Grief isn't always about death. Sometimes it's the quiet (or loud) loss of a season, an identity, a dream, a job, or a version of yourself that no longer fits. In Episode 605, we continue the conversation from Episode 604 about how it's possible to grieve what you've lost while embracing what you're becoming. Give yourself permission to grieve, while also giving yourself another chance to grow.

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Hey, y'.

All.

You're listening to another episode of the Spiritual Homegirl, where we better self in spirit and make peace with the day through wisdom, education, and practical, easy to follow tips.

I am your host, Maria, your spiritual homegirl, who's also a mental professional.

And I want to talk about grief.

I really want you to give yourself permission to grieve.

And people like to put grief in this box of just physical loss.

And it's not always physical loss.

Now, ironically, I was inspired to speak on this because if you saw my Instagram yesterday, I posted a quick snippet of my great aunt showing us how to make family preserves.

It was a video of hers.

And what I did not share on that Instagram snippet was that although when I posted it, it was five weeks and two.

No, five years and two weeks to the day that she passed, that was actually the last video of her.

And she passed less than a month after that.

Like maybe around 30, 36 days, if we're being accurate.

Accurate.

And I said, wow, you really never know how much time you have until you don't.

And it goes further than relatives dying and passing away and things like that.

It goes to parts of ourselves that we could have nurtured.

It goes to other relationships that we could have nurtured.

It could have been other relationships that we should have ended.

It could be unhealthy habits within ourselves that we should have ended.

It could be parts of ourselves that we wish we could have did more with before things changed.

And it's okay to feel that.

And for those are kind of unsure of what other losses could look like.

Or let's go over some of them.

This is not an exhaustive list, but, you know, this is just some examples.

For example, when I became a mom, and I won't go too much into mommy things.

I don't want to make like a Mommy and Me page or something like that, or a Mommy Me platform.

Even though I do have a lot of insights since becoming a mom.

But I've always looked at it and it's interesting when you experience it for yourself, what it means to have the loss of the woman you were before you had a child.

And I don't mean this in a way where I don't like being a mom, because don't get it twisted.

I do.

I love it.

But the Maria that was able to get up and go, the Maria that was able to just do whatever she wanted to do, that is gone.

But I'm okay with that.

And the reason why is because you have other things that people to consider now that are going to always be directly affected by your decisions.

And that's a core responsibility, in my opinion, for me to take on.

So that means that I can't move a certain way like I used to for the sake of my child or the sake of my family, then that's okay.

But sometimes we look at these things as negatives because we always look at what we lose and not what we can gain.

And looking at what we can gain from our grief is also special when it comes to non physical losses.

Getting married.

Okay, yeah, I'm also married.

So losing who you were as a single person, because again, you got somebody else to consider now and you have a family to keep in mind, no matter what, you might not be able to move a certain way and vice versa, and that's okay.

But instead of us looking at it as we're restricted, which to a degree, logistically speaking, that could technically be the case, instead of looking at as a bad thing, maybe we can look at it as an opportunity to do something different or transform or transmute in a better way.

For us, it's an opportunity to do something in a different way.

And that's okay.

Whether it's your body changing, weight loss, weight gain, we look at who we could have been had we not gained the weight, or we look at how much time we could have had had we just lost the weight.

Whatever it is, there's still an opportunity for us to be our belts, our best selves beyond this.

But it's okay to grieve.

It's okay.

Sometimes we define ourselves on our jobs or our career.

And when those things end, especially when they end abruptly out of our control, we don't know which way we coming or going because we have spent all this time investing in our schooling and our training and our education and putting in the work and late nights and sacrificing family time.

And now we're like, well, dang, if I had known that this was gonna roll the way it was gonna roll, I would have took more time off or I would have spent more time with my family.

I would have prioritized things much differently.

If I had known that, or even if you didn't end the job and you now are 20 years out and you're like, wow, I probably should have spent more time with my kids or I probably should have took more vacations.

We can grieve the missed opportunity, but that doesn't mean that we will never have the opportunity to take these things again.

We Just know how we can move next time.

We can move prioritizing ourselves a little bit differently.

We can have better work life balance next time if we're still working by then.

Or for those that want to start a business and feel like it's too late, oh, I should have did this a long time ago.

There's 20 year olds starting businesses.

That's fine, everybody, timeline.

In your timeline, everybody's mission alignment doesn't always come in a time frame that we wanted to.

And that's okay.

It's never too late.

If you truly believe that's for you, it's okay to grieve it.

But if you want to start the business or do something, start it, do it.

What's the worst that can happen.

Since we didn't have enough time?

Going back to my previous episode about making decisions out of desperation, what we don't want to do is let our grief make decisions that's desperate for us because we want to stop feeling a certain way, but we also want to be able to honor our feelings and our emotions without it putting us in a pattern of poor decision making.

So, yes, make your grief.

Do what you got to do.

Process it, cry, whatever.

You know, like, it's, it's, it's unique to everyone's experience and it depends on everyone's loss and everyone's attachment to what was lost.

But when it's time to move forward, just know that you always can whenever you're ready.

And you don't have to force yourself into uncomfortable, desperate situations in order to do it.

So give yourself permission to grieve, but also give yourself permission to take one small step forward.

So that is the part two to today's double header episode.

So I like being back.

I really do.

But before I get into more things I want to talk about, y' all know I can't do any podcast episode without thanking you all for listening.

So thank you for listening.

Boo.

And I really appreciate that.

So life has been very interesting and I've been so inspired by what I see online and what I've experienced.

And again, I have so many awesome things to say when I say I more than likely have episodes that I can record right now that'll last for the rest of the year.

I mean that life will.

Life, whether it is first or third hand.

And I love it.

I love talking about things that I see and experience, and I pray that it's received positively.

And if there's somebody that you know that could use the message, by all means, please send them the episodes.

Please, by all means.

Because as we know, outside is outside, and.

And I believe that it is a form of spiritual warfare.

It's designed to break our spirits down so that we don't want to do nothing.

And as I always say, once you break the spirit, every.

Everything else is going to follow.

So we have to make sure that we keep our spirits up.

Not necessarily bypassing, but knowing that things may not be the most ideal and things may not be the safest right now.

Things may not be making the most sense right now either, but we still have the rights and responsibility to find joy in the midst of this.

It's okay to hold multiple things at once.

You're completely within your right to do that, especially when they conflict.

It's.

It's completely fine.

But just know that you still can be happy if you choose to.

So, again, like I said, I'm back.

I got some more episodes coming.

Don't forget to share with somebody that you care about.

Also, don't forget to sign up for my email list.

That's the second link in my show notes, and I will catch you on the next episode.

This has been another episode of the Spiritual Homegirl podcast.

My name is Maria, your spiritual homegirl.

And remember, Boo.

Friends, trust the journey.

Trust yourself.

And whatever you do do, do it with love, okay?

Grieving included.

Love, y'.

All.

Peace.