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You just lost your loved one. Now what? Welcome to the Grief in Life podcast where we explore this new reality through grief -colored lenses. Openly, authentically, I'm your host, Nina Rodriguez. Let's get started. Hello, friends, and welcome to season three of the Grief in Life podcast. This episode will be to catch you up on everything that's happened since the end of season two. A lot has happened in a month and a half, a month and change, almost two months.
So I want to catch you up on that. I also want to make this episode a reflection on the first five years of grief, specifically through my story. But as I share the breakdown of year one and two and three, four, and now onto the fifth year, which will be official September 11th, that's my brother's angel bursary, I want to see if you could see yourself in my story.
if you could see the commonalities as your grief has evolved, or maybe it's completely different and you could just compare how certain grief stories evolve. And if you're in your early grief, this is just an example of how one person's journey unfolded, but it can also serve as a framework for what to expect. Not that it's going to unfold that way for you, but I know it would have been so helpful to me to see somebody's journey evolve through the years. So.
September 11, like I said, will be the official fifth year since my brother's passing. And a lot has happened since then. A lot has shifted. Brief evolves as we evolve. I now understand that deeply and what that looks like and what that means. But I want to walk through it because there's a lot of power in reflection and it's very powerful to take a moment to generalize how everything's shifted and what life looked like on years one and two is so different than what life looks like now. So,
We'll dig into that, but first I want to catch you up on everything that's happened in May. So I decided that the grief and light podcast will take a seasonal pause in the month of May, May, maybe June. So we'll play with these dates. But the reason for that is that May is a really big month in my life. It's my wedding anniversary. It's my birthday. It's my father's birthday, my mom's birthday. It's mother's day. It is my cousin's birthday, two of my best friend's birthdays.
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And there's just so much going on in May that quite frankly, it feels very overwhelming. There's always something going on every single week. It just feels like a right time to pause and take some personal time and breathe because as much as I love all of these stories, sometimes when I get in the routine of recording, recording, recording, recording, it can feel very heavy. These are big moments in people's lives, but they're also full of heaviness. So as a person recording these podcasts, sometimes it becomes very,
challenging to be honest to navigate through some of these stories on such a frequent basis. And on top of that, if I have a guest who's written a book, then I read their book as well. And it's just, it's a lot to take in. So I think it's wise for anybody doing anything, whether really exciting or just a little bit heavier work, whatever it is, nature always builds in a pause. So why not do that into our routine? So May, June, I expect it to be.
the season breaks, which fits in with my life and that way I could dedicate more time to my personal life. You get the point. So this year in particular was a milestone year in the sense that it will be the fifth year since my brother's passing. And also I celebrated a milestone birthday. So I entered a completely new decade because there's been some time between the loss and the work that I've started to do, the work that I've done. The idea of a symbolic rebirth kept
Whirling in my mind, my husband kept asking me, what do you want to do for your birthday this year? Since December of last year, he kept asking me because he knew it was kind of a big deal. And I said, you know, nothing big. I just want to mark it with a symbolic rebirth. And I didn't know exactly what that meant, but the idea of a retreat somewhere beautiful and peaceful and away from the hustle and bustle of society seemed to be an appealing idea at the time. And it's interesting because I kept looking and looking and looking. I couldn't find it. We had
I traveled to Tulum the year prior, so beautiful and so peaceful. And the idea of a retreat in Tulum kept calling my name. So I Googled it. I looked up the upcoming retreats and the dates weren't matching. The one that I liked was sold out. It just wasn't working. So I said, you know what? Let me release it to the universe. It's not that big of a deal. At least I'm grateful that I get to celebrate another birthday. And if it's meant to be, then something will come my way. So I released it to the universe and...
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Not even a week later, I get a text. So I have a group that I belong to on WhatsApp for a local yoga teacher here in Miami. They do these beautiful full moon meditations on the beach. It's absolutely beautiful to be in nature with a group of people who are just in the same energy. They announced, they said, hey, will you join us in Tulum on these dates? And it just so happens to be the date of my birthday. So that same weekend, the dates, everything with these people who I've been to their events, I trust them.
I love the way that they do their events and I was like, say less, I'm there, let's do it. So my husband and I signed up, actually I signed my husband and I up for the retreat because it meant a lot to me for him to be there. We've been through so much, he's been through all of it with me and I think it would be really nice to just enter this new symbolic portal into this new decade together. Went to Tulum, it was a yoga retreat, we're not yogis or anything. So this was all very new.
On the day of my birthday, they did the Temazcal ceremony. And for anybody who has participated in a Temazcal ceremony, you know how powerful that is. Supposed to be a symbolic rebirth. They create this dome -like structure that's very close to the ground and they add a fire pit inside and they completely shut it off. So you're in complete darkness. And it's supposed to symbolize Mother Earth's womb. It was very powerful. Symbolism of it being in that space, complete darkness.
a beautiful ceremony. I learned it's about four hours. We only did it for two and a half, which is still way too long because imagine being in the hottest sauna you've ever been in your life. You're just sweating your life away. It's a beautiful, beautiful experience. And what I did not expect is that at the end, before they open the door to release you back into the world, if you will, there's this guide that participates in there with you and he's guiding the experience.
And at the end he's screaming, he's like, you know, are you ready to be reborn? Are you ready to be reborn? And I thought that was so cool because it was on my birthday. It's exactly what I wanted, a symbolic rebirth. I feel like a lot of my life has been very reactive. This included the initial years of grief. As much as I'd like to think I was in control, I wasn't. I feel like the older I get, the more I understand we really are not as in control of ourselves and our life as we think we are.
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There are things we can't control, but so many elements are really not in our power to control. One of them being the unexpected loss of my brothers, learning to surrender and surrender in a willing way and just let things be. So I wanted to enter this new decade with acceptance, surrender and trust in myself, trust in life, trust that everything is unfolding as it should, that the journey is what it is and I am no longer going to fight it even if I don't like the outcome of certain things such as.
my brother's passing, I just don't want to hold any more resentment and anger that doesn't serve me or doesn't serve anybody, doesn't serve my brother's memory. So I just wanted to release it all. It was like a release, a surrender and a symbolic re -entering into this new decade. So I thought it was so perfect. And on top of that, when I signed up for the event, I paid in full because I was so excited. I let my excitement, my full body, yes, lead the way.
Then I said, my gosh, I haven't even checked the details of this retreat. I don't even know anything like what's going on. So I had that moment of panic of what did I just sign up for? And I go on the website to see where we were staying, look at the details, do more research, ironically after the fact, which is not very like me. If anybody knows me, I'm very analytic. So for me to act without researching was very unlike me. So when I...
looked at the place that we were staying, I looked at their Instagram account, I looked at their stories just to see what they're doing and what the place is like. One of their stories that particular day that I was scrolling said, yoga at 6 a with Joseph. And it was spelled exactly like my brother's name, Y -O -S -E -S. And I just took that as a sign that I was meant to be there. It gave me chills, it gave me a full body pause. My husband was like, my gosh, he gasped.
when he saw that because it was such a serendipitous sign. It was such a synchronistic moment. And there was no doubt in my mind that he had something to do with this, that this was exactly where I needed to be for my birthday. So the whole experience was wonderful. If you follow me on Instagram, you saw the recap post. If you don't go check it out, it's on my Instagram, it's on my reel. And it was a very, very powerful, beautiful, intentional experience that I am so, so grateful for.
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So that took place in May and it just left me feeling refreshed and re -energized and I just feel like it was the right call. So I wanted to share that with you because that is an energy and a space and a mindset and a place of calm in my spirit that I never would have thought was possible, especially in the early years. So with that, I want to recap the first five years of grief.
And like I said, try to see where we share elements in common with our stories, if we share any elements in common, and maybe how your story has differed from mine. And if you're new to grief and you're listening to this, I to find hope really is my goal is to share hope that it won't always feel as heavy as it does in the beginning. So.
I'll spend a little bit more time describing the first two years because they were the most intense and the most packed with energy and emotions and things that were happening. And then I'll get to the fifth year, which is now. If you're watching me on YouTube, if you see me looking to the side, it's because I'm reading my notes. Speaking of YouTube, I have soft launched my YouTube channel. Seasons one and two were audio only on Spotify and Apple podcasts and all the other platforms.
but I have since added YouTube. I still have to catch up with the first couple of seasons in terms of adding the video, but you can listen to it as a podcast there, share it, please follow and subscribe and share, share all the content because my goal is to grow this community and get these videos to the people that need them the most to create a grief -informed world. And you sharing, you liking, you subscribing helps accomplish this and...
Season 3 will include the videos and as I upload the videos for season 3, I'll start catching up with the other uploads for seasons 1 and 2. So that being said, let's get into the first 5 years of Greece.
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Year one, I named it the year of shock and fog. You could probably imagine why. So when we got the news of my brother's unexpected passing, obviously we didn't know this was going to happen. It was the day after he turned 32. Life just completely went upside down. I remember the second day, we immediately kicked into, okay, now what do you do after somebody dies? Well, they have to be buried. So where do we do that? How do we do that?
Immediately we started visiting different cemeteries and looking for plots and all those things. And I'm not going to get graphic, but it was just in this weird autopilot disconnected, a foggy state where nothing made sense. It's very confusing. I live in Florida, so it's like the day after a hurricane that destroys everything around you. You can't believe your eyes. There's so much pain. There's so much grief. Dreams started almost immediately. This became...
a very bizarre and yet comforting thing. I looked forward to being asleep. I look forward to meeting my brother in my dreams. Some of the dreams were very powerful and they felt like visitations and other dreams were just messages. And I don't want to say just messages because every single one was very powerful. I decided that this was my new way to connect with my brother, even though I didn't understand it. And I didn't want to question why I was having these dreams. I was just happy to have. I...
was desperately trying to seek the answer to where my brother went. He was here one day, he's gone, he must have gone somewhere. So where did this person go? Where did his spirit go? I just take it for granted that there's life after life. And what exactly that looks like is a mystery, but I do believe in the concept of continuing life after life. I learned to attune to signs of spirit.
That's where I learned about science in the first place from Laura Lynn Jackson through a friend who introduced me to her work. At the same time, I felt very numb. It was complete numbness, complete disconnection from my personal life, almost as if I'm watching my life as a movie. And the pandemic hit. And once the pandemic hit, that brought even more uncertainty. And whatever little piece of certainty I had,
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managed to grasp onto between September 2019 and then March 2020, which is when the lockdown began, whatever stability we managed to hold onto at that time, went out the window because now we had the global pandemic and all the uncertainty that that brought. And I didn't know if my family was going to be okay. We had to be quarantined. I said, gosh, what if something happens and now I can't even get to my family and...
I don't want to bring that anxiety back because I feel like we all had our experience and we all remember what that was like very vividly. So all I want to share is that that first year was the year of shock and fog. I sought out evidence that my family and I were going to make it in this new reality that was very, very important to me. And that looked like, can we make it to Monday intact? Can we make it to Tuesday?
Then as Monday and Tuesday came along and the answer was yes, I said, okay, well, can we make it another month? And as that month came along, it was like, okay, well, can we make it to the next six months? And so the timeline began stretching a little bit further as I gathered evidence that we were going to be okay. This is called the right time horizon. This is one aspect of the right time horizon, which I talk about in previous episodes. And it's a concept I learned through Megan Devine. She's the author of It's Okay Not to Be Okay. And...
It basically says that when you are in very stressful situations and you're in grief, shorten the timeline. So you don't need to look at the future. The future is so uncertain. So when you are facing that much uncertainty around you, shorten your timeline to the next moment, to the next minute. And then as you feel comfortable with that, stretch it out maybe to the next five minutes. And as you get comfortable with that, stretch it out as far as it feels good in that moment, or as far as it feels doable in that moment.
So year one is just complete shock. Everything felt like shards of glass. Everything felt like raw edges. And it was just feeling very disconnected. All the platitudes that people told me, all the family members that I thought would be there and they had no idea how to do it. It just felt like betrayal. I felt angry. I felt resentful of a lot of people in my life. How...
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I would have sworn that they would have been there for me the way I needed and they were not. A lot of disappointment. That year, as we started to collect evidence, I know that nature played a huge role in helping us move forward because we had to be in outdoor spaces because of the pandemic. Once the restrictions started easing, everybody was allowed but in like open public spaces.
Parks became very important. The Japanese garden became very important. Nature nurtured us in that moment and that was very important. And I actually did an episode about this, which I'll link in the show notes if you'd like to hear it. So then we moved to year two and that is what I'll call the year of permanency. Year two is when you have survived the year of firsts. And this is now the second time, but then you realize...
It's the second time, but it's the first time of the rest of your life that you'll have to do this. And that concept of the magnitude of the permanency factor of this reality settling into your daily existence and that this is just what the future is going to look like now. Some people find it actually more difficult to accept than the first year of grief. Life as we knew it changed.
This is life after the loss of Joseph in my case. This is life after the loss of your person in your case. In 2020, it was life after the pandemic. It was like year 2020 to 2021. It was okay, so now what? The world literally changed overnight. The world literally.
was not the same as it was before and hasn't been since. If you think about it, our lives have been so deeply impacted by how the world shifted in 2020 and 2021. In our case, we had the added layer of how it shifted since then because of the loss of my brother and how we have had to relearn ourselves and our role in our own lives. And specifically talking about my parents, my husband and I, we had to relearn who are we, can we do this, how do we move from here?
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How do we relate to each other in this new reality? And where is life going from now on? This was very difficult to accept. And in a way for me, it hit me the hardest. Year two was possibly harder than year one because the shock starts to wear off a little bit and your numbness starts to wear off. Your feelings start to come back online and that hurts. I imagine it's like when somebody breaks a bone, breaks a leg, and all of a sudden they start to have their feelings back and that.
process of relearning how to walk, that process of regaining your strength, that process of relearning your body. This was very much the process for us collectively as a family and to be honest, collectively as a world because everybody went through the pandemic. Somebody told my husband, they would ask him how I was doing and somebody told my husband that maybe I should get a dog and we were not equipped to take care of a dog. We were not.
ready wishing that wasn't even a thing. But one day I'm scrolling on social media and I see an adoption agency for this dog that was just rescued. And this dog who is now named Louie and has been living with us for almost four years became my saving grace. I am a firm believer that these beautiful souls in the form of
pets, these beautiful, loving creatures come into your life in the moment you need them most. And Louis certainly came into my life, our lives, the moment we needed him most. And he has been the reason I started to smile again. So the year of permanency also brought in this new life, which I now looking at life from a bigger picture, from a bird's eye view, I see there's so much grace along the way. It doesn't feel like it at the time, but there's so much grace along the way.
The shards of glass were still shards in the terms of everything feels so harsh against your heart. And I was still so sensitive and I was still so disappointed and hurt and resentful to so many people. But at the same time, I was very happy to have this moment of joy in my life. I used to call my dog my little universe of joy because he just made me smile. And I started alienating myself from friends.
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family and people who just didn't get grief. I felt a distinct need to feel understood and witnessed and I wanted my grief seen by somebody and I wanted to talk about it and I had this desire to share it and find more information and resources that I wasn't finding back then. That's when the grief and light account started as an anonymous account. You probably know my story of that then. This is also the year when grief started to take a toll on my physical body, on my family's physical body. So,
I now know that grief is extremely physical. And if I were to redo how we did grief, if you will, I would also place great value in tending to the body. I don't think we're taught this as much, but grief needs to be moved through the body. And we didn't know this. So at the time and because of the pandemic, because we also had to stay at home and not move very much, my body,
became very inflamed. You could see the signs of inflammation. You could see the physical changes in my body. Then year three is when you really start to see the effects on the body. So I call it the year of inflammation and new normals. You could see the physical changes in my parents. You could see the physical change in me. I personally gained a lot of weight. The shape of my face changed. My energy levels were completely down.
I just did not feel like myself at all, which after a loss, this is understandable. Loss is very physical and it changes you one way or another. This is the third year that we were experiencing life as a family of three. So my parents and I, and you could also say, you know, my husband and now my dog.
But it was the first time that we began to travel. My husband and I traveled internationally. It was the first time that I believed we were going to be okay in the long run, whatever that looked like. We celebrated a milestone birthday, went to concerts. The dreams started to become less frequent. So to go back to years one and two, I was having dreams about my brother about once a week, if not more. And I recorded these in the notes section of my phone.
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And year three, they started to subside a little bit. So I would have them, but maybe it was like once a month, they just became less frequent. We became more attuned to our personal lives and creating new normals. Year four was the pivot year, the year of possibilities. It was the year that my body became so inflamed and I was so disconnected from my life. And at the time I was doing real estate full time.
And I realized I can't do this anymore. I feel so disconnected. I feel like I'm living somebody else's life. And this cannot go on because that disconnect, that space between who you are becoming and who you used to be is so vast that it feels like you're literally living somebody else's life or at least it did to me. So I said, something's gotta give. I cannot live this way. I have to be more in tune with who I am now, this version of me after my brothers died.
with all that we've understood and all that we're going through. So I decided to hire a career coach and I will link that episode in the show notes if you've heard it. I talk about my transition from real estate to brief informed support. I got my certification to be a grief care specialist with Megan Devine. I have gone full force into the world of grief and creating space, creating content, creating groups. So I host a monthly virtual
I do one -on -one sessions. I'm looking to expand into in -person events and sessions, and it's just been an amazing transformation. And this is where I realized that grief can be an invitation to pivot. It can be an invitation to live a more aligned life when you're ready. And I decided to embrace this, and I decided to move forward with this reality with...
this energy that was obviously changing my life. So instead of fighting it, let me go with it and let me see where it's going to take me. So I approached it with curiosity and year four became the year that I said, okay, this is how life is going to be now. This is when the shock officially wore off. It was the year that felt quote unquote, right for me to start taking very intentional steps forward into my life.
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And with that, I released what no longer serves me. And that release was evident also. You could even see it reflected in my physical body, which is interesting because grief can cause so much inflammation. And once you release what no longer serves you, once you get to that place of acceptance, you are able to literally, the inflammation sort of goes away, right? That doesn't mean you don't pay the consequences of the inflammation. I've had to have some minor surgical procedure luckily that's been taken care of. But if you ever,
experience big changes in your physical body, any signs of inflammation and anything that is not normal, please, this is your sign to get that checked out, get that taken care of because the changes are very real and it's important that we stay on top of it. If we're here, I believe it's for a reason and we may as well honor that and take care of ourselves along the way. So personal, personal rant over there. And then finally, the fifth year is what I call the year of rebirth.
specifically because of the story I shared earlier in the episode about the Temazcal ceremony and this milestone birthday and the walking with intentionality. Now the cycle of the fifth year isn't fully closed by the time this episode is released. It'll still be about two months before the fifth year is complete so it could still hold surprises and something new can play out before the end. But I decided to do this now as a way to open season three of the podcast and
show my journey with grief over the last five years and also see how it compares to yours. How did you see yourself reflected in this journey? And if you're early on in your own grief journey, then I hope this gives you some hope. I know that some parts of it can sound very scary. The parts that affected me deeply, it doesn't mean that it has to affect you in the same way or at all. There are people who don't take as long as I did to quote unquote come back.
online, if you will. Some people go through the entire journey that I described within the first year or within the first couple of years or so, but it does take time. There is a element of allowing things to be. I was very intentional about allowing the space for grief to play out exactly as it needs to, even if everybody's telling me to let it go and move on and all the things that, you know, grievers are told. I learned to not take those comments personally. I learned...
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to let them go, that's a reflection of their opinions and their desire to see you go back to the person that they're comfortable with. I also realized that unless somebody has experienced a significant loss, they quite frankly don't know what they're talking about. People will say the darnest things. I also did an episode on that, so I'll link it in the show notes. Go back and revisit some of these past episodes. They talk about this experience and it was sort of documenting.
these very specific elements of the grief journey. Year five has been the year of rebirth. It's understanding that life is going to life. Life will life. Life will do what life does. And sometimes the outcome is not what we want. Sometimes it's extremely painful. Sometimes it's better than we expected. And all of it is okay. In the good times, remember this too shall pass. In the bad times, remember this too shall pass. So whether the good times or the bad times are here, just remember they both shall pass.
and that's okay. And so year five is embracing this reality, embracing that we only have this one wild and precious life. So what are we going to do with it? It took me five years to get here, four and a half years to get here. And I call this now the year of rebirth, the year of becoming and becoming as a verb. And I'm okay not being a final product. I'm okay saying, you know what? I am in a place of becoming. I'm in a place of unfolding, in a place of blooming, in a place of.
coming back to whatever is next and not having that fully defined is perfectly okay. It's also understanding that what people tell you as a reflection on them usually means that they haven't gone through what you've gone through and that's okay. They're not supposed to understand it this way. I went from feeling like everybody was so insensitive and rude to me to understanding that they just don't understand. They don't know what to say. It doesn't feel safe for them to respond and
In a way, that's okay. We can change that. That's part of why I created this podcast is to change that, to help people understand it from this side. But at the end of the day, not everybody's meant to be by your side in every journey that your life takes, and that's okay. And it's also feeling like I don't have to answer how many siblings I have because I don't have to.
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the capacity to manage other people's emotions versus just saying the reality. I had one sibling, he died, and understanding that it is not my job to manage other people's emotions. This was a huge one because sometimes we cover our truth because we feel like we have to manage other people's emotions. We don't want to put that on them, whatever that means. No, just if you feel like sharing your truth, it is what it is. Their reaction is their responsibility. And that's it. So,
I'll leave it here because I think that was a good walk in memory lane over the first five years. Obviously there is still so much more that went into this, but I wanted to open with a reflection and tell you what I've been up to and share what's next. So as far as what's next, I have so many beautiful conversations with grievers who have been walking their own journey in different aspects. We're also going to talk about grief and the non -death.
Related way so everyday grief or what I called little g grief So big g grief is death related grief and then little g grief is like everyday grief and what exactly that looks like what people are doing with their respective communities and what efforts organizations what experts are saying and how People manage grief in their own life. How do they integrate it? How they incorporate it and what things are coming out of it? How can we create a more grief -informed grief literate hopeful world?
through these stories. So join me on this journey. Season three has amazing guests and I am excited for you to be here growing with me. Please, please remember to subscribe to the YouTube channel because I will also be adding the video elements. So again, thank you for being here and I'll see you in the next episode. That's it for today's episode. Be sure to subscribe to the Grief and Light podcast. I'd also love to connect with you and hear your thoughts and your stories.
Feel free to share them with me via my Instagram page at griefandlight. Or you can also visit griefandlight .com for more information and updates. Thank you so much for being here, for being you, and always remember, you are not alone.