going to make it through, that you're going to have a good life moving forward. So I just love that about her, okay, the third one I want to bring up is Sha'Carri Richardson.
Speaker 2:I mean, hello, she is an extraordinary athlete. She's fast, she's incredible. She just blows my mind when I watch her. Her, she's just so amazing.
Speaker 2:So there's a netflix series, um, called sprint, and it does some of the backgrounds, all these athletes that I'm talking about today, um, on the track events. So, um, gabby thomas was one of them, but shikari richardson was another one, um, and you know I love it in the very end of the race, okay, so she did the 100 meter race, which she achieved a silver, but she was also in the four by one and she was the anchor. She was the last runner to take the baton through the finish line and there's this viral photo of her, or video clip of her, where she's looking at the silver medalist and the bronze medalist out the corner of her eye and she's turning and she just gives them a look and she just picks up her pace and she just runs through and she takes gold. And it's just an amazing thing to witness and watch and I loved it and it's kind of interesting because everybody just had their own take on what she was saying, like see ya, goodbye, and a lot of it was pretty comical. So if you get a chance, just go and take a look at that little clip.
Speaker 2:But what she said about that moment is that and I'll just say it, in her quotes she says I'm always my biggest competitor, so I had to leave my best on the track, she added. And so just looking over, it was more so, showing that the hard work that all of us ladies in that, four by one, put in was not going to be in vain. So you know, I love that because you know one of the things my grandmother used to tell me. She used to tell me things like you know not, you know to stare the devil down right and don't let him stop you from moving forward and getting yourself back up on your feet. You know, and it's kind of that same idea where I just feel like, you know, this life and this journey that we're going through and the experience of losing someone that we care so much about can really knock us down right. It can really feel a little bit life altering and discouraging.
Speaker 2:But you know, I think we all need to have that little Sha'Carri Richardson in us where we just stare that experience down and just let them know you know what, this is not going to be all in vain.
Speaker 2:I'm going to get through this, I'm going to come out on top and nothing's going to stop you, and so I just hope that that's a message that you can take to heart as you're going through your grief experience that, yes, this is difficult, this is hard, it's discouraging, but you know what it's not going to all be in vain and you're going to come out on top. So I hope these Olympian athletes, these gold medalists, these impressive athletes that we were able to witness over this past few weeks really inspires you as you're going through your grief experience and just know that you have more capacity that you can ever imagine, and I hope you can take that from these past Olympic Games and just know that you've got what it takes to move forward after dealing with suicide loss. My friends, thank you so much for listening. I hope you have a great week Until next time. Bye-bye.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Survived to Thrive podcast. If you like this podcast, please share with your friends and write a review on iTunes. Also check out survived-to-thrivecom for more information and to subscribe to get the podcast's latest episode, along with useful tips you can begin to use immediately to feel better, directly sent to your inbox.