What Is Your Grief Story? | An Excerpt From My Book

In the quiet moments of reflection, we often find ourselves face-to-face with our deepest losses. Join me today as I embark on a unique episode of "Grieving Voices," where I read an excerpt from my  self-published book, "The Guided Heart: Moving Through Grief and Finding Spiritual Solace." Let's discover how my own experiences with loss from a young age have unknowingly mirrored the language of grief recovery even before I formally encountered it.

In this heartfelt session, I explore:

• The personal impact of losing my father at eight years old.
• How grief manifested in different aspects of my life.
• The therapeutic power of journaling during my high school years.
• Insights into emotional unavailability and its effects on family dynamics.

In this episode, I also draw connections between the content in my book written before learning about grief recovery methods and the concepts found within them. I share thoughts on letting go, acknowledging pain points, and coping mechanisms that can span decades.

Grief isn't selective; it touches all corners of life, including relationships, careers, finances, and more. The way we cope can either mend or strain our emotional health. My story is not unique – it echoes many others’ struggles with life after loss.

Reflect on your path by following along in an exercise I propose—writing down your feelings to confront the emotional weight you carry. It’s not just cathartic; it’s a step toward understanding and clarity.

As we continue exploring various dimensions of grief throughout future episodes of "Grieving Voices," remember that each person’s path toward healing is unique. Whether through reconnecting with faith or finding solace within oneself after experiencing profound losses—as I did—the goal remains constant: acknowledging our pain so that we may embrace life more fully and presently.

RESOURCES:

• My Book, The Guided Heart: Moving Through Grief & Finding Spiritual Solace
• Book | The Grief Recovery Handbook
• Do Grief Differently™️

Episode Sponsor: Magic Mind | Use the code "GRIEVINGVOICES" to receive 20% off

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NEED HELP?

• National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
• Crisis

Chapters

• 14:15 Midroll

Transcript

Victoria Volk
00:00:00 - 00:00:41
Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, whatever time it is that you are listening to this. Thank you for being here. I'm your host, Victoria V, and this is episode 180 of grieving voices.  And I decided to do something different for an episode and read an excerpt from my book, The Guided Heart, Moving Through Grief and Finding Spiritual Solace, which I self-published in 2017., And I just picked up the book off of my shelf and flipped it open to its Part 2, chapter 1.

Victoria Volk
00:00:42 - 00:01:22
And, I started reading, and to be truth be told, I have not read my book since I've self-published it. So it's been quite a few years. But in reading this chapter, I realized that there were a lot of things I share in it that actually is the language of grief recovery. And so before I even discovered grief recovery, this book was written, and it's like I had this knowing about grief, I mean, I grew up with it. Right?

Victoria Volk
00:01:22 - 00:02:43
Like, I grew up with grief from a very young age, and just in reading about my experience of my different grief experiences, I just could pinpoint this language that we use in grief recovery, and I just find that interesting because for someone who felt like they were doing okay or that they felt like they didn't need help, which was me very much so for many years. I still had this understanding of it, and yet so I think back now in hindsight, it's like why couldn't I figure why couldn't I figure out that it wasn't me that was messed up? Like, it wasn't my fault that I felt messed up or that something was wrong with me. It was it was grief. And, yeah, and the grace that I sent to myself back then just reading this.

Victoria Volk
00:02:46 - 00:03:24
Anyway, you'll get what I'm saying when I read this, but, I would also encourage you to read the grief recovery handbook, and I'll put a link to that in the show notes. And then you'll really understand what it is I'm talking about here in drawing the connection between what I will have learned 2 years after publishing this book. And yet, that language is still in this book. And so I knew grief and understood grief better than I thought I did. I guess that's the point I'm trying to make.

Victoria Volk
00:03:26 - 00:03:50
Anyway, I digress. Let me get on with this week's episode and reading an excerpt from my book, which is not on Audible, but perhaps maybe I should just sit down and record reading my book, and so that it is. Anyway, let's get started. And I'm mistaken. It's actually part 1.

Victoria Volk
00:03:51 - 00:04:08
We all have a story. Chapter 1. What is your grief story? Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well. It's a quote by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Victoria Volk
00:04:10 - 00:04:39
She doesn't understand anyway, I heard someone say, talking about me as if I wasn't even there. March 31, 1987 is the anniversary of my father's death. On July 30th that year, he would have turned 45 years old. He spent the last 2 years of his life, after having been given only 6 months to live, fighting a battle he knew he wouldn't win. The doctors said there was nothing they could do.

Victoria Volk
00:04:39 - 00:05:16
The cancer had spread to surrounding tissues and organs. Colon cancer took my father away, and my mother became a widow at 43 years old. Being left to raise 2 children still living at home, myself, age 8, and my brother, 14 at the time. I'm not sure any woman in her position or any woman who has been in her position would know what to do, how to do it, or how to navigate raising grieving children while grieving themselves. It was impossible for me to understand then the profound effect my father's death would have on me.

Victoria Volk
00:05:16 - 00:05:39
By the time I was 10 years old, I would begin to grasp exactly that. 2 years after the death of my father, my mother remarried. The new man in her life was a long-haul trucker and was home typically every other weekend. Theirs was a tumultuous relationship. There are many disputes during their 9-year marriage, and it ultimately ended in divorce.

Victoria Volk
00:05:40 - 00:06:14
I learned during that time and from the time of my father's death that my mother was emotionally incapable of being there for both my brother and myself. I grew up quickly, as did my brother. I wasn't wasn't a child who lashed out or got into mischief. Rather, I was the wallflower, the introvert, the shy girl in the corner who spoke up when spoken to. And honestly, to this day, I'm not quite sure how I managed my grief as a young girl, particularly in elementary school, other than stuffing it all down.

Victoria Volk
00:06:16 - 00:06:41
My mother did not know what to do for my brother or myself. There was no grief counseling. And for reasons still unclear to this day, my father's family ceased to exist in my life following the funeral. So from a young age, my family was my immediate family, as well as some family on my mother's side, quite small in comparison to what I would later marry into in adulthood. Learning to cope.

Victoria Volk
00:06:42 - 00:07:12
It wasn't until journaling was a requirement for English class in high school that I started to express my feelings. I wrote poetry, started journaling for myself in addition to journaling for class. And for the first time, I began to feel some of what I stuffed down for so many years. During this period in my life, there were several occasions where I lashed out at my mother, often out of frustration that had built up within me over the years. I don't know if my mother knew how to be there for me.

Victoria Volk
00:07:12 - 00:07:38
She couldn't emotionally care for herself. I detached myself as much as I could. Being a teenager is hard enough, but being a female teenager of an emotionally trapped mother is even harder. Therefore, we never developed a mother daughter bond that I would have loved to have shared with her. I think she realized the daughter who had taken emotional care of her all those years was eventually leaving too.

Victoria Volk
00:07:39 - 00:08:01
My childhood is where my grief story began. However, it's certainly not where it ended. There would be several more lessons to follow in my life. I believe there are different faces grief presents during our lives, and often, it presents itself in ways you least expect. The faces of grief.

Victoria Volk
00:08:03 - 00:08:41
On some level, I still grieve for the normal childhood I could have had had my father's untimely death not happened, but in reality, I'll never know what that other life would have been. So it's not the not knowing, not getting the chance that I would come to deal with years later as well. I grieve for all the moments in my life my dad was never a part of, protecting me as fathers do, walking me down the aisle, seeing and knowing his grandchildren, and, likewise, my children knowing their grandfather. These are the things I still grieve for grief, in my opinion, never leaves.

Victoria Volk
00:08:41 - 00:09:16
It is not something to get over. It is something to sit with, work through, and live with, just in a different way as the years go on.  At some point in life, all of us experience grief, whether it be losing someone we love, a divorce, a devastating financial loss, loss of career, even infertility, all cause some form of emotional pain. How we cope with it can mean months or even years, maybe even decades of loss of well-being. That to me is tragic.

Victoria Volk
00:09:17 - 00:09:44
When we remain emotionally paralyzed, we do ourselves, those still in our lives, our communities, in our world, a disservice. Through my life, I can pinpoint at least 9 pain points where I experienced a feeling of loss. Many have to do with the death due to illness. However, not all. I have grieved lost opportunity, not knowing my father's family or having a relationship with them.

Victoria Volk
00:09:45 - 00:10:15
Lost time with my kids because in my previous business, I was driven to prove something as well as a loss of friendships and relationships. No matter how grief appears in your life, it's sure to make you feel as though you're no longer in control. You may become aware of your own mortality, which can cause self-reflection. When we self-reflect, we often realize our shortcomings or focus on the negative. It is being faced with uncomfortable feelings that arise from grief that shake us.

Victoria Volk
00:10:16 - 00:10:32
Often, we just don't know what to do with those feelings. At least I know my mother didn't.  As a result, neither did I.  And so this dynamic played out for decades. Your grief story.

Victoria Volk
00:10:34 - 00:11:08
What is your grief story? If you haven't experience the loss of a loved one, which I presume is why you picked up this book and decided to turn its pages, but rather experience the loss of love, career, or even health, these are still losses that cause some level of grief. Have you considered all that has been handed your way in life that has caused you emotional pain in some way? What are those moments that have stuck with you, which have given you a lingering feeling of loss. Maybe it wasn't what was, but what could have been?

Victoria Volk
00:11:10 - 00:12:17
I don't think there is a person out there who hasn't experienced any form of grief. As a parent myself, I cannot even fathom the helplessness and hopelessness my dad must have felt and the thoughts that ran through his mind when he received his diagnosis. To know that you won't be around to watch your children grow, that you will never see your grandchildren or witness your kids get married, all of the hopes and dreams of living a life, a full life with your spouse are shattered in one sentence spoken by a doctor sitting across from you in a sterile and personal office. It's easy to think of my grief, but it deepens my sadness when I acknowledge what my father must have experienced, sometimes just trying to place ourselves in the shoes of another changes our perspective. In my case, I am humbled when I think of the strength my father showed out showed all of us, the fight within him to hang on for just one more day, month and ultimately, 2 more years.

Victoria Volk
00:12:18 - 00:13:09
My grief consumed me for many years. I will touch on certain aspects of what I mean as the chapters progress. For now, the first three chapters will focus on grief itself from a spiritual perspective, the ways it can present itself in our lives and a preface of getting it resolved., Before we move forward talking about a spiritual journey with grief in the excerpt of my book, I just want to share, The sponsor of this week's episode, which is Magic Mind. And one of the ingredients in Magic Mind is cordyceps mushrooms, which is an adaptogen that reduces inflammation, strengthens your immune system, and supports higher energy levels and physical endurance by ramping up the production of ATP in your mitochondria.

Victoria Volk
00:13:10 - 00:13:51
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Victoria Volk
00:13:52 - 00:14:22
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Victoria Volk
00:14:22 - 00:15:06
And, again, I've been using this for several months now, and it really does help me get stuff done because I feel a sense of calm even if I feel overwhelmed by everything that I need to get accomplished in a day. This stuff helps me just I don't know. It's these ingredients just help me calm my nervous system and get me into a state of focus. And I think as grievers and, you know, life throws challenges our way and, you know, curve balls and things, like anything that can help support us, not only to get stuff done, but also our immune system. Right?

Victoria Volk
00:15:06 - 00:15:24
So that we can feel good too and maintain our health and wellness. And so check it out. Grieving voices is the coupon code. Magicmind.com slash grieving voices is the website and I will put a link to that in the show notes. Alright.

Victoria Volk
00:15:24 - 00:15:47
Let's get back to the excerpt from my book. A spiritual journey with grief. I think it is important I make it abundantly clear that I'm coming from a spiritual place in my heart. I do not wish to stuff my beliefs down your throat as much as I don't want judgment past for feeling the way I do. All of us have a unique spiritual path we follow.

Victoria Volk
00:15:48 - 00:16:08
Mine has certainly been full of twists and turns before my father's passing, we were a typical Lutheran family, attending church every Sunday as well as Sunday school. After my dad's death, however, all of that changed. We stopped going to church altogether. I did attend confirmation classes and was confirmed Lutheran.

Victoria Volk
00:16:08 - 00:16:31
However, it would either have to be a funeral or a wedding for me to set foot in a church of any kind until I was 23 when my husband and I began a relationship. I was bitter for many years. Granted, I had a lot of years to be bitter. Fortunately, life worked out for me the way it did as I prayed, received. And, really, it's as simple as that.

Victoria Volk
00:16:32 - 00:16:56
After many years of not having the ability to pray from the heart, life had finally handed me more grief than I could bear. Feeling tapped out emotionally and overwhelmed, I prayed because I simply did not know what else to do. The rest is history, so to speak., Everything changed moving forward. Before my husband came into my life as more than a friend, I was on a self-destructive path.

Victoria Volk
00:16:57 - 00:17:21
I was becoming an expert at goodbyes, and I led a very narcissistic lifestyle. I don't know what my husband saw in me, honestly. At that point, we had known each other for 7 years since we met in high school, but he was a far better human being than I was, bar none. It was one more experience with grief when I was 21. That was, in simple terms, the straw that broke the camel's back.

Victoria Volk
00:17:22 - 00:17:54
A 5 year relationship was over, as was the life I thought we were going to have. Later, this loss would prove to be a blessing in disguise, which, as my life illustrates, can be the case at times., Surely, when it comes to relationship, you may relate as well. Sometimes we just don't understand what it is that is best for us. Our minds tell us one thing, while our hearts and intuition tell us another, and we tend to choose the path of least resistance and pain.

Victoria Volk
00:17:54 - 00:18:19
It's also difficult to discern the best decision when you are caught up in emotion. We tend to check rationality at the door when we have a grandiose view of ourselves, the world, and those we perch up on pedestals. My self-worth was nonexistent. Thankfully, God showed me a better way. More on my spiritual journey with grief in detail in chapter 3.

Victoria Volk
00:18:19 - 00:18:45
In the meantime, know that for me, a higher power seemed like a very out of reach concept for me. Acknowledgment of all that had gone wrong and all that had gone right. This was the first baby step on my journey to resolving my grief. Steps towards resolving grief. As I've previously mentioned, grief has many faces.

Victoria Volk
00:18:46 - 00:19:16
I touched on a few ways. I've experienced different forms of grief different forms of it myself. For instance, losing my photography business after 6 Sears was one of the most difficult decisions I had I have made. I know how much of myself I poured into creating and maintaining my business all those years. The time, money, sweat equity, not to mention the sleep deprivation while raising 3 young children ages 4 and under at the time, it certainly was a labor of love.

Victoria Volk
00:19:17 - 00:19:45
I grieved for months leading up to my decision as I knew it was what needed to be done at that stage in my life. I continued to wallow in my sadness until I finally decided to make it official with the selling of most of my gear over a year later. I found the act of officially letting go the hardest part. Isn't that what grief ultimately causes us to do? Let go of what was and what will never be again.

Victoria Volk
00:19:47 - 00:20:11
Isn't that too what grief itself is? The emotional reaction to loss or a change of any kind. We fight to hold on, and we fight to let go. That is the dilemma of grief, isn't it? What I would like you to do is think of a moment in your life that caused you to have an emotional reaction to loss or a change of any kind.

Victoria Volk
00:20:12 - 00:20:47
Close this book and reflect on the feelings that arise when your mind takes you back to a time such as this in your life. Go ahead and open these pages again when ready. Now, if you want to feel more strongly the impact that loss or change had on you, grab a notebook, a writing utensil, and head to a quiet space, or do this exercise as soon as it is convenient. Set a timer for 30 minutes and just write. If you're stumped on where to begin, finish this sentence.

Victoria Volk
00:20:49 - 00:21:42
The loss of blank made me feel as though blank. One thing to consider before doing this is to understand my intention, which is having you write out, possibly for the first time, your feelings surrounding the event that has shaken you to your core. When we release our feelings on paper, and I speak from personal experience, they tend to have less power over us, especially if we're in a place of not knowing who we can truly talk to. The act of writing our fears, worries, and emotional pain forces us to sit with those feelings and can be very therapeutic. I wholeheartedly believe that writing for our personal well-being is the cheapest therapy one can find, but I know few, even in my own life, who practice this.

Victoria Volk
00:21:45 - 00:21:56
How did that feel? Pretty raw, I imagine. It's painful to reflect in our pains. I get that. Truly, this is an exercise in acknowledgment.

Victoria Volk
00:21:57 - 00:22:41
Taking inventory of the emotional baggage weighing us down day in and day out gives us a clearer picture of where we are emotionally right now. This inevitably aids you in figuring out where you would rather be. And that my friends concludes the excerpt from my book, and if you would like to read more or learn more, you can head to my website, the unleashedheart.com., There is a link to it in the show notes, and I'll also link to the book on Amazon there as well. And if you find as you go through that little exercise towards the end of this episode that you're not okay, which is okay, by the way.

Victoria Volk
00:22:42 - 00:23:22
But if you're not okay, and you know you want to be for the long term, there is support, and I hope that if this is your first time listening to my podcast, that maybe you're learning about what I can offer for the first time and so there is a service that I offer. There's a program. It's called Do Grief Differently. We walk through 2 emotionally difficult challenging relationships of your life, and it's a 12-week program. And I tell you what, you will learn more about yourself and about grief because it is as very much an educational program as it is a therapeutic one.

Victoria Volk
00:23:22 - 00:24:02
Even though it's not therapy, it's very therapeutic. But I'm there with you, guiding you and facilitating the deep work that so many people talk about, like, you just have to do the work. This is the work. And just it's my job to create a safe space for you to release and to let go and to move forward with a different perspective, with new knowledge, new tools that you carry with you for the rest of your life. And so if that resonates with you, I encourage you to check out my website.

Victoria Volk
00:24:02 - 00:24:36
Again, the link will be in the show notes, and I'll also link to Do Grief Differently in the show notes as well. So thank you so much for your time and listening today. I hope this, resonated with something in your heart and that little exercise helped bring to light, something that's lingering within you. That's just really wanting to come out, and know that there is support. You're not alone, and there is hope.

Victoria Volk
00:24:37 - 00:24:43
And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.