Latest / Daily Influence / 681. Grief as a North Star: Finding Purpose in Life’s Most Sacred Transitions

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681. Grief as a North Star: Finding Purpose in Life’s Most Sacred Transitions · Daily Influence

• 0:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to Daily Influence, your daily dose of positive influence.
• 0:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Brian Smith founder of IA Business Advisors and co-author of the Iain team series.
• 0:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Each day we share stories and insights to help you find be and build your influence in a positive and responsible way.
• 0:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm Greg Clino, partner at IE Business Advisors, and co-host of Daily Influence.
• 0:32
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• 0:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: And make us part of your Daily routine, whether it's during your commute, on a walk, or an quiet moment just for you, because you're influenced matters.
• 0:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Welcome to Daily Influence.
• 0:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm Greg Lino.
• 0:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: Today, I'm honored to introduce Amana Mayfield Faulkner, founder of Amana B.
• 0:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Love.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Amana's journey has been shaped by profound loss, deep compassion, and years of service as a registered nurse in palliative care.
• 1:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: There are personal experiences in professional background.
• 1:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: She now supports women in reconnecting with their intuition.
• 1:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Navigating grief and finding meaning through life's most challenging moments.
• 1:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Amana's story reflects the essence of responsible influence, how we transform adversity into purpose and use our experiences to uplift others.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Amana, welcome to the show.
• 1:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hmm, thank you so much for having me.
• 1:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, set the stage for our listeners.
• 1:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: Could you share a bit about your background and what led you to where you are today?
• 1:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
• 1:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, I grew up being a very naturally nurturing human being, like loved caring for other babies.
• 1:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: I had an extraordinary number that was 15 months younger than me and had pictures of me like on telephone books feeding her in her hi chair when I was just a little bit older than her.
• 1:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I was a mother's helper and had a study babysitting job before I was even 10 which gave me lots of insight into motherhood and other ways of being in a family unit.
• 2:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: I found myself to be really curious about other cultures and had the opportunity to travel to different parts of the world or remember being so surprised at how different things were in skin and media to America with the way that we care for moms and babies and.
• 2:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that led to me, you know, when I went to college, I first got a degree in sociology, because I love the study of humans and culture.
• 2:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then later, but came around to start nurse.
• 2:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: I also traveled and nanied in as an opair in France for a year.
• 2:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's just really explored the world and what it means to be human.
• 2:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then when I was 25, my first love was dying of cancer, and he was 26, and I was present with him and his mother as he took his last breath, and this was my first big initiation into the realm of death and grief, and completely transformed my concept of life here on earth, as well as beyond death, as I found myself experiencing connection with Bjorn like in the spirit world, and
• 3:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it was after his death that I finished nursing school and started working as a registered nurse and during that time, I also was attending Bruce as a midwife assistant because I just always loved Bruce and babies and I found it to be a really beautiful balance especially when I was working in palliative care at the end of life to also to be witnessing both of these huge transformations, the first breaths and the last breaths.
• 3:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: And in 2014, I met the love of my life and he proposed two weeks after we met.
• 3:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we married a few months later and started our own journey of conception.
• 3:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I had always just thought that all my babies would live, even though I knew that women had miscarriage and early births were common.
• 4:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: I just didn't have it in my own mind at that time.
• 4:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: But my first birth was an early birth that six weeks.
• 4:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then our second baby, we discovered through ultrasound at six months that she didn't have kidneys.
• 4:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that sent me down this whole other path, another grief journey into the underworld that again sort of transformed my world.
• 4:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: Wow.
• 4:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for sharing that story with us.
• 4:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is really inspirational.
• 4:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: And one of the themes we
• 4:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: shape the way we lead and influence others.
• 4:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: Through grief and loss, you gain new perspectives on life and love.
• 4:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: How did those experiences change the way you view connection, purpose, and how you show up for others?
• 4:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so these experiences I learned firsthand, you know, people say life is precious, but it's very different to really experience it yourself to first witness someone in his 20s die and then to have my first two babies die and to give birth to that baby.
• 5:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: reminded me and brought it to the forefront of my mind that tomorrow is guaranteed to know buddy and also the importance of expressing grief and a culture of grief that can hold and be with those that are grieving because everyone grieve something in their life if not many, many, some things throughout their life, whether it's a loss of a person or a job or
• 5:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: grief and the expression of grief is so vast and different across different relationships, different losses, different cultures, but I have found that with practices and outlets for expressing and transforming our grief we're able to move forward in a more integrated way than if we just kind of suppress it and pretend that it's not there and
• 6:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: acknowledging the grief never ends.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: It just changes across time.
• 6:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've seen people get, you know, stuck in their grief and tried to ignore it.
• 6:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it's actually really important to I, someone that I Lisa Lister, she's written many books and she speaks about grief as being like the dark maw and that it's important place to to go and be.
• 6:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: and be with her, but also it's not a place that we build our homes that it's a place we leave were there for a time and then we come back up out of the darkness and into the light.
• 6:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: So making time to express our grief through art, movement, ceremony can immensely assist a person with their relationship with their own grief.
• 7:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: So for someone who's experiencing grief because of a loss of the child, what steps, what first steps would you recommend them taking?
• 7:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: First of all, just the reminder that grief doesn't happen on a specific timeline and that this grief is something that you're gonna be with for the rest of your life because as we say, like grief is there because love is there.
• 7:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: So to not hurry your grief,
• 7:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: to find a community for me, it was really helpful to get to know other women who were years down the path who had had babies who died that were in a different phase of their grief that we can to find the community to not listen to other people who were telling you how you should or shouldn't grieve, just allow your grief to be your own.
• 7:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: and find practices and ways of expressing it and not suppressing it.
• 8:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for sharing that.
• 8:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, influence often shows up in quiet, meaningful moments.
• 8:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: Can you share a moment or experience where you felt you made a positive impact on someone's life?
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Either through your work and palliative care or through the intuitive support you now offer.
• 8:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: So for me, I feel like this question sort of brings me a little further back into what the ways that I felt supported and how now I bring some of those practices and ways that people held me and ways that I found assisted me that then I now am able to offer that to other people.
• 8:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: So like I said, when my daughter died, I felt so alone that no woman had ever felt this way,
• 8:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: found communities where I could walk along other women and now I have created communities where women can come and listen to other women's stories and understand that sharing our stories of grief and having that point of connection and knowing that we're not alone is just really the most important thing that we can do for one another and not be afraid to speak.
• 9:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: our children's names and speak about grief.
• 9:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for sharing that you know you spent years working in palliots of care supporting individuals and families at the end of life.
• 9:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: What did that experience teach you about responsibility, presence, and the role we each play in supporting others during their most vulnerable moments?
• 9:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, so my time working as a palliot of care nurse really taught me that the most important part of supporting one another in grief,
• 9:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: is to show up and to be present without expectation.
• 9:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes if we think that we're going into support someone in their grief and we have a side based on an expected to just be sad and low.
• 10:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: energy, but that's not always what we walk into, and that there can be a fine line with grief where there's also moments of joy and reminiscing and reviewing remembering certain things that happen with that person.
• 10:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: So just showing up as neutral as we can when we show up to support someone in grief and let them sort of lead the way and go with them wherever they are with their grief
• 10:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: reflection often brings clarity and wisdom.
• 10:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: We wish we had earlier.
• 10:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you could go back and give your younger self advice, what would you share and how might that guidance help others who are early in their journey today?
• 10:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: If I could go back and tell myself like that first brief journey, I thought I was going to be in the underworld forever that I would never have happiness
• 11:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: This life has taught me that change keeps occurring each and every day, whether we want it to or not.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: And that our grief is not going to be stagnant grief can be sneaky.
• 11:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: And like like a wave crashing can be unexpected when we're not ready for it.
• 11:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: But grief can also be like this true North Star.
• 11:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: And many people find that they experience what we call post-traumatic growth.
• 11:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: where we find a new, like, North Star and can feel and live in a way that we didn't feel before we experienced this grief.
• 11:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: A lot of people also say that when they go to the depths of grief, it somehow, it's not even understandable, but we then have access to a greater level of joy that we didn't have before we experienced that depth of the darkness.
• 11:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hmm, that's interesting.
• 11:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for sharing that.
• 12:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: In the IN team, we talk about empowering individuals rather than creating dependence.
• 12:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: You help women reconnect with their intuition and inner guidance.
• 12:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: How do you encourage others to trust themselves and take ownership of their own healing and growth?
• 12:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: by reminding them that their intuition has been with them, you know, since day one, it's their own personal superpower that no one else has no one else can take.
• 12:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: We each have an individual intuition.
• 12:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I remind women that they are only truly have some control over just themselves and not really about anything else or anyone else.
• 12:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so remind her to practice our intuition, to ask questions like, you know, I'm thinking about doing this one thing.
• 12:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: How would I feel if I took this risk?
• 12:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: How might I feel if I didn't take this risk?
• 12:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: five years from now, am I going to be wishing I had tried, you know, like if you never try your failing already.
• 13:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: So just trying things out and connecting with ourselves in those quiet moments and finding ways to build trust with our own intuition through little practices.
• 13:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: That is beautiful.
• 13:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for sharing that.
• 13:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: And as we begin to wrap up, I want to bring this back to our listeners, what message or words of encouragement, would you like to share with those who aspire to make a positive difference in the world, especially those navigating loss and certainty or major life transitions.
• 13:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, let's start small and start with yourself.
• 13:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: We might never truly know the ripple effects of small actions that have even on our old lives across time.
• 13:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: They may seem like no big deal, but across the weeks, months and years, those small practices can have an incredible impact.
• 13:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, can you take a moment today to truly see yourself and recognize your inherent value just as you are not because of the degrees you have or what you've done with your life or the kids that you're raising know that you are important and valuable just as you are.
• 14:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I also like to remind women just much like in birth.
• 14:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: We have that transition time which happens like so labor is law there's labor that can last short or long amounts of time and we have the transition, which happens right before the birth and almost all women say I can't do it and it feels like so tight and hard just like we say the darkest before the dawn, but remember that the transitions don't last forever.
• 14:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you'll be on the other side and be able to like look back and be like, oh my gosh, I made it through that.
• 14:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's great advice.
• 14:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for sharing that in Monna.
• 14:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for joining us.
• 14:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: If our listeners want to get in touch with you, what is the best way to do so?
• 14:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
• 14:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you can find me at my website, www.amonnabelove.com.
• 15:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm also on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.
• 15:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm on a beloved and I have a podcast.
• 15:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: The heart of the soul remembering what it means to be wild women walking this earth and sharing what is often unseen and unspoken through the ancient ritual of storytelling.
• 15:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's great.
• 15:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: We'll put all that information this show notes.
• 15:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm on a thank you so much for sharing your story and for the way you turn compassion, presence and lived experience into meaningful influence.
• 15:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Your journey is a powerful reminder that even in life's hardest moments, there's an opportunity to serve support and uplift others.
• 15:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for joining us.
• 15:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for having me.
• 15:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: And to our listeners, thank you for tuning in to Daily Influence.
• 15:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: Positive Influence doesn't require having all the answers.
• 15:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: It begins with awareness, responsibility, and choosing to show up for ourselves and for others.
• 15:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: I hope today's conversation brought you inside an inspiration.
• 16:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: If it's spoke to you, share it with someone who could use a little positivity today.
• 16:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: Remember small actions create big impact.
• 16:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: Keep showing up, leading and growing one day to time.
• 16:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Until next time,
• 16:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: Stay inspired and keep having a positive, responsible influence.
• 16:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: Bye-bye.