Life Beyond Deep Grief: A roundtable on living fully after loss

What happens when grief isn’t as heavy as it once was? 

This candid, multi-voice conversation explores what it means to live fully after loss.

While much of the grief space centers on surviving, this roundtable makes space for what comes after the initial sorrow that follows loss and life-altering change, when life begins to expand again, often in unexpected ways. 

Together, grief and resilience leaders, podcasters, and grief-informed creators explore meaning-making, post-traumatic growth, and the nuanced reality of carrying grief while also reclaiming joy, purpose, and possibility.

This is the conversation for everyone who needed to know grief shifts, that joy and aliveness are possible, and for everyone who's arrived at lighter and isn't sure what to do with that.

Rather than framing this as “moving on,” the conversation centers the complexity of living in the both/and, where grief remains, but no longer defines every moment. 

Speakers will share personal and professional insights on post-traumatic growth, identity reconstruction, and the ways life can expand after loss without abandoning love for who or what was lost.

The discussion challenges the idea that grief must remain all-consuming to be valid, while offering language, permission, and perspective for those who are beginning to feel moments of lightness again, or long to believe that’s possible.

(Video is an event replay.)

SPEAKERS:

NINA RODRIGUEZ | Founder, Host, Grief-informed guide | GRIEF AND LIGHT

@itsnrodriguez

KERA SANCHEZ | Editor-in-Chief, Get Griefy Magazine @getgriefymagazine

BLAIR KAPLAN VENABLES | Grief + Resilience Expert, Speaker & Author | The Global Resilience Project

 @blairfromblairland

TARA ACCARDO | Grief and Soul Purpose Coach and host of the ‪@lifewithgriefpodcast‬ x @lossesbecomegains

IMOGEN CARN | author, speaker, breathwork facilitator and co-founder of ‪@goodmourningpodcast‬ x @healwithim

A video version is available on Y0uTvbe. ;)

Transcript

You just lost your loved one. Now what? Welcome to the Grief in Light Podcast, where we explore this new reality through grief-colored lenses. Openly, authentically, I'm your host, Nina Rodriguez. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back to the Grief and Light Podcast. My name is Nina Rodriguez and I'm your host. Today I want to ask you a question. What happens when grief is not as heavy as it once was? Think about the time after your deep

early grief or the acute phases of grief, when life started to expand again or even feel lighter, did that lightness feel disorienting to you? Maybe after the first time you laughed or after the first time you felt joy, was there a bit of sadness that followed after? The irony of joy after loss is that it could feel like betrayal and nobody really talks about this. This is something we each find out in our own grief journeys.

A group of us, grief educators, podcasters, and grief creators in the space got together to talk about this because so much of the grief space centers on surviving. So we decided to create a virtual roundtable that made space for what comes after the initial sorrow, after the life-altering change, when life begins to expand again, often in unexpected ways. That event was held this week and I wanted to share the conversation with you.

Going to play the recording shortly, but as you listen to it, I invite you to notice how different it looks for everybody. So this is a conversation not for somebody in early grief. If you're in early grief and you still want to listen, of course, you're welcome to, but it's really for the person that's starting to feel moments of lightness again, of expansiveness again, where you want to believe that life will become expansive again. This is how we crack the door open through conversations of our loved experience. I hope you enjoy.

Welcome everyone. Thank you for being here and for bringing whatever you're carrying today into this space with us. This roundtable is about something the grief world doesn't talk about enough. What happens after? Not after grief ends, because it doesn't, but after its heaviest weight begins to lift and life starts to expand again, often in ways that surprise us. So much of the grief space is built around surviving and that work.

Really matters. But there's a quieter territory on that far side of that first sorrow. That's where we're heading today. We're going to be talking about meaning making, post-traumatic growth, and the tender experience of reclaiming joy and the purpose while still carrying our losses. At the heart of this is what we call both and. Grief isn't something you finish so you can start feeling joy again. You hold both.

You can ache for what you've lost and feel genuinely alive. And here's what this is not. It's not about moving on or getting over it or leaving anyone behind. It's not toxic positivity. It's honest expansion. The truth that grief shifts us. The lightness is allowed and that none of it betrays what we've lost. I'm Blair Kaplan Venables. I'm gonna be your MC for this next hour and fifteen minutes.

And we're gonna be having a riveting conversation with some of my most favorite people in the grief space. First of all, deep, deep gratitude to Andy, Andy and the Reimagine team for supporting this event and to our amazing speakers who we're gonna get to know momentarily. And so so for those of you who may not know, Reimagine is a not-for-profit organization catalyzing a uniquely powerful community, people of different backgrounds, ages, races, sexual orientations.

Gender identities and face. Their gatherings aim to support each other in facing adversity, loss, and mortality and to transform life's biggest challenges into action and growth. So just some housekeeping. If this is your first time on Zoom ever, congratulations. You survived the pandemic and after without having to be on Zoom. But just some housekeeping. Click on the CC icon for live captions. I know sometimes I can't hear unless I see the words.

I don't know. I I mostly on Netflix. so to view or save the full transcript, click the CC icon and select view full transcript. And then to download the chat, you click the three dots in the chat box. And this session is being recorded. Everyone who is registered will receive a follow-up email with the link to the video replay. So if you're coming in now or you're coming in shortly after, don't worry. You can see the whole thing start to finish.

So, this conversation includes themes of grief and loss. We may organically touch on sensitive topics. Please honor your own capacity and do what you need to do to take care of yourself and do what you can within your capacity to listen and participate. So before we dive into our speakers and the conversation, we're gonna ground ourselves. When we talk about grief, our bodies often react before our minds do.

The chest tightens, the breath goes shallow, the thoughts speed up. That's just our nervous system responding to something that feels like a lot, because it is. But it can leave us half present for a whole conversation. The breath is one of the few things we get to have a say in. When we slow it down on purpose, we signal to the body that we are safe enough right now to settle. The shoulders drop and the mind comes back to being in the room. It helps us be where our feet are.

So we're gonna do some box breathing. I'm gonna guide us through it. And it works in four equal parts, like the sides of a box. You breathe in through your nose for four seconds, you hold for four seconds, you breathe out through your mouth for four seconds, and you hold for four. And I'm gonna count you, so don't worry. That steady rhythm slows the heart rate, eases the body out of high alert, brings you back to the present moment, and gives the busy mind one simple thing to follow. There's no wrong way to do this.

And if you do this at home and you need to make the count smaller, you totally can. But we're gonna try it together today. We're gonna come back into this space together. And what the way I'm gonna guide us is we're gonna also use our imagination and pretend we're blowing bubbles. And I learned this from Hope, Edelman, at a grief conference, and I really like it. And when I'm doing these sessions in person, I give everyone bubbles, but I think mailing 350 plus bubble containers around the world would have been hard. So we're gonna imagine.

We're gonna reimagine and imagine. So let's try this together. Get comfortable with both feet on the ground if it's available to you. And if not, you can cross your legs. If you want, you can close your eyes or find a place to gaze with your eyelids half closed. And what we're going to do is we're going to breathe in through our nose for four. One, two, three.

Four. We're gonna hold for four, three, two, one, out through the mouth, blow those bubbles. Two, three, four, hold. One, two, three, four. In through the nose, two, three, four, hold. One, two, three.

Four out through the mouth, two, three, four, hold one, two, three, four, in through the nose, one, two, three, four, hold one, two, three, four out, one, two, three, four, hold, one, two, two.

Three, four, last one in through the nose. Two, three, four, hold. One, two, three, four. Out. One, two, three, four, hold. One, two, three, four. And when you're ready, gently open your eyes and come back to this space.

One thing that we all have is breath. Breath is life. So you always have the ability to come back to this if you find yourself needing to ground. So we're not going to read each of our bios. They're on the website and you can visit that if you want. But instead, we're going to go around and each of our speakers are going to introduce themselves and they're going to answer this one question. What does aliveness after loss look for you right now?

Nina.

Hello, everyone. Thank you, Blair. it's great to be here with everybody. And I love that we get this opportunity to see each other and you know, see each other's faces. So if you feel comfortable and if you're able to, would love to see your cameras on. This is a wonderful space of community. And hello, and my name is Nina Rodriguez. I'm the creator and host of Grief and Light. It is a podcast and resource for grievers all over.

the world from all types of losses. My goal is to foster a grief-informed, hopeful world. And this was all born after the loss of my only sibling Joseph, the day after he we celebrated his 32nd birthday. This was back in 2019 already, my goodness, about to be seven years. Ever since then, I became a certified as a grief-informed guide and I had been guiding people from all walks of life through their grief and loss, through events like this, one-on-ones, grief circles.

And of course, conversations up the on the podcast. And what does living fully after loss mean to me? It is, it looks like this. It looks like being here with you talking about grief openly. It looks like incorporating my brother's memory and legacy into everything that I do in my life and in the life of our family.

It looks like shedding the identities that no longer serve me, grief, has been a powerful catalyst into an aligned life and into honoring how I'm called to show up in that particular season. It's going to be seven years. And in that seven year span, it has shifted into a lot more remembrance with joy than pain. So that's why this conversation feels very fitting.

Beautiful. Thank you so much, Nina. and Kara, why don't you come on? Absolutely. Hello, everyone. my name is Kara Sanchez, and I am honestly just tickled to be here because truly these are some of my favorite grief colleagues that I get to work with. but I am the founder and editor in chief of Get Griefy Magazine, where our motto is grief sucks, but life doesn't have to. And for me, that is very much founded in the way that my mom lived her life.

that is who I would attribute to be the the springboard for this project. She unexpectedly passed away in 2022. And since then, conversations that normally would revolve around grief and loss were something that actually petrified me and scared me. And once I was forced into the deep deep end and had to confront my own mortality as well as the mortality of other people around me, I realized that these types of conversations are so

Inherently necessary. And so for me, what that what choosing joy means is understanding that yes, these hard things in our life, they happen. and I'm a living proof of that right now. My my father-in-law actually just passed away this past weekend and we're currently p planning his funeral. And as I'm

growing through some of these tools that I've adopted for myself, I'm holding in one hand my my sadness and how much he meant to our family, but also appreciating all of the things that he brought to our life and honoring his legacy. So I just feel like learning how to hold both has been such a huge proponent to all of the work that I do. And all of these people here have played a role in helping me learn that. And so I think it's intentionally choosing circles of people who allow you to do that as well. So

That's beautiful, Kara. Kara, before we fully lose you, what's your father's name, your father-in-law's name? His name was Roy. His name is Roy. Well, may Roy's memory be a blessing. Thank you. Tara, come on down. Yeah. hi everyone. so I am Tara Accardo. I am a grief and soul purpose guide and founder of Losses Become Gains.

I'm just a community. And that's where I do my coaching for fellow grievers all over the world. And I also host the Life with Grief podcast, where we really lean into all types of grief and loss and exploring, as the name implies, how to very simply live life with grief in tow. And so there's lots of angles that we take there, but coping with the early kind of in-your-face grief, as I like to call it, but also making space for and honoring.

The life and the version of ourselves that can and will come after. So I do solo episodes, guest episodes. I've had many of the ladies here on the podcast so far. And that really all started for me after losing both of my parents to cancer six months apart. So in December 2019, I lost my mom and July 2020, I lost my dad. And then my beautiful little fur baby less than a year later. So as an only child, that was my entire immediate family in about a year and a half. And for me,

It's really been a process to say the least of discovering, you know, what is that life after, which I know we're getting to today. And for me, that's very much living a life that is in alignment and in a way that is still fulfilling and vibrant when it can feel so dark and so lonely and so confusing and it's so cliche. I think a lot of us in this grief space hear a lot, but it really is holding space for the grief and the joy and it's navigating.

How to do that. And since becoming a mother myself a couple of years ago, that has really taken on some new meaning for me and the legacy that I want to leave and what we're talking about today, really. How how do we do this, but still live our best life, as I like to say. So yeah, it's it's been a journey. But I love this group so much and I'm so grateful to everyone joining here today. Thank you so much, Tara. And

Nina just typed in the chat, we want to hear from you in the chat. If you have questions, ask them. If you have comments, share them. If someone's doing something and you want to celebrate them, celebrate them. and also share what does being fully alive after loss mean to you today. And so last but not least, Imogen, we'd love to hear from you. Hi, everyone. Firstly, I'm just so honored to be here with you lovely ladies today, and I'm so passionate about this subject. And

Like you mentioned, Blair, it's not something that gets a lot of airtime. So I'm really excited to see where this conversation goes. So I am Im. I am co-founder of the Good Morning podcast, and I'm also co-author of a book of the same name. I started Good Morning with Sal after the the sudden death of my mum, and I felt so lonely and like nobody talks about this huge experience that happens. No one's equipped for it. There's no manual that we're given at the funeral home.

and my whole life turned upside down. So I too, like everyone else here, is passionate about talking about grief, making people, you know, more grief literate as well. So it was in February 2020. I had just given birth to my only child and my mum died by suicide and it was completely out of the blue. She had never experienced any mental health issues. So as you can imagine it was very, very confusing.

And what I wanna say now is so it's been six years for me and I've done so much work on my grief and I feel healthier, happier, more alive than I felt before my mum died. And I know that sounds so insane and we're gonna get into how that's even possible. but aliveness right right now for me looks like being present in my body.

And understanding, you know, the mind-body connection. I was so disconnected from my body before my mom died. And losing her was a catalyst for me to go on this huge journey to, yeah, figure out that I needed to heal my body as well. That's beautiful. Thank you so much. And I guess a little bit about me. I'm Blair Kaplan Venables. I'm a grief and resilience expert, coach, motivational speaker.

Writer and the founder of the Global Resilience Project. we've published books, have a podcast called Resilient AF with Blair and Alana. And my background's in marketing, but I was thrust into the world of grief. in a matter of 14 months, I had significant losses, including a miscarriage, my father-in-law, my mom, my dad, my husband, my first husband. I'm just testing that out because I'm in a grief right now. My marriage ended like a month ago.

my husband, I think that's it. he had multiple health issues. He almost died a couple times through a heart attack and a stroke. We lost a couple pets, all in a very short period of time. And what was happening was that I was turning to online to share what was going on and people started coming to me for support. And that's how I got into the the space of motivational speaking and writing about grief. And then I created something called the Navigating Grief Framework, which

It's essentially what worked getting me through. And I became the expert I wish I would have had. I'm a high performer who owns a marketing business. And traditional therapy stopped working for me. And I was being told I was doing everything I could, but I knew there was more. And so I essentially figured out how to use neuroscience to rewire the brain and to strengthen the resilience muscle. So that's a bit of my like journey in a very short nutshell there. And

My mom died very fast. She learned she had cancer and was told she'd be fine, but she died three weeks later. My father lived with a drug addiction and he was very sick. He had COPD and lung cancer and was terminal for three and a half years. My father-in-law, same thing. He learned he had cancer and died three weeks later. My mom and my father-in-law just talked about when I retire, when I retire, and everything they were doing today was for when they one day retire, but neither of them got to retire. And so

This significant amount of loss really inspired me to build a life that I don't want to retire from and to change the way I show up and and live. And so I've reworked how I do absolutely everything in my life to make sure that if I something were to happen tomorrow, like, have I done the things I want to do? Am I proud of the life I'm living? And am I leaving a legacy? And so my mom and dad dying brought me back to life. So that's a little bit about me. And now we're gonna dive into

So it's going to be a free flow conversation. and I'm gonna start off with a you know, a question, but we're gonna see where the conversation goes. So, you out there in the world watching, if you have questions, please put them in the chat or comments. And so let's start off with, and I'm not gonna call on anyone, I'm just gonna let, you know, let it kind of be self-guided. So let's start off with this. Was there a moment you realized your grief had shifted? And what changed?

And I can start off with this. I like music festivals. And I go to a local music festival that I absolutely love. and then after going through that loss, I just had no desire to go. I was like, I can never have fun again. I'm never gonna be fun. I don't wanna go. I don't I think this is me now. I'm not fun anymore. And I just like was like the life was sucked out of me. And then a few years ago, so a few years after my mom died, I was driving down the highway and I was passing the town that the festival is in.

And I just felt myself like, whoa, I wanna I I feel like I should go to the festival. And I was like, wait, I wanna have fun. my gosh. And I my the music was bumping and my car and I'm driving through this highway. And I'm like, I think I'm ready to try going to the festival again. Where before I was like a a full body no. And I found myself so I got a ticket for a five day festival. I was like, I'll go for one night. I got there and I was having so much fun. I stayed for two nights.

And I felt like myself again. And that was the first time I felt like my like myself since before the pandemic. And so that's where I knew my grief shifted.

I can go next. I love that story, Blair. And for me, I don't think it was as definite as an on-off switch, but I found myself more and more leaning into the fact that I needed to talk about and process my grief in the community that I was building. And I think at one point I remember just acknowledging the fact that.

My mom being dead was no longer just a rumination that constantly popped up in my brain. it it was something that I knew was a fact, but it wasn't something that was interrupting my thoughts or stopping me in my tracks or not allowing me to fully contribute to the conversations at hand. It wasn't something that was just like a I like to think of it as a pop-up window. And it that pop-up window kind of slowly went away. And

I I really do think that a big part of it is again leaning into the grief first. Like it's almost like you have to face it first and really sit in it for a a period of time. And for me, that was working with the magazine and talking to hundreds of people about their grief journey and hearing their stories, hearing how they dealt with their grief, but then also finding ways to write about and process mine and

Yes, it wasn't just like this one day I realized that it was gone, but I just realized at some point that the heaviness had lifted lifted for me. And so I guess for me just not having those intrusive thoughts as much was such a a a weight off of my shoulders. So that's kind of where I'm at with that one. Yeah. I for me it was the day I remember it vividly that I was walking down my grandmother's

the hallway of her home where my brother had passed. And I suddenly felt like this very tight feeling in my chest. and I thought at the time I was like, is this a heart attack? Right. And after I calmed down and I realized I was fine, I started Google searching, can you die from grief essentially, right? Like can grief kill you is was my honest question because I said, This is so physical. And I realized that the grief experience in my previous understanding was just emotional.

And this was an experience where it became very physical. That's where I learned about Takotsuba cardiomyopathy, which is broken heart syndrome, and all of these grief symptoms that can go along, a physical symptom, excuse me, that can go along with grief. So that's when it started to shift because I realized grief is here to stay. It is going to last longer than I realized. This was also in conversation with some of my friends who had lost a family members and they said, honey, this is going to be a lot longer than you probably care for.

So I leaned into it with curiosity and I just started researching, researching, researching. And understanding that this was the first time I was having this particular life experience. And as a first timer in this realm, I needed to put my current understanding aside to just welcome whatever was showing up as it was showing up. So that's the moment that it started to shift for me. And that looking up of information eventually became the grief and light.

podcast and everything that I'm currently doing today. I love that you mentioned, you know, that grief is so physical, Nina, because it is. And I I also enjoyed reflecting on this question because I think for me, my grief was so intertwined with my trauma that it was really hard to like separate the two. And it was an interview that I did on the podcast with Joanne Cachatori and she explained that your grief is separate from your trauma. They're not the same thing. So I was trying to work through it all in this big bundled mess and

felt like I wasn't getting anywhere. I was diagnosed with complex PTSD. And then just separating the two and realizing, okay, grief is something that can't be cured. It's not something that's gonna go away, but the trauma is something that we can heal and we can work through. So I started looking at the trauma and I think the real shift I saw was when I started again dressing the body and the physicality of grief. And I did a five week breastwork course with Rebecca Jacks, who's an incredible somatic therapist.

And that's the first time where I saw light at the end of the tunnel. I stopped ruminating. I started sleeping. I stopped having nightmares and flashbacks and all the traumatic, you know, symptoms that I was having. And I just finally felt like I can do this. And yeah, so my grief has been a bit more of a slower process. I think my grief, I don't have a definite point where I feel like that's shifted, but it's definitely a lot lighter now than it than it was for sure.

That's really beautiful. And there's a lot of chatter happening in the chat. I don't have time to and read everything out loud, but some of the comments are coming in as, you know, my somatic experiences shifted the feeling of a boulder on my chest lifted. And like that is so true. I also, you know, Kevin shared my grief shifted when I received my first sign and even improved as I planned my wife's celebration of life.

Five months after her death, it would have been her 30 43rd wedding anniversary. Happy anniversary. And I think, you know, it's gonna be different for everyone. Sometimes it's the little thing, sometimes it's the big thing. Sometimes you're driving down the highway and you just want to go to a rave. Like you just never know, right? And so, I think if you're watching this and you're in the early stages of grief and wondering, is this pain ever going to end? You have to feel in order to heal. And you're doing the right things by showing up to, you know,

events like this and learning new tools and you have to put the work in. You can't be a passive griever if you wanna not if you want to move forward, you can't just be passive about it. So I'm gonna throw this out there, whoever wants to answer it first. What helps you move from surviving to re-engaging with life?

Mine's gonna be kind of a funny one, but I because my parents died. Well, my dad died like in COVID and my mom was just before that. I was kind of forced to spend a lot of time alone. And I don't have siblings to speak of. I went through a breakup during all of that as well. So I was really, really forced to sit with myself. And it's kind of a blessing now that I look back on it. But at the time, it was incredibly isolating and very, very lonely. And

I think that's ultimately what led me to realize like I this is so depressing. I don't have a choice in this, right? I can't bring them back. I have to, it is it is a choice to get out of bed every day. It is a choice to go walk my dog or or do anything, really. And I just also knew they would not want me to stop living and living big and doing the things that I feel.

Called and led to do because of their physical absence in this world. And so it, but I think because everything sort of fell onto me from probate to getting rid of their things, all of it, like it was one of those things where that's when I I really started to realize, like, this isn't, I can't rush this. Like, I will be doing myself a disservice if I don't. But I think in in hindsight, in giving myself that time.

And finding books that really inspired and resonated with me, or podcasts, or you know, I did go to a little bit of therapy as well. I was just able to wrap my head around what happened. And then that sort of led me into this whole next chapter of like, okay, my my own grandmother, my mom's mom, bless her heart, which like literally called me an orphan. She was like, Well, you're an orphan now, and I'm so worried about you. And what I was like, Grandma, I do not like I can't identify this thing. Although I guess you're right.

But I but it it I laughed. I can laugh now. I wasn't laughing at the time, but it it sparked something in me. I was just like, wow. I I will never say I'm like parentless. I I had parents, right? They're just not here physically anymore. But it was sort of a catalyst of like, who am I now? And I I I really did go through that existential crisis a little bit that I think so many of us can relate to. And then that's ultimately what led me to, you know, just find losses, become gains and start the podcast and everything. So

But I don't know. I I think for me that was that was a big one. And it was like, again, it was sort of out of my control. but I also was like, okay, well, there's gonna be these big milestones they won't be here for. They didn't see me get engaged, married, have my kid, nothing. And that was never a life that I thought they wouldn't be here for. But I think I just it's so sad to say. And it's like it's a realization we all have. It's like there's nothing I can do to change that. So I can either

wallow in that. Or what's the alternative? You find little sparks of joy again and just have some curiosity around that. And I think that's kind of where it started for me. Tara, that's amazing. And also what you just said about the little sparks of joy. It's like looking for the glimmers, which is the opposite of a trigger. Yes. Yep. I would love to piggyback off that because, you know, there's that saying that the micro joys are what

gets us through the macro grief. And for me, I realized after the fact I was doing some reflecting on it. And so much of what I did was very much intentional choices that I had to make. And at the time it does feel like, what do you mean I have a choice? But it's the same concept of dopamine dressing where you pick

Pick out and curate your outfit to make yourself feel good. You wanna you wanna look good, feel good. You have to put something on that's gonna make you feel confident. It's gonna be colors that suit you. It's gonna be the accessories that maybe it you associate to something memorable, et cetera. So, you know, I did the same thing for my grief. I had to curate and pick out activities, friend groups, social circles, little habits and rituals.

looking for the signs that my mom would send me. Like all of those things were something that I intentionally had to choose and pick out much like a wardrobe. And that is what I put on every day. And there were some days it was not easy to do that. just like there's some days it's not easy to put on a full face of makeup and you know get dressed. But once you finally do it, you feel so much better about the situation. And so for me, that's that's what I've done. Dope dopamine grieving.

Okay. So that's that's my my tip. Does anyone else have anything they want to add or should we move on to the next question? Along the dopamine grieving, I love that by the way. The whole leaning in with curiosity, the the actions forward tend to be so small that we miss them. The microjoys and one phrase that my brother had was the LLPs, the life's little pleasure. So just really re-engaging with life gently and at your own pace. So many people will try to push you forward and try to get you out of your grief and move on and feel better.

You do it on your own timing and your timing is not everybody else's timing. So honoring that in the small little steps that you need to take forward is really important. Just one little thing. I guess for me, what helped me stop surviving and start re-engaging with life again was understanding our nervous systems and what survival mode actually means. I had absolutely no idea and I was living most of my life with chronic anxiety and OCD. So that information would have been really useful.

Back then, but yeah, so we have our nervous system. So there's the sympathetic nervous system, which is the fight or flight, and the parasympathetic nervous system. So oftentimes when we've been through a traumatic experience like a loss, our body gets stuck in that sympathetic state and has a really hard time of coming back out back down into that rest state. So yeah, it can affect all sorts of things and make you physically sick, affect your immune system. You can break out in rashes. I had weird eye twitches.

So yeah, learning how to put my body back into a rest state. And again, that was with through somatic practices like breath work has was a life changing for me and yeah, helped me re-engage back with life again. Imogen, I love that. And you know, it's interesting. I'm I'm similar to you. Like I've lived most of my life in fight or flight and like grief amplified all that.

And my yeah, and my main goal in life, like so I'll be forty one in August. My main goal for the rest of my life is peace and a regulated nervous system. And that's been like the main focus is if something is going to disrupt my peace or pull me too far out of the way I could regulate, it's not for me. And I didn't even know that I could feel this relaxed in my own body. So I I love that. that's just good.

That's really good. Okay. So what does post-traumatic growth look like in real non-polished terms? So post-traumatic growth, in my opinion, is how you choose to re-engage with life, how you choose to be an active participant in your life after loss. And that can look very different from what it did prior to your loss. Some people are quiet grievers, they keep it close to the heart. I am not that. My grief needed an outlet and needed a creative expression. It needed to be shared in community.

So that I didn't find it at the times, particularly with sibling loss, which is a type of disenfranchised grief. And it is usually muted as compared to other losses, because in this sort of false hierarchy of grief that we have, people really truly minimize sibling loss. But the truth is the quote unquote like worse grief is our own. So post-traumatic growth looks like engaging in conversations regardless of the opposition and you know, the the

friction that I receive from other people in terms of wanting to talk about it. I know that talking about grief is not quote unquote sad. I I know it's life affirming. I know meet it helps us meet people and each other at our most vulnerable and most honest place in our life. And to me, there is no more powerful space to connect with somebody. I really, really cherish those types of conversations. So it looks like talking openly about it. I have chosen to help

foster a more grief informed world through the conversation. So it looks like these events, it looks like, you know, writing books and participating in one of Blair's publications actually and Kira's publications and all the other podcasts. So it's this mission to really shift the public discourse around what it means to live and grieve and embrace the fullness of what it means to be human. Because ultimately grief is about your humanity and we live in the context of a grief, illiterate Greek

Reef of society. So how do we preserve our humanity in a way and connect with each other more authentically in a world essentially hellbent on keeping us from doing that? And that's to me what post-traumatic growth looks like. I feel as if post-traumatic growth can mean so many things. Yet for me, it's this ability to understand that I no longer see

Life through the lens of, you know, my pre-grief self. it has allowed so many new neuropathways to open up. And through the power of conversation and through the power of community, I have expanded the way I see the world. And sometimes just the conversations about the mundane or just the day-to-day conversations, they bore me now. And I need to have.

more in-depth conversations and I need to be able to express how I'm feeling with other types of people and see how they see the world too. And so I think for me, just having this understanding that who I was prior to the to the loss, I'm never going to get back to that, but nor do I want to. I feel like I'm I'm very much happy and satisfied with the fact that

Grief has expanded and allowed me to be insatiable in terms of wanting to have these types of conversations. And so yeah, I just I I for me the growth i is very much a social growth, being able to have these hard conversations that previously I would have not wanted to touch with a 10-foot pole. So I second you, Kara. I like seriously, I resonate with that so much. And that has

It's it's like not to sound dramatic, but it's like literally changed my life because I was very fortunate to have like a very nice, helpful, supportive, like support system. But it was also chock full of people who didn't really get it. And and that's no fault of their own. How could they? They don't know what it means to be the only daughter of Greg and Lori Jordan. That's very sacred to me, just as all of our losses, be that a job loss, the loss of a person, whatever, is sacred to us. And so when I think

Back and I like started to release the pressure on myself and more importantly, the expectations that I had on other people to understand me or to witness me. Like there's no like more abrupt lesson in like realizing who can and can't hang out with you in in your grief. And it can make it.

very isolating feeling. But I think that's the beauty of like what we're doing here today. And I know with like, yeah, griefy, what you've created here, like we can see each other in a way that a lot of people can't. And for me, the whole reason I called losses become gains what I did is that's that's kind of my mindset around it. It's like, and it's not so black and white as like, okay, what gains are you going to find from your losses? But like the gains can look like anything you wanted to. And for me, it's it's kind of more

It's kind of bigger picture. It's like there's this level of understanding and compassion and empathy and patience that I feel like I have for people and the world that I did not have before. But to your point, Kira, I like I would I'd be remiss if I didn't call out like the smaller, kind of more surface level things or someone complaining about something that their mom is doing. I'm like, okay, like I that's that's

Tough to listen to now because I'm just like, if only I could have my mom back, if only I could have my dad back. Right. And that's like a continuous thing that we're always going to have to deal with. That is a lifelong thing as long as we're alive, right? Until we are reunited with them somehow, somehow. So it's it's a journey, but I think that's why finding a community and finding those people who can just see you in it and be like, we don't even need to say a word to each other right now. I just want you to know, like soul to soul, I see you.

It's magical. Like it it cannot be understated how important that is. I love all of these responses. I've got a little bit of a different answer to this. Post-traumatic growth for me has been really ugly. It's been really lonely. It's been really challenging. I feel like there's there's the chat's been popping off. Heidi has asked, have you lost friendships through this process? I've lost so many friendships.

There's been so many losses off the back of my growth that it's been really hard. And at times I wanted to go back to who I was and back to what felt safe. But the whole point of this growth process is to step into that uncertainty, step into the unknown, and accept that we're not the same people after we experience something so earth-shattering. And so the process for me is pretty much been like going through the dark night of the soul.

getting ripped to shreds, coming out the other side going, who the hell am I now? And looking around and going, where's everybody gone? it's been a really, really challenging process. So many amazing things have come from it. I'm a much healthier, more boundaried person. I know Jenny in the chat set mentioned that she feels more alive after setting boundaries. Yes, boundaries are so important when you're grieving and boundaries

I think a lot of people when they're going through post-traumatic growth learn to say no for the first time. I don't know if you've experienced that Blair, but yeah, it's boundaries where it's at. So yeah, my experience has been challenging, but also incredible because I feel like I've come home to myself, which is great. That's a beautiful answer. And I agree, like I see like lots of my, you know, who I am and where I've been in all of your answers. And I'm the same way. I first of all, like, I need to have conversations with emotional depth.

I'd rather have quality over quantity. I like to collect really awesome people. And I find that more of the people I'm collecting these days are in the grief and resilience space. And that's the yeah. And the other thing is, is not only have I gone through such tremendous grief and growth, but I'm also sober. I'm about to be, I'm seven and a half years sober. And so all of those things combined, I often act like a mirror to people.

And so there are people who may be going through something similar that I went through, but they're handling it in a different way. And it's uncomfortable for them to see how far I've come because they're not making healthy life choices and or they don't want to face it because it's too painful. And I face it, I turn towards the pain, towards the grief. So I can look it in the eyes and be like, all right, like what are we gonna do about you? Like, I need to move forward. Let's do it together. And so I've lost a lot of.

people in my life too because they don't get it or I trigger them. And I think that's okay. this is a I really like this next question. how do you stay connected to your person or in some of our cases people while continuing to grow? And I love this when I'm gonna just say that I have my mom's signature tattooed on my arm. You can't see it. Can't see it. I did that like her body

It was like two days after she died. Like her body was like not I don't think she was even no, maybe it was after her funeral. But like my sister and I got her signature tattooed on us. And I feel like she's always with me anyways. But I love having her signature on my right arm, especially 'cause I'm a writer and I write a lot by hand. So it feels like she's with me. that's just one example. But yeah, I I don't know. I I love this question because it you know, your people can show up in butterflies or just in energy or in dreams and I'd love to know like

How do your people or your person show up while you're growing? I have a tattoo too. I have two. I have my parents' wedding anniversary and then this one that was like just an expression. but I will not I'm not gonna lie, and I saw this actually in the chat as well. Someone asked if any of like, I don't know if was directed at us, but if anyone's gone to a medium, I have. I won't say super frequently, but I did go to a medium like a week and a half after my mom died because I couldn't fathom not.

communicating with her in some way. It was not the most beautiful session. I'm not gonna lie, I poor woman. I I think I went too early. but every session since then, especially since my dad died too, has been beautiful and very healing. And this is not to convince anyone to go to a medium. I know it's not for everyone. For me personally, I found it very helpful, but I've found one that I really know, like, and trust and all the good things. so there's there's a little bit of that that I I go to every so often, but I've really gotten into like

Some energetic work. This has been a big journey that I've I've been on too. And just just trying to feel them around me in different ways. And I'm on like a whole spirituality journey really since they died. But the signs and symbols, I've seen that in the chat as well. Big time. My mom comes through in coins, my dad has his ways. And yeah, I just try and keep open to those things with, but there was a time in my grief, and I just want to call this out in case anyone can relate to this, where

I feel like we we grasp for it so much or we're like looking almost too hard. And it's it's so hard to just release and just be like, hey, send me whatever, right? and and just try and notice, especially when we're in that really early grief. But that's also been a journey for me is just kind of like releasing and like, okay, whatever is meant to come will come. But I also just want to acknowledge it doesn't make up for them not being here. All of these signs and symbols and dreams and

Medium sessions or whatever are beautiful. and I'm very grateful for all of that. But I also just want to acknowledge anyone here who's like, yeah, that's all great too. But like I really miss my person or my people. And that's what we all hold space for too. It's not, it's not a consolation prize, you know, but it's like, what else, what else do we have left? So just keeping that alive and and trying to keep them alive for my daughter too. And she's only two right now. So I'm just trying to like, you know, show her pictures and things like that. So I have yet to figure out how to really

Keep them alive in the future, but that's kind of a new iteration of my grief that I'm navigating. I love that. And we've all had conversations about this, but continued bonds, learning about continued bonds, which was a death can end the life, but not necessarily a relationship. You can still have the relationship with your loved one in a completely different form. And learning that shifted the course of my grief in the best way possible.

Because it was like, okay, wait, I get to still be his sister. I get to still perform this role and have a relationship with him. I, you know, have seen him through dreams and signs. And somebody was asking, like, what is a sign, right? And I don't have the answer for that, but a sh a way to present it is a point of connection or synchronicity that has their energetic footprint. So something that you associate with them. It's almost like a language that only you would have understood with that person.

And something shows up in a way that makes you pause, right? And I went through this in my early grief, the search for answers. Where did you go? What happened? I still have your clothes. They still smell like you. Where did you go? Right. And a lot of people find answers in their religious texts and all these things. But to be honest, none of that served me. At the time, I remember learning about near death experiences. And when I learned about that, that cracked me open. It was the first time I heard it. It was the most bizarre thing.

But all of these kind of more metaphysical or spiritual things do have a purpose in for some of us in helping us understand that there's more to this thing called life and there's more to than what meets the eye. So what I offer is if that feels comforting to you, if that feels like a point of connection.

then let it be so. And that part is what kickstarted my journey with, you know what? I can still find other ways in how to be his sister, how to talk about him and how to incorporate him in my life. And that has evolved daily in the time since. Absolutely, Nina. I absolutely am a huge fan of science. And actually my mom showed up for me in a big way. She sends me number sixes. And I remember when we all met in New York together and we're hugging each other.

I was handing my coat to the the coat check guy and he handed me my coat check number and it was the number sixty-six and I was like, of course it is, right? And so I just feel so powerful about the fact that those signs feel like little nudges from her and she's pushing me along the way. And as much as yes, I'm the founder and editor in chief of a grief magazine, I also firmly believe that my mom is co-creating with me. And so I think so many of us have started these passion projects and

you know, podcasts, writing books, et cetera. And I think every single one of us could nod our head and say, Yeah, I affirm that also it's as much as it's me, it's the the the people that I've lost that are pushing me along the way. And so much of what I'm doing is based on the way that my mom lived her life, which was obviously full of life and zest and color. And yeah, I just I feel like

we are having this co-creation even though she's not physically here. And so for me, that's how I I feel connected with her is by doing things like this because I know that without a doubt she's she's here and she's cheering me on. So I think for me having that creative outlet that we can do something together has also been a powerful way for us to stay connected. Did you have anything you want to add? I think everything's been touched on. I did just want to say something. There's been a comment in the chat if we can address other

types of loss that aren't death related. And I just wanna say grief comes from all forms of loss. So whether it's a loss of a friendship, the loss of a job, the loss of your health, divorce, anything, I think a lot of what we are touching on can also apply to that. So I hope that's helpful for you. Happy to keep moving forward, Blair. Yeah, I well I wanna we we we have many more questions prepared.

But I know there's been a few questions coming in through the chat. Andy, have you been taking note on the ones coming through? How about you step in here? Okay, great. Two that actually I got three here. I'm just gonna popcorn this out and you guys can choose what you want to address. David wants to hear more about the neuroscience from Blair. Heidi asked about did any of you lose relationships? That's an that's another.

non-death loss that you could talk about. Monica, it's been only a couple of months since her mom's passing. and she's been researching somatic work to help with her grief. Is she doing too much? what are the things that helped all of you at the beginning of your grief?

You know, maybe I'll start. I know there's the neuroscience part, and I'm maybe I'll come back to it if there's time. But if not, please reach out to me and I can say I did a TED talk on the five secrets to strengthening your resilience muscle. If you like Google my name and Ted, Ted, it comes up. but I want to talk about the non-death loss because I'm actually in one right now. So my ex-husband and I had been together for almost 15 years, and he in 2019 had a stroke heart attack and quadruple bypass surgery.

Then the pandemic happened and we lost my mom, my dad, his dad, the baby, etc. Six years to the day, October 2nd of this last year, he had a stroke. The stroke changed his personality and his brain, which has ultimately been a big part of the end of our marriage, without that being the core reason. And so I'm actively grieving the man I married who no longer exists.

and my marriage. And it's very interesting. And so I've gotten feedback from people in my life who have seen me through everything that I've been through. And some of the feedback I've gotten was wow, like you handled the stroke so like so well. And I noticed that too because I have the tools now that like if if I feel like my you know I'm getting overwhelmed or anxious, like I know what to do to bring myself back into my body. And

I was really impressed with the way I handled that crisis because it was really scary to wa I literally was watching him have the stroke and we both it was just a very weird experience because he's in his late 40s. the the loss of the marriage is still very fresh. It ended on Mother's Day, which was May 10th. And so we're not even a few months out. but I was meeting with girlfriends in my hometown and they're just like, You are handling this well.

And I wasn't handling it well at all. And I still am not. And when I'm in a place of not handling it, I cancel plans. I set my boundaries. I do what I need to do because I'm in an act of grief. Like if this was an actual physical death, like it's a month and a half out of like this relationship, this marriage dying. Who how how can I, you know, I'm treating this like an actual death and you know, I'm in mourning and some of the things I'm doing to serve to survive is.

In Canada, where I am from, like you have to be separated for a year before you file for divorce. And so I've just decided that on the tenth of every month leading up to when I can file for a divorce, I'm gonna buy myself a present. And so I bought a dress last tenth. the next tenth I'm gonna be with my sister at the music festival that I revived my love for. And I've decided on the tenth there I'm gonna buy myself a treat. and it's helping me get through it. I'm I'm making like rituals to help me get through this really hard time.

But it's very interesting because it is fresh and I've obviously never been div well, not obviously, but I've never been divorced before or separated, and this is all very new territory. And it's a really terrible type of grief. I even came up with the word grievoce because like I'm grieving this man, and yes, I'm a d gonna be a divorcee, but I'm grieving this man who's still walking around and he's still living and breathing, but he's like no longer alive in like the marriage that we were in. So it's definitely really hard.

I think you just said something really powerful there, Blair. It's like, and I think this is why a living loss, so to speak, can be, I don't know, I however anyone wants to think about this just as hard, if not harder sometimes than the a death, which I know sounds kind of funny to say, depending on the situation. But like I think with a death, right, there's I think some people view it, there's there is some sense of closure, right? We may not have that closure right away, right? But like you can't bring them back.

With a living loss, I also went through, I briefly mentioned this earlier. I went through a breakup in between my parents dying. And spoiler alert, that's my now husband. So we did get back together. However, it was speaking of like losing relationships, losing friendships, whatever, like that was a big one for me. I did not expect that to happen. And I definitely think a lot of that was to do with the losses I had gone through. Neither of us knew how to handle it. But what I wanted to say was with a breakup, with,

The death of a loved one with a job, with a career. I think so much of our identity is tied up in those relationships or jobs. And I went through I was in at a company that went through a lot of layoffs a couple of years ago. And I had coworkers not take it well at all because they were they were blindsided. They were really wrapped up in their that company. And so that identity piece I think is really important to call out. And I'd love to anyone else's thoughts in the chat or anyone else here. Like I

I think that's where, you know, a lot of people when they're trying to support us, they might be cognizant of like, okay, yeah, this person or that job or whatever isn't in your life anymore. You're gonna be fine. But it's like you you're not understanding how much of me was tied or connected to this person, that relationship, this job, that pet, right? And that does not evolve right away. Like there is so much to.

unpack there. So just that identity piece is just what I wanted to call out because I think that can apply to both like living and non-living process. You know, and what's really interesting about that, I'm just gonna before I let anyone else speak, is, you know, one of the first questions a lot of my friends asked me, are you changing your name? Are you gonna are you gonna drop his name? And it's funny because my business is Blair Kaplan Communications and my website's BlairKaplan.ca and my email is Blair at BlairKaplan.ca I'm like,

Yeah, I gotta renew my passport soon. We'll just we'll just do it and then maybe we have a big party, like a rebirth.

Does anyone else have anything they want to share about non-death losses? I know there's I know Nina, you put some stuff in the chat. Did you want to say anything about it? I do. And I and I want to name something that Tara just chimed in on because the conversation that we're having today, there's a sort of implication that there's some emotional distance. And there's like that image that comes to mind is like a callus, right? Like if you're playing guitar, you build that that callus in your fingers. There's that a bit of emotional distance.

And perspective from a loss, whether that's a loss of a person or pet or a living loss. So if you would have told me, if I would have myself would have said the things that I'm saying today to the early grief version of me, I would have told her to get out of my face and leave me alone because you are not there yet. I wasn't there yet. The person in early grief is not the person that's having today's conversation. And I want to make that very clear because there is this expectation sometimes that you hear.

Maybe some of us saying, like, no, it's fine and we get through this, we have the tools now and it's painful, but we're gonna be fine and all these things because we've had, in my case, seven years of talking about this nonstop processing, integrating, understanding that we don't move on from, we move forward with. So I'm seeing I'm naming this because I'm seeing some of the comments that from what I can gather is still very fresh grief. So I want to offer the perspective that this conversation is.

when there's been a bit of distance and you already feel it within yourself, not because somebody told you, not because society pushed you, but something in you is ready for the next season is what I like to call them, the next season of your life. How do you crack that open? How do you navigate even living losses? Kara just experienced the loss in her family. B Blair's currently in the thick of it. And they're able to show up in this capacity because they've had the time and you know perspective and tools. So I just want to name

That in particular. I saw Kiero chiming in on that as well.

Yeah, I I think that's really important to make sure that we're having that conversation because the reality is this this style of conversation, for whatever reason, it's taboo because I think we're afraid that we're gonna loop everyone into the same space. And that's not where this conversation is necessarily gonna lie. We're all on different phases and yes, different seasons of our grief and

You know, something that I've really utilized as a tool to help me visualize grief is the bookshelf, right? And I think there's an artist, I'll have to I have to look her up again exactly what her name was. But you know, at the beginning, the only book on your bookshelf is a grief book. That's it. That's all you can you can pull off the bookshelf and it just sits stares at you in the face, and that is the only thing there. But eventually, yes, you you are able to incorporate other types of entertainment back into your life and

your memory books and other books that you're you're reading to bring joy to your life, tchotchkis, photos, memories, like all of that stuff eventually goes back on the bookshelf. The grief book never went anywhere. It's still there. It just kind of fades into the background and the other things start to take import importance as well. And so I think for anyone that's listening to this, this is definitely not like a conversation where it's as black and white as, oop, my my grief is fixed now. Absolutely not. It that's not how it works. But

I really do hope it does provide some type of hope for people to understand that if they really do lean into it and they find the right s resources and they're seeking out the conversations and making new bonds and friendships with people along the way. Like, yes, I I I wouldn't say necessarily lost friends, but I would say I out I outgrew friends. And I would consider some of these people here some of my best friends now, which is kind of crazy because we're all over the world and we mostly communicate via voice notes. But anyway.

That is besides the point, like grief is it doesn't necessarily get fixed, it just it evolves, right? And that's why we're here and that's why we need to have the conversation about it.

I think that's just so true, Kara. Like grief, like you don't get rid of it. It just becomes part of you. And, you know, I like to say, and this is like it floats around the internet these types of quotes, but you know, you love, you love deep, so you grieve deep. And like, would I rather my mom and dad still be alive? Yes. But they're not. So what can I do to move forward and still like make them proud? And

Something we did talk about also is about like building relationships with other people who I understand it. And I like to say, like, you know, I when someone hasn't lost a parent and I talk to them about parent loss, they don't understand because they haven't like drank the grief truth serum. It's like a truth potion. And like, you know, in Alison Wonderland, when you take the pill and, you know, you shrink or you grow, it's like this thing where you're never gonna know life before then again because

You now know this ugly truth of what this deep grief is. And, you know, no one, I shouldn't say no one stays in it forever because what is forever? But the people who want to move through it, move through it and they integrate that experience into their life. And I think it's about integration. And there's not a lot of talk about integration, you know, and a lot of experts are so focused on the fresh grief. And that's why we're here, right? We're here to talk about like.

Okay, what happens when you're back to functioning like a normal person? And like, can you still have a grief business and like, you know, have all this joy and whatnot and celebrate? I think maybe something is I mean, throwing a curveball and maybe this is our final thing we talk about before we wrap it up. But I don't just have the Global Resilience Project, right? I'm a background I have a background in marketing. I have a marketing and PR agency. I specialize in, you know, substack marketing right now.

you know, I volunteer, I do a lot of stuff outside the space of grief, but a lot of people know me as a grief and resilience expert. And I think it's okay to wear multiple hats. And I think it it can be really confusing for people, but it shows that you can actually balance all these different things and not just carry the grief, you know, expert title.

Does anyone else want to share kind of what else they're, you know, what else is going on in their world? Because grief and resilience is a huge part of my life, but it's not my entire life. I second that for sure. Yeah. I mean, I have a full-time job on top of this, right? I have I have my family, I have other things going on. I have a whole other podcast about travel and culture and exploration. And that has always been a part of me. And it's something that my husband and I really bonded over, that my parents and I really bonded over. And

That has lit me up in different ways, right? So the work I do in grief and having these conversations and all the things is incredibly important to me. And in some ways, it kind of did become my whole identity there for a second. And then, but with this with the integration with all these things we've talked about today, it's gotten to a point where I curiosity is like my word. And it's like I've got curious about other parts of myself. And what's so beautiful about it is like I don't know that these other parts would have come to the surface, or at least not now.

Had my parents not died when they did. And it's not that there's a whole other conversation. Did you know, was that like my soul's path? Did I choose this? Did I not? That's a conversation for another day. But I think where I landed with it is I just naturally, with all of the processing and all of the sort of tools I've done to cope, I just got to a point where I was like, okay, this is beautiful, but this isn't all of me. And I think that's where it can kind of continue to crack us open.

And I I just want to acknowledge one of the comments, you know, with I think it was like from Linda. I totally hear you. And I I know it seems like we're all like young and we have so much life ahead of us, and that's true. But like I th I think there's a lot that we're talking about here that could apply to at any point in your life, right? No matter how old you are. I I would like to think you're never too old to explore a little bit or try something new or get curious. And I think that's what we're

Saying today, and I think we've all kind of done that in our own way. So I just wanted to note that. But yeah, everyone else, please chime in. I've just got a few things to add to this because it is so important to talk about. I think grief is it's gonna happen to everyone at some stage in their life. I do feel like, yes, a lot of us are young here, but it's gonna happen to us again. And I feel like these

These conversations are so important. And I have spent the last six years talking about grief nonstop. I started a grief podcast. I wrote a book about grief. I was so immersed in the world of grief that I knew nothing else around me existed. And I've come to a place in my grief now where I'm starting to explore who am I now without that identity? Because I've only identified as a griever for the last six years. There's been nobody else.

And it's been a really scary time to try and figure out who I am without identifying with my loss because, you know, like the the other ladies have said, there's so many other parts to us. I'm a mum too. I have a seven year old now. She's only known a mum who's been grieving. And so it's been a really confusing time trying to navigate all of that and, you know, work and commitments and finding out who we are and holding down relationships and being a good friend and showing up and

It's it's so much to carry. So and I I also want to say that talking about this, we're not talking about this subject lightly. It's taken a lot to get to this point for us to share these experiences. And it is like like Kara said, it is quite taboo to talk about growth or silver linings or any positivity coming from loss. And we hope that you don't take from this conversation that we're saying that you need to, you know, make meaning from your loss or you need to find

growth or anything like that. Grief is so individual. So take from this conversation whatever little bits are going to help you along your journey. And please don't sit here comparing yourself to us either. We've all done very different things with our grief. So yeah, I just wanted to leave you with those words.

If I could chime in, I remember the point when I first laughed out loud, just you know, I saw something funny on like a reel or something silly, and I laughed. And that was followed by just deep sorrow because I said, How dare I be happy? Like, how dare I? And that was the first time I remember, you know, having that confronting self-analysis of like, am I allowed to be happy? What is my role now? What how what does this look like? And that again, like Tara says, curiosity, you lean into the questions.

So much of my grief journey has been in if anybody's read Rilke, it's so much about living into the questions, leaning into the questions of life that don't always have answers. And in that exploration of trying to live into the questions, you find your way forward, whatever that looks like. But I do remember somebody said you have to become an active participant in your life whenever you're ready. Make sure that you become an active participant in your life. And that stayed with me. At first it sounded a bit harsh.

But once I started to do that, I said, you know what? We get to live another day at whatever age, we get to do another day of life. That could feel incredibly burdensome some days and heavy. Like I really could not do another day. But when you look at it in the bigger picture, you also realize I'm still here. I'm not gone. I'm still here. So what am I going to do with this one wild and precious life, you know, to quote Mary Oliver. And leaning into that question.

Finding out the answer to that on a daily basis will show you the next step forward. That's beautiful. That's beautiful, Nina. So we're getting close to the end. And we want to thank everyone for being here today. And thank you to all of our speakers and to Reimagine. for you who are here live, we would love to invite you to type one word, sorry, type in the chat one word that describes something you're taking away from today's conversation.

we're gonna include our names and the links to our podcasts and websites and social media in the chat so you can continue to connect with us directly. And then everyone who has signed up will receive a link to watch this recording of our conversation. I know we haven't gone to all the questions and the comments in the chat. And thank you so much for being such an engaging audience. We couldn't be doing this without you. So if you have any specific questions that's directed to any of us specifically, please reach out. We want to be here and continue this conversation.

And let's see what's happening scene. Okay, I'm gonna read some words in the chat. I might brief, stillness, love, boundaries, healing, not alone, grace, be, I love that. Community, ooh, yeah. Hope. So good.

And yeah, keep putting those words in. What's a word? What's a word that describes something that you're taking away from today's conversation? I mean, this is the tip of the iceberg. This conversation all started from like, was it a group chat? It was like a text message chat with a few of us talking about life beyond grief. Like what like what are we doing after, you know, a after we build these like grief businesses, these grief communities? And also now we're no longer in the deep grief, and that was a huge catalyst to helping us heal. Now what? And

It's I think this is conversation is something that could keep going, but we we are going to run out of time. So without further ado, I want to invite Andy to make some announcements. Thank you, Blair. And also thank you, Im. Thank you, Kira. Thank you, Tara, and especially Nina, who really spearheaded all of this for us. and for all of you who joined us today, all your questions in the chat.

My name is Andy Ingall. I lead virtual public programs at Reimagine. And we're so honored to co-host this with this group of Reimagined collaborators. Nina, In, Kira, Tara are all Reimagined collaborators. And I'm going to ask Nina if you could share those links in the chat. That would be great. What you might see on Reimagine's calendar.

Are hundreds of events. We don't produce all of them. We only produce a fraction of them. This is one example of a group of collaborators who came together with an idea, something that I don't think we've really focused so much on in programming at Reimagine, and that's why it was appealing to us. and they had the resources and skills and capacity to host it. You all can too. If you're interested in creating an event.

And using our platform. It's not a pay-to-play situation. It's pretty democratic. Anyone can do it. There's a link to learn about it. And I invite you all to consider hosting an event on our platform. Especially for those who didn't really see themselves represented in this particular experience. If you don't, if you want to share an experience that wasn't represented today, consider hosting an event.

And I also just want to mention here a few other upcoming events that we have. sorry for that. yes, we have Room for Grief coming up on July 16th and August 20th. This is a drop-in space for anyone who just needs a space to show up with others who are experiencing any type of grief. Nina.

will be facilitating those sessions. and I also want you to consider coming to our Reimagined Collaborator gathering. You first have to create an account and think seriously about becoming a reimagined collaborator. So review that. And then join us on July 15th, where you can meet others who are hosting events on our platform. And that's all I'll say. I'm going to pass this back to Blair and the team.

Well, thank you, Andy. you know, this has been a really great experience. And I think that this was such a brilliant conversation. So Nina, Kara, Tara, Andy, me, I'll thank me, for coming together and planning this. We all have a lot going on. And for everyone who showed up here today, engaged with us, participated, got some takeaways. We really appreciate you and we're grateful for you. So thank you so much for spending time with us today.

To talk about life beyond the deep grief. Thank you, everyone. 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.