Grief after divorce and loss is real. Learn how to rebuild your life with spiritual resilience, process grief, and move forward after major life transitions.

In this powerful conversation, Lesa Koski sits down with spiritual resilience coach Carrie Hopkins to explore grief beyond death—including divorce, life transitions, and identity shifts. If you’re navigating grief after divorce or loss, this episode will help you understand how to process emotions, create a safe space for healing, and begin rebuilding your life.

Together, they unpack the early stages of grief, why avoiding emotions can make things harder, and how spiritual resilience allows you to move forward—not move on—with strength and clarity.

Timestamps:

(00:00) Introduction to grief beyond death

(02:15) Carrie’s story: loss, divorce, and becoming a grief coach

(05:40) Understanding grief in life transitions

(08:30) Grief after divorce vs grief after death

(11:10) Why we avoid emotions and what happens when we do

(14:25) Step 1: Creating a safe space to feel your emotions

(18:10) Naming emotions and why it matters

(21:05) Step 2: Radical self-care during grief

(24:30) Why neglecting yourself makes grief harder

(27:15) Step 3: Making peace with the past

(31:20) Letting go of judgment and limiting beliefs

(35:10) The danger of idealizing relationships after loss

(39:00) Moving forward vs “moving on”

(42:00) How to begin rebuilding your life

Key Takeaways:

Grief is not just about death—it includes divorce, identity shifts, and life transitions

Avoiding emotions can intensify grief and lead to emotional or physical consequences

Creating a safe space to feel and express emotions is the first step toward healing

Radical self-care is essential to build capacity during difficult seasons

Healing comes from making peace with the past—not staying stuck in it

Guest Bio:

Carrie Hopkins is a spiritual resilience coach and founder of Life’s Next Chapter Coaching. She specializes in helping individuals rebuild their lives after loss, including divorce, bereavement, and major life transitions. Through her Rebuilding Your Life After Loss program, Carrie guides clients to reconnect with their inner strength and create a life they love after grief.

Resource Links:

Carrie Hopkins Coaching: Life’s Next Chapter Coaching

Rebuilding Your Life After Loss Program

Contact: Carrie@LifesNextChapterCoaching.com

Lesa Koski Mediation & Coaching: Lesakoski.com

Tags/Keywords:

grief after divorce, grief after loss, spiritual resilience, divorce healing, life after divorce, rebuilding after loss, emotional healing, grief coaching, midlife transitions, women over 40, divorce recovery, loss and healing

Welcome listeners.

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I am so happy that you're here today.

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I have Carrie Hopkins doubts with

me, and it's going to be a really

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fun conversation, we're going to

get to know Carrie more through this

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episode and Carrie is, well, she's

a spiritual resilience coach, and I

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think she helps people a lot of times

through life transitions or difficult

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times, kind of rebuilding after loss.

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So that's what this episode is about.

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grief isn't just about death, it is

about death, but grief can be about.

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Divorce going through a different way

of life It can be a lot of different

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things So it affects us all even if we

don't realize it even if it hasn't been

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someone close to us who's died There

are things that have Moved and changed.

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So Carrie, welcome.

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I'm so happy that you're here.

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Can you just help us get to know you

better and what led you to do this work?

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Sure, Lisa Yeah, this is

such a great conversation.

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And like you said not a welcome

subject for a lot of people,

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but I love talking about this.

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I started out as a grief coach, actually.

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I had, before becoming a coach done

all the training to become a marriage

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and family therapist and got into

my internship and just decided this

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was not the career path for me.

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It was really to.

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clinical too much for me.

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I love therapists.

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I think therapy is great, but

it just wasn't great for me.

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and then I decided to go into

coach training and I got myself

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trained and certified as a coach.

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I thought, well, why don't I use this

as my specialization in coaching?

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And so I started out doing that

just because it's, I'd lost my

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mom during the time that I was

in the coach training program.

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That was a big loss for me.

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My relationship with my mom was,

let's just say, a little tense.

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So I loved her, she loved me, but

we didn't get along that well.

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So there was a lot of ambivalence in the

relationship, that ambivalent attachment.

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And when she died, it really hit me hard

because there was no chance for me to get

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the love that I was thinking I was ever

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going to get from her

because, the chance was over.

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So when I went through that and

decided to focus on grief, I also found

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myself focusing on divorce because

that was also part of my background.

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I was divorced in 1992 and that was

one of the most challenging, difficult,

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painful situations that I'd been

through at that point in my life.

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So I found myself working with

people going through divorce, through

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bereavement, through job loss, any

of these things where there's an

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ending of some normal part of your

life and where grief will come in.

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it's really important just to have

somebody to talk these things through.

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And then, about three and a half

years, my second husband died suddenly.

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Oh, jeez.

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Yeah.

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so it was not only, okay, I'm

certified as a grief counselor, I

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know the territory, I know the maps,

but I got to walk the territory this

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time, and sometimes on my hands and

knees, it was incredibly painful.

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And to this day now, you know, fast

forward to today, I worked through my

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own process using my own program and also

the help of my own coach and I really

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adapted to and created a life that I

love on the other side of that huge loss.

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So I'm still working with people in

those arenas, but I've recontexted

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the work that I do calling it

spiritual resilience, because

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that's what we're really going for.

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To know yourself as capable, creative,

resourceful, and whole, even when

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you're going through grief and loss.

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So that, that's my story.

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One is if you have a parent that passes

that maybe you weren't, you didn't

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get along with, There's still grief

there, you know, and then, the other,

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I have someone really close to me

who I have a, several people who have

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lost their spouse and, I really want

to help people who go through that.

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And you know, yes, you lose

them in divorce and death,

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you know, however that works.

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But I know in particular, this one

that's very close to me, I think she

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has just, Come to the conclusion,

you know, she's handling it.

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She's gotten therapy, which I love I

do want to say the difference between

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therapy and coaching and I think therapy

is so helpful We all need talk therapy

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now and then when I think of coaching I

think of as moving forward of how you're

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going to maybe change things in the future

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She's a little bit older than me

and they were very, very close.

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And I don't know that she has

a lot of hope for the future.

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I think there's a lot of feeling like,

well, I'm kind of looking forward to,

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to being there with him at some point.

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And, and I don't know, maybe that's okay.

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And maybe that's normal,

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Man, I sure would love

to see her happy, joyful.

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And I know with grief, I

think I understand Carrie that

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we always carry it with us.

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It's always here.

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It's that little piece that's

there, but you can still find

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joy and yeah, you're changed.

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And yeah, there's something different

and you know that that loss is there

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I can go and enjoy things as well.

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Does that sound right?

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Absolutely.

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And it depends also on the amount

of time that has passed between the

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person's death and now because it does

take time to process through this.

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We can still hold that person in our

hearts because they'll always be there.

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You know, the love that we felt for

that person, we can feel it still.

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You know, I still feel

that for my husband.

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I just, it's not in the here

and now and in the present, you

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know, and it is important, you

said something very important.

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We want to start moving forward

in our lives, not moving on.

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You know, a lot of times people

say, Oh, it feels disloyal to move

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on because that almost, signifies

that you're leaving them behind.

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You're moving on without them.

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And so I say, no, we move forward, sort

of adapting to the loss and incorporating

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the grief into our lives because

like you said, it doesn't go away.

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It will show up as a grief trigger.

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All of a sudden you hear a song that

you used to love or, you know, you go

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to a restaurant and it's like, Oh yeah,

we used to go here, I've been here.

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You know, just, we get a memory

triggered and then the grief can.

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Wash over us again.

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So it's just, it's sort of I, you know

I am not surprised when that happens.

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I just take a breath and it's

like, oh here's grief again.

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It's okay.

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Just take a breath.

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Just cry my tears, you know, do what

I need to do to take care of myself.

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And then, you know, I

pick myself up and I've.

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rebuilt my life after that great loss.

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And I moved from, we lived in Arizona.

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That was the place he wanted

to retire after he was gone.

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It's like, I don't want to live here.

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So I moved back to the Los Angeles

area and I'm right around the

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corner from where my daughter lives.

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And so, you know, I, I've created a new

life for myself and one that I love.

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Yep, that's that's fantastic.

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And so I kind of want to as I'm sitting

here listening to you I want you to help

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me if we can I know we don't have a lot of

time But can we talk about okay, so in the

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beginning stages when this is brand new

now the friend I'm telling you about it's

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You know, over a couple of years, right?

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Which who knows?

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We're all different.

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I don't know how long it takes, but

I know, I understand that there has

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to be a time where you have to sit.

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And what I love that you said is

that you'll get a wave of grief

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and you sit and you feel it.

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I don't know if this is normal,

but I feel like I would run away

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from those feelings all the time.

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Oh, I can't feel this way now.

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Cause we don't want to,

who wants to feel that?

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So just for the audience to realize

if you're like me and you run

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away from those feelings, cause

you don't want to feel them.

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They are going to be worse or come out a

different way So feel them feel them and

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then it's almost like they can dissipate.

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I know sometimes it's hard if

you start You know reeling in it.

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That's where you can kind of have

issues But okay So what I'm kind of

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thinking of let's go through some stages

like if someone's brand new into this

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brand new into a loss I mean, I know

when I've gone through something hard.

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I sit and cry You And I think, I don't

know, even when my oldest daughter

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went to college, I was like, I don't

know if I'm going to get over this

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but what do people do in that, in

the early beginning stages of either

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divorce or death or, diagnosis that

scares them and change, whatever it is.

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Right.

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Well, that first stage is exactly, you

know, the first step in my Rebuilding

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Your Life After Loss program, which

people going through divorce, people

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going through bereavement, you

know, all kinds of people take this.

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It's a program, just designed for

grief, no matter what the context.

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But the first step is creating a

safe space, a safety net for yourself

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to feel, to heal your feelings.

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And I shouldn't say heal your feelings

because we don't really heal them, but

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we experience them, we bring them in, we

welcome them, say, Oh, here's sadness.

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Sadness is here.

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we feel it, we name it, you know,

so it's really important to name it.

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A lot of times people, you know, just

slowing down and naming it helps the

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brain sort of integrate what's going on.

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So you feel it, you

name it, you express it.

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And so that's where another, a safe other.

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really comes into play.

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You need a place, a person, a vehicle

for you to express, you know, safely,

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without any judgment, without people

needing to fix you, without people

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needing to minimize your feelings.

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often a coach or sometimes it's just

a trusted friend, maybe somebody

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who's gone through something like

this, and they know how to companion

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with you and just be there for you.

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while you express it all.

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and so that's a very important first step

because like you said, Lisa, if you don't

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do this, if you try to shove it away

or avoid it or numb it or, do all those

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things that we do, it's not going away.

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So what it will do is it hangs out

in our subconscious, our unconscious,

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comes up in these really overblown

reactions that we have to life where,

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you know, road rage, something like that.

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it also can go into body.

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So it can go into the, the tissue of

the body and somaticize, become illness.

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There's lots of research about,

unresolved or unmet grief, can

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lead to a person's illnesses.

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So it's really important, like you said,

to have a safe place, a safe container.

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to feel, to release these emotions.

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And like you said, once you've released

it, once you've really given it that

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safe space inside of you, like you invite

it to tea, like come sit down, talk,

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what have you got to share with me?

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It has a message for you.

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And then once it's delivered its

message, it goes on, and then you have

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the next feeling, whatever that is.

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Right.

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Okay.

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You said that is the first

step to your rebuilding steps.

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How many steps do you have?

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I have a nine step process.

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Boy, I don't know if we're going

to be able to get through all nine.

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Yeah, we probably won't, you

know, but that's okay because,

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you know, even just the first few

steps is an important, you know.

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It's just realizing, bringing awareness

can sometimes, be all you need.

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Mm hmm.

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I know.

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Yes.

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Just knowing that first step is, I

really need to create a safe space

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for me to feel all of these feelings.

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You know, grief, it's

going to bring them all.

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It's going to bring,

you know, sadness, hurt.

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anger, relief, you know, we have so

many feelings, and they're all normal,

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Yeah.

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And I want to say, and this on

my, divorce, I have lisakosky.

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com.

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If you want to go there,

I have a Facebook page.

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Feelings wheel.

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And sometimes I look at that so

you can grab it there that you

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can probably find them online too.

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But sometimes if you're having trouble

naming it, that can be helpful.

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That's right.

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You know, when people say,

well, how are you feeling?

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You know, and their answer is I feel good.

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Right.

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That's not a feeling that's a label.

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Okay.

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So that's the first step.

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Mm hmm.

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What's number two?

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Second step is creating capacity

through what I call radical self care.

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You know, because when you're grieving

any kind of loss, often if you are

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having to help your kids through this

as well, say with a divorce, or you

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know, you're now a single parent.

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You know, where you had the, the help

of your spouse before in raising kids,

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it's often so common, really, for

you to neglect your own self care.

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And so we start to talk about,

well, how is grief affecting

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you on the physical level?

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A lot of times it's,

I'm not sleeping well.

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I'm not eating well, I'm not

exercising, I'm not doing all those

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things that, we all know we should

do to take care of ourselves.

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But what people don't recognize

is if they don't take care of

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themselves first, they don't have

the capacity to take care of others.

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It's like putting your own oxygen

mask on first before, you know, like

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they say on the airplane, right?

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You have to have your own oxygen

before you can help other people.

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I think that is something that we

all know, but that we rarely do.

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when you're grieving, you're

even more physically depleted

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than you would be normally.

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Yeah.

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And then, yeah, we forget, you

know, to take care of ourselves.

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Okay.

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Third?

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Third is making peace with the past.

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And so when we are sort of unpacking what

has led us to the present moment where

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this person, either through a divorce

or bereavement, is no longer part of our

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lives, it's going to bring up Some of the

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memories, the, the things that were

unresolved in those relationships.

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And this is where we take, really

slow things down and look at that.

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You know, what judgments am I holding

against that person or myself?

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And this is where we get free of these

limiting beliefs that we've got going

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on about the nature of relationships,

the nature, you know, it's like we

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make up meaning, about, well, I guess

I'm just not cut out for marriage

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because I failed at it three times,

whatever, you know, and people really

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hurt themselves by hanging on to these,

untruthful, beliefs about themselves.

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So we really take a look at the past,

not as a way of ruminating about it

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or anything like that, but just to

look at the dynamics that perhaps

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maybe created the relationship

issues that you were having.

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Sometimes, also, it's, helpful in a

divorce, but also when somebody passes,

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for instance, for myself, looking at

all the judgments that I held against

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my mom or myself and, forgiving myself,

forgiving myself for the judgments

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I placed against her, that I placed

against myself as not being a good

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daughter, not being a good enough

daughter, you know, all of those things.

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So we really free up a lot of

that energy that is going on.

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gotten stuck in the past.

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I remember hearing people telling

me that sometimes you can.

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Remember them as perfect, perfect in every

way and not really see them how it was.

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Is that anything?

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Yes.

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That's really smart.

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I like that you brought that forward

because, you know, if you've ever had

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children and you go through childbirth

and then, you know, you have this

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baby and, oh, it's so wonderful.

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And you forget about all that.

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That's what our minds do.

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we, we tend to minimize or

forget the painful things.

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So that's often what happens.

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You also like enshrine this person.

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Yeah.

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Put them up on a pedestal.

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You know, he was the love of my life.

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She was the only one for me,

you know, and you're right.

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It's like we have forgotten about

the fights we used to have or

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that this person wasn't perfect.

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So it is important to be honest and

you're looking back in the past.

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And, you know, it's like, well, this part

of it drove me crazy, but, it doesn't.

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If you enshrine that person,

it really makes it difficult to

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move forward in any other kind of

intimate relationship because you

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feel like it would be a disloyalty.

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Yeah.

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that's interesting.

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And I'm thinking, even when I think

about my grandpa, he was a King.

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He was perfect now

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and maybe that was okay that I

felt that way when I was young.

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And then as I have grown, I can see there

were things that he did that weren't

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amazing and great and that's okay.

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And I can still love him.

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But.

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I wondered how that would play in

if you, for future relationships, if

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you did have them on that pedestal,

you can still say, Hey, I'd take him

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chomping his gum in my ear in a second.

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But that it wasn't all just to be real.

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Just to be real, you know, when we shine

a light on something and then we put

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that spotlight of perfection on somebody,

we're forgetting that there's shadows,

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there's gonna be shadow, you know?

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And so it's really important that we

look at somebody with the light and with

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the shadow, that we look at ourselves

with the light and with the shadow.

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Because often what we'll do if we

find that we have objectionable

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traits or behaviors That we don't

accept about ourselves, we can

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project them onto that other person.

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Similarly, we can do

a positive projection.

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We take all the, the things that

we haven't owned about ourselves

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that are really wonderful.

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Oh, this person was so smart.

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He was so gorgeous.

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He was kind.

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It was like, and these could be

unowned aspects of ourselves that

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we're projecting onto that person.

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We're not seeing the person

as they truly are or were.

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We're seeing our projection.

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So that's part of what we look at

in this third phase of the program.

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We look at owning and accepting

those projections and bringing

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them back home and go, I sometimes

treat myself like this too.

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If it's a negative projection, or

I treat other people like that.

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And it's interesting because

isn't that unconditional love.

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is loving their shadows too?

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Unconditional love is not

easy to do in a relationship.

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You know, that's the spiritual

level of unconditional loving.

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the loving of the universe, of God,

whatever people's spiritual beliefs

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are, that's where unconditional love is.

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But we have conditioned love in

relationships, but the more that we can

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do our own work in relationship, whether

it's a current relationship or a past

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relationship, The more that we can own our

own stuff and take responsibility for it,

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the more that we can have happy, really

productive and loving relationships.

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Now.

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Yeah.

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Now.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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So good.

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Yeah.

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So good.

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And so I'm looking at the time, Carrie.

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I can't wait.

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Like I'm actually talking.

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Oh my gosh, look at that.

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I know.

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I think I'm talking

more than I usually do.

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Ooh.

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And this is what I'm wondering.

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Would you come back on?

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I'd be happy to.

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And then we could talk about

the, so did we get through three?

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We got through three, you know,

cause that, that's really a good

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place because that's setting

the foundation for what's next.

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All right.

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I won't say what's next.

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All right.

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Well, we'll be sitting here

anticipating what's next.

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And I'm going to see if I can get us

scheduled here when we're done on this,

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but I just have to, I so appreciate this.

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And I get, I got lost in it because

it was so fun to learn from you.

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So thank you.

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Thank you for going through something

hard and using it to help the world.

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That's such a blessing.

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And I want you to know that I see that.

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And I'm very, very grateful.

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So and then Keri, if our listeners

want help from you, we'll have

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your information in the show notes.

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But how's the best way?

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What's the best way to get,

reach out and work with you?

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Oh, the best way to reach me is my company

is called Life's Next Chapter Coaching.

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And that's really what we're

doing is we're creating your

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life's next chapter after chapter.

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you know, whatever you're going

through has, is, is, resolving itself.

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So they can reach me at, Carrie

at Life's Next Chapter Coaching.

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They can visit me on my website.

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There's lots of resources.

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There's information about my Rebuilding

Your Life After Loss program.

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And so, yeah, that's the

best way to reach me.

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Wonderful.

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So listeners, if you need a little help

in this area, at least go look at those

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free resources or reach out to Carrie.

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So Carrie, I'm so excited that

you're going to come back and

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thank you so much for being here.

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Well, Lisa, thank you for

this great conversation and

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for having me on your show.

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I really appreciate it.

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My pleasure.

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You take good care.

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Yeah, you too.