How Grief Works and Why It’s Different for Everyone with Krista St-Germain

Grief. It can be big and it can be small, yet many of us yearn for a roadmap to help us navigate through it.


Society often provides us with steps, timelines, and catchy phrases like "time heals all wounds." However, if you have experienced grief, you know it is much more complex than that.


In this episode, I have a conversation with Krista St-Germain, a grief expert, life coach, and fellow podcaster, to discuss the journey of grief—something we all face at various points in our lives. Whether you’ve experienced a loss of a loved one, experienced the end of a relationship, or are navigating difficult life transitions like children leaving home or a job change, grief is an inevitable part of life, and most of us feel unprepared to handle it.


Today you’ll learn:  

• Why the 5 stages of grief may not be the best framework to guide you through.
• How grief encompasses more than just loss; it involves how you choose to respond to it.
• The distinction between primary and secondary grief and why it’s important to know the difference?
• How to adjust your holiday traditions to better manage your current state.
• What “post-traumatic growth” is and how you can leverage your grief to move forward and create a more meaningful, purpose-driven life. 
• How to allow yourself to experience all of your feelings without guilt or judgment.  

Krista’s personal story will resonate with you and provide guidance for taking your next steps forward. So pop in those earbuds so you can learn how to navigate your grief with grace this holiday season.


With warmth,
Laurie

These guides will help you take the next step in life. 

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About Krista:
Krista St-Germain is a Master Certified Life Coach, Post-Traumatic Growth and grief expert, widow, mom and host of The Widowed Mom Podcast. When her husband was killed by a drunk driver in 2016, Krista’s life was completely and unexpectedly flipped upside down. After therapy helped her uncurl from the fetal position, Krista discovered Life Coaching, Post Traumatic Growth and learned the tools she ne

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DISCLAIMER: THE COMMENTARY AND OPINIONS AVAILABLE ON THIS PODCAST ARE FOR INFORMATIONAL AND ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY AND NOT FOR THE PURPOSE OF PROVIDING LEGAL, MEDICAL OR PROFESSIONAL ADVICE. YOU SHOULD CONTACT A LICENSED THERAPIST IF YOU ARE EXPERIENCING SUICIDAL THOUGHTS. YOU SHOULD CONTACT AN ATTORNEY IN YOUR STATE TO OBTAIN LEGAL ADVICE. YOU SHOULD CONTACT A LICENSED MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL WITH RESPECT TO ANY MEDICAL ISSUE OR PROBLEM.

Transcript

Laurie James  
Hey there. It's Laurie. Don't forget to sign up for December somatic class coming up on December 4. I've had really wonderful feedback from these classes, and they have been so helpful for my attendees. This month's topic will be on the science behind connection and attachment, and it's only $48 and you walk away with so many valuable practices and valuable information. So click the link in the show notes to register so you can join me on December 4 and stay with me for a must listen episode with today's guest, Krista St Germain, we are going to discuss what the Kubler Ross model got wrong when it comes to the five stages of grief, how you can move through the grieving process instead of suppressing it, and what post traumatic growth really means. So enjoy this episode. 

Laurie James  
Welcome to Confessions of a Freebird podcast. I'm your host. Laurie James, a mother, divorcee, a recovering caregiver, the author of Sandwiched A Memoir of Holding on and Letting go, a therapy junkie, relationship coach, somatic healer and now podcaster, I'm a free spirit, and here to lift you up on this podcast, I'll share soulful confessions and empowering conversations with influential experts so you can learn to spread your wings and make the most of your second half. So pop in those earbuds, turn up the volume, and let's get inspired, because my mission is to help you create your most joyful, purpose driven life, one confession at a time. 

Laurie James  
Welcome back, free birds. Today, I have a very special guest, Krista, St Germain, and you are going to love our conversation. It's going to be a tough one, but I think it's a really important one, especially this time of the year. Krista is a master certified life coach, post traumatic growth and grief expert, widow mom and host of the widowed mom podcast when her husband was tragically killed, a hung getting chills by a drunk driver in 2016 krista's life was unexpectedly flipped upside down after much therapy helped her uncurl from a fetal position. I can only imagine Krista discovered life coaching, post traumatic growth and learned the tools she needed to move forward and create a future she could get excited about, and now she loves coaching and teaching other widows how to love life again. Chris has also been featured in print in Psychology Today, Psych Central, bustle, Charlotte, parent medium and parenting magazines and on selected podcasts. Welcome. Krista, thank you so much for joining like this conversation.

Krista St-Germain  
Totally My pleasure. Laurie, I always love it when anyone wants to talk about grief, it's a good thing. 

Laurie James  
Yeah, thank you. And you know what I have to confess before we got on this call, I was just sharing with you a moment of grief that I had. And you know, I'm seven years post marriage, and I was having this moment of grief. My oldest daughter just recently got engaged, and I was having this grief, which I this moment of grief, not that I want that life back at all, but it's like I was having this moment of sadness that I didn't have my old family unit, or what a friend called, you know, the OG, the original gang. So I think we're going to jump into a lot of that. But what I'd love to start with is, can you just share with our listeners a little bit more about your journey and how you turned such an incredibly difficult and painful experience into something so purposeful. 

Krista St-Germain  
Yeah, it, for sure, was not on my list of goals or a 10 year plan, but, but here we are. Yeah, the Reader's Digest version is I had gotten divorced. First marriage kind of went down in flames, beautiful, two children that came out of that marriage, many good things, but it didn't end well. And I had found someone who it was just kind of like the redemption story, you know, like, good people do exist. You can be in the relationship you want to be in and treated the way you want to be treated. And we'd gotten married. We'd lived together for a while, and then and gotten married a few months before, but we were coming back from a trip, and we had driven separate cars, and I had a flat tire pulled over on the side of the highway. Stubborn man that he was, God love him, engineer, French Canadian, very. Be independent minded. And, oh, let's not call AAA. I just want to change the tire myself. I just want to get home. You know, let's just not and so while he was trying to he was trying to get in my trunk, to get the spare tire out of my trunk so he could change the tire. And I happened to be standing on the side of the road interstate, mind you, like cars whizzing. And I was texting my daughter, she was 12 at the time to tell her we were going to be late, and a driver who, as you mentioned, you know, we later found out, had alcohol in his system and meth in his system. He just did not see our hazard lights, and it was daylight, and he just didn't see us, and he crashed right into the back of Hugo's car and trapped him in between his car and my car and I went from like a real high of genuinely believing that my life was finally going in the direction I wanted it to go in and that my best days were really in front of me, to just feeling like the rug got absolutely ripped out from under me. And even though I thankfully had a great therapist because I had seen her all through my divorce, I pretty quickly realized that this was different, and that what I thought I knew about grief was not actually helping me. I did not have the tools that helped in that particular instance, right? And it was different. And so ultimately, I finally found different tools through life coaching. And then I just decided, once I got I got to a different place, that I really didn't want other people to have the same amount of struggle. You know, I wanted to make it easier for other women. So it wasn't really ever anything I I aspired to do it just at a certain point, kind of didn't make sense for me to do anything else.

Laurie James  
I feel that as a fellow coach and healer, it's like we use our experience to help others that are coming behind us, because we don't want it to be as difficult as it was for us. I mean, all the suffering that I did, I feel you in that. 

Krista St-Germain  
Yeah, and also, I think when you've gone through something significant, your perspective on what's important to you changes, and that's what happened to me. And I kind of looked at my job and I went, this pays the bills, but does it fill my soul with anything, right? Like, am I actually making an impact on the world that I want to make? And the answer was no. And so here we are. 

Laurie James  
Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that story, and I can only imagine how difficult that must have been for you and your family. So I've listened to your podcast, and you talk about the popular five stages of grief, and you touched on it a little bit during your story, that this kind of grief was different, but based on the grief of losing a loved one, where did the five stages of grief come from, and how does it apply differently to your loss versus, you know, a loss of a marriage, say, or- 

Krista St-Germain  
You know people can't see me talking necessarily, my whole face feels crinkly like when I just think about The five stages. I get all like, crinkly about it, yeah. So the five stages, I think, is something that was very valuable in its time, right? And so it was created in 1969 by Elizabeth Kubler Ross, and nobody was really talking about it at that time. So it's really important and pioneering work in its day. But really it was about people coming to terms with their own terminal diagnosis. It wasn't even really about losing someone or something. It was about dealing with our own mortality.

Laurie James  
Wow, see, I did not know that. 

Krista St-Germain  
Yeah, most people don't myself included, and so that's kind of what I mean. It's not like my grief was so different necessarily than other grief. It was what I thought I understood about grief wasn't actually accurate and wasn't helping me. And so her five stages was originally about again, people coming to terms with their own death. So it was she wrote about it in a book called on death and dying. So denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, that that was what she noticed anecdotally people were going through. And then later, she and David Kessler applied that work to grief and grieving later in her life. And you'll see it if you go back and read the forward of that book. She really deeply regretted that people took her work and made it formulaic and turned it into, you know, a staged thing, right, in a linear process. She never meant for it to be taken that way. She was trying to normalize the experiences that people were having and give language to it at a time when it wasn't being talked about. But then, because we're humans, and of course, like you said earlier, don't we want the roadmap? You know. 

Laurie James  
Right. Everybody wants the roadmap. Like, yeah. How do I get through this? 

Krista St-Germain  
Yeah, just give it to me, and it's nice. Five Stages. Oh, that sounds tidy, that sounds doable, that sounds, you know, so much less daunting. But then it's not how we experience it. And so then what I was doing, and what I've seen a lot of people do, is you look at it and you go, Okay, well, am I doing it wrong? Then, if this is not how. Well, I'm experiencing it, and this is what the experts say it's supposed to look like, what's wrong with me, and that's just not a helpful lens. And as with any theory or any subject, right? That was one theory, and that was in 1969 and here we are, how many years later there? There's been so much work done in the field of grief, so many other theories, but that one just seemed to catch on, and it's the one that shows up in our popular culture. It's the one that everybody knows about those two

Laurie James  
Google it, and that that's what shows up. 

Krista St-Germain  
Right, right? And it's, it's, it's like fingernails on a chalkboard for me, because I know that it gives people the false assumption that there's an end to grief, which there isn't. It gives people the assumption that acceptance is like a one time decision that you make when it's not. It gives people, you know, the idea that denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance are the only things you experience in grief, which is absolutely not the case for most of us, and great in its day, but we need to evolve with it.

Laurie James  
Yes, I would say so. So how do we evolve with our grief? Or, you know, because grief is small and big, right? I mean, we can grieve our kids going away to college. We can grieve little things, our pets dying. You know, not that that's so little, but I mean, there's life we're always changing, and we don't like change. So how do we grieve the loss of a friendship?

Krista St-Germain  
What you said Laurie, is profound. I don't even think you noticed that you said it. Maybe you just say stuff like this all the time. But grief is little and big like it so is. And I think where we want to start is we want to go back and we want to define what grief is, because sometimes we're not even talking about the same thing, right? So the my favorite definition of grief is that it's the natural human response to a perceived loss, and the little and big fits so well into that, right? Because it's perception. We wanted it to go one way, and it went another, and that feels like a loss. And what might feel one way to me will feel differently to you, and what might feel big to me might feel little to you, and vice versa. It's subjective, right? It's perception. It's unique, it's a fingerprint, it's different for everyone. And it's not just bereavement, right? Bereavement is death, losing someone to death. Grief is we thought it would go one way. It went another, and it feels like a loss. And so I think that is such a great place to start, because then all of a sudden we're including things that we didn't think, we didn't label them as grief. And now, when we use this generous definition of grief, so many more things fit into that, and even just in the naming. 

Laurie James  
Yes, yes. I love that. I love that. So we name it, we have a definition about grief. We might maybe a listener or two are out there thinking, Okay, I am currently grieving something, right now. Then what? 

Krista St-Germain  
Yeah, okay. So then another thing, sometimes it's actually about busting the myths more than it is about like, you know, new information. It's like, can we just get rid of the myths? So we have to understand that grief is not something we get over. It's not something that ends. It's not like golf, right, where there's like, 18 holes and you're done. We will always have a response to the loss that we perceive.

Laurie James  
Can you just say that one more time? Because I think that that is like, I'm getting chills in my body, and I think that's really also profound, because we think, Well, if I do this healing and I do all these things, I'm not going to have the grief anymore, and it just kind of goes back to my point where I started. I left my marriage seven years ago, and I had a moment of grief two weeks ago with the holidays coming up, and, you know, a daughter getting married, and all of that. 

Krista St-Germain  
So and that has a name, and that is called a secondary loss, right? So the primary loss was that the relationship ended, and then every loss that you experience from now until the day you die, and there will be more that happened because of the primary loss, right? So this loss that you just experienced would not have happened had you still been in that relationship? Right? It was secondary to the primary loss. But you can't see that stuff coming. Still, a good decision, probably to not be in that place. But also we cannot predict sometimes when the secondary losses will be felt. So it's like you didn't maybe anticipate. Paid a bit like, oh, there it is. And then if you think that that grief is something that's supposed to have an end, or you're supposed to get over it, or you're supposed to be somewhere, or you're no longer supposed to feel that punch, then it's easy to think, Oh, I'm doing something wrong, or I didn't do enough healing, or I missed something, or, no, it's a secondary loss. It's a new loss, right? And then we can normalize like, oh yes, of course. I thought it was gonna go this way, and here we are, and it went that way, and that feels like a loss to me. Now, am I still happy that I'm here where I am and I'm not in that relationship anymore? Yes, but sadness, right, and grief can coexist with happiness and joy and all the things that we know are aligned 

Laurie James  
Can be true at one time. 

Krista St-Germain  
100% 100% so if we just have the right expectation that it's okay for us, we're always gonna have a response to the loss right when we can't travel time, so we can't undo the loss, and we're always gonna have a response to it. And yes, we can create more of an intentional response. We can decide what we want to make of what has happened. We can decide who we want to be given what has happened. We can get clear on our values and be even more of who we want to be given what has happened, but we will always have a response. So of course, there is no end to grief. And if we could just decide that that were true and okay, we would have so much of an easier experience when we have moments like you just had. That is the way of it. 

Laurie James  
Thank you for normalizing what I was experiencing and hopefully helping our listeners right now normalize what they might be experiencing right now. So what else do we does our society get wrong about grief? 

Krista St-Germain  
Yeah, so many things. If we hit the heavy hitters, I think it's valuable for people. We're also told a million times over that time heals, you know, and Time heals, all wins. And I'm not a big believer in that. I think I used to be very black and white about the way that I thought about that, and which is like time does nothing. Now, I think it's a little more nuanced. I think we do need time to pass, because in large part healing happens with exposure. Right, our brain has to have more exposure to new data to make accurate predictions. And so what a lot of people will experience as some sort of, you know, they feel like they're not well, right? An example of that would be, you know, the loss has happened, but you keep picking up your phone to text that person you know. Or for me, it was, I would hear the garage door open, and I knew he died, but I also thought he was coming home, right? And that kind of stuff does take time. You know, our brain has a wonderful way of helping us feel safe by deciding when, you know we're going to see people who we really deeply care about by, you know, kind of knowing where they are, and so that we don't have to worry about it all the time, right? It's collected enough data that it can predict with relative accuracy when we'll see them again, where they are, etc. But then when they die, or when a situation changes again, it's not just bereavement, but something, you know, major shifts it takes a while for our brain to get exposed to the new data, the new reality, so that it will stop predicting that they should be there when they aren't. And so that whole, like, discombobulated, disorienting thing that sometimes we were just like, what's wrong with me, right? Is actually so normal. So that does require that time passes in order for that to kind of lift also things like grief fog, you know. So I was definitely not prepared for the amount of fogginess that I would feel as someone who very much would always go to books to find information. It was so frustrating that I could not pick up a book and read and retain it in the way that I had before. I did not understand or wasn't prepared for the full body experience that grief would be for me, right? And so hormones are out of balance. You're not sleeping as well, and you're not eating as well, and your prefrontal cortex is just minimum capacity. 

Laurie James  
Well, never mind, from a somatic place, you have just had extreme trauma, and that stays in our body, right? 80% of our sensory information travels from our body to our brain. 

Krista St-Germain  
I was woefully unprepared for any of that, right, and some of what's happening physically does tend to lift over time, and so I don't think we want to get super worried about you know, if the grief fog is intense, I think we just kind of need to normalize that and kind of laugh it off as best we can, and have some systems in place so we can remember the things that maybe we're noticing ourselves forgetting or whatnot- 

Laurie James  
and give ourselves some grace.

Krista St-Germain  
What an idea, Laurie, what an idea. But then also, which I think you're an expert on, is. What we do with our time also matters, how we let ourselves feel whatever it is we're feeling, and getting the support that feels helpful to us, which varies by the individual. But it's not just as simple as saying Time heals. It's not just as simple as saying feel all the feelings, because we also want to take breaks and

Laurie James  
Right. Well, it's okay. What I often used to say is, you know, have your pity party, and you know when you lose a spouse in such a tragic way. I mean, that's a loved one like that. I mean that the idea is that we need to allow ourselves to feel, we need to allow ourselves to cry and to have those emotions. But then you need to also have moments where you put your big girl panties on and get stuff done too. And you don't want to stay in either place too long, right? Because if you stay from a somatic place in this dorsal vagal state, you're in shutdown. And so you need to mobilize yourself to move. And then if you are numbing out by going, going, going, doing, doing, doing, you're not feeling right. So you have to have that balance of both. 

Krista St-Germain  
Minus the polyvagal theory you just articulated, what's called the dual process model of grief. Do you know that you did that?

Laurie James  
Yes, in somatic world, because I listened you talked about that in the podcast I listened to we call that pendulation, right? Going from something positive to negative.

Krista St-Germain  
And but it's a little bit more than that. It is that and also distraction. Dual process model basically says two buckets, right? There's the loss oriented bucket. So thinking about the loss, feeling about the loss, dealing with the logistics of the loss, loss related things, and then restorative bucket. And restorative is everything else, which can include Netflix binges. So yes, it is what you said. And also it is, it's okay to take a break and not do anything. It doesn't also have to be, you know, pulling up your big girl panties. It can be, can you just lay down, like, can you just, you know, not think about, can you go laugh?

Laurie James  
Yeah, something you know, like the resources that make you feel more present, more calm, more curious,

Krista St-Germain  
Yeah. What I have found is that people like me, who were kind of socialized to get the A in life, like we'll show up to grief in the same way, and we'll try to get the A. And if we think the A means constantly thinking about the loss, feeling the loss, dealing with the loss, then when we notice ourselves laughing or taking a break, we'll make it mean that we're doing something wrong, right? Instead of being like, Oh no, it's, you know, dual process model says we oscillate back and forth, right? We go back and forth between the loss orient and the restorative. And that is the healing, is the back and forth. So it's good, it's healthy. We want to give ourselves permission to go back and forth. So two different ways of saying something similar, I think.

Laurie James  
Definitely, definitely, that's what I was picking up when I was listening to that. So what would you say with the women you work with? What is the hardest part about the grieving process and giving yourself permission to move through the grief, big or small. 

Krista St-Germain  
I want to give room for, you know, everyone to have their own individual experience. But what I have seen for many is very hard, is that we have been taught things about emotions that make emotions harder and that shows up, right? So, you know, some people were taught that showing emotion is a sign of weakness, that you should be strong, that you should deal with emotions alone, that the goal of life is to be happy, that you know crying is something you should do in private, or you know that there's a timeline on any of that. And I think we will also been taught like if at a certain point, if we're not happy, then we're doing something wrong, and that's just so unhelpful. You know, this idea sometimes too, that gratitude is superior to any of the other feelings, and everybody's socialization is complicated and unique to them, but very often it's a storm that says how you're feeling is not okay, and you should be feeling something else.

Laurie James  
You should be grateful for something, or find the gratitude, which feels like, positively, yeah, and that just feels like, you know, they call it spiritual bypassing. I mean, that's bypassing everything. That's a workaround to get.

Krista St-Germain  
Yeah, and last thing I want to hear is that anybody uses this information against themselves, as though you know if they're doing it, they're doing it wrong. I think that's where a lot of us end up, and it makes sense, because how many of us had environments where somebody helped us stay in our bodies or. Support ourselves when we had feelings that were difficult, and how many of us were told we were supposed to be happy. 

Laurie James  
You're right. Or whose parents said, How are you feeling? Like, my parents never asked that, like, how are you feeling? How was your day? Tell me the good and the bad about your day. I mean, that was not part of our dinner table conversation.

Krista St-Germain  
Yeah, if I could just wave a magic wand around feelings and and I think it's happening, right? I think it's happening and eventually in children, I'm seeing it, my clients, kids, I'm seeing it more and more that we are developing an emotional intelligence that we have been lacking. But I think that's what makes it so much harder, because the pain is supposed to be there, right? It is. It's supposed to be there. It is what makes us human and alive. But it's the added suffering that we keep on top of ourselves, accidentally, because of what we've been taught about pain, or not taught about pain, that makes it so much harder.

Laurie James  
Yeah. So how do we grow if we're in this very grief stricken state, how do we grow from that experience and we feel like, oh my god, this is never going to end. I'm going to feel this heaviness and this grief fog, or whatever somebody might be feeling forever, and I'm never going to get out of this. How do we grow from that? 

Krista St-Germain  
Yeah, I think we want to take stock of where we are and how intense things are first before we make that decision. Right? So if it's early, acute grief, and I don't mean that in the sense of putting a timeline on it. I mean it in the sense of, it feels like I'm on a roller coaster that I can't get off of. If I wanted to go back to work, I couldn't. It's like grief grenades everywhere. It's just, it's my quality of life is hard right then in that place, I don't really think we want to be focused on growth. I think we want to be focused on, how do I take really good care of myself? How do I get enough water? How do I move my body? How do I get enough sleep? Like, how do I take care of my basic needs and have my own back? And then when things kind of if and when, you know it's different for every person in terms of how long it takes. And, of course, every loss is different, but I think a lot of people then reach a place where, I call it the grief plateau, where it's kind of like everybody is telling you that you're doing great, and you understand why they are saying that because from the outside, it does look like you're doing great, but on the inside you don't feel like you want to feel, you know, and then that's the place where we want to start looking at, okay, what next? But not from a place that says growth is superior, or growth is the goal, or we have to turn our grief into growth like it makes me want to vomit a little bit when people say that, right? Because we don't need any more shoulds. It's more like, you know, okay, post traumatic growth, right? Post Traumatic Growth, which we haven't even really talked about, but, you know, essentially, post traumatic growth is a phrase that was coined in the mid 90s by a couple of researchers and before their work, what we thought? First of all, we thought about trauma in different ways than we do now. We kind of thought about it as big T, little T, like, very objective. This is traumatic that is not which we now know is nonsense, because everybody experiences trauma differently. What's traumatic to one might not be to another, but what we thought at the time was that before something traumatic would happen, there was this level of wellness or life satisfaction, and then something traumatic would happen, and there was essentially two scenarios after that. One was that your level of wellness or quality of life would dip, and that would stay down forever. And the other one was that it would dip, but that it would bounce back. And that was the goal is to get you to bounce back to the level of life satisfaction or quality of life that you were experiencing before. But then these two researchers, tadeshi and Calhoun, were their last names, started noticing a third group, and they noticed that that third group bounced down, that they didn't just bounce back. They bounced forward. It wasn't in spite what they had been through. It was because of what they had been through, because of who they had decided to be based on what they went through. And that's not to say it needs to be anything dramatic, but when something big happens, what most of us realize is that it can be a record scratch, right? Like the the record stops, and you, like, look around, and you inventory your life, and you go, Holy. Am I living? Is this what? What's happening, right? Am I living the way that I want to live? Am I in relationships with the people I want to be in relationships with? Do I actually believe what I thought I believed spiritually like, Am I doing what I want to do? And it's taking that and then assessing where you are relative to what you value, and then making choices accordingly, so that it's not like you're grateful that. The loss happened. It's that you've you've used it as a way to get very much in touch with what you care about and what matters to you and who you want to be. And you have a clarity around that and maybe some bravery around that, so that you're making choices to live in even greater alignment with that.

Laurie James  
Alignment authentic with who you are. It's almost like you take it as an opportunity to re evaluate all parts of your life. Tell me if I'm wrong.

Krista St-Germain  
No, you're exactly it. Yes, there's kind of like five main domains that post traumatic growth typically focuses on. But I don't think it has to be limited to those. And sometimes people think that that means, you know, I'll tell stories about my clients who have, like, major career changes, or they went on to start a nonprofit or do something significant. It's, sometimes it's big things, but sometimes it's very little things. It's, you know, do I want to be around that person anymore and let them talk to me in that way? Or do I want to set a boundary right? Do I do I want to keep believing that thing I've always believed, because that's what my parents taught me to believe. Or do I want to choose something else? It's like such an opportunity for liberation, right? In a way. But we don't want to turn that into a should, right? We don't want to turn that into a I must grow from my grief. No, no. This happened. Who do you want to be next? It happened. We can't control it. It's over. We don't have to like it. We don't have to be grateful for it. And also, are we living life the way that we want to live? And then if we're not, then we can get curious about what's in the way of that, and what sort of support do we need, and how could we lean into that a little bit more?

Laurie James  
Yeah. And how can we start taking small steps towards creating the life that you do want, and so that way you can have more meaning, more purpose, deeper relationships, whatever it is,

Krista St-Germain  
yeah, yeah. And then, like so often, come to me, and I'm sure that it's the same thing for you, where they come thinking it's one thing, and then you do that work, and the progress is amazing, but then what they realize is that, like, there's there's stuff they've been carrying around with them for that has nothing to do with this most recent grief. That's so old and so heavy and it's really weighing them down, And this is just what brought them to that opportunity to do something that has always been there and is now ready for their attention when they're properly resourced.

Laurie James  
Very well put and very well said. So are there two or three things that we can like if a listener is listening right now. And I know we covered a lot of different things, so maybe you go back to something you've already said or but if somebody is struggling right now with the grief, the holidays are coming up, I know it's a difficult time. I It has been. I've had some difficult holidays after, you know, my marriage ended. This one might be a difficult at least Thanksgiving might be difficult, because three of my four kids are not going to be in town, because I have three kids that live on the east coast. I'm spending a week with them before, but it won't be here for the actual holiday. But regardless, I'm not some I'm saying this for me, but I'm also saying it mostly for the listeners, because I know the holidays are hard. They're hard to get through. So are there two or three things that come to mind that we can suggest people do to make it a little bit easier?

Krista St-Germain  
Yeah, so the first thing that comes to mind is feelings are not a problem, right? However you feel is fine. I know Hallmark tells you that you're supposed to feel some kind of way, oh and only thankful. We can't be sad, we can't be annoyed, we're only supposed to be thankful. There's this beautiful little kids cartoon called be the pond. I don't know if you've ever seen it, but it's one of my favorite metaphors. And the idea is that all of the all of the fish live in the pond, right? And in this case, consider all of the fish like all of your different emotions. We're not trying to only let some fish live in the pond. All the fish live in the pond. We're just trying to be the pond, right? We're just trying to let the fish live in the pond. So whatever emotions you experience over the holidays, guilt, loneliness, joy, right? It doesn't matter sadness. If you if you go into the experience deciding that you will not make yourself wrong for the emotions that you experience, then the emotions that you experience get easier, right? We can literally make space for them. So I think that's part of it. I think part of it is giving yourself permission to do it in a different way. Right? This may not be the year that you want to have the same traditions, or that you try a new tradition, or that you celebrate in the same space, or that you celebrate with the same people, and you get to be the authority on that. You get to be the one who chooses. How do I want? To spend this time. And you can also change your mind at any moment in time. You can say yes to the invitation, and then if going doesn't feel like love to you, you can say no, right? And vice versa. 

Laurie James  
Right. And try and not feel guilty about that decision, because you're taking care of yourself in that moment and what you need versus trying to meet other people's expectations. 

Krista St-Germain  
Yes, 100% it's okay if they're disappointed. Yeah, they can handle it. And then the other part, I think, is we just want to be wary of what we're looking for, because we will find it right? So if we're looking for evidence of how hard things are and we can't handle it, we will find it. If we're looking for evidence of how hard things are, and we can handle it, we will find it. And so we just want to notice what we're looking for, because right, we will find it. And sometimes the stories that we're telling ourselves really give us so much less credit than we deserve.

Laurie James  
Yeah, completely. Thank you for that. And as we come to a close, is there one confession that you have saved that you'd like to share with our listeners around this topic that we haven't discussed?

Krista St-Germain  
Yeah, I would just say that it's so easy to talk the talk, and in talking the talk in a well polished way, it might give one the inclination that I don't struggle or have big feelings or get support myself, and I don't think any of this kind of work, no matter how many tools you use and no matter how much you apply them, ever don't apply anymore, or that you reach some for me anyway, I have not reached some sort of enlightened state where I no longer struggle or no longer have, you know, big feelings, and so I'm constantly using my own tools. And you know, that is the way of being a human. It's messy, it's hard, it's complicated, and there I just don't think there's any getting away from it. And sometimes I think people think, Oh, you have a podcast, you know, you coach. And there must be some place where that person is that they aren't. And it is just absolutely not true, and it's so not in service, right? When we put other people on some sort of pedestal, as though they are more evolved than we are, because it just gives us an unrealistic expectation, and we'll never make it, you know? So we're all human. It's all hard. We all have to use the tools.

Laurie James  
There's no gap around and thank you for naming that. I think the only difference is that we're ahead of where the people that we're serving and helping are. We're three steps ahead, maybe five steps ahead, maybe even 10 steps ahead, whatever it is we've just already walked that path, and so we know how to help them and maybe make their struggle a little bit easier. 

Krista St-Germain  
Yeah, and for my own struggle, I know I can help myself faster, you know, I can recognize it and not put any shame around myself for doing it, and I can use the tools faster, and I can get support faster 

Laurie James  
and move through it easier. I'm guessing, because I know I that's for me, for sure. 

Krista St-Germain  
Yeah, it's kind of I loved Pema children's, oh, I forget which one, which which one. Well, there's so many beautiful things that she's done, but, you know, just the idea of that, like the waves don't get any less intense, necessarily. It's just like we just get better at writing them and preparing for them and and so that's it. It's not but there's not some enlightened state, where all of a sudden your troubles melt away and you don't have grief anymore. 

Laurie James  
No, no, no. And the somatic world, we just talk about developing more resilience and more capacity to ride the waves, right and to ride the big ones and the little ones, versus running away from them and suppressing them. So thank you so much for being here and sharing your very valuable wisdom. I know I have learned a ton today, so I'm very appreciative of that. How can people find you Krista. 

Krista St-Germain  
Yeah, so coachingwithkrista.com is my website, and my podcast is currently called The Widowed Mom Podcast. It's been around for quite a few years, and we're probably going to rebrand it in the future. I still want to keep working with widows, but the mom part is less important to me, but anybody is welcome to listen the widowed mom podcast. It doesn't matter if you are a widow or a mom, if you just want to learn about grief or post traumatic growth, for sure, you are welcome to come and listen. 

Laurie James  
Great. And I will make sure that all of that information are in the show notes too, so people can find you more easily. And thank you again for being a guest. This was very valuable information.

Krista St-Germain  
Thank you, Laurie, thanks for having me.

Laurie James  
Thank you for listening to this episode of Confessions of a Freebird. I'm grateful to be in your ears and hearts if you're interested in becoming a free bird, I'd love to support you. Please check out my website at Laurieejames.com to learn how we can work together, or to sign up for my newsletter so you can receive tips on how to date and relationship differently and ultimately find more freedom and joy in your life. If you found this podcast helpful, please follow or subscribe, rate and review and share it with friends so they can find more freedom in their second or third act also. Until next time.