64: Grieving What Could Have Been - The Breakup That Broke Me Open

There’s grief in death - but there’s also grief in the life you pictured that didn’t happen.

In this raw and deeply personal episode, Darla Ridilla shares what it really looks like to grieve the invisible losses - the breakup that shattered her expectations, the friendships she outgrew, and the death of her soul dog, Goliath.

Through her story, Darla explores how grief shows up not just in our hearts but in our bodies - through exhaustion, anxiety, numbness, and even chronic pain - and how giving those emotions space can transform them into wisdom.

If you’ve ever felt like your grief doesn’t “make sense” or that you should be over it by now, this conversation will remind you that grief isn’t linear - it’s layered, cyclical, and sacred.

This episode invites you to:

• Recognize the invisible grief hiding beneath change and heartbreak.
• Understand how the body holds what the mind tries to forget.
• Redefine grief as evidence of love - and a doorway back to yourself.

Because sometimes the grief that almost breaks you is the very thing that brings you home to who you really are.

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Transcript

Darla Ridilla (00:00)
And feeling those fresh waves of grief has helped me to understand that grief isn't linear. It isn't a straight line. It's like any other form of healing. It comes and it goes. It gets better. It gets worse. And to be in a space where I can accept that and to understand what's going on, not only in my mind, but in my body and to let those feelings and sensations come up as as they show up.

I've also learned that it's important to honor it and to sit in it and to be in it. Because every time that I try to minimize it or push it under the rug, it actually gets worse and it often shows up in moments where I may be out in public and I don't show up as my best self.

Darla Ridilla (00:44)
Welcome to You Have the Power, the road to truth, freedom and real connection. I'm Darla Ridilla a certified somatic trauma-informed coach for high achieving women who are ready to stop shrinking in their relationships and start living fully expressed. If you've already done the work, you've healed, you've grown, you've set boundaries, but your connections still don't feel like home, you're not broken. You're just stuck in a pattern that no longer fits the woman you've become.

This podcast is where we break into what's next, the deeper connection, vibrant alignment, and magnetic relationships that start with you. Each episode offers somatic tools, bold truths, and real life strategies to help you embody your power, hold your standards, and lead your relationships without losing yourself. Because you're not here to be chosen, you are here to choose.

Let's get in to today's topic.

Darla Ridilla (01:43)
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of You Have the Power. So grief, it isn't just about death. It's about the parts of us that we've had to let die. And so today I wanna talk to you about the kind of grief that most people never really name. It's the grief of what could have been.

would call this the invisible grief. We have the obvious kind of grief, right? When someone dies, and I think when people hear that word, that's what they automatically go to. But there are other types of grief that are just as real and just as painful. It could be the loss of a dream, loss of a future, maybe loss of the version of yourself that never came to be.

So those could look like maybe a breakup that ended and it wasn't just the end of the relationship that you're grieving. It's the life that you imagined together with this person. It could be a job or a move that you thought was finally gonna make you happy.

It could be a pet, a dog who is your constant companion and your source of safety and connection. Because there is grief in death, but there's also grief in life, the life that you pictured, but it didn't happen. And I think in our society, it often invalidates these different types of grief. The invalidations come in the form of, it was just a breakup.

It's just a pet. You'll move on. Get over it.

In my own life, I've had examples of this.

I had to grieve the loss of my social structure. It happened even before I left Arizona. Earlier this year, I moved back to Colorado from Arizona and my whole life imploded. It just fell apart in Arizona and I realized I had outgrown most of my social circle and

I had to grieve the loss of those people, many who I really liked and cared about, but realized that in order for me to move forward and continue my own personal growth, I had to let them go. So there was grieving that letting go of people I cared about. And then the emotional wave that happened several months later. You want to look at a year ago, I was in a relationship that I thought

was going to be the last one I was ever in. I was highly invested in it. It was looking like it was going well. And then it wasn't. It happened very suddenly. And that breakup really changed me.

And the domino effect of that relationship ending was me realizing that I had outgrown those other relationships, those friendships. And the emotional wave that came months later in a couple of different ways that I didn't expect. One of them was when I first got to Durango, I had a fresh surge of grief come over me. And I got here about

four to five months after the breakup and I thought I was doing fairly well with it, but I had talked with this man about moving here together. We were going to come together at some point and then I made the decision to go ahead and come by myself. So it was like his ghost was everywhere. Even though I didn't develop any memories here in this town with him, there were places that I frequent that I know he would have enjoyed going to. There is the

after effect of losing my whole community and trying to rebuild a new one. And that hasn't been easy here. There are some dynamics going on here that maybe don't work for me, but there's also, I am looking for something very specific, not just in a romantic relationship, but on my friendships. And so that means that I'm having difficulty finding people that I can build a deep connection with instead of a surface level connection.

And so I'm grieving the loss of not just the friends I left behind, but I'm grieving a place of loneliness because I have, I'm in a middle ground right now where I've changed who I was and I'm becoming someone else. But in that gap, I haven't built the new community that will fill.

and honor who I'm becoming.

and what I had to realize also with my dog. My dog died a week after I moved to Durango.

Here I am with no support group.

I moved her by myself.

and my dog, my soul dog died. And it's something that's been a constant. It's been getting better, but I have fresh waves of grief from that all the time. I didn't go to the dog park where I was with him two days before he died all summer because we have an issue with rattlesnakes here. And it's finally been cooler in the fall for me to start taking my dog that I have now to the park.

And I went for the first time in two weeks ago. And the grief hit me so hard. I started crying all over again. I walked that path that I walked with Goliath, where he just kept egging me on. He had been ill for two years and he was so, so ⁓ energetic that day. And I hadn't seen that for a really long time. And he kept wanting to walk on that path. I remember specific spots where we stopped.

and I took pictures of him or I stopped to talk to a lady. He just patiently waited under the tree. And that was our turning point to go back to the car, not knowing that that was our last walk ever together or the rest of his life, because he got sick 12 hours later.

And feeling those fresh waves of grief has helped me to understand that grief isn't linear. It isn't a straight line. It's like any other form of healing. It comes and it goes. It gets better. It gets worse. And to be in a space where I can accept that and to understand what's going on, not only in my mind, but in my body and to let those feelings and sensations come up as as they show up.

I've also learned that it's important to honor it and to sit in it and to be in it. Because every time that I try to minimize it or push it under the rug, it actually gets worse and it often shows up in moments where I may be out in public and I don't show up as my best self. I've also learned that with anything that involves trauma,

when we let the emotion bubble up even as even if it's uncomfortable even if it feels overwhelming maybe even unbearable in that moment when I give it space within a short time it'll actually dissipate and I feel like I've reached a new level of healing or moving through the grief by doing that.

So when we talk about the grief living in our body, that's known as somatics. And our body is always talking to us, no matter whether it's good or it's bad. It's letting us know what's for us, what's not, and what we need to do. And our body will hold that unprocessed grief in so many ways. It shows up way more than lack of sleep or feeling tired or feeling overwhelmed. It shows up as a tight chest, a shallow breath.

that fatigue, anxiety, and sometimes it even shows up as numbness. We feel nothing at all.

And as I navigated all of these losses and grieved them over this past year, it showed up in so many ways. It could have been shaking.

exhaustion, emotional flooding. What I've discovered about myself over the past year in the past when I was feeling overwhelmed or super stressed, I would actually want to be around people. It was more of a distraction to be honest. Now what I'm noticing is that I withdraw.

Some of that is numbness, but some of that is also processing. It's not loneliness, it's solitude. And what I found is in the solitude is where I can just cry, be sad, let whatever emotion there is have its space and not have other people around because I feel like I process it a little bit better. Well, I could use a hug.

Yes, I could use a shoulder to cry on at times because that isn't available to me in this space in my life. Talking to my dog.

being in my own company and really working through what I'm feeling.

and being aware of my body and sensations. Because our body truly does remember what our mind tries to forget.

As you are thinking about your own things that you're grieving, I'm going to invite you to be really aware of what is going on in your own body. What sensations are you having?

What is coming up for you?

Where does your body tighten? Where does it ache? I have chronic pain. I've had it for many years. And I know it's just because I'm still healing from the narcissistic abuse and the trauma that I experienced.

Does your body shut down? Do you feel numb? Removed? Brain fog? Can't concentrate?

explore how that grief might even be layered, not only in your mind, but in your body. And when I say layered, how does it show up? Does something else trigger the grief, especially when you don't expect it? For instance, breakups, they can trigger old attachment wounds.

I have done a previous episode on attachment styles. ⁓ Just to summarize what that is.

There are ⁓ three main attachment styles that I talk about. One is the healthy attached. This is the person who was given positive reinforcement as a child most of the time. And so they feel confident, not just confident in themselves, but they feel like they don't need to chase others. They have self-validation. Anxious attachment, which is what I am recovering from, is someone who was sent mixed signals

often from caregivers and parents as a child. Everything was unpredictable for me. Love is conditional. I was hyper vigilant. And so I have this fight or flight type anxiety level going on underneath me all the time. And I didn't actually know that until a couple of years ago. And for me, a breakup is going to trigger that old fear of abandonment.

Maybe there's someone who has an avoidant attachment style. This is someone who learned very early in life. It's not safe to express who I really am. I have to be somebody else to be loved. And oh, by the way, love is dangerous because everybody that's left me in the past has hurt me. So I'm just going to withdraw. I'm going to avoid intimacy. I desire it. But when it shows up, it scares me so bad, I sabotage the relationship.

And their trigger may not necessarily be the breakup, it's the relationship itself. It triggers that old feeling of this woman loves me. Every time I was loved as a child, I got hurt, so I'm gonna push her away and I'm gonna hurt her before she hurts me.

Darla Ridilla (14:44)
If something in today's episode stirred something awake in you, if you've outgrown who you used to be, but your relationships haven't caught up, this is your moment to rise. You are not too much. You've simply evolved beyond what no longer fits. You don't need another mindset shift. You need embodiment. The kind that moves you from understanding your patterns.

to living your new standards, from awareness to alignment, from self-sacrifice to sovereignty. That's the bridge my coaching provides. And it starts with a free call, a chance to get clear on the patterns that keep pulling you back and what it looks like to finally create relationships that rise to meet you. No pressure, no performance, just truth, clarity, and your next step forward. Check the show notes for the link.

Darla Ridilla (15:35)
Losing a pet brings old grief, feelings of abandonment.

Well, Goliath didn't abandon me. I was not even close to being upset with him. I felt so alone. It wasn't that he abandoned me. I just felt abandoned in general, I guess, is how it really felt. He was my only source of support at that point in my life. He was my confident. I went through a divorce.

after I got him and it was during COVID. So I was isolated and had no one else to talk to and cried for hours while he laid his head on my lap and listened. As you know, pets are often the best listeners. Just their presence is comforting. And to come home to the quiet, it was so loud, I couldn't hear anything else.

to not having the feeling of his fur to pet was another source of grief.

And then you have some of us who have experienced narcissistic abuse. This really compounds grief and betrayal and confusion in your life because you're sent so many signals, you know, that you're not worthy, that it's your fault, that you deserve this. So you're not just when you break up with a narcissist, you're not just grieving them the person you thought they were. You're grieving every time, every time that you were silenced.

to keep them.

And I found that two of my triggers, I found that when I get triggered about something, when someone does something that upsets me or hurts me, it's not just about the hurt and upset in that moment with that one person. It actually connects to all the other times of my life where people have done that. For instance, right now I'm single on purpose, but I'm open to dating and have been men that have expressed interest.

but they haven't followed up or been consistent in their communication or reciprocated with investment enough. So I've decided not to date them. And the upset wasn't just connected to their lack of communication, their lack of respect for my boundaries, their investment in me. It connected to every man in the past who did that to me. Every time someone gives me the silent treatment, no matter who it is,

It connects to when my mother did it as a child and that old childhood wound gets poked.

But what I had to learn in all of these situations, whether it was a breakup, whether it was a loss of a friend, a loss of a pet, loss of a job or a hope or a dream, that it wasn't punishment. It wasn't because something was wrong with me. It was actually an opportunity for growth, an opportunity for change.

And when I talked earlier about not running from the pain, that really was a huge game changer for me because if we don't grieve, it will remain inside of us and it will probably get bigger and more painful to face in the future.

So that's why I stopped trying to fix my grief and I started to really listen to it. And the lessons that started to show up in that is that first, grief is not a weakness. It's actually an evidence of love. That ache in your heart after you lose someone, whether to a breakup to death or because you walked away from a friendship, it means that you're capable of love and you loved at one point.

It means your heart still works.

And when we don't give our grief the space that it needs, not only is it hard on us emotionally, that emotional price gets bigger because it starts to affect your body.

your body will start to break down if you keep carrying emotions and you don't move through them. And that shows up in a variety of ways, whether it's anxiety and depression that lead to illness and sometimes chronic illness and fatal conditions that cause death.

One of the things that I had to learn during my last breakup is that it's okay actually to let grief come on full on. And it's also okay to set some standards and boundaries of how long I'm going to grieve. It doesn't mean the grief goes away completely, but how I'm going to walk through the steps. And one of the things that I did for myself is I had a lot of trouble moving on. ⁓ It occurred a week before Thanksgiving.

chose not to just stay in relationship over the holidays just for appearances. I didn't want to do that. Even though it's really hard to be alone on the holidays. I actually strangely enough two years ago had a breakup in October. Fall seems to be a time of change for me where I make a lot of major decisions and changes. And I've noticed that pattern both in when I switch jobs or when I leave a relationship. Fall seems to be that time where I let go a lot.

One of the things I did for myself two years ago is I didn't want to be alone on the holidays. So I decided to go out of town. I decided I had a few days off from work and I went to, well, I went to Colorado for Thanksgiving, which is why I'm here today. But I went to Palm Springs for Christmas and I scheduled to be at a Hot Springs all day long on Christmas Day. So I wouldn't feel sad.

When you go back to. ⁓

not trying to contain the grief. And we go back to I did another breakup right before the holidays last year.

I could not seem to move on no matter how hard I tried. And part of the problem was just because I was trying too hard. So the holidays aren't an easy time to be grieving anything and to be alone. I did decide to be alone on the holidays last year. Because I had needed the quiet, I did go to a friend's house on Thanksgiving. She invited me and she's a very dear friend I've known for many years.

and I knew I would have a good time. And it was only, I was only a week out, I kinda needed a distraction. But for Christmas, I decided to spend it alone. I'm actually really glad I decided to do that, not just because it was good for me to be in my own space, but it ended up being my last Christmas with Goliath. And so I'm glad it was just us.

But the grief was horrible. Lots of crying. I couldn't concentrate. I couldn't work. And I decided that was okay.

that it was okay to be deep in grief throughout the holiday season, all the way up into New Year's. But on New Year's Day, while it wasn't gonna be a magic wand, it was gonna make it go away, that's when I would think more about how can I move through it and try to heal it. But I wasn't gonna tackle the holidays and the grief all at the same time. It was too much. And I think that really helped to give myself permission to cry as much as I needed to.

to give myself permission to cancel appointments when I couldn't show up, to give myself permission to be okay with not being okay.

And when I talked about losses that occur being an opportunity.

I'd like to invite you to think about.

how these changes have affected your identity.

Were you so affected by this loss that you actually changed that you became somebody else?

and being okay with that as well.

Lost, particularly death, breakup, those kind of things, they affect us so deeply, they often forever alter who we are. we're also grieving the loss of ourselves on top of whatever else we lost. But just remembering once again, it's not the end. It's a new beginning. We may not want this new beginning, we may not understand why it's been given to us.

but eventually coming around and understanding and accepting that we can't change what happened, but we can change how we look forward.

We can find that silver lining, even if it's just a glimmer. And maybe it takes a while. With death, it's going to take a long time. And we don't have to rush that. Just let it happen when it's ready.

Sometimes the grief that almost breaks us truly is what builds us in the future.

I would encourage all of you to see your grief as a doorway back to yourself.

Because when you stop trying to get over it, you start to grow through it. Will I ever get over Goliath's death?

No.

I will not.

He was such an important part of my life.

And I feel in some ways that the death of a pet is so hard because of the unconditional love because you know that you are going to outlive them. And when it does happen, it's so life altering. You don't hear the pitter patter of their feet. The funny little noises that they made just a presence that you felt in a room. It's all of that is gone.

Will I ever stop missing him?

But I can learn to live in spite of that. I can learn to find joy in my new dog. I can be thankful for the 10 years I had with him and the gifts he gave me. And I would do it all over again because he was so amazing.

and the acceptance that he couldn't live forever, even though I wanted him to.

is healing all in itself.

I'm going to invite each of you just to take a deep breath.

and pause.

place a hand on your heart.

and ask.

What part of myself am I still grieving?

What dream? Relationship? A version of me?

Am I ready to release?

can be okay with grieving in a new way. may not even make sense.

But that grief has meaning.

even when we don't understand what the meaning is, when we don't want to understand what it is.

What can this grief show me about myself this person this situation?

And how can I make that a sense of comfort?

I wanna thank each of you for being here today. And I wanna thank you for investing in yourself and answering these questions and reflecting. And if something in this episode spoke to you, share it.

that friend that needs to hear this today. Send this episode to her.

Help her to give herself permission to grieve whatever it is she's grieving.

you have the power.

Darla Ridilla (26:44)
Thank you for listening to You Have the Power, the road to truth, freedom and real connection. If you've already done the work, if you've healed, grown and set boundaries, but your relationships still don't reflect your evolution, then this is your next level. This podcast isn't about staying stuck in the story of what went wrong. It's about stepping into what's possible when you stop shrinking, stop performing and start leading in your relationships from radical self-trust.

If this episode called something forward in you, share it, subscribe, and send it to the woman in your life who's ready to rise. if you're not just ready to listen, but you're ready to live this, check the show notes. You'll find the link to connect with me and take the next step toward magnetic connection, embodied empowerment,

and relationships that actually meet you where you are. you need a new pattern, and you're the one who gets to decide. Do I stay in the old story, or am I ready to write the new one? You already have the power. Now, let's use it.