Redefining Grief: Tools, Faith & The Space To Heal | Marcia P Earhart

Loss doesn’t only arrive as a funeral—sometimes it looks like the life you planned but didn’t live, a dream that quietly expired, or a version of yourself that never showed up. With author and grief coach Marcia Earhart, we open a wider door to grief and talk about how to move through pain without letting it swallow your future. Marcia shares the story behind her book, Gripping Grace In The Garden Of Grief, and the practices that helped her feel deeply, release safely, and still choose joy.

We dig into the difference between grieving with hope and being consumed by despair, and the subtle signs that grief is starting to define your choices. Marcia breaks down practical tools: crying and vocal release without causing harm, journaling to God, movement as medicine, and thought hygiene that supports the nervous system.

Marcia also introduces the Sterling Rose Sanctuary, a nonprofit serving clients online across the U.S. and abroad, integrating heart-healing, trauma-informed coaching, and brain health strategies. From parts work to art and music therapy to nutrition that calms inflammation, the focus is whole-person care that helps you return to joy more steadily. If you’ve ever felt “lonely” but not alone, or worried that feeling emotion would break you, this conversation offers grounded hope, language for your experience, and next steps you can take today.

If this resonated, share it with someone who needs it, subscribe for new episodes, and leave a review to help others find the show. Your story matters—and you can breathe, create, and live again.

Connect with Marcia at https://www.thesterlingrosesanctuary.us/ or on IG at @thesterlingrosesanctuary

Let's connect on social media! You can find me @ _journeytowell
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be well, my friend
xx Hannah

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_02 1:11

Hello. Welcome back to the podcast Journey to Well. My name is Hannah. I am joined today with Marcia Earhart. She is one of my favorite things to talk about is grief. And she is a grief girl. We love talking about it. So I'm very, very excited about this podcast recording. Marcia, thank you so much for coming on. We were just talking right before I hit recording, so I'm going to let you introduce yourself. And it's actually one of my favorite questions that I ask on the podcast because I like people to be able to introduce themselves how they would like to introduce themselves, whether that's your accolades, whether that's your schooling, your business, your job, your personality traits, your Enneogram number. You can give us any or all of them. But Marsha, thank you so much for coming on. And yes, please give a brief introduction of who is Marsha, why are you coming on podcasts? What is on your heart to share today? And then we will dive deep into grief conversation.

Why Grief And How It Shaped A Calling

SPEAKER_00 2:19

Oh, well, first of all, I'm a child of God. That just so resonates with me. And I am a wife and mom, which I love both of those roles in my life, as well as I am wildly passionate about the things God has placed within me and love deeply and just desire for people to experience life in its fullness. I love the beach, as we were talking about just before we got started. I live in Florida. I am a life grief trauma brain mental health coach, a heartthink uh minister, and an author and speaker. But honestly, there's nothing that compares to the fact of all the other seasons of my life as to who I am and what I do. So I just love being who God created me to be in every space he puts me in.

Expanding Grief Beyond Death

SPEAKER_02 3:19

Oh, love that. And I I read some of your book, and and you have quite a story, and you uh stepped into some really dark seasons in your life with such grace and gratitude, and I'm really excited to chat with you about that. Um one of my I've said this before, but I don't talk about grief a ton. So if this is your first time listening to the podcast, such a weird thing to say that I love talking about grief, and I know that you do too, Marcia. Um I think the reason behind that is because there are certain things that we don't talk a lot about. And one of them, in my opinion, is grief. And you and I, when we chatted before, um, one of the important things for me to bring light to is grieving not just people who have passed, but living grief as well. And I think you and I talked about when we chatted before of how you as the listener or you as the person grieving, you get to define what grieving is, how long it is, what it looks like, how it feels. You get to define that, not other people. And we have these stereotypes of grief that we really only grieve people that have passed, and you have this amount of time, and then you should be, quote, over it. And that's just not how grief works. So, my first question is what got you interested in talking about grief, writing a book on grief, becoming a heart sync counselor, all of these things. This is really heavy, heavy work. And what brought you to that chapter of your life that I guess you're still in this chapter of your life that you're in now?

SPEAKER_00 5:12

I think that life prepares us for our calling. And so I really from three and a half, grief was a part of my life ongoing. And when I say that, I had 17 losses by the time I was 18, and there were pretty horrific losses. So grief did not define my life, but it was a redefining of my life because what I learned early on in three and a half is that there's a brevity of life. Someone's here and then they're gone. And that was while my father was holding me, and I'm looking at my great-grandmother in a casket. So it it really embedded a memory for me, and it it became part of my DNA moving forward as to this is part of life. And I'm very thankful for my parents, Hannah, because they taught me how to grieve. Wow, they showed me how to grieve, they were present in people's faces when they grieved, they knew how to show up, and they also wept when they, you know, were grieving themselves, and I got to watch that process also be a part of it because some of those things involved all of us. And so as life has continued, and loss is not just people, but that was 17 people. That was not other losses within my life during those 18 years because I had other losses of friends, you know, that changed and just the seasons. Health, I had some health issues during those seasons of pneumonia and having mono repeatedly. And so I was missing out on certain things. And so I feel like we need to know that grief includes so much more in our lives. And I've we need to be able to grieve each of those losses when we experience them and incorporate it in the sense that we're moving forward. Because I don't think grief should get to define who we are, I think it should redefine and it should never have the last word, it should only be there to teach us so that we are equipped better, and in the next time we have more tools. And to me, it's a process of a continuation of growing in that.

Seventeen Losses Before Adulthood

SPEAKER_02 7:47

I love that grief shouldn't define us, but it should redefine the way in which we move through life. Because I would agree in my life, the things that I've had to grieve the hardest or the deepest, it's not something that I want to leave behind. It's a part of you that you move forward with. That's always going to be even if we are talking about grieving a loss of a person, it's carrying that person with you. But I do love the the breath that you expanded of being sick and missing out on things when you were a child and grieving for me. A big part of my one of my most recent grief journeys is grieving like a version of myself that I thought that I would be by 31. And it's my life now is so different than 25-year-old me would have thought. And it's way better than I would have ever imagined. So it's but it's interesting, right? To have both the happy and the sad, the light and the darkness, the the grief and the joy and the peace. And I'm curious to hear your personal experience with that because you had so many losses before what, the age of seven, you said, or 15.

SPEAKER_00 9:10

By 18.

SPEAKER_02 9:10

18. Okay. I have 17 losses. 17. By 18. Wild. Which which also boggles my mind because I do feel like I've experienced grief in so many ways. I haven't actually experienced it so heavily with a loss of a person. Because I have my parents still, I have my siblings still. So that's that's just wild to me. But my question is, what what is that experience? What has that experience been for you in learning, really experiencing the both sides? Because you you come out of you come out of a spiral of grief. So you you experience the high and the low. What has that experience been like for you?

SPEAKER_00 9:56

Well, in the book, I think you saw it's very raw, and it's that there's there's a a visceral aspect of grief that we have to allow ourselves to experience.

SPEAKER_02 10:08

Yeah.

Feeling It All Without Numbing

SPEAKER_00 10:08

We when we run from it, we're not running from it, it actually embeds in us. So we want to allow ourselves to walk into the lessons it has for us in that space. And from there, and for me, those each of those experiences has brought a richer part of how I live life. It's also taken me deeper personally in my relationship with the Lord, because I would not have been able to walk in that without his presence holding me, carrying me. Honestly, there are times that we are carried, and I do believe when we have felt, and for me, losing a child was as if someone had taken all of my skin off of my body, and I was raw and just vulnerable to the air, and I just could feel it all over me, and it hurt in the very depths of my soul in ways I've never experienced before. But on the other side of that, there was this incredible love of the Lord that lifted me, carried me, held me, met me, cried with me, and infused his breath because I couldn't even breathe. And there's such dichotomies. There's there's you know, we see both sides of it in that moment where there's this excruciating pain, and then there's this moment of memory that brings me to laughter, and so that's part of it, and incorporating it into my very being that this is something that I have, nobody can take it, and I can have this safely here, but I've got to deal with all the emotions that are being brought up and bubbling to the top. And I feel when we don't do that, we're denying ourselves something really incredibly beautiful in the process of this life.

SPEAKER_02 12:48

I heard a quote one time and it said, When we push down our emotions, or when we run away, or when we don't allow ourselves to feel our emotions, we think we're burying them, but they're really just buried alive. And they're gonna come back up. They are probably in an inopportune moment. Um, and they are going to come because they're still living and they need to be witnessed and experienced. And I am curious how well I want to say something.

SPEAKER_00 13:20

They're not just gonna come back alive, they're gonna haunt you. Ooh, yeah, it's a haunting that's in you that you keep trying to be busier and and run from that. That's the haunting aspect, then it will come back. Yeah, when when all of a sudden, because you haven't chosen to step into, it's gonna find you. So so go on and be gracious enough with yourself and give yourself permission. I need to grieve in this season.

SPEAKER_02 13:49

Yeah, yeah. I love that. It's gonna haunt you. I love that. I you you're sharing kind of you you allowed yourself to viscerally feel it and to move through it and allow yourself to feel the the breath of emotions. I am such a tangible person. And this was a question that I had a lot when I began my own grief spiral journey. Um how do you do it? How do you allow yourself when it feels because for me, I re recall sometimes it just feels so heavy and so big and that's scary that I was afraid that I would get stuck in it.

The Haunting Of Unfelt Emotions

Practical Ways To Release Safely

SPEAKER_00 14:43

So I want to address that because I initially said to one of my friends, I feel if I let myself feel this emotion, I won't come out alive. Yeah. Yeah. And that was that was function who was speaking that. Because function, and so let me explain, function is what we get up and it's the every day that we do in our lives that we get up, brush our teeth, go to the bathroom. It's kind of we can do that in autopilot, which we don't want to do that, but a lot of people go in autopilot when they have grief, and so that can be dangerous. But function is the one that was saying that. But my true self said, press into Jesus, and the Holy Spirit said, I need you to let me be present with you. I'm holding you. We need to do this, and I'm gonna do it with you, and he did. And but that that function side of me really thought, if I allow myself, I won't come out alive, it'll change me. I won't be able to ever get up off this floor if I let my emotions go where I am allowing for the tears and screaming. And I remember the day that I went in my room and I got a pillow and I wept and I screamed in that pillow. And why did I scream in the pillow, people? Because I had children at the house. I had children at the house. I did not want to cause further trauma for them, so it was important for me to release, but I screamed and just screamed because it was part of just letting out the pain. I wasn't screaming at anyone, just screaming to release what was so bound in me. And I probably did that for an hour, and then all of a sudden I just felt this breaking open of I'm gonna be okay. Because the Holy Spirit said you're gonna be okay, yeah, and it was the beginning of really embracing the emotions that come with this story of grief. And I also knew enough that if I didn't give myself permission and I didn't allow myself, that my body would keep the score and it would go into the parts of my body, and that it could cause sickness, it could cause emotional and mental problems because it happened, and I wanted to live this out as helpfully as I possibly could, but you asked how I called on Jesus and Father and Holy Spirit continually. People, I did not let them go from my presence, nor were they leaving my presence. I I needed everything they had because I did have children. I also had a husband who was not handling this grief well. Yeah, and so I was like, Lord, I want to be able to walk this in the manner that you have, but I have to have you. And I became so dependent on the Lord there just wasn't anything in that that I would leave or I would I his just presence was just always and I feel it even to this day. He just doesn't leave me, he's with me, and so there's a there's a component of grief that everybody feels, and it's lonely loneliness when you're grieving. Yeah, I never felt alone, but there is a loneliness because our grief is specific to each of us. I really can't help you understand the intimate details of my grief story in the way that I experience and feel it. What I can do is tell you from the lens, this is how I walked through it, this is what I felt. But the reality is in that moment, each of us have to understand nobody's ever going to be in our shoes. Doesn't matter what experiences we have, but it does give us a greater capacity for compassion for other people when they're in their own story to have no judgment, yeah, and to be present in that space.

SPEAKER_02 19:47

You said something interesting that I never felt alone, but I felt lonely, and there's such a difference between such a similar word, there's a big difference between being alone and feeling lonely, and you can feel lonely with people all around you, and and I did, I did.

SPEAKER_00 20:09

I'm sure I'm sure you did too. When you're I mean, when you're good because this really has to be dealt with between myself and the Lord, yeah, nobody else really, and and he's really the healer, yeah, of all that we're going through. But yeah, so you can be all around many people, and that loneliness is still very present, but you're not alone.

SPEAKER_02 20:34

Well, and it's interesting what you said too about realizing that I will never fully understand what you went through, and you will never fully understand what I've gone through. And I've heard people say these sentences of like, you just don't understand. And I heard this sometime, I don't even remember where, but the person was like, Yeah, you're right. I will never understand. And there's almost this beauty in realizing and recognizing that because it's it's like this weight of, oh, okay. I don't have to prove to you or explain to you everything that I went through. Hopefully, the person that you're talking to, and this is where I want to get into the being, not being alone. Make sure that you're not alone and make sure that you find someone that has the capacity to understand this difference of I don't have to understand what you went through to hold you through it. Because we do need our physical community as well. We need our support system in this realm as well to hold us through whatever we're going through, whatever, you know, whatever grief we're experiencing. And that learning that is almost like this weight of, oh, I don't, that's okay. They're not ever going to, they're not ever going to experience what I experienced, even if we went through the same thing, right? Even if we lost the same family member, the way that I grieve is going to be different than the way that my sister grieves because we've lived different lives, even if we grew up together. So it's I hope that it's this permission slip. Can we allow it to be this permission slip of oh, they can they can still hold me through this? And and it's okay. One of the things that you said that was very interesting was finding the balance between we can be in grief too long, we can stay in grief, and there's a balance to be found. And so what I was going to say is it's okay to feel lonely. I would argue it's okay to feel lonely. That's a normal feeling, especially when you went through a big loss. But finding that, I'm curious if you can kind of share, expand, expand on that of finding that balance. How do we how do we know that we've been staying in grief too long?

Boundaries, Compassion, And Support

SPEAKER_00 23:08

So I'm gonna use my own life as kind of a point place. Yeah. So when we lost our son, the Lord said, I need you to go dance. Okay. So my son's friends in law school, they would call and we would all go out dancing. And some people would say that's no. What I found is it was an amazing way of release and of filling in joy and being alive. And I think we have to have these experiences when we're grieving something that has died within our lives, even dreams, because dreams are a I mean, everybody kind of looks at their life at different juncture and goes, well, those dreams are never going to be fulfilled because I'm at this point, and so I feel like we have to look and say, am I allowing myself to go and still live in the midst of this death I'm feeling? See, the Lord made sure I did, but I was obedient to it, and my son's friends were amazing. They made sure, hey, come on, let's go dancing, and we would have a blast, and just uh but I I began to need that expression, yeah, as it was it was another aspect of a releasing but receiving at the same time. And when you are facing, how do you know it's too long? When it starts to define your life, it's defining your decisions, it's defining your choices, it's defining whether or not you're willing to do anything any differently. Because the reality is I died in that moment when my son died. Our family died to who we were. That family will never resurrect. Why? Because he's not here, we're not gonna be the same when my second son was murdered. We all died yet again. We're not gonna be those people again, and you know what, Hannah? I don't want to be those that person again because they're not here. That space is held for them, honey. And I think if if grievers can come to understand, there's a sacred space for whatever you're grieving, and it doesn't have to look the same in your life. Because, see, I think we're people that like to have things look the same instead of embracing the new. And in scripture, the Lord talks about can you perceive I'm doing a new thing? Well, new things kind of are uncomfortable, aren't they? When we go work out and the body hasn't been working out for a while, I can tell you it's really uncomfortable. But it's the same way with our spiritual muscles, it's the same way with anything that we're doing and activating, it's uncomfortable. But that's what we need to do is to realize there are things that were and they're not going to be again, and that's okay. I don't want them to be again, but there are things yet to come, and I want to embrace what is and is to come with the fullness that I have. So I think that we can look at grieving. There are two sides. You can grieve with hope, or you can have a spirit of grief come over you. A spirit of grief consumes your entire life and it brings on a depression and a despair. Then you've been in grief too long, and we need some professional help. And there is a difference, and I saw that lived out in my husband as he went in despair. He was in a spirit of grief. I was in the grieving with hope. And we had this conversation that okay, you're in despair, you're in the pit, and I want to be of encouragement to you, and so your audience knows this is a good two years out, everyone. This isn't like we're fresh in it, okay? I don't want you to, I don't want you to send poor Hannah notes and say that was horrible, but she was being cruel to her husband. No, I have my husband, but I'm also cheering my husband on to be healthy and to make healthy choices in his grief, and it was penetrating in areas of his own health. Yeah. And so he had to put in some other places, he had to put in tools in other places and start acknowledging the places where he needed to work on and to and and really to change the mindset. And so when we talk about grief, I think it it doesn't do a good service to us if we leave out everything begins in the mind. So if you have negative thoughts and you keep thinking the negative thoughts after someone or a situation has happened, then what happens is that's a toxicity that goes in your body because your mind, your body lines up with your thoughts, everybody. They're they're one and the same. So if you're saying negative things, your body's aligning with it. If you're speaking life, the I am healing, yeah, then your body is lining up with I am healing, and God is doing an amazing work in and through this pain. Then guess what? God is doing an amazing thing in and through that work, and so we have to speak life over the places where the enemy has come in to speak death and to take you into the death of whatever it is that that grief has brought about. And so we have to be very cognizant of those two areas in our lives. Am I living from the tree of life or am I stagnated and just sitting in the tree of death?

SPEAKER_02 29:17

That's a great, I love that grief with hope, and then living and being overcome by the spirit of grief. And I really love that felt very palpable to be able to navigate. Is this something that I'm need to seek professional help for, or is this something that I'm moving through? Both ways are okay, you know, wherever.

SPEAKER_00 29:44

But we don't want depression to the point where it changes and alters your life. And that's when it becomes dangerous. That's when you've you've been sitting too long. Yeah, and you've got to get professional help, and you've got to make sure that you don't keep going in that path of darkness.

SPEAKER_02 30:01

Yeah, yeah. I want to talk about the title of your book. We've referenced it a few times, and I'm just obsessed with the title of your book. So if you could share, and I'm also I must know how you arrived at the title of your beautiful book.

Grief With Hope Versus Despair

SPEAKER_00 30:22

Okay, it's gripping grace and the garden of grief, a place for the heart. So I was gripping tightly to everything that the father had for me. I was holding on, gripping, and I felt like that's all I had. Because it is and in that gripping, I felt the pouring out of his grace over my grief. It was a continual bathing, honestly. And the garden. There's a segment in my book on the garden. And the Lord brought me to a gate, and he said, You're welcome to come in. It's your garden with me. And you get to choose. And I chose to walk in, and the version that's in my book is more condensed in the scope of all that he did in that garden. Because that's where my tears really fell out onto the ground of that hard soil. And I started seeing everything that he does within our grief. Because he is so specific to each of us, so tender, so merciful. And he asked me throughout, are you ready for this? And sometimes it was like, I don't know that I am, and he said, Well, what kind of questions do you have? And I would ask questions, and then I was ready. And so everyone, there's a garden for everybody, it's gonna look differently, which is so amazing. Because we all are gonna have different things within our garden. And a place for the heart. I think in grief we all need to know there is a place for our heart to be at rest and to dwell in safety. In safety. Because most people feel there are not safe places for them in their grief.

When To Seek Professional Help

SPEAKER_02 33:04

Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's it's a pal uh I already said palpable, it's a palpable. I think one of the things that I appreciate so much about your book is you could feel it. I can I could feel you. And it's interesting that you said, you know, I'll never experience exactly what you went through, but you did an incredible job of, and it's not even like a kudos thing. It's you were so raw and authentic, and you could feel that in the book. And being able to open yourself up and be that open and raw and vulnerable in such a beautiful, most poetic way. I feel like your book is a poem allows. I I just kept getting like these visions of people reading this that went through something similar, losing a child, um, having, you know, um losing a child and maybe having it takes such a toll on a marriage, not from experience that I know this, but I I know this. Um and I I kind of I just kept imagining how healing it really would be for so many people. And it is, it is healing the way that you just really cracked open and and shared that cracking open. That's not I would imagine it's not an easy thing to do, but it's so valuable and it really does minister to so many people. Because again, going back to the alone thing, you're not alone. You're not you're not listening to this. If you are someone that has lost someone, no matter who it was, or it's a loss of a dream, if it's not a physical person, you're not alone. You're not the only person that has experienced this. You're the only person that experienced it the way that you experience it now. Okay, but you're not the only one. And to be able to have this tool is really what it is to use in that healing journey. It was really, it was really beautiful. Thank you for sharing it with me. And I highly recommend reading it. Um, for anyone who's listening, if you if you would like a tool to support you to carry that hope through through grief, is uh it's really, really important. It's a beautiful message, just regardless of the book, to have some tool to carry yourself through. And grace is uh it's one of my I have a tattoo. So my grief journey, I didn't write a book, I got a tattoo. Um, and I have a tattoo on my forearm and it says the beauty of grace is and has dot dot dot. And to me, grace is uh, there's so many things, and that's why there's a dot dot dot because there's not one thing about the and you can't define it. There's there's nothing that I could put after that, but you learn you learn grace when you're experiencing grief, and that is one of the most powerful lessons I've learned in my life, and I would argue that we probably learn in this lifetime is to experience, experience grace, and that's wild.

SPEAKER_00 36:36

It's and I think I think grief brings us into layers of that grace, yeah. So you ask why the grape because they're layers of grace that's poured in and over us. Yeah, I mean, and it's just like whoa, I didn't even know this aspect because it's something new, and it's and I need you to know I never intended to write a book, everybody, with this. This is the Lord, this was about my experiences, and I wrote to the Lord, everything was written to him. It was kind of like my journal and per se. And the Lord said, You need to make that into a book because I want people to know that there is a companion for them. That's exactly what he said.

SPEAKER_02 37:20

And you feel that you feel that in the book, and it does feel like a journal. That's a great way. It was like just reading your your your diary entries. It was it was really very intimate, very cool experience.

SPEAKER_00 37:35

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 37:36

Yeah. So you so speaking of support and tools, I know that you have a sanctuary. It's called Sterling Rose Sanctuary. I know it's in the works, but I would love for you to share a little bit about it because again, I think one of the important things for me on my podcast is to share tools and share information and give people these ideas, even if they're not in Florida and they don't ever make it to see you. You're going to find similar tools elsewhere. And we don't know what we don't know until we're introduced to it. So please share because I love, love, love your vision and and your journey.

SPEAKER_00 38:21

Well, the Sterling Rose Sanctuary is nonprofit, and we actually serve all over the United States and in six countries. We do everything online.

SPEAKER_02 38:32

Yes.

The Book: Gripping Grace And The Garden

Sterling Rose Sanctuary Vision

SPEAKER_00 38:32

Uh, there are some people that we meet with that want to meet, but the healing, the delivering and healing aspect can be done online on a phone call. And it's been amazing because this the reach we've had has been beyond what I could have ever imagined. And to see the healing that the Lord brings to each person. And we do work with people that are not believers, and so we have various modalities in which we work with you. We have a heart healing uh aspect, which I'm a heart sync minister, and so we really bring in some of those very wounded and um emotional parts that need to come in and have healing so that you can return to joy quickly. So we're talking about emotional parts that are negative, emotional parts, anger, unforgiveness, uh, shame, guilt, uh, anxiety that can really keep you from returning to the fullness of joy. And we work through with you and we help you know some good boundaries when you're grieving, because people unfortunately overstep and take advantage of people grieving. So we kind of go through with you some things that you may want to put in place to protect yourself and to protect your finances, even though I know that may sound a little odd, but yes, unfortunately, many people are taken advantage of when they're grieving financially. So we we have these things we want to help you have the best healthy experience grieving. So we encourage you to have a very healthy diet without sugar and carbs so that the body can heal and detox because the sugar and carbs actually prevent the toxins releasing it, it clogs it up in the liver, and so we don't want that. So we work with you neurologically, we work with you physically, we work with you spiritually. This is about your mind, body, soul, and spirit. We don't leave a component out, and we have so many amazing resources for you and tools to equip you. As always, we are continuing to add on to this past year. I just became a brain coach, which is affiliated with the Amen Clinic. So I'm working hand in hand with them to help people that need some more neurological, maybe in-depth things because of medications they've been on that really maybe misdiagnostic. Diagnosis and components where overthinking isn't stopping, medication isn't working. So that's really exciting. So I'm I'm doing everything I can to be the best to bring to people that need it. And the Sterling Rose Sanctuary, we are in the process of fundraising to have a physical place which will really be just for an individual, a couple, or family, simply one at a time, one to three days, or three to five days, three to five days, where they come to the to the site and we get to implement other tools in person. And the other tools would be some somatic releasing with exercising. We have several different components that we want to include art therapy, music therapy, and because everybody doesn't grieve the same way and express themselves the same way. So we want to provide other modalities. There'll be a garden for people to be able to sit in, meditate, pray, and just have a sense of healing. And we have a butterfly and uh room, a thorn and rose room, and those rooms are very specific to healing. So the rose and thorn room is that we look at the thorns and we address them in order that you have healing from those thorny places so you can appreciate each petal on the rose. And then for the butterfly room, we look at traditions and things that used to be, and we're trying to see in this season what is triggering to you, and if it is, could we just leave that there for now? And could we embrace something new, like for Christmas? If y'all had a certain tradition at Christmas time or at a birthday or any kind of event that had this certain tradition behind it, could we look at doing something else so that everybody can walk in a sense of healing? And if it's something you really need, but it's triggering to everyone else, how can we get that for you that everybody else can still walk forward without being re-triggered? So we address triggers and we do that so that people can understand what is healing to you, Hannah, may be triggering to me. But because I don't want to do something that's important to you doesn't mean that I don't love you and I'm not willing to support you, but I'm understanding that that's triggering to me and I just can't do that and enter that space. So it's it's learning grace with each other of how to love well in this journey. So we really want people to come alongside of us at the Sterling Rose Sanctuary to make this a reality this year. We've been fundraising. We really are doing the push this year to finally get this on home and get our place and get our feet and get our people there.

SPEAKER_02 44:03

Yeah, it's gorgeous. That vision, that dream, it's gonna be such a healing place. And I thank you for sharing. Thank you for um sharing the whole vision and and the journey because it's going to be oh, it's gonna be so amazing. So thank you for sharing that. Um for people who would like to stay connected with you, follow up with you. Where can they learn more? Whether they're looking to support or they're looking for support, where can they find you and connect?

SPEAKER_00 44:38

They can go to www.thesterling rose sanctuary dot us. And the reason the US is because it takes us as a community uh to restore and to be present with people to heal.

SPEAKER_02 44:55

Yay. Oh, Marcia, thank you so much for coming on. I have one final question for you to close. If you were standing on a stage right now and you had one message that you could share with the world, what would that message be?

SPEAKER_00 45:13

No matter what happens to you, you can breathe again, commut again, and live again fully in your creative design. So go and do it well.

SPEAKER_02 45:26

That was so concise. It's like you've done this before. But I haven't, but thank you. That was beautiful. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. This was a really beautiful conversation, and I appreciate your wisdom and your vulnerability so much.

SPEAKER_00 45:42

Well, I love being here and I've loved talking because this is a conversation, as you well know, people do not want to talk about. So I thank you for having what is considered in our society, unfortunately, a hard conversation. I hope that as the the years go by, and very quick years, like by that I mean short years, that we really, this is a conversation that becomes on the table and is celebrated and people feel comfortable because all of us are going to experience losses throughout this life. So wouldn't it be better to be well equipped to walk this journey and to be able to be encouraging to one another and celebrate the things with each other, those milestones as we face them?

SPEAKER_02 46:29

Yeah, absolutely. And this is not a hard conversation with you. So let this be the first of many of yes, seemingly hard conversations. Thank you for making it so easy and enjoyable.

SPEAKER_00 46:42

Thank you, honey. I appreciate it.