Information is free. Being held is not.
When my husband died, my daughters were six and eight. I had a lot of coaching training behind me. I knew what I would have said to a client. I knew what to do.
Knowing did not get me out of bed.
Some mornings I woke up in a fog of grief. More than once I pulled the car over to the side of the road because it felt so heavy.
I tried grief therapy. I tried a grief support group. Both gave me something. What I needed was different. I needed a coach who would hold me to account, meet me exactly where I was, and guide me forward. I wished for someone who had lived grief themselves.
The call with my coach gave me back the thread. What to honour that day. What to leave space for. The one next step. I had room to acknowledge what I was feeling, and I moved through it with intention, day by day. I made decisions with more clarity, and I showed up as the best parent I could be for my girls.
One sentence carried me through, and I heard it years earlier in my personal development work: learn to love life the way it was and the way it wasn't. I could not have done that alone. Being held is what made it possible.
I worked with that coach for close to a year, and I have worked with a coach ever since. Knowing how to work out and having a personal trainer are two different things. A trainer moves you forward in a way that knowing never does.
My coach wasn't grief-informed, though. That gap stayed with me. It sent me to study grief, grief coaching and grief recovery. I bring both to my work: the study and the living. Growing From Grief came out of that.
Information is free. A person who holds all of it with you is a different thing.
If you have the information and you are still carrying this alone, that is worth noticing.
Jennifer
Discover Your Path: a free 30-minute call, open to anyone who wants to talk it through.
