Chris Mamone on Acceptance and Resilience

Chris Mamone is an acceptance coach who helps people heal from grief, loss, and trauma so they can find self-acceptance and step into their power. His journey began with profound personal losses that reshaped his life and perspective.

In 2020, he experienced the death of his grandfather, and just two years later, after struggling with infertility for 12 years, he and his wife were thrilled to be expecting their first child. Tragically, their son was stillborn just one day before his due date. The weight of these losses was immense, and he had to make a choice—let grief consume him or find meaning and purpose in the pain.

Through his journey, he discovered that grief, loss, and trauma are rarely discussed openly in society. Many people told him to “move on” or “let it go,” but he realized that grief doesn’t work that way. Instead, he learned that moving forward is the key, not forgetting or suppressing emotions, but carrying them in a way that allows growth and healing. Grief becomes a lifelong companion, and when we find the lessons and blessings within it, we evolve into better versions of ourselves.

He has worked with people grieving lost children, family members, and even those struggling with traumatic, unexpected deaths. Grief often feels like slamming on the brakes while speeding down the highway—it forces a full stop, demanding us to process emotions we might otherwise ignore.

Acceptance is not about liking or agreeing with a loss, but acknowledging it as reality. Once we accept what has happened, we regain personal power and can make choices about how to move forward. 

Through grief, he realized that much of what people stress about daily is insignificant. Major losses shift priorities, showing what truly matters. Losing his son, while incredibly painful, gave him this gift of perspective. He calls it the “gift of shitty wrapping paper”—something he would never wish for but ultimately changed his life. Every day, he continues to learn and practice acceptance, especially during difficult moments like his son’s birthday or the holidays.

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Transcript

Chris: [00:00:00] I help people get to that place to accept it. That doesn't mean we like it. It doesn't mean we agree with it. It doesn't mean we're just saying it is what it is. Oh, well, but we're just at face value saying this happened to me, and I accept that circumstance. When we get to that place of acceptance, we are in a position to step into our personal power.

Jill: Welcome back to Seeing Death Clearly. I'm your host, Jill McClennen, a death doula and end-of-life coach. Here on my show, I have conversations with guests that explore the topics of death, dying, grief, and life itself. My goal is to create a space where you can challenge the ideas you might already have about these subjects.

I want to encourage you to open your mind and consider perspectives beyond what you may currently believe to be true. In this episode, I sit down with Chris Mamone, an acceptance coach who helps people heal from grief, loss, and trauma so they could step into their personal power. Chris shares his deeply personal journey from the death of his grandfather in 2020 to experiencing the [00:01:00] stillborn of his son just one day before his due date.

These profound losses shaped his perspective on grief, leading him to discover that healing isn't about moving on, but about moving forward. Forward carrying our losses in a way that fosters growth and transformation. We talk about society's discomfort with grief, the unrealistic expectations placed on those who mourn and how acceptance doesn't mean agreement, but rather acknowledging reality so we can reclaim our power.

Chris also shares the surprising gifts lost can bring This conversation is a powerful reminder that grief. When integrated can become a source of resilience and deep personal growth. Thank you for joining us for this conversation. Welcome Chris to the podcast. Thank you so much for coming on. We connected on Facebook, I believe.

I feel like I know you a little bit now because I've been reading your posts and hearing all about your story, why you start us off with a little bit of background, who you are, where you came from, if you wanna share how old you are, anything like that. 

Chris: I love it. So for [00:02:00] everybody listening today, my name is Chris Lamoney.

I'm an acceptance coach. What I do is I help people heal from grief, loss, and trauma to discover their self-acceptance and step into their personal power. What led me down this road was a lot of unexpected losses that were pretty heavy. Back in 2020, I watched my grandfather pass away on my arms. I. After fighting a three year battle with terminal cancer, that kind of led me down my grief journey.

It was one of the most painful moments in my life and something I was definitely not prepared for. It led me down this journey of transformation in my life that I I see today, but I didn't see back then. Unfortunately, two years after that, after fighting with infertility for 12 years, my wife and I got pregnant with our first child and we lost him a day before he was supposed to be born.

'cause his heart stopped. So I dealt another heavy car to grief having a stillborn child. And that's something I still really struggle with today. But again, something I share with people in my coaching is said, all these things are happening for us. They're not happening to us. And that's hard to see in the moment when you're dealing with all those emotions.

But what I was forced to do is make a choice. Do I want to be depressed [00:03:00] about this and go down a bad road in my life, or do I wanna find some meaning and purpose in what happened? And so I couldn't take all the heavy emotions going on with those circumstances, so I said, I've gotta do something with this.

What I came to find was, is that grief, loss and trauma are not well talked about in our culture, in our society. I, I heard it a lot after I lost my kid and my grandfather, that you gotta get, move on, let go of it. Life happens. Our human mind, all of us, we're not wired that way. That just doesn't work. What I have learned on my path is that moving forward is how we do it Moving forward doesn't mean we forget things.

It doesn't mean we push off our emotions or feelings, but we learn how to move forward with it and treat it like a little person next to us. It's gonna be there our whole life. And when we find the gifts, lessons, and blessings through that process. We ultimately become a better version of ourselves. I became a coach through that process.

It was my way of healing and also my way of giving back to people that are going through exactly what I've experienced. 

Jill: So many of us came to this work. When you work with end of life or grief, you don't come to this work if you [00:04:00] haven't experienced it yourself, right? It's like not something that most of us kind of are like, I don't know.

It sounds interesting. We go through the experience and then realize we could have used something that was not there for us. How can we fill that need? For other people. I am very sorry to hear about your grandfather, especially about your child. I mean, I remember the first time I read that I was just like, that's heavy.

That's hard. That's a real big one. Not that grandparents aren't big, but again, it falls in the natural order of things. For our grandparents live their life. They're supposed to die before we do. It's still sad. We still grieve the loss of a child. I don't think it matters what age they are. There's just so much that goes with that loss that isn't just the loss of the child.

It's the life we saw ourselves having with that child, the experiences they were gonna experience that we were gonna experience with them. And now that's all gone. There's a lot of grief that seems. Very complicated when it comes with the loss of a child versus [00:05:00] the loss of other people in our lives that we love so much.

Chris: Yeah, you said that very well, Jill. I'm glad you said what you did, by the way too, because a big thing I learned, and I hear a lot of it in the grief community, there's a lot of comparison to losses and I, I try to tell everybody, your loss is individual to you. Don't try to compare. I've been in the loss community for over two and a half years now, and I can tell you me losing my son as a stillborn and it lost their 4-year-old daughter.

Who strangled herself at night in her bedsheets. Those losses are individual. They share a certain amount of pain depending on your experience of things. So I do share that grief isn't linear and it's definitely not something to compare because we all process that individually. Another point that you brought up too, but I had to really work through when I lost my child.

Not a lot of people know this, but I had less than 24 hours with him. I had 33 years with my grandfather, so I had. All these memories, all these experiences, all these good times I can look back on and with my kid, I have less than 24 hours. It really messes with your mind on certain losses you [00:06:00] go through and how that loss happens.

I think it also exposes a lot of our deep inner workings as people, I've talked to, people that have been suicidal, I've talked to people that have lost somebody through drunk driving. And their loss experience. It's really interesting when I talk to these people because there's always this deep part of 'em.

It's, it's like you're driving down the freeway at, at 70 miles an hour you slam on the brakes. That's what grief is like it. It really is this whole full out stop check and pauses yourself, but you end up in this place of. Having to acknowledge your feelings and emotions that you normally would say, well, it's not a big deal.

Grief kind of makes you forced into it, but really uncomfortable and it's really uncertain and unknown. That's why I share with people. Grief isn't linear. There's not a timeframe on it. By the way, I'll be grieving until the day I die about my kids. That's what I got dealt. Do you have a loss like my grandfather?

And you got 30 years with somebody, you've got all this stuff to fall back on. That grief process can be very short. For some people, it can be very long. For some people, it just depends on how you deal with it. 

Jill: Yeah, and I mean, it's true that. [00:07:00] You never get over it, right? You're gonna have that grief for your child, especially for your entire life.

But that doesn't mean it's a bad thing. And I think that's something our culture gets really wrong too, is that we view grief as like, oh, that's terrible. Like, I'm so sorry. You're gonna grieve that for the rest of your life. Yes. But also there's things that grief brings us to life. The joy, the appreciation, like there's a lot of things that we don't necessarily fully experience until we know the feeling of losing something that we care about.

It gives so much more value sometimes to the things in our life that we kind of took for granted, where it's just like, I don't know, they're gonna be there forever. Or This thing is more important than the people in my life because this thing has monetary value. Right? It seems to me. In my experience that grieving and the acceptance of death really changed how I view all of the things [00:08:00] in my life.

It allows me to appreciate them so much more. And it sounds like that's what you are doing now with your coaching, helping people not ignore the loss, not ignore the grief, not ignore the bad things that happen to us in life, but take it and use it for something that can be positive, which is. Kind of why I wanted to really talk to you.

'cause I was like, I love this idea of what you do with people. I think we get so lost sometimes in the sadness of death and grief, but it can help us live our life better. So when we get to the end, we're not gonna look back and think, I just wasted my whole life caring about things that weren't that important, which I think is really sad.

Chris: I appreciate what you just said because that's exactly what's happened to me on my journey. Things that I thought were problems, they're not problems. When you go through, if you lose somebody very close to you, and I, again, I, I have a very unique loss with old child, but I'll say most people will lose a grandparent, aunt or uncle, maybe a spouse, and a DUI accident kind of thing.

The reason I bring those [00:09:00] things up is that when you take that loss that happened and you. You go through a range of motion, you go through anger, you go through frustration, you go through sadness, grief, guilt, shame, and you start questioning yourself. This could mean some, this outcome might not have happened.

That's what lives with you. What I teach people on coaching, that's why I call myself an acceptance coach, is I help people get to that place to accept it. That doesn't mean we like it. It doesn't mean we agree with that. Doesn't mean we're just saying it is what it is. Oh, well. It doesn't mean that, but we're just at face value saying, this happened to me, and I accept that circumstance.

When we get to that place of acceptance, we're in a position to step into our personal power, and that's where we can make decisions and choices that this doesn't have to be some terrible, horrible, tragic loss. It doesn't have to be that. One of the harshest things I got told when my grandfather died and I passed this along in coaching in the right moment because it's a sensitive thing.

That experience really was my grandfather's experience. It wasn't mine, it was his, it was his passing, it was his death. [00:10:00] That was his experience. When someone passes, we're ultimately the ones who feel pain and suffering because we're. Screaming inside with our anger. Our anger is the part of us that loves us the most, and it's the part saying, I'm missing something.

I'm not feeling seen or heard or understood during that process of death. While we're going through all that, we're seeing our own reality at the end. 'cause we're all gonna die one day. And so we're seeing that we're faced with it and it, it scared the crap outta you. At the same time. I had to sit there and say, that was his experience and he's no longer in paint.

That's what I had to get to with my grandfather. He fought a tough battle. It was three years at hell. And he doesn't have to suffer anymore. Thank God I suffered a bit because it's how much we love these people that we lose. It's our love and our compassion. Deep down, when we get caught up in the waves, motions of every day, I see it every day.

When I go out in public, I see people driving crazy. They gotta get somewhere and point to or they want to most somebody over in the parking lot, and I'm kind of sitting there in my head. You don't really know this until you go through a major loss of grief and trauma, but all those things we think are important are those [00:11:00] urgency things every day.

They get real quiet when you go through trauma and you kind of reprioritize, and as you said, you know, I don't wanna wake up and say, oh, I wasted my life. Well, grief and trauma puts you in that bucket to say 90% of what I thought was a problem in life. It's really not. So what's left is what's important to you and what matters most to you?

Losing my son, by the way, that was the greatest gift I ever got. And I call it the gifted, shitty wrapped paper because it is, I wish he was here right now. I should have a three-year-old running around, making a mess, creating chaos, screaming, all sorts of stuff. I should be having that life and I don't have it.

And I grieve that loss every day. It gets worse on his birthday. It gets worse at Christmas all the time. I thought my Greek process with him in particular. Would be better going forward with time. It actually gets worse for me, and so I always have to learn that acceptance all the time. I have to say, Hey, you have to accept it.

It's not gonna change. But he gave me this gift to become a coach. He gave me this gift to go help people. He gave me the gift to help people learn and [00:12:00] understand their grief and learn how to find purpose and meaning through that process. And so I can't be anything but thankful and grateful for his life and celebrate him.

I can't do anything other than that. That's a, that's a beautiful place. Some people will say, that's radical to get there. Don't you love and care or miss 'em? I would say, yeah, I do, and I'm still sad and depressed. I cry some days. I really do. But that overwhelming sense of gratitude and love and compassion and empathy and understanding and gratefulness overpowers that.

He is always a part of my journey. He's what led me down this road. To not celebrate him would be a disservice to him. I encourage everybody, if you're going through a loss like that, it takes time. It's not gonna happen overnight. Please don't misconstrue what I'm saying. Look for that a little bit every day, and that loss will turn into something great for you.

Jill: This might be some people's beliefs, and it's one of those things like take it or leave it, but I've heard this from other podcast guests and it's. Something that stuck with me is that some souls choose to incarnate into this life [00:13:00] for a reason, and sometimes that reason is to just show up and then leave before they've even had a chance to exist, to potentially put other people on a path.

And so when you were saying that about your son again it, I don't know. I don't know if I believe it or not. It's just something that I've heard, and this seems like that might be, if it is possible, one of those cases where his soul was like, you know what? My dad has some work he needs to do, and if I don't show up and then leave really fast, he's never gonna do that work.

I just thought about that. 'cause I don't know what I believe. Honestly, the more people that I talk to, the more I don't know what I believe, which is okay. Right. I think that's all right. That's okay. Right. But it is something that I thought of when you were talking about that and going back to where you were saying how like people in the parking lot rushing around and all these things are so important.

Some of that I feel is because of the unprocessed trauma and the unprocessed grease that we're holding, that it's just so much work. It requires so [00:14:00] much energy to hold that in, shove it down, and pretend that it's not bothering us. Then everything feels so urgent, like we have to get there and do this thing, and I need all these things in my life to try to make me feel better, and then they're impatient and they're pumpkin foreigns at people because.

Holding all that in still comes out sometimes is anger. It seems to me if we could all work a little bit with this acceptance that shitty things happen. All of us have shitty things happen. Maybe not as shitty as other people, but we all have bad things that happen. I actually talk to, uh, my 14-year-old son about this not too long ago.

I said I wouldn't go back and relive some of the experiences that I've had because they were really painful. They were really difficult. I also wouldn't change them now that I am through it, and now that I've worked on healing myself and healing the way that I feel about the experience, like I don't wanna [00:15:00] relive it, but also it made me who I am today.

And if I wouldn't have had that experience, I wouldn't be able to help people the way that I do because I wouldn't understand what it feels like to feel pain and to feel suffering and to carry trauma within us. And so it makes me a better. Person when I go out into the world, before I healed it, it used to pop up in really nasty ways and I would fight with people physically fight, like argue with people.

I mean, it was a hot mess. And then one day I realized, oh, that's 'cause of this unprocessed trauma that you have from this event. When it comes time for that anniversary of that event. You get really angry and you fight people, it makes them, but it is what was happening. And once I acknowledged that, and once I allowed myself to process how angry I was, the date comes and goes and I'm like, oh, look at that.

It was fine. Nothing happened. I just thought of all those different things as you were talking about. The acceptance and the rushing around and then the soul. I just thought that was something [00:16:00] that was interesting as you were talking. 

Chris: I really appreciate that you brought that up because that's exactly what happened.

I'll, I'll, I'll share a quick story. I was a woodworker when my son died and I was trying to make him a box for dashes. The long story shore box didn't work itself out on the work bench that day, and I chucked it on the ground and tried to smash it with my foot. I ended up in the gas for eight weeks. I smashed on.

The reason I say that is when you're, it was what you were talking about with all those emotions. When you bottle up that stuff is what I like to say. People suppress it and then what a lot of us do, by the way, is we distract ourselves. Just like you said, we're setting our mind everywhere, but it's sitting in here building and a lot of times it'll just sit there and start kind of pushing you up like that because it's gotta go somewhere.

What I share a lot on the Greek journey, and it's what I give people space in my coaching practice for is. You gotta feel your emotions, feel your thoughts, feel your feelings. That's very contradictory to what society tells us to do. But my belief that I've learned over the years, and it took me a long time to learn this, is that our emotions are [00:17:00] messages.

Just like I I was saying about anger is the part that loves you the most. Next time you get angry about something, and I don't, you know, particularly mind what it is you get angry about, but stop and ask yourself, what caused me to feel angry right now? Or how did I end up in this angry state right now?

When you do get to that place of figuring out what caused you to be angry, that anger starts going away because you listen to that emotion, you listen to the message it's trying to say, and when you're in that place to step into your personal power, so your emotions aren't guiding you, you're listening to them and you're in control.

I was trying to remember the other thing you were. You said a lot of good stuff there. 

Jill: We will keep doing that, which is why I have my notepad so I can write it down and I don't forget. 

Chris: Um, the one thing I'll share, you know, a really crazy story about how my grandfather's death and my son's death was connected.

This is gonna be a little woowoo for some people. I can't explain it because it happened to me so vividly. 30 days after my grandfather died, I had a, a vivid dream about probably three o'clock in the morning. This dream was so real. It was like you and I sitting here on a Zoom call and [00:18:00] my grandfather just showed up out of nowhere, like a ghost or something.

I was like, grandpa, well, well, what are you doing here? Oh, where are you coming from? We had this full out conversation that felt like it went on for an hour. We just talked about life. We talked about each other. At the very end of it, my grandfather just like, it was very cold and very fast. He's like, I love you, but I have to go.

And I was like, where? Where are you going? I don't understand this. And he said, I have to go, but I love you. And he started walking away and I was like, where are you going? I was in this total state of confusion and long story short. He just left and I woke up from this dream four o'clock in the morning crying my eyes out because I thought he was right by my bedside.

It was so real and vivid. I have not had a dream like that since. Fast forward when I lose my son, same kind of thing happens when my thumb dies. The the craziest part, it's about the same timeframe after he passes. I have this dream and it's a white hospital room. Everything is stark white. So what I hear, 'cause I can't see it, but if you imagine your hands, from my view, you see a little baby tiger or baby lion.

And my son's [00:19:00] animal we made for him before he was born a lion. So I see this thing that looks like a lion or a tiger, and I see these hands and I hear my grandfather's voice telling all these excited little children to calm down and be quiet because baby's sleeping. And I'm getting really weirded out because I, it's in a dream stay, but I'm not, I'm.

Where the heck am I? What is going on right now? I'm tripping out because I hear my grandfather's voice and I see this thing that represents my son, and I hear all these little kid voices really excited. Same thing happens. I wake up and I'm just like, what happened? This is trippy. After my son passed, I kept saying, I hope my grandfather's looking over him in heaven.

I give this example, and I know it's kind of woo woo out there, but when you have dreams that row, when you go through the grief process, pay attention to them. This is my belief, by the way. I'm not trying to push this, but. I really believe there is an afterlife. I believe that we're just passing through in a slide to learn lessons onto the next thing.

I had that experience and I just was like, it made me really question my beliefs on a lot of ways. It made me say, is the afterlife real? Is this, this [00:20:00] transition mode for us here? I. I share that to say, if you lose a loved one, keep them in your thoughts for a good 30 days on a deep level of things. Don't ignore your emotions, don't ignore your feelings.

Don't try to distract yourself all the time because you will get messages that are very deep and personal to you. You may get an answer of some kind through that process that you were looking for while that person was alive. She may get. At that time, at that point in time, in a grief process, 

Jill: it makes me think of, in Buddhism, I believe it's 49 days.

I would have to look that up to be exactly sure. They believe that the soul doesn't really fully move on for that period of time. It's like. I think it's 49 days. Very weird exact number. And I had a dream very similar after my grandmother died. It's the only time that I've had a dream about her. We were in the lobby of a hotel.

It was very bright, but really beautiful and calm, and we were just sitting in chairs and talking and she kind [00:21:00] of said something similar where she was like, I love you, but I gotta go. And I was like, no, but you can't. She was like, no, but I have to. And she like, yeah. And she like not floated up, but she definitely kind of like was going up and I was like, but are you gonna come back?

And she was like, no, I'm not. And I was like, but I've won you to, my grandmother's been dead for 14 years. I've never dreamed about her since then, and it felt so real. I was actually sitting in this room with her and it was a strange feeling. It was not long after she died, like it we're not talking like the next day, but it was definitely pretty close to after she died.

I guess it was just her way again, I don't know. Maybe it really was her. Maybe it really was her soul. Coming to me in a dream and being like, all right, this has been cool. We spent a lot of good time together, but it's time for me to go. I was like, all right, and I really didn't want her to, really didn't, but it's okay.

It does now. I don't feel I miss her though. It's a weird feeling. Feels like she's still [00:22:00] with me. 

Chris: I wanted to ask you about that because I've not gotten to talk to another person that's had that kind of experience before. How did that help you on your grief journey and your process you went through when you lost her?

Did you, did that bring you a sense of calm or acceptance, or did it make the pain worse for you? Like how did that make you feel? After that experience, 

Jill: my grandmother had a long illness as well. At the end, it was very challenging and I remember really hoping that I didn't remember her the way that she was At the end.

Her personality even changed. She thought people were stealing from her. She thought I was trying to kill her, like it was not. My grandma at the end and I was so upset because I thought that that's the way I was gonna remember her because that was our last experience. And having that chance to like sit, it makes me wanna cry.

Having that chance to sit and talk with her and have it be her again. In some ways almost left me with that like, oh, no, [00:23:00] no, no. That was just her illness. That was just all these other things. As her body was shutting down, right, her personality was changing. That wasn't really her. This is the real her.

This is the grandma She looked. In the dream, the way that I remembered her when I was younger, like she was still old. My grandmother was 94 when she died, I think even when I was a kid. Wow. She was in her sixties, so like she was still old, but she wasn't the 90-year-old. She was, you know, she was my grandma.

She looked real short, cute, chubby, like short, curly hair, you know, like it was her, and it really did help me grieve. Her and not get so stuck in the pain that there was at the end. It's been 14 years now since she died. I haven't physically seen her again. I haven't dreamt about her, but if you were to ask me, it feels like she's sitting in the other room.

I have this feeling that she's never left. I just feel her close by me and that's what I [00:24:00] wanna say. Sorry grandma, for some of the stuff you saw, if you really were apologize. I really expected to grieve her so differently than I actually have all these years because I thought I was just gonna be lost without her.

But I still feel like she's here and I still wish I could go sit in the other room with her and have a cup of tea and talk to her like I used to, but it doesn't feel as heavy. And I do think in some ways that dream really did have a lot to do with it, that I just had that opportunity. To be with her again, not the her that was at the end.

And it didn't have to be that way at the end. And I know that now as a death doula, that we don't do service to people at the end of life in a lot of ways. So we really didn't have to be as hard as it was at the end. I know that now and again, that's why I got into this work because I was like, what was that?

And hospice was [00:25:00] amazing. So yeah, that's the long way of saying it did help my grieving process, and I have stuff of hers everywhere. I have her handwriting tattooed over my heart. I have little tkes and stuff across the room from me, and even the plants. A lot of my plants originally came from my grandmother's plants, so I keep myself surrounded by stuff.

That was hers or has some connection to her, and I think that helps to keep that feeling of love and presence still in my life. 

Chris: I appreciate you sharing your story with that, that that was a beautiful story that I'm, I'm very grateful that you shared that because that's gonna help a lot of people find.

Some solace in their grief process. I couldn't agree more with you. I, I still have my grandfather Shopsmith from 1954 woodworking thing that I found out, not even two years ago. It was actually his dad's from back in the day. Wow. And I've still got his fishing rods from when we were kids. I bought a sailboat recently because I sailed with my grandpa, and sailing was huge for him back in the seventies.

I'm glad he [00:26:00] brought up. Sharing your story that you have all these things with your grandma, because something that's brought me comfort and I try to tell other people this, I'm sure everybody does this to a degree, but always keeps something that's very meaningful and impactful. That person you lost always keeps something like that with you because it can be a very grounding.

Tool for you as you go through grief. When I lost my son, I had a, a lady in Idaho make a necklace for me that's got a palm. I can't read 'cause I'll cry my eyes out. But it's a tree of life and it, it's meant to represent, you know, my kid and just that my kid was the stepping stone for everything. Great that comes next to my life.

And so I always encourage people to hang on to those little memorabilia things because they can not only help you in your grief process, but sometimes they have a deeper meaning for them and they can lead you down a different path in your grief process that maybe you didn't expect or understand at that point, that it helps you start to heal a little bit fuller.

Your process. Yeah. I appreciate you sharing about your grandma. 

Jill: Well thank you for sharing about your grandfather and your son [00:27:00] because the reason I started the podcast was so that people can hear more of these conversations and you know, both of us already already said like, I can't talk about that thing 'cause I might cry.

That's okay. Right? That's part of the human experience. It doesn't have to be something that we avoid. We don't need to avoid things that make us feel sadness or any emotions. If we avoid the sadness, we can't fully feel joy either. You can't have one without the other. That's part of the human experience, and if I was gonna be honest, I wouldn't change it.

I don't want to suffer greatly in life. But also it does feel like that's just part of what makes life. Interesting at what makes it worth living is that we have a variety of experiences. Maybe this is just a stopping point in a long journey that our souls go through and for whatever reason, we were supposed to learn these lessons just made me think of, my daughter just said a TikTok to me and my husband.

It was a girl saying we were dinosaurs together and we held each [00:28:00] other's hands at the end. But I bet you don't remember. Do you. What, what just said that was so funny. But at the same time, I don't really know why. Why is that any weirder? To think maybe we were all dinosaurs at once. Maybe part of like, you know, we've evolved to become more intelligent, but maybe we were all dinosaurs at one point.

We were just holding each other's hand and we were like, I don't know. And now. However many thousands of years later, here we are again, holding each other's hand going. The world's crazy. It's all on fire. I don't know what's gonna happen, but at least I have you with me. Right? Who knows? 

Chris: Yeah, I, I saw videos of those online.

They, they really tripped me out. This one story I read, uh, this. I think it was a mom that had a five-year-old or something, really young kid that said she knew her mom in a past life. She named who the person was and it was actually a friend of the mom that died like five, 10 years prior to that. And her mom is [00:29:00] stop and was like, what did you just say?

It makes you wonder if we reincarnate on this planet, maybe this body that we're looking at right now is just here for a short time. And then when this one ends, another one begins. It makes me wonder. I, you know, same thing, like my dreams with my grandfather. Who's to say if it was real or it wasn't real?

I certainly don't know. I'm wanting to lean a certain way, or like with your dream about your grandma, who's to say if it's real or not, how do we even know? So it's just very interesting, these roads that grief takes us down. Something you brought up twice down. I wanted to say something about it because I got reminded when you were talking about how when we go through this grief, we get very distracted with things.

Something that I'll share. That energy in your body has gotta go somewhere. If you, my mom, for example, when my grandfather passed, she went on with life. Like it never happened the day after we lost him. And I, there's people out there that handle grief like that. And I, I bless you people for being strong.

I really do. Because when you go through that grief process, the scary part is you're suppressing all those [00:30:00] emotions and you're suppressing all that feeling. And I will share just 'cause of some experiences I've had. That does blow up in your life in one way or another. That could be fighting with somebody like Jill said, I used to go through those motions that can be absolutely crying over something minuscule in your life.

It could be creating losses in your life of additional things. It could be friendships, relationships, job. It could be, uh, moving. There's a lot of these things that can happen when you bottle all that stuff up within you. Something I've learned on my Greek journey, and it's like when I smashed my foot that energy's gotta go somewhere.

When you trap it in there, it ping pongs around like a ping pong ball at a, you know, Chinese ping pong tournament. It's going a hundred thousand miles an hour back and forth across the table. And if you don't let it out and let it move, it slowly will start doing bad things in your life. So I just want to address that 'cause that's something that I too didn't really learn until I went through all these things.

Allow yourself space to feel, give yourself permission to cry. I always say, give yourself permission to feel [00:31:00] that no one's gonna make fun of you. You're not a bad person, you're not a weak person, you're not any of those things. You're a human who has feelings and emotions, and you experienced a loss that changed your world.

It also changed you, you know? And a thing that I learned from the loss community with parents, people that lost kids, and this one really hurt when I first heard it, but it's really true. I didn't just lose my son. I lost the future life I planned and wanted. And so that's why. Some losses, and I can't say it's just child loss because I think it does happen in many other facets of loss and grief that we have this idea of life.

For example, somebody in my family, same thing happened. They got married and lost their spouse of one year just poof, and their whole life gone. Now it's this start over thing. It's like, how? How do I move forward? How do I figure this out? What is my life gonna look like without this person? And that's a big trauma.

Back to what you were saying earlier, Jill, don't distract yourself. Things that's dis disservicing you and taking away what could be yours, signs or [00:32:00] symbols or messages you need to hear that will guide you on this next path. Give yourself permission. Allow yourself space to feel these things. There's nothing wrong with it.

I'm a grown 38-year-old man. I cried my eyes out for six to 10 months straight after I lost my kid. I couldn't help it. That's how much I love that kid. Change my world. I'm forever grateful that I had those moments. When I'm talking to men in particular, men are really told to suck it up and you're a man, you can do this, you can get through this.

We have emotions just like women do. You were just taught to hide them better. Women were taught how to show them. We gotta break the societal barriers around grief and lost to say. It's okay if men cry. It's okay if women get a little emotional. There's nothing wrong with this. What we should be doing is accepting her and saying, this is part of the process.

This is how this process unfolds, and this is what we're meant to be in this moment. If we allow ourselves to be fully present and sit with these things, we discover a deeper purpose and meaning to who we are as [00:33:00] individuals. We also discover gifts we have and blessings of that moment, and maybe those gifts, by the way.

You'll end up like me, you'll end up on this path of helping people in ways you never thought you'd be doing. And I'll wrap up with this. I never thought I'd be a grief coach. You could ask me that three years ago, five years ago, eight years ago, I would never, I'd sit there and go, what are you talking about?

I never do that. I, here I am. Right? I didn't ask for it. The gifted, shitty rocking paper here 

Jill: it is a gift in shitty rock paper. It's true. Nobody will make fun of you. There might be people that do give rid of those people. Then if somebody in your life is making fun of you for crying and feeling an emotion over a loss, you really don't need them in your life.

Search out groups. Facebook is a good place to start. Anywhere you can find people that will be okay with you. Showing those emotions. Don't have people in your life that are gonna judge you for it. If they're judging you. It's more that they're uncomfortable. Your emotions because it's triggering something in them that they didn't process themselves and [00:34:00] they never were able to cry themselves.

There are people that will be okay with you crying and will support you through it and will still love you through it. So just find those people. If you find that in your real life you don't have them, unfortunately, there are some people that will make fun of folks for it. I didn't cry, and it's because I got made fun of when I was in high school.

I graduated in 1997 and I went a good 10 years at least, where I just didn't cry. And it's because I was so ashamed of it. I had a boyfriend that was like, God, you cry over everything. Why do you have to cry over everything? And I was like, I don't know. I guess I won't. So I shoved it all down and turned it all off.

When I had traumas happen, rather than crying and dealing with them, I got angry and I got into fights at bars with people. Didn't work very well. I have spent a lot of the last few years getting comfortable with tears myself because I still have a hard time. It makes my whole being get all confused and burn off, but I'm working on it like a lot of things in life, right?

We gotta just continue [00:35:00] to work on it. Because tears are important, like they really are important. If somebody's uncomfortable, maybe don't cry around them, but find somebody that you feel good with. 

Chris: Jill, I wanted to ask you, and I, I appreciate you being vulnerable enough to share that story. There's a lot of people that, like you said, they'll just bury it and never deal with it.

Do you notice when you hold back your tears, how you feel inside, and do you notice a shift when you do allow yourself space to cry? Do you feel a shift inside? Yeah. Well, almost like what's being yourself versus not. 

Jill: I can feel a difference. This past Saturday was a great example where I'm going through an experience that is emotionally draining right now, caring for a friend working on this business.

It is not easy. I was doing an event, I was hopeful I was gonna sell t-shirts and it just was not a good day. I could feel that things were not lining up and I could feel this desire to cry. I was like, you can't cry. You're at the middle of a flea market, not the ray timing. I [00:36:00] was able to keep pushing it down.

I could still feel it. I was like, oh, that's interesting. I feel it in my face. I could feel it in my chest. I could feel it in my stomach that this wanted to come out. When I got home, I took a shower and let it come out. I just felt lighter. I felt like I could breathe easier physically. My body did feel better, and I was able to be like, okay, now that that's gone, let's figure this out.

What can I do to make this situation easier? What can I do to maybe change my business? What direction do I wanna go? But until I let it out. It was so distracting that I couldn't actually think through the quote unquote problem. I was just so busy trying to manage all these things. I was feeling on top of also feeling there is some shame that still comes up in me when I feel like I wanna cry.

There's still that little voice that's like, don't cry. Don't cry. You can't cry. And then I'm like, all right, go away. But did feel physically different. Immensely different and emotionally different. Once I did allow myself to cry and now I'm [00:37:00] refocused, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna figure it out one way or another where I could not get to that point on Saturday.

On Saturday, I just was like, I just wanna go home and I just wanna cry. 

Chris: I love that. I wanted you to share that on here today, because I've talked to people in grief for 15, 20 plus years and everything that Jill just said, by the way, about releasing that, allow yourself space to cry. Allow your space to feel that emotion.

How, it's almost like you got rocks on here when you're dealing with the problem. And when you give yourself that space to feel those emotions and cry, all of a sudden it's like thousand pounds off my shoulder here. Yeah. Now, now I can feel things, I can understand what's going on. And like you said, it gives you that clear head now that you can say, okay, I see what's going on.

I feel these things. What can I do next? What, what action can I take? It's really that giving yourself permission to release. And then puts you in that place of where you wanna take that next step. I appreciate you sharing that today. 

Jill: Well, thank you. This has been a lovely conversation and we are coming up on the end of our time.

Where can people find you? Where can they [00:38:00] find your work? What's the best place for somebody to reach out to you? 

Chris: The best place for you guys to reach out to me is on Facebook. I've been growing exponentially on there lately in Lost Community and the Grief Communities. Look me up on Facebook. Joel will have the links and the, and I also, you guys can find me on my website as well.

Coming soon is my own podcast, which I hope you'll join me on that for sure. You've got, you've got some stories. I think that'll be very, very, very good for where I'm going with things. You look me up on Facebook and I'd love to connect with you guys. 

Jill: Yeah, I will put all the links in and people can easily find you.

Since we do have one more minute, when you were just talking about people holding grief for a long time. My grandfather died when I was. Very young, like four, the same grandma, her husband, right? So I was around him all the time when he was sick and when he was dying. And there's the ghost stories involved in that.

Like at the whole thing. One of the things that I realized when I started learning about grief and learning about death and dying and processing the whole thing, I realized how much grief I'd held for my grandfather because I didn't go to his [00:39:00] funeral. I wasn't allowed to go to his funeral. It was one of those things where he was living at grandma's house.

He was sick. I know he was sick, and then he just went away one day and never came back, and I had all of that grief that I held onto. He died when I was four. I'm 46 now, so I'd held grief for 36 years for my grandfather. I didn't even know that it was in there until I started sitting and thinking about it and I was like, do do I have grief in there that I've been holding onto?

I wonder if there is. And I created a whole ritual for myself that included meditation, prayer, and movement. I think movement is very important to help us work through some of it. I was able to release this grief that I'd held onto for so long, not knowing that it was even grief, and realizing how many decisions and choices I made.

Throughout my entire life we're affected by that grief. I wasn't facing it, I wasn't acknowledging it, and I didn't have any sense of closure around that [00:40:00] situation. That was really fascinating when I was like, oh, dang, look at that. All these years you've been holding that. So it happens to so many of us.

That we don't even understand that what we're feeling is grief. It just feels like anger or sadness or confusion or something else. And really, if we kind of dug in a little bit and got to the root of it, it's possibly someone processed grief from childhood even. I thought that was interesting when you, that there's a lot of us I think walking around like that.

Chris: If you, if you guys are going through grief, my biggest thing is don't identify with your emotions. Be very careful how you talk to yourself. This is another hard lesson I had to learn. Mm-hmm. Don't say, don't say the words, I'm angry, I'm sad. You need to learn to say, I feel sad. I feel angry because what you guys will learn, I went through this process for many years.

I'm still working on it, but when you say thank the statement, I feel, versus I am, you give yourself space to process that and it'll take you [00:41:00] out. Identifying with that emotion and understanding where it comes from, just like Jill said about. I just realized this through this process that she went through with her grandfather holding onto it for 35 years and then saying, I didn't know this.

I didn't feel this. We distract ourselves a lot in life, or life just moves forward. We forget that those, those, those emotions when they come up, if we identify with them, they get destructive. But if we say, I feel this way, it opens up that gateway for us to figure out where the source of that is coming from.

Jill: Yeah, that's a great point because oftentimes we will describe somebody as like, oh, they're so angry, or they're so lazy, and then that becomes an identity when really no, it's just what we feel. It's just who we are Sometimes. I like that reframe, kind of thinking it through when we talk to ourselves.

'cause sometimes we're nasty to ourselves. I'm nastier to me than anybody else is. It's a learning process. I'm trying. 

Chris: I always tell people every day, the world's gonna beat you up seven ways to the moon every single day you walk the planet. So if I could leave you with one thing, be kind to yourself, be nice [00:42:00] to yourself, you'll be amazed how far that will make your happiness in life.

Be kind to yourself first. Wonderful. Thank you 

Jill: so much. This was lovely. I could talk to you for another hour. We'll just do that on your podcast next, whenever that comes out. 

Chris: Okay. Thanks for having me on the show, y'all. I appreciate it. 

Jill: In my next episode, I sit down with Rosalia Cantana, a Miami based nurse practitioner whose journey of healing and transformation is truly inspiring.

Originally from Cuba, Rosalia built a successful career in healthcare, but in 2018, she found herself at the peak of her profession. Yet drowning in emptiness and depression. She opens up about her struggles, including suicidal thoughts and the search for deeper meaning that led her to breath work, somatic healing, and spiritual exploration.

Her story takes a dramatic turn in 2022. When she had a near death experience that forced her to confront deep fears and ultimately find salvation through a profound [00:43:00] connection with the divine. Now she shares the practices that continue to guide her healing journey. This conversation is a powerful testament to resilience, self discovery.

And the transformative power of faith. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend or family member who might find it interesting. Your support in spreading the podcast is greatly appreciated. Please consider subscribing on your favorite podcast platform and leaving a five star review.

Your positive feedback helps Recommend the podcast to others. The podcast also offers a paid subscription feature that allows you to financially support the show. Your contribution will help keep the podcast advertisement free. Whether your donation is large or small, every amount is valuable. I sincerely appreciate all of you for listening to the show and supporting me in any way you can.

You can find a link in the show notes to subscribe to the paid monthly subscription, as well as a link to my Venmo if you prefer to make a one-time contribution. Thank you, and I look forward to seeing you in next week's episode of Seeing. Death [00:44:00] clearly.