The Shadow Diaries
Real women - slightly unhinged - get real about the daily chaos of motherhood, business, relationships and everything that comes from life. From airing out the dirty laundry to actually washing it, we dive into the messy, beautiful, and hilarious reality of navigating life.
The Shadow Diaries
How To Manage Grief In The Holidays
The lights go up, the invites roll in, and suddenly the quiet aches feel louder. We sit down for an honest, compassionate look at grief during the holidays—how it shows up after death, through estrangement, in separations that split Christmas morning, and in the futures we planned but never lived. No scripts, no tidy stages, just two humans telling the truth about love, loss, and the courage it takes to set boundaries when the world says “be merry.”
We share fresh, raw experiences from the past year: saying goodbye to a 16 year companion, the slow goodbye of a beloved grandparent, and navigating an ectopic pregnancy discovered in crisis. We also talk about a different kind of loss, missing someone who is alive but not safe to welcome back and the guilt that follows hard choices made to protect your family’s mental health. Along the way we explore second‑hand grief, like watching a parent lose a parent or standing beside a partner who honours a child who died, and how to hold empathy without making it yours for them to manage.
If December stirs up what ifs, you’re not alone. We unpack the grief of expectations - fertility hurdles, partners who are done having kids, money pressures that don’t match Instagram and the identity shifts of motherhood, step parenting, and careers that no longer fit. You’ll hear practical ways to make the season gentler: understand your bandwidth, skip triggers, create new rituals, mute comparison, and use language that protects your energy. Most of all, you’ll get permission to feel what you feel, for as long as you need, without explaining yourself.
If this conversation helps, share it with someone who could use a softer Christmas. And if you want more real talk about shadow work, grief, and the messy middle of being human, hit subscribe, leave a review, and tell us what landed, your story might be the one that helps someone breathe again.
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Steph is here and Lurinda is here.
Welcome to the Shadow Diaries. This isn't a Deer Diary, it's a Deer Shadow.
SPEAKER_03:Here we are pulling the curtain back to the good, the bad, and the ugly to bring light to those deep inner thoughts and feelings you keep on having but are too ashamed to admit to. To provide a safe space and get radically honest about what's holding you back and what shadow work really is.
SPEAKER_00:This isn't surface level. It dives deep into your soul to meet it with acceptance and compassion. There is no need to hide. All is welcome. This can be a space where you learn and receive real women, real stories, real shadows.
SPEAKER_03:This is the Shadow Diaries, and your story starts now. Welcome back to another episode of The Shadow Diaries. By the time this one airs, it will be our last episode before Christmas, which is insane. Today we wanted to have a bit of a chat around the topic of grief because I know that every single year clients come to me and ask for advice on how to deal with grief, particularly around Christmas time. I think it can really start to bring those sorts of feelings in because it's one of those times where we're often reflecting, especially around New Year's, we're reflecting on the year that's gone, we're reflecting on what's to come in the new year, we're reflecting on the way that Christmas should look, who we're spending it with. We're reflecting on all of those sorts of things. So it can definitely bring this up. And I think for me, it's been a particularly heavy year in that regard. We lost my beautiful grandmother a year ago on Monday, yesterday. Um, yesterday, I also to like a year to the day since we lost my grandmother, I actually put down my 16-year-old cat. And that was really fucking hard. Um, many, many tears involved in that and many, you know, questioning whether or not I was doing the right thing and all of the things. And we also have lost a dog this year. I also did have, which I don't know if that we've actually we were we were gonna do an episode on this, but I don't think we ever actually did. Um I had an ectopic pregnancy in March. We weren't trying. It wasn't supposed to happen, but it did. And so there was also that piece of, you know, we we lost a baby. So there's but there's been a huge amount of grief in my world in the last year or so. And obviously coming into Christmas, that can start to feel a little bit heavier. I think, especially because we do stop. The world kind of stops, you know, the week with the the there's jokes around the Christmas, the the week between Christmas and New Year's, where nothing's open, nobody's doing anything, nobody knows what day it is, nobody knows what's going on. We're just kind of hanging out for a lot of us. And so I think it can bring all of these things up. But as we were talking about it, it's not just necessarily the grief of like of losing loved ones in terms of them passing. Though that is very, very heavy for a lot of people where maybe you've lost parents, maybe you've lost a child, maybe you've lost a partner, maybe you've lost a sibling, or you know, like there's there's any number one num number of people that you could have lost in your life that makes Christmas feel really heavy in that duality of feeling really sad that they're not here, and also then not allowing yourself to enjoy who you do have and and just all of those things, which we are going to go into. But then we started talking around the grief of maybe not having people there that you feel should be there, but that they're still very much alive. They're just not a part of your life anymore. Maybe you have lost a close friend, maybe you have cut your parents off, maybe your child has cut you off, maybe you don't speak to a sibling. There's any number of these sorts of situations that can happen. And that is also an element where I feel like Christmas does bring that up because it's the message is kind of, you know, togetherness and being with your family and being with the people that love you and all of the things. So there's that. There's maybe that you have experienced a separation this year. And what was once a family unit, now you're having to share Christmas with your ex-partner, and you don't get to spend Christmas with your kids. And maybe you grew up in a household where your parents were still together. So you spent every single Christmas with both of your parents, and now there's that, well, what does this look like? And I'm supposed to spend Christmas with my children, and now I can't. All of those things. There can also be the piece of like the grief of expectation of wanting things to look a certain way. And maybe with the way that the economy is at the moment, maybe you can't provide that Christmas for your kids that you wanted to, the lavish gifts and all of the things that you're seeing all over Instagram where people are wrapping hundreds and hundreds of thousands and thousands of dollars worth of presents for their kids, and you're really struggling with that, that there's that expectation that you should be doing that and you can't. There is a huge amount of different ways that grief can show up, especially around this time of year. So, what we wanted to do was bring you an episode that not only shares our experience, because we do both have experiences with this, but to maybe give you a couple of, I don't know, a little bit of comfort or a couple of ways that maybe you can make this a little bit easier on you, or the things that you can remind yourself of when you are feeling these ways.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And I think before you're like, I just had this big feeling to maybe like trigger warn you that like if this episode does get too heavy for you, that you can just switch it off because we wanted to, we have such a piece of vulnerability, right? We wanted to wrap our own experiences in because I know for me when I've listened to other people's podcasts or stories, I haven't felt so alone. So this is why this episode, yes, it will have those little pieces that we're gonna drop in. We always go on our random tangents of education and and whatnot, but this is really just coming from an experience base. So if you feel like you're getting towards this episode and it's just it's a little heavy, you do have full permission to switch it off. You don't need to listen to it now, you don't need to listen to it ever. But this is just what we wanted to do in case somebody does listen to this and doesn't feel so alone. I already feel the heaviness of this episode. Now, I think when it comes to grief, something that for me that I feel like I want to say straight away is that grief looks different on every person. And that is coming from listening to the podcasts and and reading the books, but also my own experience. I watched many people like grieve in different ways. And there is really no right or wrong. Right? It is how we need to deal with it. And the thing is, grief is not something that I feel like you can just heal with and move on. It comes up in so many different ways. It comes up with Christmas. It will come up in, especially if you've lost, you know, a parent, when you go to get married, when you are having children. So this is the thing with grief today is there is no need to be over it. There is no need to not experience it anymore, even though a lot of us go, I don't want to experience this feeling anymore. But obviously you have so much grief because whatever it was left an impact on you.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:I read something a while ago. It was like grief is just love that has nowhere to go. Yeah. And it's yeah, it's it's that like that love that you have for whatever it is that is missing from your life now that you can't give to them. So it's it's just this this feeling that it's kind of yeah, like it's in a jar or whatever, and you know, jars aren't great for that sort of stuff.
SPEAKER_02:It turns out. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I'm like, oh God, where are we gonna go with this right now? I guess I well, I'm just gonna open it up. That my grief, I have lost people, my loved ones, uh, and that has been extremely hard. But the one that hit me that I really, really struggled with is losing somebody in my life that is still alive. That that one hit me like a freight train because uh to go straight into it. So two years ago, I was a PT and I decided that what my eldest uh daughter, she had this best friend and she was in a really dysfunctional family. And so we decided to do the the fostering route. So obviously there's a lot of pieces in there to get to that point. Unfortunately, with my beautiful foster daughter, she had a lot of mental health. Some big mental health. And I have still a lot of anger with the system because it just wasn't set up to help her. It wasn't set up to help foster families, it wasn't set up to be supportive. So for six months, she was on suicide watch with myself, and I spent pretty much every waking moment for those months stressed, overwhelmed at capacity, worried that she was going to do something that could she couldn't come back from. Now, during that time, she did try twice, and it was the that last attempt that nearly broke me. Now, I'm only gonna speak as something that I also wanted to share. I'm only gonna speak from my experience, I'm not gonna speak for her experience. This is something that I've been wanting to share for a while because I know I'm not the only one. I actually have clients who have been in similar positions. I'm only gonna speak from my experience, and my experience of that was horrific. Um to know that there's nothing that you can do to stop somebody from not wanting to be here. And that's something that I've had to come to terms with. When somebody does not want to be on this earth, it's actually not in our control to stop that. We can influence, we can guide, we can give them as much love as we can. But when somebody doesn't want to be here, at the end of the day, that is their choice. And so that last attempt was when my beautiful partner decided that we couldn't do this anymore because it was now affecting their mental health of my children, which is something that I do still feel a lot of shame about because I was so wrapped up in wanting to ensure that she was still on this earth, that I just couldn't see past it. And we decided that we couldn't do it anymore because the system said that in some stupid way that she could get actual more mental health support through residential care. And we thought, okay, cool, we've done everything we possibly can. We were paying out-of-pocket psychologists. I pretty much my PT business was burning while trying to still show up in my PT business, doing my absolute best. And we were like, cool, what about we do some form of like pathway where she goes into residential care until we can get the right things because there was a few uh legal things that needed to be done, not from our end, but from another end. And she can come back. And I remember her agreeing to it, and we had set her up that that's what she was doing. Now, when it comes to residential care, they actually have a lot more freedom. Uh in residential care, 16-year-olds are actually classed as nearly adults. And she decided that she didn't want to come back to our family because when you're 16, 17 years old, this is just from my experience and from what I've been told.
SPEAKER_02:She wanted the freedom. And I couldn't control that.
SPEAKER_00:And so then I went through the grief process of missing somebody that is still here, and she's from what I know, she's okay. Um, she's still here, but grieving somebody that you you know that you can't have access to. And I reason I say that as well is because she tried a few months later to come back into our lives, but she still wasn't uh mentally healthy, and we had just kind of got stability in our family again, and I had to make that really horrible decision of going, it's actually not good for you to come back right now, especially why you have so much you need to work on, and it's my kids also need me, and there's a huge shame piece with this as well of like I just went into disassociation when she left. I was so in my grief of like I couldn't help her. I I couldn't help her, I could only love her, and it just felt like at that point my love was not enough. And that's what my body believed. My love was not enough, and I had to grieve. And I felt stupid for a long time of grieving somebody that was still alive, but then it's like grief actually comes in many ways, and so I still grieve her. It's been it just went two years since she left, two years since her big attempt, and I still miss her. I still walk through my local Westfield because that's where I think I would see her, because she used to visit there a lot, and I think what if it could have been different? Could I have had my four kids? Because we trauma bonded really, really quickly, unfortunately, and I was with her all of the time. And I'm like just thinking to myself, if if something had changed, would I had my four kids with me? And this is the thing, like throughout the year it's okay around her birthday sucks, around Mother's Day sucks because she was with us for Mother's Day, and Christmas because we had started to plan things for Christmas and the way it was going, she would have been my foster daughter. But sometimes we are I've had to learn that I've had to remind myself maybe that sometimes we are just stepping stone in in people's lives. And that that's the thing that gets me through is that I showed her, like Matt and I both showed her what love was like and for somebody in that mental health mindset, when they haven't received love like that, it's really unsafe. Yeah. So they will do all of the things to prove that they are actually unlovable, and that's what happened. And that's also like, to be honest with you, that that grief piece right there is part of the reason I moved away from PT and into the work that I do now because it's we just don't have enough information. There's not enough safe spaces and not enough people validating and listening and helping and supporting. And I still believe that. So in my own experience, grief of it's like a mixture of like grief of a child that I loved and grief of knowing that I can't let her back in yet. Or maybe ever. Because it's actually not beneficial for my kids' mental health or even mine and my partner's. And that is something that I constantly battle of like, could I could I let her back in?
SPEAKER_02:And I just don't I just don't have the answer right now for that.
SPEAKER_03:And I think even that that part of grief, I was thinking about this yet, and it's this seems really silly to compare a person to an animal. It is like it's similar feelings where um, you know, obviously there's a choice involved. Yeah. And not there's there's no good choice and there's nobody to help you to make it. And I felt a lot the same yesterday. Well, I I, like I said, made the decision that it was time for my for my cat to go. Um, she's been with me. I think that this is possibly the grief attached to this as well. That she's been with me for 16 years. She's been with me since I was 19 years old, like m most of my adult life. She's watched me go through, like, she's been with me, going through like every serious relationship I've ever had. Like moving into state twice, moving different houses. Like she's been with me, watching me grow up from this silly little girl who made silly decisions into the mother, the adult, the wife that I am today. And it's just like losing her, what that represented was just huge. And it's that same piece where it was a decision. Like I had taken her to the vet, and they said, like, there doesn't appear to be anything wrong based off of the tests. But I knew because like the way that she was acting, the way that she looked, I was like, this is not her anymore. And I feel like this could possibly be, you know, also attached to people who are maybe, you know, going through things like Alzheimer's and dementia and things like that, where they're still there, but they're not there anymore. And it's like that watching watching somebody go before your eyes like that, where they're still there. But it's like grieving, grieving that for her, obviously, like for for humans, which I think is it sucks. We we can't, we can't help them in any way with that, where they don't know. But for her, I always said I said her entire life, like I would never want her to be in pain. And I would never want her like last days to be so horrendous that it becomes a an emergency. So I did make that decision as fucking shit as it was. And same, same with you, with her, where it's we had to make a decision based off of the best information that we had at the time, based off of other factors. And that can feel so fucking hard because it's like that selfish, all the selfish stuff comes out, all of the am I making the right decisions, all of that self-doubt. And like in those moments, all that we can do is make the best decision that we have with the information that we have, with the person that we are, and what is right in front of us. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And I still like there's so much shame attached to decisions like that, right? You're like, did I make decision? 100%. And even like it's it's so interesting, like even speaking about it, because it's really the first time that I'm speaking about it, like I guess openly like this. I can feel my own value system beating me. Because I never feel like I can't do enough. I always want to be able to help people, I always want to be able to love people. And it's like, well, you're choosing to not have her in this life. But you need to look at that decision. This is where, like, I'm a very emotional person. I make decisions from emotional places. But I had to look at it also logically in bigger picture. What it did at the end to to my family sucked. And I always like, and it was this moment of like, I also had this huge ego death at the same time because I'm like, actually, I can't help everyone. I can't save anyone because this is the lesson that I learned from this of people aren't broken. So why am I trying to fix them? She went through something, and this was the other piece of the responsibility. She went through something that was not mine. And I remember going to a psychiatrist for my ADHD, and he asked me about a few things, and I spoke to him about her, and I said, I just feel so much guilt for. Making that decision and he's like, Why would you feel guilt? Did you hurt her? Did you cause her childhood trauma?
SPEAKER_02:Did you do this for like what was your intention? I said just to love her.
SPEAKER_00:And he goes, You shouldn't feel guilt then. But also And that was like But also you do. Yeah. But it was that moment that I needed that moment of like, hang on a second. I needed to step out of that guilt and go, well, I feel guilty because my value system is I want to be able to love her and I want her to be safe and all of these things. But it's like, wait a second, I need to take a bigger step out because I'm taking responsibility for something that I didn't do.
SPEAKER_03:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:Because I also felt responsibility. I'm like, well, that like I knew somewhat of these people. They're never gonna change. And I don't say that lightly. Okay. I believe everyone can change. These people don't want to. Yeah. There's a difference. And and I like to be a very open person, but like this experience of being in the system and watching this, I'm gonna say it. Some people shouldn't be fucking parents. 100%. A lot of people think I think Matt and I were trying to trying to fix something that we had no idea about. We weren't responsible for. But all we could do is is love her. But it doesn't change the fact that there is guilt, there is shame, that I was the stepping stone, that I wasn't the place that she ended up calling home. Right? That we were giving her opportunities, and there was just things that we just couldn't understand or comprehend from her.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And that's hard.
SPEAKER_03:I think it possibly, I mean, I'm I'm hypothesizing here, but possibly parts of it that bring up that not enough piece where it's like I'm trying to give you absolutely everything. I'm doing everything I can and it's just not enough. And that piece alone where it's you know, yes, it is it is shadow and it's belief, and it's also very real. It feels very real, where it's I should be enough, if I loved them enough, if I could be enough of a person, then it would be enough. And I think that this goes for um for for anybody who is experien who who has experience with somebody who does have suicidal tendencies, where we think that we if if we can just be a certain person, if we can just articulate things, and not even necessarily with the suicidal, but just people making terrible decisions, people making really reckless decisions with their lives, that if we can put the right words into the right combination, that we can get through to them, that we can make them see that that's not the way it is, that that they are needed here and all of the things. And it's just it's not about us. And that's yeah, that is such a fucking hard thing to come to terms with that we just don't have as much control as what we would like to think. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And that even just comes into relationships. If I if I didn't bring this up, maybe he wouldn't have left me. If I didn't say this, maybe he wouldn't have done that. Maybe if I had done, and this is also like comes into then cheating as well. Like if I was like this, maybe he wouldn't have felt the need to go somewhere else. And then we kind of, in a really horrible way, become really selfish, right? Even for my foster daughter, it was never about me. And I know that. And I know that because she would tell me over and over again, and I was in a really horrible way, I was the the person that she wrote the letter to. And it's like you can get all the validation you want in the world that it's actually not you, but your body will still make it about you because if they, if I had loved them enough, they would stay. Whether it's relationship on this earth, whatever it is. And I feel like that's a lot of things that people don't talk about. Of like, yes, logically, I got the validation. I got the evidence. Doesn't matter though, because my body is going, I want, I want them to be safe and I want them to be loved, and I want them to stay. And we don't talk about the grief of just physically having somebody not there anymore.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Emotionally not there. Maybe somebody wasn't emotionally there for years, but at least you could see them.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it it's it's and I think every single experience is so different. Like obviously, I think back to this time last year, um a few a few weeks ago this time last year, we got a call to say that, yeah, my grandmother was was really sick and she wasn't like she'd been into hospital so many times with things that they were like, look, this isn't looking good. And she always bounced back. She always bounced back every single time. And this this time it was so hard to come to terms with the fact that it was that was not gonna happen this time. It was just like, what do you mean? And they told us that she had 24 to 48 hours, and this stubborn old bugger lasted for 21 days. She she held on for as long as she could. And like obviously it was just before Christmas, 27th of October. It was two months before Christmas, and knowing that my mum was down there with her siblings and with her mum, and that I couldn't be there as well for you know, uh for for my grandma. Like she'd been in my life since I was a baby. She'd been in my life my entire life, and it this was my mother's mum, and I couldn't help her with that. And I think that this is also another piece of grief is is supporting other people who are grieving. Where it's yes, it was my grandmother, but my mother had just lost her mum. And like that's I mean, my my mum lost her dad when she was 15 months old. So my her mum was her only parent. And then then she was just gone. And it's what like watching, watching that over the next kind of little while play. And I it was I was really lucky that I was able to um help her with a breath work session around that. And it was a really, really beautiful experience. I'm so grateful that I was able to help her in that way because she had been really struggling to show any emotion. Cause this is a lot of the time what we do with grief as well, where we go, they wouldn't want me to be upset, they wouldn't want me to be sad, they wouldn't want me to miss them, they would want me to get on with life, they would want me to be enjoying life, but it just because that's what they would want, and that's true. Like I know that if I was to leave this earth, I wouldn't want my kids or my husband or my friends to miss me. But also, I can't tell them how to feel. That's not my decision. It's not my decision how they would feel. Of course, I wouldn't want them to, but you've lost such an important person in your life. Of course, that leaves a hole. Of course that's gonna make you sad. Of course you're gonna miss them in those moments like Christmas, where you're watching your children unwrap presents and you turn around and like your parents aren't there, or your partner's not there because maybe you are going through a separation, or you're waking up on Christmas morning without your kids because they're with your ex-partner. And it's just, it's all of these things that we need to remember that, like you said in the beginning, Rin, like grief looks different on everybody. There is no time period attached to it. Like, I I remember when I was a teenager, so my mum would have been in her 40s. I remember her breaking down, bawling her eyes out because she missed her dad. And she and she'd lost him 40 years before. Like this, this person that was was really never a part of her life, but at the same time was a huge part. And just what like watching that, it it never goes away. It doesn't get easier. And I think that we we think it will, right? We think that time fixes everything and time will heal all wounds and eventually we'll stop missing them and we don't. It it's yeah, it's going, it's going to it's it's a process that I don't think I think you you make the space for it, but I don't think it ever stops hurting. And I think that that's a huge thing that people do with grief, where they expect themselves to just be over it, or they expect themselves to act a certain way. They expect themselves to maybe be crying, like even fucking hell. When I left the vet yesterday, there was another woman who pulled up at the same time as me. And I saw her park, and then well, she was just staring into space, and I fucking knew that she was there for the same reason that I was. Like I could just tell. Without even looking at her face, I knew. And she got out of her car and she picked up her dog. And he obviously, he or she, I don't know, they couldn't walk. So she was carrying them into the vet clinic. And when I left, her car was still there. And I thought, did I stay long enough? Maybe I should have stayed longer because that person stayed longer than me. Does that mean that my god? Does that mean that like I I'm like I'm not sad enough? I should be staying for longer. Like, should I be on the floor on the floor screaming because like I I can't leave? Like all of these shoulds.
SPEAKER_02:And this is around like this is around an animal.
SPEAKER_03:And yes, she was a big part of my life, but nobody nobody gets to tell you what this should feel like, what this should look like. If people are telling you things like you are in a space of grief where you are missing somebody, whether that person left a day ago, a month ago, a year ago, ten years ago, maybe you never even met them.
SPEAKER_02:That is your path with that person and that particular piece of grief, that pocket.
SPEAKER_03:And it is allowed to look however it looks. You are allowed to feel however you feel. Maybe you're in the anger stage, maybe you have completely dissociated and people are telling you that you just need to feel your feelings. Maybe you've lost someone and you haven't been able to cry. Maybe you are throwing yourself into I have to do everything, or maybe you can't get out of bed.
SPEAKER_02:And all of that is okay.
SPEAKER_03:Maybe you can't bring yourself to celebrate Christmas this year because you've lost somebody who feels so important to you. Maybe you are going through the motions for your kids, for people around you, and maybe you're really not there.
SPEAKER_02:But that's okay too. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Sending you lots of hugs. That was really hard to watch. But I think like what you said, there was something there of like, and it really hit me hard when you said maybe you're watching somebody go through grief. And I don't know about you, but like that one hurts my feelings. Right. Because like there's a few things that come up. So the first one is like I lost my pop when I was two, which means that my mom lost her dad when she was 25. Which means that this, I think it was this year, means that my mom has been longer without her dad than he was here with her. And I remember actually getting to 25, and I was, Matt and I were separated. Because my mom was, I was born, and then 10 days later, my mom turned 23. Where, funny thing, I turned 23, and 10 days later my son was born. So my mom and son share a birthday. And I remember getting to 25 and looking at my son going, this was the age that I lost my pop. And I think because there's many times where I like over say, like tell myself, well, you don't really remember him. Right? You don't really remember him. But I look at looked at my son and I was just like, he loves his poppy. Right? And apparently, like, this is obviously I don't remember this, but my mom says that when my pop passed away, there was something in me that switched. So this is the thing, like maybe you don't remember, but your body mind.
SPEAKER_02:And I was poppy's girl, apparently. Then I look at my mom and I go, wow, she's grieving her dad.
SPEAKER_00:She was 25. That is so young.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:With a two-year-old, which means that my sister's never got to to meet him. So I watch my mom grieve these stages in her life, and I have these moments where I'm like, I shouldn't be upset, because it's not my pain. But you watch somebody you love so deeply in so much pain. Like I watched my my nan and my pop were like, they were like soulmates. Apparently, they would go ballroom dancing on a Friday night, and they were in love, and my mom was a whoopsie. So they were like, they were so madly in love. And to watch her grieve all over these years. And you can't, and this is the thing, this is where that control piece comes in of like, I can't fix it. I can't take their pain away. Watching somebody in so much pain is awful. And like part of me is like, let me feel the pain. I would rather feel the pain than watch people I love feel the pain. Because at least I can like know that I can what I can do with it. And this is the same with my my beautiful partner. So, and this one hurts my feelings too. My partner, um, he lost his son when he was born.
SPEAKER_02:And we're coming up to, and I was not in the picture by any means.
SPEAKER_00:And every year we celebrate his birthday. And to watch, I'm gonna get emotional with this one. So this year, my beautiful stepdaughter was in a very horrific car accident, and that was a different grief of itself, of like, um, and I didn't hit me until later in the year of I could have lost her. And that's a grief that I never wanted to experience. Like when you you drive up to the car accident and you just see these white sheets, and you're like, am I about to lose a child? That is something that I still sit with many days, and I'm so grateful that she's here, and I'm so grateful she's doing well, I'm so proud of her. But that moment, there was this grief of like, I don't know if my partner could lose another child. So if he lost another child, am I gonna lose my partner?
unknown:Right?
SPEAKER_00:I know that's really selfish, but I'm like, I'm gonna lose a child, I'm gonna lose a partner, and it just rocked me. But then being in the hospital with her this year, and she unfortunately had this accident right before her 18th birthday. So the way it works is his son was in January, and then four days later, Shade's uh my eldest's birthday. Watching my partner and his ex-wife stand in hospital, knowing that they had to celebrate his birthday while we're standing in hospital. Watching them was the worst thing ever to sing his birthday and knowing that I can't take anything away from them, and it's not mine, right? This is the thing with with grief and with pain. It's not my right to take it away, and I know that, right? They need to have this pain because that's theirs, that's their right to what they're feeling, but it doesn't make it any better to go. I wish I could just make it one percent better.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And this is the thing with grief, it like comes in so many forms, and I'm like, I can't fix this. And then you go, well, I shouldn't be upset.
SPEAKER_00:Like when I cry on his birthday, there's always that little part of me that's just like, oh, that's it's fucking sad as shit. Like maybe I would have had a stepson, like I don't know. But the big part that I cry is going, I could not imagine what they go through every single year.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And then you feel selfish because you're like, I shouldn't be crying for this. It's not mine. But I think it's also like we're allowed to feel sad for other people's pain. And I try and make it easier by doing all of the things like the birthday cake, the balloons, and just also giving them space. What do they actually need that day? And how can I just ensure that they they get what they need? Sometimes over the years, it's okay. We have a normal day. Sometimes he just needs more time by himself. Sometimes he's more involved with the family. And the thing is every year is different. And this year we'll be coming up to his 18th birthday. So I know that coming into December and January, I just have to be there.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And then feel whatever I feel, but also know that he's they're going to feel whatever they need to feel.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I think um I was having a conversation with one of my clients uh last week.
SPEAKER_03:She had a friend who had just lost somebody very important to them, and she was like, I don't know why I feel so like I just can't stop crying. And she's also lost a parent. So I said to her, it's likely that this is probably bringing up your grief, babe. Like, and also we can be empathetic of thinking, okay, it's not me that's going through that. But as a mother, as a sibling, as a daughter, we can we can understand how fucking horrible that would be. And I think it's it is really important to honor our feelings in those moments. And I know Rin that you don't do this, but it's also it's so important that we feel those feelings outside of that space. Yeah. Like it's it's those pieces of I'm I'm sure that if you've ever lost anybody that's very, very close to you, and we've all heard these stories where it's like you're supporting somebody else through the loss of your loved one. Yeah. Because they just like they take it on so much. And it's some sometimes it's it's that beautiful thing where they they just feel really deeply, and that's that's a beautiful thing to feel. And also that's yours to feel, that's not theirs to to hold while they're also going through their things. I think also like while you were speaking about that, I think there's a lot of people who will resonate with that around the whole, like around losing a child, whether that's miscarriage, whether that's a topic like I did have earlier this year, whether that is something like stillbirth, or whether that is losing a child who has been born.
SPEAKER_02:It's not even just about the person that you've lost, it's all of the what ifs.
SPEAKER_03:And I mean, obviously, yeah, like I like I said, I did I did have an ektopic earlier this year. I didn't want any more children, but at the same time, if if it were to happen, Jesus Christ, I don't know how it would probably make it work. Yeah. And like there is a part that is kind of like, well, what would that have looked like? I I did I did do a I did do a session with my um with my mentor I don't remember when it was, a few months ago, because we had lost our dog, my grandmother, and and this pregnancy. And I I didn't know that I was pregnant, by the way, when when this happened. I just started getting really bad pain. I went into the hospital and they said, Were you aware that you were pregnant? And I was like, what the fuck are you talking about? Um This is really just like airing our fucking, like this is just a massive trauma dump this episode, I feel. Um yeah. But I hadn't it's it's it's we hope that this is helping you to feel to feel the feels. You're allowed to feel the feels. But like I hadn't given myself the space to grieve that because I was like, I shouldn't, because I didn't want any more kids. I didn't even know that I was pregnant. Like I didn't know that that was a that that was there. Like, I I I didn't know. But when I did this session, and this is why I fucking love breath work so much. Because if you try and get me to talk about my feelings, except for today, because obviously they're still very fresh, I will, I will sit there and be self-aware until the cows come home. I will sit there and say, like, yeah, I feel this way, but that's okay because of this. And I'm like, I will logic myself out of it and I will rational myself out of it. Breath work for me, I you have nowhere to hide. It's you and your body. And I've I've led Rin through through similar things where she has released things like that. But I I had this really beautiful image come through when I was doing breath work. And usually I can't visualize, but I had this really beautiful image of like my grandmother and my dog and this little girl with curly hair running around my yard. And like my grandmother was, wow, I'm crying so much today. I'm not normally a crier. Um my grandmother was young. Like she was like the pictures that I've seen of her when she was young. And they were just all so happy. And it was just that moment of going, like, I've always said that if if I was to have another child, I would have loved to have give given my daughter a sister. And that that would that would I I would love to have done that. And it was for me, it's like that that's I I don't necessarily feel that I want another child. I don't think I need another child to to um fulfill me or to to to to complete our family or anything like that. But I would have loved to have given her a sister because I have I have two sisters and it's like it's such a beautiful relationship to have. And to see that it it did make me realize like there will always probably be a part of me that wishes that for her, that wishes that I could have given that to her and that like what would it have looked like with another another baby? Like, what would our family have looked like? What how would they have gotten along? Like when I watch my children play together when they're actually being nice to each other, like would they have would they have been there playing as well? And what would my daughter have been like as an older sister? And you know, like going through Christmas, like there would have been presents under the tree. Like and if you have lost a child, again, uh by by any way, I think that's probably the worst thing that can happen to a person is to lose it to lose a child. Like it's all of those what ifs. What kind of person would they have grown up into? Like, what would they have liked? What would they, what theme would they have wanted for their birthday parties? What what clothes would they like to have worn? What friends would they would have had? Like, what would they have been when they grew up? Would they have become parents? That's it's all of those what ifs that you're grieving that you never got to see, and you just have to use your imagination. And that is that's the grief there. It's it's it's not that you'll you've lost somebody that you never met, so you shouldn't grieve them. It's those what ifs that you've missed. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I just want to thank you for sharing that because I know that's something that we haven't spoken about before. And I know that a lot of people are gonna really resonate with that. And yeah, and you're right, it's the what ifs, and this is why this is the other piece of grief of like grieving things that never ended up happening. Right? Grieving, you know, this is can be as simple from like imagining what life would have looked like with your partner, and then they separate from you and what the season you're in. And I spoke to Steph before about this as well of like, so technically, I actually have one biological child. I have two stepkids and just my son, and that was never in the plan for me. Um, I really wanted to have more children. But uh, a kinda got an old man who'd already had two kids, and he decided fairly early on in our relationship, and this was a change of heart, that he just he doesn't want any more children, and this was even before our son. So I was like, oh shit. Great, this is going to be wonderful. And then I found out um from my gynecologist that I would struggle to have children naturally. I had endometriosis and I had a few other things going on, and not a very happy uterus, to be honest with you guys. And she literally looked at me, and this is where I'm like, some people just need a little bit more, a little bit more empathy. And she's like, Yeah, you're probably not gonna have kids. And telling that to somebody who was just like, my entire being was like, Yep, I'm gonna have kids one day. I'm gonna be a mum. If I could be anything in the world, it's gonna be a mum. And then just like have that ripped out from you, and you're like, What the fuck do you mean? And then my partner being like, Yeah, I don't want any more kids. So then I had to make this decision in my life when I was like 21 of like, do I stay with this person that I love and get to raise the girls with him? And like in my brain was like trying to process grief because we do weird things, and it was like, well, at least I get to have still like two children, right? Like I love this person, and at least I get to raise them. But you know, maybe the other thing is that I think about now is like I just didn't want to lose that person. But there was options, right? I could have left and maybe done IVF with somebody in the future, but I was just like, well, what happens if it doesn't work out in the future? Am I gonna really sacrifice two like three people that I love? Because I loved the girls, probably fell in love with them much quicker than I fell in love with Matthew. But am I gonna lose that? So then it was this weird thing of like, okay, I gotta do this weird grief process that honestly I feel like most women don't talk about like we need to talk about it more of like grieving that season is is complete. And for some of us, maybe you don't ever get that chance. Like you've you've been wanting it, and I know people who go through IVF and it doesn't work. And so it was that weird thing, and then I accidentally fell pregnant with Logan too many beers later. Apparently that's what my uterus needed. And we had Logan, and he was like, No, I'm I'm still done. And I remember having Logan and being like, But I really want another one. Like I want Logan to like I see the girls, and I'm like, okay, well, they have each other, and I want Logan to have somebody. And then it was a conditioning of also like you're gonna have one child. Like so coming into like a bit more of a lighter session for the grief piece, it's the grieving of like what may not ever happen.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. And the expectations and the like the things that you saw for yourself.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I never would have said in a million years that I would only have one baby, like one biological baby, because I still feel like a mama three. Um You are a mama. Yeah, it just looks different.
SPEAKER_03:You're not what you wanted, it's just not what you thought it would look like.
SPEAKER_00:No, I already and I it's so funny though, speaking of like weird things. I always remember being in my teenage years and being like, I'm gonna have multiple kids, but there was this weird knowing that I'm like, maybe it just won't be biologically. And I remember having those thoughts often, and I'm like, that'd be ridiculous. Like, whatever. But it's just like, and this is what I see a lot in my clients as well, they're like, I just really wanted more kids. But then whether your body can't, and this is a different grief piece as well. Like, you've maybe your body can't actually handle any more babies. Maybe you're like, and it's horrible, but your financial situation can't handle any more babies.
SPEAKER_03:Maybe your partner's situation can't handle any more babies.
SPEAKER_00:Like, yeah, like maybe your partner is like for me, mine was done. Yeah, it was no question about it.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, like maybe you're you've met your person older or or whatever, and it's just yeah, there's all of those pieces. Maybe you wanted your kids much closer together than what you managed to have them. I've got a few friends who went through that where they were like, Oh yeah, I want like a two, maybe three-year gap, and and it just didn't happen for them straight away. And it's yeah, like all of those things where it's yeah, like, yeah, your your partner didn't want them, or you split with your partner, and you really just wanted two or three kids by the same person with the same family, and that's just not what your family looks like.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that one is a huge one, especially in this like society. Like majority of families at the moment are split families, right? Because a lot of them just don't work out. And then you've got half siblings, you've got step siblings, you've got all of these different things. And I think this is also where the grief piece comes in because we were so conditioned that you like I just remember growing up, you can't have only one child, you've got to make sure they're not an only child, you've got to have more than that, you can't just have one. And I remember this was a huge thing in my family that I actually had to put a boundary on of just like we like I've I'm raising three kids. Does it look different to what I thought it was gonna look? Yes, does it look different to what you thought it was gonna look? Yes. And I'm allowed to grieve that, yeah, I'm also upset that I didn't have any more biological children. I couldn't imagine my life any different though. I love the situation I'm in. And honestly, if you would ask me now, I'd probably like, um, it's a no from me. Like I I had to go, but I had to get to that point, and it's because I allowed myself to grieve though, right? Yes. And this is why we go, like breakups are hard because you grieve the what if and you grieve that person and you you grieve it. And also, I've spoken about it in maybe a different episode where I started to the grief of a season ending. Right? Like my my oldest one is 18 years old. Yeah. Right? My next one is about to be 17. I've got one more year left for her in school.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:That just means that there's no more picking her up from school. There's no more drop-off. She's about to get a license. I don't have to, she doesn't need me anymore. And it's like that's something that we don't get. I love being needed. I actually really enjoy being needed and being the mother and being the stepmother that I'm like, oh my god, my kids are about to be adults. They don't talk about like grieving that season. And even though I've still got, yes, my young one, there's gonna be grief for him as well because my oldest one mainly lives with her mom now. He misses his sister.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I don't have all of my kids 50-50 all the time. I don't get to have all of these gay nights and and do all of these things anymore. So when it happens, I'm very, very present with it now because I know it's fleeting. And I can just feel myself like trying to latch on to these moments because I know it's coming to an end. And that's why relationships, you you kind of see that last burst of, okay, maybe I can fix this because you're latching on, because you're getting prepared to lose something. Yeah. It's even And the fear of abandonment doesn't just come from people, it comes to things as well. That's why my PT business, even though it should have finished much earlier, I was still latching on because I latched on to that identity of that's who I am. I don't want to lose that identity. Just like I don't want to lose my identity as a mum.
SPEAKER_03:But it's also like I think a lot of people do lose that identity, especially people who maybe they I feel like there are quite a quite a lot of people who have kids just because they think that that's what's expected of them. And I don't think that that's spoken about as much either. And it's like, oh, you'll never regret the children that you have. I I have met people who do. I genuinely have. And I think that they're so ashamed to speak about it, but they lose the identity of who they were before. And because it's so, it's so like uh there's there's this expectation in society, right? Of women. It's like you should want to have kids and you should lose yourself doing it. You should give up your career, you should do this, you should do that, blah, blah, blah. And there's a lot of women who just don't want that. Like maybe they don't want to have kids, or maybe when they do have kids, they do want to, do want to still have their careers and all of the things. And we're made to feel so guilty about it. I think even like in terms of what you were saying around the whole only having one, then we got it at the opposite end as well. Where I remember I would be out with my two boys and I was like when I was pregnant with my daughter, and people say, Oh, you've got your hands full, don't you? Or like then if we, you know, you start moving into four, it's like, oh, don't you own a television? Like, you, oh, you're gonna need a minivan, all of those sorts of things. And it's like there's just so much expectation on what is right and what you should be doing. But yeah, like it's it's that grief of losing that identity. Like, I it took me a very, very long time to come to terms with the fact that I wasn't as not that I wasn't as capable, but I just I had more constraints on my time than I did before I had children. Like I couldn't make it, like to give you context, before I had kids, before I met my husband, I was doing a master's degree full-time and I was working two jobs. So I was a very, very busy person. I had I got a lot done and I very much identified as the busy one, the hard worker, all of the things, the hustler, right? So then I had this baby, and all of a sudden I was like, oh, you mean I just sit around at home and clean? Like, whoa. But then I would also get so frustrated at myself because I couldn't do as much. Like even now, sometimes it'll take me all fucking day to mop my floors. Because I just get so distracted by the kids. Like I'll get, you know, halfway into picking stuff up and they'll be like, Mom, can you help me with this? Mom, can you come play with me? Mom, I need this, or I'll be like, ah, fuck, I need to wash that uniform so I go put a load of washing on or whatever. Like, there's just so much going on. And I would get so frustrated at myself because I couldn't. But I used to be able to just go to uni the day an assignment was due and sit down and write the entire thing in nine hours. And I couldn't do that anymore. So it was like losing that identity that I'd created as a very capable person who could fit a lot of things in, who was able to do big bursts of things. Like I always preferred to do it that way. And then all of a sudden I couldn't. And it completely ruined all of my systems and all of my routines and all of the masks that I'd built. And hello, that's where we, you know, found the ADHD roaring underneath the surface. It was covered up with busy work. But like it is losing those identities. And we go through we go through grief so much more than what we think, and we give ourselves permission for the big ones. But then we also, there's that expectation, right? Where people, people are like, no, but you should feel this way. You should be doing it like this. Like you should be trying to make them proud. You shouldn't be sad anymore, like it's been long enough. Get over it, you know, or it hasn't been long enough. What are you doing? Like, I you see a lot where people, people will um like get out of relationships and then be straight back into another one. And people are judging them because it was too soon. It's like, but you don't know what was going on in that relationship prior. Like potentially that relationship was over a long time before they actually call quits. And it's like, it's all of these expectations I feel on grief, what it should look like, depending on who it is, like if it's like the amount that you're allowed to grieve based off of what you're going through, or if even if you're allowed to grieve at all. Like I've I've spoken to people who have lost pregnancies and things like that. And people will say things to them like, well, at least you've got kids already. Like for you, I'm sure. Well, at least you've got the step, like you've got the girls. So it's okay, you know, like you don't, you've already got something. Like it's there's no need to be sad about it. It's like, yeah, but you're not you're allowed to want more. You don't want to be.
SPEAKER_00:You should be grateful that you have one. That's what I got.
SPEAKER_03:Like, yes. And it's like, I am grateful. And I'm also allowed to grieve the fact that I I wanted more. I had other expectations, I had other dreams, and those aren't gonna happen for me. And that's fucking shit.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And even as you're saying this, because I'm coming up to 30 in like less than two months, almost. Actually, by the time you listen to this, I'll be 30. So this is a pre-30-year-old me. And I think about it now that I'm like, there is also a part of me that grieves that I didn't actually get to find who I was, because I met Matt when I was turning 21. Right. I had been in also terrible. I'm that person that jumps into relationships. Awful. Um, but yeah, I had had a really horrible relationship and then had some really big experiences that really traumatized me. And I just didn't get time to find myself. And then I met Matt and then I became a stepparent, and then next minute I'm a mom, and then I'm a single mom. And I'm like, I had to do this whole finding myself an identity thing while also being a parent. And that's a really interesting thing to navigate because I'm like, cool. I'm now, everyone's like, how do you feel leaving your 20s? And I'm like, what was my 20s? I'm like, um, I don't know what you're talking about. Like, I didn't do any of that because I chose to, and that's and like sitting here right now, I don't have any reg. I'm so glad that life ended up the way it did. I love my life so much. And I even said to my partner the other day, the last, especially the last two years, I'm the happiest I have ever been in my life.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:But there is still those little parts that I'm like, what would it have been like to find myself without having to take care of others?
SPEAKER_03:And you are allowed to grieve that, that you did miss out on that. And yes, it was a, you know, it was a choice, and this was the better option, but that does not necessarily mean that it takes away from the fact that that is still there. And you're allowed to feel that. You're allowed to feel that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think it's like whole thing of like you made it, you made the decision. Yeah, I did make the decision.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it's it's like you're never allowed to complain that motherhood's hard. Because like, but you chose this. Yeah, I did. And I'm still allowed to grieve the fact that like I used to fucking I remember when I was pregnant with my first, like very late, late in the pregnancy. I wouldn't get out of bed until 10 o'clock in the morning because I was on maternity leave. I could do whatever the fuck I wanted. And then of course I had babies that like to get up at the butt crack of dawn. Sometimes I really miss my Sunday sleep-ins. Yeah. And it's I think it's that that missed, that missed experience or missed potential that we that we grieve. And yeah, like that that maybe your family doesn't look the way that you wanted it to. Maybe your relationship doesn't look the way that you want it to. Maybe, maybe you're coming up to Christmas and you're grieving that your parents aren't aren't with you, or that maybe you live really far away from your family and you're grieving the fact that it's similar to, you know, to what we were speaking about in the beginning, where it's like they're still here, but you can't be with them. And yeah, that's allowed to suck.
SPEAKER_02:This this was a heavy episode.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. But I think it's one of those things where I'm like, yes, it's heavy. Yes, it was deep, and you guys got a huge insight to honestly a like a big part of our grief, and obviously some of it is still very fresh. But this is why we do it, because there's we've spoken so many things about like belief systems and how it should look. Are we telling you to go on a podcast and a shit? No. There is a part of us that, well, especially for me, when I was talking about a lot of my own experiences, I have done a lot of work around it. And I also know that when grief comes up, I just allow it to come up. And I've had to change a lot of my belief systems around grief, which is why we're talking about it. But we don't want people to feel alone in their grief. And it was this thing of like, uh, I I have something that I don't know if I'll post it just yet, but it was just like suffering alone is still suffering. Right? Or you can s suffer together and feel seen. Because this the other thing I posted the other day is a lot of people don't actually want their trauma to go away. They want to be seen. Yeah, they want to be validated because we we hold on to a lot of pain because we we don't get seen by it. And then we feel a little crazy. And we kind of gaslight ourselves a little bit of like, why am I like this? And I want you to hear from, I feel like we're fairly normal people, maybe a little crazy. Sometimes, uh we also experience a lot of these things, and we've also felt a lot of shame about our grief, and we've also had to move through things. And there's also some things that we struggle to move through on a day-to-day basis because that's what grief is, right? We I'm a big anniversary person. I know when things happen. My body knows, which means sometimes I just am not a functioning human. That doesn't make me a bad person, though. It makes me honor what's actually happening and remembering those people that we love, remembering the relationships that shaped us, remembering the seasons that we've been through, or maybe it's coming to an end. And that's why we want to do this episode. Yes, it has been very heavy, and we're probably gonna get a little vulnerability hangover after this. But yeah, but I also just want to share, like Steph, that this has been a big year for you. And I'm really proud of you for sharing these things because I know this is something that you also haven't openly spoken about. And love you lost.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Love you too, and I appreciate that. But yeah, I think there's I think this year has really taught me, even though it's been really hard and it's been heavy in a lot of ways, and I think I've come off the back of a lot of really exciting years, you know. Like I I met my husband and then we had babies and we got married and we bought a house and like we did all of those things and it was really exciting. And then it's kind of been the downside of that, or the downside, the the the the tough year. And we've had tough times, obviously, but this was yeah, it it has been a tough year, but it around honoring the way that I feel. And I think if you if you are experiencing grief or if you are around people who are grieving, please don't allow you to, or please don't allow yourself to take on the way that other people think that you should feel. You are entitled to the way that you feel. And when you try and push it down because somebody tells you that it's not okay to feel that way, or you shouldn't feel that way, or you should just be more grateful, or I think a lot of the time we it comes from a good place where we want to, we want to try and diminish people's pain and we want to try and logic it away. And emotion makes us feel extremely uncomfortable, especially when it is that kind of heavy emotion. But if you just allow yourself to feel the way that you feel, I do think that the grief side of things, it it moves through more quickly. And it's not always easy to do that. And this isn't about speeding our grief up, by the way, because I have definitely had clients who have lost people and come to me and be like, right, like yeah, I definitely'm ready to process this. I'm like, bitch, you lost that person two weeks ago. You are absolutely not ready to do that yet. And then I'm like, are you ready to, are you ready to are you ready to grieve them or are you ready to not feel like shit anymore? And every single time I've asked them that, they've been like, fuck you. But it's the second. I'm like, yes, I know it is. But it's it's when you are questioning whether or not the way that you feel is right, or if you're doing it the right way, according to who.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Who says who says that that's how you should or should not be feeling, how you should or should not be experiencing that, what you should or should not be doing.
SPEAKER_02:So this is full permission that if you are grieving this Christmas or at any time there are definitely destructive things that we don't condone.
SPEAKER_03:Always go and get some help if you're uh if you're heading down the path of destruction of either you or you or yourself, or you or yourself is the same person, or other people. But you are allowed to honor the way that you feel, you are allowed to feel the way that you feel, and nobody gets to tell you what that should look like.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And we're just sending you lots of love, always.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. If anything in this episode has touched you, maybe activated you, maybe made you emotional, um we are always here for to hold space for that. By the time this airs, it will be six weeks later. So we're we're okay by now. Um but it like we we are always here to hold that space to allow you to feel the way that you feel. Um and yeah, if you are experiencing something and you you did feel seen by this episode, I'm glad if you feel like there's somebody that you love that could benefit from hearing something, whether it's the full part or maybe just a little part of it. We would also love it if you share it because we do want to bring more conversation to these topics because they're just not spoken about enough. And I think that's why so many people struggle with it because they just don't talk about it.
SPEAKER_02:They shove it down and they try and push on, and it's just it doesn't help.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:But yeah. We're here to have the conversations that need to be had. So beautiful.
SPEAKER_03:Well, we wish you a Merry Christmas from our family to yours. Um whatever. It does feel so fucking weird because it's like the end of October. Um, but yeah, we do we do wish that for you, and whether whatever your Christmas looks like this year, we're sending you all of the love. And we will see you in the next episode. Your story does not end here.
SPEAKER_00:Permission granted to keep fucking up and figuring it out. Subscribe if you're ready for more conversations that make you squirm in the best way. Send this to someone who needs to hear that they're not broken, just human. Drop us a line about what came up for you. The messier, the better.
SPEAKER_03:We'll be here holding space for all of your beautiful chaos. Keep writing, keep exploring, and keep being real.