 This is Holistic Wellness Revealed. I'm Letitia Sharp welcoming you to a safe place where together we will explore the infinite possibilities on this journey of holistic wellness. Today's what we're going to explore is something that I think a lot of us have had maybe a little more of over the last few years and most certainly everyone has experienced this. We're going to talk about how do we transition? How do we transform grief into finding joy in our hearts? First of all, what I'd like to do is talk about what is the definition that most people have of grief. In this life, I've been able to experience both birth and death and I have to say that both experiences are very humbling and extremely profound and I feel a calmness in both and I want to explore that there's all kinds of deaths. There can be deaths with people the most common that we think of right away or are for families so when they leave that's very very challenging. We have relationships, people go through divorces, they go through changing friendships, changing the kinds of relationships that they have. We have deaths of ideas. I had an idea before that I was a certain role to my daughter as a mother and I went through a death of that as she grows older because my role has to change. Transformations, we can have transformations in ego, transformations in our life path. I've heard so many people including myself say, oh, we have started a new life. Oh, I can remember when that happened. That's when my new life started. That's when I really feel like I started to live. As you can tell, there's all different ways of transforming and I'd like to actually invite you to redefine your idea of your definition of death and see if there's somewhere inside of you that can recognize that death is actually a transformation. It's a change. And with change can be an open gateway, an open gateway to a new path, to a new way of thinking, to a new perspective, to a new kind of relationship, and a new awareness of being really. So when we think about grief and how we transform ourselves through experiences of death, what we think about is pain. And pain happens. Pain is a part of everyday life. And what I've noticed and what I practice is to find a way to release the suffering of pain. Once I release the suffering, I can actually move through the pain and it's not as hard. It's easier. It's easier to see the lining in the clouds. It's easier to welcome the rainbows. It's easier to see the thorns on the flowers as just a part of the growth rather than something that is going to define the experience. Another thing that I feel is really important to recognize about grief is to honor the timing. A lot of people feel like they have to rush through the process. And as you rush through that process, what tends to happen is you don't really go through the process. You actually stop and you distract yourself with other actions, with other things, with other thoughts and ideas. And it's a part of this process to be able to get to the other side of that suffering. So definitely honor how much time it takes. Don't try to rush it. Don't compare yourself to other people's experiences of how they dealt with it. If there's some sort of support that can be gained from those experiences, then by all means find support in those ways. At the same time, really fully sit with yourself through that process of grief. I know that there are five stages of grief. I'm going to touch base with them briefly, but I really don't want to spend a whole bunch of time with the five stages. I feel like a lot of people are familiar with the five stages. First of all, we have denial. So when you just don't even want to believe that it's happened, you're in shock. Then you're mad that it happened because it's a big change. Even with relationships and a death of anything, you can get mad. And then you start thinking, oh, if only that's the bargaining stage. If only this would have happened or that would have happened or something else could happen in place of that's the bargaining stage. And then depression, really letting it sink in and starting to deal with those emotions. And then finally coming to acceptance. So as you can feel, these are all emotions. And those are ways of getting through grief as well as one aspect. As you know, unholistic wellness reveals what we do is we work through all parts of ourselves. So no one part of us can fully be operating at an optimal level without all the other parts operating at their optimal levels. So it's important for us to look at all parts of ourselves. So let's start with the physical part. And I want to go through kind of the things that you might feel in your physical body with grief. And one would be you could feel heavy-chested. You feel like there's a weight on your chest and you can't get it off. You could not be able to sleep. You could sleep a ton. You could find yourself not being able to really wake up. Your structure and your routine is completely disrupted. So you have to find ways to be able to replace that thing that's gone or find ways to operate in a new way throughout your day. Finding a new business as usual, so to speak. What I feel is more important is how we can quote unquote cure those things. One thing that we could do is exercise. We can bring a new exercise quote unquote routine into our daily living. And we could put ourselves in nature. Nature always brings me back to myself and who I am. You can use crystals. There's all kinds of crystals. I would google what kind of crystals that you would think that you might just google crystals, alleviating grief, crystals helping to release grief. There's so many earth minerals and crystals that can help us on our journey. There's you can get a massage. You can get acupuncture. I highly recommend that you get body work during times of grief. You can use essential oils. One of my favorite essential oils to use with grief and letting people go is frankincense. I'm not recommending this as any kind of a medical cure. I am however saying that it has alleviated my feelings of grief when I've gone through them. Also patchouli is another way of helping to release those attachments and have a loving goodbye, a loving farewell. So those are some things and also another way is that you could commemorate the person or the thing or whatever it is that is a death. And that could be with a necklace. That could be with a ceremony. That could be with a place that you go where you center and you honor what it was that is now no longer the way that it is. These are all different ways to be able to find cheers to your physical feelings with grief. Let's move on to the mental. I think the mental is a lot because we get really caught up in our thoughts, our thoughts about this, our thoughts about that. We can't stop looping our thoughts. We get forgetful. We can't remember things. We overcompensate because we're worried about what other people are thinking about how we're dealing with it or how we're totally judging ourselves about how we're dealing with it. You might not be able to focus on anything. And there are tools out there for all of these things. You can find affirmations. Affirmations are referenced. Louisa, hey, heal your body. She's amazing. One of her big things with grief is your lungs. And your lungs are your breath. So you can breathe. That's a big thing that you could do, too, back to the physical side of things. You could journal. Journaling helps you to get those thoughts out of your head. I would totally suggest having some kind of a dump. Like if you have mental thoughts coming up, I would take three pages every morning when you're grieving. And I would go through and I would just dump everything. You're dumping your emotions. You're dumping your thoughts. You're dumping how you feel physically. You're dumping how you're working on connecting spiritually. So that's a really great tool to be able to help you move through grief. You could take a class. You could learn a new skill, pick up the guitar, pick up a new sport. You could find a support group. Oftentimes when we lose things in our lives, there's other people who have lost the same things. So what we want to do is we want to call on them. We're here as humans. This is about us all helping each other and connecting together in a way that is supportive and that helps each of us grow because ultimately that's what we want to do. We want to grow through this. You could do a gratitude practice. The title of this show is Grief to Gratitude. You can find ways of being thankful for all the things that you have in your life. Even if it's something simple, you look around your room of where you're at. Look around where you're at right now. What do you see around you? This was a beautiful tool given to me by one of my very influential teachers over the last year. Look around yourself. Identify your environment. Identify your surroundings. Are you in a place that's safe? Are you in a place that has fresh air, that has a roof? Do you have fresh water? These are all things that we can be grateful for and they're just the basics. Honestly, in this arena of being able to watch a television show on a computer or some kind of a device, you're very well off and you have many things to be thankful for. It's great to be able to reconnect with that gratitude from inside of your heart. That's also another thing, too, that we can do with if it's a loved one that has passed. What do you do? Do you focus on the parts that are gone? Or do we bring our awareness to all of the things that we shared, all of the gifts that were part of this life experience with them? That really gets to the next level. Gratitude practice is big on my list for helping with getting through grief and it's a big tool that I use in my daily life. Like I said, grief can be all kinds of things. It can be a friendship. It can be just about everything that has to do with change. That leads me to our last point that we're going to talk about and that's the spiritual side. Some of the things that can happen when we go through grief spiritually is we can become really disconnected with the ones that we love. We can have a sense that maybe we've lost our purpose, especially if we haven't even identified what our purpose is up until that point. Maybe we thought that our purpose lied outside of ourselves and that was what we were looking for in other people, perhaps even the person or the thing that we lost. That can all lead to isolation. Once we start isolating, our human experience begins to decline greatly and that's what we want to find our possible cure to. That possible cure can be communion. What do you commune with? Do you commune with nature? Do you commune with your divine power? Do you commune with your family? What do you commune with that is a higher sense? That way that you connect to be able to feel at ease and peaceful within yourself. Communion is one of my key components to safety within myself. Another way to be able to possibly hear that spiritual pain of having grief in your life is to be exposed. Really jump off that cliff. It's scary and to be able to look at your fears and look at those shadows and maybe even look at the things that happened in a life and reflect. Don't blame yourself. Blame's got zero cure in it at all. Blame just is a useless, it's almost, it's probably just as useless as guilt. So it doesn't provide anyone with any nourishment, physically, mentally, spiritually, anything. Once you can really touch base with being able to stand in exposure of the parts that you played, that brings a sense of vulnerability and freedom and liberation and peace within yourself because you're able to truly be okay with who you are and know that you can only act or behave or respond the way that you can with what you know at that point in time. And that's what this is all about is allowing yourself to have a different point in time as a starting spot to be able to get to the next level. And that level could be that next new life beginning that happened after the quote unquote death in your life. Renee Brown, I believe, said vulnerability is a key to connection and is a connection what this is all about, this human experience, to be able to connect with each other, to be able to share laughter and hugs and tears and this expansive theories and all of it, all of the life experience. Connection is really truly where it's at and you don't get to that true connection if you don't experiment with being vulnerable and that's how we really find our truth. So all of those things being said, I really feel like in order to be able to get through grief, some of the things that you could do are definitely attend to all parts of your being and yourself of who you are. You are not just one part. We all know that we discuss this, your body, mind, spirit and emotion and each part does not, it doesn't operate by itself. It operates in conjunction with the rest of ourselves. So if there's a part of you that's showing up that is physically unbalanced, find a way to be able to find balance. Ask for help. Find a way to bring your emotional selves together. Find a way to look at your mental thoughts and patterns. Are you looping? If you are, find a book, find somebody else who's gone through it and honor your time. Honor your own divine timing. Honoring your timing is key. You truly want to be able to experience this fully so that the next time grief happens, you can get to your joy faster. You can find that happy heart a little bit faster and be able to experience what is still living in your life completely. So I'd invite you to spend more time being interested in the gifts of the experience that you share with people in this life and less time with the loss. I really hope that this has resonated on some level with some of you, many of you, all of you. Feel free to reach out to me, comment, ask any questions that you might need to ask and I'll do my best to either answer them or find an answer for you or at least support you on your journey. Thank you so very much to ThinkTech Hawaii for providing this platform to be able to talk about things like this and for all the sponsors and donors and listeners and viewers that keep this alive. And remember, you are the catalyst and creator that your body, your mind, and your spirit require in order to live a happy healthy whole life. Aloha.