Healing Through the Holidays: Finding Hope

Summary:
In this episode of Growth from Grief, Susan Andersen discusses the challenges of navigating grief during the holiday season and emphasizes the importance of hope as a guiding force. She offers practical tools and techniques for self-care, including movement and mindfulness practices, to help listeners find resilience and light amidst their struggles. The episode serves as a reminder that hope, no matter how small, can be a powerful anchor during difficult times.

Takeaways:

• Grief can be especially challenging during the holiday season.
• Hope is a powerful anchor that helps us navigate pain.
• Self-care is essential for managing grief and loss.
• Even small glimmers of hope can be enough to keep going.
• Movement and sound can help release pain and bring in positivity.
• Practicing hope can create space for healing and light.
• We develop hope through adversity and discomfort.
• Hope helps us find meaning in the midst of sorrow.
• You are not alone on this journey of grief.
• It's important to be gentle with yourself during tough times.

Thank you for listening! Visit www.sueandersenyoga.com for Yoga for Grief classes and additional resources.

Transcript

Susan Andersen (00:03.382)

Hello, I'm Sue Anderson, grief guide and yoga teacher dedicated to helping individuals navigate the challenging journey of loss. Welcome to Growth from Grief, where I aim to offer strategies to transition from the depths of grief to the path of healing. Whatever loss you are grappling with, here you'll discover support to ease both the physical and emotional burdens of grief. Together, let's embark on a journey towards strength, peace, and healing. I'm so glad you are here.

Susan Andersen (00:54.094)

Hi and welcome to this episode of Growth from Grief. So today we're diving into the first episode of the series called Healing Through the Holidays. And we're going to start with the theme of hope.

If you are new to this podcast, welcome. I'm glad you're here. I hope you will find the resources that you need as you move through your grief journey. If you are a returning listener, welcome back. And I hope that you have been able to share these podcast episodes either through leaving reviews, on either Apple podcasts or Spotify, or just sharing them with your friends and loved ones who may be going through a difficult time. I also want to draw your attention to the resources that I have on my website. I have a couple of guides, one for those folks who are suicide loss survivors and one for those folks who are grieving loss and are looking for tools to help them and you know different kinds of meditations and mantras, yoga movements that can help you as you move through grief and you can find those on my website 

Susan Andersen (02:37.944)

So the holiday season can be especially challenging if you're grieving or just navigating difficult times. I mean, we're in this season, we're in this climate of a lot of dysfunction, a lot of negativity. And just in the world today, just so many natural disasters that maybe are due to climate change, wars that are going on, and just in the United States, our own political climate and the upcoming, as I record this, the upcoming election. So there's a lot of angst, a lot of worry, and whatever you're going through personally, all of these outside forces can also affect what you're going through personally.

This season also tends to amplify our emotions, both the joys and the sorrows. You have that family dinner and you might be dreading that family dinner because you're missing a loved one, or you have people that just don't get along, but you get together for that family dinner during the holidays. And so, you know, these times can be challenging for us.

Susan Andersen (04:11.19)

My hope is that in this series, you will be able to find some tools and techniques to help you gently care for yourself through it all, right? So self-care for navigating through these tough times. And I want to start with the theme of hope.

Hope is a powerful anchor. It's a force that keeps us tethered to something beyond the present moment's hardship. It doesn't change our situation. doesn't erase our pain, but it does have the power to lighten our load to make the present moment a little less heavy. When we have hope, we're able to see beyond our current struggle to a place of possibility, a place where healing and light can exist. This is something that the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh talked about a lot, having hope, able to see beyond the current struggle to a place of possibility.

There's a beautiful line from author Brene Brown that says, we develop hope not during the easy or comfortable times, but through adversity and discomfort.

Susan Andersen (05:48.426)

It's during those dark, uncomfortable periods where hope becomes a lifeline, a small light reminding us that things can get better, even if we don't know when or really how. When we are in these tough times, again, whether it's personal, maybe you're just caught up in what's going on in the world, hope allows us to keep moving forward, even if it's just one step at a time.

Susan Andersen (06:25.942)

Why is it important to have hope? Why do you think it's important to have hope? If we didn't have hope, we could start to feel trapped, you could start to feel almost paralyzed in your grief and pain. Hope opens up a pathway, even if it's just that tiny, tiny narrow one, right? That helps us look forward.

When we have hope, we're reminded that the world isn't as small as our pain or limited as to our current circumstances. So you can look outside of yourself, really, right? You can look beyond what's going on. You can connect with a belief that there's more to come, that there is healing, that there is peace and that there is life beyond what you are enduring right now.

Susan Andersen (07:38.016)

One thing about hope is that even if it's really small, even if it's just a glimmer, it's enough. It's enough to keep you going, right? It doesn't have to be overwhelming. It doesn't have to be grand promises. It's just that small, tiny, quiet little light of hope. It can be really meaningful and really powerful.

Susan Andersen (08:13.678)

One of the things that if you are a listener of this podcast or if you've been to any of my Yoga for Grief online programs or in person, you know that one of the things that I like to do is I like to use movement and I like to use sound, the sound of my voice to help me release pain and to bring in something positive. You know, make an opening by releasing something out. So there's a practice that you might want to try. And if you're certainly, if you're listening in a car, you're not going to try this, but just kind of keep it in the back of your mind, or you'll be able to find this on my website or on YouTube.

But this is a practice where you can do it sitting or standing. And as usual with most of these practices, you really want to feel grounded. You want to feel the earth beneath your feet, right? You want to feel steady, you want to feel secure. You want to notice energy around you. You want to notice that energy from the earth.

Now this part, if you're in your car, you can do it. You can say, my heart is open with hope. My heart is open with hope. My heart is open with hope. So you can repeat this a few times. And then notice the energy in your body. Notice what's happening. Draw your awareness within. Do you feel any kind of shift in that energy? What do notice?

So this mantra, this saying, this phrase, my heart is open with hope, if you just continue to say that, you believe it, you bring it into your heart, you bring it into your body, it will be true for you. It will be true for you.

Now, if you are seated in a chair or you have the opportunity to sit or maybe stand for a moment, if you're listening to this podcast when you're walking, you can bring your arms overhead on an inhale and then just let them release down. So do a few of these breaths, inhale bringing the arms overhead and exhale, release the arms down.

Susan Andersen (11:30.38)

And now bring to mind something that's been weighing on you. So maybe one of these worries or concerns that you have right now, something that you're ready to release and then inhale, bring the arms overhead. And as you exhale, throw your arms back and throw away that burden. it's as if you are clutching that in your hands and then throwing it in back of you and just letting it go. And you can voice, put voice to that. You could say, ha! Or you could say, I'm releasing worry. So name the burden that you are releasing. And maybe do this a few times using voice and using that powerful movement to release whatever is bothering you.

And then I invite you to just come back, come back to stillness, your chair, or if you're standing, just come back to that standing posture. And take a moment here and just allow your body to drape forward. Imagine that waterfall coming over you, cleansing you, just releasing any last bits that have to be released, that you have to let go. Cleansing and renewing, you carrying away all that remaining tension or sorrow or just the weight and then come back to your starting position. Place your hands over your heart. Notice how you feel.

Susan Andersen (13:26.188)

Notice that as you released, you created a bit more room for hope. You can feel the possibility of hope. You could take a few breaths here, inhaling through the nose and exhaling.  You can say, my heart is open with hope. And then when you're ready, just let go, release, go on with your day, maybe make a little movement.

Susan Andersen (14:10.156)

I hope this practice offers you a sense of lightness and just a reminder of your own resilience. As we move through this holiday season, let's remember that hope, however small, is a lifeline, a lifeline that we can reach for, especially on the hardest days. Hope reminds us that even when the road feels dark, there's still more beyond what we can see right now.

Susan Andersen (14:46.744)

Having hope isn't about ignoring pain. It's about believing in the possibility of healing, of growth. We each carry our own unique burdens, but hope helps us find meaning in the midst of sorrow. Thank you for joining me in this episode, our first episode of Healing Through the Holidays. May you find moments of hope, love, and light. Remember, you are not alone on this journey. Until next time, be gentle with yourself.