“From the Vault” - 5 Tangible Steps Someone Can Take to Finally Befriend Their Grief with Helen Fernald

“Where there is love, miracles occur naturally. Miracles are your inheritance in any given moment. A miracle is available to you when your heart is open. A Course in Miracles says you have a grievance or you can have a miracle – you cannot have both.” ~ Marianne Williamson

 Welcome to Exploring the Seasons of Life: Travel Edition! I’m Cindy MacMillan, your host and the founder of Pangea World Travel Agency.

This December, I’m beyond excited to take you on a little trip down memory lane! We’re unlocking the vault to bring you some of our earliest episodes—stories that dive into beginnings, endings, and all those beautiful, messy, life-changing moments in between.

Every Friday, we’ll revisit these gems, reflecting on the journeys that teach us, transform us, and connect us to something bigger.

So, grab your coffee (or your favorite travel mug), settle into your coziest chair, and let’s embark on this adventure together. 

5 Tangible Steps Someone Can Take to Finally Befriend Their Grief with Helen Fernald was originally released on May 3, 2023

 Guest Introduction: 

Welcome to another episode of Exploring the Seasons of Life, a podcast for women with a big heart on a spiritual journey. I’m your host Cindy MacMillan and I’m joined today by Helen Fernald.

Each week I interview spiritual explorers, amazing coaches, and authors from all walks of life about beginnings, endings and the messy bits in between because I believe every season is a beautiful opportunity for transformation.

In this episode of the podcast, we are chatting with Helen Fernald about 5 tangible steps someone can take to finally befriend their grief and her book LOVE, HELEN--Letters to My Mother: Creating a Loving Connection After Loss.

I am delighted to introduce my guest.

Helen Fernald is a grief recovery expert and author of the forthcoming book LOVE, HELEN--Letters to My Mother: Creating a Loving Connection After Loss. She specializes in teaching therapeutic letter writing.

All right, Helen, thank you very much for being with us.

Here’s a glimpse of our conversation:

3:21  But then when I really started to think about was how my book is actually about exploring the seasons of life. And I think unlike a linear timeline, my book is about exploring the seasons of the heart. So, it's how all those emotions, the joy, the sadness, everything gets all mixed together. And I think that's the beauty of life. And that's the beauty of the seasons of life.

7:13 I've reflected on this question a lot over my life, because I've had so many sudden losses in my life of the people that I really loved and I come from a family where we didn't deal with grief, we didn't deal with emotions. And I don't think I'm the only family from the only family that did that.

7:55 The first thing that I would recommend to people is that you just acknowledge your grief. I think that's the first step, acknowledging it. And then also giving yourself permission to feel it to actually grieve. I know that that can be so hard because I realized, after a number of years of not dealing with the grief around my mother, there was a part of me that was so afraid, I would never be able to stop crying that I didn't want to start cry.

8:37  The second step is absolutely to find someone to talk with. I personally would suggest a therapist, someone who really specializes in this, it could be a therapist, a doctor, a coach, there are grief groups I know. And even in our small town, we have a grief group. It could be a pastor, I first turned to my pastor, and then he connected with me with a therapist, and it was just so extraordinarily helpful.

9:24 Step number three is to find some sort of practice, some sort of practice where we can just learn to take a breath and be still. I think that we can't really turn into our grief until we can slow down enough to acknowledge it and to be able to talk about it.

14:38 The first thing I think for writing letters, is that it needs to be something that you want to do. It shouldn't be something that you feel oh my god, I have to sit down and write a letter, I have to do all this other stuff and I’ve got to have a letter, it should be something that you want to do.

16:57 This was the first letter that I wrote to my mother, my mother just to give you a little timeframe my mother died in July of 1992. And I did not start writing letters until 2008. So, this was my first letter and I entitled it Letters Through the Veil because I feel like for me from a spiritual sense our loved ones are always around us, but we just simply can't see them.

23:12 I also just wanted to mention that I never knew when, when this book would end, I had no idea I just kept writing and writing and the letters all sort of ended the same way. They all ended in with perhaps the exception of this one. They all were about Mom, please stay by my side, I still need you.

31:27 I think that it's when we actually stop and explore the seasons of our life. I think that there are miraculous things that can happen. Amazing things. And, and it's okay to be vulnerable. It's okay to be honest. We are who we are. And we are all gifts to the world. We are all lights to the world. And I think that those are, I know that's a little more than what you asked. But that's what that's that would be for me the biggest takeaway.

You can find Helen Fernald at:

 Website Instagram

That brings us to the end of this episode! Thank you Helen for joining us and as always, thanks for listening to Exploring the Seasons of Life podcast.