Embracing Healing & Finding Resilience

Navigating Grief and Finding Your Emotional Shoreline

In this heartfelt episode of Real and Rooted, Lori Kendall shares honest reflections on grief, healing, and how life continues moving forward even when we're not ready. If you're quietly struggling with loss or life transitions, this episode offers compassionate insights and practical ways to stay grounded through your journey.

Key Topics Covered:

•  Understanding the emotional shoreline: what it is and how to reach it
•  The paradox of grief moving at its own pace, unlike societal schedules
•  How grief waves resemble the ocean—overwhelming at times, calmer over time
•  The importance of grounding practices, like water and nature, in healing
•  Reflection questions to identify where you feel stuck or moving forward
•  The myth of linear grief and embracing your own pace
•  Building honesty and community in your healing process
•  Practical steps to honor love and loss simultaneously
•  Encouragement to find small moments of hope and joy amidst grief

 Timestamps: 

 00:00 - Welcome and overview of honest conversations about grief and healing
 00:28 - Introduction to the emotional shoreline concept
 01:46 - Lori's grounding exercise: taking a deep breath to reset
 02:29 - What makes grief a "quiet" and often unspoken journey
 04:02 - The experience of noticing others life moves forward after loss
 05:00 - Personal story of grief during Thanksgiving and societal pressures
 06:12 - The pace of grief versus the pace of culture and expectations
 07:16 - The unpredictability of grief triggers and how it arrives unexpectedly
 08:07 - Moving forward with grief while carrying the loss like a stone
 09:00 - Reflective journaling prompts for honesty about your grief process
 10:21 - Recognizing where you feel stuck or left behind
 11:20 - The importance of understanding that grief isn't linear or fast
 13:38 - Physical grounding practices: water, nature, and finding your personal space
 14:27 - Grief as the ocean: waves, tide shifts, and reaching the shore
 15:12 - The significance of small moments in healing (laughter, hope)
 16:46 - Living fully while still honoring love and loss
 17:30 - Allowing your grief to flow at your own pace
 18:44 - Creating a safe space for honest conversations and community support
 20:09 - Recognizing signs of healing in small moments and new beginnings
 21:21 - Moving forward step by step, with honesty and courage
 22:14 - Final thoughts: healing is about carrying love forward, not leaving it behind

Resources & Links:

• Reflective Roots — Support for navigating grief

• Missing Pieces: The Final Salute

Connect with Lori Kendall:

• Instagram

• Facebook

Remember: Healing is a non-linear process. Embrace your unique timeline, be gentle with yourself, and let small moments of hope find their place in your journey.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

I work as a free navigator. A companion for the tough times of life. The final stuff in your house. Each week we explore the experiences. The breakthroughs and the honest conversations that transform who we are becoming. This is a space to reconnect with yourself. Reclaim the pieces that you've lost along the way. And grow in ways you never thought were possible or expected. Let's get rooted and begin. Welcome to Real and Rooted, where honest conversations about grief, healing, and navigating real life happen. This space is for honest conversations about the real situations that we're facing in life. Grief, whether it be loss of a child or a loved one, the relationships that aren't coming to fruition, whether it be divorce, separation, or just a relationship that you haven't quite mastered, healing and rebuilding when life knocks you down. And we talk about the quiet moments where everything changes. When this podcast first began, it focused on slowing down, on breathing, and finding that moment of stillness. If you joined us Sunday evening, you heard me speak about the emotional shoreline. When the waves of life keep crashing over top of you, you must find that solid ground. This becomes your emotional shoreline, the place that never leaves you, and you can find solitude in. Because before we can face the real parts of life, we have to get grounded enough to hold them. So here we start by rooting ourselves just for a moment, and then we talk honestly about what life actually looks like. I'm Lori Kendall, and together we're learning how to stay real, stay rooted, and navigate life one honest conversation at a time. So before we begin, take one slow breath with me. Not to escape life for a moment, but to ground yourself in it. The conversations we have here aren't about pretending life is easy. In fact, I want you to take that social mask off that we all sometimes find ourselves wearing. Because it's about being rooted enough in our strength to face what's real. Now let's talk about the real part. Wednesdays here on Real and Rooted are what I call our dive-in conversations. These episodes go deeper. The moments that don't always get said out loud, maybe because of embarrassment, maybe because we are finding ourselves in our own turtle shell, afraid to face what is really happening. And if you've ever experienced loss, deep change, or have felt that the world kept moving forward while part of your life stood still, then today's conversation might feel very familiar. Because one of the strangest and hardest realities of grief is this. Life keeps moving even when you're not ready for it to. Imagine this moment. You wake up one morning after your loss. Maybe it's been a few weeks, maybe months, maybe years, and something suddenly becomes very clear. The world around you is continuing like nothing happened. People are going to work, making dinner plans, talking excitedly about weekend activities, laughing at ordinary things. And you're standing there thinking, How is everyone else moving forward when part of my life stopped? This moment happens to many people navigating grief. It happened to me. I couldn't understand why people were wondering why I couldn't get over my loss, why they were asking why I was stuck. There's this realization that the world didn't stop the day your heart, my heart broke. And that realization, wow, it can feel incredibly lonely. I know I isolated myself at my job. I have still done so and still continue to do so. I can't seem to be that social character that I used to be. But one of the hardest realities of grief is that it moves at a completely different pace than the world around us. Our culture runs on schedules, whether it be work deadlines, school calendars, social expectations, our life whole or our life household obligations. If you have young children still in school, they have activities and social events themselves that they are expected to partake in. But grief doesn't recognize those calendars. Grief, unfortunately and fortunately, moves at the speed of the heart. Sometimes it moves slowly. Sometimes it arrives unexpectedly. Sometimes it waits quietly, then shows up months later in the middle of an ordinary moment. This happened to me. At Thanksgiving, which was Cole and I's favorite holiday, I felt the tears trickling. I know he wanted to be there, and yet the realization that he wasn't became very apparent. Someone said something to me that just sent me into a crippling cry and I couldn't seem to pull myself together. No one around me understood it. I usually don't cry in front of my other children, but this time I couldn't help it. And because we don't talk openly about grief very often you feel pressure to move on. But grief isn't something that you can move on from. I've tried. Sometimes I put my hand in there to make sure that it's still there. Not because I want it to be, but because it's relevant. And learning how to do that, continuing life while carrying grief. I want to pause for a moment and offer a reflection question. So if you joined us Sunday evening, I gave you some journaling questions. If anybody knows me and knows how I work through my own grief, it is through writing. I hope that you are able to do the same. I find it very peaceful. It gives me the space to say the things that are too hard to say out loud sometimes. So here's a few reflection questions that I would like for you to write down. And they don't have to be perfect answers because, as you know, life's not perfect. This podcast is not perfect. I want it to be real. Because I don't know about you, but I get tired of wearing that social mask that I feel like I have to hide behind sometimes. So without further ado, your reflection questions that I would like for you to answer, take time to ask yourself and answer. Where in your life might you feel like the world moved forward, but part of you is still standing still? Maybe you're on that shoreline and the waves become those that are within your social circle still thriving. And here's another reflection question for you. Are there any emotions that you've been trying to rush past? Maybe you feel like you should be further along by now. I lost my son over two years ago at this point, and I think a lot of times I bottle everything up and I put on a very good demeanor for others. And whereas my husband grieves differently, and he at times may not look like he's as far along. I sometimes question whether people understand grief, understand me, understand where I'm at. Sometimes I make myself feel guilty for some days being okay. And then I'm reminded that my grief is still there on others, and I question if I'm strong enough to carry on my son's legacy. But if you're listening while you're walking, driving, or sitting quietly somewhere, just notice what comes up. What feelings are you feeling when you think about how the world moved forward? And maybe part of you feels stuck when you ask yourself, are there emotions that you're trying to push down? Because you need or feel you need to put out a certain persona to your friends or family? Do you secretly question why you're not further along in your grief process by now? You see, there's no right or wrong answer. Only honesty. And I'm gonna reference back to the emotional shoreline. It's gonna be an idea that comes up often. Uh, I talk about it reaching that emotional shoreline. It um is that spot where you feel solitude. Uh, I told you my grounding area is by water and needing to be, whether it be at the ocean or at the bay. Um sometimes you'll find me kayaking on a lake, but it's that one piece of life where I feel like I am me again. I am this person that can stand up without my legs quivering, without my legs shaking, without feeling as though I'm going to collapse. I explained it Sunday as you know, standing on the beach where you feel the warm granular sand under your feet. You hear the crashing of the waves onto the shoreline. Even though they're crashing, I still feel solid. Imagine grief like the ocean. In the beginning the waves are constant, they're sharp, they have a lot of pull, and at times the strong waves feel overwhelming. But it can be like you are barely staying afloat. But over time something begins to change. The tide will shift, the waves don't disappear, they just feel different. But there are moments when your feet begin to touch that sand again. That moment where you realize you can stand. This is what I call reaching your emotional shoreline. It's not the end of grief, it's the beginning of learning how to live again while still carrying the love that you had for your loved one and the feelings of sorrow and their loss, but feeling it together. You're carrying both, that love and loss, at the same time, and neither one is becoming so overwhelming that you feel like you're drowning. Reaching that shoreline often happens through those very small moments. They're the missing pieces that at times we take for granted during everyday life. But the shoreline looks like the very first genuine laugh after losing your loved one. Making a plan for the future again, realizing that your heart still has space for hope, and that you can continue with activities and feel like you're not leaving them behind. These moments in life can feel confusing because part of you may still be grieving deeply, and another part of you is slowly beginning to live again. That tension is not a problem. It's part of healing. And healing doesn't mean that you're forgetting them, it means you're learning how to carry their love forward. If you find yourself feeling out of sync with the world around you, here are a few gentle ways to navigate that space. Allow your pace to be your pace. There is no universal timeline for grief. No stages, it's not linear, it will come and go, and you will find yourself flowing in and out of each stage of grief multiple times. Give your language to your emotions. So sometimes saying out loud, this moment is hard. And that example that I gave you of Thanksgiving, I really wish I would have vocalized that to my loved ones around me. Because it's okay not to have to do this alone. But saying those words, recognizing how hard and difficult it can be, can be incredibly grounding. Find a safe space for honest conversations, whether it be supportive communities, whether you're working with me navigating your grief. Maybe we're working on creative healing. That guided grief navigation can help people process moments. These moments, the hard ones. Work like this is part of what and why I created reflective roots. It's where the focus on helping people navigate loss and relationships and the life transitions with honesty and support. It can be the difference between that grounded healing that you're so desperately trying to achieve and finding yourself floundering still. But no one, no one, and I repeat, no one should feel like they have to navigate these moments alone. So before we close today's conversation, I want to offer you a few more reflection questions, and I promise I won't get out of sync or on a tangent. But I want you to ask yourself what small moments in your life right now might be signs that healing is quietly happening? Maybe it's that moment where you did find yourself laughing at a joke or finding the comfort in something that your loved one would have loved. Where might you need permission to move at a pace your heart actually needs? Maybe it's taking a step back from those family gatherings. Maybe it's changing up those traditions. Create new ones. And what would it look like to honor both love and loss in the life you're continuing to build? We're taking steps every day. One step at a time. Real life is complicated. Sometimes heartbreaking. Sometimes confusing. But when we stay grounded, we can begin navigating it with honesty and courage. Thank you for joining me this Wednesday for our dive-in conversation on Real and Rooted. If this episode resonated with you, take a few moments after listening to reflect on one of the questions we shared today. You might journal about it. You might sit quietly with it. Or you might share this episode with someone who needs to hear that they're not alone. And if you're walking through grief or a life transition right now, I want you to remember something. Healing doesn't mean leaving love behind. It means learning how to carry it forward in a new way. Until next time, stay real, stay rooted, and keep navigating life one honest moment at a time. I'll see you on Sunday for our Sunday shoreline. In Missing Pieces, The Final Salute, a mother's journey through service, sorrow, and survival, you'll walk through my story of preparing for the service of grief, of resilience, and rediscovery. And along the way, I hope you find space for your own story. This book isn't about being perfect. It's about becoming whole again, even when some pieces feel forever changed. Order your copy of Missing Pieces today on Amazon or at MissingPiecesbook.com. Join other readers who are finding their own story, encapsulate it within the pages. Gain insights and learn more at Real and Rooted Podcast, where real stories take root and healing grows. Missing Peace is the final salute, a mother's journey through service, sorrow, and survival. A story of love, loss, and becoming whole again.