Latest / Two Girls and a Cup of Wellness / Grief: What If It Isn't Something to Fix? with Mindy Relyea | Ep 37

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Grief: What If It Isn't Something to Fix? with Mindy Relyea | Ep 37 · Two Girls and a Cup of Wellness

• Crissy and Marie: And welcome back everyone for another Two Girls in a Couple Wellness. This is Chrissy. And this is Marie. And today we have the gorgeous soul Mindy with us. Welcome, welcome to our community love. Mindy: thank you. I'm so happy and honored to be here. Thanks for inviting Crissy and Marie: Yeah. Mindy: me. Crissy and Marie: Yeah, no, thank you. And so everybody's already heard the amazingness in your bio of what you do. But what I find so fascinating, I'll talk a little bit about a few things, but first things first, what's fascinating is we are actually recording this on 9-11. And I have the chills right now, and there may be tears come up, but we're talking about grief today. Like Could the stars have aligned any better? I don't think so. This won't be rolled out on obviously today, but just the fact that we're bringing such a topic that it it not a lot of people don't talk about grief. And we need to. We need to. And Mindy: Yeah. Yeah. Crissy and Marie: so yeah, the power of this conversation today and every day, anyways, but today especially is giving me Mindy: Yeah. Crissy and Marie: the chills. Mindy: Me too. And I'll I'll share a personal story with you. So on September tenth, I gave birth to my youngest. And I was in the hospital holding my brand newborn baby when the Twin Towers fell. And it was just like, you know, we all know exactly where we were when that happened, right? Crissy and Marie: Yeah. Mindy: It's one of those historical moments that we never forget. And so when he turned twenty five, it was like which was, you know Just this which was yesterday, right? It's Crissy and Marie: Yeah, yeah. Mindy: like that, then we realize that that was exactly twenty five years ago today. Just crazy. Yeah. Crissy and Marie: Yeah. Wow. Yeah. It is crazy. It really, really is. But, you know, when I met you and I have I I met you just a few weeks ago. And where'd you meet? Mindy: Mm-hmm. Crissy and Marie: so there is a beautiful organization out of Utah that is called Image Reborn. Okay. And they provide weekend retreats and offerings to breast cancer survivors. And I was honored enough to be asked to teach yoga. To some of their local Florida retreats, but then also on a virtual one a couple weeks ago. And Mindy was another one of the providers that was sharing her gifts in this this a retreat. And gosh, she just started talking. And I was like, yes, just because everything that you were saying was so spot on, and the words you used and and the the vibrancy that came through you. However, you could just feel the warmth and you could feel the like the realness of her heart in speaking also, that I just immediately thought we need her on the show. So like Mindy: Thank you. Crissy and Marie: it it I'm I'm I I'm like fumbling over my words because there's so many that are coming through. But that's really Mindy: Yeah. Crissy and Marie: how I felt. And Especially with this year for me being a very emotional year, losing my parents within two months of one another. grief is front and center for me. And I'm realizing more and more that people just think grief is like, okay, you cry and that's it. You move on. And you move on. Right. And there's so many layers to it. So Let's dive in, Mindy. Like where do we even start with that? Mindy: Yeah, let's dive in. I mean, I I love I love that that was how you felt. I mean, we're in some capacity or another, I feel like we're all drawn to grief, but we're also resistant to it at the same time because of really how our culture works, right? Grief is like this so just speaking about nine eleven, it's like this massive global thing that we're all experiencing. And yet we bring it down to the most personal, intimate experiences. And it it really is so vulnerable and and it's really so intimate, right? So that's why we have zero conversation, or I mean very little conversation. I think Crissy and Marie: Very little. Mindy: it's getting better. We're getting more people talking about it, but really for forever, our whole culture has been grief is wrong. Grief pre brief grief represents brokenness. So we're gonna just push it aside and pretend like it doesn't really exist. And if you're sad, then you need to go fix yourself and we'll give you a little minute to do that and then you can come back. And to me, that's just such a disservice to a huge part of humanity. It's part of what connects us as human beings. You know, there's two things on Crissy and Marie: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mindy: the planet that we can all really be sure of, and that is that there's one day that we were all we will all die. Every single one of us. It is the unifying experience. And we're all gonna experience grief on all different levels all throughout our life, you know? So Crissy and Marie: Yeah, there's so many times, right? And not one person is gonna go unscathed. And I think Mindy: Right. Crissy and Marie: that's what, like, let's let's talk about it. And let's so many times I hear people say, don't make me cry, Chrissy. I don't I don't wanna cry. And I'm like, no, cry. I just had a conversation Mindy: Yeah. Crissy and Marie: with a breast cancer survivor yesterday. And she was like, I don't want to cry. And I'm like, but why? Right? Feel your feelings. Yes. Mindy: Yeah, or or apologize for their tears, right? It's like I'm so sorry, I'm crying. I'm so there's so much shame, like I said, that that goes along with grief. And and it inherently I do think that we do grief makes us feel broken. Makes it doesn't feel good. You know, we feel like there's something wrong with us. And we we either want to push it aside or or try to get past it as fast as we can. And so in that there is this tendency to just bypass it and and it it we think that we can kind of jump past it and get busy and get distracted and do life and then and then we're done with it. But grief resides in our bodies. Grief is a very physical it's just as much physical as it is emotional or any other way that it or mental right it it's a very physical thing. And so we hold it in our bodies and years later that those feelings and that really intense experience that we have tried to repress and really tried not to feel Crissy and Marie: Yeah. Mindy: comes out in different ways because our body can't hold it. And so it it comes out in other ways. And so it's, you know, just going back to the very basics of why I do what I do. That's that's really why I feel so called to this work is just because there are some tools that we can do that are, you know, they're they're not complex. They're pretty simple. and they can be really life-changing for people who are are dealing with really heavy waves of grief, or even people who've had that grief kind of circle back around again and they're like, man, I thought I I thought I had I thought I was past this, you know. It's it's not how it works. Yeah. None Crissy and Marie: Yeah. This again? Mm-hmm. Mindy: of us can outrun it and and nor should we, because what I have learned over the years is that there is just so much. beauty that lies in that space. It really is the most sacred and hallow places, hallowed places that are within us, you know. So we just we just get to learn how to kind of sit with it. And it's a skill because it's Crissy and Marie: Yeah. Mindy: not it's not something that it doesn't feel intuitive to go, wow, I'm ri my heart is breaking. I'm really hurting today. I'm just gonna sit down with that, you know? We don't Crissy and Marie: Yeah. And most people want to schedule in their things. I'm gonna grieve today. It doesn't quite work that way. Yeah. Mindy: Yeah right a hundred percent Chrissy and that you know that's the craziest thing about grief is that she is an unpredictable one, you know? And we just never know when we're gonna have this wave of grief and it tends to feel like that. It tends to feel like a wave that just comes across our our whole body and you know we can be really taken out by that and so Crissy and Marie: Yeah. Mindy: Learning how to really check in and tend to our grief on a way more regular basis. So that's the funny part is that we really can schedule these times to just tend to our grief. And it's just opening a space within us where we just are allowing ourselves to check in. You know, it's Crissy and Marie: Yeah. Mindy: kind of like going for a run or brushing our teeth or even e eating, you know, it's like, am I hungry right now? You know, do I what do I need in this moment? And we can do the same type of thing with our grief where we just we can become so familiar with where where we feel it in our body, how it feels in our body, and then just learn some practices around it so that when it that wave does come up unexpectedly, we're not quite so blindsided by that. We have some preparation around it. So Crissy and Marie: Yeah. Yeah. It's it's interesting when you said that so many people are like, I don't you know, I'm sorry for crying or I'm sorry for feeling my emotions in front of you. I did that today. So in Mindy: Yeah. Mm. Crissy and Marie: I was teaching yoga and again it's nine eleven. So my whole theme and talk and purpose for this class today was creating peace, creating peace Mindy: Mm. Crissy and Marie: within. Creating peace that you know we extend out to our loved ones, and then that just ripples out. And at the end of practice, as I'm bringing them out of Shivasana, I got emotional. And I just let it go. And I said after the class, there was a moment that I wanted to say, I'm sorry for getting emotional. And I didn't. And I literally said that out loud to the class. Because I wanted them to know that I wasn't sorry for it, right? I just allowed it to come up, but I really had to I had to stop myself because my mind was like, my gosh, Chrissy, yep, no, tell them you're sorry for cur for crying because acknowledge it, right? Everybody knows Mindy: Yeah. Crissy and Marie: I was like tearing up and I got choked up and saying, Why do I need to say sorry for it? It's it's a beautiful emotion. And I Mindy: Yeah. Crissy and Marie: just kind of let it, I let it roll in both of the classes that I taught this morning. And I literally said, so. Inviting people to say or not to say, I'm sorry Mindy: Yeah. Crissy and Marie: for crying. I'm sorry for this. Why? Why do we have to say that? So it just a remind as soon as you said that I was like, Yeah, I think everybody needs the reminder that not to be sorry. It's okay. Mindy: Hundred percent. Yeah, and it's really what you did was really powerful because you're modeling for people what that looks like. And the crazy thing is that as broken as it can feel on the inside, right? It's never comfortable for us to like they even call it ugly cry, right? Like an ugly cry. And it's like, Yeah, me too. I mean, who doesn't? We all Crissy and Marie: Yeah, yeah. I've had a few of those lately. Yeah. Mindy: do. But to do to do that. Like to allow ourselves to have an ugly cry in front of a whole class is really giving permission to everybody else to be able to do that too. And the Crissy and Marie: Yeah, yeah. Mindy: thing that I have learned over the years, so I became a certified death doula in 2017. So it's been, yeah. Yeah, Crissy and Marie: Fascinating, right? Mm. Mindy: it's been nine years. So and in the meantime, I got to take care of my dad at the end of his life. I actually was with him when he took his very last breath. And there were just things that I learned through my training that really helped me so much with that. But the thing that I've learned over and over and over again with grief, and it comes up with every single image reborn retreat that I have the honor to be a part of. And I started working with Image Reborn at about that same time that I became an end-of-life doula, is that there's only so much work. and healing and tending to that we can do around our grief alone. So much of it is communal. And so much of it needs to be witnessed in order for it to truly move and shape shift. You know, our grief never really disappears. Like it's never gonna fully go away because it transforms us. And so we're completely transformed by the experience that we went through that involved the grief in the first place, you know. And so it's we're as much as there might it might be human nature to try to get back to where I was before that, you know, quote unquote bad thing happened, it's a matter of learning that I the sh the grief is gonna shift and it's gonna transform as well. And it does that so powerfully in community. And so I it is just like it'll be my dying breath to just really be such an advocate for grief circles. I do grief retreats every year. any kind of conversation that we can create around grief where we're sitting together and I'm a big circle person. So anytime I do an in-person anything, we do it in circle if possible. I did a I did a grief training workshop in North Carolina a couple of years ago, and we had 36 women who'd been diagnosed with stage four breast cancer. And we did a circle of 36 women, so it was like this big, huge circle. But the reason that that feels so powerful, and whenever I do an online retreat or any kind of online anything, I I ask the attendees to just imagine that we are in a circle. And the reason for that is because we can see each other, right? First and foremost, we can see each other. And it can feel vulnerable, right? Like it's like, I can't sit on the back row here. I'm in the circle. And part of the beauty with that, with this community circle, is that we show up just exactly as we are. So that you don't have to pretend anything. We just come as we are. And some days you know, our grief is gonna be way less alive in us. It's gonna feel much more tame and mild on certain days. Other days we're gonna just show up super raw and we're just gonna feel incredibly vulnerable and and it's scary, right? There's a certain Crissy and Marie: Yeah. Mindy: amount of fear that goes along. And so with the circle, when everybody just shows up as they are, there there's automatically this system of people who are able to give. And people who are able to receive. And so it just creates this incredible reciprocity that, you know, we don't really experience that very often, you know? To be able to Crissy and Marie: Yeah, yeah. Mindy: be vulnerable enough to say, Yeah, I'm I need you today. And or, you know, I'm feeling good today. I I'm here for you today. Crissy and Marie: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think there's that that sense of being able to see yourself in other people. I've been, you know, in a lot of rooms with a lot of women at times. And when people are speaking their life situations or their feels or it's like you can see yourself in that woman at some point in your lifetime, you are going to relate to what it is that they're doing. Right. So Whatever got that person to that room is maybe one thing, but like healing is healing, grieving is grieving, joy is joy, peace is peace, right? And Mindy: Yeah. Crissy and Marie: all of those things we have experienced one time or another. And it's I think that is why I love circles so much in some form, way or another, healing circles, grieving circles. It's because it really helps people understand that they're not alone. They're not the only ones that have ever felt that and when they can see Mindy: Yeah. Crissy and Marie: it it through other people, they're like, wow, I truly am not alone. People see me. Yeah. Have you ever done a Mindy: Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. Crissy and Marie: like a healing circle or grieving circle? No. No. They're really powerful. Really, really powerful. And I think too just like the the circle itself is like this never-ending like connection, right? It's not broken. It's like continuous. And it just the energy just stays there. And it's like you just you You you feel other people's energy. You know, it's really beautiful. Mindy: Yeah. Yeah. The other thing that I really like to point out at the beginning of a circle with a group is that the other reason I love a circle is because it's not hierarchical, right? There's no there we're all here to teach one another. We're all here to learn from one another. I am undoubtedly the facilitator, which I always explain is just a great honor for me and it's my s sacred responsibility to hold space. During the circle, but really we all contribute and we all receive in the very same way. And so it just makes everybody kind of equal. And to your point, you know, because we all experience grief, and there there are always gonna be different levels of grief, right? Like we have little griefs that we can kind of acknowledge every day, and then we have big griefs that kind of knock us for a loop that we didn't see coming, and we're like, whoa, you know, they're more shocking to the system. Crissy and Marie: Yeah, I got a lot of the big griefs right now. Mindy: Yeah, you do. I know you do. And I wanna just acknowledge that for you and I wanna hold that space for you because it's big, you know, it's a big Crissy and Marie: Yeah, yeah. Mindy: deal. And I feel like there are I don't know about you guys, but I feel like I know a lot of people right now who are dealing with some big griefs. You know, Crissy and Marie: Yeah. Mindy: it's kind of a hard time to be alive on the planet. And so it's it's another reason that I feel like this conversation is so important because I mean, we just don't have a lot of spaces where we get to just show up as we are, you know. We don't really care about all the external circumstances. We just show up as a human being whose heart might be hurting for whatever reason. And and we get to hold that space for each other, you know. Feels pretty rare to me. Crissy and Marie: Yeah. one of the things that I would get a lot when I was going through my cancer journey was people would be talking to me about certain things that are going on in their lives. And then they would stop themselves and they would say, But Chrissy, not it's I'm sorry, it's not as bad as you. Or they like broken ankle or something. But Chrissy, I'm sorry, it's not as bad as what you're going through. And I Mindy: Yes. Crissy and Marie: stop them every single time, still to this day, even now with my parents, right? Chrissy, like, you know. I'm like, but that's your experience. Mindy: Yeah. Crissy and Marie: Don't the comparison that people try to Mindy: Mm-hmm. Crissy and Marie: create in these s scenarios. I'm like, no, no, no, no. But that was Mindy: Yeah. Crissy and Marie: your experience. I think that's that's human though. That is human. You know, to try to relate or something or not relate. Like I know for me now a lot of my friends, you know, they're losing their parents. Yeah. And I'm blessed Mindy: Yes. Crissy and Marie: to still have mine, both very, very healthy. And I know. I have a few friends that are really struggling with it and I'll say I I have no idea what you're going through. But I know when I get there it's gonna be really bad. Yeah. You know. Yeah. And if people Mindy: Yes. Yeah. It's the perfect thing to say. That's the perfect way to respond. You know, there are Crissy and Marie: take it a different way, then that's that's on them, right? But you so speak Mindy: Yeah. Crissy and Marie: your authentic self. Mindy: Yes. There are two things that I think are really maybe not necessarily human nature, but definitely in our culture. And one is to do the comparison, right? your grief has to be way worse than mine or my grief is worse than yours, right? and then the second one is when people don't know what to say, they tend to try to fix it. And it and I believe that that comes down to the fact that they have not done their own grief work. And so they don't want to feel their own pain. And so they want to they want to make it so that you don't have to feel your pain either. So it's again, it speaks to that the really importance of doing this as a community. Because if I can Crissy and Marie: Mm-hmm. Mindy: sit with my grief, then that means that I'm capable of sitting with your grief. And if I don't know how to sit with mine. I'll never know how to sit with somebody else's. I'll try. But what will happen is I'll I'll it's called placating, you know. I'll placate. I'll I'll say things like, well, at least you still have your dad, you know, I know you just lost your mom or whatever, you know, people placate. And I find myself, I have a real temptation to do that still. And it's because we it's hard to watch people suffer. Crissy and Marie: Yeah, you have to catch yourself. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Mindy: It's hard to see people hurt. And I would say that one of the most important things that I learned in my end-of-life training, and then I also did another training at the Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco. It's now called Zen Caregiver Project. It's run by an amazing, amazing man named Roy Reimer. I love him. But that's another, that was a big part of the training. And I remember when I first started, I was so irritated because I wanted the skills. You know, I wanted like the I wanted the dead do this, then do this. And so much of it was all Yeah. I wanted Crissy and Marie: Yeah. Mindy: what I thought were it was like the meat and potatoes of what I wanted Crissy and Marie: Mm-hmm. Mindy: to do, which was sit with people at the end of their lives and hold space for their families and act as a liaison, which is what death doulas do. And they kept doing these exercises where you just had to sit with somebody. You had to sit with yourself, you had to sit with other people. Who are hurting and not say. And it was so hard for me. It was just one of the hardest things. And it just showed me that to this day that's one of my that's one of the hardest skills for me to learn. But in in actuality, when we listen to someone and we don't compare and we don't own it because it's not ours. But we we don't try to fix it. We Crissy and Marie: We don't try to fix. Yeah. Mindy: just allow it and we let them share. It's the greatest way to honor that human being. Crissy and Marie: Mm, so bad. Mindy: And in so doing, we're honoring ourselves, right? Because it's it is the thing that we all experience. But I love how you say, I can't imagine how you're feeling, but I know I'm gonna I'm gonna you know, it's not gonna be fun when I get there, you know. It's true. You're just being honest. It's absolutely true. Yeah. Crissy and Marie: Yeah, it's so true. Yeah. Yeah. I can't. Mm-hmm. You know, I've done a lot of life support withdrawals in the ICU. And Mindy: Yeah, yeah. Crissy and Marie: I have to say, they're beautiful. It and I know that Mindy: Yes. Crissy and Marie: that might sound really awful, but when you're dealing with dealing with someone that's suffering and then all their families are there together. And I will tell you the power of the human body to hold on to that last breath for that Mindy: Yeah. Crissy and Marie: last child to get there or that last Mindy: Yeah. Crissy and Marie: love one, it is So crazy. But there's such a beautiful feeling and essence, I guess, to the room when when you remove someone from life support. It's beautiful. Mindy: Yeah. it's it's I agree with you. And every time I have the opportunity to do that, I feel like I have been invited to the most sacred space that we only experience at childbirth and death, right? It's like the two spaces where it feels like that. It doesn't literally. And Crissy and Marie: Life's coming in and life's going out. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mindy: and you know how how many how many years do we go without ever even thinking about that? You know, it's just we just don't think about it. Think about birth. I mean, when we're having babies and you know, Crissy and Marie: We think about birth, right? 'Cause when babies are born, we're all excited. Yeah. Mindy: when it's around us, but really it's just it's just the most incredible and sacred experience. And and you don't know that until you feel it. And it honestly it's kind of hard to believe, right? Like people are like, no thanks. Like Crissy and Marie: Mm-hmm. I I see it. Mindy: some people say, You're a death doula. I can't imagine. No, thank you. Crissy and Marie: I don't even know. We used to have case managers that would come in, hospice case, and they were wonderful. They'd set the room Mindy: Yeah. Yeah. Crissy and Marie: up and I would learn from them. I'd be like, All we're gonna dim the lights, we're gonna make it warm. But I will tell you that when everybody Mindy: Yes. Crissy and Marie: leaves that room and sometimes it was shift change, so I never had to go in there with the body afterwards, it is after everything's over, there's no energy left. It's just an empty room again with the but it's death. It's and you can feel it. I so Mindy: Yeah. Yep. Yeah, it's it's dead. Yeah, it's dead. Yeah. You totally Crissy and Marie: wanted to be there for my dad's. We had a couple weeks before he passed and kind of in the knowing that the his time was was near. And I just so wanted to be in the room with him and watch it, witness it, because he Mindy: Mm-hmm. Crissy and Marie: was so ready to go that Mindy: Yeah. Crissy and Marie: I know there was gonna be such peace to it. And the night before he passed, I was there with my sisters and I could still feel he was agitated, which his life he was agitated most of his life. So Mindy: Hmm, yeah. Crissy and Marie: I just felt like he was wanting to talk, but he couldn't. He his eyes were closed, but he definitely knew we were there. He was definitely f well aware. he could hear us everything. But we ended up leaving because we thought he was gonna have, you know, more time. And we left probably about 10 o'clock at night and he passed at about 4 15 in the morning. And Mindy: Yeah. Crissy and Marie: as much as I wanted to be there, I couldn't. He needed the ultimate, ultimate piece. Of nobody's energy, but the beautiful Mindy: Yeah. Crissy and Marie: hospice angel that was there. Nobody else's energy in the room. He just he he didn't. He needed to be by himself. Mindy: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It it happens all the time. And Crissy and Marie: Yeah. Mindy: I would I will just the other thing that I really like to repeat again and again and again is that our desires aren't always what needs to happen, which you're speaking so beautifully to. I in two thousand eighteen I hosted a symposium in Salt Lake City called Ever Presence. And it was an all-day eight-hour symposium where we flew people in from all over the country. We actually had a palliative care physician from Brazil come in and they all spoke about end of life and grief. And Roy Reimer was the guy from Zen Caregiving who came in, he spoke. and we had the second year we did it in 2019, we had The pediatric palliative care team from children's hospital here in Salt Lake City, two phenomenal physicians come in and speak about end of life with kids. Crissy and Marie: Yeah. Mindy: And that they spoke to exactly what you mentioned, Chrissy. They just said, you know, so often parents won't leave their kids' side at the end of life. They want to be there. And it's so common that that the minute that you know the parents will leave for just a minute to go to the bathroom or something and the the child will pass. And it's heartbreaking for the parents because they want Crissy and Marie: Yeah. Yep. Mm-hmm. Mindy: to be there. But a lot of times our living force energy, our life force energy can hold them here. You know, it can actually be a a draw for them to stay. And Crissy and Marie: Yeah. Mindy: you know, it's just that that's just part of it that's just not in our control. Crissy and Marie: Yeah, yeah. Mindy: But it's again, it just speaks to that just incredible intimacy, you know, there's so much intimacy there at the end of life because it's vulnerable on both sides. Crissy and Marie: Yeah. Mindy: It's so vulnerable for the per the people who are doing the caregiving and it's so vulnerable for the person who's dying and you know, it's an interesting it's just such multi layered experience, right? Crissy and Marie: Fascinated. Yeah. Yeah. Got tears in my eyes right now. I'm getting choked up. And I'm not Mindy: So multifaceted. Yeah, I'd love to tell you Crissy and Marie: gonna apologize. No, and I'm not I'm not gonna say sorry. I'm just gonna let these tears. Mindy: Yeah, your tears and that's the thing I I say in circles too is that your tears are holy and celebrated and so sacred. And just, you know, anytime you cry, and I actually call truth tears, anything that makes me cry and like a real, real heartfelt, tearful cry. I I know that that's my truth. In fact, that's how this whole journey started for me. I don't know if this book will be backwards for you. Can you see it? Crissy and Marie: aware awake at the bedside. Mindy: So it's called Awake at the Bedside. It's by a Koshan Paley Illison who started the Zen Center in New York City. He runs it now. But this book he talks about how he cared for his grandma Mimi at the end of her life. And I mean, it's just it's the sweetest story, but I could not stop crying. Like the whole time I'm reading every sentence, I'm just tears flowing. And that was the first this book was sent to me by a dear mentor of mine who knew me really well. I it had never even occurred to me that I would do end of life care, that I would do anything to do with death or grief, but just reading just that little bit, you know, of just his story and noticing that I couldn't I was just like, this is striking such a chord with me. And I will say it's really interesting because so many people, when I say that I'm a death toula, they say, I wanna do that. I feel so drawn to that. Like it happens multiple times a week if I say, I you know, I do end-of-life work or I'm a death dealer or whatever. People just kind of know, but then they kind of don't know what to do with it. You know, it's kind of like Crissy and Marie: Yeah, yeah. Mindy: I feel really yeah, I'd love to learn more about that. And so over the years I've tried to offer what I call an end-of-life doula intro. Workshop, which is just an all day long one day workshop where it just kind of goes through you know, what a death d doula does, what's involved in training, and then my recommendations for actual hands-on end of life work because it's actually hard to find. Yeah. Crissy and Marie: Where they go from there if they want to actually do a training. Yeah. Mindy: And it's hard for people to find death doulas too. That's the other part that's kind of crazy. So, We talked a little bit in the intro about my new organization called One Wish World, which has a marketplace for women who are makers, artists, and have any kind of service offerings. And so I will have a directory of Death Doolas on that site across the country so that it's just easier for people to find. It's hard to find. A lot of people don't have you ever even heard of Yeah. Crissy and Marie: Yeah. Nice. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Let's talk about that a little bit more. I wanna talk about that. Y your your with like the direction that you are going to put your offerings out into the world and create more community. Mindy: Yeah. Crissy and Marie: And then I also wanna I also have something else in mind I want talk about too. We'll go there after. Mindy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well that so One Wish World is a marketplace. It's multifaceted. It's a marketplace. It's in person gatherings. We are in the midst of a six month local Salt Lake City, Utah women's monthly gathering series. So we're on our fourth gathering and we just literally hold circles for women and you don't have to be you don't have to do anything. You don't have you just need to be, you know, identify as female. And come to our circle and we just meet each other. It's a mix and mingle. The marketplace does represent female founders who are putting work out into the world. And so that's our online presence. And then the gatherings are our in-person presence. And then we're starting a podcast too, just like you guys. So we'd love to love to have you on at some point. And then Crissy and Marie: Yay. Mm. Very cool. Yeah. Mindy: a directory. And it's a directory that will have services that are generally hard to find. and yeah, it's just needed. I'll tell you a really quick story and then I want to hear what you wanted to share, Chrissy. But it was I had something really remarkable happen recently, and that is that I there was this evening Yoga Nidra class that I had been wanting to go to for months, and I had never gone. And and finally it was the night. I was just like, I have to go. I I'm not gonna put it off anymore. I'm gonna go. And so I went. And there were only five other people in the class. And the the teacher really suggested that we all sit together and have a tea and kind of talk after class because she said you've just experienced something together. So don't rush out the door, you know, stay for a minute. I know it was so Crissy and Marie: Yeah, love that actually. Yeah. Yeah. Mindy: so sweet. And and again, very unlike me, because I would have rushed out the door. But I thought, no, that That actually sounds really lovely. I'm gonna have a cup of tea with these people that I just had this experience with, right? We just did this class together. So we sat down and the first woman that came over told me where she was from. And I I generally just don't say this to just anyone, but because she's from a town that's an hour away from where we were doing yoga, I said, I did an end-of-life workshop in that town last year. And she said, What do you mean? or an end of life doula workshop and she said, You're a death doula? And I said, Yeah. And she waited, and the other ladies came and sat down, and she said, She's a death doula. And they nobody said anything. They all just kept, you know. Come to find out, her husband had been diagnosed with ALS six months prior. Very, very aggressive form of ALS. Crissy and Marie: my goodness. Mindy: He had weeks to days left. Crissy and Marie: Mm. Mindy: And their family was in need of some support around the grief. And this happens so often where people show Crissy and Marie: Yeah. ALS is terrible. Mindy: up with different, you know, it can be there can be some conflict there, right? And it's difficult, especially for the caregiver who has to make the ultimate decisions when other people disagree. So I gave her my card. I kind of told her some basics about end of life. you know, care w one of which that you touched on a little bit, Murray, which is that after your person passes, there's no rush. Like you don't have to call the mortuary immediately. You get to be with this loved one, you know, after after they've passed, I just said take your sweet time. Spend as much time as you want to and and then let all the other stuff happen when you're ready. But Crissy and Marie: Mm-hmm. Mindy: it's not anybody else's schedule but yours. And so anyway, a few weeks went by. I had been out of town and I had I just came back that morning and that night I got a text from her and she said, Can you come tomorrow morning and do a sound bath for her family? Because it's it's the one thing that we all agree that we really want. And he this her husband who was right at the very end had never experienced a sound bath. And I use my sound bowls for everything that I do because they're so calming and they're just so they're just so lovely. So I said, I'll leave my house at 8 30 tomorrow morning. I'll be there at 9 30. And then I went, no, I'm gonna leave at 7 30, I'll be there at 8 30. And we all gathered and just like you said, Marie, the whole family was there. It was so beautiful. And we spent an hour doing a sound bath and I read a little bit to them from This other book that I love, The Wild Edge of Sorrow And at the very end, at 8:30, he took his last breath. And we were all there with him. And I mean, it was so I just I just feel so overwhelmingly grateful and honored to be able to be a part of something like that. It's just so Crissy and Marie: Powerful. Mindy: It's so incredibly what's the word? I just think it just shifts our whole perception on what we think is important and what we think is real. You know? We can't I can't Crissy and Marie: Hmm. Yeah. I mean just hearing that story, I'm just like bawling over here, you know, and not even being in the room, but just underst like just imagining. Mindy: Yes, yes. It was the most and and now I have this intimate connection with this family that I didn't even know before. But they allowed me the honor of being a part of this beautiful man as he took his last breath, right? It's just I I I immediately texted my kids and I was like, Whatever you think is important, this is what's important, you know. Crissy and Marie: Yeah. Well it's just interesting where how we decide to go to certain places or you know, we we Mindy: Yeah. Crissy and Marie: come across people people's paths, right? At the the right times Mindy: Mm. Crissy and Marie: sometimes. It's just it's it's not coincidence. There's no coincidence in life, you know, but it's just it's powerful. It's powerful. Mindy: I agree. Yeah, I agree. And it was it felt very aligned. Every aspect of it was just kind of perfectly aligned. And I felt like, you know, there it felt like there were a lot of unseen forces that were involved in that. But it also made me aware because this woman kept saying, I have heard of Death Doolus, but I had no idea where to find one, you know. Crissy and Marie: Yeah, yeah. Mindy: So it does feel like there's And there are great people out there doing really good work around grief. I don't know if you've watched Anderson Cooper's All There Is podcast. It's all about grief. it's super, super good. Highly recommend. Crissy and Marie: Kind of imperfect that we're coming back to this because that's actually what I wanted to talk about is you know, we talked about kind of the stigma behind grief and how just societally we don't typically want to show it. We understand Mindy: Yeah. Crissy and Marie: the importance of why we need to ri feel it and release it as it comes up. so let's come back for our listeners to what are some things that we can start to do daily. Mindy: Yeah. Crissy and Marie: That can give us the the permission, the tools to feel whatever is meant to be coming up if there is something to come up. What's Mindy: Yeah. Crissy and Marie: some of these things that we can put into practice? Mindy: Yeah, I love that so much. Thank you for bringing us back around there because they really are pretty simple, you know. Whenever I teach them, I always say these are simply profound. So they're gonna be really easy to underestimate. But the reality is that they like I like I was saying about this perspective shift, right? It's like that's what they do for us. It's like a perspective shift around our own relationship with. sometimes those hard feelings that we hold and grief is one of those. But I mean first and foremost, what I remind people of often, I'm sure I sound like a broken record and I'm sure it gets very repetitive, but it's just because it's so goes against most everything that we have been taught and kind of programmed to believe. But that is that when we are doing grief work, whether alone or in a circle, there is no right, no wrong No good, no bad. There's nothing here to fix. Even though grief can make us feel so broken, any kind of you know, quote unquote negative emotion can make us feel broken. And so we tend to kind of not want to see those, right? We tend to want to not only see the positive things, and so I like to just give absolute permission to just. gather information when we start to sit with ourselves, there's nothing here to fix. Nothing is broken. There's no right, wrong, good or bad. And so in an exercise that that I have learned to just we just named it over the years. I actually did this working with Ali, who runs all the programs for Image Reborn, is we call it a current state of being. And it's just a we if you have three minutes, you just take three minutes. If you have thirty seconds, you take thirty seconds. But it's just literally sitting still. You can set a timer if you want to. And we're just going within. And the easiest way for me, especially on days where I feel really resistant to stillness, which happens all the time. I get busy, I'm impatient. I don't want to do that. You know, I have things to do, but On those days, it's just it's just I follow my inhale in a really relaxed way and I follow that air into my lungs. And what that does is it connects me to my heart. And some days my heart's really open, and other days it's just closed up tight. And again, no right, wrong, good, or bad. We do what we need to do to Crissy and Marie: No labeling, right? Yeah. Mindy: get through the day. And so we're not here to change or fix a thing. And you know, our self-help culture. Has really programmed us against that. It's programmed us to believe that if I go within, I'm gonna find all this stuff that I need to focus on that needs to be fixed. That we are unprogramming that here. That's not what this is about. So we're taking three minutes or 30 seconds to check in on ourselves and we're just gathering information. Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. Yeah. Follow Crissy and Marie: Deep breath. Yeah. Let's do it. Mindy: your next inhale into that. beautiful inner world that belongs only to you. There is no one else on this planet that has the same internal world and internal makeup that you have. It is yours alone. And as we go within, we're just checking in. How you doing today, Chrissy? How you doing today, Marie? Mindy, how's the body? Crissy and Marie: Great beautiful garden. Mindy: Yeah. And then what I what I like to do is just encourage when you're there and you're in that space, if you can, try to come up with three words that describe or represent what you're finding as you're exploring there today. Again. Only information. So oftentimes I feel so today, in this moment. I feel a little bit jittery, kinda like the like you drink too much coffee, like I feel a little bit of that. But I also feel really grounded. And I feel a little bit my body feels hot. I'm just kind of overheating a little bit. So that's just an example. another thing would be, you know, my heart feels really heavy or broken or tender, or I'm really noticing that I have a lot of tears to move today. I feel really sad, you know. Crissy and Marie: Yeah. I feel I definitely feel my stomach is a little like my can feel my solar plexus just, you know, moving energy Mindy: Yeah. Crissy and Marie: around. I definitely feel the tears. I I can just they're gonna come and go the rest of the day. Mindy: Yeah. Crissy and Marie: because I'm giving them permission to and Mindy: Mm-hmm. Crissy and Marie: I'm not holding back, right? I'm just a lot and I do feel grounded too. And I think a lot of that's because of my teachings today too, you know. What do Mindy: Mm. Crissy and Marie: you feel, Maureen? I feel I'm sorry guys, but I feel roses in a garden. Beautiful. I love that. I don't know what Mindy: I love that. Do you smell them too? Do you smell a man see them? Crissy and Marie: I thought about a pink rose. But but I don't. We don't need we don't need to explain. We're just like I to go work in my garden now. There you go. Mindy: Yeah. What we don't need we don't need to know at all. Yeah. But I will say, because I'm a Reiki master as well. And rose, pink is the high vibrational color for the heart chakra. Yeah, and it and the rose represents heart energy. So you were real it sounds to me like you're really in your heart. There you go. Yes. A hundred percent. Crissy and Marie: Beautiful. I'm gonna go buy myself a pink rose. You should. You should. But I think there's there's some I love that. Whether you have three minutes or 30 seconds or one minute or whatever, you know, it's just that daily check-in. And it doesn't need to be, you know, if you could do it multiple times throughout the day, right? And when you're starting to feel disconnected, a moment to pause, put your feet Mindy: Yeah. Crissy and Marie: on the earth, whether it's inside or outside, close your eyes. hands on your heart like that and just start to do a little self-discovery. And I love how, you know, it's not good or bad and different, you know, it's literally you're just exploring, you're just observing. And we don't need to label, we don't need to justify. We don't need to explain what it is that we're feeling. That's what came up for you. That's what came up for me. That's Mindy: Yes. Crissy and Marie: what came up for you. And that's it. okay. Mindy: Yeah. Crissy and Marie: Isn't that interesting? Right? It is it's beautiful. Mindy: Yeah. Yeah. Crissy and Marie: I used to stop and breathe before I would go in the job I quit. I was very stressed out. So I would breathe Mindy: Uh-huh. Crissy and Marie: before I went in to just calm my nerves down. And it was, you know, very powerful. Yeah. I'm like, I'm not sure if this is gonna do anything, but it definitely does. And it really does. Mindy: Yeah, yeah. Breath is I mean, this is what I'm saying. Like these are so simple and I forget all the time, but I can't tell you how many times I've been in my car, I drive somewhere, and before I get out of my car, I'm just like, nope, I haven't checked in. I'm gonna take thirty seconds and just go within. And I'm sure I look crazy. I don't really care. You know, I'm in my car. I'm just Crissy and Marie: Exactly. Who cares? Mindy: Or else if there's a l even a patch of grass, I like to just stand on the grass with my bare feet and just it's just a check-in. And and some days, you know, I will say this, there are days when I don't get a thing. Like I'm so disconnected that way that nothing comes through. Or maybe it's not even that I'm disconnected. It's just a day where I'm not connecting to that information that's inside my body. And so if that comes up for people as well. That's totally okay. So many times Crissy and Marie: Yeah. Mindy: in circle people will say, I have no idea how I feel. You know, even after three minutes of sitting. Or they'll say, a lot of people, and I love this, and Marie, it's just what just happened to you. They'll get colors. They'll be like, I'm just, I am getting purple and green, and then they'll talk about how it's moving. And that also represents what's going on inside of us, you know, it's just developing a habit. Of going within and checking in on ourselves is a foreign concept. When are we ever taught how to do that? Unless we take a really good yoga class. Yeah. Crissy and Marie: In every one of my yoga classes. Well, not not when you're growing up though. No, no, but in in every one of my yoga classes, the beginning, Mindy: Yeah, as a kid? Are you kidding me? Yeah. Crissy and Marie: midway through, I have them pause and either they're standing Mindy: Yeah. Crissy and Marie: or sitting or juice. Just take a moment, check in. What's going on? What's different than when you walked in here? You know, Mindy: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Crissy and Marie: or if nothing's there, just ground yourself and just breathe and come back. Come back. Mindy: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I love that we I love that we're starting to find it in more spaces and I love that you offer that. The other thing that I do say to people is if you do check in and you don't get anything, keep doing it. Just Crissy and Marie: Yeah. Mindy: keep doing it. Because you'll learn, you'll learn how to just get into those nooks and crannies that you maybe you've never ever ever spent time with. And you'll figure out how to bring that information forward because it will feel more. Safe the more you do it. And you Crissy and Marie: Mm. Mindy: know, our grief and our pain tends to kind of go into those little nooks and crannies. It it likes to hide out unless we're having one of those live waves that we talked about where we're like, man, it's hitting me today. And I have my own grief hygiene around that, you know, where I'll just rent a super sad movie and I'll just give myself permission to cry for three straight hours. I'll have a big Kleenexes, Crissy and Marie: Yeah. That's great. Mindy: a big glass of wine, and I just Crissy and Marie: Ha ha ha. Mindy: Okay, and you know what? It actually works. It's really, really it's therapy, you know, and I I walk Crissy and Marie: Yeah, that's great. Mindy: away and I'm like, okay, I feel lighter. I have moved, I've physically moved my grief. Yes. Yeah. And there's Crissy and Marie: Yeah. Yeah. Or listen to like some sad songs. Yeah. Yeah. Mindy: a lot of somatic stuff out there now too around grief. and some Tai Chi movements that are really, really helpful. And yeah, so it it I feel like it is coming forward. You know, there are some Crissy and Marie: Yeah. Mindy: real lots of really beautiful work around grief right now. Great thing. Crissy and Marie: Yeah, yeah. And one thing that was beyond powerful when you did the grief circle with the retreat that we did a couple weeks ago, you had us journal what does Mindy: Mm. Crissy and Marie: grief want you to know? Mindy: Yeah. So it's what does Crissy and Marie: That was like Mindy: what does my grief want me to know today? And the reason Crissy and Marie: Yes. Thank you. Mindy: that's important is because it's mine. This is my grief. And it moves and changes every single day. So we could do that three times a day and we'd get a different answer, right? So it's what does my grief want me to know today? And the other thing that I love about that experience, it's a free war it's free writing. Right. So Crissy and Marie: Yeah. Mindy: it's again, it's just three minutes. And so I'll set the timer and you write the question and then we just do three minutes of writing. And then whoever wants to read that back, if I do this experience alone, I read it out loud to myself. Because the the words that come through are usually so wise. Like Crissy and Marie: Yeah. Mindy: so wise. Like we know the answers, right? We are so wise. We just have to learn how to tap into the wisdom that sometimes is just Yeah, it's behind our conscious mind. It's in our subconscious Crissy and Marie: The wisdom of the body and not the brain. Yeah. Mindy: and it's in our body. And so tapping into that in a subtle way, and again, it's really easy. That's a super simple question. What does my green want me to know today? Yeah. What came up for you with that? Yeah, yeah. Crissy and Marie: Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. It's easy, but it's not simple. Right gosh, you know what? Now I don't remember. I think I think I'll have to go back. I know I still have it. Mindy: Yeah, yeah. But you remember it as as an exercise that you would repeat. Yeah. Crissy and Marie: Yes. And I wanna say that my grief wanted me to know that it's okay to be vulnerable. I I I it was something I'll I'll have to go through, but I remember Mindy: Yeah. Crissy and Marie: that being so powerful. And I think that for all of our listeners, what a beautiful gift that this is for you to now take this, do the three minutes of checking in and just Mindy: Uh-huh. Crissy and Marie: drop in and just notice what's going on and then sit with yourself for a little bit. And ask yourself that question, write it down. What does my grief want me to know today? And then just Mindy: Yeah. Crissy and Marie: write and don't judge what comes up. Mindy: Yeah, no just no right, wrong, good or bad. Just information. We're releasing the the critic, right? We're letting go of any kind of critic because there's nothing here that we are that we even want to change. In that moment, we're not here to change a thing. We're just checking in and we're just gathering the the information. Yeah. Crissy and Marie: Yeah. And just being and meeting ourselves where we are, right? Then and there. And we are all perfectly imperfect. Mindy: Yeah. It's a yeah. Crissy and Marie: So just love on yourself every moment. Mindy: That's exactly the point. It's really getting to know ourselves intimately and get and learning to love ourselves wholly. Cause if Crissy and Marie: Yeah. Mindy: we don't love our grief and our our parts that we don't really want to look at wholly and fully, we won't be able to love ourselves fully. You know, so it's the the whole self love thing, it's missing that one piece, which is we have to just figure out how to get in there. And see what parts we're we're compartmentalizing, what part am I not looking at? What part am I ashamed of? Where's shame live in my body? You know? And giving ourselves permission to really embrace that part and pull it in close and sit with it, like we're sitting with a dear friend on a couch with a cup of tea. Yeah. It's good stuff. Crissy and Marie: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah. good, good stuff. This was beautiful, Mindy: Ha ha ha. Crissy and Marie: a well needed conversation. I mean, I know for myself and I'm sure for you and for our whole community, thank you, thank you, thank you for coming and just sharing your light with us. Wow, that was just such a beautiful conversation. Mindy: Thank you so much. It's my very favorite conversation. So thank you so much for having me and exploring this conversation together. It's an honor. Thanks. Crissy and Marie: Yeah, thank you. All right, guys, reach out to Mindy if you need any help in the grief department. she's amazing, as you all know now. So until we see you guys again, thank you so much. Bye. Mindy: Okay.