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Grief and Light™
This space was created for you by someone who gets it – your grief, your foundation-shattering reality, and the question of what the heck do we do with the shattered pieces of life and loss around us.
It’s also for the listener who wants to better understand their grieving person, and perhaps wants to learn how to help.
Now in its fourth season, the Grief and Light™ podcast features both solo episodes and interviews with first-hand experiencers, authors, and professionals, who shine a light on the spectrum of experiences, feelings, secondary losses, and takeaways.
As a bereaved sister, I share my personal story of the sudden loss of my younger brother, only sibling, one day after we celebrated his 32nd birthday. I also delve into how that loss, trauma, and grief catapulted me into a truth-seeking journey, which ultimately led me to answer "the calling" of creating this space I now call Grief and Light.
Since launching the first episode on March 30, 2023, the Grief and Light podcast and social platforms have evolved into a powerful resource for grief-informed support, including one-on-one grief guidance, monthly grief circles, community, and much more.
With each episode, you can expect open and authentic conversations sharing our truth, and explorations of how to transmute the grief experience into meaning, and even joy.
My hope is to make you feel less alone, and to be a beacon of light and source of information for anyone embarking on this journey.
"We're all just walking each other HOME." - Ram Dass
Thank you for being here.
We're in this together.
Nina, Yosef's Sister
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For more information, visit: griefandlight.com
Grief and Light™
LOVE AND GRIEF: How Emily P. Bingham learned to MoveTHRU grief as a young widow
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What role does movement play in grief?
Emily P. Bingham is a certified grief educator, grief coach, widow, and founder of moveTHRU, which she created after the loss of her husband, Ian, in 2019 to Uveal Melanoma.
moveTHRU was born as a way to create new meaning out of her tragedy by helping others heal.
Her book -- LOVE AND GRIEF: Find Healing, Meaning & Purpose in Life After Loss -- teaches readers how to survive early grief, how to find meaning and purpose as you grow from this experience, and how to rebuild a life where you ultimately thrive.
Emily has worked with hundreds of clients in both private and coaching groups. Additionally, she has reached millions of followers through her social media content.
Her goal is to help anyone who has experienced a loss embrace grief through movement and mindset.
In this open conversation, Emily shares her journey from caretaker of her beloved husband Ian, to newly bereaved widow and mother of two under the age of 3, to how she rebuilt her life helping others, and how she's ultimately thriving through grief and love.
Her story is ultimately one of resilience, surrendering, and deeply understanding that "nothing is ever lost".
Emily P. Bingham's Social & Website:
- Website: movethrugrief.com
- Instagram: @emilypbingham
- TikTok
- Buy the book: LOVE AND GRIEF
Nina Rodriguez Social & Website:
- Instagram: @griefandlight
- Website: griefandlight.com
- Ways to Work with Me
- Subscribe to my newsletter
Episodes of topics referenced in this episode:
- Continuing Bonds: Death ends a life, but not a relationship
- The pain is real, but the suffering is optional
- Grief and personal boundaries
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Grief and Light is an award-winning, independent podcast exploring the honest, messy, and deeply human experience of loss. We're on a mission to foster a more grief-informed, hopeful world, one conversation at a time.
🏆 Ear Worthy Best Life Lessons 2026 · TalkDeath Readers' Choice Best Podcast 2025 · Women Who Podcast Awards 2025 Winner · Podground Editor's Pick
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Grief has like brought me back into connection with myself more than any experience in my life. And I'm grateful for that.
SPEAKER_00You just lost your loved one. Now what? Welcome to the Grief in Life podcast, where we explore this new reality through grief-colored lenses. Openly, authentically, I'm your host, Nina Rodriguez. Let's get started. What role does movement play in grief? Today we'll hear from Emily Bingham, a certified grief educator, grief coach, widow, and founder of Move Through, which she created after the loss of her husband in 2019 to juvial melanoma. Move Through was born as a way to create new meaning out of her tragedy by helping others heal. Emily has worked with hundreds
Introduction, Meet Emily P Bingham
SPEAKER_00of clients in both private and coaching groups. Additionally, she has reached millions of followers through her social media content, and her goal is to help anyone who has experienced loss embrace grief through movement and mindset. With a bachelor's degree from the University of Denver and a master's degree from Carnegie Mellon University, Emily's expertise is fortified by both her academics and personal experience. Thank you for joining us today and a warm welcome to the Grief and Light Podcast, Emily Bingham. Thank you so much, Nita. Very happy to be here. It's an honor to have you. And um, we were just discussing a little bit ago that I absolutely love and respect your viewpoint about grief and post-traumatic growth. But before we get there, let's take it way back and see where your journey started with this grief life. I always joke around that grief life chose us. We didn't choose grief life, but here we are.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so it's funny because I believe that my grief journey started long before Ian actually died. And that was when Ian was diagnosed with cancer. And so that was even before we had we got married. It was before we had kids. It was ironically his cancer diagnosis that brought us back together because we had taken a break from college. I'm sorry, right after college, we had taken a break to kind of follow our career paths and figure out who we are. Who we were. Cancer then was kind of always in the background. Like he had his diagnosis, he had an eye tumor. It was UVL melanoma. I just kind of subscribed to the belief that he wouldn't die. We'd be fine. We would treat it, we would radiate it. Eventually, we had we did have to remove his eye to get the tumor out. But even after that, I was like, there's no way that he's actually going to die from this. Like bad things happen to other people, they don't happen to me, and we're gonna be fine. We proceeded with cancer treatment and we also proceeded with life. We got married, we started a family, and it wasn't until we were at the beach living in San Diego at the time. My daughter was two and a half, and I was pregnant with my second, that we learned from the doctor that his cancer had metastasized. And when nuvial melanoma metastasizes, it's basically fatal. Like it's there's a very small chance, like a 10% chance, that you survive. So from there, we still were optimistic. You know, we didn't, he was so young, so we thought if anyone could beat this, it it would be Ian. Um and so we fought for about 15 months in and out of experimental treatments at the MD Anderson Cancer Center, which is like a pretty big cancer center here in the US, um, or in Houston, Texas. And that was rough because with
Experiencing anticipatory grief
SPEAKER_01it, I didn't know it at the time, but I was experiencing anticipatory grief. And that was me feeling that uncertainty and the anxiety of what my life would be like without my husband there. But I was also grieving the life that we had when he was healthy. Ian wasn't able to play with the kids at a certain point. We weren't even able to make plans, long-term plans, because we didn't know if a cancer treatment would work or if it wouldn't. We didn't know what the future would look like. So it was kind of, I I like to bring everyone back to the pandemic because that was grief upon anticipatory grief as well. Like, when will things go back to normal? And similar with Ian, when will he get healthy or will he not? It was just this constant state of limbo that we were living in and having to grieve the normalcy of what our life used to look like was really, really hard. You know, that was like phase one, and then phase two was really like after he died on March 26, 2019. Um, he passed away in his hometown of Hawaii. He had spent about a month in hospice. It was a really beautiful, peaceful passing. Like I'm so grateful that we got that experience and I didn't have to deal with the trauma of his death because trauma and grief are two separate things. And so the fact that he had a peaceful passing, I think allowed me to heal in a certain way in a more peaceful way. And that doesn't mean that if you go through a traumatic death that you can't have, you know, non-traumatic grief, it's just knowing that there's a distinction there. So yeah, I think that's kind of where this whole process of moving through my grief kind of began.
SPEAKER_00Thank you for sharing openly and and honestly, and we honor Ian's memory through these stories. This is how we get to know him and completely understand the feeling of it happens, but not to us. There's a level of psychological protection that our minds want to embody at that moment because it's so scary to think of the possibility of anything other than it being okay. Was there ever a point where you said, this might not work? You know, what what would I do? Or was it after that diagnosis? We stayed so hopeful.
SPEAKER_01And I and I've looked back, I've thought about this a lot. Like, was I just in denial? You know, I think it was a couple of things. I think that we're raised in a society that doesn't really talk about bad things happening. I think it's very recent with social media, honestly, that people have had a platform to be vulnerable and to be connected to other people who are going through hardship. I mean, I know um Joey Tryon, he's a podcaster and lost his sibling as well when he was like 16 years old. And they didn't have that. You know, growing up, we didn't know that bad things happened. We were kind of taught that they don't. You know, I look at my kids now, they come home and they have a project. What am I going to be like when I'm 100 years old? I'm like, wow, you get to be 100 years old, right? So I think we kind of have this narrative that we're that the future is guaranteed and that we are all gonna live and pass away when we're old and in bed with our loved ones. So I think I just subscribe to that narrative. And I and I I'm also a naturally positive person. I I tend to sway toward the light as opposed to the darkness. You know, I like to think that I chose love over fear because of all of those different factors. And I mean, honestly, I was just head over heels in love with this man and like nothing could have stopped me from marrying him.
SPEAKER_00Beautiful love story, even within like all the complexities. That's
Nothing's guaranteed
SPEAKER_00life. And COVID was a point in our collective consciousness where we realize, huh, things are not guaranteed. Nothing is permanent to the point that a hundred years old is you're lucky to get to 80. So I understand he passed in Hawaii.
SPEAKER_01I hope in the book with that memory, because it was just so surreal. I mean, it's still surreal, right? To be very honest, I dissociated. I I wasn't, I was, it was happening, but I wasn't there. Like it was like the movie was playing out, but I couldn't feel a thing. And I say in the book, I don't even think I cried. And what had happened is that the hospice nurse the day before came to check on him and said, Hey, I think he's gonna probably pass away within the next day, maybe two. After hearing that news, you know, we all kind of took our individual time with him to to lie with him, to talk to him. You know, I told him the three things that you're supposed to tell like a dying person, which is like how much you love them, how much they made an impact on your life, and that we'll be okay. The morning that he passed away, I woke up at like 2 a.m. and his mom was in the room. And I was just kind of like, all right, good night, Ian, like love you, you know, good night. And I just like let it like, just let it be. I I also in the back of my mind was like, if he passes away, I'm gonna have to be a mom in the morning too.
Saying goodbye to Ian
SPEAKER_01Like, I can't just focus on me right now. So yeah, I was woken up to my aunt that morning saying that he had passed away and I went in there and he was gone. He he laughed right above this before the sunrise when no one was in the room. And I honestly don't think he would have had it any other way. Ian had a lot of pride and he didn't want anyone to fuss over him, right? So he was just like, peace out. I'm gonna go surf. Like Dawn Patrol was his thing, like surfing for the sunrise. So I was like, that he just exited in Ian's way. After that, it was like, oh my God, well, now I'd like what do I do? My kids started to wake up, and so I reluctantly told them what had happened. And I just said, you know, hey, Izzy, she was three and a half at the time daddy died last night. Do you want to say goodbye to him? And she was like, No. Like, I don't think she could process what was happening, nor could I. So we just had breakfast that morning. I think she was curious and she said, Yeah, I want to go see daddy. And so we went to the room and she just kind of stepped up toward the hospital bed and kind of like touched him, I think, and just said, bye, daddy. Then we went and played at the beach. Like it was just these two worlds of like the death and the living somehow happening all at once. And it's just so much that your my brain couldn't integrate it all. And so it literally short-circuited. And that's what happens when you dissociate. It's like you're there, but you're not really there. And so it's taken time now to go back to that experience and feel what that really meant because I just couldn't at the time.
SPEAKER_00The disassociation is definitely a protective mechanism. I call it grace in action, because if we didn't have that, I don't think we would be able to function through everything else that needs to be done, like the tasks, the very mundane, menial tasks. And I can have so much compassion for you as a mother. Uh, I'm not a mother, but I could imagine what that scene was like and how difficult that must have been for you as well, even with the numbness to have to tell your child, hey, you know, this happened. And for your daughter to process that in her capacity with her age, she's only three years old. And I believe you had a another baby, he was one year old, correct? At the time? Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So you're too little. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Too little. Like the contrast that was happening at that time, right? He's taking his first steps and like his dad is like dying in the other room.
SPEAKER_00It was just oh it's so surreal. I'm so sorry. Even with all of the processing you've done and the post-traumatic growth, I know that there are still challenges that evolve as your grief evolves. And one of those on social you shared on your social media that was wishing you could maybe have been able to savor and enjoy time with your littles back then because there was so much going on and the intensity and all the emotions that would naturally happen at that stage, but with the added layer of everything else that was going on that didn't allow you as a mother to spend this time with them.
SPEAKER_01In grief, I think, or at least I do, and maybe this isn't true for everyone, but you do. I I go back and I revisit the past. I don't stay there, I don't dwell there, I don't even long to be there, but I just you start to just see things with more clarity, I think, as your grief evolves and as you evolve yourself. And so, like, I look back at that time. And also like when you hit a milestone, you're like, oh my God, I've changed so much from that year, this from last year to this year. And so that's kind of how I've gained this perspective, I guess. But yeah, I just look back at that time and I see how incredibly dissociated I was. I also was so angry and resentful. I wasn't angry at Ian. I was just really angry at my situation that I was like, I didn't sign up to do this alone. I didn't want to raise kids alone. And now here I am with a one-year-old and a three-year-old. And I think there are some widows who throw themselves into their kids. I was like, get me the fuck out of here. I want to go on my eight pay love journey and like find myself because I don't even know who I am anymore, but I can't. I felt so trapped, suffocated by these like two little kids who needed me. And after like caretaking for so long, too, it was just yeah. So, but you know what? The best thing I did for myself was to just feel that. Luckily, I had two supportive parents who witnessed me, who didn't judge me for that, and really tried to show compassion, gave me the space that I needed to heal during that time. So I don't feel a lot of guilt for the way that I showed up there, but I do still grieve it. Like I miss even the times that Ian had cancer too. It's like we didn't get to have that quintessential young family. Those are like the golden years, right? And ours was just so overshadowed by cancer. And I absolutely can feel that grief now. I've also accepted it.
SPEAKER_00Your parents supported you through that and they understood the assignment, if you will. Like they understood that you can't pour from an empty cup. There's so much judgment on mothers without all of this added layer of complexity already in the world. And I honor every single person, mother, regular person, whatever, but especially mothers, when they say, No, I need to take care of me in order for me to give from a place of strength and equanimity. I cannot pour from what I don't have. So good for you, good on you for doing that and taking care and understanding that you needed to fill your cup and that space. You were also a caregiver in a very intense way. All these transitions need a type of ritual to move forward from that dorm and move on to the next phase. You deeply understood that. And in your book, you mentioned that there was a
Healing through movement
SPEAKER_00lot of this processing and healing that you were able to begin taking on by yourself through exercise, through movement. So tell us about that journey, how that got started.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. So um, I do want to mention I you're like my parents were compassionate, but it did take some educating. Cause I tell clients now, like they're like, we don't have time, and they don't know how to ask for help. And I'm like, listen, if this isn't about going to the spa, and then that's fine too, but like the self-care is survival right now. Like you need to put your eyes on. 100%. Yes. And you have to be able to tell people, hey, I need help, and explain why. The gym was my church. It was my sanctuary. I I've always loved movement. I grew up dancing, and then I taught spin. I taught bar. Like I've always been in a gym or moving my body in some capacity. Emotions are literally energy and motion. And when I would feel anger, it was mainly anger and anxiety that would just like build up in my body. Like the only way that I knew how to release it was through movement. If I felt angry, I would go and like throw punches. Like I'd go to like a kickboxing class or like a yoga sculpt, like something really hard and heavy where I felt like I was moving shit around. If I felt anxiety, like jump on a spin bike or go for a run, move that energy through, right? Like that nervousness. And I needed like space for just like all of the thoughts and the overwhelm to just dissipate and clear. If I felt sadness, I would go to a yoga class because the heaviness of sadness, like you're not going to be moving, you know, really vague when you're just like, oh, so yoga became like my place for feeling my sadness and just that gentle stretching and just crying in shavasana, sweats already all over your face. So no one could see it. It just was so intuitive for me to go to that place and to literally move it through.
SPEAKER_00Beautiful. The book is entitled Love and Grief: Finding Healing, Meaning, and Purpose in Life After Loss. It is beautiful, and I feel like you infuse what I call the Goldilocks ratio of different elements. So just enough of your story, just enough of the education component, just enough of the takeaways. A great resource. I was reading it and I was thinking, gosh, if I had this five years ago, like I would have understood so much of what was going on because it is so very confusing. But you learn this intuitively through listening to your body, through listening to your needs and through going to your workout classes. I like that you mention in the book, if you're angry, do this workout. If you're stressed out, do this other workout. If you're feeling whatever, do this other workout. So there's a little bit of that if this and that scenario. Obviously, there's suggestions. Everybody has to feel out what feels right for them. You also mentioned that in the book. As the years went by, you started learning a lot more of the concepts of how grief functions, the types of grief. How did that start evolving? Was there a moment where you said, this is the work that I want to go into, or did it happen over time? How did that work?
SPEAKER_01So, six months after Ian's death, I was kind of like, What am I gonna do? I felt really jaded about going back to my agency work. I was at a marketing agency. I had already started sharing my story online, and that felt really good. Whenever I wrote, I just like processed so much. Like that was another way for me to move through my emotions was writing. It was just this release. And then when I shared, I started connecting with other young widows. In my circle, I didn't know any young widow. I felt so alone. So the online community became like my go-to space for that connection and to feel seen. That was already kind of happening on one end. And then I was still doing my fitness stuff, which also felt really good for me at the time. So I hired a coach. Her name is Jackie Carr. She does goal setting basically. And we met over a couple of sessions and I just kind of told her where I was at. I was like, I think I might want to do something with movement, with my story, with grief, because I was just so immersed in it. And everything else, just kind of I just felt jaded by it. I also need the flexibility of raising my kids alone. You know, I didn't want to go back to a job where I was there nine to five and I would have to hire someone to pick them up. And it just didn't align with me at the time. So we worked together and we came up with the first iteration of move through, which is my company today, looks nothing like it did today that it did then. I called it an intention-based workout. I actually hired a therapist to help me create it because I at the time I was like, I don't know what I'm doing. Like, but she gave me, she introduced me to the work of Peter Levine and somatic therapy. And I started learning about how yes, it was intuitive for me, but there's a science behind this. The issues are in the tissues. The issues are in the tissues. I think that's the first time I hear that one. Yeah. Definitely good. But yeah, I'm totally spacing out on his name right now. But he he does like grief yoga. And so it was all about just how our body stores emotional memory and trauma. The mind is just one part of the equation, but the body is also another huge piece to healing. My grief knowledge expanded just through my own healing journey. Like I started, I got introduced to David Kessler and I read his a lot of his work. I read about the five stages of grief by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and how they've been very misconstrued, but they're still very valid and useful to learn about when in in the right context. I devoured like every widow memoir, Nora McInerney, Option B by Cheryl Sandberg. And it just kind of started to compile this body of knowledge around grief being in the body, somatic therapy, cognitive behavioral therapies, and then post-traumatic growth was like that was like my that I like really held on to.
SPEAKER_00I was like, oh my God, okay, I can something good can come of this. I'm sure you identify the common thread as you were walking the past. You're like, hey, this person is saying this, this person is saying this, I'm experiencing this. And we slowly start seeing how it all comes together, and there's people that have been there before. There's so much power in people sharing their stories. So in your case, you reading these memoirs or novels or whatever books other widows left along the path for new widows. Now you're sharing your story with others and you're doing your coaching work. And along that path, you decided to get certified. You, there's a grief education component to it. So we have mind, body, spirit, the body with the workout. You had the therapy component, and now you're adding this education component. So, how did that all start coming together to this more structured um format we see today?
Becoming a grief coach
SPEAKER_01I mean, it's so funny. It just kind of takes on a life on its own. Like now that I'm coaching people on how to find their purpose and then looking back on my own journey, I literally just followed my excitement. What was lighting me up at the time? So at first it was really just learning about coping with grief. How the how do I handle these emotions? How do I survive? Survival. And exactly. Like that was all I was focused on. And then I started learning about the concept of post-traumatic growth and how that helped you create new new meaning in your loss. So I created a course about that. And basically what that looked like is I wrote down like all of the different lessons that I had learned and I created modules around what, you know, what would the transformation be from someone who's grieving to growth? What do they need to know? And so it would be like, okay, well, what are the pillars of post-traumatic growth? Um, helping you help helping you see those changes in yourself. And then how can those changes help you create new meaning in your loss? And just to put this in context, it's like noticing how much stronger it is. More capable you are. Resilience, I think, is one sign. Another sign is all the relationships that change for better or for worse. You lose some, but you also gain some. Spirituality, big change, appreciation for life, how a loss makes us appreciate our life even more. And then the fifth component being new possibilities. I think once you see your true capacity and that you, you know, that life isn't this finite. I mean, life is finite, and that, you know, how can we make the most of it? Other opportunities begin to present themselves. So helping clients kind of do that. And then, you know, so so I got my grief educator certification from there because I wanted to be as good of a coach as I could be. I I think you can absolutely be a coach. You can share your story. You don't need credentials because honestly, I think what people need in grief is simply to be seen and to have their grief witnessed. And David Kessler says that too. His big thing is, you know, all of us are gonna have a lot of different things that work for us, but your grief being witnessed is key. To know that you're like not going through this alone and that your person matters, that your struggle is normal and that everything you're going through is also that you're you're you're being seen and like that's just so instrumental. So I did my first grief group with no credentials. I just launched it because I was like, this feels good.
SPEAKER_00I didn't like let's go, you know, like let's talk about our cookie. If you already had information, your credentials were, hey, I've been here. Like I've I've done the work, like I've I've had to get myself through this insane time. And I also want to highlight, even though people die all every day, it
It feels like I'm the only one going through this
SPEAKER_00happens all the time. It's the one thing we have all have in common. We were born and we will not be here a Sunday. We are so not good at talking about it, at processing, at even understanding what it means to grieve and all these things. So there's an element, especially as a first-time griever, I'm the only person feeling this, right? Like I felt like that. I said, I'm the only person in the world that has ever and will ever feel like this. And it's our brain trying to understand and make sense of this insane renewed reality, but we are not. And there's an element of normalizing the experience that is so important in this process. I almost feel like, you know, in a way, step one or maybe two is normalizing that this is okay. You do a lot of that in the book. I really, really appreciate that because what is really scary in the beginning is am I going crazy? Is when I'm feeling okay? How long is this gonna last? What is my life now? Very confusing as a griever.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And I think I name that as one of the main sources of suffering is our mind and the stories that we create, that inner critic, right, that's judging our own grief experience. And a lot of it is because we're just misinformed. We we we just don't know what to expect. And so when we feel a wave of anger or anxiety, we're like, oh
Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional
SPEAKER_01my God, what's wrong with you? There is a Buddhist quote too that says, pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And it's like the pain of grief, there's nothing that can take that away. You have to feel it. But the suffering, and that's what I'm talking about, is like that mental chatter, that inner critic that's that's making your grief wrong. Yeah. Or right, or your emotions bad, or you know, saying that you should be further along than you are by now, that's informed by conditioning, by um, how the media portrays grief, by maybe how you were raised in your family. Like we didn't talk about bad things. So now you don't really have a place to. You can't, you don't really, you feel like it's a burden if you're talking about your grief or that you're struggling, right? So all of those different stories really impact our ability to grieve with grace, I'd say, and self-compassion.
SPEAKER_00The pain is the fixed portion of the experience, and the suffering is the more dynamic one that you have more control over. And so that's the one that we focus on. This book is a how. It's very relatable in the way that it's written. It's not prescriptive. I want to make that distinction. It's an overview of this is what worked for me. This is what has worked for others based on education and evidence. And I invite you, person reading this, to
The 6 Cs of Grief
SPEAKER_00open your mind to these steps and lead with curiosity. And you talk a lot about curiosity in your book. It's huge because so many changes, you're meeting this new version of yourself and getting curious is probably the biggest tool to navigate this path forward. I agree. The six C's of grief: curiosity, community, coping skills, connection, compassion, and consciousness.
SPEAKER_01Throughout the entire book and through all of the lessons, I just wanted something that was easy for people to come back to that they could just kind of sink their teeth into. What are some just guiding principles, right? That can support you on your grief journey. And these were the six that I came up with. And I think that they I think that they're pretty accurate for me. Maybe, you know, I invite.
SPEAKER_00Oh, they're very good. They're very useful. And I like that you start with curiosity. When something feels overwhelming and confusing, curiosity is the tool to start opening new doors forward in a way that's not intimidating and super scary. So I love that you started with that one.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I start with curiosity because I always say, like, instead of criticizing yourself, get curious. Yeah. Um, and that's just, you know, when you think of like judgment, it's just failure to understand. Uh that is like literally the definition, I believe. So it's like, let's get curious about it instead. Curious about other people's grief, curious about your own, curious about your thoughts, curious about your feelings, right? Like, there's so many ways that curiosity applies. Cure curiosity just about what the heck you're going through. Right. Like, you know, educate yourself on any of this stuff. Like, we are in the information age and there is an abundance of information. It's not always good, and you gotta check your source, but like it's out there. Um, community is huge because I think, like you said, you thought that you were the only person who had lost her brother. I had the same thought in my mind. And community is the quickest way to shift yourself out of that limiting belief, which is personalization, which is the belief that this bad thing's only happened to me. And it just traps you deeper and deeper into victimhood. So once you see that other people are struggling too, it's evidence that they are moving forward, that they are healing, that they're living lovely lives beyond their pain and suffering. It gives you hope, shifts you out of victimhood, and it gives you that space to be vulnerable and seen and validated in your struggle. Coping skills. I mean, coping skills for me is just like nervous system regulation, tools to support you when you are having a panic attack or when you cannot stop crying. And you, you know, and you just breath work, having a stone, like an object to ground down and hold to remind you that you are here and that you are safe, right? Practical tools that you can rely on all the time. And and coping skills is really where I think it's different for everyone. And you kind of gotta just like here's the buffet, pick what works for you. And, you know, your coping skills change with with time. In in early grief, my coping skills were were one thing, and then later they were another. Connection, this also applies to connection to a community, but also connection to your loved one. For me, the scariest part of moving forward was that I thought I had to let go of Ian. I thought that I wasn't supposed to talk about him, that I needed to just brush that chapter under the rug that, like, you know, just kind of like seal it off, put it in the closet, and try to keep going and living my life. And connection, this idea made it of connecting to him in spirit. And I was not spiritual, mind you, when Ian died. I was like, that's some woo-woo stuff. It's kind of fun to play with, but like, I so what what helped me early on was just trusting that death kills a person, not a relationship, and that I was forever connected to him by the love. Um, so connection to your loved one, connection to community, connection to yourself. I mean, man, grief has like brought me back into connection with myself more than any experience in my life. And I'm grateful for that. Same compassion. Compassion is just giving yourself grace. We beat ourselves up so much when we're grieving, like for very natural things that are happening, right? Like having grief brain. A lot of people are like, I just can't like get anything done. And you know, I used to be able to do all this stuff, and I'm like, it's okay. Like, look at what you're going through. Your brain, like, give your like if your body could talk to your brain right now, like listen to what it would say and give yourself a little bit of love and grace. Um, and consciousness, and this has been like a new, a newer development for me, but I think it's really true. And so when I speak of consciousness, consciousness, it's really your ability to separate the facts of the death from the story, and noticing that like human beings are meaning-making machines and that we create a lot of stories that aren't even true. And so, for example, what what would be an example of that? So, say um I can look at my my husband's death in two different ways. I can say Ian's death was the worst thing that happened to me in my life, and I can also say that it was the best thing that happened to me in my life for various reasons, right? Like it was the worst thing because I lost my best friend, my soulmate, the person who I thought I would spend the rest of my life with, the father of my kids. It was painful, it was awful. Like that is true. And I can buy into that narrative, or I can say, and I'm also grateful for the suffering because I grew, I expanded, I met myself in a whole new way. I found my truth and purpose in life and follow with that narrative. But those narratives are also informed by conditioning, by old wounds, by our past, our childhood, right? And so the more that you can be aware of where those thoughts are originating and where those stories are coming from, that's what I call consciousness is awareness of your thoughts and learning that like we ultimately get to create whatever reality we want. We can create whatever meaning we want out of this experience. Kind of scares me at times.
SPEAKER_00How powerful we are in a way. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's it's a double-edged sword and we have to wield it wisely, but we are the summation, we are the culmination of the stories we tell ourselves. And the beauty is that those stories can be reframed at any point, and we can become, we can have a totally new life with
Setting Boundaries & asking for what we need
SPEAKER_00those reframings. I wanted to go back to connection. You talked a lot about setting boundaries, even within your own family. I think that is triple exclamation bold highlight such an important point in grief because business is no longer business as usual. Life has shifted. The boundaries have shifted where they are now, where where do they lie? Are they static or are they dynamic? And you have to see within yourself, within your own family system, within your new life, exactly how they moved. And something you highlight quite a bit is, and you have to communicate them accordingly because that's very difficult. Sometimes we don't even have the words for our own experience. So finding the words within ourselves is part of that reconnection, mind, body, spirit, reconnection, coming back home to ourselves. Then we can learn what we need. We can learn how to communicate that, and we can learn how to set new boundaries. So, is that something that you had to do within your family and your circle of friends at any point? Because I know that that's a big one for a lot of us.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. I had to do it. It was funny, my my mother-in-law and I in early Greek did it very early on. And it just happened naturally for us. We both just noticed we were not on our best behavior and kind of just really irritable with one another. And we said, let's just take a pause. Like, wait now, we're just not good to be around one another. So we're just gonna take a pause and then come back. But um, yeah, and then I had to do it with my mom and my dad as well around what my needs were for grief and for taking care of my kids. And I think it it really starts. This is again something that we haven't really learned. A lot of us have kind of been told what we need or what what to do all our lives. I know I grew up in a family like that. So it's like this process of coming back to ourselves, like you, I think you just alluded to. Maybe it's breathing, doing a quick body scan, noticing like where the sensation is, like, and then asking yourself, what do I need right now? Do I need to take a nap? Am I tired? Do I need to am I overwhelmed? So do I need to go take a walk in nature? Do I need to offload something because I just can't take everything off right now? So it's like first identifying your needs and then having the courage to communicate them. And again, a lot of us learn these behaviors in childhood. If we ask for help, we're gonna be a burden in some way, or if we create conflict in any way that we're unsafe. So noticing your reluctance to asking for help too is, you know, that's part of the expansion. Right. Because you you you start to see, oh, I picked this up when I was a kid or in some other faucet of my life. And it's like, how do I change that so I can give myself what I what I really need right now? And and that has ripple effect across all realms of life. Boundaries are so important everywhere.
SPEAKER_00And showing ourselves grace in that process as well, because you know, it's conditioned, it's learned, there's a lot going on that we have to undo and unlearn to relearn. So even knowing how to communicate these needs is a process in and of itself. I'm gonna read a quote here that says, Because grief looks different for everyone, yet despite all the different ways to heal, grow, and find meaning in life after loss for grievers, there is one universal need for grief to be witnessed. I love that. I love the way that was phrased because that is very true. With that witnessing comes that awareness
LOVE AND GRIEF book
SPEAKER_00of where we are, who we are now, and where do we go from here. And your book is a book that I recommend in everybody's bookshelf, especially if you're grieving, even if you're somebody working with grievers. I feel like this is a great framework for people working with grievers, for people trying to support grievers for grievers. So it's a beautiful read. Again, it's called Love and Grief. And I will again tag it in the show notes.
Widow's Retreats, MoveTHRU Offerings & what's next
SPEAKER_00And I know you have really exciting things in the works, and I want to give you some time to talk about your programs, your offerings, your retreats, what you're working on right now, and tell the audience what uh how they can work with you and where they can find you.
SPEAKER_01Awesome. Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest accomplishment and, you know, that I'm just trying to get out in the world right now is the book, Love and Grief. It's so accessible, right? Everything is there. You can pick it up if you're in early grief and like read the later chapters. And you know, one thing I really comment on is you may not be ready to hear this right now, and that's okay. But you can come back to it later. Because it's literally five years of everything that I've learned to a place where I truly feel like I'm thriving right now. Like I love my life and I truly I'm like so at peace with the fact that Ian died. I don't long for that life. I love Ian, I appreciate him, but I'm I'm very much like here and now and in the present and grateful for everything that has happened along the way. Yes, it will be sad that my kids didn't get to meet their father, and there's gonna be that element there always, right? But like I've released the attachments to that life. Yeah, everything is as it should be. So the book is number one. Um, I'm also hosting a widow's retreat in Tulu, Mexico. Like to explore the theme of duality, which I talk about a lot, which is basically the both and, right? So we're we are going to be exploring the duality of honoring our deceased loved one, feeling that grief, and then really celebrating who we are now without them. So I'm calling it rep remembrance and rebirth, and it's held over Dia de los Muertos.
SPEAKER_00It's symbolic through and through. I really, really like that. And I love Tulum. Yeah, that's a very powerful date. I think it's going to be very symbolic. Some magic about the physical space in Tulum that just, you know, feeds the soul. So that's really amazing. I also want to honor that you said, you know, you feel like life is exactly what it's supposed to be right now. That might sound harsh for somebody in early grief, but like you say in the book, uh, give yourself time because for somebody who has lost someone so precious and so important and so fundamental, such a pillar of her family, to be able to say that with peace in her heart is evidence that it is possible. And for somebody who maybe is feeling in the grips of their grief and feeling like there is no way that I can even survive this. Not only will you and can you, but you can also thrive. And with the sixth C, which I am, I think it was consciousness, if I'm not mistaken, it reminds me of making meaning or giving meaning. David Kessler talks about a lot. And that's really, really important because the story changes, the grief changes, it all evolves, and so can your story. And this is all evidence of that. So the book is formatted in a very interesting way because it's story, but also tools. And I think the tools are practical. And people say, How do you do the work? We've heard that phrase. What the heck is does that even mean? And the work, what work? Like I'm tired. This book gives you that framework. So thank you very much for writing it. Before we close out, is there anything that maybe you want to touch on or any points that you want to address or anything that's in your heart to share at this moment?
Nothing is ever lost
SPEAKER_01I actually would like to share something because I really like that last point that you made for someone in early grief, how hard that would be. And it does take consciousness. It takes, you know, being able to allow the story to evolve and that you and knowing that you're in charge of it. I just want to sh share with one closing story because I think I think it'll land. So I did a, I went to Tulum and I did a Temasquel. So Temasquel. It's like a Mexican sweat lodge. And the I cut the concept is you go into this sweat lodge and it's like symbolically supposed to be the womb of Mother Earth. You go in, you release whatever you want to release so that you can come out reborn. And so I went in with the intention of releasing fear. And so I go in, they heat up these hot-ass loveroks and they stick it inside this sweat lodge that's like sticks covered with blankets, and you're like lying in the dirt, or at least in the one that I did. And then they throw water on these rocks and it just fills the space with steam. And I'm like, oh my God, is this USDA approved? Am I gonna freaking die? Like, am I like that? I didn't sign a waiver, like, you know, freaking out, my heart rate is like pounding, and I legit think I'm going to die. They give they give you a break every 15 minutes, and I came out and I started talking, took a break and I talked to Sean, and I was like, I think I'm gonna die. He said something to me about we die and we're reborn. We lose and we gain. It's all part of the cycle. And I don't know, like in that moment, it just helped me release any fear around it. Like, so I went back in the second round and I kind of thought, well, if I were to die right now, my kids would be sad, my parents would be disappointed. They'd probably think it was really irresponsible for me to do something like that. But it would be okay. It would be as it should be. There is no should be in life, there is no future, it all just is. And I I think in that moment I was just like, all right, I'm just gonna trust and I'm gonna be fine. No matter what happens, it'll all be okay. And so that's what I'm saying with my life now. It's all okay.
SPEAKER_00It all just is. That's so, so powerful. I hear you, I got chills as you were talking because there is something about quote unquote doing the work and going through this process that you realize just how impermanent everything is. And there's a a separation between who you are, yourself, capital S self, and this experience we're having through these bodies, this being called Emily and me, Nina. So these are our vessels through which we have experiences, but who we are is so much bigger than that, and that doesn't die, it just moves forward. I love that experience. Thank you for sharing that. That must have been very scary, but also very, very um enlightening. I'm sure just that moment was a big aha moment.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And he actually looked at me shortly after he said, Nothing is ever lost. And I was like, nothing is ever lost. It's just transferred, like you said, like we're infinite. I mean, you're doing it right now with your work, you're sharing not just your story, but your brother's story, and he is helping other people through your podcast from beyond the physical, because you wouldn't be doing this had he not passed away. Correct. And that's the same way that I feel about Ian.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01Which is like fucking magical. It makes me tear up thinking about it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And we have and they support us from beyond. Like it's it's still a partnership. It's just looks a little bit different than we expected. Yep.
SPEAKER_01Uh and if you can detach from the way you thought it should be and accept what is, like, there's so much magic. It can be so beautiful, but it's just a choice that you have to make. And you get to feel disappointed about it that it wasn't the way that you wanted it to, and we have to move that through and feel that. And then now what? What do you want to make of it? It is what it is, and it will be what you make it, is like so trivial.
SPEAKER_00It sounds so simple, but it's one of the most profound lessons we could possibly learn. Your current partner, how has he integrated all of this into your relationship? Or have you and I'm yeah, guessing the answer is yes, but how have you integrated all of this into your relationship?
SPEAKER_01It's it's it's a work in progress. Like I've had to do a lot of education around grief, around duality. Like, I can still love my late husband and love him in the present. Really secure and emotionally intelligent and vulnerable to have like some really hard conversations, but I think we're doing a really good job. Um, and it'll continue to evolve and unfold as we go deeper into relationship with each other.
SPEAKER_00Amazing. Well, I am so happy to hear your story. Your story is going to be a breath of fresh air for so many. It certainly was for me. And your work is beautiful and important work. So thank you for choosing to answer the call to this path and for changing and doing the work and doing what needs to be done and for your beautiful gift to the world that is love and grief. And I thank you for being here. Thanks, Nina. That's it for today's episode. Be sure to subscribe to the Grief and Light podcast. I'd also love to connect with you and hear your thoughts and your stories. Feel free to share them with me via my Instagram page at grief and light. Or you can also visit griefandlight.com for more information and updates. Thank you so much for being here, for being you, and always remember you are not alone.
