40. The Power of And: Why Your Nervous System Needs Room for Both Joy and Sorrow

What if healing isn't about choosing between grief or joy but learning to hold both?

In this deeply personal episode, Leanna reflects on returning from the funeral of a close friend's 16-year-old daughter and shares how one simple word and has become one of the most powerful lessons in her own healing journey.

Drawing from her experiences with loss, the ongoing healing of her relationship with her late father, and the work she does every day through the lens of the nervous system, Leanna explores how true healing isn't about eliminating pain. It's about expanding our capacity to carry both heartbreak and hope, sorrow and beauty, grief and gratitude.

You'll discover why nervous system healing isn't about never struggling, but about building the resilience to stay present through life's hardest moments. Leanna also shares meaningful insights on supporting those who are grieving, the importance of remembering loved ones by speaking their names, and how hope and faith can coexist with profound loss.

If you've ever wondered how to keep moving forward without leaving your grief behind, this episode offers a compassionate reminder that you don't have to choose one emotion over another—you can make space for both.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why the word "and" can transform the way we experience difficult emotions.
• How nervous system healing increases our capacity rather than eliminating pain.
• The difference between moving on from grief and learning to carry it.
• Why presence is often more powerful than advice when supporting someone through loss.
• How continuing to remember and share stories of loved ones can become a beautiful act of healing.
• Practical ways to notice hope and "glimmers" even in life's darkest seasons.

Whether you're navigating your own grief, supporting someone you love, or simply learning how to hold life's complexities with greater compassion, this conversation is a gentle invitation to embrace the power of and.

Because healing isn't about becoming someone who never hurts—it's about becoming someone whose heart has grown strong enough to hold both the pain and the beauty.

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Website → leannahunt.com

Disclaimer:
Although I am a licensed Associate Clinical Mental Health Counselor, The NeuroHeir℠ Podcast is not a substitute for therapy, counseling, or medical treatment. The tools and practices I share are for educational and coaching purposes only. Every nervous system is unique, and what we discuss on this podcast should not replace your own individual therapeutic work or professional support.

The focus of this podcast is my coaching work, which centers on education, nervous system practices, and generational healing tools designed to support—not replace—your personal journey with a qualified provider.

If you are struggling with your mental health or experiencing overwhelming emotions, please seek support from a licensed professional in your area. You don’t have to do this work alone.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Welcome to the NeuroAir Podcast, the show for cycle breakers, parents, young adults, and helping professionals ready to understand their nervous system through a generational lens, heal what isn't theirs to carry, and consciously choose what comes next. Hi, I'm your host Liana Hunts, an associate clinical mental health counselor and certified performance coach. Each week you'll get stories, science, and somatic practices plus my signature 4-end framework. Notice, name, nurture, and navigate to help you honor resilience, break silence, and build deeper connection with yourself and those you love, all while shaping a legacy of safety, freedom, and possibility. Welcome back to the NeuroAir Podcast. This episode is called The Power of AND. And is one little word, three letters, and yet I think it might be one of the most powerful words we have in our vocabulary because life rarely asks us to choose just one emotion. More often, it actually asks us to hold both. Welcome back to the show, you guys. It's interesting that this is episode 40. 40 episodes ago, I started this podcast because I wanted people to understand something I wish more of us knew that you are not broken. And over these last 40 episodes, we've talked about the nervous system, about trauma, survival responses, healing, relationships, and what it truly means to become a neuro heir. But I wasn't planning for episode 40 to be this conversation that I'm gonna have with you guys. David and I actually just returned yesterday from Oahu after attending the funeral of the 16-year-old daughter of our dear friends that we have known since college. It's been one of those weekends that felt like it held so much. We were in one of our favorite places in the entire world watching beautiful sunrises, watching the sun disappear into the ocean in the evening, seeing rainbows stretch across the water, and at the very same time standing beside two parents and friends, experiencing the unimaginable. And as I sat on the beach before we came home on 4th of July, I kept coming back to one word, and it is the word and. Because life doesn't usually ask us to choose between joy or grief, between beauty or heartbreak, or hope or sadness. More often, life invites us to carry both. I think so many of us have learned that emotions compete with one another. If I'm grieving, I shouldn't laugh. Or if I notice something beautiful, maybe I'm minimizing my pain. Or if I start feeling joy again, does that mean that I'm forgetting? Our brains love certainty, and we've talked so much about that over the episodes. Our nervous systems often like categories, things that are safe, things that are unsafe, things that are good, bad, happy, or sad. But life doesn't usually fit into categories, you guys. Life is wonderful and painfully complex. It's both. It's and the morning, or I guess it was a few mornings after the funeral before we came home, David and I went on a morning walk as we usually do. We love to walk by the ocean whenever we are by the ocean because the ocean still feels like home to me. And David and I just stood there and looked out over the ocean and a rainbow stretched across the water. And I remember just standing there with him, our hearts breaking for our friends. And yet I also couldn't ignore how incredibly beautiful this rainbow was. And the rainbow didn't take away pain. The rainbow doesn't take away other people's sorrows. The grief can't erase the rainbow either. They simply just exist together. That is the power of and sometimes we think noticing beauty might somehow dishonor our pain, and I do not think it does. I think beauty actually can remind us that even in the darkest moments, life continues to offer us glimpses of hope. It is not to replace our grief, but to carry us through it. As I've reflected on this last week, I also realized something I don't know that I've ever shared quite this way. Neuroair did not begin after my dad passed away when I started writing my book the beginning of last year in 2025. I'd already been doing this work for years. I'd been studying the nervous system. I had been learning about trauma. I had been using the four ends that I created with my own clients without me even realizing that that's what they were. I've been applying the tools that I teach to you and to my clients in my own life. But when my dad died last January, this work became deeply personal in a way that I'm not sure I ever expected. Suddenly, I wasn't just helping other people understand their nervous systems. I was actually learning to sit with my own grief and my own questions and my own relationship. And I think one of the hardest parts of losing someone is realizing there are conversations that you won't have in this life anyway. There's things that you'll never get to ask and things that you'll never get to say, ways you wish you had understood each other sooner. And I don't know if my dad and I would have ever gotten to that place I hoped that we could have before he passed away. And I don't know if he would have been open to some of these conversations. But what I have learned to know over this last year and a half is something I don't know if I thought would ever happen. It's something that I see now. Healing doesn't always stop when somebody passes away. In some ways, it begins differently. We can still repair, we can still forgive, we can still understand, we can still grieve, and we can still soften ourselves. Because while someone's life may have ended, our relationship with them continues inside of us. And that realization has changed so many things for me. And neuro error has become more than understanding inherited nervous system patterns. It has become about asking, how do I continue healing a relationship with someone who is no longer here? This has been a big part of my work and looking at those generational patterns and things we've talked about. It's also been wondering how do I carry both the hard memories and the beautiful ones? How do I honor what hurt without letting it become the only thing that I remember? And that's where the word and has become so personal for me. Sorry guys. People often ask me what nervous system healing is supposed to do. Does it mean we'll never feel anxious? Does it mean we'll never grieve? Does it mean we'll never shut down? Does it mean we'll never struggle? But you guys, I truly don't believe that that is the goal. I think the goal is about capacity. And we've talked about capacity before. The goal for me is, and in my work and in sharing and talking about capacity and doing this work is to have capacity and increase capacity to stay present, to have and increase the capacity to remain connected, and to have and increase our capacity to experience difficult emotions without becoming completely consumed by them. Healing is not becoming someone who never hurts, but it is becoming someone whose life has expanded enough to hold more, to be able to hold more joy, more love, more compassion, more curiosity, and yes, sometimes even more grief. Because grief isn't evidence that something is wrong either. It is also evidence that we loved. And even if that love is complicated, grief is still evidence to me that love existed. This week also reminded me that nervous system work isn't only personal. And I think we've talked about this too. It is relational, it is communal, it's something we do for each other. Because as we do our own work, as our own capacity grows, we become more capable of staying present with someone else's pain. We don't have to immediately try to fix ourselves to fix them. We don't have to rush them towards feeling better. We don't have to compare our stories. We don't have to search for the perfect words. Sometimes, you guys, the greatest gift we can give another human being isn't advice. It is our presence. It's sitting beside them, it's listening. It's crying with them, and it's holding silence when there are no answers. And I wonder if that's actually one of the greatest things our world needs right now. Not more explanations or opinions, but deeper empathy. The kind of empathy that says, I don't need to fix your pain to stay with you in it. And one thing that has kept coming back to my heart all week was this no parent should ever, should ever have to bury a child. And yet it happens, it has happened, and it will continue to happen. Some people will have time to say goodbye, and others won't. And neither is fair and neither is easy. My hope for myself and for all of us isn't that nervous system work somehow protects us from our pain, protects us from our hurt or our grief. It won't. But my hope is that it deepens our capacity, our capacity to sit with what hurts, to be able to hold what feels unbearable, to face the questions, to cry, to mend what can still be mended, to deepen what can still be deepened, and above all to continue loving. Because healing does have its own timeline too, and love doesn't end when someone's life does. One week before we left for Hawaii for the funeral, a dear friend of mine who has also experienced the unimaginable loss of two children shared something on her Instagram stories from Bereavement Mom on Instagram, who helps educate others about grief after the loss of her own son. She talked about how meaningful it is when people continue sharing stories about the person who has passed away. When they say their name, when they remember, when they don't pretend that person never existed because they're afraid they'll make someone sad. That has really stuck with me this last week. I think so often, including myself, I've avoided bringing up someone who has passed because I was worried that I would remind the person of their loss. But here is also their reality. And I felt that so much this past week. Anyone that has experienced loss will never forget. They will think about that person every single day. And sometimes one of the greatest gifts we can give is simply saying, I was thinking about them today. I remember when, and I'll never forget this memory. We help keep their memory alive in these conversations that we can have with our friends and family members. And maybe that's one of the most beautiful forms of empathy. So today I was also thinking about ways that I wanted to remember my dad because I've talked to you guys so much about the hard things and the pain, but I also want to remember him in positive, beautiful ways too. And many of my favorite memories were actually of us driving together with the windows rolled down. Music turned up way too loud. It was usually Chicago singing You're the Inspiration or one of their songs. They have so many albums with many of their amazing instrumental breaks. And if you have listened to Chicago, you know that their musicality is superb. Or maybe it was listening to the traveling Wilberries with End of the Line. Or maybe some credence clear water revival. We would just drive and sing together as loudly as we could. And life with my dad wasn't always easy. And you guys know I've talked about it and I've tried to be really open about it. There were so many hard chapters. There were things that never got resolved the way that I wish they had. And there were really good memories too. And those memories deserve space. That's the power of and the hard was real, the good was real too. And today I can choose to remember both. So maybe this week, if someone you love has lost someone, maybe tell them a story or text them a story or send them an email or write them a card. Maybe say their person's name. Maybe share something you remember and help that memory keep living. And if you're the one grieving, tell yourself one of those stories too. Play the song, look at the picture, smile at the memory, cry if you need to. Maybe you need to yell or scream. Because love doesn't disappear. Sometimes it just sounds like an old song playing with the windows rolled down. And what's really interesting is I, you guys know I talk about some of the work I do. I was in a practice session with someone, and some of my old childhood memories came up. And at the end of that, I am did some work with what could be possible now. That's something I love to do in my own session. So I brought that into this session of that I was being guided with someone else and working through some things that happened. I think I wouldn't know, I was probably five or six. And even though it didn't happen then, now we can create new endings to things in our mind. Our mind is so powerful. And so with visualization, I think I remember my partner, my practice partner asking me, you know, what is something that young Lianna wants now? And it was so beautiful because I just said, like, as the adult me, I was like, young Liana just wants to go have her dad pick her up, give her a hug, roll the windows down, and drive through the town and feel the wind and air on our face and listen to music really loud. So I know for sure that that still has so much impact on me. So as I close today, there's one more thing that's been on my heart. My deepest wish for our dear, dear friends isn't that they somehow move on. Because I don't know if we do that. I don't think love works that way either. But my prayer is that little by little they find the capacity to carry both, to carry unimaginable grief and moments of peace, to be able to carry their tears and laughter when it comes, even in those random moments, to carry heartbreak and beautiful memories that continue to make them smile. Because both can exist and both deserve space. So I think when I say it's not just moving on from their loss, it's just carrying it with them. One of the things that gives me hope and something our friends and I share is our faith. I truly believe that this life is not the end. I believe it because of our Savior, my Savior Jesus Christ, that death doesn't have the final word. I believe that we can be together again with those that we love. I believe that one day every goodbye, every loss, every unanswered question, and every broken relationship will somehow be made whole. And I hold on to that hope with all my heart, but I've also learned that hope also just doesn't erase the heartache. Faith doesn't cancel out our grief or our emotions. Believing we'll be together again doesn't make today hurt any less. It simply gives us something to hold on to while we walk through the pain. As I think about the nervous system, I think hope is actually part of expanding our capacity. Not hope that life will never hurt, not hope that tragedy won't come, but hope that we can keep taking the next breath. Hope that healing is still possible. Hope that love continues and moves us forward. And hope that another sunrise will come even after our darkest night. Because sometimes hope isn't the absence of pain. It's having something strong enough to hold on to while we move through it. And as I've reflected this week, my heart has also been with my own family, with my siblings that are all still navigating their own lives without our dad, with my mom who is learning how to navigate life without her husband, Rob, after losing him so unexpectedly, and also her ex-husband, my dad, all within a few years of each other. It reminds me that every grief has its own story. Some come suddenly, some come after along the bye, some leave us with words we wish we had spoken, and some leave us wondering what could have been. And it's also a reminder that no two grief stories and journeys will ever be the same. But every one of them does deserve gentleness. Every one of them deserves compassion, and every one of them deserves hope. So today my prayer is for our dear friends as they learn to navigate life without their only daughter. It's for my mom, for my siblings, for every parent who has buried a child, for every spouse learning to navigate life without the person they plan to grow old with, for every son or daughter learning to live without a parent, and for every person carrying a grief that feels really heavy today. My hope is that you can find gentle moments of peace, that you may be surrounded by people who aren't afraid to say your loved one's name out loud. May they tell you stories, may they laugh with you, may they cry with you, may they help keep those memories alive. May they sit beside you without trying to fix what cannot be fixed. May you never feel like you have to carry your grief alone either, and may your capacity continue to grow, not because the grief becomes smaller, but because your heart slowly grows stronger around it. May hope quietly find its way into the places where heartbreak now lives. And as we were coming home that night before we left, I shared a quote with our friends, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. Grief is like the ocean, which feels so perfect as we were in this beautiful place. Grief is like the ocean, it comes in waves, ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim. And that quote was from Vicki Harrison. So maybe today, my friend, you're in calm waters. Or maybe today you're being pulled beneath the waves. Wherever you find yourself, be gentle with your nervous system. Let people help you float when you need them. And please allow yourself to notice the moments of beauty without guilt for seeing them. Remember that love and loss can travel together. And my invitation is for all of you to feel like you can hold space for both. Because remember, life isn't just this or that, it's this and that. Some things were never yours to carry, things like shame and the survival patterns that no longer serve you, and the stories that told you that you were not enough. Those are the things we work to release. But sometimes grief is different. Grief isn't something to get rid of, it's something we learn to carry because grief is love and that still has somewhere to belong. And maybe that's what becoming a neuro heir has always meant. Not becoming someone who never experiences heartbreak, but becoming someone whose heart, mind, and nervous system grow enough to carry heartbreak without losing the ability to see beauty one wave at a time, one breath at a time, one sunrise, one sunset, and eventually another morning. So thank you, my friends, for spending these 40 episodes with me. Until next time, be gentle with yourself and remember that you were never broken. I hope that you can take time that even in your struggles this week, you can see the little glimmers. Remember, those glimmers are just small, tiny ways that offer our nervous system a moment of presence. So if you want to join me this week, I will be looking for those glimmers in the sunrises and in the sunsets, in the flowers, in this beautiful summer, in the hugs, in the smiles, in the laughter of my children, in the little winds with my clients, and in the beauty all around us. Until next time. Bye guys. Thanks for joining me on the NeuroAir Podcast. This work is about honoring resilience in yourself and also those who came before you, all while finding freedom from what was never yours to carry. With the help of stories, science, somatic tools, and the four ends, notice, name, nurture, and navigate, you have a path toward deeper connection with yourself, your loved ones, and the legacy you want to pass on. If today's episode spoke to you, share it with someone who's ready to step into this work too and follow the show so you never miss an episode. Remember, you may not have chosen what you inherited, but you can choose what comes next.