This Living Out Love Podcast episode is the first of its kind for Season 2. This expert interview explores how to handle grief and loss with a special guest, Cindy Cline. Listeners will gain insight into dealing with their losses while learning coping methods, such as seeking help from self-support communities and professional counseling when needed. Cindy also shares her personal story about navigating the pain of losing her sister while emphasizing the importance of tenderness towards oneself. Plus, she discusses Unity Houston's Journey Through Grief support group and Survivors of Suicide meeting for anyone in need. Tune into this empowering conversation for advice on loving yourself through hard times!

Resources

• Learn more about Cindy on her website: https://www.thehopelady.com/

• Email Cindy: [email protected]

• Share the podcast with your friends: use this link

• Book your half-hour or hour long reading now before these options retire! Get on my calendar.

Transcript

Amy Hageman  00:01

All right, Cindy Cline, welcome to the living out love podcast. I am so so excited that you're here for multiple reasons. So I'm going to talk and then I promise I will let you talk. Hey, I've just always felt drawn to you and your energy. And so I've always wanted to know more about you and learn more from you. But also, I had this idea of how genius it would be to talk to you about grief. You know, the podcast is titled living out love. And the reason for that is I want to either heal the things we need to heal in order to live out love or teach the skills we need to learn to live out our love. And for me, a lot of that comes back to our own emotional intelligence. And so I thought talking to you about grief would be a wonderful thing for especially my audience, since I'm a medium. But what's been interesting is that, since we set this up, I've had quite a few things happen where me and also some people I know, who are going through some very intense periods of grief. And so I have felt like, well, this was just divine timing, for me to come talk to Cindy Cline. And so for everybody listening, I will tell I will tell the podcast audience how I know Cindy, and then I'll let her introduce herself. I've attended Unity Church of Houston. Basically, my whole life, Cindy Cline has been there as long as I can remember. On staff and volunteering, she works a lot with the animal ministry. And she she does a lot of prosperity, Napoleon Hill Think and Grow Rich. So I've never actually heard Cindy talk about grief. But I begged her to please come on and bless us with her wisdom. So Cindy, what else should we know?

Cindy Cline  01:52

Well, Amy, I want to say thank you for inviting me on I it's it is a honor to be able to come on, and to share what I've learned about grief. And yes, I feel so old because I've watched you grow up. I love you what you said about me and my energy. I feel that way about you and all the wonderful work that you were doing, Amy. And the reading that you did for me was so healing and spot on. So thank you very much. Yeah, I've watched you grow up and know your family. And just what an amazing family you are.

Amy Hageman  02:36

Thank you. To

Cindy Cline  02:39

your little children growing up here too, is just so wonderful. I love it.

Amy Hageman  02:46

Oh, well. Thank you so much for being here. Is there anything else? I feel like there's so much more to you than what I even know. So is there anything else my audience should know just about you?

Cindy Cline  02:58

Well, yes, I, I have a mother of a wonderful son, who's 27 That is the beat of my heart. And I have a grand style that is five months old, a baby girl and I just loving being a grandmother. I'm also recently became a pet chaplain. And what I do, I learned so much through the program I went through, I help people navigate their grief, with the either upcoming loss of a pet anticipatory grief, or help them in the stages of making last wishes plans for their animal. And so I can be there with them and help them navigate that process. I'm also will be ordained at the end of March as a new thought interfaith minister. And so I'm very excited about that. That is that is something I've been working towards for several years now. And actually about 40 years really, but but I actually saw when people said, Well, how long did it take you to go through the program? And I say about 40 years and they go wow, that's a lot. That's a long program. But I'm very excited about that program. It was early about a two year process. And I do I have I do help people as a Life Mastery coach and consultant. I help people navigate their grief and loss and can help people with life coaching situations or creating the life they would love to live. You know, and for me what you said earlier really hit a point with me. We can't move forward in our lives to love or to live or to expansion or to living fully until we're able to heal the things that are so emotionally disturbing to us. We have to find a way to heal Are pains in order to move forward. So it is my absolute great joy to be here with you. And to talk about these things.

Amy Hageman  05:09

Yes. Oh, I didn't even know all that about you. So I'm already just jazzed that you're here because now I know more. And it's interesting. I had heard the phrase of like a death doula of people that help family expecting the loved one of a passing. So now knowing you do that for pets, literally, I was talking to a very close loved one of mine just last night who just lost a pet. And she was sharing how long it's been since she's experienced grief. And she said, I forgot how physical it is. She like like, my chest just hurts with the grief and the crying. And I was like, oh, yeah, it is. It's so physical, when you are going especially that initial wave?

Cindy Cline  05:53

Yes, absolutely. And one of the things I would like to talk about today is disenfranchised grief. And that's grief that people don't normally acknowledge. It can be the loss of a pet, it can be the loss of someone that it could be an ex spouse, it could be a job, it could be a number of things where your tribe, or the people around, you don't necessarily acknowledge it, it goes unacknowledged. Or people may say, Oh, you can you can get another dog. Yeah. And so people are not being acknowledged for the tremendous grief that they're having. Or if you've lost a child, people may say, Oh, if you have children already, they may say, Oh, thank goodness, you've got the three children you have, right. If you don't have any children, they may say, Oh, well, you're young, you can have more children. And these things are not helpful things to say. And it's called disenfranchised grief, where you're not really being acknowledged by your community, and your tribe that you're going through a tremendous loss. So yes, I understand pet loss. Some people, that's all they have are their pets. You know, they may not their children may be gone from home, or they may have never had children. And for me, I'm a big pet lover, and they love so unconditionally. And they're with us so much of the time that you know, I have grieved, at some points deep as deeply for the loss of my pet, as I have for some of the people in my life when they passed. Right. So yeah, it can be very, very hard. Yeah. And

Amy Hageman  07:41

I think what's so interesting about what you said is, I think, in general, in our society, we don't really know how to honor negative emotion. It makes so many other people uncomfortable to be with somebody that's having a negative emotion that it's like, let me just make you feel better. Yeah, and, and they may be coming from a loving place, but it has the opposite reaction. And it makes that person feel not seen. And honestly, I think some people even question like, I think they sort of feel like, well, maybe I'm not grieving, or like maybe, maybe I was kind of wrong to feel that way. Like, it's, it can be confusing when the world is saying, Oh, just have another baby, which is something people said to me. Which like, I eventually did, but that doesn't change the initial situation at all. I mean, I was able to hear that, but I have, you know, I'm lucky to be me. I'll say that.

Cindy Cline  08:40

Yes. And people just don't know any better. You know, they don't know any better. They're trying You're right. They don't want to be in the midst of uncomfortableness and they're thinking, What can I say to make this better? Well, this is something they grab out of the air to say that they think will make you feel better, but it doesn't, that that puts you into that disenfranchised grief, because it's not being acknowledged. This is a tremendous loss. A miscarriage is a tremendous loss and a family's life. And so it needs to be acknowledged. And I think if we can become more comfortable with grief and how to stand with people in their grief, it would be a wonderful step forward. I really do. Yeah, yeah.

Amy Hageman  09:28

Well, so I want to know what you tell me which question you want to answer. First, I want to know what is your relationship with grief? And I also want to know, how do you even define grief?

Cindy Cline  09:43

So I have a long running history with grief. I've lost five of my family members to suicide. The first being my stepfather when I was in my late 20s and And then my sister about love us in my 30s when I lost my sister to suicide, and then just about three years ago, three to four years ago, I lost my nephew to suicide. And he left behind two adult children and a younger child, and in his wife, and I've lost two brother in laws to suicide. And then of course, being the age I am now at this juncture in my life, I've lost both parents, I've lost all sets of grandparents, I've had a tremendous amount of loss in my life, I lost my father, when I was five, he passed away unexpectedly, so I've had a lot of loss in my life, I've experienced a tremendous amount of grief. And I do define grief as the loss of anything that has importance to us. In our life that has meaning to us in our life. I have, like we talked about earlier, the loss of a job can be very much so a grieving process, a loss of a friend a friendship, or relationship. And death.Definitely when someone has passed on, or someone or an animal has passed on. That is a tremendous grief. that quite honestly, initially, I really felt like it was going to kill me. I did, I felt like grief was going to kill me. And I didn't want to experience it. Because I thought it would just kill me. And I had therapy for my grief early on. And learned that it wouldn't kill me. Thank God, yeah. But you know, the more we learn about grief, and we, I almost hate to say this, but it is necessary. We, we none of us escape grief, there's not one person that will escape a grief. And you can delay it. And you can choose to distract from it. But eventually you have to experience grief in order to move past it. And I came across a very interesting different types of grief that I'd like to just talk about briefly if that's okay. Yeah. I'm, the model that Elisabeth Kubler Ross came up with was the five stages of grief. And you can move in and out of these different stages, it's not a set G, you're gonna go through six weeks of this, and then you're gonna move on to the next stage. You go through different stages at different times, and that can last for different times. But the five stages of grief start with denial. I know when I lost my, when I lost my sister, I was in complete denial, that, you know, this hasn't happened. This didn't happen. No, this couldn't be true. And I think that this happens to us. With people dying, we can we say no, no, no, this is not true. Anger, then we become become angry. Why did this disease take my loved one? Or why did my loved one choose to leave the planet? Why did this happen? So we can move into anger, then there's the bargaining process. If someone's sick, or you know, close to passing, we can be bargaining with whatever we call creator, you the universe, whatever you want to call creator, God, whatever you want to call the power that created us, we can go through that bargaining process of, you know, if you just let if you just let Mary be healthy, I will, I will be a good person from now on or I will do wonderful things with my life, or I'll give a lot of money to this charity, we go into a bargaining. And then we go into depression. And then the last stage is acceptance. And we move in and out of those. Sometimes we can be in next we get to acceptance, and then all of a sudden, it starts all over again. We're back to the angry stage or back to the denial stage. I know for myself, my mother has been gone. I think about four years now. And she was my best friend. And I still to this day, I know she's gone. But when something exciting has happened, or something upsetting has happened. I'll go to pick up the phone and call mom, you know, I forget she's not with us. So I start right back over again. That denial stage of no mom's mom's still here with me. So I think that's important to realize those stages. Yeah. And then I came across this was on better place for us.com. This is the different the seven they identify seven different types of grief, which just let me know when I go through them. If any of them resonate and you want to talk about them anymore. What is normal grief and then That's where we go through the emotional and the behavioral process of someone's passing. But then the second one is anticipatory grief, dissipating a loss. And I will tell you, I was an anticipatory grief for years anticipating my mother's passing. Yeah, I loved her so much. And I knew her passing would be traumatic that I, I made all her arrangements ahead of time. I wrote out her eulogy ahead of time, I had everything taken care of, to the very last degree, I had it all already taken care of everything arranged and ready to go, because I knew when I lost her, that it would be so devastating to me that I needed to have these things taken care of.Or why did my loved one choose to leave the planet? Why did this happen? So we can move into anger, then there's the bargaining process. If someone's sick, or you know, close to passing, we can be bargaining with whatever we call creator, you the universe, whatever you want to call creator, God, whatever you want to call the power that created us, we can go through that bargaining process of, you know, if you just let if you just let Mary be healthy, I will, I will be a good person from now on or I will do wonderful things with my life, or I'll give a lot of money to this charity, we go into a bargaining. And then we go into depression. And then the last stage is acceptance. And we move in and out of those. Sometimes we can be in next we get to acceptance, and then all of a sudden, it starts all over again. We're back to the angry stage or back to the denial stage. I know for myself, my mother has been gone. I think about four years now. And she was my best friend. And I still to this day, I know she's gone. But when something exciting has happened, or something upsetting has happened. I'll go to pick up the phone and call mom, you know, I forget she's not with us. So I start right back over again. That denial stage of no mom's mom's still here with me. So I think that's important to realize those stages. Yeah. And then I came across this was on better place for us.com. This is the different the seven they identify seven different types of grief, which just let me know when I go through them. If any of them resonate and you want to talk about them anymore. What is normal grief and then That's where we go through the emotional and the behavioral process of someone's passing. But then the second one is anticipatory grief, dissipating a loss. And I will tell you, I was an anticipatory grief for years anticipating my mother's passing. Yeah, I loved her so much. And I knew her passing would be traumatic that I, I made all her arrangements ahead of time. I wrote out her eulogy ahead of time, I had everything taken care of, to the very last degree, I had it all already taken care of everything arranged and ready to go, because I knew when I lost her, that it would be so devastating to me that I needed to have these things taken care of. And so that's anticipatory grief. And we can have that with our animals, too. Oftentimes, we know that our animals are not well, and I have had that with my little animals as well. The third one is disenfranchised grief. And that's what we talked about, we have a loss, and people are not acknowledging that, yes, this is painful. How can I support you? And how can I help you with this. The fourth one is chronic grief. And this is when the person is not getting better over time. They're staying in that grieving, initial grieving stage. And so it really is recommended during that time to get some professional counseling, to grief counseling to help help the person through that. There's also abbreviated grief. Number five is abbreviated grief. And they go through grief a little more quickly, then, someone else may and it says anticipatory grief helps with that abbreviated grief, already anticipated the loss and you've been grieving all along, then you can go through the abbreviated grief a little more quickly. Though, you don't want to just stay in anticipatory grief. You want to have a little time limit on that so that you're not in a state of sorrow for a long time. Number six is traumatic grief. And that's when you've lost someone. Quickly, someone unexpectedly, through a tragic situation as suicide would be a traumatic grief, it's a shock. And there's a big denial there that this, this hasn't happened because you really go into a state of shock. And the last one is absent grief. And it may look like somebody's not grieving to the outside world. And it's really important not to pass judgment on Oh, they're not grieving the way we think people should grieve. We sometimes will say, Oh, you know, Mary's not grieving. She's going on with her life. But we don't know, grief. Everybody grieves differently. We shouldn't judge how somebody is grieving, we need to, if we can become knowledgeable with the different phases of grief, and ask, ask the person how are you handling this? What can I do to be a support system to you during this time and see what they say? Some people want to, like I can I've, at this stage in my life. I've had friends who've lost people and I know ask, Would you like to go to a movie? Would you like to go out to eat? What would you like to do? Some people don't want to do anything. They just want to be at home for a while and just assimilate everything that's happened. Other people are ready to to take a break from grief. Grief is hard. Grief is a process.

Amy Hageman  19:09

It is. Yeah, I Well, I feel like with grief. It's so I think there are some emotions where you kind of learn your patterning. Like I know my patterning around anger and my patterning around resentment and sadness and those, but with grief, it feels like it's more unpredictable. And so I have a harder time supporting myself through the process because I like I'd never know if it's going to hit me and if it's going to hit me if it's going to be loud and consuming or if it's just going to keep me kind of fatigued all day. To me that's one of the things that makes grief so tricky is that it can take many shapes and has different rhythms.

Cindy Cline  19:56

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And one day I was, oh, I don't know, it was probably months after my mother had passed. And I'm, like, I'm just living a normal day, and I'm driving down the road. And all of a sudden, it's like an ocean wave, just, you know, float over me of grief of just missing her. And I wasn't expecting that I had had my anticipatory grief. And I thought I was at peace with everything. So you're so right, you just don't know. All the different elements that can come up with grief. And each one can be each person, each loss is different. Each loss has a different thickness to it. There's a sameness and that is loss, right? How we experienced that grieving process can be very different. You know, one thing wherever Michael says is that every loss brings up all the previous losses. He has said that many times, you've lost someone and then bam, bam, bam, bam, all the other losses come back and slap you. slap you in the face again, and and you go down that path. So it's a it's a, it's difficult, but it is necessary, and it can be navigated. And the more we say yes, to understanding it, the better our relationship with it can be.

Amy Hageman  21:32

Right, right, right. So I wanted to respond, I, I've made three different notes that I'm like, oh, there's so much I need to respond to. So I want to just let the audience know. So Elisabeth Kubler Ross studied a very specific form of grief. She's everybody that she studied were patients that were given a terminal diagnosis. And so it's not an what Cindy what you already said is correct, they probably moved in and out of those stages. I just like people to know that, that it wasn't just like, she studied grief at large, because I think given a terminal diagnosis is such a specific example, and accepting that they were going to pass on. Yeah, and then you, I just have to go back to this, even though you said this a long time ago, you said that, that you thought the grief would kill you. And I have said that in previous episodes of this podcast, that emotions are physiological bodily experiences, and that they can be so intense that our brain says Warning, like this is not okay. And it it, it does, it's a resting in you, you need a minute to be like, Oh, I'm not going to die. This is it's physically uncomfortable to experience this emotion. And that, that idea that this might kill me. And so I'm going to suppress it or I'm going to drink or watch porn or or become a compulsive eater, or exercise or whatever. It's there's a reason why people do that. And then the other thing that I just think is so fascinating, that is complicated about grief is I feel like it's so much of it's tied to our neural neural patterning. Like you have however many years you have of talking to your mother or thinking you're bringing a baby home from the hospital, and then all of a sudden, you don't well, that neural pattern is still there. So it's like, it's not that you haven't accepted it. It's sort of like, you know, you have you ever had that experience where you call somebody the wrong name. You're like, oh, Amy, I met Stephanie, I met your mom, you know, it's your brains just doing that. It's just doing its neural patterning thing. But then because it's attached to this loved one that you lost, it's like, then you have to do it all over again. And oh, so for me, I'm like, and I didn't send this in the list of questions to you. But I, I think the idea of having like, a ritual around loss is important to help with grief. And obviously, with a loved one passing on, we have funerals, we have the ritual. And for some people, seeing the body is very important or watching the casket. Like some people that's important. So I sort of wonder if having rituals for other types of loss, like I know some people do divorce rituals. Now, if that would be helpful in neural patterning or not, I don't know. Have you ever done any sort of ritual or embodiment any sort of acknowledgement of your grief? Or is that anything you've you've helped facilitate with somebody?

Cindy Cline  24:42

Good question. Before I answer that, I want to go back to the feeling

Amy Hageman  24:46

of Yeah.

Cindy Cline  24:48

How horrible how, how horribly actually does feel. way I describe it this way. I've always felt this way through losses that were very of people. that were very important to me, the only way I know how to describe it is that it feels like there's a huge hole in my soul. And like, you could drive a Mack truck right through just just just just right through me. I just and I don't know if that makes any sense or not. But I feel so incomplete. I feel so shattered and so broken in the midst of that, that that's and that's where that comes in, have feeling like this is going to kill me, I am never going to get past this, that you do learn through people loving you and supporting you, you accepting for yourself that you're going to be you will be okay. Life will never be the way it was when that loved one was there. It changes and it will not ever go back to being the way it was. But you do learn to reshape your life and, and go on and go on with life. So talking about rituals. Yes, there's divorce rituals. Now I'm so glad to see rituals, taking more of a front and center stage for different different things in people's lives. I have a I did recently a memorial for a pet, which was very helpful. For the pet owner. They had the brain their color and their favorite picture, and invited other people who were in the household with the pet to come and share their favorite stories of the pet. And so there was a lot of tears shed it and we lit a candle and had a reading and had favorite stories of their pet. And that was so helpful for the grieving to help with the grieving process. I've also had different rituals just personally for myself, I may, I may have a little sheet of paper, and just put down all the things that I love about the person or myths about the person. And then bless it and light it on fire and watch it. Watch it burn. Knowing they're not here. That's my symbol for they're not here in the physical any longer. But they're in my heart always. And it also this I want to talk about triggers because certain triggers happen when we lose people or things that are important to us. Holidays can be very difficult when you've lost someone. Birthdays, anniversary dates, the day they passed in a day that was very important. And so for me, I love to have rituals on those days. And I think this might be helpful. The first year, the first Thanksgiving after my mother had passed, I always hosted when she was no longer able to host thanksgiving for the family. I took it over that became my role. And so I always hosted and had the family over and it was a big deal fun and joyful. 

The first year she was gone. I shut that down. I didn't know for me. Yeah, I didn't want to do that. So there's no right or wrong way. But I personally didn't want to do that it was just too painful for me. So I took my family and we went and we volunteered at a food bank and a Thanksgiving food bank that year. And, and so we found a way to give out to others, which my mother would have loved that we were doing something for someone else. And it just took us out of the memories that we had, and the sadness that she wasn't there to celebrate with us. Now what we do now for different holidays and I really invite people to do this if they feel like it'd be helpful. I put their pictures of loved ones that are past I put their pictures on a table and I light a candle during Christmas holiday people can do it for whatever holidays are meaningful Hanukkah or whatever you're celebrating Kwanzaa and and then we include them in the prayer. When we're doing our opening prayer or celebration or going around the table, we acknowledge that, that they are not with us in physical form, but that they're always with us. And so we include them that way and keeping their memory alive and we may share a story or two about them. So those triggers are important to anticipate. Yeah, and to also be thinking about how you can navigate A trigger as it's coming up, how? How will you walk through that? After you've had a loss that first and, you know, for me, I have found with people, the first year is always the most difficult. The first year of the anniversaries coming up is the hardest, because you've not lived life without that person, maybe for your entire lifetime if it was a parent, or a relationship you've been in for many years. So that's important, and how we, how we look to navigate through those experiences.

Amy Hageman  30:38

It is so important, and I think people underestimate what all is happening for us. Like, it's obviously we're sad, and we're missing them. But also our brain is trying to read, right? You know, if you at Thanksgiving every year, if you had had the Thanksgiving, your brain would have been going where's mom? Where's mom? Because that's so unusual. And so it's like having that expectation and compassion that this is it's not only hard on me emotionally, because I miss my loved one. But it's hard on me physically, because my brain is still trying to figure out what happened. You know, our brains like to predict things and it takes us time to rewrite our idea of what reality is?

Cindy Cline  31:21

Oh, absolutely. You know, and talking about how the brain is wired I, I'm going to take it to a was suicide because your brain is not wired to lose people to suicide. So that's always shocking. It's a shock. And, and the grief of suicide is different. grieving the loss of a loved one through suicide is very different. Because there's a lot of guilt that's associated when you lose a loved one to suicide. There's always what cut out what were the last words I said to that person? What What if I had said something different? What if I had done something different? There's so there's great there's mixed in with the grieving is tremendous guilt. And so we have to navigate that as well and navigate that our mind, as you're saying is not wired to think that we're going to lose someone to suicide. So we must be very compassionate and very loving with ourselves during this time period. If there's anything I really want to impart today, it is the importance of being so tender, and so kind and so loving, with your with yourself through this time, because it is hard. Yeah, it is difficult. And you need to have that compassion, just as we've have compassion for our friends, and we want to help them. We must have the compassion for ourselves and not say to ourselves, oh, you should be through this now or allow anybody else to say, Aren't you over this? Over the loss of your pet? Yes. Got a new dog? Yes. No, I haven't gotten a new dog. Yes, I'm still grieving. And you know, it takes the time it takes so I really want people to understand to be gentle and kind with themselves and to do what you can do to nurture yourself and to surround yourself with people. That will be a support system for you. Like people who've lost someone to suicide, there are survivors of suicide groups. And for me, when I walked into a meeting, my first meeting, I didn't walk into one until several years after my sister had passed. I just it was just too painful for me to even think about it. But I felt like I was emotionally well enough to walk into a meeting. And it felt so good to walk into a meeting where everybody there only people that are there are people who've lost someone to suicide. Wow. So they know. They know you don't have to say anything. They know how you're feeling. And they're there to love you and support you. And I really thought I was in a good emotional place. And though they go around and ask you who you've lost and to say their name. It came time for me two years later to say my sister's name. I couldn't even say her name. I just burst out crying. And so being tender with myself in that moment and saying that's okay, that I couldn't say her name. I know she knows I love her. And and to be with people that understand and they're there to support you and love you and not A Are you still grieving that? Gosh, it's been several years now. You know, back in the old days, I don't know what year it was or what time period it was. But back in the old days, I think people used to wear like something on their arm. You know, back in the old days, women dressed in black for a year. So people would know, they were mourning. And some time period, people used to wear like a band on their arm that was black that would indicate they were mourning, because you don't necessarily when you're in this tremendous raw space, you don't necessarily want to hear, you know, so and so. Didn't get their right Coffee order this morning. And they're devastated about it, right. It's like, okay, there's, I'm grieving. Don't you know, I'm sorry, you didn't get your right Coffee order this morning. But I'm grieving, less, have some compassion for me during this time period. I wish we could get back to that I wish that we could understand people are in the midst of grief and really treat them with great tenderness. And great care.

Amy Hageman  36:14

Man, what a beautiful vision. I remember having after we lost our first child, I remember talking to my husband about like, when when would we go back to church? And that very first Sunday, I was like, Oh, heck no. Because it's just your raw, you know what I mean? And I knew everybody that came up, even if they already knew even if I didn't have to tell people, I was like, they're just gonna love on me. And when you're so raw, even the Love Hurts, like, I just got it. It just gotta take some space. So yeah, I think there's also that there's room for that, like, how can we acknowledge each other and sometimes it's just with kindness and with not airing our coffee was and then it's also just like, Okay, let me give her some space to feel her feelings because it is even, even for me, and like, I'm an emotional intelligence, semi expert, even for me, it can be hard to not want to make people feel better, rather than holding space for their feeling. So yeah, there's definitely a lot of wisdom in that ritual of just wearing black or having the black cuff, you know, well, I do kind of want to switch to the idea of grief as a teacher and as a gift. And like, how does grief? I mean, I have my own thoughts and feelings about how grief is a transformational gift. And it serves us and aside from the fact that like, it's just the emotional process we need to have after a loss, I think it serves us so I'm curious, what, what is your relationship to that idea of grief, Being a teacher being a gift.

Cindy Cline  38:07

It has been a tremendous teacher for me, it has taught me so much about compassion, about caring and, and being astute with what another person needs in their time of grief. Instead of I came from that old school of let me make this better for you. And I've learned through grief, I can't make this better for you. I love Orion mountain dreamer. She is a poet and her poem. I can't believe I can't think of the name of the map.

Amy Hageman  38:49

link it in the show notes.

Cindy Cline  38:51

We will link it in the show notes because it's so powerful. It's one of my favorite ones. But she says, I don't care what your astrology sign is. I don't care how much money you have. I don't care what you do for a living. I want to know if you can stand shoulder to shoulder with me. In my darkest times in my pain, yeah, I'm paraphrasing now but in my grief, can you stand shoulder to shoulder with me? And you know, sometimes that means not saying a word. Sometimes it's just standing and being. So it has been a great teacher for me in that way. It is also helped me to live life fuller. It is helping me to race that every day is a gift no matter what, no matter if my coffee order is wrong or my fingernail broke, or flat or whatever it is. I'm here to experience it. I'm here to experience the whole process and how I experienced it will be how I receive whatever's happened. Is is how I'm going way to navigate and enjoy my life. And so I've learned that every little thing that happens, this is not the big drama that I thought it was, I just try, I can't say, I can't say him like this 100% of the time because I'm not. But I do try to know, it's all part of a life experience that I'm here I have the, I have the privilege of being here, in physical form to have those feelings and have those emotions and I let them be, let it be I let them be I let them flow. And I've learned to really embrace life so much more through grief. It has made me more aware of how precious my own life is, and how I want to. I want to as Henry David Thoreau says, I want to suck the marrow out of life. Yes. Suck the marrow out of life every day. Oh, man. That's how it's taught me. Amy, what about for you?

Amy Hageman  41:01

Well, so what you said, it just reminds me when my husband and I, when we lost our firstborn, we were talking and I remember him saying at one point, something had happened. And he laughed. And I remember him saying, like, I feel guilty laughing. And I and I, you know, tried to be loving and understanding and saying, yeah, like, everybody does, that's totally common. And also I don't like I was like, I know, every time that the grief hits, and the anger hits, and that despair hits, I'm gonna feel that to its fullest degree. And so if I get a reprieve from that with a laugh, I'm gonna feel that too. Because it's just, you know, especially in those days, that can be so intense. But I think in terms of like, what I think grief has taught me is, I think, because it's so much a neural patterning thing. Where like, with the, with your mom's passing, it's like, your brain could say, I'm my mom's no longer here, your brain could say, oh, my mom's with me in spirit, your brain could say, I no longer have a mother, like your, your what how you decide to repattern that is vital, like, you don't get to decide when someone passes, but you do you get to decide how you repattern it. And I think it's it's interesting, because grief is such a mixture of like, we're kind of victim to it, we can't predict it, we can't control it. But on the other hand, we do get to have some ownership of how we walk through it. And like, maybe I'm going to choose to wear black, maybe I'm going to choose to take some mental health days, or however I'm going to support myself. But in general, it feels like grief is the opportunity to redefine yourself. Yes, whether it's the job or the loved one. It's like, Well, who am I now. And then that way, I do feel like it is a gift, I would never choose to have the loss or to have the grief. But it also serves as a very close point of introspection, just like you were saying with suicide, how like, there's that guilt and kind of the blame. You know, I've done I've done lots of readings for family members that have lost people to suicide, and it can very easily create rift in the families where they blame each other. And so it's like dealing with that. Could I have done something better? Should I have done something better? I mean, those are good questions for us to ask of ourselves, regardless of whether or not somebody passes. You know, like, trying to find healing in a relationship at any time is a good idea. But grief, yanks it out of you. And so I think if we can allow it, if we can have the compassion, it can be a teacher of sorts, or an opportunity of sorts, not a chosen opportunity, but it can be an opportunity. But I wonder if that resonates with you at all?

Cindy Cline  44:22

Oh, it absolutely does. It absolutely does. One thing you said about if it's a job loss really the majority of people that I have known in my lifetime that have lost their jobs. That's it. It's a grieving process. But they have always, always gone on to redefine themselves and find something that was even greater. You know, I did a talk recently about the universe has your back. And sometimes if we're not moving our own feet, oh yeah, from a job that we may not care for or that we're not really enjoying, as my thought process is the universe is going to help you along. Okay? And this is coming to an end so that you can very well step into who you really are. You really want to be who you say you want to be. So yeah, how we repattern that is so important. It is so important is key, what you said is key. And then the same thing. Yes. with grief and loss with my sister's loss. I could have chosen to have been angry with her. I could have you know, stepped into why did you do this, I tried so hard. I was her caregiver for 10 years, she was left from a bad accident, paralyzed and partially paralyzed, and brain damage. I never stepped into that I was never angry with her, I chose to honor the decision that she did not want to be here anymore, and the state and the condition that she was in and just just shape it in a way that I could live with that I know she wasn't acting out of trying to see how much she could hurt me. I knew that's not what she was doing. And so it's very important what you're saying these are to be able to sit down and look at it and frame it in a way that is palatable. Yeah, for us as we're walking through and navigating that grieving process. You know what's gonna speak what's gonna serve as the best during that time as wouldn't serve me to be mad at my sister. And you know, wonder why she had to do this. No, I was never ever not for a second. Was I ever mad at her? sad that she was gone? Yes. But mad at her now.

Amy Hageman  46:49

Oh, that's interesting. Anger is my like, that's my go to if I don't want to experience grief, I just get angry. And that's my patterning. I don't want to be sad. So I'll just be angry.

Cindy Cline  47:02

Well, you know what? So go be angry. Angry too at times, I'll go outside, I just get some piss. To start.

Amy Hageman  47:15

You just feel so good. Yes. Well.

Cindy Cline  47:22

I remember when I was young, and I lived in an apartment. And I would have, maybe I would have a disagreement with my husband at the time. And I would go because I didn't want to disturb the neighbors. So I would go get in the car, turn the music, turn the car around, turn the music up, rolled out and just scream while still screaming music I was screaming because you need to get that out of your body. It's something you do. Yeah. Carry that in your body to find a way to get it out whether it's exercise, turning the music up and screaming or whatever works for you. Right?

Amy Hageman  48:01

Yeah. And that with grief? Like I've I find myself in the fetal position. Yes. I mean, I just, I don't ever consciously there's sometimes I consciously go there. But there's lots of times where I feel like I wake up and realize I'm in the fetal position. Yes, because you just feel so vulnerable. You know, I can remember being an adult and wanting to climb in my mom's lap. Just, you know, just Can you hold me mom. So yeah, to

Cindy Cline  48:34

me, yeah. My mother was 90 something when she passed. And up until the very up until the very end, I same thing. I would just go and say, Mom, can you just hold me? You know, she wrapped her arms around me and hold me like, Oh, thank you, Mama. Because he felt safe. Right? Yeah. So yeah, and loved it. So yeah, I'm like you, I have been in that fetal position many times. And there's something very comforting about that you bring about you're in that position, and you're just in many ways, setting the outside world down and you're, you're just in your comfort. Do you know your comfort? Maybe you're even rocking?

Amy Hageman  49:20

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that like, you know, we've talked about like the neural patterning and also the physical of emotion, it's like, it's so important to embody it. You know, and I think that's kind of that kind of harkens back to like wearing the black cuff of just like, wearing our emotions actually experiencing our emotions. For me, I know that embodying it like having the hitting the tree with a stick, having the yelling in the car, like whatever it is having those moments allows me to move through things faster. Yeah, like it can feel dramatic. attic, but then, but then it's out of your body and you don't have to carry it anymore, or at least for whatever amount of time. But so I want to ask you since we're coming up on an hour, I feel like early on, you said like, the biggest lesson is to have compassion for yourself and to be tender with yourself. And I absolutely agree that that's the biggest lesson. But I just wonder, do you have any other words of wisdom or anything else you would want to say to people that are experiencing grief?

Cindy Cline  50:34

Yes, do seek help. Do when you can and you're ready. It will help you to be with others who do understand. There are many grief and loss support groups. Yeah, we will be having at Unity, towards the end of the year journey through grief, which takes you on your journey with your grief, which is so helpful. Oh my gosh, people really talk about how it helped them to navigate that their losses. So I grew up is so important with people that understand the same thing with survivors of suicide, which we have here at Unity, the first and third of every month. In the evening, at seven o'clock. It's survivors of suicide. And that is so helpful to be able to go in and say what you're feeling with people who understand and are there to support you. i My biggest words of wisdom is that caring and tenderness for yourself. And please reach out, please reach out, be with a community that understands what you're going through. And that can help you through it. And sometimes we need professional counseling, to navigate through a loss. And sometimes when I lost my sister, I needed to I even with counseling and support groups, I still needed to be on I needed to be on medication to help me through it. It was so devastating to me, I couldn't even I couldn't even stand the pain of the day. And so, for me, that's what I needed short term in order to come to terms with what had happened. So whatever it takes to help you walk through and navigate your grief, reach out, ask for help get the help you need. You're not alone. You're not going to go crazy. You're not going to die, it will not kill you. Reach out. Don't Don't don't go through this by yourself. Let them go get the support that's there for you. With people that understand that would that's what I want to say. It feels like our time went by so quickly did

52:53

it didn't go so quick.

Cindy Cline  52:56

So we are coming to the very end. But don't you're not alone. You're not alone in your grief. There is nothing that you can go through that someone else hasn't been through. So man.

Amy Hageman  53:07

Amen. Right. Yeah. Well, Cindy Cline, why don't you just tell people where and how they can find you. You know?

Cindy Cline  53:21

You can find me I have a website. It's the hope lady.com The Hope lady.com You can reach me there. I'm also at Unity of Houston. You can reach out to my email cindycline “C-L-I-N-E” at Unity houston.org. I'm available to visit to help navigate.

Amy Hageman  53:57

Thank you so much, Cindy. I really appreciate it. And we'll talk soon.

Cindy Cline  54:03

Okay, thank you. All right.

Amy Hageman  54:05

Bye.

Cindy Cline  54:06

Now you're okay. Thank you, sweetheart. I've enjoyed being with you. Thank you so much for this chance to be with you today.

Amy Hageman  54:13

Yes, thank you, Cindy. Have a good one. All right. Bye