Grief: Putting Yourself Aside

You can be the person who holds everyone together and still be hurting. That tension has been weighing on my heart lately, because so many of us practice “self care” in theory while living out the opposite in real life: we spend our energy serving, comforting, smoothing things over, and staying strong so nobody else has to feel the full weight of the moment.

In this episode, we talk about grief support the way it actually looks in families after a death. I share what I noticed when my brother-in-law died: I felt unusually calm and had the right words for the people around me, even while everything was crashing inside.

 Then we get honest about a common pattern, especially for many women : putting our own grief aside so we can take care of children, spouses, siblings, and friends even. That may come from love, but it can quietly erase us.

We also dig into something that can be hard to admit: how quickly we judge someone else’s mourning when it doesn’t match our own. Not everyone cries in public. Not everyone shows pain the same way at the hospital, the funeral, or the visitation. With time, grief education, and compassion, we learn to see what might be happening under the surface and why a single safe person can change everything.

If you want practical, human words for holding space,and staying connected without losing yourself, press play. Subscribe, share this with someone who is carrying too much, and leave a review so more people can find support when they need it most.

Holding space for you, The Caring Death Doula Doula

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Transcript

You Matter And You Need Support

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, thank you for joining me today. It really does matter, you matter, and I thank you. Today I want to continue our talk in a different little twist. We've been talking about taking care of ourselves. We've been taking talking about getting, I guess I called it the help you need, but it's more of the support you need. The support of someone who will listen, who will someone who will say you matter, check in on you, not fix you, not drag you through the past, not make you talk if you don't want to. But today I'd like to just do a little bit of a curve in this whole idea of taking care of yourself. Because it's really been weighing on my heart lately that sometimes some of us we put ourselves aside and we take care of everyone else. We give to everyone else. We expound our, not expound, but we expend our energy and our time, our energy, our whole essence, our presence, our whole, our whole being, just on

When You Care For Everyone Else

SPEAKER_00 1:25

serving other people. Wrongly, sometimes I think we do it to keep everyone happy, which is just love. Even though it's not our responsibility to keep either other people happy or other people not hurting, we often have that tendency. And so I want to talk about that today. That even in grief, even in grief, we do that. You know, when my brother-in-law died, I remember I was so much, I just can't explain how I was feeling, but I was just so so present and I was so calm. I mean, even my husband commented to me on how I just had the right words for each person that I that I ran into, the grandson, the sister, you know, the wife, my sister-in-law. I remember telling her, you know, in the hospital, right there after he had been pronounced dead,

Staying Calm After Sudden Loss

SPEAKER_00 2:35

we we were there in the hospital, and I remember giving her a hug and just, you know, I had this sense that she needed to hear this because I knew her heart. I knew her. And I and I told her something along the lines of to take care of herself, to grieve, to not feel like she had to take care of the rest of us. Because I know, as a mom, when her daughters would be coming in, you know, she was going to be putting her side her grief for a time to support them. And I'm sure they cried together. I mean, it's not like she never cried in front of them, but I just know how we have that tendency, especially as women, as most women, I won't say all women, but a lot of us, and I'm not excluding men, because some men are this way. But I I remember when my father-in-law died, I had only been married eight months. And when we went to the hospital, I my mother-in-law, I didn't see her cry. She had strengthened herself up because her sons came in and they were devastated. They were devastated. My father-in-law died younger than you would have wanted him to. His children were still, I

Grief Looks Different For Everyone

SPEAKER_00 4:20

don't know, young, middle-aged. I mean, there's there's a 10-year span in there. But I never saw my mother-in-law cry. I I just I never did. I never saw her anywhere, at the hospital, at the home, at the funeral, at the visitation. I never saw her cry. And that really, that's actually would be another episode where we could talk about not judging other people by the way they grieve or show their sorrow, show their pain based on how we do it or how we've experienced those around us doing it. Because I was young and I had never been around. I mean, my father-in-law was the first dead person that I saw. I had never gone to a funeral. I had never been on the I I'm not even sure I had been to any visitations, maybe uh a few. I don't, I definitely wasn't on the inside of it where, you know, you were in the line as people came through, but there just wasn't a lot of that in my family. Uh we didn't have, we didn't really, uh I didn't grow up with a lot of family around. But anyway, I I was extremely judgmental. Being so young, being so inexperienced, I did judge my mother-in-law. It was like she didn't even cry when her husband died. I mean, who doesn't who doesn't cry? Because I'm the type of person that I cry very easily. I cry when others cry. I cry, you know, movies and books, and just I cry very easily. And that's not right. That's not wrong. And neither is it not crying isn't right or wrong. But now that I'm older, and now that I've studied grief and I've studied, you know, death, and I have a deeper understanding and compassion, it's like she was remaining strong for her children. And I and I think I knew that even back then. But it's like she was staying strong, she was putting herself aside. And my one of my sister-in-laws did tell me that she did actually cry. When her aunt came to comfort her the night that her husband died, she cried. I was not in the room at the time, so I missed it. But that just shows you how when she had someone older, when she had this aunt come in and sit down with her, then she was able to say what she needed to say, to be able to grieve, to shed some tears. And that just shows you how important it is that we all need to be in each other's lives. We need to support each other because you don't know. You don't know if you're gonna be the person that somebody else needs. Where they can let go, where you are the safe presence, you are the safe place for them. Where they can feel like you care, you're gonna hold space for them, you've got their back.

Becoming A Safe Place For Others

SPEAKER_00 7:56

So I really want to encourage you to be there for other people and to really be careful that you're not putting yourself aside for other people all the time. Because sometimes they need to be strong for you, they need to see. I don't know if I want to say they need to see your pain or they need to see your your crying or your your expression, your disturbance. You know, that you're disturbed, that you're bothered, that you're you're feeling this. But I think that's that's the whole key of connection is that we're open with each other. And sometimes you're strong, and sometimes I'm strong. Sometimes you hold space for me, and I hold space for you. So I hope I hope I express this episode right. What's been on my heart, that so often we put ourselves aside even in grief. And we don't have to. I am the caring death doula, and I am here for you.