Evoke Greatness Podcast

Finding Light in Darkness with Kelci Jager (Part 2)

• Episode 155

Share episode

Send us a text

🎧 Episode 155 Part 2: Finding Light in Darkness: A Journey Through Grief and Hope with Kelci Jager (Part 2)

In this continuation, Kelci Jager delves deeper into the challenges of parenting through grief and reveals the unexpected ways loss continues to shape our journey. Her candid discussion about navigating grief alongside her four sons offers invaluable insights for others walking similar paths.

We explore:

  • The complexity of parenting while grieving
  • Understanding children as "silent grievers"
  • How grief triggers can surface unexpectedly
  • The evolution from personal healing to professional calling
  • The distinction between grief coaching and therapy
  • The relationship between the nervous system and grief
  • Finding purpose through personal pain

🔑 Key takeaways:

  1. Parenting through grief requires extraordinary grace and patience
  2. Children often hide their grief to protect their grieving parent
  3. Grief evolves but doesn't necessarily get smaller
  4. Traditional therapy may not always address the unique needs of grief
  5. Understanding your grief responses can be empowering
  6. Hope and belief are enough to begin healing

💡 Quotes to remember: "Grief is there because love was there first." - Kelci Jager

"One tiny flame of light can snuff out so much darkness." - Kelci Jager

"You move forward and integrate the grief into your life. You bring your loved one with you." - Kelci Jager

🌟 Featured Insights:

  • The importance of allowing space for grief to exist
  • How neural pathways can trigger grief responses
  • Why grief coaching differs from traditional therapy
  • The power of awareness in managing grief
  • The transformation from feeling lost to guiding others

📚 Resources:

  • Website: https://risewithgrief.com/
  • Book: "A Million Miracles: And The One That Never Came" on Amazon
  • Instagram: @risewithgrief
  • Facebook: Kelci Jager
  • Free Video: "The Truth About Grief" available on website

A rising tide raises all ships, and I invite you along on this journey to Evoke Greatness!

Check out my website: www.evokegreatness.com

Follow me on:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sonnie-linebarger-899b9a52/

https://www.instagram.com/evoke.greatness/

https://www.tiktok.com/@evoke.greatness

http://www.youtube.com/@evokegreatness








Speaker 1:

Welcome to Evoke Greatness. We are officially entering year three of this podcast and I am filled with so much gratitude for each and every one of you who've joined me on this incredible journey of growth and self-discovery. I'm Sunny, your host and fellow traveler on this path of personal evolution. This podcast is a sanctuary for the curious, the ambitious and the introspective. It's for those of you who, like me, are captivated by the champion mindset and driven by an insatiable hunger for growth and knowledge. Whether you're just beginning your journey or you're well along your path, you're going to find stories here that resonate with your experiences and aspirations. Over the last two years, we've shared countless stories of triumph and challenge, of resilience and transformation. We've laughed, we've reflected and we've grown together. And as we've evolved, so too has this podcast. Remember, no matter what chapter you're on in your own story, you belong here. This community we've built together is a place of support, inspiration and shared growth. Where intention goes, energy flows, and the energy you bring to this space elevates us all. So, whether you're listening while commuting, working out or enjoying your morning coffee, perhaps from one of those motivational mugs I'm so fond of, know that you're a part of something special. Thank you for being here. Thank you for your curiosity, your openness and your commitment to personal growth. As we embark on year three, I invite you to lean in, to listen deeply and to let these stories resonate with your soul. I believe that a rising tide raises all ships and I invite you along in this journey to evoke greatness.

Speaker 1:

Welcome back to part two of Finding Light in the Darkness with my guest, kelsey Jager. In the second part of this episode, kelsey dives deep into the challenges of parenting through grief and reveals the unexpected ways loss continues to shape our journey. We explore the complexity of parenting while grieving, how grief triggers can surface unexpectedly, the relationship between the nervous system and grief, and finding purpose through personal pain. If you haven't yet, make sure to go back to last week's episode and listen to part one. All right, let's hop into it. Throughout that process, you had to navigate both your own grief and that of your four children concurrently. What unexpected challenges arose in trying to balance those dual roles? And then, what can you share for other grieving parents who are navigating?

Speaker 2:

those same waters? That's a really great question and it's a very multifaceted question so I'll try to answer it as best I can in podcast terms. Parenting is hard. Parenting grieving children is hard. Parenting grieving children while you're grieving yourself is next level. So just it's so, so, so challenging and definitely the hardest thing I've ever had to do, because while you're grieving, everything is so confusing. Like you, just you question everything and you want to have your children's life as unaffected as possible and so like.

Speaker 2:

For me personally, I tried to keep as many things the same as I possibly could and in some ways, that worked out great, because kids really thrive in routine and stability, and in other ways, it just completely backfired in my face because the reality is, no matter how hard I try, everything's different. Their dad is no longer here. That changes everything, and they are so, so, so resilient and they bring me so much joy and have healed me through this process so much. With that being said, they still have really really hard days and, for example just one example children are often called the silent grievers because, number one, they grieve differently than adults. Number two, a lot of kids and not all children, but a lot of kids are afraid to show their grief because then it's going to set mom off, or it's going to set dad off, or it's going to you know. And so a lot of times kids suffer in silence. And so, for an example of this, I being a solo mom is hard. Trying to keep everything going the way that it was when I had a partner, when I had my husband here, is impossible. I had to let things go, I had to change things. But, with that being said, I still try to keep things going as much as I can. So I'm tired, much more tired than I ever was before, and with that tiredness comes irritability.

Speaker 2:

And so I, in this particular scenario, I had told one of my children to do you know, xyz set of chores, and he didn't get it done. And I came home I had left and said when I get home I expect those things to be done. I came home and it wasn't done. I got frustrated, I was angry, I had thoughts of why do I have to do everything alone? I'm so sick of doing everything alone. And so I yelled out to him. I didn't know where he was, but I yelled out to him in the house in probably a harsher tone than I normally would have and he didn't respond. And as he's not responding, I'm getting more upset. So I'm looking through the house and I found him and he was laying in my bed and he was sobbing. And the reason why he didn't get his stuff done is because he was sad about his dad not being here.

Speaker 2:

And there is no.

Speaker 2:

I don't think I've ever felt guilt that level of guilt that I've felt since my husband has died of feeling like I'm failing my kids, feeling like I'm not enough for them, feeling like I'm not enough for them, and in that moment I of course felt horrible and of course I, you know, went and sat with him. But to parents that are struggling, whether you're, you know, a widow or you're, you know, even if you're just a single mom or whatever your circumstances are, give yourself grace. As long as you are doing your best, you are enough. And have some compassion for yourself and your children. And also know that grief shows up, sometimes in the silence and in ways that you don't expect, in the places that you weren't expecting it to be, and just allow some space and room for it to be there, because the grief does not need to be fixed. It's not a problem to be solved. Grief is there because love was there first, and when you look at it from that way, it becomes almost a sacred experience, instead of this thing to be feared.

Speaker 1:

I think, in that people feel that pressure to move on, to get over their grief. You want to hurry the process and, to your point, it's such a unique journey for everyone and you're trying to navigate two worlds, your own world that feels like it's such a unique journey for everyone. And, as you, you know, and you're trying to navigate two worlds, your own world feels like it's just collapsed. And then you have four boys and each of their world feels like it's collapsed and so, concurrently, you have five worlds that you're trying to manage while grieving. When you think about that pressure to move on that people probably feel, sometimes overwhelmed by how can people reframe their relationship with loss while honoring that person's memory, while recognizing that it doesn't have to be a race. There's no mark where it's like okay, now I'm over it.

Speaker 2:

It's a mindset shift. Society tells us that there's stages to grief. Taylor Swift has a whole album on the stages of grief, and so when we believe that we think there's an end point, we think that we should be further along that, oh, if I you know I'm doing so good. And then all of a sudden I get smacked in the face by something that triggers my grief and I feel like I'm you know, I'm on the floor a puddle of tears and I feel like, oh no, I've regressed. All that work, all the progress I've made is gone. That's not true.

Speaker 2:

Grief is not linear, it's messy. It goes up and down and forwards and backwards and upside down, and you don't even like, you can't force it into this neat little box where you get over it and you move on. There's no moving on. You move forward with you, move forward and integrate the grief into your life. You bring your loved one with you.

Speaker 2:

How that looks is up to you. You get to decide that. You get to decide how you honor their legacy. You get to decide how they continue to influence your life. You get to decide if their death, if their legacy is that their death broke you and ruined the rest of your life. If that's what you want, you get to decide that. But you also get to decide if you want to rise with your grief, if you want to bring your loved one with you and continue that connection and continue that their influence over you for good. That's also within your control. No one can do it for you. You have to do it. But with that is also you getting to make the choice you share on your social media and your presence.

Speaker 1:

you share all sides of grief and I think that there is such beauty in all those sides that you courageously show. So you show the really raw, hard days where you're going through it. And then you also recently shared how I saw a post about your son heading off for a mission and how that unexpectedly kind of stirred up grief for you in a little bit of a different way. What was that experience like for you?

Speaker 2:

The mission experience.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and just like navigating that of what did that?

Speaker 2:

do with your grief. Grief, as I've said multiple times now, it becomes part of you. Multiple times now it becomes part of you and in the beginning it's so heavy and so suffocating that you feel like you're drowning and you're never, ever, ever going to be able to catch your breath. And as you begin to integrate the grief into your life, as you begin to learn how to process, as you begin to kind of navigate this life after loss, grief evolves and it changes. It doesn't get smaller, it's still the same size, but it evolves and it softens, but it evolves and it softens. You still have moments where it's suffocating and you feel like it's dragging you under, but in between those moments you have moments of joy and happiness and reprieve where you can catch your breath, even if it's just going through the motions of your day. When those waves get farther and farther apart and then they do come, it's kind of like whoa, where did that, where did that come from? You do have expected triggers, like anniversaries holidays. You know there are expected triggers, but sometimes anniversaries holidays there are expected triggers, but sometimes it comes out of where. You're like whoa. I was not expecting that.

Speaker 2:

One of those was my son's mission trip. So he had decided before my husband passed away that he wanted to serve a two-year mission, two-year volunteer mission. His commitment for this mission was that he would be gone for two years. We would not see him for two years. We would be able to communicate with him once a week on the phone, but he would be away from us, and this was completely his decision. I supported it, of course, but I did not try to sway him away from it or try to talk him into it. This is what he wanted to do. After my husband passed away, I wasn't sure if he was still going to want to go. He did. Part of that was probably to honor his dad, because his dad had served a two-year mission when he was 19 years old and so he left six months after my husband passed away.

Speaker 2:

Saying goodbye to him in the airport I knew was going to be hard. I didn't expect it to feel like I was saying goodbye to my husband all over again. I remember sitting in the car at the airport and I could not catch my breath. I was a wreck, sobbing, sobbing, and I was like what is going on? Like, yes, I'm sad that I'm not going to see him, but I'm also really excited that he has this experience and I was like, why does it feel like he died? And it took me a couple of months to figure out exactly what was going on Because, like I said, I could only talk to him once a week on the phone.

Speaker 2:

And so, as I go about my day, I would think of something like oh, I want to call Ian and tell him this, or I want to text Ian. Or I would be at the store and see, oh, I'm going to buy this for Ian, he likes it. And I'd be like, oh, he's not here. And it would be the same experience as when my husband died and I would think, oh, I want to call him, or I want to buy. And I was like, what is going on?

Speaker 2:

And I started having these panic attacks because I couldn't just pick up the phone and call him. And I realized that my nervous system was reacting in the same way it did when I said goodbye to my husband, because that was the neuropathway that had been formed. And so when I had that awareness, I got this clarity. It was like this light bulb went on and suddenly it made so much sense and I was like, oh my gosh. So I did. This was a little bit against the rules, but I think it's okay. So I did text him.

Speaker 2:

When I figured this out, I texted him and I said it wasn't.

Speaker 2:

We can talk on Mondays.

Speaker 2:

It wasn't on a Monday, I think it was like on a Wednesday, and I said, son, my nervous system is freaking out and it thinks you died.

Speaker 2:

So I need to be able to just send you a text message when I start to panic, and you don't have to message me back if it's not Monday, If you're busy. I just need a little like a heart back, some type of acknowledgement, so my brain calms down and knows you're not dead, Even though, logically, I knew he was going to come back. I knew he wasn't dead, but my nervous system acted like he wasn't here anymore. So it's that type of awareness that we have when we do the grief work, when we have someone like a therapist or a coach that's experienced it, that is educated in grief, when we can gain the awareness of what is happening and you understand that you're not going crazy and that of course what's happening is happening. It's so validating and it's so empowering, because then you can then decide how you're going to move forward from there, and that's how you gain control of your grief, instead of just having your grief control you.

Speaker 1:

And you took all of that and you, I'm sure, by way there's your lived experience, and then there's probably doing research and looking at the other side, kind of that research, science-based side of grief. And you've taken all of that and you have created your own grief coaching program.

Speaker 2:

Share a little bit about that and you know who are the right people, who should be really seeking out grief coaching, struggling like they don't have their footing, could benefit from a coach, could benefit from somebody that says, here, let me take your hand and I'm going to show you the path through this Grief. When my husband died, everyone was like you need to get into therapy right away. I was like, oh yes, like I'm a mess, I got to get into therapy. So I went into therapy right away and it helped a little bit in the beginning. But grief is your brain is not broken, you don't. You know, there are some instances of grief that can lead to severe depression and severe anxiety where you do need more intensive intervention for that depression very closely. But it's not depression. You don't have a broken brain, you don't have a mental illness. So, while therapy helped me in the fact that I was able to talk to somebody in a safe place, I hit a plateau in therapy very quickly and my therapist was telling me that I was doing so great and I'm thinking I am Like, I feel terrible, like this is going to be my life for the next 40, 50, 60 years, like this sucks, and I wasn't okay with that. And I wasn't okay with that because, like I said, we had such a beautiful, full life before all of this and I wanted to get back to that. I knew it was possible. And so I was consuming grief book after grief book, like if you had told me that I needed to stand on my head and say my ABCs backwards, it would make me feel better. I would do it Like I was just like a sponge. I was taking trauma courses, grief courses, all the things, um.

Speaker 2:

And then I signed up for a life coaching school to be life coach certified not to be a life coach, but like, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to figure this out for myself. Like, how do I coach myself through this? I couldn't find exactly what I needed. I needed someone to take my hand and say, here we go, I'm going to show you the way through this. And I couldn't find that anywhere.

Speaker 2:

And so I signed up for life coaching school and I was not very far into the program and it was like this light bulb went off and I was like, oh my gosh, when I took all the things I had learned from educating myself in grief things from my experience professionally as an RN dealing with grief on that end all my experience of experiencing grief myself and I combined it with the tools I was learning. It was like magic happened. I was like, oh my gosh, I cannot keep this to myself. I knew how lost I felt and I didn't want anybody else to feel that way, and so it came very clear to me that to me that I needed to become a grief coach and I needed to help others navigate their way through grief. And that's what I've done, and my program is rooted in research and scientific data.

Speaker 2:

But it is not therapy, I'm very clear about that. I am not a therapist and most of the time you don't need a therapist in grief because your brain is not broken, but you do need a coach. You do need someone that has been there, that knows how to navigate and help you get through, and that makes the world of difference. And my work is. I laugh because when people ask me what I do, I kind of like kind of pause a little bit and then kind of like sheepishly say, well, I'm a grief coach. And every time they kind of look at me like what, what is that? Never sought out to do this work, but I absolutely love it because to see the transformation from my clients from when they first come to me to when they finish my program is just so incredibly rewarding. I just can't even begin to describe how much joy it gives me to be able to help others and to have them trust me in their darkest days and to help them see the light.

Speaker 1:

And then be able to grab the hands of others who are navigating that and don't see the way out yet or haven't progressed to the place that you have been, and so to be able to share those real lived experiences, to guide them back to the light has got to be a sense of fulfillment for you, just in making that experience something again that you held on to hope and you held on to this light, and now you can help others do the same. Absolutely, absolutely Well, as we wrap up, I usually have a question that I ask at the end of every podcast interview. It probably lands a little more personally for you. If it were your last downer and you could only impart one piece of advice based on your experience, the way that you've seen the world, what would that be?

Speaker 2:

I would say kind of the same thing that I said in the beginning that no matter how dark your day is, no matter how hopeless you feel like your life is, no matter what the circumstance, there is light in the darkness and one tiny flame of light can snuff out so much darkness and there is so much power in that light. You just have to hold on to it and you just have to believe. You do not have to know how, you just have to believe, and that belief is that hope and that is enough and you will be able to get through whatever is causing your world to be black and white and I promise you can bring the color back into your world.

Speaker 1:

I would love for you to share. Where can people find you and follow you, pick up a copy of your book or, more importantly, if they're going through that process of grief themselves, where can they find out more about your coaching?

Speaker 2:

So my website is risewithgriefcom and you can learn about ways to work with me on there my coaching programs. I also have a free video on my website that gives clarity and some direction in this world of grief that is very there's a lot of misconceptions and a lot of misinformation, and so this video is the truth about grief, and so I have a free video that you can access on my website, risewithgriefcom. You can learn about my programs there. You can follow me on social media. On Instagram, I am risewithgrief. On Facebook, I am Kelsey Jager, K-E-L-C-I-J-A-G-E-R and my book, my book. I'm so proud of my book, my book. I would love, love, love for anyone and everyone to read it. It's not a book about grief, it's not. It's really a book for anyone that wants to be inspired. And my book A Million Miracles and the One that Never Came, can be found on Amazon.

Speaker 1:

Well, I will put all of these links in the show notes so you can just go and click directly to get to them. Kelsey, thank you so much for continuing to share your story. Thank you for letting me explore that with you and sharing the wisdom and insights that have come through your experience with my audience.

Speaker 2:

It was my pleasure, sunny, thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 1:

Thank you so much for listening and for being here on this journey with me. I hope you'll stick around If you liked this episode. It would mean the world for me if you would rate and review the podcast or share it with someone you know may need to hear this message. I love to hear from you all and want you to know that you can leave me a voicemail directly. If you go to my website, evokegreatnesscom, and go to the contact me tab, you'll just hit the big old orange button and record your message. I love the feedback and comments that I've been getting, so please keep them coming. I'll leave you with the wise words of author Robin Sharma Greatness comes by doing a few small and smart things each and every day. It comes from taking little steps consistently. It comes from making a few small chips against everything in your professional and personal life that is ordinary, so that a day eventually arrives when all that's left is the extraordinary.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Sonnie Linebarger

Host