Gracious God, thank you so much for gifting so many talented people to bring us together with technology from all over the United States, Lord. Thank you that you've brought us together today and that you are here with us. And I thank you, Lord, that as your spirit is with us, that your words would come forth, not ours, but your words. And Lord, I ask that you would just continue to walk with these people that are on this webinar and listening to it in the future, that you would walk with them and that they would be in your step, be lock step with you and not out in front of you and not lagging behind you and protect them and bless them as they go and use their compassion to help others heal. We thank you for that in your son's precious and holy name. Amen.
Okay, so kind of the flow of what we're going to be doing is I'm going to ask everybody to go ahead and mute theirself unless they want to speak. And that'll help the connection be a little bit more efficient.
I'm going to talk a little bit, give a little bit of an introduction and then and whenever Carissa wants to hop in, then she'll have things to add. I'd like you ladies and gentlemen, if you would write your questions and have them ready to go towards the end of the podcast, we're going to save some time for question and response.
So let's dive in.
First of all, I want to talk about the book of Lamentations and the Book of Lamentations as an introduction in my Bible, and I'm going to go ahead and read that. The introduction says that the title of this book means funeral songs. The author was probably Jeremiah and he was grieving about the destruction of Jerusalem. In the original language, Hebrew, the 22 verses in each chapter of one, two, and four, used two letters of the Hebrew alphabet to start the verse. The third chapter is 66 verses and the third verse starts with a new letter of the Hebrew alphabet, which is called an acrostic.
Jeremiah reflects here on the total destruction that has happened to Jerusalem and the temple.
But he recognizes that all of this is the judgment of a righteous God. Knowing that God is merciful, he appeals for mercy in prayer to God. And that's a really good introduction to what lamenting is. It's praying and just pouring your heart out to God. When I've talked with people in regard to the webinar and let them know what the webinar topic is going to be this month was lament and they're like, "Well, what is lament?" And it's like, you know, just crying, just getting it all out. And so it's just it's basically, I found a quote that I really, really liked. And it is, "To cry is human, but to lament is Christian." So when we are lamenting, we are crying out to the creator of all. We're crying out to him. We're pouring our hearts out. And one thing that I have realized about our society, our culture here in the Western hemisphere, we do not allow ourselves to lament and grief.
We do not give ourselves enough time. And so often I hear, "That was two years ago. Get over it."
I have an unfortunate situation with my sister, who her daughter, who was 50, was murdered in a domestic violence. And even today, and that was two and a half years ago, even today, we'll just be talking and she'll hear something that reminds her of Shannon, my niece, and she'll just break out in tears and just excuse herself. And all I want to do is just let her be very much of what we do in Mending the Soul. Sometimes we let someone go off and do whatever they need to do to compose themselves. Sometimes we will just offer our hand and let them hold it if they want to. And so lamenting is, and grief is something that is very important for us.
It's a way of processing our difficult emotions. And if we keep holding our emotions in, there's a very good book, if you've not read it, it's called The Body Keeps the Score. It's a very dry read, but it is so on point in regard to whatever we hold in is going to manifest one way or another. And all my life, I was told that I was not able to feel, unless it was what somebody wanted me to feel. And I have repercussions in my body today because of it. I have stiff joints. I have pains that are unexplainable. I've got knee issues, arthritis, and that sort of thing. That's one way, migraines, maybe for someone else, kidney issues. All kinds of things happen when we hold it in. So it's extremely important for us to do that. And as Mending the Soul facilitators, that's one of the things that we help them to do is help them to understand what their feelings are, connect with that feeling, and sit with it. And that's what we don't do generally as a culture in the United States. So there's some certain points that come along in regard to Mementing. One of the things is to connect with God, with love, and receive his compassion. And to bring us peace.
In Christianity, lament is a way to turn to God to express our grief and our sorrow, and to seek that love and compassion and peace that only he can give.
So that piece of grief is such a big part of lament. And so many times, I know myself, when my mother passed away, she was one of my main abusers.
And it was like, "She's gone now." And I did do her eulogy at her service. And I had a hard time allowing myself to cry. And about a year later, I was driving down the freeway. And all of a sudden, I wanted to pick up the phone and call her. And I just started crying. I had to pull off the side of the road because I was crying. And it was like, "Oh, some of this grief is starting to come up that I didn't allow myself."
So in regard to that, Carissa, I think you have quite a bit to say about grief. So if you would like to just share a little bit about what you do and some of the things that you've come across and how it could be helpful to blend that in, that would be terrific. I'd love that. Absolutely. Yeah, grief is probably one of the main areas that I do walk alongside with a lot of people. And I think it plays a huge role in a lot of areas of life that I don't think we recognize. Because we experience grief and loss just not in the loss of a loved one or someone that we know, but it comes with, whether it's divorce or anytime we get pain or hurt, even transition. Even if it's a good transition, I'm leaving a good job to another good job.
Just because I'm losing something that I had to go to something else.
Or even loss of dreams, loss of expectations, hopes. So I think it's kind of woven into the fabric of a lot of different experiences that I found from just sitting and walking alongside people in the healing journey. So whenever I'm listening to people's stories and I'm trying to help them navigate their story, sometimes I'll notice that, oh, shoot, we're getting stuck here because we've been working on anxiety or depression. And then for me, that's a flag that, huh, I wonder if there's some grief here. Because there's no coping skills for grief.
So you can't deep breathe your way out of grief. It just doesn't work that way. The only way you could really navigate grief is just to experience it. It's a lived experience. And sometimes I joke with the people across from me. I'm like, I'm sure you don't want to hear that as a therapist. Like, oh, you just, we have to, we have to experience it. We have to feel the pain and go through the process. They're like, oh, that's not what I want to hear. Right? I want to cope with it. I want to feel better. But oftentimes my goal is to try to walk through the grieving process in a healthy way. In our fast paced society, like Phyllis said, we tend to truncate grief significantly. Right? You know, someone passes away on Wednesday, the funeral Saturday, and the bill for their mortgage is due on Monday.
The mortgage company doesn't care that my loved one passed away. They still want the mortgage payment come Monday. Right? So in a lot of ways, it's a necessity that it gets truncated. So I'll usually encourage people that it's okay to put grief on a pause for a time to get your affairs in order, get things situation, go through the transition, whatever is needed, because you feel like, okay, I don't have space to really allow myself to be vulnerable and fall apart in the way I feel like I need to when there's so much demand of me. The goal is just not to leave it there and never come back to it. Because if we do that, it'll push its way through in other ways, and oftentimes unhealthy ways. Right? So it's okay to hold it for a moment, but the goal is always to come back to it. And sometimes it could even take a year or two. Right? I had someone who I was supporting, and she unknowingly got left with a lot of business decisions, and she's never been a business owner before. And she's like, I don't, what am I supposed to do? And so it took about a year and a half for those things to get resolved for her to actually have the mental space and capacity to be able to actually go healthily through the grief process. So sometimes we feel a lot of pressure to have to grieve now so that we can get it over with and move on. So there's a permission there to be like, I need the space and I will come back to it when the time is ready. The goal isn't to leave it there for a moment. I will come back to it when the time is ready. The goal isn't to leave it there for five, 10, 15 years. All right? So that we have space for it. Yeah.
That is so good. Thank you, Carissa. I love that part of it, that you can compartmentalize it and get it back out.
And when we are doing groups so often, we get to the point to where we are not able to get back to it, or our participants are not able to get back to it. Because I know myself, having been under so much control all of my life, it was like shove it under the carpet and pretend it didn't happen and just keep on going. I learned probably about 2013, I think I was doing two groups at once. And one of the things was my morning group, I couldn't debrief with my co-facilitator because I had to hurry up and get to work. And with my old coping mechanism of just put it away and don't go back to it was very helpful for me because I was able to do that. I was able to tuck it away, get to work, cross that threshold and say, oh, I'm so sorry that happened. How can I help you? Did you get everything that you needed? Let me go ahead and check on this for you. It was so good to hear your voice today. All the while, I had just heard heart wrenching, unbelievable breaking destructive stories. And so what I would do is after work, five o'clock on my way home, I'd pick up the phone and I'd say, hey, Mary, let's just talk about what happened in group today. So I got that box that I had put it away in and I made an appointment with myself and my co-facilitator to get it back out and process it then. And that's I loved your analogy of being able to do that, like give yourself permission to put it away right now to take care of business at hand and then go back to it. But that's the key is to make sure that you go back to it. Otherwise, it will pop out embarrassingly in different ways sometimes. So when you do have the chance to come back to it, it's it's literally beautiful. It comes in like waves and it begins with this very heightened intensity and how grief is a little different because sometimes it can present his anxiety and depression. But what's a little distinct about grief is there's a sharpness to it.
There's this kind of sharp pain that comes with it. And it usually starts out at a pretty heightened intensity.
And we can sometimes be afraid of that big painful wave to come because we're afraid that we won't ever get out of it or I'll be stuck there. So we we cut off the wave before it peaks and gets to the top. And the hard part is it keeps coming back to where we cut it off.
So the hardest part is letting ourselves actually go through it. And the irony I usually tell those I'm supporting because it's painful. Our body doesn't have the capacity actually to hold on to it for as long as we're afraid of. So it probably really lasts about five or 10 minutes.
And then it comes down. And how you know you went through a wave is you feel a sense of relief and fatigue.
You kind of feel like tired and fatigued. It doesn't mean another wave won't come, but it doesn't tend to come up as high. And it kind of goes through this process until it can take however long it takes for it to eventually level out. And we've heard of the stages of grief, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. And the end is when it levels out is more of that leveling acceptance. And that can look different for everybody.
Terrific. I love that. I'm coming in waves because it does. And so when that comes in waves and you're down in it and you're in the pit, that is a perfect time to lament. That is a perfect time to get out your journal or go in your room and and just let it all out to God because he is ever present and he is ever listening.
The lamenting is an ancient practice that helps people to reconstruct when they're suffering. And it also disoriented people. They don't expect to feel this way at a certain time. And so they get disoriented. So if we take that time to go back and open that box and sit with that for a little while, it helps us to be able to get that out. And we can turn to the scriptures and we can go to the first Thessalonians 5, 16 through 18 says, "Rejoice always. Pray without ceasings. Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you."
And when I'm in a period of that pit, I don't feel like rejoicing. But when I start coming out of it, that's when I feel that relief. And that's when I can feel like, "Okay, thank you, God. I am so grateful that you were here with me in this." And that's the thing is we need to know that lamenting is not only helping us to reconstruct the way that we think and view, but it's also pushing us towards God to trust Him, to be able to help people direct their heart towards God's purposes that are hidden behind all of that pain when we go through the grief. And the events that happen, whether it be like Carissa mentioned, the loss of a job. And I'm going to go to a job that's even better. It's a much better, higher-paying job. It's going to be working with my schedule. All of those things are really good, but still, I'm leaving behind what I knew. I'm leaving behind my friends. I'm leaving coworkers. Sometimes, sometimes, coworkers, it's like, "I'm so glad to be out of there." But needless to say, it is a change and it is a loss. So when we're going through that feeling of grief and pain, to pour it out to God. And that's where I've been myself. I've been really kind of weak most of my life, because of the way that I was raised. God's out there and He's for me if I have a crisis, but He's pretty busy. So this is probably low on His radar scale. As far as, "Yeah, I got to get down there and help her." But He is not going to come down to us. He is with us always. And that's one of the things that helps me to remember that lament is good. God can handle my tears. And it's awesome when you have somebody in your life that helps to support that and helps you to be able to know that, "Yes, you can come through this and I'm here for you. If you need me to go away, I'll go away for a while. But I'm here for you." One time, I'm a hard learner. I'm on my third husband. And I let God pick him this time. And he is so supportive. And I remember one time when I had a lot on my plate after my mom died, I had to become my stepdad's primary caregiver. And just one day it all hit me and I was crying and crying almost all day. And I came in, we were in the bedroom, and I had just sat down on the bed. And he said, "What's going on?" And I said, "I just have to stop crying." And he sat down on the bed next to me and he put his arm around me. And he said, "Yes, you need to stop crying when you're all out of tears." And I went, "Oh, that is so good." And he just helped me and let me cry. And so that's what we need to do is we need to sit with God because Dave's not always going to be here with me. But God is. And so I can sit and know that I can cry in time all out of tears. And if I have a reservoir of tears that I can shut off and come back to later, God's still going to be there for me.
And also, one of the things that's really good about lament is that we are able to go through that and participate in the pain of others because we are here to support our participants and in Carissa's case in her profession. And that's one of the things that if we don't go through our own lament process, then we don't have that connection of our participants. It's like when I first had a baby, my first child is 43 years old now. And I still remember that day of, "Oh my gosh, I created this." It's just like, "Oh, and you explain that to someone." And they're like, "Oh yeah, that's cool." And it's like, "No, it's not cool." It's like, "Amazing." And so it's the same way. You have that connection. You know what it's like if you've gone through your own process of lament when you have things to grieve and things to recognize and things to turn over to God. It helps us to be able to participate in that pain with our individuals that we're supporting. So it involves a lot of different things. It involves expressing your sorrows and regrets and unhappiness.
It's a calling out to God. It's after we go through the laying out our complaints and calling out to Him, we're asking for His help to get us through to the other side, to the top of that wave. And we are choosing to trust in God when we are doing our laments. And what that does is it brings us to a platform where we are with God and that we are praising Him. So that's where I can get to a point where I can rejoice always, as the Bible says, because I can get past that point. And that doesn't mean that it's not going to happen again, but I'm going to be able to get past that point.
So, Carissa, do you have anything that you'd like to add to this right now?
Sure. One of the things that I was thinking about is oftentimes when we're thinking about the grieving and lamenting process, I threw out those stages. But we actually kind of go through these stages. It's different for everybody and intermittently.
I think you even brought up one, Phyllis, when you said, "I went to go call my mom." That is more, that's the, usually in the beginning of the grieving process, that's the denial. And denial isn't often like we think of it as like, "Oh, it never happened. This pain, this hurt, this situation never happened." It's a, it doesn't feel real.
It doesn't feel real to me. Or I heard someone say like, "I know my wife's gone, but it feels like she just went to the grocery store and can be back anytime."
So as you're sitting and supporting your groups, you might hear things like that, like certain experiences don't feel real to them. And so those are something that you could tune your ear to and say, "Ah, I'm wondering if they're going through this process right now."
Where something just doesn't feel like it's clicking, it doesn't feel like reality. Bargaining is not like, "Oh God, if you give me this, I'll do that." Sometimes it can be. Oftentimes when I have those who are in a bargaining stage, it's their brain is trying to work out how could have this played out differently.
Like, "What if I did this? What if I said that? What if I just would have called? What if I made a different decision?" In a healthy way, because usually we try to cut the bargaining off and just say, "Well, it's out of your control." Right? God's in control. It's out of your control. And we just need to move past this bargaining stage and let it go. But it's a very natural process that we, our brain wants to make sure this doesn't happen again, if possible. And so a healthy way to go through the bargaining stage is to let the brain flush out those options. "What if I did call them?" And you go through that train of thought, "What if I did do this?" How you know it's a healthy bargaining is if all roads lead to the same conclusion. It was outside of my control. I couldn't have done anything even if I wanted to. If you know it's an unhealthy bargaining train is if it's kind of spirally, it causes a lot of anxiety, panic, stress, heart rate goes up. And that's not what we're looking for. We're looking for just my brain flushing it out a little bit and just letting it realize all roads lead to the same place. It doesn't matter what I do.
It's not what I could have done. And that can be done with interaction with God too. Like, "God, what if I would have done this?" And it's like, it still would have been that way. "Well, what if we would have done this instead?" Right?
Oftentimes I think of the story, they'll test it where they're putting out, I think it was the animal skin. He's like, "Well, what if we did this God? What if we did that God?" He's like, "It's still gonna be the same." You know? Doesn't matter. Right? But sometimes we just need that to have a sense of peace and acceptance of the experience. And obviously we know anger and sometimes we get a little afraid of anger. Right? Because it's intense. And so trying to navigate that in a healthy way where we're not taking it out on loved ones. And I could just talk to God about how I feel like this is wrong. Like, I wish it could have been different. It's okay to wrestle with the anger part because God's not afraid of it. And he can be there to support us through that as well.
Excellent. Thank you so much. I really like how you've taken that and kind of pulled it out for us and gave kind of verbiage to what those different stages of grief are. And to be able to use this when we recognize it in our people that we're supporting is very, very helpful. And it helps us to be able to encourage them when they are in those spots. And sometimes we can, they can be going through that during the week and just shoot us a text and say, "I'm really down today." And maybe a quick phone call or something to our person that we're supporting might be a good way for us to get in that type of a conversation. Just ask them, you know, would the situation have turned out different if that were to happen? So all of that is extremely helpful as we go through helping others on their journey of healing. So thank you, Carissa. Thank you so much. Yeah, the lament is a process for our pain. And it's a way that gets us to the point of not only trusting God, but it's worship. It's a way of worshiping God. Too many people think that real worship only means being happy and upbeat in their demeanor. And yes, but that is not true. Grief-filled prayers of pain while seeking God are among the deepest expressions of God-centered worship. And I just really love that because worship isn't just singing songs. Worship isn't just being in corporate worship with other people raising our hands to a God that we love. That it is how we live our life. And when we're living a God-infused life, my husband's spiritual director, I had a conversation with him and he said, "Have you ever had fruit-infused water?" What you do is you take a gallon of water and you take your fruit and you put it in there and every molecule of that water will have that essence of fruit. And he said, "That's what a God-infused life is for us." And I just love that because it becomes a natural part of what we do. And when we are crying out and lamenting, it's a part of worship to God. Because, face it, if we have a child that comes to us and they only come to us because they want candy, because you gave me candy last week, aren't you going to give me candy again? That's not a real loving, encouraging relationship. But if a child, say, my neighbor child comes to me and says, "My dad said I can't have candy anymore and I just hate him because of that." That gives us opportunity to be able to share with them and exchange with them. And that's what God wants to do with us. We can say, "I hate what that person did to me and look what it's done to my life." And that's what God wants to hear from us. And that's what we can encourage our participants and our people that we're supporting through whatever they're going through. We want to encourage them to not just be connected with us as their guru for getting through something, but having them connect with God to make sure that no matter where they are, they're going to be able to connect with Him and show Him love because they're pouring out their complaints. So, yeah, there is a person that I did a lot of researching and looking at, and his name is Mark Vrogop. I don't know how to pronounce it. He's an author and a pastor, and he wrote a book called "Deep Clouds, Deep Mercy, Discovering the Grace of Lament." And he's very well versed on it, and he's so encouraging in regard to helping us to be able to see further how we can go through these things and go through our process of lament and allowing the grief to come in those waves that they come. And there's a fairly new song out, and I don't know who does it, but one of the things that some of the lyrics in there is, "God's love keeps crashing on me in waves, and it keeps crashing on me in waves." And that's exactly what can happen when we take those waves of grief that we're going through and going under, that we can take God under with us and allow His waves of mercy and grace to be able to get us to the point where He's like our, I imagine, scuba divers. You know, when we're 30 feet under and we would not be able to breathe, He is our mask. He is our oxygen tank, and so He's there with us. So needless to say,
I go back again to cry as human, but to lament is Christian.
It's, lamenting is another way to approach connecting with God, turning to God and bringing your complaint, asking bodily because we're weeping, you're using our senses and everything.
And that's your, we're choosing to trust God. And that's something that we need to do when we are supporting people through this process of grief and lament is we need to encourage them to lean on God and choosing to trust Him and strengthening their relationship with our Heavenly Father, with our Creator. And that's what's going to help them to be able to become more of who He created them to be. And that's our purpose, is to create that safe place for them to understand how to go through the process and use that feeling chart that we bring out every week and let them find those words that's not just happy, sad, mad, angry, but going out further.
And what's under that sad? Is it embarrassment? Is it feeling of loss? Is it humiliation? You know, having them connect with one of those other feelings that is underneath that sadness, and knowing that what they're feeling in their body is connecting with what's coming out of their mouth. Oh, I feel sad, because I was humiliated. I was embarrassed. So, okay, so now that you verbalize that, what are you feeling inside? You know, remember that feeling, sit with that feeling for a little while, and know that when you're out and about and you have that feeling, you can connect with what it is that is happening to you a little bit better. And so that's things that we can share in our groups with our participants. So that's kind of what I wanted to get across. Was there anything else that you wanted to add right now, Carissa? Because I want to give some time for questions and input. No, I'm looking forward to the questions. I mean, the whole goal of going and allowing ourselves to go through the process and do the ways to be able to get to a place of peace and sense God and be able to accept what it is that I've been going through and get some healing in that.
Thank you. Thank you. Okay, we're going to open it up to you participants. And what is your experience with going through this with the other individuals? What questions might we be able to respond to? Let's hear from our participants here today.
Yeah, I had a quick question. And also just wanted to share a resource to this really good in addition to that Deep Clouds Dark, or Dark Clouds Deep Mercy.
Every Moment Holy has put out a book, their third volume, I think it is, it's the Red Book. And it's the entire book is on grief, dying and lament, I think. And if you're into liturgy, or even if you're not into liturgy, they are very beautifully worded and scripted prayers. And the whole book, that's the focus of it. I get a lot of benefit. I've read some of those out loud to my group before. So that's just another really good resource.
Thank you. I wanted to ask about, is it Carissa? You were saying something about how it can present as anxiety and depression, but it has a sharp edge to it or I couldn't take notes quickly enough. Do you remember that comment? I wanted to have you fill that out a little bit more. Yeah. So yeah, especially when we haven't had a chance to go through the waves of grief. When we haven't allowed our body and our brain to actually go through that integrating process, it can manifest and kind of push its way out in the form of anxiety and depression. And so I know, but usually I can tell there's a distinctness to it because there's like usually a sharp, like there's like a pain or like a pain that they can feel in their chest, or like that tightness in your throat.
There's some sort of sharpness and pain to it that's a little different than when I would normally see someone with anxiety and depression. It's hard though. It's like, it's like, combing out with a hard, like with a comb. Right? Because usually we find ourselves there when we've been trying to find help with the depression or find help with the anxiety. It just doesn't seem to be working its way through. And then when I kind of like, ah, I wonder if there's grief there and all of a sudden we're able to kind of work with that. Find a healthy way to process it and see the body relax and kind of move into that healing and acceptance.
Okay. So you weren't specifically referring to like a sharp edge and that there's anger to it necessarily? Could be. Okay. That is a process of the grieving process is anger. So there could be that component to it too. And that tends to be one that gets repressed most often because it's hard to find a safe space to do that in a healthy way.
Okay. Yeah, I just wondered what kind of features a person might be looking for underneath anxiety.
So kind of what I'm understanding you say, Carissa, is that a lot of times it could be manifesting as a tightness in the throat or I know myself. A lot of times the way it shows is I start turning red and blotchy.
And or if I have something inside of me that I don't want to share with maybe the person sitting in front of me, I start tight breathing what I call tight breathing. So these are indications that that might be that sharpness. Did I understand that correctly? Yeah. Okay. I'm ready to figure out how to explain because it is distinct and it is different, but it's kind of hard to tell because sometimes it can kind of be muddled in with the experiences of anxiety and depression.
But then oftentimes when we work through the anxiety and depression to see what's left is usually this kind of like heavy pain usually around this area that there's like this heaviness to it. Yeah. Gotcha. Okay. Okay. Thank you.
What else?
I have not a question but a comment. I had a participant. It's been a couple, three, four groups ago that the only thing she did through the entire 10 weeks was cry.
She couldn't say she would say something. She was always apologizing. I said, No, I think this is what you need to do. You just need to sit with your tears. And it's okay. But she said, but I'm disrupting. I said, No, you're doing fine. Everybody in the group is fine with this. You just keep going. And then she asked if she wanted to take it again.
Months later because she wanted it with me and I've never had anybody ask that to have taken with me. But in that instance, that was her first time she had ever stepped out and told anybody what was happening in her life.
Or had happened. And I said yes. And I let her come back in and she was able to open up and share and understand more of her grief and why she was crying.
So I don't know if that was okay to do, but I did it. Just saying.
Well, Susan, that is a very good approach, especially with somebody that has had just a lifetime. I have one participant that about three and a half years ago, she went through group. She had not disclosed that she was in an active, destructive relationship. Yeah, and she had decided that she was going to do Mindy the Soul and this was going to be a good help for her. She went through, she didn't do hardly any of the work, but she came every single week. She came every week. She had a little bit to input, but she heard she received from the other women sitting in the room and she, she just, she finished and she felt a lot better because she had that support. Well, about as a almost a year, no, it was about a year and a half, two years later, I get a text from her and she said, Hey, do you know anybody that has a group going? I said, well, I'm putting together a group now and who do you have? And she goes, well, actually, it's me. And she said, I'm ready to work on my childhood stuff. And so she came back in. She, she had gotten out of the destructive relationship. It had been, she had, she was actually because of that in a police protection program. And she was currently in jail for attempted murder and a few other things. And she, she felt safe because she was in the protective program. And it had been six months since her last contact, his last contact with her. So she was born about where she could be reflective. And she grew so exponentially in that group that it was amazing. So yes, there, there are more, there are times and I've had several people over the years that have said I want to go through it again. Can I go in your next group? And so it's very beneficial, especially if they feel safe with you. So that's the key is, and that's what made me say yes, is that she did feel safe. And I thought, why would I send her to somebody else that then she's going to just not be able to open up perhaps or whatever. And unfortunately, I haven't heard from her for quite a while. But she has stayed in this relationship, because to her, it's so shaming to get away from it. And he's a pilot with a well known airline, and he would lose his job. And I said, So be it, let it happen. God's going to take care of you, you know that. And but so I don't know where she is today. But well, just one thing that I like to lean into is God has them right where he needs them. Yeah. And eventually, she's going to get to the point to where she, she needs to reach out to someone. So thank you for being here. So thank you for being that for her Susan, I really appreciate you're welcome. Susan, thank you for sharing that story, and just being able to offer such a beautiful space where she felt safe enough to be able to just let herself cry and grieve during that time because that is such a vulnerable thing to be able to do in the presence of another person. Yes.
Absolutely.
Thank you.
What else.
I wanted to just say, I've had a couple women who've come back again, because the first time they made it to chapter eight and just kind of shut down, they still kept coming back.
So that's been my experience to having people come back. But this last group, every group is has such a unique flavor and, you know, the whole group is different this last one. Everybody was grieving deeply. I've never had a group that grieved so much. So I was really excited to see this, the skill level of the skill webinar come up. One resource that I did wanted to share as a group called grief share, which is like it, I think it's international. I've been at a couple different churches who have offered it, and it usually is for people who've lost someone. I mean, at least the groups I've been through the majority of the people were somebody who someone had died recently.
So I'm hesitant to necessarily just list that as something for people I try to warn them that's usually what it's about.
But it, but it still is has so many good tools.
Even if somebody could just kind of go through it in a smaller, smaller group instead of a bigger group. But anyway, the grief share group was just something I highly recommend.
Excellent. Excellent. Thank you.
I have a dear friend who used to be a mini nistle facilitator trainer, and she is has her own practice she's also a minister of a church she's got her own church and she's also a licensed grief counselor. And I've gone through her group and it's it's about a six week study and it's just a little bit different from what I understand grief share to be. And it just it. And when you can go through something like that you get those tools to know that.
Okay, so it's not my mom, but this time it's my job, I was let go unjustly. And I need to learn how to get past this because it's consuming my life. And so, those tools that we gain as we go through read resources and go through support groups and that sort of thing. It's always beneficial to be able to have something to share with individuals who are going through the grief process.
Terrific. Thank you, Nancy and welcome Nancy came in after we had done our little introduction so can you unmute and just tell us where you're coming in from. Sure, Vancouver, Washington. Terrific. Thank you late coming home so I was like, Oh, I just jump on as soon as I can. As soon as you can. That's fine. Thank you. Well, I appreciate your, your joining us Nancy. Thank you.
Anyone else have questions or input.
I had a follow up one if it was if somebody else I want to allow other people to talk to you but maybe I'll just pause and if somebody else had something I can wait.
You're good Angie. Okay. What do you have. I want to I'm curious about back to the what I was asking about earlier.
I think there might possibly be a relationship between I have someone who, who I think is experiencing probably a panic attacks that include the realization. And I'm wondering if there is I know that you can always draw a straight line but I just wonder what Christian would say about the experience of the realization as it relates to, you know, possible and released grief.
And can I just add something to that if you could explain to me what that means, what that word is please.
The realization I think is what you were saying. Do you want to go for it, Kristen or.
It's kind of, kind of similar. I'm guessing your question is coming out of that initial stage I'm guessing where denial where it just doesn't feel real. Is that accurate. Is that what's kind of producing the question. No, the client is having an experience of pretty sure there are panic attacks.
And I think part of that whole experience, not every time but often is the experience also of this layer of de realization.
Kind of with increasing frequency. And so I am just wondering if there might be some unreleased grief that I ought to be digging a little deeper for.
Possibly, I think it'd be hard to know because just panic attacks and do you realization is incredibly intricate and complicated.
I'd be curious, obviously what what trauma is involved how is it impacted it how is it being held somatically in their body and as they process it.
Do you realization is this kind of sense. It's hard to feel grounded in reality. You don't, it's hard to know what's real or what's not real.
Even if they have a sense of what's real. It's, I just had someone say to me, she had a traumatic experience and she's like to be honest, this image came up for her and she's like the image right now feels more real than that being in this room.
Okay. Is that, is that your understanding Angie.
Yeah, and he would describe it as like almost a losing sense of time almost like when you experience something in a dream almost like an out of body. You're not really you're experiencing reality but not fully present in it.
Oftentimes grief is almost always a component that's woven in, it's like, you almost have like this big tingled yarn and it's woven in there as mixed in with everything else. And oftentimes when I've noticed as someone is processing their trauma. It's almost like grief kind of comes in towards the end of it where they're processing it processing and all of a sudden there's kind of like these tears and there's this grief of just they're grieving their experience they're grieving their reality they're grieving their losses so it's almost always woven in there to some degree or another.
I don't know if I would say that would be the entire causation though.
Thank you. I, I appreciate that explanation, and that was the D realization was kind of a new word for me. I've experienced it but I didn't know that that's what it was termed so thank you I appreciate that question, and I should my husband and I just watched watched a movie couple nights ago, go on Netflix, and it's called a little white lie, and it has Kate, Kate Hudson, and Don Johnson in it, and it's a very good illustration of what you just described on a famous writer wrote a book, and then he disappeared off the face of the earth, so to speak, for 20 years, and then this college got a hold of him and said we come and speak at our literacy literacy festival that we're having.
And so he's thinking well I'm the imposter but yeah sure I'll go whatever so, because they were going to pay for everything so he got on the plane, and he went, and he at the spoiler alert if you're going to watch it it's a really good movie. It's a little slow to begin with, but spoiler alert, he ends up being the person that he said he was the imposter for. And so that was a really good description of what you just described of what I saw in that movie he disappeared for 20 years and didn't know that he was a famous writer, because he was living in an unreal world and some of the phrases that he spoke about. And then when he realized that he was the real person, not an imposter. It was really, it was like this movie finally redeemed itself. But, so, Angie thank you for bringing up that question I really appreciate it so well, somebody put in the chat there about dissociation.
Yeah, you're accurate. It is a form of dissociation. That's why I would be more curious more about what's happening or why the panic attacks are happening, because it has that dissociative component to it. And that's just the body just not being able to stay present in the experience. Yeah, and I'm digging for the trauma that I just cannot quite I haven't popped the cork yet.
That's good. That's good. And I've had a lot of experience with dissociation in my groups. And I just, I, I like the way that you drew that out to, to be able to identify that even further so anyway, um, we're coming to the end of our time. And I just want to tell everyone thank you for being here for participating. And with your input.
Carissa thank you so much for joining us today and I look forward to having you on more webinars with us and eventually podcasts. If you're available. And so if anyone has any questions or anything, please feel free to write info at mendingthesoul.org, or you can shoot me an email my email addresses up there at the bottom of my screen. If you have questions for Carissa. How, how are you with that Carissa.
Yep, yeah, my I put my email on there as well I was like that's a great idea so I just kind of threw it on there so that would be a very good way to get a whole. Terrific. Okay, well, I'm going to go ahead and close us out in prayer if there's not anything else that we want to dive into. And we'll go on with our day.
So, actually, Carissa would you like to close us out in prayer. Sure, absolutely. Thank you.
Your heavenly Father just thank you so much for the gift of being able to be with these individuals today as we just talk and learn more about just how you've designed this and what does it look like to truly lament as a way to process the pain and grief that we experience while we're here but also find a way to find hope and healing and connection with you.
I pray that you may move with us and take this information with us today as a way to bring hope and healing to us but also to be able to use that as we care and walk alongside those who are also needing hope and healing as well.
Thank you for this time and for this day that you've given us in your name.
Man. Well thank you everyone for joining us, and we'll see you again next month. Next month, just as a little teaser. We're going to talk more about what I spoke of at the beginning of this webinar, and that would be on what direction is meaning the soul going, so look forward to seeing you all again. All right, thank you. Bye bye. Thank you.
