self-love after loss
grief & healing tips with liz newman
I was joined by special guest Liz Newman for this episode of the self-love podcast, small steps to self-love. Liz is a poet who writes about grief, faith, and mental health. We discussed her recent poetry book release, a collection titled “I Look to the Mourning Sky”, and how to navigate grief and the healing process. The holidays can be a tricky time to venture through without your loved one with you. If you are grieving you are not alone.
this episode
Liz explained that she had been writing poetry for many years but turned to it as an outlet after the loss of a loved one, as many of us do. She wrote many poems in the “notes” section on her phone and mentioned that having timestamps of when she wrote the poems showed her grieving and healing process and how it changed over time, an interesting way to see how her poetry changed and evolved over this period of time.
We discussed that imagery in poetry can be especially therapeutic, not only for the writer but for the reader as well, and when grief and other emotions are personified in poetry, it creates the feeling of the emotion being there beside you as an entity of its own, how it often feels when working through these difficult emotions.
Liz reminds that grief is “something that needs to be felt and experienced, and it's something that's constantly changing and evolving.” She goes on to explain that grief is something we have to work through in our own time, there is no timeline of expectations to how the grieving process should look and we have to be gentle with ourselves. When asked about advice for those on their own healing journey, Liz said the biggest thing is learning to allow it to be what it is from day-to-day and that some days you might not be able to do your normal routine, and that is okay. She quoted something her mother told her that really stood out to me as well, an important reminder to help us through the tough days: “sometimes you can't do normal when your heart is broken.”
Another key point we discussed was the importance of community, and how important it is to surround ourselves with people for support, and be there for others as well when they need it, both in-person when able and through our art.
“We need community, we need each other. We need art. We need to feel like other people have experienced the things that we've felt and that we're just we're not alone on this isolating path of loss or grief, or hurting, and I think that's the beautiful thing about poetry especially is that it just gives voice. It gives people the words that they were looking for, that they didn't even know that they were feeling.”
Small step
Every episode, I give you a small step that you can take on your self-love journey. In Liz’ poetry book, she includes prompts that readers can use in their own healing journey, so I thought it would be perfect to use one as our small step!
Heart Check
How is your heart today? Allow yourself to reflect on the way you're feeling, the emotions you're experiencing. This can be a daily prompt for journaling and processing, tough emotions, or it can serve as the first step to putting pen to paper for a poem.
TIP! Like a home inspection, imagine that you're doing a heart inspection. What do you notice as you look around? What is the condition of your heart? In what ways could it use tender love and care? Is anything not as it seems? What do you hope people would notice if they were to look closely? What do you hope no one else notices?
where to listen
tune into the episode for more tips on dealing with grief, and to hear Liz read two poems from her collection. you can tune in on your favorite podcast site or by clicking one of the buttons below!
i hope this episode brings you some comfort if you are currently grieving and on your own healing journey. remember to be gentle with yourself and give yourself grace. healing is not linear.
thank you for tuning into another episode of the small steps to self-love podcast, i hope you have a great week full of kindness and compassion!