Guest: Imogen Carn

Finding Peace Within Our Grief: Sal & Im’s Tips for Good Mourning

In our ongoing pursuit of peace during the holidays, we’re tackling something this week that we might forget others are facing during the holidays (or perhaps we are trying to trudge through ourselves); grief.  Everyone’s grief journey is unique, but during a season where “joy” is being pushed 24/7, our grief can feel like it’s 10 times its normal size as we struggle to “show up” in the ways we usually do during the holidays. Our guests this week are here to remind us of several important things, including; it’s okay to grieve during the holidays, and it’s perfectly okay to take it slow, to pause, to rest. There’s no “right” way to grieve. 

And that’s why we’re grateful to have some return visitors to the show, the hosts of the Good Mourning Podcast – Sal and Im. Sally Douglas and Imogen Carn met in 2019 after their mothers suddenly passed away just months apart. Because of their shared grief experience, they met in a grief group and decided to launch a podcast together. They know that grief is intense. It hits you physically, emotionally, spiritually. And even during the holidays, during what should be happy moments. The community they’ve created around the topic of grieving brings people together during what can be a really lonely time and reminds them, they’re not alone. There are others out there who know exactly what you’re going through. And it’s okay to reach out, to seek help, and to take care of your mental health.

Sal and Im give us coping tools, show us how to establish boundaries when we’re grieving and also remind us; the pain does lessen over time. This is your journey, and you get to decide the pace. It’s not a race. It’s a process. So, take it one day at a time. You’re doing just fine.

Elephants in the Room Part 1: Grief on Your Terms with Sal & Im

Hey community, it’s a new year and it’s time to get uncomfortable. We have all spent the last few weeks relaxing and indulging and prepping for what we hope is a good year. If your families or friend groups are anything like ours, maybe some hard topics popped up over the holidays. That aunt that can’t help talking about politics, or maybe passive-aggressive grandma’s racist comments caused a stir. Instead of stuffing our faces full of another dinner roll and changing the topic, we’ve decided to embrace these topics head on—yes, we’re tackling those Elephants in the Room for a whole series. And for our first topic in the series we’re dealing with something that’s difficult when it’s happening and sometimes awkward for those around it–plus it affects every single one of us who has been on the planet for any significant amount of time. It’s grief. And you may say, “well grief is not something we should shy away from,” yet many of us do–or we don’t recognize that we are grieving, or we don’t know how to walk with or give space to someone who is grieving (or even carve out that care and space for ourselves). We have some good guides in this conversation; Sal and Im are the delightful hosts of The Good Mourning podcast, a show that talks about ways to work through grief and accept the changes grief brings into someone’s life. Brought together by the early deaths of their mothers in close proximity, Sal and Im began to examine how they both looked at grief and came away with all kinds of real life examples of how we tend to defer grief and push it down, how we shame ourselves for grieving too much or too long, and how we try to structure our grief to play out  in a linear way (when grief is just gonna do what it’s gonna do). They encourage us that it is possible to live fully while grieving, giving ourselves space and grace as individuals to let it run its needed course in our very own timing.