Unravel With Stephenie Zamora - Content Warning

Hi there,

GriefGrower,

And thank you so much for listening to this episode of Coming Back on Insight Timer.

Just a heads up that this episode does feature conversation on the suicide of a loved one and living life after a loved one dies by suicide.

Oh my goodness,

GriefGrowers,

I am delighted to be sitting down with my friend,

Mentor,

Guide,

Fellow Grief author,

Stephanie Zamora,

Because her work was some of the very first work that I found after my mom died,

And it was the only work for months and months and months that stuck.

And then less than a year after I found Stephanie and her work,

She experienced a massive loss of her own.

And then all of her work,

Which already resonated with me,

Started to take this dark and twisty tilt,

And I was like,

Oh,

We're really talking about grief now.

And it continues to inspire me.

I don't follow a lot of people on social media,

But I purposely follow Stephanie because I continue to just resonate with her work in the world.

And the reason we're talking today is that she has a new book out called Unravel.

And I was so honored to be given a preview copy of this,

And I think this is the first time my name is on the cover as an endorsement for someone else's book,

And so I'm like minor celebrity here and having a moment.

But Stephanie,

Welcome to the show,

And I am just so excited to celebrate the story of Unravel with you.

Thank you.

I'm so excited to be here,

And thank you for being willing to provide a quote for the cover.

I just,

Our work is so similar,

And I respect and value you so much,

So I so appreciate that.

Yes.

So tell people who have no idea what we're talking about what Unravel is and why it exists in the world.

Yeah,

So Unravel is the story of the last five years of my life,

And it all started in 2014 when I felt like I was pretty on top of the world.

And was seeing some success and getting more clarity in my business and my work and who I wanted to be in the world.

And had ended a two-year relationship with someone who I loved dearly but just felt wasn't right for me.

And he ended up taking his own life a couple of weeks later,

And it just absolutely flattened me.

In an instant,

In a single moment,

My entire life was turned upside down and inside out.

And my business died a slow death in the aftermath of that.

I had pretty bad PTSD.

I wasn't able to really track things or remember what I had done the day before,

Let alone tell you my whole life story in an order that made sense.

And was just really struggling in the aftermath of that loss and had no idea that I had PTSD.

Had no idea what I was doing swimming around in grief.

And ended up in a really toxic and traumatic and abusive relationship because of the PTSD,

Which all of that led to health issues,

Pretty serious health issues.

And it's really the story of what it took for me to rise up and come back from that season of my life.

And I wrote it the way that I did and I shared the stories and the moments that I did because I wanted to show people that it's not always pretty and inspiring.

And sometimes it gets worse before it gets better.

I think it's really easy for us to feel alone and crazy inside these experiences that come from grief and trauma.

And to not know that it's this process of reorienting to ourselves and our own lives and work and relationships.

And so I wanted to share all of those really challenging moments and what it really took for me to recognize that it was up to me to come back.

But not to the life that I had before.

I had to really learn who I was becoming in the aftermath of my loss and the trauma and who I wanted to be and what the purpose of the path I was walking was so that I could really step into what came next.

That's a really beautiful description and I'm latching on to this idea of I wrote it the way I did because XYZ.

Because as soon as I got through the first like five or six chapters or so,

I was like,

Oh,

This is not organized.

In the sense that this is not going to be linear.

And so I recognized coming in,

I was like,

Oh,

I'm going to keep going on a journey where I think I'm going forward and then I'm going to go back and ruminate on something else or see something else in the picture that I didn't see before.

And then I have to talk about it again and process it again.

And at first,

Reading a lot of the grief literature I do read that is very linear because when people are five,

Six,

Seven,

Eight,

Nine,

Ten years,

Twenty years away from it,

They can look back and be like,

Oh,

I can see how I got from A to Z.

But in the midst of it and in your book,

I'm like,

Oh,

This is what grief really looks like.

And so it was a reminder of how often we ruminate or need to revisit things or need to frame things in a different light than we did before in order to like literally survive.

I'm wondering if we can dive into the topic of PTSD as it pertains to grief.

Because I think a lot of people feel like PTSD is only applicable to those in the military,

To those who've been through some kind of natural disaster.

But I feel like,

And I've seen this with clients that I've worked with,

That grief in and of itself or major loss,

Sudden traumatic,

Especially loss to suicide,

Which is the case in your story,

Can result in a massive amount of PTSD.

Yes.

Yes.

And it's so important.

I didn't know that either.

It never occurred to me that I had PTSD.

I knew it had been a traumatic loss.

I described it that way,

But I never I didn't know that's why my brain wasn't working and my brain deteriorated so much and so rapidly over about seven to eight months after my loss.

And I have since learned that that is very common for sudden bereavement because it shows us how unstable and insecure life actually is.

We don't know what's going to happen to us or to the people that we love.

And for me,

There was a lot I didn't know about this man that I had loved and had in my life for two years that really led up to the build up to his death.

And so it caused me to really question myself,

What I thought I knew to be true about the world,

What I thought I knew to be true about him,

Whether or not I was actually safe with people.

You know,

There was a lot of things he said to me,

Like,

I would never hurt you.

I'll always be here.

Things he said to me that turned out to not be true that just really caused me to recognize how we don't know things as well as we believe that we do.

And we don't always know people and we don't always know what's what they're holding close to their heart.

And so it was really this experience of everything.

I thought I understood everything known and familiar being ripped away from me in a single moment.

And also the intensity of the grief itself.

It just shook my world.

And so it's really,

Really important to understand that trauma is not just limited to veterans of war,

People who have been through horrific,

Big,

Horrific experiences like bombings or mass shootings.

And we tend to think that that is the only time that we can have PTSD.

But it's actually very common for sudden bereavement and even developmental trauma.

Like there's,

I think some people call them the big T's and the little T's.

But to me,

Trauma is trauma.

Even things that you don't think would cause trauma,

You can have a perfectly great childhood or great relationship and still get traumatized from it.

And so trauma is something I've had to learn a lot about.

And PTSD and grief together are very,

Very common.

And so things like memory loss,

Things like panic attacks and anxiety,

Like all of these symptoms that we can have in the aftermath.

Some of it is inherent to grief itself,

But a lot of times it can be from PTSD and trauma.

I'm going to shift directions entirely to the category of shitty things that people say.

Yes,

Grief growers,

We're going here today.

Because one of the first things I recognized in your book was like,

Oh,

She broke up with this guy.

They were no longer dating.

And then he took his life.

And then in the aftermath of his loss,

There were people surrounding him or in his life,

Like his best friends and things like that,

That he blamed responsibility.

What did you say to him onto you as kind of the last person who interacted with him in a romantic sense while he was here on the earth?

And so there's like the one shitty thing that people say of like,

Oh,

It was just an X.

He was toxic for you.

Why are you grieving him?

And then there's the other side of you're responsible for his death.

We're blaming you.

The fingers are pointing in this direction.

And so I'm wondering like how you balanced both of those,

I mean,

Similar but wildly different shitty things that people robbed at you in the aftermath of this death.

You know,

It was very hard.

I felt a lot of guilt and I blamed myself.

So it was almost as if I wasn't surprised when I found out that certain people in his life,

Like his best friend and mentor had at first blamed me because he had been feeding them information that wasn't accurate,

That wasn't true.

Had been,

You know,

Really trying to create separation between all of us.

And so it was horrifying to actually hear it,

But it also kind of aligned with how I was feeling anyways.

And it was hard.

I mean,

I went to his funeral and it was such a confusing experience to be there as the ex-girlfriend.

There were some photos of us that were up because I had been in his life for the last couple of years.

And it was just,

I don't know how to answer that other than to say it was wildly confusing and fragmenting.

And I think that added to a lot of my trauma and fed my own blame,

My own guilt and shame,

Even though very quickly I became very close with his best friend and his parents and some of his family.

But it just.

The duality of these experiences,

I think is is the important point to make here is that we can hold so much more than we believe we're able to.

And it took me a long time to really find my footing in.

It's not my fault and I'm not to blame and to own the fact that I loved and cared for this person.

No,

He was no longer right for me,

But he was still somebody that had been in my life for a really big chunk of time and who I was glad to know existed in the world.

Like there was good and bad to our relationship.

There was good and bad to him as a person.

And one of the one of the most awful things that was said to me after he passed was said by the boyfriend,

The person I ended up getting into a relationship with after him.

He would say these really insensitive things about his death and the way that he died.

And it's like people didn't really recognize that even though I had chosen to leave the relationship,

I may never have seen him again.

I still cared whether or not he was alive or dead.

I still felt a lot of the burden of his death and everything that had happened.

And he was still somebody who had been a really huge part of my life for those two years.

So I think it's such a difficult thing to balance and to really explain and speak to.

But it took a lot of processing on my end and really working with the different parts of myself because I had become very fragmented from his death,

From the trauma,

From the relationship that I was in afterwards.

But being able to hold everything and hear everyone else's opinions and what they thought and tap into my own truth and really own it for myself.

I don't know if that clearly answers your question because I think it's such a sticky topic.

And I don't know that it necessarily has a clear answer per se,

But I'm glad that you're speaking on it.

And I'm glad that your book Unravel speaks to it because we had this conversation on coming back,

I mean way back in season two or three,

When a woman named Sunny Joy McMillan came on and she talked about her divorce from a toxic ex-husband.

And one of her big worries and fears was,

Am I allowed to grieve somebody who ultimately was really,

Really bad for me?

And she decided for herself that the answer was yes because,

Again,

Kind of like you said,

He played such a significant role and he was around in her life for so long.

And they kind of,

In their own twisty,

Dark ways,

Which I,

You know,

You and I talk and laugh about the fact that a lot of the work that you do is dark and twisty.

They kind of taught each other things,

But things that were dark and things that were twisty,

Maybe things you wouldn't willingly sign up for.

And so she's like,

Yeah,

I have a right to grieve the fact that,

You know,

Our sharing of information,

However toxic that was,

Has now ended.

And I agree with that because I think we do have a right to grieve people who ultimately are not right for us right now or may not ever be right for us again in the future.

And we also have a right to grieve people who aren't,

You know,

Our current spouse,

Our current family,

Our current,

You know,

Relatives,

Like immediacy.

People think there's like,

If it's not your immediate family,

You really don't have a right to be grieving them.

And I'm like,

Oh,

That's total BS.

So I kind of,

It's a hard question for me to throw out there.

So I'm glad that you kind of went where you went with it because I think a lot of people wrestle with this and they're just like really riled up internally because again,

I love how you say this fragmented me on so many levels.

It's like,

Who am I if I'm grieving a toxic person who I don't know that I'm allowed to grieve and people are blaming me for their death.

And it's a lot of,

I mean,

Multi-layered.

I get this image of like baklava.

I'm like,

How many layers are we putting into this thing?

Because it's,

It's absolutely huge.

And I just want to speak a little more to the fragmenting really quick is that that's really common when we're not able to hold both things at the same time.

Like that idea of he was a good person who are,

He's someone I'm grieving.

I'm grieving the loss.

I'm grieving what I thought we might be.

I'm grieving all of these things.

And I never want to see this person again.

I certainly experienced that with the boyfriend that I had after Brett who passed away.

And it's until we can learn to hold both that we're allowed to feel both and both can coexist and one doesn't necessarily negate the other.

It causes that fragmentation,

Which can be so confusing.

Yes,

And that's exactly where I want to go next is your relationship with Roger,

Who is the next person that you dated after after Brett died.

And I'm so intensely curious because you have these pieces in your book about,

You know,

Needing to kind of shove people away in grief or make your own way or make your own rules.

And if this is how you need to grieve,

This is how you need to grieve.

And it's a very,

You're allowed to take up space.

You're allowed to change your life.

You're allowed to move forward with this.

And then simultaneously,

You also told the story of being in a relationship with a person who really shrank who you were and diminished your voice to a point where the most moving chapter in the book for me is a part where you literally could not swallow somatically in your body and had to go to the hospital because of it.

And that was kind of all the Rolling Stone accumulation of the energy of this relationship,

Plus the grief you're going through.

And so I'm wondering,

Again,

This is another question of how do you balance both together,

This extreme be who you are,

Grieve how you want,

And then simultaneously I'm in a relationship with somebody who really silences my voice and makes me feel like crap.

Yeah,

I think that is such a great,

Challenging question.

Because,

Again,

There is a fragmenting piece and something I think is important to understand about me and my story is relationships,

Romantic relationships are not my zone of genius.

It is something that I have been working on and working through and I really do know that there is a book on relationships and healing from relationship trauma in me.

I'm living out the ending to that right now.

So I think that's important to note that that is not an area of my life where I feel like I have and have had historically the most skills.

So I am a boss when it comes to my business.

There are other areas of my life that I can really,

I have really developed skills and certain ways of being,

But relationships are something that is not one of them and certainly was not at the time.

And it's important to remember,

Too,

That I went into the relationship because I had PTSD.

So and I tried to paint this picture in the book.

I did not know what was going on more often than not,

And my heart was wide open.

There is a term in post-traumatic growth work that I love called energy boundary rupture,

Which is basically when the trauma is so intense that it ruptures the boundaries between realms,

Consciousness,

Whatever you want to call it.

And my heart was so wide open that I loved Roger on a level that I had never felt or experienced before.

So it was like my heart loved his heart and my soul loved his soul,

None of which was relevant to whether or not we are compatible or worked in this life at that time.

And so I went into the relationship already confused and not functioning.

And one of his dark and twisty gifts,

I would say,

Is he was masterful at the art of confusion and overwhelm.

And so as I started coming back online in terms of the PTSD with my brain and I started making these decisions in all of these areas of my life,

The relationship itself was a container that I was still just tremendously confused inside.

I didn't know what was going on,

Was so fragmented at that point that I couldn't hold anything at the same time.

So,

You know,

He would do some really terribly abusive,

Awful things to me,

And I would not be able to hold them alongside the fact that he would also do things like he gave me a car at one point.

Granted,

It wasn't a brand new car.

It was a car that had been his roommate,

But I needed a car at the time.

He found me a car.

He gave me a car.

And so it was like I couldn't hold the fact that he would do these big,

Grand things that to most people seemed like,

Wow,

That's really cool that he did that alongside the fact that there were these really awful things happening.

And so I think the way that society really approaches things is we only look at what makes sense and we only look at what's good and we kind of use that to negate everything else.

So it didn't make sense to even me,

Let alone people outside of me,

Because I couldn't communicate it because I was so confused that good things were happening.

But ultimately,

It was a very bad and unhealthy situation.

And so what I was doing was coming back online and really starting to take a stand for myself and have a voice.

But I was only able to do it in those external spaces piece by piece because at home I had no idea what was going on.

And even if I had managed to start to take a stand for myself,

I would so quickly and easily be overwhelmed and confused out of it that I really didn't know what was going on.

And so I think that's an important thing to point out is,

Again,

That fragmenting happens when we don't know how to hold two things at once.

And when you have somebody else in the picture,

Whether it's a partner,

Whether it's family,

Whether it's just society and all the crap that we throw down each other's throats,

All the polished positivity and good vibes only.

And there can only be good and not evil at the same time.

I didn't know how to make sense of my experience.

And it took my body shutting down the way that it did for me to be like,

This is not OK.

I am not OK.

And I really fought with being able to communicate to the people around me what was actually going on,

Because all they could see was the good stuff that was happening,

Which I had expressed to them that had happened.

Because they were things that had happened.

And it's like they couldn't hold it either that there was good and bad.

And I call it the magic and the madness.

And that's actually going to be the name of the relationship book.

There was so much magic and there was so much madness and all people could really hold on to or make sense of was the magic.

Well,

If there's this good thing,

You know,

The bad can't really be that bad.

So I really feel like being able to build that muscle of having a voice and taking up space and doing what I needed to do for me.

So the whole honey badgering,

It started externally and eventually seeped into the relationship when it was finally like my body was just like,

We cannot be in this anymore.

This is not healthy.

I couldn't swallow anything,

Not even my own saliva for nine days.

And so that was really a wake up call as to things have to change.

And it was the beginning of the healing and the being able to bring those fragmented parts back together.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I and I often see that the transformation is kind of opposite with grievers where they start to change things internally and kind of experiment with stuff in the safety of their home.

And then they take it out into the world.

And so it was so fascinating to me that you were like,

I'm going to do all this stuff in the world first and then see if I can bring it home with me.

And I and I just think that's a an interesting mutation of your character.

I don't think it's anything bad,

Negative or different,

But I'm sure there's grievers out there who are nodding their heads of like,

Yeah,

I could show up at work and I could show up in public spaces and friends and stuff.

And then I went home and I still felt not myself broken under somebody else's control,

Massively grieving in a crippling way.

And so I love that you phrased it that way.

And also thank you for sharing the title of your next book,

Because that's super exciting.

And just also highlights again,

Again,

Again,

This divine dichotomy that exists within relationships.

And I think something,

Too,

That I don't know if Unravel touched on,

But you certainly do in your work,

Is the insistence that the people around us are always looking for the good things,

Especially after we've experienced loss.

Like they want evidence that we're doing well.

And so anything that says we're not,

They're like,

Oh,

That's not important.

At least you have X,

Y,

Z going for you.

Right.

And I noticed that especially after after loss happens.

And it's more about reassuring them that we're going to be OK,

As opposed to telling the truth of what's going on.

It's a little sinister.

Yeah,

You know,

And it's it's really hard to be on the receiving side of that.

I know I've experienced that in a lot of ways.

I'm sure that you did.

I know everybody does to different degrees of this need to be fine and good so that everyone else could feel fine and good.

And ultimately,

That did lead that did contribute to the swallowing issue for me and all of the other things that I needed to do,

Like the honey badgering of.

I just I couldn't I couldn't take care of anyone else anymore.

There was too great a cost to me.

And people just really aren't ready to face their own stuff.

I feel like is at the root of that a lot.

Some of that is it comes from a loving place.

I want you to be OK because I love you.

And it would make me feel better if if you would show me that you're OK and you would stop crying and you would stop doing all the weird things that you're doing.

And you could maybe remember things a little bit better.

That would make me feel a lot better about where you're at.

And ultimately,

People either come around or they don't.

A lot of people fell away from my journey,

From my life.

Just because I couldn't be who they wanted me to be anymore.

I couldn't take care of them anymore.

And some relationships fell apart because of that,

Because I had to put myself first and eventually came back together as I was able to understand what I was even doing.

One of my best friends and I went through that.

I just couldn't be who I was before and I couldn't take care of her experience around that.

And so we had a little bit of a falling out.

But it just I think that's really common.

Unfortunately,

We're not taught how to be with other people's pain.

Right.

Right.

Right.

And yeah,

I'm not taught how to be here,

So I'm just going to look for the good stuff and hope that that's enough of a friend support to get by.

Yeah.

I'm wondering,

You've mentioned it twice now,

So I wonder if you can tell people what honey badgering is.

Because when I got to this,

I saw this chapter in the table of contents for the book and I was like,

I think I know what this is.

And then when we got to the chapter,

I was like,

I definitely know what this is.

So Google honey badger with narration by Randall and it's hilarious or swearing.

So if that bothers you,

I guess you wouldn't be listening to Shelby anyways.

But basically,

The honey badger is it's in the Guinness Guinness Book of World Records for like the most badass of the animals.

It's in the Weasel family.

But and they show the honey badger doing all these things like basically.

And you'll see the memes.

Honey badger just don't give a shit.

And for me,

Honey badgering was a phase that I had to drop into.

And I labeled it kind of after the fact and going through the maybe the second half of it.

And I still have it to a degree,

But it was just I could not give a shit anymore.

My life and health depended on it.

This was after the swallowing where it was like any time that I didn't honor my truth,

That I didn't speak up for myself,

That I didn't even do things like leave in the middle of dinner because I did not want to be at a restaurant or movie or grocery store.

Anymore.

My throat would start to close up.

I was experiencing really severe lower back and hip pain.

So all the ways that my body would respond to me not honoring my truth and my needs had become so severe and strong that it just wasn't an option for me anymore.

And I say with the honey badgering phase,

It's not about not caring.

I cared a lot.

I felt bad about abandoning people in Costco or leaving in the middle of dinner or not doing what I said I would do.

It didn't feel good.

It wasn't like,

Yeah,

I'm just going to screw everyone over.

It was out of necessity that I had to put myself in my needs first.

And it was not a skill I had cultivated very well before grief and trauma,

But ultimately had to for my own health and well-being.

And so I actually prescribe the honey badger phase to my clients sometimes when it's a matter of getting getting honest with yourself about what it is that you want or need in this moment.

And having the hard conversations exactly when you need to have them.

So you don't wait for the most convenient time if you can.

Great.

But if it's a matter of it's costing you physically or emotionally or it's damaging to you in some way,

You get to come first in ways that I don't think a lot of people have learned for themselves.

So having the hard conversations,

The moment that I needed to have them not doing anything I didn't want to do,

Speaking up,

I became really blunt.

And for me,

It felt really abrasive.

And I felt I definitely felt like an asshole because that wasn't my normal M.

O.

I had been more of a people pleaser,

Though I wouldn't have labeled myself that way for most of my life.

So it feels very abrasive to swing to the other end of the spectrum.

But I think when you're grieving and you're in the middle of this process of trying to reorient your own life and everything about it and figuring out who you are in the aftermath,

It becomes really necessary at certain points.

Otherwise,

You get trapped in the same old loop,

In the same old groove,

In the same old ways of being and the roles that you play.

And you can't ever really get out of that.

What Christina Rasmussen calls the waiting room.

So you kind of get stuck in the middle and the in-between.

You can't really be who you were before,

But you can't step into what comes next.

And part of stepping forward into what comes next is that honey badgering of I do what I want when I want and need to do it with no apologies.

So we're not inconsiderate of people.

We try to be as caring and considerate as possible,

But we still do what it is that we want and need when we want and need it.

Yeah.

And I when I read this section in your book,

I actually went to YouTube and watched the video again.

I've seen it before,

But I was like,

I have to go watch this again because I know it's going to make me laugh.

And just,

Yeah,

This emphasis on I'm not going to be an asshole about it,

But simultaneously I'm going to stop being a doormat about it.

Right.

I think is such a delicate dance and a delicate balance in the aftermath of losses.

Like how do I speak up for what I want and need without feeling like I'm mowing everybody over?

And I think something I talk about with I love that you share this with your clients,

Because something I talk about with mine is that we generally see setting boundaries as something that's so severe or people are going to be so hurt or feel betrayed or feel taken advantage of,

Or feel like you don't want to be their friend anymore or whatever the case is.

And I'm like,

Most of the time people don't notice when you set boundaries for yourself,

They don't notice if you leave the party half an hour earlier than you normally do.

They don't notice if you're not drinking anymore.

They don't notice if,

I don't know,

If you're like,

No,

I just can't bring myself to come to the park with you today or go grocery shopping with you today.

They don't take as deep a fence at it as we think we will,

Think they will.

And so the reaction,

At least in most of my experience,

Is a little bit softer than what my fears have been.

There are cases where people are like,

Wow,

That feels like an insult and that's really big.

And then in that moment,

You know,

You're like,

Okay,

You're not a person that I can grieve with in this moment.

And it sucks that they've filtered themselves out that way.

Exactly.

And simultaneously,

I'm like,

God,

I don't have to spend any more energy on you.

So it is kind of like a F you honey badger don't care.

Mentality about the whole thing is like,

All right,

I just can't give a shit right now.

Maybe I'll give a shit in six months,

A year,

Approach you again,

See where you are in your life.

But for now,

This is this is where I am.

I'm going to switch gears again,

Because Unravel covers literally so much about your life in the aftermath of loss,

Including your work.

And this is kind of like the main through line where I got exposed to you is as a mentor coach.

I actually built my first business by taking one of your coaching programs online.

And then that business ended or never really got off the ground.

And then my grief work started immediately after that.

And so I kind of thank you and do a little ode to you as the founder of planting this idea in my head that it was even a possibility.

But I remember when when you took everything down on your site and your work and you sent out this email of like,

I'm taking all these things down and starting from scratch,

I'm introducing all of these new things.

And and it felt it felt drastic as somebody being on the other side of it,

But also as somebody who literally just lost her mother a year before your big loss.

I was like,

I can see why you did that.

I see where you're coming from there.

And so I was kind of jazzed for you.

I was like,

Yes,

Take it down,

Burn it down.

In the sense that I'm like something else,

Something deeper,

Something richer,

Something more dark and twisty,

Inclusive is coming.

So can you talk about grief's effect on your work,

But also your relationship to your work?

Because I think your work is like kind of the static exterior thing.

But then we maintain these living relationships with the things we create,

Especially as entrepreneurs.

Yeah,

Absolutely.

I think that's a great question.

I really struggled almost immediately with my work.

So I write like I breathe.

I have to write all the time.

And I had been writing a daily awesome life tip every day for three years straight and all of a sudden couldn't write them anymore.

I think I tried to write the week's worth after he died and it just it wasn't happening.

I struggled really hard to write blog posts and put things out there.

And the way that I wanted to write and express myself had changed so dramatically that it wasn't until I really uncovered that I wanted had this urge to tell stories.

I didn't know that I was writing the unraveled book when I first started.

I didn't I wrote a lot of things that didn't feel like they had a place.

I didn't know where to put them,

But I still would put them on the blog or share them in social media.

And it had changed so much that I had a long time coaching client and somebody who had been following me,

Who emailed me one day and asked,

I think she said,

You don't have to answer this.

You don't want to.

But did you hire a ghostwriter because your words sound like you,

But they're very different.

And it was just like,

Welcome to the transition.

My voice went through a big change.

What I wanted to share really changed.

But what really happened was I didn't know how to be inside my own body of work anymore.

I had spent so long building up this business.

I had programs,

I had websites,

I had all of these things.

And as you've reflected to me,

My work was still and still is to this day similar to what I did before my loss.

But it had deepened in a way that I didn't understand yet.

I was starting to express some of that in what I was writing.

But when it came to everything I had built,

I didn't know how to relate to it anymore.

I tried to repackage and rebrand and relaunch things.

And that didn't go anywhere.

Like I couldn't put my heart and energy behind it.

The content was still great,

But it's like I would go to launch it.

I would send out one email and then I'd be like,

Eh,

Doesn't feel right.

And I wouldn't really promote things.

And I knew that something else was meant to come.

I knew there was some way I needed to reposition and reorient to my work.

But I couldn't seem to do it because I was surrounded by everything that the me before had created.

And so it came down to this one moment where it was just like,

I have to tear it all down.

And my mentor at the time nearly fell out of his chair.

A lot of people were just like,

That was not a good move strategically.

And it wasn't.

But it was what I had to do in order to become clear in what was next.

And so I did.

I pulled everything down and I wrote this in the book that if it had been easy enough,

I would have put it all on a hard drive and given it to a friend like I would have wiped it from the Internet.

But thankfully now I can say thankfully it wasn't that easy.

So I just pulled everything down,

Redirect things,

Put up a simple splash page and just kind of hung out in the unknown.

There was a couple of weeks after I did that that I felt really depressed because I didn't realize how much of my identity had become wrapped up in who I was and what I was building.

And with it no longer there,

I just kind of floated very aimlessly and waited patiently.

I think it was a few months before Call of the Void really dropped in.

And so that's the first site that I brought back online or I guess launched for the first time,

Called the void that TV,

Which is all about using the hero's journey as a tool to rise up and come back.

Where I was writing about things like grief and trauma and healing and what it takes to step into what comes next.

And we orient your own life and work in relationships.

All these things that I had been really going through,

Launched my journey mapping program there.

Realized that I was really ready to start writing the Unravel book,

But I couldn't have done that until I pulled everything down.

Like I couldn't seem I didn't have the space to feel into what felt right for me to envision something completely different to actually write the words for a different site.

It's like every time I tried,

It would get sucked back in by everything I had built before and the deep grooves that had been laid.

And so everything has come back online since then and has been reorganized and repositioned and fits into my new vision.

But I think it's really important to note you don't have to burn everything to the ground,

But sometimes that's the only way you can really connect with what wants to come forward.

What wants to be born from everything you're feeling.

And even if you have a job,

If you if you have a career or you're in corporate,

You might need to step back for a little while to feel into.

Is this who I am anymore?

Is this how I want to express my creativity or my purpose?

Is this the work that I want to be doing in the world?

And if not,

What wants to be born?

What wants to come forward?

Doesn't mean you quit your job.

Some people have mouths to feed.

Thankfully,

I just have myself and a couple cats to take care of.

But I needed that space.

And I think there's a lot of places in our lives where we need to create that space.

I'm five years into my healing journey and just a year ago around the four year mark,

I moved to the middle of nowhere because that's just what I needed to deepen my healing,

To step more deeply into my purpose and what's coming next.

And I think that space from ourselves and the life that we created is sometimes just so essential to stepping into what comes next.

I think that's really beautiful.

And this notion of I don't need to know why.

I just need to know that.

And not needing to know why everything is coming down,

But just that I know that everything needs to come down.

And I agree with you that not everybody needs to take a torch to their life's work in order to make something different in the aftermath of loss.

But sometimes there's just like,

I don't know a better way to phrase this,

But it's like there's too many ghosts of the old life in order to even envision the new life.

And so you're like,

I got to leaf blow all of these ghosts out of the way so I can see,

Even imagine what's going to come next after this.

So many times I work with clients,

I jump on live calls,

I do these Facebook lives with a bunch of grievers and stuff in a room or in a group together online.

And one of the biggest hurdles I think that people face is really,

Really,

Really allowing themselves to go there in grief.

I think there's a couple of things that stop people.

There's the fear of looking crazy.

There's the fear that I will never come back from this.

There's the fear that like,

If I go off the deep end is kind of people's language,

There will be no way that my life will be the same after this.

And after losing so much,

It seems like one more thing to lose is like your mind or control over your emotions.

So I'm wondering if you can speak to this notion of how do you go there?

Because Unravel is a book that goes there.

Right.

Yeah,

I think that's a great question.

And so part of why I named Call of the Void,

What I named it is that I have become obsessed with and work with this concept of the void.

And it's really very simple.

It comes from some process work that I did with my mentor who really gave me my brain back almost overnight,

A good portion of it.

And it was a big part of my healing journey is this idea that when we can drop through the what we like to sometimes refer to as negative emotions,

Really,

They're just the more contractive emotions.

So no emotions are inherently good or bad.

They're just energy that's moving through us.

And when we can drop through those contractive emotions,

So those are things like fear and anger and sadness and all of these things that we don't want to feel,

We can feel into them and really,

I mean,

Immerse ourselves into them and let them wash over us until they we drop through into what's below them.

And sometimes we have to drop through several of those layers before we hit what is the void.

And it's this unknown zone.

It's this terrifying space is how most people experience it.

Nothingness.

It can feel like death.

It can feel like you're just going to disappear and you'll never come back from it.

And that's certainly how I felt with my grief when I would get hit by those waves of intense grief,

Where I felt like I was just going to disappear into my own puddle of tears on the kitchen floor that if I really went all the way into it,

I would not come back.

And that feeling is bumping up against this void.

And all the void is,

Is a gateway.

And it's actually the gateway to everything that we desire to feel.

So peace and joy and love.

And whatever is at the core of it is your own experience of whatever you want to call,

Whatever language words you want to use,

God or source or the universe or the energy that is or that deep connection with your own soul and your own self is at the very bottom.

And so when we're going into these feelings that we're so terrified of and usually,

Yes,

There is some of that,

Like I don't want to look like a crazy person to the people around me,

But the core fear is really around losing ourselves in it,

That we won't be able to come back from it,

That we won't we might even just disappear.

We might just die when we can drop through that void.

We move into this deeper,

Richer sense of peace and joy and love.

And it doesn't mean that it erases our grief.

It doesn't mean that it takes away the sadness,

But it allows us to tap into something deeper.

And when we can feel them all the way through,

Which is something that I just instinctually,

Thankfully,

Instinctually knew how to do or just felt like I had no other option.

But OK,

This might consume me.

I might not come back from it,

But I have to I just I have to feel it all the way through.

And it was horrible and it was gut wrenching.

And I'm sure if anyone had been there with me for some of those,

It would have been really scary for them because I was so immersed in the grief.

But that is the only way to really move it through us.

So to get it out of us and to really process it,

As well as to drop into what comes after it.

And it really expands our capacity for the good.

Again,

That's not to negate like that's not to skip over it and get to the gift of it and feel happy and polish positivity and all of that.

But it drops us into the root of who we are and allows us to connect to that deeper love,

That deeper sense of peace and connection to ourselves and to the world around us and builds that muscle,

Builds our ability to really handle things and survive hard things.

And I don't I don't think we trust ourselves to go into it because we don't know that we can survive it.

We don't know that we can do really hard things because,

Quite frankly,

Until we go through some of the harder things in life,

We're not really faced with a lot of things that require us to build that muscle of doing hard things or to or to feel things through and to see that we're capable of surviving them.

But with grief,

If you don't feel your feelings as they come up,

Whether it's the rage or the anger and the devastation,

The sadness,

The overwhelming sadness,

The emptiness,

All these things that we feel,

You're going to get stuck and you're going to make yourself sick.

And so I would invite people to kind of trust in this process.

They've never experienced this idea of dropping through the emotions and seeing what's beneath them and feeling them all the way through until you go deeper and deeper and you hit that place that you're so afraid of.

That is like a tiny moment of death and rebirth.

And you'll find that you will survive it.

And there's so much good to be had on the other side of it.

We don't always know what to do with it right away when we're still in the midst of our grief.

But you will build that muscle of your ability to survive and do hard things.

And you will find things that you won't have been able to find otherwise if you weren't willing to feel that.

I think that's so beautifully said.

And it reminds me of working with a client once and she just kept expressing anger,

Anger,

Anger,

Anger.

She was so mad about the way that,

I mean,

Similar story with the loss of her former partner.

She was so mad with the way that he died,

The things that came out after his death and just like the inability to be there and get more answers and all this other stuff.

And the next question I asked her,

I said,

What's underneath this?

Yeah.

Anchor.

And it's not that the anchor isn't valid.

I'm like,

Get it out,

Lay it all out here,

Because God knows that that's taboo in our society already,

Anger is.

And so I'm like,

Lay it out.

There's so much room for it here.

And simultaneously,

What is at the root of this?

And usually it's something like a really,

Really carnal human emotion like fear or the unknown or terror or really just deep sadness or loneliness.

And anger for me is like my favorite thing in the world.

But every now and then I do have to step back and ask myself,

I'm like,

OK,

What's really underneath this because I could tip into the void in this moment if I really wanted to.

So trying to figure out what's what's under here,

Looking under the rug is enormously helpful,

Is enormously helpful.

Before we sign off,

I want to.

Wonder,

I wonder if you could say anything to the person that you were.

Maybe not the day that you lost,

Brett,

Because there's a lot that happens on that day.

Yeah.

But in that first year,

That first two years,

Like the thing that you wish that other people would have said to you and just kept saying over and over and over again.

Yeah.

It would be something in the vein of.

Be willing and open to surrendering to the unraveling.

I think I clung to my life before so desperately and who I was before and what I had built in the track that I was already set to be on,

Even just for that year,

The first month after.

Not just giving up and throwing in the towel and maybe not tearing down my websites in that first few months,

But to be more open to.

Just the unraveling of it,

Right?

Like the the not being attached to who I was,

Being able to.

See things for what they were in each moment versus what I hope they had be or how awful they were and being willing to.

Settle into the not knowing that was really hard for me,

The not knowing what was next.

And that's why I think I quang so desperately to the life I had before in the business I had before it.

It took me until later that first year and I wrote the chapter about this,

The taking your feet off the wall,

Being willing to.

Surrender to what was happening.

And again,

I think people confuse that with giving up completely,

But to have more openness to.

My life is going to look different and maybe certain things and people will be the same,

But I am changed and really being invited to get to know who I was,

Which is something that I've heard you talk a lot about.

And I think that you do it so beautifully.

But but being willing to explore who am I now and how do I really feel about things?

And to have somebody help me see that.

Things are just different and you don't know yet what all those differences are internally and externally,

But just be open to them,

Like give yourself some time and space to explore how you feel about things and what has changed and to not be so terrified of the unknown.

One of my favorite Rumi quotes is and I know I don't get it right word for word,

But don't be so afraid.

Don't be afraid that your life is turning upside down.

How do you know that the side to come isn't better than the one you left behind or something to that effect?

We don't know.

We're so afraid that what we're losing is better than what could ever possibly be.

And the reality is,

As much as it still breaks my heart to say I'm so grateful to have the life that I have now to have learned the lessons that I have learned.

And that was not a quick thing.

I don't believe in the polished positivity and everything happens for a reason.

And jumping ahead to get the lessons and the gifts before we're ready.

My heart still breaks and I will never be glad that he died or that he died the way that he did or that his death disrupted my life the way that it did.

And I am so incredibly grateful for the path that I am on and the work that I get to do now and everything that has come from it.

So just that being a bit more open to the unraveling.

Yeah,

The words that just rang through my head were allow this to change you.

Yes.

Yeah.

And I think so many people are just like,

No,

No,

No,

No,

No.

So much has changed already.

And it sounds funny to say and even just getting the visual now I get this like,

Kids like,

Don't feed me vegetables.

Don't feed me vegetables.

Don't do it.

Don't do it.

And just like pushing this away pretty violently.

That makes me laugh.

But I remember living in that space too.

I'm like,

I cannot afford to lose anything else.

And then,

Yeah,

Piece by piece,

Just like your story and unravel.

I was like,

Here you go,

Here you go,

Here you go.

And I just shucked it all away from me.

I don't know who I was giving it to.

But I'm like,

Here you go,

Here you go,

Here you go.

And allow this to change you allow this to be important and significant and upending because it really,

Really is.

It really is.