self-love after loss (grief & healing tips)

Welcome to the small steps to self-love podcast! Today, Shelby has special guest Liz Newman on to talk about grief and healing. They share practical tips for navigating grief, the healing journey, processing grief and more. If you are grieving you are not alone. The holidays can be a tricky time to venture through without your loved one with you. I hope this episode brings you comfort!

ABOUT LIZ NEWMAN:
Liz Newman is a poet who writes primarily about grief, faith, and mental health. Her most recent book is a grief poetry collection called “I Look to the Mourning Sky” which won the 2022 Readers’ Favorite Bronze Medal in the Inspirational Poetry category. Her work has been featured on Her View From Home, Read Poetry, Love What Matters, The Mighty, Calla Press, and Be Still Magazine. They have also appeared in the London Underground.

She believes in the power of words to comfort, connect, and bring hope. Her recent journey through grief has been a humbling reminder of how desperately we need grace and each other. She writes with the hope that her words can meet people right where they are and make them feel seen in their own difficult seasons.

IG @liz_newman_writer_
TikTok @liznewmanwriter
Her book

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ABOUT SHELBY LEIGH:
Shelby is a mental health author, who has grown an audience of more than 500,000 on social media who resonate with her work. Her bestselling book, changing with the tides, is a poetry collection about self-love, doubt, insecurities, and more. Her new collection, girl made of glass, is coming in January 2023 and is a collection about self-love, isolation, and fear. Shelby also edits poetry, runs an online poetry community, and helps authors market themselves and their books for more sales.

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Transcript

Shelby: 

Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of Small Steps to Self-Love. My name is Shelby Leigh. I am a mental health writer and today I am joined by Elizabeth Newman who is a wonderfully talented poet who writes a lot about grief and healing from that. So I'm really excited to talk with her today. I believe we met through probably Instagram and Liz has joined the Poetry Club, which is really fun to get to know you better there. And yeah, I think we just have connected through the poetry community on Instagram, so I'm really excited to chat with you further, learn more about your work and talk about grief and healing, which I think is a really important topic, so I'll pass it over to you to tell us more about yourself and anything you want to share. 

Elizabeth: 

Great, well first of all, thank you for having me Shelby. I'm really excited and the poetry club is so cool. So any poets or writers should definitely join us over there, but my name is Liz Newman and I have been writing in the online space since about 2016. I started primarily with blogging and it has since morphed more into a focus on poetry and even more so, my writing has really taken on the focus of grief in the past year or so since the passing of my father in January of 2021, so it's been really cool to kind of see. I know you can relate to Shelby how your work just changes over time with the different things that have been placed on your heart and the different messages, but it's been really cool to be in this online space and to share my writing in these platforms. 

Shelby: 

Yeah, that's wonderful. I'm sorry for your loss by the way, I always find you know talking with other writers like it finds us at the right time and you were writing from before that too. But then you were able to start writing about grief and hopefully that has helped you. Can you talk a little bit about how maybe writing or writing poetry about grief has helped you? 

Elizabeth: 

So when it first happened like we talked about, I had been writing poetry before that, and then when it happened, as loss usually does, it just knocked me off of my feet and just shattered all the illusions I had of what the future looked like of what my life looked like. And I had a friend very early on that really lovingly said that she thought that poetry and writing would be one of my biggest tools that I would use as I was processing my grief and she was really spot on. And in those early days it wasn't even - I always tell people it wasn't a book that I ever planned on writing, it was just something that poured out of that experience. These emotions and experiences that I was having, they had nowhere to go and poetry was the outlet. I just wrote most of them in the notes section of my phone and it really became like a grief chronicle and the cool thing about having it on the phone as I like to write pen to paper, but having it on the phone was cool because you could see the time stamps from the different days that the poems were written. So it was genuinely like the acute days of grief you could see some of the poems from that part and as I journeyed on there were more and more poems that were just kind of walking through what the journey has been like for me and how things have changed and evolved. And it's really special to be able to look back and see what it felt like at the very beginning versus what it feels like now and how it's just constantly changing. 

Shelby: 

Yeah, that's really, really interesting. Did you find yourself sitting down to write on your phone and things would come to you? Or did you kind of go throughout the day and as things came to your mind, you would jot them down on your phone. 

Elizabeth: 

I think it was more so in the moment as it would come to me. I would just pour it out and some of the poems I think every writer has like their file that doesn't see the light of day you know that they're very raw ones, the very like acute ones. Some of them will only ever be for me, but I think that's the beauty of writing. It can be shared or it can be extremely personal and just for you, but every piece of writing can serve a different purpose. Every bit of it was so helpful and so healing. 

Shelby: 

Yeah, definitely. I definitely have that file myself, but may or may not ever see the light of day but it's there. Yeah, speaking of sharing, could we hear one of your poems? I know you had selected maybe a couple from your book to share? 

Elizabeth: 

Yes, absolutely. So the first one I'd love to share is a poem that's called the visitor. And it is just about when grief comes to meet you along your journey. When grief first came knocking, I thought I had two choices. I could lock the door, close the blinds, activate alarms, and shut it out, but I still lived in fear of its intrusion, of it finding a way around my security systems. Around my defenses. Or I could invite it over for morning coffee, I would set the terms block out the time. I would get my house in order and sit beside it, let it say its peace and send it away as quickly as possible. But grief doesn't care much for schedules or facades. An unexpected visitor who comes and goes as it pleases. So now I'm learning another way. When grief comes to visit, I leave the door unlocked. Sometimes it frantically storms in, sometimes it taps quietly on the door waiting for a response. But I'm learning to let it in, to sit with it, to see it and feel it. So now when grief knocks, I let it in. I let it in. 

Shelby: 

Beautiful. So good, I find whenever I write poems that personify a certain feeling, it's because it really does feel like it's there with me like it is a being that is like there with me and do you feel the same way? Is that kind of what led you to writing a poem like that? 

Elizabeth: 

Oh absolutely, it just becomes this constant in your life once you've experienced the loss, especially, and it may change over time, but I think that imagery can be such a helpful therapeutic tool not only for the writer but also for the reader. Because it can be hard to name what you're feeling or what you're experiencing, and the imagery of that poem, especially, I just think really helped explain what it's been like for me personally, and for a lot of other people, it's just something that, like you said, it just feels like it's there with you and it really feels like its own entity and its own being. And it's just demanding attention or acknowledgement. 

Shelby: 

Right, yeah, that's so interesting. How have you felt that your relationship with grief with that entity has changed over time and maybe impacted your view of yourself or your self-love? 

Elizabeth: 

It's so interesting because it's one of those things that you'll never fully understand until you're experiencing it for yourself, and even then there are different ways that you would react and interact with grief depending on what the losses are. It can be different depending on who you've lost. It can be different with different relationships. And I think everyone experiences losses along the way, whether it's loss of a loved one, loss of expectations of what you thought your life would look like, loss of just about anything, because we're human beings, and there are going to be disappointments in so many different aspects of our life. And I think that that has been something that I've been learning to process because that's one of the biggest things is that it's something that needs to be felt and experienced, and it's something that's constantly changing and evolving, and I think for a lot of people, they have certain expectations for themselves like they should be through it or over it by X amount of time, but things like this are just not on a timeline and it's not something that there can be prescribed stages or anything like that. It's something that you have to tread very gently. 

You have to give yourself a lot of grace on this journey and allow it to evolve and be different and there will be a time when it's very acute and very painful and all consuming. You need to be able to allow yourself to feel that and to journey through that and there will be some times when it might be a little bit more static in the background. You might feel joy and love and all the things you never thought would be possible to feel again and just the living and the tension is such a big part of grieving and allowing yourself to feel all the things that you need to feel and not compare it to what someone else's journey looks like because I think that we can be guilty of doing that as well. We compare ourselves to what we think other people's journey would look like or what other people might expect us to be experiencing, and it's just something we need to allow ourselves to adapt to as it demands different things from us every day. 

Shelby 

Yeah, all such good advice to not compare yourself to other people's timelines or journeys and let yourself feel and let yourself feel for as long as you need to heal. Yeah, that's really, really good advice. What are some ways that you would recommend that our listeners can help to move forward in their grieving process or their healing process? 

Elizabeth: 

Yes, well, I think one of the things that you hear a lot is that time heals all wounds, and I think that time can be very helpful, but it's something that's going to be with you for as long as you live, especially with loss of a loved one, because the love will be there forever, so the grief will be there forever. Grief can be tricky because it can come up in happy times, it can come up in sad times, anniversaries, milestones. All these big things that you expected would have that person in it. The memories that you thought would include them, and it just involves allowing yourself to grieve those little things along the way, and even grieving the difference in the person that you are. Because sometimes when we lose someone so much of the relationship that we had that role that we filled with that person, it's just not there in the same way, so we have to learn different ways to carry that love forward with us. So I think that one of the biggest things I'm learning is just to allow it to be what it is from day-to-day and even from moment to moment and some days you might not be able to do your normal routine.  

And I remember I was talking to my mom near the beginning and I was just not able to do my normal schedule one day and I was just telling her that I felt like such a failure and felt stuck and she said honey sometimes you can't do normal when your heart is broken and I thought that was such a beautiful insight on her part and some days you can't do normal when your heart is broken. You can't always have the same demands put on your heart when you're grieving or when you're hurting, and rest is so vital and just allowing yourself to feel the things that you need to process. And it's not a step backwards. I think that so many people think that it's supposed to be this linear kind of journey, and it's not. You might have a string of great days and then an impossibly hard day where you can barely get out of bed. And that doesn't mean that you're taking a step backwards or you're not processing. It's just the nature of the situation. Your heart has never been through this before, and it's trying to learn how to carry a love forward that's not presenting in your life in the same way. So I think just being very gracious with yourself if you're the one grieving. And then if you're walking alongside someone that's grieving, I think the power of presence is key. They just need people to come alongside, and you need to see the grieving person. That's what the grieving person needs the most is to feel seen and to feel heard and to feel like they have a safe space to say the things that they're feeling and experiencing. And that's hard, especially for the person walking alongside someone grieving. It's really uncomfortable to sit with someone in their pain and not have that knee jerk reaction to fix it or rush it or get through. But because that's just not a reality with grief, you can't rush through it or get through it. So it takes a lot of courage on the person that's coming alongside the griever as well to sit there with them and to know that they're not going to be able to fix it, but they get to bear witness to this really raw moment and they get to be there and just be a safe space for someone to feel the things that they need to feel. So the power of presence is just huge and not to be afraid to walk alongside that person and let them feel the things they need to because we all just need each other so desperately.  

And that's the other big thing that I've learned along this journey is 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. And so much of grief is lonely and isolating and if we can bring that into the light, it just makes such a big difference, because it's still going to hurt and it's still going to be scary. But when things are brought into the light and into the open, we can fight them together. We can get the tools that we need to heal and to process, and it's just so much better when we can let someone in and really see what we're feeling. 

Shelby: 

Oh my gosh, such a beautiful answer the whole time you were talking. I'm like over here nodding. That quote from your mom had me choked up because that's just so profound and true. We put so much pressure on ourselves to get back to normal whatever normal is. When that's not true, and that's not really the goal. We're trying to heal, and we're trying to grieve that person, but they're gone, so it's not going to go back to you know how it was before. And we have to kind of heal through that and process that. And yeah, and such a good reminder too, just to be present for someone, I think that's another thing that I put pressure on myself of like what do I say? What's the right thing to do? And just being present in that person's life and showing them support and love is really impactful on its own, so I think that's a really great reminder. 

Elizabeth: 

And I just want to encourage people, because I've thought about this a lot especially in light of my own loss. I have totally been the person that didn't want to bring it up to someone. I always thought, oh maybe they're having a good day. I don't want to bring them down. I don't want to say the wrong thing. I don't want to do the wrong thing. But at least in my experience, I think an attempt at reaching out will always be better than saying nothing and just that presence is going to matter so much, because grief, especially, is such a lonely thing, and the more often that they feel like someone is coming alongside them and reaching out, the better. 

Shelby: 

Absolutely yeah, that's wonderful advice. Could we have you read another poem on this topic? I know you have just a book full of poems from your journey and they're all so, so beautiful. So I would love to hear more. 

Elizabeth: 

This actually ties really well into what we were just talking about, so this one is called They’ll See You. 

They'll see you as the weeks turn into months and the world continues to turn, you may feel hopelessly stuck in the spot where grief greeted you. Others move forward. The world moves forward, but you feel motionless, hopeless, directionless because of what you've gone through. And I know you feel lonely here. I know you feel so alone. I've been there too. But one day when you're ready, you'll take a step forward too, but on the days when you're not, other hurting hearts can come and meet you. There are others who will wait with you, who will hurt with you. There are others who can say I've been there too and they'll see you. They'll see you. 

Shelby: 

Oh beautiful, that does tie in very well with the community and support we were just talking about. That's perfect. Thank you so much for sharing and tell everyone the name of your book again and where they can find it! 

Elizabeth: 

Oh yes, my book is called I look to the mourning sky. And it's a book of poems and writing prompts for the grieving heart, and it is currently only available on Amazon, but it is available in paperback and Kindle versions. 

Shelby: 

Awesome, wonderful and you may know if you've listened before and other people who listen weekly that I always give my listeners a small step to take with them on their self-love journey. And so, since your book has prompts, I feel like sharing a prompt would be perfect for this week’s small step. So is there a prompt that you'd like to give our listeners this week? 

Elizabeth: 

Yes, I get so excited about writing prompts because I think it's so fun. It's just when you love something you want to share it so desperately with other people. So writing prompts feel like a great opportunity to do that anyway. OK, so this prompt is called 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. So then I included a 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? 

Shelby:

Wow, very nice. I would definitely do this this prompt. Wonderful thank you. I hope everyone can take a few moments to jot down their thoughts for that prompt and see how it goes for you. Thank you so much for sharing that and thank you for being here and opening up about grief and chatting with us about healing and your experience with that. I really appreciate it. Where can people find you if they want to connect with you in your poetry after listening to this episode?

Elizabeth: 

Yes, I am on Facebook. I had to jot them down because I can never remember. Liz Newman on Facebook. Liz_Newman_Writer on Instagram, and then Liz Newman_writer on Tiktok. And I must say that I am on Tiktok because of Shelby. I’m trying to learn the ropes over there, it’s a lot of fun on there. 

Shelby: 

Awesome everyone go follow Liz on Tiktok. I will put the links in the description as well to your book and to all of her socials and everything. So thank you again for being here. This was really wonderful. Anything you'd like to add before we close for the day? 

Elizabeth: 

Thank you for having me. It's been so fun and I just want to say to anyone grieving that I'm so sorry for the loss that you have to carry now and that the things that you're feeling are normal and that it's not a linear process. It's just something that you learn to carry day-to-day, but there is a big community of people that are hurting alongside you and that want to walk alongside you. And you don't have to journey alone. So I just always want to encourage people that you're not alone, no matter how isolating it feels right now you are not alone. 

Shelby: 

Beautiful message, thank you Liz. All right everyone. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you have a wonderful week filled with self-compassion and love and kindness and I'll see you next week.