Restorative Grief with Mandy Capehart

"A loss of relationship, a death, living with chronic illness, or whatever it may be - these things are challenging to any sort of framework that promises certainty."

Becoming curious is a central tenant of Restorative Grief, but how often do we truly indulge our curiosity when it comes to allow our faith and beliefs to evolve? Listen as Derek Myers of Your Favorite Heretics shares his story of growth and perspective that allowed for true healing.

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"Healing, life, grief…it all happens in waves."

You’re not going to arrive and be healed, but you will emerge from each wave with a little more grace and a little more resilience than before.

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“Mortality is unavoidable, so how do we face it and bring dignity to the process?" Author, chaplain, and online educator J.S. Park returns to Restorative Grief with news of his wonderful new book, As Long As You Need: Permission to Grieve. Why do grievers need permission? Listen to find out. Hint: It's more helpful than you think.

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Is anticipatory grief good, bad, or some other secret third thing? Let's dig in and find a way to help us cope while we sort through the mess of waiting for loss.

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"Straight people's discomfort is not the same as a queer person's pain."

This week, our grief story is expanding into the world of queer advocacy and embracing the loss of community, relationships, security, and identity...all for the sake of transformation.

Mike Maeshiro is the founder of Numa, an organization that supports people recovering from religious toxicity. Whether you identify as queer or not, this conversation is a bold invitation into the role of advocate and grief supporter from a perspective you may not have considered before.

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Integration is just a fancy word for making things work together really nicely...kind of. Let's explore how integration can change life and grief for each of us and together as a whole.

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"There is a flow to strength worth exploring that can help us learn to heal."

Why muscle your way through loss when you can learn how to soften and heal instead? Aundi Kolber's work as an author and trauma therapist invites us into a space of compassion, tenderness, and attunement on our pathway into healing.

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Our grief strategy is not just about making ourselves feel better today, but believing we will feel better tomorrow. This week, let's allow ourselves to dream of a better future and teach our brains what hopeful things they can expect, too!

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"This has helped me in grief and has become my most spiritual practice."

Join author and pastor Courtney Ellis as she explains why the birds of the air (and the ground) are a symbol of hope and invitation into healing for our grief journeys. This is a faith-centered conversation and people of all walks will find something encouraging here.

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"Our anxiety does not come from thinking about the future, but wanting to control it." This week, we are unpacking the misunderstandings between control and clarity to see how it will help us learn to trust ourselves instead of searching for a future we can predict.

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"Talking about death helped me learn how to live."

Playfulness is a core value of healing, and if you don't believe me, I'm bringing backup to make the point! Jeff Harry is a brilliant public speaker who combines positive psychology and play to heal workplaces, help teams build psychological safety and assist individuals in addressing their biggest challenges by embracing a play-oriented approach to work.

As we grieve, we must find the gray space. This is a great place to begin.

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"When we need to reclaim our sense of power and control in the world, it doesn't take an iron fist."

The idea I have for you isn't going to be a reasonable idea for everyone, but if you're interested in it at all, test it out for a day or three and see how you feel. Everything is just an experiment, so if you hate it, set it aside or see how you might adapt it to be a better fit for your life.

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Dr. Kimber is a licensed clinical psychologist and author of the book "Still: Making a Whole When Parts Go Missing." In 2006, her son was stillborn at 33 weeks, changing the course of her life entirely.

She became a grief and trauma specialist and now, helps others get tools and learn how to carry their own grief and losses connected to trauma. Listen and learn how to navigate bypassing from others, as well as how to start building a container for your own healing from infertility, pregnancy loss, and child loss. This chat is for parents of any gender, too.

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"My identity had to be pending."

Kristof Morrow has a hell of a story to tell you. As a survivor of childhood abuse, he went on to become an EMT, a Navy veteran, and a journalist before settling into his new role as a self-published author all while navigating sobriety and learning to live with Tourette's. Faced with a bleak decision, Kristof allowed himself to go inward, ultimately bringing a more gentle expression of himself, his hope, and healing to the surface.

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Let's put a little hope into this final episode of 2023! Imagining and reimagining our sense of self with a lens of hope means we can begin to see a new future take shape. Here's a deep and meaningful tool (backed by neuroscience) to help you explore what hope can mean for you.

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“Anytime you’re thinking negatively, you are blocking your own healing without noticing what you truly need.”

If you could reimagine a healthier you, would you make the time to do it? Ann Hince experienced traumatic loss as a young adult and after years of emotional suppression, unlocked her story in a way that radically altered her path forward. Her brilliant work to release inner tension and grief through EFT Tapping, awareness, and somatic movement is exactly what we're here for.  Links + Resources for this episode:

Do you strive to keep it all together? Want to ditch that framework for something more helpful and healing? Good, me too.

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Lauren Leduc is a yoga teacher and intuitive mentor deeply invested in creating opportunities for others to grow and shine. Her work as a Certified Spiritual Life Coach and Dharma Coach revealed new pathways to wholeness for herself and her clients and this week, we are discussing how a little attention to your chakras can bring realignment as you grieve.

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You know you are not your thoughts, but did you know your thoughts are not always telling you the whole truth? This week, we're exploring ways to distance ourselves from the belief systems we carry in order to find our truest selves and understanding as we heal.

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Negativity bias doesn't appear out of thin air, but with a lot of intention, we can reassign the energy it generates toward a more positive approach to our futures. Here's a great skill to practice!

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"I'm not trying to shut down this grief in my life - I am accepting that it is a part of me." Nik Goodner is a content creator and creativity coach allowing his own story of loss to inspire himself daily to pursue the life he wants. After losing his father at a young age, Nik recognized that life is short, and he has one chance to flourish and encourage others to do the same.

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Being blindsided by grief is awful, but what if it's something you never expected you would care about losing? Let's learn how to swing with it.

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"Do not be afraid of bareness of flesh, of mind, of soul. But know that not everyone is deserving of the nude versions of you."

Deciding to unfold the deepest, hidden version of ourselves doesn't happen overnight - but it can feel like overnight, we're suddenly not who we once were. Arielle Estoria is a poet and speaker sharing her experience of awakening to a newer, freer version of herself - and navigating all the grief that comes with it. Her new book, The Unfolding, is an invitation into gentleness for anyone to exhale, unlock healing, and gain permission for our own unfolding for ourselves.

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We don't forget to heal, but sometimes we need to heal by forgetting. The science is clear enough - forgetting is a helpful skill in our circumstances around grief. Let's unpack how to do so with intention instead of packing things and pretending they're not real.

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"I’ve had to start putting all the pieces of me back together instead trying to silo these little bits apart as if one is more important than the rest.”

Kate Boyd is the author of An Untidy Faith (Herald Press, April 2013) and host of The Untidy Faith podcast. Amid her own grief in the pandemic, Kate recognized a need for someone to speak up on behalf the Messy Middle Christians looking to reimagine what faith, life, and community could look like after disentangling. Her story invites us to become more curious about what we are carrying and find a pathway toward wholeness if we too are navigating grief and faith change at the same time.

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How do you hold yourself knowing you're about to experience divorce? The same way we would face any other impending loss - by going internal. Let's talk it out.

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"What I have started experiencing is being able to communicate what my intentions, desires, expectations are in social settings. I now know that if I or the other people don't communicate, I cannot fill in those gaps with my own ideas or beliefs - it doesn't allow the relationship to last or flourish."

Cortland Coffey is one of the most intentional, compassionate, and curious humans I've ever had the pleasure of knowing and I am so excited to share his story about relational healing today! His personal journey to dismantle relational paradigms, permanence, and expectations has allowed him to learn more about himself and others. The grief around relational shifts is real - we disappoint others and sometimes ourselves, but ultimately, can rebuild back a better way of relating that is healthier and more sustainable for all.

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How many times have you heard about the five stages of grief and been overwhelmed? This week we're chatting about all those grief theories and how to sort the helpful from the noise.

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"Life is just one part of this - and death is the other side of the coin - but that doesn't mean we need to be afraid of what we don't yet understand."

Caili Danieu is a death doula and intuitive life coach working to dismantle the anxiety and fear we carry around death and dying. Her personal experience with death is as personal as it gets, radically transforming her approach to life itself as well as the way we grieve. I can't wait for you to hear her story.

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This week, we're dismantling black & white thinking binaries that keep us limited in our integration and growth. The idea of clarity is deceptive when we marry it with control, but if we can invite the both/and of reality into our healing process, we will find ourselves flourishing when we least expect it.

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"Once you bring yourself to that vulnerable place - that baseline emotionality - there is a real temptation to retreat."

Author Benjamin Perry wants us to know our tears matter for so many reasons, we're losing count. After nearly 12 years of not crying, Benjamin decided to experiment with his own baseline emotionality and pursue a tearful project of crying at least once a day for a year. The outcome expanded his inner world and outer connections in healthy ways he never anticipated.

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Pet loss is a legitimate reason to grieve, and yet so many times we disqualify ourselves from the loss of our little companions out of shame, comparison, or any number of self-criticisms. Let's chat this week about how to move through the loss of a pet with as much kindness as anything else we may grieve.

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"Play is crucial - without it, we just become hurting adults who've forgotten what matters."

You do not need to be a parent for this week's episode to inspire you in your grief work, but if you are, you're in for a little extra support. My guest this week is Lee Caterson and while his own grief work is foundational in his role as a parent and paramedic, his appreciation for Bluey and the life lessons imparted make this one grief story you'll want to hear.

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What could be possible if you believed in your own healing?

This week, we are visiting a very common roadblock to finding alignment in our grief journey and how suffering can cause us to stumble. We're not talking about minimizing or using toxic positivity, but instead about addressing some beliefs that deserve a little challenging.

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The best advice I can offer is that if it matters, then let it matter. This week, we're going to briefly explore how to do just that when the world around you would prefer your full attention.

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"Know thyself." One of the most powerful tools we carry in our grief work is our ability to know ourselves well. But as we grieve, we may wrestle with our sense of self. This week, we're going to introduce a self-assessment tool that will allow you to gain a little more sight on where you are so you can make an intentional plan for where you're heading.

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Hi friends! This week, you're getting a to-the-point question of what you can do to begin your grief journey and growth work on your own.

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"It was a season of leaning into the edges of my life to finally what lies in the center."

Even with the path well-formed at his feet, West Point grad and former NFL linebacker Caleb Campbell traded his cleats for a broom to discover what life could offer if he learned to belong to himself. Our conversation today is full of self-compassion, curiosity, and the courage to trust in the unknown for the sake of what kind of peace exists in the center of ourselves.

CW - a few little swears. It's okay, I promise. 😘

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Resiliency and hope are often complicated topics with grievers, but through her work as a thought leader of resilience psychology, Dr. Lucy Hone uncovered just how accessible both can be in the face of loss. After losing her 12-year-old daughter in a horrific motor accident, Lucy applied her research as an adjunct senior fellow at the University of Canterbury to begin helping people (including herself) cope with disruption, change, uncertainty and loss. Her work is regularly featured in global media and today, we are honored to share her heart and story with you. 

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When does grief get easier? Will it ever get easier? Is easier even the right way to phrase my question? It's a great question, but the answer depends on you.

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Even when we think we're grieving well, we may not feel so good about things - especially if we've left feeling completely out of the picture. Becky McCoy is a spiritual director, coach, and professional griever who finally noticed she deserved the front row in her own grief story. Listen as she walks us through her own wild experiences to the ultimate conclusion that she deserves to be the main character, too.

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