Feelings Fitness Podcast
Feelings Fitness Podcast
225. Growing Through Grief: Gifts of Grief
As I blow out the candles this year, the glow is bittersweet; my heart aches for my mother, who always crafted magical birthdays. Yet, her love lingers in the traditions she bestowed—like the cherished birthday corner—that now resonate deeply in my family's celebrations. This episode is a tender voyage into the "Gifts of Grief," a realm where sorrow carves space for appreciation and memories become a guiding light. Through personal narratives, I unveil how my mother's legacy of thoughtful gifting continues to weave through the tapestry of my life, keeping her spirit brilliantly alive in every ritual and moment of gratitude.
Embarking on a heartfelt exploration, I'm thrilled to share the commencement of our "Growing Through Grief" series, setting sail on a journey to embrace and understand the complexities of loss. I extend an invitation to you all, my companions in grief and growth, to join the conversation on our Feelings Fitness Facebook and Instagram pages. Together, we'll traverse the contours of healing, finding solace in shared experiences and the unexpected gifts nestled within our own stories of grief. Tune in as we seek the comfort of community and the growth that emerges from our collective narratives.
Welcome back to the Feelings Fitness Podcast. I took a little hiatus to kind of do some reflecting and we are back in this cozy space where we meet to discuss the well-being benefits of a consistent yoga practice while we exercise our emotions. Join me on this journey towards feeling fit mind, body and spirit. Let's get started. So today is my birthday, and saying it is bittersweet is an understatement, why some of you may be wondering. Well, first, the two year anniversary of my mom's untimely passing is quickly approaching and I'm feeling extra emotional. Also, my mom used to always make my birthday extra special and it makes me miss her more than ever. I am forever grateful for those cherished memories that will always keep her spirit alive. That is why I'm choosing to come out of this little podcasting hiatus that I've been on and launch back into things with a series called Growing Through Grief, and this episode is called the Gifts of Grief, and I'm just kind of reflecting back upon how special my mom always made my birthday and how that was the gift that she gave me the spiritual gift not even the tangible gifts of receiving something at a birthday, but this spiritual gift that she gave me that just lasts forever. I mean, she has left this earth and her spirit is still so much alive in my birthday celebration. So I'm just grateful for this gift. I'm gonna share a little bit about how grieving and the grief process you can find these little gifts, these little glimmers of hope, in kind of a sad situation. So each year, whether near or far, my mom always created a birthday corner for me, and this is a tradition I have carried on with my own family and I absolutely adore establishing a mix of bags, boxes, balloons, just really pretty wrapping paper all the things in a corner for the kids and they like to admire it and get excited leading up to opening up all the gifts. So my mom started that and it was just always so much fun. It really was something that you never age out of getting a birthday corner put together. You just feel so special and it looks so pretty and it's just so much fun. So that is a gift, a legacy that my mom has left that I absolutely loved, and one of the last text messages that my mom ever received from me was a picture of me wearing a birthday outfit that she gifted me that year and, of course, I had so much fun. It was in my birthday corner. I opened it up, super exciting. So a nice little athleisure outfit. Oh my goodness, I put it on. It was so soft, so cozy. I loved it. So I hate Texted her a picture of me in it and I'll be honest, I go back to that text every now and again to feel her spirit, because there was just such a nice exchange between the two of us just discussing this gift that she had given me and, geez, like the worst realization, honestly, of loss is like when I realized that texting void, that I couldn't text her, that I couldn't call her anymore. It just gives me this pit in my stomach just thinking about it. You know, friends are great but a mom is just so 100%, unconditional and irreplaceable. So I loved that we had that little exchange about that outfit, about that little gift in the birthday corner. And again, I go back to that often. I will certainly go back to it today as I pull her spirit into my birthday celebration.
Speaker 0:The gift bag that that outfit came into it lives forever on a shelf in my closet. I have frozen that birthday corner in time. So each year that rolls around I know that I will spend some time with just the bag that that gift came in. There was a piece of me that didn't want to continue wearing the outfit, but I was like, oh, I love it so much and she would want me to be wearing it. So I just keep the bag with the tissue paper. It looks really pretty. It's like such a nice little memory of that precious, perfect gift that she gave me. And also, kind of, as I sit with the birthday corner and look at that gift bag, I think to myself hmm, I wonder what she might have put in there for this year. So it's sad, it's bittersweet, but it also keeps her spirit alive and I truly believe that her love language was gifting. So she loved doing that and I just try and carry that on. I'm not the best gift to her because I don't really shop is the problem but I try to keep that going, at least with my immediate family, when I know a little bit more specifically what they like or what they want, and so I can get it and wrap it and surprise them in that birthday corner.
Speaker 0:So then, moving on from the birthday corner, from the gifts that she gave me with that tradition, one of my absolute most memorable birthdays was when I went to her house, went to my parents house in South Carolina when Clark, my son, was just six months old and oh my goodness was. I was more tired than I've ever been in my entire life. Clark was not the greatest sleeper as a real little baby, and so I was tired as all get out, and my mom helps me out so much that time. The weather was beautiful, we got to get outside, coming from the Midwest, it had been cold and not really gone into warm weather yet. So getting to South Carolina was sunny, it was warm, we could be outside, we could sit outside and have coffee at the coffee shop and all the things. And I will never forget my mom really just taking charge of Clark and giving me that gift of some sleep, because sleep is a gift, it is so necessary and so important and as a new mom it's ugh, you just don't get a whole lot of it.
Speaker 0:So that was such a gift, the gift of sleep, the gift of time that she gave me when we went out there for my birthday so many years ago, and you better believe she had a beautiful birthday corner all set up there as well Another tradition throughout my birthday years, and this was a little bit more when I was younger, but she used to make rocky road fudge bars for my birthday and it was just such a sweet treat and they're a little labor intensive. So it definitely was a special treat, not something that you would necessarily make all the time, and I may actually have to pull out the recipe and give it a whirl. Just to keep her spirit alive in the kitchen. She was always. She gave such a gift to me as well by way of baking with my kids in the kitchen. So now my daughter is such a baker and she has so many memories of baking with my mom and if I look way back when my son was really little, she did baking with him too. He kind of phased out a little bit as he got older, but then my daughter stepped in and really enjoyed doing the baking, and so it's such a gift that she gave me to have this space where I feel like I can go to be with her and I have a beautiful picture of my mom and me sitting and having coffee. I keep it actually up in the kitchen and then I feel like, as I'm baking or doing anything in the kitchen, that she's still right there with me. So I do. I love that. That's such a gift that she gave me.
Speaker 0:So to say I miss my mom is quite the understatement, right, but she left so many gifts behind that keep her legacy alive, keep her spirit alive. And I really have no regrets when it comes to our relationship, aside from the fact that I do wish I could have been there for her more when she was sick. But I do know in my heart of hearts that that was really much to do about the COVID era, so we were separated through a lot of it and then by the time we got back to being able to see each other, she really wasn't doing well. But I think she knew that if I could have been there more, I most certainly would have. So she, like I said, lives in South Carolina and we're here in the Midwest and so it was just, you know, it was a plane ride and during the COVID time I wasn't really super interested in getting on too many flights. And then by the time we did get there, then she, like I said, she just really wasn't doing well and it was short-lived before she passed away and yeah. So no regrets on the relationship, just the regret that I didn't get to see her more closer to when she passed away.
Speaker 0:But we did a lot together in the 45 years that I did get to spend with her. So my sadness really comes from thinking about all the things that I still wanted to do with her. So we did a lot of traveling, we had a lot of laughs, all kinds of good stuff. But when I think about the things that I really still had on my radar that I really thought we still could have done, it makes me a little sad. But I know that even if I go do those things, that she will be with me in spirit. That's just the gift that she has given me. So she leaves behind many gifts that get me through my grief for sure.
Speaker 0:And grief really is something that we all will experience at some point in life, whether it be a parent or a pet or a special person. When you love and lose, you experience grief and it's a process to get through it. As much as it hurts, the growing is good and if you lean into it instead of burying the emotions, you'll change for the better. You'll process your emotions and you'll pass what you've learned onto others. You will be given gifts of grief and then you will pass those gifts along to others.
Speaker 0:I share my grief journey in this series of episodes. I call growing through grief as a way to normalize the experience and to help others to find the silver lining of loss. I'd be honored if you continue to tune in over the course of the next few weeks to exercise your emotions when it comes to grief, and I am going to try to be a little bit more intentional about getting stuff onto the Facebook page so you can join me over at Feeling's Fitness on Facebook, on Instagram, and do have an email list as well. I'm not super savvy with it at the moment, so really the only way to get on it is to letting me know that you would like to be on it. Give me an email address somehow and I can get you onto that, but that if you wanna contact me via email, susannne, so I will see you back here next week to continue our growing through grief series.