Exploring Grief Through the Lens of Yoga

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Get ready to be inspired by our upcoming episode featuring the incredibly insightful Laura Walton, a licensed mental health therapist, mentor, and founder of Grief on Purpose. Laura's journey into grief coaching was profoundly shaped by personal family loss, a burden she courageously carried at an age when life should be carefree and fun. With 20 years of experience, Laura shares invaluable insights on how to effectively process and acknowledge grief instead of avoiding or suppressing it. She'll delve into practical strategies for managing stress and overcoming mental health challenges, guiding us toward a path of healing and resilience. Join us as we explore the depths of grief and learn how to navigate its complexities with purpose and strength. You won't want to miss this enlightening conversation.

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Welcome to Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Nurturing Through Adversity. In this podcast, we will delve deep into the challenges and triumphs of Grandparents Raising grandchildren as we navigate the complexities of legal, financial and emotional support. I invite you to join us on a journey of exploring thoughts, feelings and beliefs surrounding this growing segment of our society. Drawing from real stories and expert advice, we will explore the nuances of childrearing for children who have experienced trauma and offer valuable resources to guide you through the intricate journey of kinship care.

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We'll discuss how we can change the course of history by rewriting our grandchildren's future, all within a supportive community that understands the unique joys and struggles. This podcast was made especially for you.

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Welcome to a community where your voice is heard, your experience experiences are valued, and your journey is honored.

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Before we dive into our conversation with Laura Walton, I want to take a moment to share a personal story that might resonate with many of you. When I began caring for my grandchildren who had experienced emotional trauma, neglect and abuse, I was completely unprepared for the whirlwind of emotions that would arise.

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What I realized was that their trauma began to trigger my own unresolved childhood experiences of trauma. It felt like being swept up in the midst of a tornado, where my emotions, their reactions, and even my husband's trauma created a perfect storm of chaos. But much like finding the calm in the center of a storm, there were moments when I had to ground myself and find my way back to center.

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Today's episode with Laura Walton, who is remarkably wise for her young years, will help us focus on just that.

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Finding calm amid chaos Laura's journey, inspired by profound personal loss, led her to a life dedicated to help others others process grief with intention and understanding. With 20 years of experience, Laura brings invaluable insights on how we can More effectively process and acknowledge grief instead of avoiding or suppressing it. I hope our conversation today brings you some calming perspective and offers support in whatever grief you may be struggling with in your own life.

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Laura, I know in our lives as young people, we have experiences that influence the work that we do when we become adults. And I know you had an experience that brought you into wanting to learn more about how to manage grief and trauma. Can you share with us your background and experience and how you began doing this work and why you began doing it? So when I was in my 20s, when I was 21 and 26, I had two significant deaths happen. My dad died first when I was 21, and then when I was 26, my. The person who was my then boyfriend at the time died. I was young enough that I hadn't. I didn't really yet have a thing that I was doing with my life. I was. I was working in restaurants and retail and didn't really have a clear, at least career path forward. And those, those two things shaped me so much and impacted me so much, and I had so much trouble finding support. That felt good to me, that those experiences were what motivated me to go to grad school, to become a therapist and then to specifically work with grief. And then through my education and through my experience and working with people, I learned a lot about trauma, which I. Previous to that, I probably had very little awareness of what trauma even was, but I learned a lot about trauma and was able to understand my own life better through the lens of trauma and what experiences I had had. So then that piece of trauma became a big part of my own personal healing journey, but then also a part of the work that I started weaving into my therapy work with grief and then later coaching work with grief.

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I'm sure it helped you understand more about how trauma impacts us as we relate to other people. Yes.

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Yeah, definitely. And, you know, if you had asked me 15 years ago, let's say, if I had ever experienced trauma, I would have probably said no, because my understanding of trauma was, I think, what we think of as, like, the most obvious traumas, like, you know, obvious physical abuse or kind of these, like, really extreme situations in which there may be trauma, which, of course, those are traumas. But there are also experiences in life, particularly in childhood, that can be. Still be traumatic and still have a huge influence on you as a person. But they're not. They're not as obvious and they're not as commonly known in our culture as being trauma. Just kind of very generally, some of Those experience experiences just being that my emotional needs weren't met as a child, there wasn't the space for me to be able to have any emotion. So just learning about that as even a thing that these traumas do exist, and then kind of connecting the dots for myself and how those experiences that I had, how those shaped me and what beliefs that gave me about myself and about the world. Yeah, very much learned how to better understand myself, but then applying that same perspective to everybody else in the world, too, I learned a lot there. That's been an amazing journey for me in raising these two grandchildren because although I've done counseling previously in my life, I didn't realize until I was helping these children cope with their own trauma that it brought back more and more memories from my past. So at the same time, I've been coping with my own experiences of abuse as a child that I didn't realize were there until I started helping them. That must be very common.

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Yes, that's very common. How. How is it approached? How has it affected your approach to handling grief and trauma? Coming into my work with somebody with a curiosity about kind of what the underlying things may be, there's a saying maybe you've heard, but within the worlds in which I work, there's a saying. If it's hysterical, it's historical.

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So I haven't heard that before. Yeah. So through that lens, like, I kind of look for the places where somebody I'm working with might be having a really big reaction to something and not, of course, there are situations in which really big reactions are warranted and make sense. But I get curious in those situations as to what might be. What else might be there, because those are often the situations where some of our old stuff is just getting. Those wounds are getting poked at and something inside of us is getting activated. I mean, if we're talking about grief, obviously if somebody dies, we're going to feel a lot of ways around that. So there are again, appropriate emotional responses to have to certain life situations. But it is also often or commonly true that whatever it is that's triggering us or whatever it is inside of us that feels like it's being triggered is maybe a tiny bit due to the situation that's in front of us, but mostly due to something in our pasts that hasn't been completely resolved or integrated for us.

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And when we don't resolve those issues, it can manifest itself in many different ways in our own caregiving of others. Yeah, I think it's always helpful for me to think about These, these, any unresolved emotions that we might have around any issue as just energy that lives in our bodies. You know, if you, for example, if we cry, we're releasing the energy of sadness through our tears. So if, if we haven't, for whatever the reason is, we haven't been able to kind of move the energy that is in our bodies associated with whatever has happened, then it can get stuck there. And it can manifest in physical ailments, it can manifest in mental health challenges. It can manifest in just, just, you know, having something happen and you just blow up at it or there's a really, you know, really big reaction that doesn't necessarily warrant what the, what the situation was.

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So for an older person, a grandparent who's raising a grandchild, who's coming up against all kinds of issues with a child, whether it be a child that's coping with separation from a parent or death of a parent, or recovering from neglect or physical abuse, and we're reacting to a situation, we're most likely not going to think of it as managing energy. Managing energy is not a term that our generation is most familiar with. Can you help us with a term or a concept that we might better relate to? Yeah, I think one of the first places to start there is just with a. On the part of the grandparent or the caregiver, with a sense of curiosity within themselves, a willingness to kind of slow things down and look at themselves to try to better understand what might be happening.

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So if a child does something and the, the caregiver is noticing that they're really, let's say, angry, but it could be anything but they're feeling some particular way they're angry. Maybe they're, maybe they're yelling, maybe they're doing something else with that anger to slow it down. Maybe you can't do that right in the moment, but maybe after the fact. So slowing it down and checking in with yourself and noticing what you're actually feeling, can you name that emotion? Is it anger or is it something else? And what does that feel like in the body? So when I use that term, energy, and yeah, I understand what you're saying is that that's sort of an abstract term and maybe we don't even really know what that is. But if I, for example, let's say I am feeling angry and I check in with myself, just take a breath, maybe close my eyes, see what I'm feeling, I might feel like this clenching in my fists or this clenching in my jaw, because for me, that's that's how the energy of anger translates into my body.

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Everybody's a little bit different with how these things show up. But getting curious with looking at yourself and trying to better understand how your body is holding those emotional responses, does that clarify it a little bit?

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Yes, I think that's helpful. Finding ways to relieve the stress or finding ways of practicing mindfulness and mental health techniques that we can use for ourselves when that stress or that energy is coming up.

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And we talked about yoga as being one of those things that we can do. I know for my husband, for instance, it's going and sitting off in the corner and putting headphones on or something. But. But it does help to identify these situations and find ways of practicing healthier ways of managing the stress, both for ourselves and for the kids. I know that yoga and mindfulness practices are tools that we can use because my time is not as much my own as it was maybe five years ago. I struggle with finding little things that I can do to relieve stress. We talked about the benefits of yoga. Stilling the mind or slowing us down in times when we're raging or frustrated or not breathing deeply enough. I know that's a big one for me.

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Sometimes I just notice that I'm not taking slower, deeper breaths, and I need to calm myself down to do that. But some yoga practices, and I know that's coming out in your new book, talk to us a little bit about some simple things that people that don't have a lot of experience can do that are yogic. And maybe there are some things that we could even do with the children that would help us when we have days that are extra stressful or extra traumatic for us.

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Yeah, yeah. Well, as we sort of touched on before in our conversation when we eat, say the word yoga, people often think about the physical poses, which. That is a part of yoga. But there are also a lot of other aspects to a yoga practice. So just to say, first and foremost, that if for whatever reason, doing any physical poses of yoga isn't something that a person feels capable of or interested in at all, that's fine.

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And, and, and yoga as a more broad practice can still be a tool that can be used. What that can look like as far as the physical poses is.

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There's tons of, you know, videos on YouTube of yoga practices. You know, you can find. For younger children, you can find yoga practices that.

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That name each of the poses like an animal or something like that, so the kids can connect with that more. But there are things other than the physical poses that you were telling me about that, I think might be really nice to share with the listeners that. That they could do that still utilize the concept or goal of yoga, which is to. To slow down, which we're all struggling to do. Yep. Yeah. One of my favorites, because it's simple and it's something we always have access to, is our breath. And with the kids, you can make it maybe a little more fun and interesting for them. And talking about breathing in. Fun is always good. Yeah. Breathing in like you're smelling the flowers, you know, so breathe in, smell the flowers, and then breathing out like you're blowing out the candles on a cake. So breathe in, smell the flowers, breathe out, blow the. Blow out the candles. I love that. Yeah.

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And so that can be. You know, you can do that five times in and out. Let's say that could be a practice that you do with the kids maybe once a day at the beginning of the day to start the day, or at the end of the day to end the day. But just something that gives. You could do that in a minute or two, but that gives you a chance to connect with the kids, teach yourself and them a tool that's accessible in how to calm down and maybe bring your. Together. Bring yourselves to a more regulated emotional state. And it's also a great way to redirect energy.

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We talked about energy. But yes, with kids, if they're in a state of mind, of frustration or struggling, or we are struggling, it's a great way to say, okay, how about let's just breathe the flowers and blow out the candles. Right?

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Yeah. Yeah. So that's part of the goal in doing that practice, I think, with the kids would be to teach them a tool that they can use and that you can use when you actually need it. Right. So in those moments of high emotional distress that's. They're gonna have to. Both. Both parties are gonna have to get familiar with that tool before they're. Before it's a realistic expectation to be able to actually use it when we truly need it. But, yeah, that can be something that you're working towards in that those moments when tensions are high, we can come back to that breath. What's another tool that you might recommend that we use? It could be combined with that.

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But even just checking in with each other and asking, what's one emotion that you're feeling right now? Can you label or name one emotion that you're feeling? Are you feeling sad? Are you feeling happy? Are you feeling scared? You know, just one word and you don't need to. There doesn't need to be a reason why. You don't need to explain why you're feeling this thing. But just naming that as an emotion builds emotional awareness and an ability to kind of understand our own inner workings and name that. We can even refer to them as tools. Can say to the kids, okay, let's use one of our tools right now to reconnect and focus and slow down because our emotions and our minds are going too fast right now.

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Yeah, yeah. I think speaking about it and that language is really great because that normalizes for the kids. That normalizes the experience that we all, whether we're grandparents or we're children, we're all going to get. We're all going to get emotional at some point. We're all going to get activated at different points. And that's okay.

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There's nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but that we also have tools to be able to manage that. So that normalizes the whole experience of. It for the kids, which reduces the focus on the abnormalcy of the situation and the drama and the pain that maybe they're relating to or we're relating to.

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And it allows us to separate ourselves and take that, make a note, get back to it later. Let's talk about what happened and what elevated our emotions at the time.

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Yeah, but we can't talk about that unless we have an awareness of it first.

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So. Right. So, yeah, that teaches us how to get there.

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What are the things would you like to share with the audience about trauma, recovery and grief? Many grandparents are, while they're caring for their children, are also coping with the grief of either losing a child, losing a child to drugs. I mean, there's a lot of grief going on for the grandparents that are taking care of the children. Other than just the physical aspects. That's important to acknowledge that there are probably a lot of different factors that are going into this experience and a lot of different layers of emotions. And it's probably feels complex and complicated for everybody at different times. So giving some space and compassion for that, both for the, for. For grandparents towards themselves to what the reality of this situation is and acknowledging the heaviness of that and also giving that compassion to the kids and this, this all. You use the term a minute ago. I think, like this being kind of an abnormal situation. And I often think about the way that we might show up in the context of trauma as being a normal response to an abnormal situation. So the situation that we might be dealing with here is an abnormal situation. But the responses that anybody might have, again whether that's grandparents or children, are most likely normal given the context of the situation.

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So I think it can be helpful just kind of keeping that in mind. It's not, it's not bad or wrong for either party to be sad or mad or confused or frustrated or any, or even relieved or happy or, you know, any emotional experience. All of that is normal within the context of what has happened. And when we can allow for that and hold space for that in ourselves and others that can. There's always a bright side to, to all of this that we need to focus on sometimes, not always concentrate on the negative and the difficulty of the situation. Yeah, yeah, There are bright sides, there are upsides, there are positives. And I would assume in the situation itself, but also just in the day to day, there are those, those bright sides, so those being seen and acknowledged as well.

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But both of these things can be true at once. You know, there can be the bright sides and the positives and there can still be the harder sides that come with the reality of the situation. What kind of encouragement can you give the listeners about these traumatic situations that they're coping with, about the grief and about the path of recovery that they're facing?

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That it's hard work, maybe, you know, I might assume some of the hardest work that we might ever do, but that it's possible to also do this work. I think approaching it through that lens of curiosity that I touched on earlier, just being interested in both for both yourself and for the children. What is it that sparks something in us and being curious about that because there's likely something there and starting to get to know that and understand that for yourself and for the children, I think can make that road ahead maybe feel a little bit more manageable.

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That's great. Thank you. Yeah. Tell us about your new book.

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Yeah, so I'm working on a book. The title, the working title is the Yoga of Grief. So this is.

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Stems from my own personal experiences. I've been practicing yoga for 20 years, teaching for some of those years, and then have some personal experiences with grief and the deaths of a few significant people in my life. So the book pulls together some of my story in combination with the description of the eight limbs of yoga, which were one of the most helpful practices for me along my path of grief, and then explains how those each apply to grief and gives both on the mat, so physical poses and off the mat suggestions or ways that you can work with those practices in your grief. My yoga practice was a Huge part of my recovery, you might say, in learning to navigate my grief.

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So to try to share those tools with other, other people.

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What were some of the top off the mat exercises that helped you cope with your grief? So the first one that's coming to mind is. So there's a concept in the yoga practice called ahimsa, which means non violence.

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So this can be violence in, in actions and things that we do, but it can also be violence in the words that we speak or the thoughts that we have. And that can be directed towards ourselves or towards other people.

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So one off the mat practice could, in exploring nonviolence, could be just noticing for yourself where you. Where there might be thoughts that say, let's say, feel violent. So maybe judgmental or critical of yourself or critical of other people or critical of situations even. And it's not necessarily to say that. It's not to say that it's bad to have those thoughts. It's not to say that it's good or bad. The practice is just in awareness, gaining awareness over how in this particular example, how ahimsa nonviolence might show up in your life. I like that. I see that both on the part of the grandparents and also with the children. They're angry at their parents, they're angry about the situations they came from. I see a lot of anger in these young children. How would you discuss that with a young child? Yeah, through the lens of yoga.

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Yeah, any child. Yeah. Well, it would be different with a young child, with a teenager. So with a teenager who has more self awareness, I might ask, you know, if they, if they, I don't know, they slam a door or they punch something or they do something that, you know, seems to be very outwardly angry.

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I might ask them how it makes them feel when they do that to try to get them to have some of that internal reflection on themselves.

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And based off of whatever that answer is, maybe they say, oh, it makes me feel like I'm more in control, for example, because I can slam this door and be as loud as I want.

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Then we might explore ways what they're actually seeking there is control, a way to feel more in control of their situation. So that could be be approached in exploring other ways in which they might feel control. They might be able to feel some sense of control in their lives or in their days. And then exploring having them try that and comparing and contrasting how it feels to them to slam the door or punch something or yell at somebody versus doing the other thing and seeing if they can find, if they can kind of articulate a difference in those two experiences in how it affects them internally. With a younger child, I think that's a great suggestion. Actions instead of words are more effective with yoga. Yeah, the younger children are going to learn more through that probably, and won't have that self awareness to be able to articulate those things as well as a teenager might.

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Let's say we're working with children that are more cognitive, a little bit older.

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One of the other aspects of a yoga practice is around cleanliness.

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And so that can be cleanliness of your physical space, but it can also be cleanliness of what sort of, you know, foods or beverages or whatever you might be ingesting. But it can also be cleanliness as far as what sorts of media you might be taking in or anything that you might be taking into your body. So cleanliness, let's say for us, a small child more simply could be helping them in cleaning up if, if the whole, if their whole room feels like too much, maybe cleaning up just one little corner of the room, helping them to organize an area, knowing that it might get messed up later and that's okay. But teaching them the, the practice of having that little bit of control over their space and being able to put things away and create cleanliness around them. It's about caring, about caring for ourselves. It's about caring for ourselves. Yeah. And it's also about, you know, if you, if you are surrounded by a lot of clutter, physical clutter, that it often is a reflection of internal clutter inside. So that can feel, if there's just a lot of clutter going around around you, that can feel more chaotic. So, so taking some intentional space to lessen that clutter or to organize that clutter can have a direct impact on what that internal experience is for us.

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I really like the idea of being able to talk to children about these issues related to how they care for their body. Like sorting out feelings of sort of like keeping your drawers clean, putting things in their place so that you can. Because all of this, there's so much information these poor kids are taking on from a very early age. Too much, you know, too much information, oftentimes a lot of violence, you know, neglect is about not caring for your body, talking about wellness. Why. Why we want to think about what we put in our body, why we want to think about. I'm, I'm always talking to the kids about what they watch on their tablets. I like relating the concept of relating yoga to very real things that children can use to Compare to physical things that are going on with them. In the same sense, it's the same for adults. Yes. We begin to think of ourselves as superhumans.

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We need time to care for animals. You know, we need time to care for ourselves. We need time to care for our plants and our gardens and 10 things that. Yeah. And really for. Especially for the younger kids. But the way that they're going to learn any of this is by seeing it modeled to them. That means that the adults in the children's lives have to be the ones who are that. You have to take this on as a practice in yourself in order to be able to teach that to them, to get them to buy into it as being worthwhile. I think that's the most important concept of all. If we can look at our own lives and see how we're managing our days and our time, are we giving ourselves the care that we need and being tender enough with ourselves, they. They see it as well.

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Yeah. Yeah. That's where they learn it from. In a lot of my work in the past with. With grief, specifically, if. If somebody has died, how you as the. The parent, grandparent, as the caregiver, how you are.

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How you are managing this, how you are talking about it or not talking about it, how you are dealing with the situation is. Is setting the groundwork for what the children's entire viewpoint around death and grief is going to be as they grow up. You're creating the mold here. If you don't talk about it, they'll learn. You don't talk about it. If you do talk about it, they'll learn. You can talk about it. Those are going to be at least their initial tools for how they themselves learn to manage it.

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Well, thanks, Laura. I appreciated your time.

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Yeah, thank you. Do you have anything you want to say to the audience as a closing remark? Well, I have information available.

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There'll be more, even more so as it's getting closer to the release of that book, but available on my website at griefonpurpose.com or at laura@griefonpurpose.com Great. Well, thanks, Laura. Yeah. Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure. Yes. Thank you.

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Thanks for joining us today for another episode of Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Nurturing Through Adversity.

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I encourage you to share both your challenges and your successes with us. Your story is undoubtedly one someone else needs to hear. Submit your stories to the links provided in the podcast information. Your contributions will enrich upcoming conversations, creating a more supportive community in which we can learn and grow together. Next week, prepare to be truly inspired by our upcoming episode featuring Karen Dittman, a devoted wife, mother, grandmother and now author of the empowering book Thriving in Grace, Unleashing Wellness. From a Biblical Perspective, Karen has skillfully woven her life experiences into a beautiful tapestry of wisdom that you won't want to miss.

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Join us as we delve into how Karen, with a master's degree from the seminary, navigates the rewarding yet challenging journey of raising her granddaughter. She'll candidly share how her daughter's battle with addiction helps has not only shaped her spiritual path but also strengthened her faith.

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Her heartfelt stories invite us all to reflect on the obstacles that stand between us and a deeper relationship with God, offering profound insights and encouragement. So whether you're looking to deepen your faith or just seeking guidance in your personal life, Karen's journey and wisdom are sure to resonate with you.

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Don't miss the chance to be inspired by another grandmother's story of grace, growth and perseverance.

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Tune in for an episode filled with warmth, wisdom and the kind of insight that will both challenge and uplift your spirit. Thank you for tuning in to grandparents, raising grandchildren. Nurturing through Adversity Remember, you are not alone. Together we can find strength and hope in the face of adversity. Peace be with you, and I pray that you find some time this week to listen to your inner wisdom amongst the noise and the pandemonium of this world.