011: The Sacred Side of Grief: My Journey After Loss

Content note: This episode includes reflections on child loss and grief. Please take care as you listen.

In this deeply personal episode, I open up about the loss of my daughter and how it became the catalyst for my own spiritual awakening and sacred work. This isn’t just my story—it’s a reflection on how grief, when honored, can become a portal into purpose, power, and remembrance.

We explore:

 • What it means to live in devotion after deep loss
 • How grief reshapes our identity and sacred roles
 • The awakening of spiritual gifts through soul rupture
 • What I’ve learned about compassion, presence, and truth

Whether you're navigating your own loss, supporting someone who is, or simply seeking a deeper connection to what really matters—this episode is for you.

Mentioned in this episode:

 • https://www.helpingparentsheal.org/ – a community for bereaved parents
 • Connect with me or explore sessions: https://lisagarces.com/  

Life to Afterlife: https://youtu.be/icwhBSN4rHQ?si=QZHkGufE9Pwl31I_  

If this touched something in you, I invite you to share it with someone who may need this message.

With love,
 Lisa

Follow The Amplified Female for soul-led insights, spiritual wisdom, and real conversations about alignment, purpose, and healing.

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✨ Want to go deeper? Join my weekly activations inside The Empowered Path: 

https://lisagarces.com/#tep. 

Explore more of my work at: https://lisagarces.com/

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Transcript

lisa 0:01

I was standing at a crossroads. One path led to darkness. The other to curiosity. This is the story of what happened when I chose the second path.

Speaker 0:14

Welcome to the Amplified Female, a podcast where soul led living, spiritual alignment, and intuitive leadership. Meet, hosted by Lisa Garces, a spiritual mentor, intuitive channel, and transformational guide. Each episode is a sacred space to explore healing, purpose, and empowerment. Now, here's your host, Lisa Garces.

lisa 0:42

Welcome back. Today I wanted to talk about something that has changed my life in every possible way. The loss of my daughter, Jada. So this isn't. Going to be a clean packaged episode, probably. It's gonna be real. something obviously that changed my life, but it's also a story that I feel should be shared and as a reminder that grief isn't linear. It's messy, and it's unique to each individual. But sometimes it's the very thing that cracks us open to the truth. I'm not here to give you a formula because everybody is unique and I feel our, excuse me, I feel their own path and their own journey in life is extremely unique. So I'm just here to share my experience, my story, and the hope that it brings you even just a drop of comfort. Or maybe a flicker of remembrance or hope, because for me, grief didn't just break me. It really did awaken me. It's hard to put into words what that moment was like. The moment I found her, um, so hard, it was the moment that everything went silent. I am sorry guys. Well, I shouldn't be sorry. Right? We should not be sorry for our feelings. So I've shared this before, but when I found Jada, I had a near death experience that day. And in that moment, everything just made sense. it's like I had my own near death experience. I was able to see my soul contract with her. I saw all of it. The why, the timing. I saw the purpose behind our strong bond, her passing my own life path. it was almost like in a movie from the day I was born, why I chose the parents. I had all the difficult experiences I had, Ultimately what really stood out was in my experience, that this was pre-planned and I was flooded with something that I can only describe as God as source, as pure love, but not the God I was taught in the Catholic church, but really who God is. Sources love what this is all about. And it was so big and all consuming, that I use a word and it's called an fable, and it's a word I use now, but, it basically means that there is no human words that can describe it. And that definitely was my experience. after all the beautiful moments, I saw her going back home. it was such a rush of high everything made sense and everything was just peace, love, certainty. I just wanted to stay there. But then of course I had to come back to reality. And then came the crash, the low, the grief. Woo. Um, you know, uh, numbness. It, it's the trauma. A lot of what I can't even remember, but I feel that that is by divine design because there's only so much our human self can handle. But there was such a low, and you know, grief is such a roller coaster. One moment I would be so happy and full of joy 'cause it was like, yes, we did it Jada, we fulfilled the contract and now I'm taking over from here. Um. And knowing she's home, at peace, feeling her so clearly. And then the next I am, why am I here crying on the floor, feeling the weight of her absence, not being able to hold her again. it's definitely this roller coaster for sure. And that's the thing about grief it isn't one thing it's. Everything, the all of it, the highs, the lows, the rage, the wonder, the why me. And then also at the same time, this beautiful realization, um, that's so simple, but we make it so complicated that we all go through this. Every single one of us dies. I remember even questioning that, like, why do we. Suffer so much when it's inevitable. It just sometimes doesn't make sense to me. And, you know, it was hard was also during this time, of course, everyone telling me what I should do, right? Go to therapy, join a grief group, um, take it one day at a time. She's in a better place and I get it right. Everyone means well. And the one thing that. What's very obvious to me is they do say that losing a child is the worst possible experience a human being can go through Even when you research psychology, there's no linear path for it. so everyone's just trying to help. But what no one tells you is that sometimes, being in a room full of other people's pain may not help. Sometimes it drowns you and can root you deeper in grief instead of guiding you through it. Now, that was my experience and I wanna be very clear going back to everyone heals and processes things. According to what works best for them. We're all so unique. But I do remember sitting in a grief group and listening to a woman speak. She could barely talk and she was explaining how she couldn't get out of bed, that life has no meaning. But then I remember her saying it had been 10 years, 10 years. And something loud in me whispered, this is not your path. This isn't where you stay. Because I knew in that moment, if I held on to grief the way that they were holding onto grief in that group, I would lose myself. And not because grief is bad, right? But because for me, I was meant to transform with it and not build a home inside of it. So left. That group knew, okay, I am definitely not going to any of these groups. And I followed the signs and I somehow found it's called Helping Parents heal.com. And to be honest, I don't even know how I found it. It appeared in my path somehow. Like so many things in my life do now when you're open. And what I loved is that they weren't just talking about pain, they were talking about. Connection, signs, messages. It was really messages of hope. Parents who were getting visits, dreams, messages from songs just like I was. they were validating the unexplainable for me, and that was my world. Now it was unexplainable, but undeniably real. I first found them, on the Facebook group, and there's also, documentaries that they did, which I will find the links for and put in the notes because seeing things like that really did help. The thing I realized is I didn't lose my daughter. I lost a part of who I thought I was. when you're a mother, especially to an only child, that role took over everything. It became my identity. It was my anchor ger. I was Lisa, but I was mostly Jada's mom. And when she died, I felt like, What am I here for? Then? Who am I now? And nothing else seemed to matter at all. And this is what I wanna talk about because I think we all do this, and not just through a loss of a child, but it could be through a loss of a job, a loss of a relationship. We build our lives around these roles. We become the mother, the wife, the responsible one, the strong one. The helper, the good girl, maybe even the bad girl. But these are just costumes. They are expressions of us, but they are not us. They are temporary. They are always shifting and evolving. You are not your role. You are the one who wears it. if you don't know that, if you've never anchored into that truth. Then when that role ends or changes or breaks, you feel like you disappear with it. that's what I went through because it wasn't just grief over losing my daughter, it was grief over losing my identity. Who was I? what purpose did I have? But here's the thing, that question that emptiness, became my portal because without the role, I had to meet the woman underneath it. I had to meet Lisa, the soul, the seeker, who Lisa really is the one who came here with a purpose that was never just one thing, never just one identity, never just one chapter. And that's what grief showed me, that I am allowed to evolve. That roles are sacred, yes, but they are not the full story. What came next was confusion. Because I started having experiences I could not explain, and honestly, the old belief systems I had grown up with couldn't explain them either. I was raised Catholic, and in that framework there were two paths after death. It was either heaven or hell end of story, but that is not what I experienced. After Jada passed, I began receiving so many signs, unmistakable ones. Messages, dreams, songs on radios, feathers in my path. I could even hear her voice moments when I would feel her actually touching me. Moments when her present felt more real. Then I can explain, and I remember thinking, if this is grief, it's not just pain, it's a doorway into something. But if I had stayed married to what I had been taught, I would've dismissed all of it. And the sad thing is, I see this all the time. I see people who are grieving and there's signs that they keep missing. You know, this opened up my ability to channel. a lot of the times I could see that their loved ones are like, I'm doing this, I'm doing this, and they're not seeing it. And then sometimes when I'd question them. they wanted it to be more tangible. so yeah. Just be open and curious a lot of times I could have said, well, that's just my imagination, or I'm in denial, accepting that she's gone. But no, I knew in my experience what I was experiencing, it was real, it was love. It was her, I knew it to my core. so that became my word, curiosity, not certainty, not dogma, just wonder and what if. eventually I could feel it. I was standing at a crossroads and I describe it to my clients as having two paths or two timelines. You have one. Which is the path of despair where nothing is meaning, where I could tell myself, Jada is just gone, where I spiral into darkness and where I check out of life or two, I saw the path of curiosity, of learning more, of trusting what I'm feeling of faith. That begins not with knowing, but with just asking. And I chose the second path and that path brought me back to life. I dove into reading books. I studied the research. I listened to stories from people who had died and come back with memories and messages. But most of all, I listened to my body, my intuition, and my knowing that path, the one that didn't make sense to my logical mind, was the one that brought me hope, that brought me joy, that brought me back to myself. So when people say, well, I don't believe in all that. I gently ask, okay, but what does your life look like? Because sometimes it's not about being right, it's about how you feel. And if your beliefs are bringing you suffering, why not try something else? Why not choose the path that leads to peace, even if it's unfamiliar. You don't need to believe everything, but what if you just got curious and that's how most healing begins. So if you're still here with me, thank you. Because I know this isn't an easy topic. This is the tender stuff, the stuff we don't always want to talk about, but we do all feel, and death is something we all experience. So let me leave you with this. You are allowed to choose the path that brings you peace. You are allowed to let go of roles that no longer fit. You are allowed to evolve, and you are allowed to live fully even after loss. If you take nothing else from today, just remember this. You don't have to be certain, you just have to be curious. That one breath of wonder might just save your life. It did mine. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for honoring Jada with me, and thank you for walking this path, your path. Until next time, stay open, stay sovereign, and let curiosity lead the way.