Loss is an unavoidable part of life. It affects all of us and we all deal with it in our own ways. However, it can feel overwhelming to process and heal from a loss when that loss feels so devastating. Whether it's the death of a loved one or even the end of a relationship or the end of a long chapter in our lives, that feeling of loss seems to affect every aspect of ourselves. That's why this week, I brought on The Stress Less Show Justine Haemmerli, the founder of Girls Gone Happy, to discuss how we can cope with loss.
Justine's work with loss began after working as both a High School teacher and as a career coach where she noticed commonalities among the women she worked with.
“There were just so many common themes of folks feeling disconnected from their values and feeling like they were kind of lonely and lost. And so I wanted to create a company that would help folks to have these conversations around these questions and around these things that we all struggle with.”
After creating Girls Gone Happy, she started making prompt cards designed to help women start exploring deep questions within themselves and each other. Through her own experience of losing both of her parents early in her adulthood, she created a deck of big questions specifically about loss in order to help other women understand their grief and heal.
“Even though [loss] was familiar to me, I didn't know what to say to friends and people that I loved when they were going through a loss... So when I sat down to write our loss deck and move into that work. I thought what do I wish someone had said to me when I was in that space”
Through her work with Girls Gone Happy and the women she has connected with, Justine has come on the show to share a couple of tips on how you can cope with a difficult loss in your life in a way that is authentic and true to how you're really feeling.
Tip #1: It's OK to feel a sense of relief
Justine's first tip is one that many of us need to hear. When we’ve experienced a loss or a tragedy such as ending a relationship or losing a loved one, the reality is we are hit with so many different emotions all at once.
While the obvious ones are sadness, pain, hurt, you name it, we may also find ourselves feeling emotions that aren't painful and that seemed unexpected in the face of such a powerful loss. We may find ourselves feeling a sense of freedom or relief in the face of our grief and Justine notes the importance of being okay with those feelings in her own experience losing her mother.
“It was really weird to be in the deepest throes of sadness and grief, and also to feel the strange excitement and vertigo of freedom that I had never felt before... It's important for us to talk about that. Nothing is just one thing and it's okay.”
In our communities, we don't often talk about feelings other than sadness when we talk about loss. As a result, it can feel uncomfortable and strange to experience positive feelings of freedom or relief. We can start to feel further isolated in our grief because we feel like no one else has ever felt this way.
However, the more we talk about grief openly and honestly, the more we realize that our experience of grief is not strange or wrong. We learn to accept all of the emotions that come with our grief and loss, both the positive emotions and the negative ones.
Tip #2: Take things at your own pace.
We tend to judge ourselves throughout our healing process after a loss. We get frustrated that we aren’t healing as fast as we like or we feel ashamed for feeling like we haven't taken enough time feeling sad or hurt, but Justine stresses the importance of letting go of any expectations we have on our emotions surrounding our loss.
“There's no universal timeline for healing and if you feel raw for longer than you anticipated, it's okay. If you feel better faster than you anticipated, that's OK. There are different seasons in our life for different things.”
We may not be fully healed from our grief right away and that's okay. The important thing is that we take the time to heal when we need to, hold space for grief where we truly need it, and we explore our grief in a way that is true to us.
If you are working through a difficult loss right now, you can check out Girls Gone Happy’s Loss Deck by visiting their website here. Girls Gone Happy is also offering a 15% discount on their decks and group kits as well if you use the code, STRESSLESS.