The Inviting Shift Podcast
Embrace the authentic, confident you so you can feel good in your skin and have deeper relationships. The Inviting Shift Podcast focuses on how we step through this messy journey of life confidently so we can feel good about how we show up, have more connected relationships and connect to purpose and meaning. Or in short, how we manifest the lives we crave in practical, tangible ways.
The Inviting Shift Podcast
S3E9: The Healing Journey of Self-Compassion and Vulnerability in Grief
What if the grief we experience isn't just about losing people, but also losing dreams, relationships, or even parts of ourselves? Our episode this week poses this provocative question as we unpack the intricate layers of grief with Steph Grainger and Kelly Berry. Steph shares inspiring stories from her journey of supporting women through past grief, turning pain into a catalyst for personal growth. In her 40s, Kelly faced profound losses and she opens up about navigating these seismic life shifts. Together, we explore the grief that sneaks in with chosen changes such as ending friendships or career transitions, and how these too can lead to a deep loss of identity.
OUR GUESTS:
Steph Grainger, Therapeutic Mentor has been supporting women since 2010, to reconnect to all that they are and desire to be, by walking beside them as they turn their pain into power, embrace all their truths, and live a free, authentic life.
She has supported many women for many different reasons, but all with the same goal in mind - to understand, trust and love themselves and move through their world awake and with intention, and free from restraints that have been attached throughout their lifetime lived so far.
Connect with Steph: Instagram | Facebook | Linkedin | Podcast | Website
Kelly Berry is a strategic business leader, coach and podcaster with over two decades of experience in the business and entrepreneurial sectors. She is passionate about helping others find their path and live a life full of purpose and joy. Through Life Intended, Kelly offers a platform for sharing transformative stories and wisdom to inspire others to lead more fulfilling lives.
Connect with Kelly: Instagram | Website
THE HOST:
Connect with Christina Smith & Inviting Shift on Social: Instagram | Facebook
Free Gift: The Confidence Tool Kit is here to help you walk into the second half like a queen (because you are one already). Get it here.
Email me and tell me what you think: christina@christina-smith.com
Tune In:
Welcome back to the Inviting Shift podcast. I am excited to have you all here to hear this conversation about something that we don't talk about a lot, which is grief, and for me I know my four days has been, I wouldn't say, filled with grief, but there's definitely been a lot more grief than probably any other decade and that's all kinds of grief we're going to talk about loss of dreams, loss of people that we love, loss of our minds, maybe in menopause, and so, without taking too much of this time, I just wanted to have our guests introduce themselves. So, steph, can you introduce yourself?
Steph Grainger:Absolutely. Thank you for having me. My name is Steph Grainger and I am in the UK. I support women to deal with a lot of the past grief that they've experienced, in whatever capacity that that shows up, in order for them to be able to move forward with their life and allow those experiences to define them in a really positive way rather than hold them back. Those experiences to define them in a really positive way rather than hold them back. Um and I do that say for women of any age, but typically women that are drawn to work with me are 35 plus um so yeah, that's me thanks.
Kelly Berry:Yeah then, kelly thank you, I'm happy to be here. My name is is Kelly Berry. I am also a podcast host. I host a podcast called Life Intended and my podcast is all about just bringing awareness to mostly women but how to live a life of intention and live it with authenticity. I also am a business owner and a coach. Work with business owners to set their vision and achieve their business dreams, and with women, similar to what Steph said. Um, and really you, christina, too like helping women overcome, you know, negative self-talk and a lot of limiting beliefs from their past and, uh, finding out who they are and who they want to be and helping them remove those obstacles to get there. Yeah, I'm in my 40s. Also have experienced in this decade I'm 43, but probably the most profound losses of my life to date, and some of those have been the loss of people I love, but some of them have been the other things that you described like unmet expectations. So I'm excited to dive into the conversation.
Christina Smith:Yeah, All that unmet expectations and let's just talk about like, yeah, what are all the different things that we grieve? I know just in the past year I've grieved loss of friendship because friends can change in your forties, as you start aging, and things are different. Letting go of grieving who I used to be right and how life has kind of changed me. There's even this menopausal grief of like grieving that fertility I mean not so much for me.
Christina Smith:I'd love to flip the switch anytime, but for lots of women, there comes up a grief around not being, you know, being able to carry a baby anymore. Even if they didn't want to carry another baby, they can have that. So there's so many different types of grief. What do you? What have I missed here?
Steph Grainger:I experienced grief when I got divorced. I was divorced about 16 years ago and I'm now remarried. But that was one of the hardest experiences and because of the loss of the life, I expected the life that I had anticipated for my children as well as for me the trauma of being a child of divorced parents. I didn't want that for my children as well as for me. You know the trauma of being a child of divorced parents. I didn't want that for my kids.
Steph Grainger:So when it came to the realisation that this relationship was not working and we couldn't retrieve that, I was desperately sad and very much grieving that loss and as much as I didn't want him in my life anymore, everything that came with him, even grieving the loss of my in-laws. They were still going to be in my life. I could no longer call my mother-in-law my mother-in-law. You know things like that and such a huge sense of loss.
Steph Grainger:Everything changed how we did Christmas changed, how we did birthdays changed, all of that and at the time I didn't even recognize it as grief. I didn't even recognize it as grief. I didn't even acknowledge it to be the grieving process. It was very difficult to navigate because it's not something that people talk about. In that sense, you don't hear people say I grieved when I got divorced. It's just to me grief was very someone dies, you grieve, and that was the very first experience I had of grieving something that was no longer going to be in my life, but the person was still here. It was a very different experience for me.
Christina Smith:I love that you say that because it's like this grief of like even if we make the choice right to get that divorce or change our life, it doesn't mean that we skip the grief part right. Like it doesn't mean that that's not going to happen. Um, even if it is our choice of whatever happens, and that that is also um a friendship that I had, that I let go of. It's like that was our choice together and yet, at the same time, it's still sad.
Christina Smith:I mean, I still had ideas, just like you, with your marriage, had ideas of how we would grow old together, or you know, and and be laughing like old ladies, or I, um, I, I also felt the same thing during my divorce as well, and that was many moons ago, almost 20 years ago, um, and I still, I still can see that grief, for you know, I wish it would have turned out differently for our son. How about you, kelly?
Kelly Berry:Yeah, so I think and I'm working through this still but like grief of a lost identity. So I used to be a runner, a triathlete, and I'll say used to be like I still run a little bit, but it was my identity. You know, I was a runner, I ran hundreds of races, an ultra runner, a trail runner and just through different circumstances and life changes, I'm not anymore. So I ran like a 50 mile race at the end of 2019, had some like nagging injuries that I was getting treatment for in early 2020. And then the pandemic happened and my treatment stopped and it's like my body has just never been able to recover. Then I got pregnant, I had a baby.
Kelly Berry:You know all of these things that I'm just kind of like grieving that I will never be the athlete that I was and how much like personal fulfillment I got from that. How do I replace that? What does that look like? Will I be satisfied with, like being less athletic than that? Like, can I replace that with yoga and still get the same thing? You know, as my body like changes and, you know, just needs different things. So I'm still figuring out like how to navigate that. But you know, I don't even call myself like a runner. It's like, well, I used to be a runner or I used to be a triathlete, um, and that just it feels sad. It was a season and it was just like a really important season in my life and um, it's just, I don't know if it'll ever come back, you know.
Christina Smith:I agree. I mean I was never a runner. That's not what I'm grieving. But there is a part of me where my body just naturally stayed healthy and I didn't have to do a lot for it. Um, and I could, I didn't really have to limit what I eat. And now it seems like my body there's this part that feels like my body has kind of turned on me, and that's the acceptance and the grief that I'm going through is that it used to be so easy to take care of my body and now there's a lot more work to it. I just had my morning shake with my collagen and my maca. I mean I didn't have to do that before. And now, if I don't do those things for myself, I get so much inflammation in my body and I have to figure out what foods trigger me and I mean that's all taken a really long time. So like I grieve ice cream, because I really miss ice cream, but my body does not want it at all anymore.
Steph Grainger:I think it comes back to that point of these. Things weren't said or we women didn't have the openness to express the menopausal process like the perimenopausal process. It's only now, certainly in my area of the world, that that we're talking about this. It's such an open subject. Period health has been taboo. It's something we just did amongst ourselves, and education was around concealing it and how to deal with it in a certain way, and it feels like the menopause is the same. Women are seen to be a certain way through that process, so let's just not talk about it, and so there's no wisdom. That's kind of being passed down from women that are older than us. So it's almost like I'm now learning without having anyone told me that this is normal. You're going to feel like this, you know, and for somebody that never experienced fat around my belly area, like it, just everything I eat just goes there now and it's why. Why is this happening to me? And then you put yourself on ridiculous diets and you're trying to get back to where you was before instead of embracing the change and why it's happening and all of that, and no one really spoke about that.
Steph Grainger:So I have definitely gone through a grieving process of the body that I once had, like you were saying, the things that I used to be able to eat, that now I just look at it and I bloat. You know all of these things and it's. I've been very resistant. I've been very angry about it. For a period I was stuck in that phase of grief, of the anger of it's not fair. Why, why can't I do these things anymore? Why do I ache now? Why do I sneeze and put my back out? You know all of those things it felt I was in. I was stuck in anger for a long time and I am transitioning through the. I've come out of that now. I'm moving towards acceptance, but it's just um, yeah, it's not spoken about. And if you said I'm grieving my pre-perimenopausal body, it might have looked at you like you had two heads, like what are you talking about? You know it's. It's a strange subject, but we need to talk more about it.
Christina Smith:Yeah, it used to be well, just exercise more, you know, go do the thing. And it's like it's more than that and and we don't know this because we don't really talk about it. In fact, I learned the other day that even studying periods, like scientists study erectile dysfunction six times as much as periods, even though erectile dysfunction only affects like 15% of the population, where periods are like 50% of the population. It seems really odd, let alone menopause. You know, studying menopause and just that change is been um, it's just been really rough on me and I guess I want to talk about what grief looks like, right, Cause people are like, well, what, what is grief?
Christina Smith:Especially, I have a lot of clients that come to me and they're like I don't really know what I'm feeling because they've ignored their body for so long that they don't really know the differences between feelings. And for me, grief if we were looking at mad, sad, fear, shame, joy for me grief feels like a flip-flop between sadness and anger, like it feels like this war going on between like I'm really sad that I don't have what I had and I'm and, and uh, what Steph said is like it's not fair, you know, like I can feel my inner adolescent coming out going.
Christina Smith:it's not fair. This is now it's supposed to be. I'm supposed to like I've I've hit all these goals in my life by midlife. It's supposed to be easy peasy from here on out. And it feels just as hard to me as it did when I was an adolescent. And I think that kind of makes sense, because when we're an adolescent, we're grieving too. We're grieving losing our childhood and having to step into adulthood, and even though that's something that we definitely don't talk about, it is something that is seriously happening as we're having all those hormonal changes, and so I always look at menopause as like our second puberty, where it's like it's undoing all that stuff. But at the same time I feel sometimes I feel just as crazy as.
Christina Smith:I did when I was an adolescent, and I see Kelly popping her head.
Kelly Berry:Yeah, I mean, you know, talking about feelings, I just feel like in the past two years I've had the gamut of feelings surrounding grief, and some that I think were very unexpected for me are like shame. Some that I think were very unexpected for me are like shame how come I can't move through this or move on. You know, why am I? Why do I feel like I'm just being drug through this? And you know there's a lot of comparison out there for everybody and it's like why does it seem like other people are able to move on? And it's like why does it seem like other people are able to move on? And I'm still stuck in this, like profound sadness over a lot of things that have happened.
Kelly Berry:That's one jealousy, maybe that you know like other people haven't had to experience the same things, that you know it can just feel like back to the shame thing, like feeling so shameful that you feel jealous of other people because they haven't had what the next minute? I'm so sad, so tired, just really tired of having. It's a lot of work to go through all these emotions, you know, and like manage your relationships through it all and a lot of other things. So I didn't really expect to feel shame. I didn't expect to feel jealous. I didn't expect to feel like I just needed sleep all the time. Um, which you know. I don't know if that's having a baby in a toddler or if that's going through grief. I'm sure it's all just compounds. But you know, for me those were some of the unexpected feelings that I've had.
Steph Grainger:Uh, through my experiences, yeah, you were talking about the um element of fertility and like mourning the of your fertility. And I'm like you, I'm done, like hard, like done, and I would love to flick that switch. But as I'm transitioning, I skipped a period, one month, and I did feel this sense of sadness Like is this the end? Is this now going to be coming to an end? Something that I've had with me for many, many years and I've come to accept, and she arrives every month. And the only time I've had with me for many, many years and I've come to accept and she arrives every month. And the only time I've skipped is when a baby is coming. So all of a sudden it's not here. And is this the end of me being able to do this part of womanhood? And I don't want to do it. I don't want to do it again.
Steph Grainger:But there was a real sadness that day that I was just. I sat in it and just thought why do I feel so sad? Like this could be the end of my fertility journey, and actually there's something really sad about that and I really wanted to honor that. But then my period came the next month. So it's like this roller coaster. No, no, you're not quite done yet, right?
Christina Smith:right, just like testing, you testing and I love what you said, Kelly, about this comparison, because we do this so often and I think that we often forget that what we see on Instagram is people's Instagram lives and it's not there behind the scenes where they are possibly grieving as well. And what really came up for me was my childhood and hearing my mother go, just put your big girl pants on and let's go.
Christina Smith:Like you know what I mean. Like, why can't I just suck it up? Is what I want to? Is what I constantly am telling myself these days is, like, just suck it up. Yeah, menopause sucks. You're going to have these emotions going crazy, and sometimes there's not, there's not an explanation for it. Sometimes it's just it is what it is and and yeah, there's a real part of shame for a lot of us of just saying why can't, why can't? Why is it such a big deal? Why am I getting so emotional about this? Like, why is this holding me back?
Christina Smith:And what else you said was about having to rest more and because you're so tired all the time, and I don't know, I don't have a toddler or a baby and I'm tired, and there's this real part of me that gets angry that I have to slow down, and I get angry that I'm not doing or getting done as much as I used to, and I think that that would happen with any grief, whether someone passed or left our lives or relationships break. I think that what I'm learning is that I need to be a lot more gentler with myself and remember that I'm human and not a robot, even though there's parts of me. That's like I wish I was a robot. That would be so much easier. Have somebody just program me properly.
Christina Smith:And so we've talked a lot about what grief looks like. So it can look like anything. It can also look like there's some little moments of joy as well, of going oh wow, I handled that very well, even though I didn't want to or even though I don't like that this thing happened. There is this relief that happens Like even when people pass, if they're really sick. There's like a relief that we have, and then we feel guilty about having relief that this person passed. And so I guess what I'm saying is all the things are okay when it comes to grief. They're all okay and they all kind of come in this giant bag together and we don't really escape them. But what is it that we can do while we're grieving in order to, I guess, just be kinder to ourselves?
Steph Grainger:I think for me it is. It is that it's exactly that when I notice it's coming up, I will show myself kindness and compassion, and I'm so used to as a woman, being so emotionally resilient and being able to do this and then be doing this and be doing that. And one thing that this phase of my life has shown me is that you can't, but neither should you want to be doing all of these things anymore, and there's there's so much in slowing down and showing yourself grace and all of those things. It's. It's been a little bit I've been.
Steph Grainger:It's taken a little while for me to catch up, but, um, I now listen more and I'll sit down if I need to sit down, or I will say no now instead of saying yes and hoping that it will work out fine. I'm very boundaried now with my yeses because I know that the weight of doing that is going to take me longer to recover and actually do I really want to do it in the first place when something else needs me? So I'm showing myself grace a lot more and it goes against the grain, but I'm slowly catching up to actually that's okay. Now it is okay to do yeah.
Kelly Berry:I think, for me vulnerability. So I spent a lot of my life being fine. I'm okay, not really letting people in, but always being a good listener for others, taking on other people's problems, coaching them through or just being there for them, but never allowing anybody in my life to reciprocate that for me. And it wasn't until I needed somebody to do that that it kind of had this awakening. Well, the reason that nobody is banging down my door asking how they can help me is because I've never let anybody help me and so really getting comfortable, getting really uncomfortable.
Kelly Berry:So if my husband's like, how are you, you know, I will now say you know, I'm really sad, like I, I am really, really sad right now, instead of being like I'm good. And and I'm good is the way that I answered that question for basically my whole life, my whole life, and I just realized, you know, that's what has kept friendships more on like the shallow side than the deep side, and so I've really tried to open up more, let people see that you know I'm not okay sometimes or like this, just really freaking sucks and I'm having a really hard time and, um, you know I feel sadness a lot and you know all it sucks, but it's also okay that I feel this way and to be able to talk about it with more people and, um, just let people know that I just I need somebody to check on me, like I've been checking on them for so long.
Christina Smith:I love, how you're like to tell them that you know to let them know, hey, this is. This door is open now and I really need the help rather than whereas.
Christina Smith:Before what I heard was, um, that you shut that off, and it really brought up something for me, which is, um, in my forties well, I guess in my thirties my late thirties is when I started um, when I started going to women's circles and well, around the world it's a woman withinorg, in case anybody is interested in a woman's circle but those women's circles are about being able to bring anything and not being judged and just being kind of held space for, and that has been so amazing for my grief, because I can bring the tears and it doesn't, it's not off-putting to anyone. Or I can bring the anger, and that's not off-putting to anyone, and I'm able to share that and get the support that I need in a really safe space. So that's one way. And what else I was picking up from what both of you were saying is like this mindfulness piece, right Of just being like, ooh, this is where I am today, and so how can I give myself grace today If I'm having a really rough day, which I am honestly having the roughest day, although you can't tell, because I have these beautiful women here with me and I've been loving talking to them, but just giving myself grace and saying, yeah, with my menopausal brain.
Christina Smith:Sometimes when I'm recording a podcast, there's words that don't come up, that I want to come up right away and they won't do it. And I don't feel as smart as I did before, even though I know I actually have more wisdom now, and it's that mindfulness that it slows me down a little bit. But who's to say that's a bad thing? I almost feel like that's on purpose, right? Like maybe menopause is here on purpose, to like be like hey, it's, it's time for you just to be more mindful, to be more conscious of what, what you're doing with your energy and what you're allowing in, what you're not allowing in and how you're, um, how I am reacting to all that.
Christina Smith:So in that tiredness right, I try to find the gifts of yeah, I'm tired because I need to slow down and listen to my body. I'm tired because I haven't been listening to my body and I've been pushing myself way too hard, and there's a lot of wisdom that comes with that for me. One of the things that I often do with my clients is something called a dream funeral, which is like Steph and I were discussing divorces. When I got a divorce right, there was all this stuff that my life wasn't going to look the way that I wanted it to right. That fairy tale that, happily ever after, was just not going to look the way that I wanted it to write. That fairy tale that I that happily ever after was just not going to look the way that I wanted it to, and it's not. It's not like, um, people are like oh well, you can have anything you want. Well, no, because once something like that happens, there are dreams that are taken out of there, and it's not necessarily a bad thing, but it is something that I identified myself with right Within this marriage, and now I'm pulling that identity away, and so a dream funeral is about just that, about putting all of our dreams.
Christina Smith:I often have my clients put them in like a little box. Write all your dreams down that are no longer going to happen, put them in a box and then bury that box and have, literally, have a little funeral for your dreams, so that you have a place to let them go. Some people will burn them. You know cremation. Um, I like to have a box because then I have a place to go back to, because, as we know, just because you grieve at once does not mean like, oh, all better, I cried once and now I no longer feel that way. But it gives us a space to go back to and, like, release more of those dreams as they come, because I feel like I don't know anybody who hasn't had grief in waves.
Christina Smith:Like there's people who show up to work, like the next week after maybe a parent passes or something, but that doesn't mean that those waves of grief are going to go away, and I think that that can be. What's so irritating for some people is that they go on and on and on, and so I know, kelly, you've had a lot of loss in your life. How is it that you manage all those waves that come? Yeah, as best as I can.
Kelly Berry:Yeah, right, the way that I can. You know I there is kind of a lot, you know, I will say up until probably like my mid thirties I would I would describe my experience with grief as very like normal circle of life. You know, I've had grandparents that passed away all well into their eighties, um, some like other family members, illnesses, but you know I, I didn't really know how to handle grief as an adult because I hadn't had like a close, profound loss. So when they started happening and specifically, you know, I will say maybe eight years ago, you know some, some profound losses in mine and my husband's life that just escalated up until about 2021. My grandfather passed away. Then I had, like, my high school soccer coach was murdered. I had a friend tragically hit by a car. You know, my sister and her family suffered a loss of a friend to COVID and then, I mentioned to you all, my best friend was diagnosed with glioblastoma and she passed away a year later.
Kelly Berry:So in a very small amount of time, I not only had like close losses, but some of them were extremely tragic and sudden and it was all such like new territory for me, and so one of the biggest helpers was a therapist, um, talking to somebody who can help me, who you know I mentioned I hadn't been very vulnerable, so I needed somebody that I could practice this with and, um, who was really like trained to help me navigate all of these feelings. Um, but I just even to Steph's point like I started saying no to a lot of things, um, you know even things that I knew would probably help me in the moment. You know like, no, I'm not going to the gym today. No, I'm not gonna. I'm going to cancel these meetings or or whatever, like really protecting myself, um, and the things that I was exposed to and how much like the capacity I would let kind of like expand in my life. And so therapy was a big one.
Kelly Berry:I also joined a women's circle in 2022. That was amazing. I'm actually partnering now with that facilitator and we're starting a women's circle next week actually in our local area and talk to and you know, don't have the expectation that you're going to show up as your best self all the time. You're showing up like how you are, and the same like I'll give a ton of credit to my husband, like he understands, he's also a coach, he is a listener, he kind of can like feel where I am when I'm there. He kind of can like feel where I am when I'm there and will always just offer, like you know, a way to think about things or look at things. That can help you put it into perspective, because grief can also just be so overwhelming that you feel like, uh, you're just really close with and and knows you really well.
Christina Smith:Hmm, that support is so important. I think I don't even know what I would do if I had gone the last 11, 12, 15 years without a women's circle. I often have several of them at any particular time because they've just been so helpful, because I think in my grief I know I want to isolate and I know that that's sometimes helpful and not always helpful.
Christina Smith:And so knowing that I don't have to isolate, like I can show up as I am, like you said, and that I'm going to be accepted. I think it's so different, like it's one of the gifts of getting older for me, because when I was young I went to lots of different high schools because but we just moved a lot and so I didn't trust women when I was younger, because in high school there was like a lot of mean girls and they were at every school, so I didn't really trust women. And so if you're one of those women listening to this and going, I don't know how I'd feel. My first women's weekend, I sat in a room with 60 women. Wish they were men, because men would have been easier to handle for me, and that's when I first realized I didn't trust women. Um, but as I started being held, having space held for me by women, I started to really trust them.
Christina Smith:And what I love about circle is like there's guidelines, there's agreements to how we show up in circle, that we're not going to judge each other, that we are there to do the deep work, um, where I feel like there's still so many groups of women who try to avoid that and stay on the shallow side and I I find myself like not wanting to be in those kinds of circles anymore, um, and really wanting the deep relationships, um. So support is like essential and, yes, therapy as well as has been very, very useful to me. Um, even as a coach, I go in and out of having a therapist because I want to keep myself clear too.
Steph Grainger:You know, like I can't, I can't hold that space for other women unless I'm also actually doing the work, like so I'm just nodding furiously away here because, um, the most profound grief I've ever experienced is the loss of my sister, um, and that is a grief that will be with me forever and all grief is but it. It defined me in such a powerful way and for a long time, in an unhelpful way, because I was so young. She was 17. I was 19. I have an older brother, who was about 21 at the time, but it shows up in all areas of my life. It shows up when I have my children, it showed up when I got married. It shows up when I see sisters with their children playing together and I have, like I say, my brother and he has children as well and we are very close. But I think most recently it's resurfaced because our dad is unwell. He is seeing out the last days, weeks of his life and she's not here again. So it's again. You know it been gosh nearly 30 years since she, since she passed, but it it shows up consistently through big milestones in our life that she's just not present. So sometimes it takes your breath away. Sometimes you didn't see it coming, and other times you know it's coming, um, and it's how you support yourself when it shows um, and I and I have got really good now at naming it and allowing it and my default is to get in my car and drive to the sea and stand on the beach and just let it come at me and let it go at the same time. But it's taken me quite a long time to do that. But women's circles have just transformed my life.
Steph Grainger:I think being in circle with women, possibly around 14 years ago, was the first time I finally found a place. I fit, um, and that's how I would explain it because, like you were saying, christine, a school for me again didn't fit, didn't know where I. You know some mean girls. I tried to stay in that camp because you felt safer there than you did, if you, you know, removed yourself. But when I sat in circle for the first time, I was like, finally, finally, here's a group of women that are just kind to each other and I have been in many since then and I continually sit in circle because it just it's so refreshing Like I have an incredible husband and the same I go to therapy regularly, but sisterhood has been a game changer for me, yeah, and it's not in our natural DNA to be so kind to each other.
Christina Smith:Unfortunately, it's actually in our DNA to be more about women's relationships, and I can't remember who wrote it, but you can go look it up, great. Well, yeah, we could probably have this conversation all day, of course, and we don't have all day, so I'm going to have us each close out with one piece of wisdom, and if you also want to share how people can connect with you in case they want to reach out to you, that would be great. My one piece of wisdom, and just allow it to be okay wherever you are, just allow it to. You're sad today? Great, be sad today.
Christina Smith:You're angry day? Great, be angry today. And whatever it is, just allow it to pass through you, because there's so many times I've wanted to like, stomp it down and be like, oh, we can't be that way today. Put on the happy face and then I and I feel like I have been stuffed and I don't feel myself and I'm not also not hearing the wisdom of what the feelings are trying to bring to me. So, with that staff, can you check out with a little wisdom and how people can reach you?
Steph Grainger:Absolutely. I think the biggest lesson I learned was boundaries, and I learned that the hard way, but once I started to look at my boundaries and implement them, it meant that I felt so much safer with with what I was doing. So I would always say notice the areas of your life where you're giving too much and you're depleting yourself and think about how you can put some boundaries in place. Um, I read a on the back of one of my friends bathroom doors and it said say more as in say the word no more so that it gives your yeses more power. And I loved that and that was about 15 years ago. I read that and it stayed with me and I just think what you know saying yes all the time, it depowers you completely. So I would, I would say that boundaries and, yeah, checking that, but you can find me on Instagram. It's probably where I hang out the most at. I am Steph Granger and you can find me at stephgrangercouk.
Christina Smith:Thank you, thank you, and those links will be down below as well, so that people can easily click on them. And Kelly.
Kelly Berry:Yeah. So I think my wisdom is to pause and take notice when you are living in autopilot. And I say that because I think that a lot of us are just in this habit of letting life pass us by staying busy, and really, that we're doing things that don't bring us joy or that we don't love, and we don't really stop to take notice of that, because it's just what we do, it's it's what our life looks like, it's it's this like pattern that we've gotten ourselves in, but it can lead to doing things that are really misaligned with who you are and what you want. And so then you find yourself, you know, way down the road, very far from where you thought you'd be or where you wanted to be, and and all it takes is a little bit of like awareness, that intentionality of stopping and being like why am I doing this? Do I really like this? Then you can take whatever steps you know are comfortable or right for you in the moment. But that's a big one for me that you that really these tragedies have surfaced for me. Like you know, you only get this one, one life, and if you're just on auto, on autopilot, you'll end up someplace that you didn't really want to be.
Kelly Berry:Uh, and you can find me also on Instagram. Uh, the podcast is at life intended podcast, or my personal Instagram is at Kelly Berry four. And then I also have a website, kelly Berryinfo, and I have a newsletter. You can sign up for it there.
Christina Smith:Beautiful. Thank you, women, so much for being here. I really appreciate all the wisdom that you've brought to this topic. That is really really hard to talk about for so many of us. With that, thank you, audience, for tuning in and we'll talk to you next week.
