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>> Carlee: If you experienced loss in your life recently this episode is for you. Hi I'm Carlee Meyers, a stress management expert, and this month we're talking about how to cope with trauma and tragedy. And that's why I brought on this amazing guest, Justine Haemmerli, she's the founder of Girls Gone Happy, a company that helps women connect with their inner wisdom and with each other. She spent the last 12 years teaching coaching writing consulting around work life balance self employment and creative careers and how to make decisions rooted in your own values. With Girls Gone Happy Justine brings these experiences into products that help women to have deep conversations around big life questions and build real friendships through these discussions. Justine has been recognized by Billy Penn Leadership Philadelphia and the City Council of Philadelphia as an entrepreneurial leader and by the Philadelphia by the Philadelphia citizen as citizen of the week for her work as a community organizer. Wow I am so excited to have you on the show.
>> Justine: Thank you so much for having me, Carlee. I really am excited to chat and I appreciate the chance to be here with you.
>> Carlee: Absolutely. So I'm really curious especially because we are we are talking deep stuff this week. How did you get into this line of work?
>> Justine: That is a great question. Well I before doing girls gone happy I had worked as a middle and high school teacher and I then was coaching teachers and then became a coach myself and I worked with a lot of women in particular around career questions and career challenges and 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. And I started out creating products that were more around like how do I deal with a fork in the road or how could I make the question more approachable. And as I started feeling my way forward with the content for our cards at Girls Gone Happy, I realized that a topic that a lot of us don't talk about enough is grief. And it's something that is so universal, all of us struggle with it in one way or another. Yet at the same time even though it's something every single person was through when you are in the thick of it nothing feels more unique to you and lonely and kind of like you are in your own little world disconnected from everyone else. So I felt like I wanted to really create a product and create a tool for folks who were in that situation. And again that doesn't just have to be when somebody has passed it could be when you've had any kind of big goodbye or big transition like we have a lot of grief around losing a job or changing careers. We have a lot of grief when a friendship ends. We have grief when we move from a house even if it's something positive there is it's hard to say goodbye and it's hard when a chapter is ending even if the thing in front of you is bright and shiny and exciting too. So that was part of how I got into the work of when I sat down to write the loss stack which is one of our products at Girls Gone Happy. I drew upon my own personal experiences I had lost my parents both of them by the time I turned 24. My dad passed away when I was 16 and my mom when about a few weeks after my 24th birthday. So I was very familiar with with with loss and with grief. And they'd been sick for most of my life. So I sort of had a childhood that was in the shadow of of illness. So it felt very familiar to me. And at the same time even though it 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 and when they were in that kind of isolated state and I thought man if anyone knows what to say it should be me and I still don't. So that was kind of when I sat down to to write our loss deck and move into that work. I just sort of thought what do I wish someone had said to me when I was in that space and what do I wish I had the insight foresight courage to say to people that I loved when I know that they're in that place too?
>> Carlee: So you're loss deck. I just want to just clarify for the listeners
>> Justine: Yes
>> Carlee: This is this is a deck that's asking those tough questions that's giving you prompts to really dig deep within yourself?
>> Justine: Yes absolutely. So it has topics and it has questions and you can combine them you can just look at the topics or the questions for reflection you can use them in a group for conversation and it was really interesting writing it especially with the topics because again when we think about the areas of our life that are affected by a trauma or a tragedy, you know you might think like family friends the direct relationship of who is impacted but I sort of writing topics like freedom, like your sense of adventure, your plans for the future, your body like all of the tragedy and grief and trauma affect us on such a holistic level. And they they affect us thematically, they affect us psychologically, they affect us interpersonally. It's not isolated it's just kind of leaks into every part of our lives. So yes that was really interesting actually to think about and when I see people using them in groups it's always really powerful to see how folks have insights into all of these different crevices of their experiences that are impacted by a big loss that we don't always talk about.
>> Carlee: Yeah and I loved your comment about freedom right. Because I know and the comment about how lost can be many different things. I know personally you know having a breakup happen is horrible, but at the same time I know when I've personally had to leave relationships. I also felt like a big weight lift off of me.
>> Justine: Totally. Yeah
>> Carlee: I admit that but all of those feelings for sure.
>> Justine: Yes it's a it's an AndI it's not an either or you know. And I remember after my mom passed away, I was going for a walk with my cousin and she was like, "Are you OK?" And I said, "you know I know this sounds really awful but I feel relief and freedom in a way that I never have." I had all of these life plans that I kind of had to defer because I wanted to be around my mom when she was sick and so I didn't get to live abroad. I didn't move I didn't take some chances and like daring choices that I'd wanted to in my early 20s because of my family situation and I don't regret that in any way whatsoever, but it was really weird to be in the deepest throes of sadness and grief and also to feel the strange excitement and like the vertigo of freedom that I had never felt before. And so I feel like it's important for us to talk about that. Nothing is just one thing you know and it's okay if you're going through a loss whether again and it's a breakup or somebody passing or any kind of big transition to feel relief and freedom and excitement along with the sadness. I think there can often be guilt around that but I also think it's really really normal especially if this is a situation that you've been living with for a long time.
>> Carlee: Absolutely. And I love that because I think we're not talking. I don't think there's enough conversations happening around that right now about that. Oh you're just supposed to be this you know like but we're so many things so we experience so many things when we experience trauma, tragedy, loss yes.
>> Justine: One hundred percent and I think people are really squeamish talking about grief and loss and I wish that we could have more open conversations around it. I think one of the things that I've learned from having more discussions with other folks is that there is no right way to grieve or go through a loss. There's no universe timeline for healing. And if you feel raw for longer than you anticipated it's OK if you feel better faster than you anticipated that's OK. You know there are different seasons in our life for different things. There are different seasons for healing and grieving and there's no way to do it. You know and I wish that more of us would share that with each other.
>> Carlee: Yeah absolutely. Speaking of which, we want to know we want to know what your experience was like with loss. Have you felt all of those different feelings? What has come up for you? Please share in the comments below and let us know so that we can start really creating a conversation around this. Now Justine, I know you wanted to share an opportunity for our listeners. So I'm going to let you take that away.
>> Justine: Oh thank you. Yes. So I had I had mentioned that the loss deck which is a tool that we have for folks who are either grieving going through a big transition. We actually just used it at a Halloween circle last week which was so neat. We used it in a group conversation, just around letting go which was really really beautiful. So I would love to share with your listeners a 15 percent discount on that as well as on our group kit which are tools that you can use to just put together your own conversation with friends. It has all of the plans that you need to be able to use the deck in a group setting without having to do really any work at all. And the code is Stressless so you can find that on our Web site
>> Carlee: OK. And what is your Web site for us?
>> Justine: It's Girls Gone Happy dot org.
>> Carlee: Girls Gone happy dot org you heard her. So we hope you enjoyed this episode of The Stress Less Show. Let us know how we did by giving us a big old thumbs up and hitting that follow or subscribe button. Thanks for listening. And we will see you next week.