You Can't Outrun Grief With Sunny Joy McMillan

After "unhitching" herself from her high-conflict marriage, Sunny Joy McMillan ran... far. After three years of running, she was hit with massive grief for her ex-husband and the life she no longer lived. We're talking about the losses we create ourselves (like chosen breakups, moves, and job changes) and how you can never really outrun grief.

Transcript

Well,

Sunny,

Thank you so much for coming on the show.

I am so stoked to tell all of our listeners that we are recording this face-to-face,

Which I have never done before,

In a live studio in Seattle.

Most of our grief growers know that I traveled to Seattle for my little break between seasons of coming back,

And Sunny and I actually got to meet in person,

Which is so cool.

So I'm having a moment.

I hope everybody knows that I'm having a moment.

Sunny,

Thank you so much for coming on,

And I would love if you could start us off with your lost story.

Yeah,

Well,

I'm just so excited that you're here.

It's so fun,

Too.

It's so rare for me to get guests that are in studio,

So for us to be able to do this together today is just really fun.

So thanks for coming out to our studio here in Seattle.

So my lost story is around my divorce,

And I think I run a divorce support group currently in Seattle,

And so I hear a lot of divorce loss stories.

And I think the thing that surprised me about mine is that I was the one who ultimately pulled the plug on the marriage,

And so it was my choice.

And of course,

My now ex-husband,

At the time,

He was not a big supporter of this idea.

And so it was just an interesting place to be to be able to create the loss myself,

But still feel the grief of it so viscerally.

And our marriage was a very high conflict marriage from day one,

And I used to say we were like kerosene and fire,

And we were both two strong-willed attorneys.

And so it was a very—our life looked really good from the outside.

We had everything that our culture tells us you are supposed to have to be happy.

But the problem was that behind closed doors,

Our marriage was incredibly difficult,

And I think it was just hard from day one.

And so it surprised me because by the time I got the courage to leave and had the clarity around what I knew I needed to do to be able to create more peace in my life and to create,

I thought,

You know,

Just to create the right life that I had desired.

And it just didn't feel like that could happen within the bounds of the marriage,

Just given how we communicated and how we related.

So by the time I did make that decision,

There was so much anger and resentment that had just built up for years,

For 12 years.

And I ran far and fast,

Fueled by my anger.

And I would say I would even call a lot of it rage.

And I was completely unexpectedly hit with grief about three or four years after the fact,

And I did not see it coming.

I thought,

Number one,

Because it was my decision,

And number two,

Because so many years had passed and I just thought the anger had just chewed up whatever real emotion I had in there.

Well,

Not that anger isn't a real emotion,

But let's say anger had chewed up whatever other difficult painful emotions were in there,

And oh my goodness,

Was I wrong.

And I actually,

My ex-husband and I now have a better relationship than we did when we were married.

And through,

You know,

A several year process of forgiveness and amends,

And it's when that started happening that I think it opened the door for the grief,

And it was like tidal waves of crashing grief.

That sounds like a lot to process.

And I wrote down as you were talking,

Point one and point two,

And point one was I did this myself,

So why should I be feeling grief over it?

And one of the very first episodes of Coming Back I ever did with Iris Rankin was called The Griefs We Create,

Or was all about the griefs we create.

Yes,

I heard that one.

Things like breakups,

Things like moving,

Things like taking career change,

Things like picking up our lives and making them something different.

Like I have no right to feel grief about this because I did it to myself,

But I'm like we can also have self-inflicted or self-instigated,

Self-catalyzed grief because we start these moments in our lives.

And then the second thing that you had said as a point as a right not to have grief is that so much time had passed.

Yeah.

It's like I shouldn't have a right to be grieving because anger or time or whatever other emotion has had its way with my grief,

And so why is it existing now?

I want to kind of rewind a little bit and go back to you said you came to this point of clarity where you knew that you could not go forward without this divorce happening.

And I'm kind of wondering all these questions I'm like,

Who,

What,

Where,

What?

How did that happen for you?

Was it another person that gave you that clarity?

Was a flash of insight for you?

Did you kind of how did you stumble across this idea that this was the decision that needed to be made for your life?

Yeah,

And that's a great question.

And then the work that I do now,

Which is guide women all the way from the should I stay or should I go zone through I call it unsticking a marriage,

And that can be divorce or it can be using tools and techniques that can help at least get you to a different place where perhaps reconciliation is possible.

But to answer your question,

I knew there was an intuitive voice that I wasn't raised to listen to my intuition.

It wasn't something that was taught in my house,

And it was more how do I know that I need to be outside of this marriage?

How do I know that this is not my right life?

But there was a still small voice,

And there were a couple of catalysts.

Number one,

I had a best friend at the time,

And my ex-husband was a big workaholic,

And he was battling depression for the tail for probably the last half of our marriage.

And so I basically was like a single girl at that time,

And my best friend in the world was not married.

And so we had lots of resources and a lot of time.

I wasn't working,

And I realized we would just go and travel and do and go to exercise together.

And I just realized this is what I want in a partner.

This is what I want in a romantic partner,

And my marriage has never been this.

It's just been this facade of perfection on the outside,

But there is no connection.

We don't enjoy each other's company.

We're not kind to each other.

We don't enjoy the same things,

And there were just a lot of reasons for that.

So it was this realization that,

Wow,

I want in a romantic partner what I have in this best friend.

So there was that.

And then I also found the writing of Dr.

Martha Becker.

Really,

It found me.

Yeah.

So I read her book,

Finding Your Own North Star,

And it was like a bell that you couldn't unring.

I knew that I was not in my right life.

I love that phrase.

I've never heard that before.

Yeah.

Well,

It just got louder and louder,

And I devoured her books in quick succession,

And I just realized that there was this quote that was paraphrased from the Buddha that when you encounter a body of water,

You will know it as the ocean because it tastes of salt.

In the same way,

You will know enlightenment and truth because it tastes of freedom,

Not safety,

Not comfort,

But freedom.

And I realized I'd been living my life with that safety and comfort,

A beaucoup of safety and comfort,

But no freedom,

Not because I was partnered.

My gosh,

You can be partnered and be as free as a bird,

Or you can be singled and shackled up to high heaven.

But for me,

My most authentic essential self was not being nourished by my marriage,

And so it was those two things that made me realize I needed to get outside the bounds of that comfort and make a big brave choice,

Jump off the cliff and trust that the net would appear the life that I thought that I needed to be living in it,

And it did ultimately,

Thank goodness,

But not without grief for the whole life,

Even though it wasn't the right life.

Right.

You can grieve things that are wrong for you.

Yeah,

Okay.

See,

I didn't know that.

I love saying it now because I'm getting chills in my listening to know that this is a signal for,

Okay,

Now we're talking about something we really need to be talking about.

This is what we came to talk about today,

Is you can grieve things that are wrong for you.

Will you say more about that?

Like what else,

What other evidence or- Oh,

What a great question.

I love to turn it back around on me.

I love it.

I think,

Well,

What the grief recovery method teaches,

And this is the modality that I was trained in as so many of my listeners know,

The definition of grief is not losing something you loved or something that has your heart and soul being torn away from you.

The definition of grief is the collection of emotions that appear after the end of or change in a normal pattern of behavior.

This is why people can grieve abusive fathers.

This is why people can grieve being in zones of turmoil or in refugee camps or things of that nature,

Or I miss what that life was like.

I'm grieving what that life was like,

Or grieving relationships that don't work,

That don't work for you,

That aren't aligned with your spirit or even people that were not kind to us.

People are like,

They were a monster to you.

Why are you grieving them?

Or they never fit into your life anyway.

Why are you grieving them?

You never really liked that dog.

Why are you grieving him?

Anything.

It can apply to so many things.

The reason that we grieve is not because we miss their attributes necessarily,

Or we miss who they were to us,

But they provided what was our sense of normal.

It was the comfort.

It was the bukus of normalcy,

The comfort in the routine and the image that they left on our lives.

They were a piece of our identity.

All people are pieces of us,

Whether or not we want to acknowledge it,

Which I think is very cool.

I'm hearing that a lot from you as well as you seem to be growing out of this container.

I'm getting an image of a plant that needs to be repotted and the roots are all coming out of the bottom of the plant.

You're like,

Okay,

I got to get into a different container as a result of this.

You see all these other containers.

You're like,

That's kind of working.

I've had experiences with this other plant and this other container.

I think I need to be in some different soil,

Some different space.

I wrote down on here,

You said you help.

We're getting into this at the end of the show as well,

Kind of where people can find you in your work,

But you help people unstick their marriages,

Whether that's through divorce or through a series of tools.

I'm wondering kind of where that sticky verbiage came from for you or kind of what comes up for you when you say that about your work.

Well,

Actually,

If I'm being completely honest,

It came because in creating and coming up with the title for my book,

The book is called Unhitched,

Unlock Your Courage and Clarity and Unstick Your Bad Marriage.

It was,

I really like alliteration or I wanted it all to kind of flow and we were trying to come up with words that conveyed movement and getting out of stagnation,

But not necessarily meaning you just go straight to divorce.

We were trying to find that place where it suggests that there is,

If you can just do one thing differently,

Perhaps you can get some movement and then from that position,

You will have better clarity about what you want to do.

I'm getting an image of like pulling your feet up out of the mud,

Not running for the hills.

Yes.

Which is really helpful.

I love that.

I'm kind of curious going into now like the next steps of this running for you,

The announcing the news or sitting down with your now ex-husband and being like,

This is what I want and I need.

How did that go for you as a conversation between the two of you if it was like a one-time thing or it happened over months or years and then kind of what was the radiating effect on friends and family and people who had seen you as this,

This is who you are as a couple and now you're uncoupling.

Yes,

Exactly.

Yeah,

So we actually and I suggest this for clients when it is appropriate or doable for them.

So because I was in really high conflict marriage and I was working with a great therapist at the time in Austin and when you're constantly in that fight or flight response,

You're in a totally different portion of your brain than your rational brain and not that I think this needs to be a decision that comes from the trifecta of head,

Heart and gut,

Not just a pro and con list from your head.

But we were not in our rational minds because there was just so much conflict and so we did what was called a structured separation.

That's not a legal term but I think it's a term that I think I've heard from various other people and it's basically you create an environment where you're still married and you write the rules.

Do you want to see each other once a week?

Are you going to go to counseling?

Will you wear your rings?

Will you date other people?

Where will you live?

And so we were in a structured separation at about six months.

We were seeing a therapist a couple times a week and because we could not seem to communicate,

We just kept talking past each other for years.

Neither one of us felt heard.

Neither one of us felt understood.

So we had to have this intermediary basically to be able to facilitate communication.

It was exhausting and I got to a point during that separation,

The idea was to go in and put a bow on a shared narrative so that whether or not we reconciled or dissolved the union,

We could put that old story on a shelf because clearly it hadn't served us.

So it was within the bounds of this that we agreed that if one of us knew that we knew that we knew that we couldn't reconcile that we would let the other know so it didn't just go on and string the other person along.

And I got to that point at about the six month mark and I knew.

And it was really,

I might have,

If I'm being completely honest,

I hit that point earlier but I was still just too scared.

That's been the hardest thing I've ever had to say to anybody in my life was I can't reconcile with you.

We need to go toward divorce.

So yeah,

It was shared in that balance.

And then in terms of what we shared with friends and family,

I was so concerned with all those years of my life with the facade of perfection that we kept the separation a secret.

So then it made it all the more difficult when we went to everyone and we're like,

Oh,

By the way,

We're getting divorced.

And they're like,

What?

We didn't even know there was anything going on.

And not that I would do it any differently,

It's just I live from a much different place now and authenticity,

Integrity and honesty are more important to me than appearances.

That's one of the biggest differences.

Yeah.

And then now,

So I would have handled it differently if I did it over again in terms of how we shared and how honest we were.

Yeah.

What's the bow for you?

Putting the bow on it.

Ooh,

That is a good question.

What's the story that you've landed on for this?

Because how far out are you now from this divorce?

We got separated in 2011.

Divorce proceedings began in 2012.

Okay.

So six,

Seven years.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it took us,

We had a pretty tumultuous go there for about three years until I came back with a letter that was all about forgiveness and amends and that kind of opened the door for us talking.

But the,

So the bow that I,

Well,

And I don't know if I'm going into territory that is not where you normally go in your podcast.

Have at it.

You can swear if you want to.

Okay.

Which is so I'm so used to having to FCC rules for the show that I've really toned my language down for podcasts and things.

But anyway,

So the bow for me,

I truly believe,

I believe in reincarnation.

I believe that before we incarnate in these bodies,

We sign up for certain potentials for the purpose of soul growth.

I believe that there are very uncomfortable things we experience as humans,

But from a soul perspective,

It's more like a pinprick.

It's more,

It's not even in the eternal timeline of things.

It's kind of like an actor taking on a role.

Yeah,

It looks pretty uncomfortable on the screen,

But it's not,

That's not reality.

It's actually in service of something greater.

And so I believe my ex and I came in here to work out some things to grow each other.

And I believe he taught me some things about self-worth and being comfortable in one's own skin and creating your own way.

I truly believe we signed up to teach each other some things.

And I think our most intimate relationships are the ones that are the greatest teachers because you're really in that friction for an extended period of time in intimate ways.

And I think I don't want to speak for him,

But I know that through our relationship,

He's done some growing too.

I've never seen the change that I've seen in him in the last six years is nothing compared to,

I think the totality of the 12 or 15 years proceeding it,

You know,

That we were together.

That's so well said.

And I,

And I align with you on a lot of those things as well.

And I believe relationships are our biggest catalyst for growth.

And we learn the most about ourselves.

We learn a lot about ourselves in solitude,

But we learn even more about ourselves when we're engaged in relationships with other people,

Whether or not we identify with the traits that they're exhibiting or we're like,

Oh,

I don't identify with the traits they're exhibiting.

So we become more rounded people as we go through life with others and the super uncomfortable,

Sometimes really shitty,

Slap you down,

Pick you back up kind of garbage,

Frankly,

That we go through with,

With other humans.

Especially for the longterm,

Especially in the long haul.

I'm kind of curious now I'm,

I'm entering a zone in my brain where I want to talk about the recognition of grief,

This run,

Run,

Run,

Run,

Run,

Run,

Run,

Run,

Run.

I think that anger is taken care of it.

I think that time is taken care of it.

And then all of a sudden you're like,

You open your door and you're like,

Oh,

There's grief.

Like what the hell?

Yeah.

I want to talk about like what that time was like for you and then how,

How grief came up,

How it made itself known in your life.

Yeah.

Okay.

So it's an interesting setup because toward the,

When my divorce proceedings were going and the tail end of my marriage I met my current partner.

And it was,

The timing was not ideal.

But I just,

We had such a connection that I thought,

You know,

Screw timing.

I can't not follow this breadcrumb because it was,

It was big and it's,

I mean,

We've been together now for six years and I'm,

I feel so incredibly blessed.

But it's interesting because to be fully involved with this other person and then have this grief over the marriage that I left hitting like three years in,

It was a really weird thing to hold.

And I experienced grief and I had gotten pretty good at a mind-body connection by that point because I'd left the practice of law and I had was,

Because I was in coach training at that time.

So we did a lot of mind-body work and it was just like this huge longing,

Like suck right out of my heart center,

My chest.

There were a lot of tears and it was like tidal waves of rolling grief.

And I thought,

What am I even,

What am I grieving?

And I realized that I ran so far and so fast at the tail end.

I left the city of Austin.

I left,

You know,

Family and friends.

I ghosted a lot of people because I was just in so much pain and needed to hibernate and heal.

So when that door opened and all of this just flood of longing and missing and emotions came up,

Not necessarily just all directed right.

It wasn't at my ex-husband,

It was at the totality of what the life had been.

And so I'm simultaneously knowing that I'm with this awesome partner who is just like the answer to every,

I wouldn't say answer to prayers because that's not how I pray anymore,

But it was just like this gift.

And then at the same time,

Ah,

How can I be missing this old life so much when there's so much awesome new stuff?

So lots of tears.

And frankly,

The first time that I think I'd truly surrendered because I couldn't,

It was something that was too big for me to hold.

And when I say surrender,

The work of Tosha Silver really came into play for me around that time and her book,

Outrageous Openness,

I joined her forum where she does these weekly calls and it's just basically offering things up to the divine.

And by divine,

I don't mean old male God with big white beard.

A Lord.

Yeah,

No,

It's like that,

You know,

We're all droplets of the divine.

Yeah.

And we're just,

We're like the small incarnations of it,

Of the greater,

The greater whole here.

And so,

Yeah,

I just found her work incredibly soothing because I didn't know what else to do with it except go,

Ah,

Can the wisest bigger part of me please take over here?

Because I don't know what to do with it in my little human self.

I love that picture too,

Because that's very similar to what I experienced in my grief as well,

This process of surrender.

But for me,

It was kind of allowing the anger to be held by something else.

I was so insistent on holding onto it myself and I identified with being angry about it.

I was like,

Okay,

Maybe you just need to take this.

Or the universe actually even asked for it.

The universe was like,

Just let me hold this for you.

I can get it.

And I just did not have,

I don't even know if I want to use the F word.

I don't know if I had faith.

I don't know if I had faith that it could hold onto it,

But I was like,

Okay,

If that's going to give me like two seconds of relief,

Then fine,

You can hold it.

What did that actually look like on a day to day physical reality basis?

What does that look like when you hand it over?

Because I don't know what it would look like for me,

But I'm curious.

That's a great question.

I don't know that anybody's ever asked me that before.

And you know,

To be honest,

I don't really remember.

What's really interesting about it is I don't really remember.

A lot of it looked like though,

I'm just getting this image of a kind of as anger would come up through my body.

It's almost like I would take it out of my heart myself and put it in a pile that was separate from me.

Like it would not live in my body anymore.

I would carry it all this anger was my biggest emotion and grief because there was so much left unresolved when my mom died.

But for when it came up,

It was like I stopped needing to put it in a backpack and carry it around with me.

It's like I could just put it in another pile.

Like,

Okay,

Somebody else is going to take care of this.

Like an energetic practice,

Like a visualization,

Like you would envision taking it?

Not even.

But this is me looking back at it now.

I don't remember a lot of what my meditative practices or things look like.

I remember a lot of grasping in my own loss.

I'm looking for answers and looking for resources.

My hands were going out in all directions,

Just like looking for something to hold on to.

But day to day in terms of turning it into a conscious practice,

I don't know that it was actually happening.

I think it was something that worked in the background or maybe even worked in my sleep.

But there was that one moment where I was like,

Okay,

I'm going to let something else hold on to this.

And then there was stuff I did in the day to day.

I was like reading books and things like that that got me to spaces where I could look at grief and emotions beyond anger.

But in terms of an active energetic practice of taking this out of my heart and putting it outside of my body,

That never happened.

I can tell you with 100% certainty that never happened because I don't think I was in a space to recognize that that's what I needed.

The universe was like,

This is probably what you need and I'm going to acknowledge that I can hold this for you.

But I didn't believe it to be true at the time.

I was like,

We'll try this.

We'll see if this fits.

Yeah,

Yeah.

I like how grief came up for you then.

And tidal waves is such a,

It's a consistent imagery that comes around a lot with grief.

And I'm curious with your higher self kind of taking this over,

At that time,

What was the message that your higher self was giving to your droplet self here on the planet?

Yeah.

Well,

So I would,

My daily practice at that point was to just include in my meditation time or my prayer talking to the universe time to just say,

I just,

I've got to offer this up and ask for whatever is in the highest and best interest for all involved.

And it would be a physical and verbal practice every day of me literally offering it up.

And the,

The piece that I got back from that practice,

That was the message I think for me was that we've got this and you can trust that you're in the right place right now.

Everything is in divine right order.

And just,

It's like,

Um,

An eat,

Pray,

Love.

Um,

When Elizabeth Gilbert is on the bathroom floor and she's talking to God and God just says,

Go back to bed,

Liz.

It was more,

I love this book.

Yes.

Yeah.

And so it was,

It was more,

You don't have to know what to do right now.

You may,

You don't need to know that every,

You don't need to have all the answers.

Just know that by offering it up,

We've got this,

You're not alone in it and you'll be shown if anything needs to change.

Cause I would just ask for whatever needed to happen,

Whatever that was.

Um,

Because the times in my life when I what not white knuckled and created or forced things into being,

That's when things didn't work out so well.

But when I trusted that there was a benevolent universe where breadcrumbs would appear and that we were all kind of working in this together,

That made me feel that's when really magical things,

The mystical started to open up for me in a way that I wasn't ever open to before.

And yeah,

I felt very held and I didn't have to know.

So the message was,

Hey,

We got this.

You can just be at peace with it as best as in with all of the roiling emotions in the human body.

You're like,

Do you understand I'm on a ship in the middle of the ocean and we're in a storm right now and you're telling me you've got this?

I'm like,

I don't think that's real.

So I'm kind of curious because I,

As a grieving 20 something,

Uh,

I frequently,

Especially in the beginning,

Would roll my eyes at everything you just said.

Oh yeah.

So what were you rolling your eyes?

I mean,

What would you say in response to this,

To somebody who's like divine order breadcrumbs?

I don't know what the hell you're talking about.

I'm grieving.

Like I get it.

What do you expect?

Well,

Okay.

I shouldn't say I get it because the kind of grief that I experienced,

It was a divorce and it was a divorce I chose.

To me,

That is nothing compared to losing one's mother.

I mean,

I can't,

It's just so I,

I fully recognize that for me to talk about this from this place,

This was my own limited grief experience and I don't want it to,

Um,

I don't want to speak for anyone else's experience.

I would say I would have freaking rolled my eyes at that bullshit too.

I was raised a fundamentalist Christian.

So I went,

I would say I never went to atheistic because I just,

I had seen too much mystical stuff and I was fascinated by near death experience stories and things like that.

So I would say I was more agnostic than anything.

But when I got to that place where I was in so much pain and I just thought,

What the hell,

Let's just see if there's something out there.

And so it all started with numbers on a clock.

Um,

And I growing up,

Whenever I heard 11,

11,

You see that on the clock,

You make a wish.

And so the wish that I started making when I was in all of that pain was I wish that whatever is supposed to happen,

What happened,

Whatever that is,

Cause I don't know.

And all of a sudden amazing people started coming into my life.

Amazing circumstances presented themselves,

Things that seemed hopeless.

All of a sudden new possibilities were emerging and I started seeing 11,

11 everywhere.

It was my flight out of the country.

It was my hotel room.

It was on the clock every freaking 12 hours.

And you know,

Who knows,

Maybe that was just all coincidence.

I personally don't believe in that anymore.

But at the time I just thought,

You know what,

This is kind of cool.

What if I do lean into this even a little harder?

And there was a quote that I think that's attributed to Einstein.

I don't know if it's accurate or not,

But I love it.

So I just go with it with the disclaimer that I'm not sure what the original source was,

But that the biggest decision that we'll make in a lifetime is whether we believe it's a friendly universe.

And even in the midst of my pain,

I thought,

You know what,

Let's just,

Let's just try this and see what happens.

And good,

Good things started to happen.

Good things continue to happen.

And so I would just say,

You know what,

What the hell?

If you're at your wits end,

If you're ready,

If you can't hold the reins anymore,

Just try it.

And if nothing good happens,

You can go right back to the other way.

That's always the option.

And I'd love,

Thank you so much for that answer because it's exactly what I speak for it in so much of my grief work is that grief is an experiment.

Grief is a giant scavenger hunt.

Grief is this process of,

Again,

I use this grasping emotion a lot,

But kind of reaching out,

Grabbing on,

If it works,

Hold onto it.

If it doesn't let it go.

And it's very much a point where in the free fall,

If you're finding a branch is supporting you,

Stick with it.

If you find that it's just like running through your hands and you're like,

But this is what I've always relied on and it's running through my head.

Like,

Oh,

Yeah.

And it's so hard to practice in the moment,

But you bring so much like a lightness and like a joy to it when you're like,

Okay,

Grief is an experiment.

I don't need this to work.

If it doesn't work,

I can go back to the old thing or the other thing or what I used to lean on or what I was raised with or what they told me to do,

All these kinds of things.

And so I love that acknowledgement for you because that's,

That's my response to the people that roll their eyes because I'm like,

Even through grief,

We are growing.

And they're like,

Are you sure about that?

Because I'm in a lot of pain right now.

And I'm like,

Just try it on.

Just try it on.

Like a dressing room.

Yeah.

And I don't know about you,

But yeah,

I mean,

There may,

I wasn't ready to even be open to that stuff.

Even in a loss that was just as small as divorce,

I wasn't even open or ready for that till a certain point.

There's a certain point.

I remember Martha Beck,

She was,

I can't remember what,

Whichever books it's from,

But she said,

There's a reason it's called depressed,

Deep rest.

And I just remember laying on my couch for months during that separation where I couldn't,

Didn't want to do anything else,

Couldn't do anything else,

But just be in a place of deep rest to allow my body,

I think to my psyche and my body to heal enough where I could even be open to these possibilities.

So I have,

I don't know about you,

But I can't,

I mean,

I understand for someone who's just so in the thick of it,

That that's not even a possibility for them yet.

I hear you.

And I want to take a quick second to acknowledge,

I know we talked a bit before we got on the air today about comparing losses.

And I think for everybody,

Grief is as big as grief is.

I don't know how to phrase it in a better way than that,

But to compare a grief and loss like the death of my mom to your divorce,

It doesn't really matter because in the large scope of our life,

It's the biggest thing that's ever happened.

And it's such a big deal.

And to say that what you learned might not be as relevant or what I learned might be more about things like that is it's tricky.

I usually tell people not to get into the habit too much of comparing the pain of loss as much as you can compare,

Like the most you can ever really compare is logistics.

Like it happened on this day I was this age,

You know,

And even then it's all dependent on your life experience.

How were you raised?

What was the religion?

What part of the country,

You know,

What language did you speak?

Were you on good terms or on bad terms?

All these other things.

There's so many variables in grief that it's so hard to compare.

And for some people,

Even in their own lives,

They try and compare one loss to another loss.

So things like I wasn't as sad when my dad died as when I lost my first cat or something like that.

And they think that they're not allowed.

People think they're allowed and not allowed to do so many things with grief because it's ranked on some invisible severity scale.

Like this must be worse than that.

And so I'm not allowed to feel X,

Y,

Z.

But I've had so many people come up and tell me,

I said,

This,

This,

This show,

This podcast,

This coming back,

The Grief Growers Garden group has helped me validate that I have a right to grieve losses that other people deem as trivial or that this is the biggest thing that ever happened to me.

Or I've experienced 13 different people dying in my lifetime and I'm still really,

Really sad about the cat.

Like just,

Just allowing that to be what it is.

So I'm taking a second to acknowledge that like we're in the same boat in the middle of the storm because of two totally different losses.

But,

But,

Um,

But I think the wisdom that we all garner from our grief is so,

So valuable.

Yep.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I want to kind of switch gears.

I know we're nearing the end of our time here and talk about how you got from attorney in Texas to book author,

Life coach,

Radio hostess in Seattle and kind of that whole journey and where grief fit in and where,

And where this higher voice fit in for you as well.

Yeah,

Really it is for me,

It has just been a manner of a matter of following breadcrumbs.

When I knew that I needed to leave my marriage,

That was all I knew at that point.

I had this amorphous idea that I wanted to work with people in a field of service.

I did not want to go back to law.

I knew that while I was fond of and cared deeply for my ex-husband that we were not good in a romantic relationship,

I knew I wanted to get back to the West coast,

But I didn't know how any of that stuff was going to come together.

And it just,

Shelby,

It was so incredible just at the exact right time the door would open.

And for example,

Like I met my current partner,

He was from Seattle originally.

He asked me if I wanted to move up here.

So here's my West coast.

I'd never been North of San Francisco at that time.

And I got up here and we did a volunteer trip abroad and I had like a thousand emails in my inbox.

We had a stopover with some internet because we'd been working in like a remote jungle area in Thailand with some elephants.

And anyway,

The first email I land on is Martha Beck,

Life coach training.

And I thought her books were transformative.

It was like a,

It was a direct from my heart to the register now button,

Which I'd never done in my life before.

It was pro and con list out the wazoo.

What's going to be the right school?

What's the right training?

Blah,

Blah,

Blah.

Nope.

I just signed up,

Started that.

And that's just,

And then by virtue of that,

That's how the radio show came about because I was meeting so many neat people through that training that I wanted to share their work with a broader audience.

So every time a door would open,

I would push it and walk through.

And I was open to those doors being there because I,

Every day was getting up and saying,

Hey,

This continues to go pretty well when I'm wishing that whatever is supposed to happen would happen,

Whatever that is.

What have you got for me now?

And so here we sit and yeah,

It's five or six,

Seven years later.

And I'm still following the breadcrumbs.

I don't know where else it's going to take me.

We were just talking about before we got on the air today,

I'm looking,

Feeling drawn to Northern California now.

Never lived there,

But I'm just feeling the draw.

So we're going to go check it out.

So yeah,

I'm just going to keep following.

And if there's one piece of wisdom that you could offer other,

Other grievers,

Just other folks who are in the thick of it and their relationships and they're feeling stuck stagnant,

What's like the biggest truth that you convey in your work?

Okay.

If I can,

There are two things.

Follow your most essential self,

Not your social self,

Not the self that needs to please other people,

Not the people in your life,

The family of origin,

The religious figures,

The teachers,

The colleagues,

Whatever,

All the people who have a,

Have a,

An opinion about what you should do.

Um,

Go inward,

Not outward and follow the freedom.

And again,

Just because you can be free within a marriage,

You can be shackled up outside of a marriage.

When I say follow the freedom,

Follow what feels the most expansive in your heart space,

Whatever that is,

Even if it doesn't make sense to anyone else.

I absolutely love it.

And those are two things that you can take with you literally anywhere.

Yes.

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Daniel….

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Reviews

This hit so close to home that it almost felt like it was created just for me, but I think that's also the point of the story--you have to be open to doing (or even just trying) something different if you're not living your best and most authentic life, because you'll never know what might be possible if you don't even try. I particularly appreciated the part that spoke about how making a temporary change to try and live a more peaceful life is just that, it's temporary, and you can always return to feeling miserable if you want to. It's far less scary to think about something as temporary vs permanent, and the final decision is still yours to make. Thank you so much for this incredibly valuable and thought provoking episode 🙏

This was good to hear. I myself have done the GRM 7 times now, as I host the group process in my home (well, I look forward to to returning to it after this current fiasco). I am currently doing one on one of my two dogs that passed away this month but I have done my divorce my business, my business partner, family members and friends who have passed and “updated” relationships with each of my three children and my twin sister. I even did the process on myself. Obviously, I think it’s a tremendous program in that woman who is certified to run it is a dear friend of mine and does fantastic and compassionate facilitating. Thank for sharing your stories. 🙏