Ways to Work Through Grief

Have you been experiencing grief lately? I promise you aren't alone in this. Together, we will explore multiple ways to work through grief!

In this week's episode, we are starting off strong with a 10min guided meditation that allows you to lean into your stillness. How likely are you to allow moments for yourself to breathe? This guided meditation provides you with the opportunity to practice your breathing and practice lovingkindness with yourself.

After you've found your zen, we take some time to highlights different ways to work through grief. These are not one-size-fits-all solutions, take what you can apply and leave whatever doesn't work for you. I'm with you and I love you. Grief is an unfortunate experience that we all come across at some point in our lives. I've most recently been finding ways to cope and lean into my emotions without being overborne by the feelings.

Meditation music provided by Chris Collins at indiemusicbox.com
Episode theme music is provided by DP the Unknown x "Here/If"

Be sure to follow the social media accounts to stay updated on episodes, highlights, and behind the scene pics 🤗
Website
Instagram
Facebook
LinkedIn
Twitter

Transcript

MaJhané
[Meditaiton Music by Chris Collins at indiemusicbox.com]
Hello, my babies welcome back to another episode it's a girl MaJhane AKA MamMaJ and you are listening to MamMaj(ism). I know it has been a while and I've missed you all dearly but you know since it has been a minute let's go ahead and get right into our guided meditation. Want you to get into a comfortable position, sitting down or laying down. And when you're in that position I want you to close your eyes. Go ahead and give me a nice long slow deep breath in and out. Awesome. Again, deep breath in and out. One more time, deep breath in and out. Awesome. Go ahead and return to your normal breathing pattern. Release any and all tension in your body, unfurrow your eyebrows, loosen your chin, unclench, drop your shoulders. As you’re breathing I want you to imagine that while you're inhaling you’re lifting your chest up to the sky. And as you exhale, ground yourself. We're going to take a few moments to just sit in this mindful-stillness. Thoughts may be running through your head and that's okay. Gently push them to the side if you can.

Sometimes when the stress gets to be too much we keep running into brick walls. We want yeses and we keep receiving no’s. It can all become too much. In those moments I want you to remember this calmness, this mindfulness. Take a moment and just breath. Your problems will still be there, you’ll need to find solutions, but it’s hard to think when everything around you is going haywire. Take control by simply breathing. Unfortunately we don’t have the capabilities to change outside forces, we only can control what’s in us. 

I am so proud of you. You are still here doing the work, making the moves, showing up for yourself. You are so much powerful than you give yourself credit for. Let's take these last few moments to just appreciate ourselves and the work that we've done to get here this far. Thank yourself, love on yourself, this is your moment.

Give me a nice long slow deep breath in and release. Again, deep breath in and release. In and release.

Thank you so much for joining in this guided meditation with me. Remember to offer yourself that kindness, that love and appreciation, in moments where you feel like you're not doing enough. I promise that you are doing more than enough. If you enjoyed this meditation and feel like someone you know can benefit from this, go ahead and send it their way. Enjoy the episode.

[DP the Unknown - "Here/If"]

Hello, my babies as I've mentioned this is your girl MaJhane AKA MamMaJ and you are listening to MamMaJ(ism). Thank you for deciding to listen in on this talk of love and honest conversation so, let's get into it. 

By the time you finish this episode, you will know five ways to work through grief. These tips aren’t a one-size-fits-all solution. They aren’t ranked in any particular order. They are simply things that have helped me in my journey to heal.

Grief is something that's everyone is experiencing in one way or another because I do want to say grief is not just when you're you know dealing with a loss of a death or someone that you care about is also when you're changing up a routine drastically so we've all we've all kind of been dealing with grief you know COVID kind of took 2020 from us in a way. at all of our plans so we're all grieving in a way. 

First I want to start off by saying one way that has really helped me personally has been taking your time. I struggled with this one in particular because I had found out that a librarian from my High School, Miss Crabtree, a literal walking angel on Earth, was called home, and it was really tough because I had a relationship with her as a student and I had it as an adult because when I went and worked my after-school program it was in the library with her. So in the days when I felt like I couldn't get the students to come in or I felt like I wasn't doing a good job she was there speaking life into me and into the students and helping me.

With that news it made it very hard for me to want to do anything at all and I was thinking okay well maybe I'm using this as an excuse to not get work done or to procrastinate and then I was like no I don't think that's it at all. I didn't want to give into that sort of like self-doubt or like that type of negative self-talk because that was just where I was going with it. And truly we all need a little break from everyday life sometimes, right? So I just decided you know what I'm not going to force myself to do anything that I don't want to do if it doesn't feel comfortable for me then I’m just not going to do it. 

I haven't really posted anything even though I had it already and qued to go I just I just didn't feel up to it and sometimes that's just what it's like that's just what happens when you're grieving and when you're really leaning into your emotions. 

The second way is to accept your grief. So like I said I was having this self-talk where I was like MaJhane you’re using this as an excuse like you're sad about this of course but at the same time you're using this as a reason to procrastinate on your goals did not make things happen for yourself then I have to stop myself like what oh no girl you're grieving like you it is okay for you to feel this way and it is okay for you to take a break. You work, you've been working really hard to get stuff you know off the ground it is okay if you decide that you need to take some time to really, you know, feel this way. And so that is exactly what I did and it has helped me to figure out the best course of action for myself because if you can't name what's going on with you, if you can't name the emotions that you're feeling, or why you're you're doing the things that you do, then you're going to just keep going in a circle doing the same things over and over. But once you're able to kind of sit down and be like okay write it all down okay this is what I'm feeling this is the reason why now you can plan your course of action and figure out ways to slowly but surely navigate through those feelings. 

Number three is to express your grief. This one is my favorite. If you know me you know I'm a crier so what that looks like for me is literally a really good cry session like ugly crying blasting my music to the max and you know always keeping some treats and snacks nearby so I'd say I taken a lot of time to really just let it all out and it really did just kind of consists of me crying a lot and watching the Marvel Cinematic- *laughs* watching all the Marvel movies. The MCU has truly kept me company. I'm all for it okay and that's not me hiding from my emotions okay actually the MCU movies that make me cry more so I feel like it's actually helping me to purge and release and you know what the end of the day that's what we that's what I need right now, haha right?

Number four is seek support. Y’all know how I feel about that. I do have a therapist. I see her eh it ranges from weekly to biweekly depending on how I’m feeling. This past week I actually forgot that I had a therapy session because I was so deep into the Marvel movies. So when she called me I was like imma be honest with you, i’m currently watching Thor: Ragnorak and I am on Asgard right now. I I I can’t talk right now haha. I can’t talk to you right now I’m doing hot girl shit. So i had to be like, “yeah I’m sorry but MaJhane is not in the building. She left to Asgard. She’s trying to help Thor and the Valkyrie so I don’t know what to tell you.”

For those of you who don't have a therapist or don't have someone that you talk to on the regular, I do want to suggest that if you can, if it's in your budget, if you have insurance, definitely utilize all of the things that your insurance offers you because you might even find that there are some services that there are some services that are free to you. So that’s always something to keep in mind. In the show notes I’ll also be providing a list of resources ranging from The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline to a treatment service locator.

And then the final thing, number five, is to get active. So I know this sounds uh wait why? Like even I’m kind of like ehh I don’t know about that one but it could be something as simple as walking around your neighborhood or going on a hike.

If you want to keep it indoors, cause you don’t want to go inside and see people, you can try yoga. I have slowly been incorporating yoga into my daily routine. I started doing yoga and then I think I like almost dislocated my back. I think i tried to do something a little too fast and it was just not working out for me.

So actually what I've been doing instead is I like to do stretches as soon as I wake up and these are things that I do on my bed before my feet even touch the ground these are just stretches from like the butterfly pose to like what is it downward dog a little bit that the cat that cat pose where you like to do that with your back I like that one but there are some things that you can do just on your bed without even leaving your space just to kind of get your body used to the movement, the fluidity. So those are some things that I have done in order to help me along the way with my grieving process. And again it's going to look different for everyone I don't expect us all to have the same ways of dealing with grief but these are just some ways that I personally found helpful for me.

Again that was to take the time that I need; so sometimes the best way to work through grief is to not work at all. The second is to accept your grief, you know you can't help yourself if you don't even know what it is that you're going through so if you can't name that feeling you know that might be the first step that you want to take. Number three is to express your grief, so that could be writing singing Crying whatever feels right to release that from your body. Number for is to seek support, so that can range from a family member or friend or getting help from like an actual resource like a therapist or 911 really depending on whatever situation it is that you're going through. And finally it is to get active. So that could be running and walking or that can just simply be stretching just making sure you get some blood flow going.

With that being said I challenge all of you to just check on yourself. I know the last episode I said to check yourself now I want you to check on yourself. 

I think it is best that you know we we give the grieving process the time that it needs. Don't force anything just be honest with yourself and really give yourself that compassion that I hope that you're also giving other people. Remember just to work work through your grief that don't run from it so thank you so much for tuning in. and I won't see you next week but I will see you the week after until then please please be good *smooches* bye!