Stop Repeating the Past: The Secret to Lasting Emotional Healing

So I did and I can't remember who I was speaking to, but I talked to them for about an hour. And they said, you know, you're already doing it. You just don't know you are. And so I decided, all right, I'm going to go through the program.

I'm going to get certified. I did not do anything with my client until I had got the certification. I kind of cleaned up my own backyard, so to speak. And that's what started me on the path to Great Recovery.

And when I first opened my business, it was divided into three parts. There was energy work like Ray Key, that sort of thing. And then I had the life coaching. And then I introduced this Great for Recovery Element.

But now fast forward to 2025. That's basically all I do. Because not only did I find it was the missing piece for me on a personal level, but it was also the missing piece for me on a professional level. I just believe in this process so much.

That is incredible. We're honored to hear that first off. So thank you for mentioning that aspect of it. And let's see, on a couple of the last podcasts, we talked about, I think one of our main challenge as grief recovery specialist is how to tell people that there really is no perfect time to do grief recovery.

And in fact, everyone on the planet could pick up grief recovery at any point and benefit. So how did you first kind of start to see that you know what every client really should? I want to transition more and more into the grief recovery method. Was it just kind of the results we're produced?

Were clients asking for it? Were more clients coming around grief? Or did it kind of just evolve based on the outcomes of how you were seeing this effect and help people? I think it kind of evolved organically actually.

But I think this is where I made my final decision. I've probably spent about three decades in the mindset world, positive thinking. And that's all part of the coaching world, that sort of thing. And one thing about it that never set well with me was when they would say, okay, you've got a negative thought, just flip it over to a positive one.

There was something intuitively that really triggered me when they would make that suggestion, but I didn't know why. And then I started doing grief recovery work and people would say to me, you know, should I start with the mindset piece? Should I start with the coaching or should I do grief recovery? And I was still fairly new to it.

And I said, you know, I don't think it matters as long as you cover all the bases at some point. Then I became really experienced in it. And I really started to see the results. And then I shifted that answer completely to I believe now that everyone should start with the grief work because so much of the problems that present are driven by unresolved emotions.

So deal with the grief stuff. I think it'll save you time. And I think it'll save you money. But then if there is something else left, it becomes much easier for a therapist or whoever the next person is on the journey to see what's left.

Does that make sense? Absolutely. And Ed, if you can hear me, I am picking up some popping. When Tammy is talking every now and again, are you hearing that as well?

Okay. Then give me one second, guys. I'm going to move something away from me. I'll be right back.

Give me one sec. Okay. Okay. I don't know if it's interference on my side.

So if you're not hearing it, Ed, then we'll just keep going. Okay. I just was I just was curious if you could hear that too. So we will we'll just pick up from there Tammy.

So I will we'll pick it up here in a sec. Yeah, that's very that's very interesting, Tammy. The the thing that I have noticed, both from my own personal life and through other people I've worked with personally through grief recovery. A little bit of my story.

I love my mom. She's an amazing mom. She is to this day. So this is not about critiquing her her parenting whatsoever, right?

And my my kids will have an opportunity to do that on me someday. But but I will say this. My mother is a very positive person. She's very much into you know, you create what you believe and and I think those principles are very good in a lot of ways.

But what I did find as a young young, you know, man growing up is I you know, I broke up with my first girlfriend and I'm heartbroken over that, right? And my mom in an attempt to shield me from the pain that's inevitable around our first breakup, right? My mom who is again loving well intentioned mom was like, well here let's you know, let's create a vision board on exactly what you do want. You know, let's let's let's just dream up the girl that you want to meet, right?

Again, this loving action, the problem was is we are short circuiting or attempting to kind of do you know, again, we're we're attempting to kind of move past like the things that need to happen there, which is I need to grieve and complete my relationship with the with the gal that that I broke up with. And I again, I didn't know how to articulate it at the time, but I very much did not feel heard by my mom, right? My mom came across as kind of a loop in my opinion because it was like yeah, yeah, yeah, like we're going to create what you want, right? And there's this kind of, again, it's an attempt to take a, oh god, why am I not what what is the word a shortcut?

Thank you. We're trying to shortcut into me being happy when we're missing like a critical piece of that, which is like, hey, it's okay and I need to feel sad for a bit. And so I think that's kind of, that's what I'm getting a sense of what you're talking about, which is like in the coaching world, again, coaches do incredible things. I'm friends with a lot of coaches.

But if we go right to mindset and positive thinking and and that positive outlook, a lot of the time that that is just not the first step, you know, especially if you're working with a client where there's, you know, a lifetime full of grief there. And it's it's it's not possible for most people to go from a to see, right? If there is a B in between and the B meaning, hey, there's some sad painful stuff from the past like we, we need to find a way in our work. We call it find a way to get emotionally complete because if we're on emotionally unfinished, it's just kind of stirring around in us over and over and over.

And and again, like I've said, I've had many different people I've worked with personally, who also had similar kind of either they they had found kind of positive thinking or their, you know, their mom or dad kind of taught them how to do that. And the minute you you get them in grief recovery where you give them permission to spend some time in the sadness, they're grateful for it as crazy as that sounds because it's been there the whole time. They just never felt comfortable just feeling stuff and working through that stuff because it was at all all costs find the positive at all costs shift your mindset. And at a certain time, I that is a great place for me to be, right?

At a certain time, I do need to go to positive thinking and have that optimistic outlook. But if I miss all that other stuff, then I just carry it. Well, and I think it also feeds into that myth of replace the loss, you know, right away we get conditioned into replacing that negative thought with a positive one without giving it a voice with no recognizing it or just feeling it before we go to that next step. And I think for people who go through grief recovery, it becomes harder to just replace that negative thought with a positive one because they appreciate the value and the freedom that comes from being able to process those emotions.

And so I was really grateful to be able to find that piece. But another piece that came together on the same line for me is when I started life coaching, I belonged to a lot of groups that were, you know, kind of again in that positive mindset. And people would say to me, you know, you have the same lesson over and over again, or the same experience over and over again until you learn the lesson. And much like the positive thinking, that also pushed my buttons.

And it just seemed to be like there, I was missing something that I kept having these repeat experiences again and again. And then you feel stupid because you're not learning the lesson, right? And then I found grief recovery. And now I look at that so differently because those repeated patterns, those repeated experiences aren't lessons that we need to learn.

They're missed opportunities for healing. And once we heal that experience, we don't have to repeat it. It doesn't have to be repeated because our heart was heard, it was recognized, it was able to express what it needed to to complete that experience. And then it just goes.

So I found it really interesting after a lifetime of being in this whole mindset kind of way of thinking, that replace a negative thought with a positive one. And lessons repeated are unlearned versus missed opportunities for healing. So that was really big piece. Yeah, I love that.

And Tammy, for the audience, could you give us a real life example of that kind of, you know, you're going to continue to repeat the lesson until you learn it versus it's a missed opportunity for healing? Can you give us an example of what that looks like in terms of grief recovery and how it clicked for you with grief recovery? Okay, I'm going to use my own story as an example. So I grew up in what I would describe as a very emotionally unsafe environment.

You know, if you walked into my house, it would have been a nice middle class, you know, house was nice, had food, had clothes, that sort of thing. But emotionally it was very unsafe. And so I grew up not having a lot of confidence, looking for my worth through external validation, I guess would be people pleasing even an imposter syndrome, you know, people would compliment me and I couldn't accept the compliment because I didn't see myself that way. I've worked since I was 13, so I've had many bosses over the years.

And I've had four that I really loved and respected and learned a lot from. But the pattern that showed up on my career graph was working for bully bosses over and over and over until the last one literally brought me to my knees. And as I was going through grief recovery, what I learned was, as you know, when you go through the process, you've got to be honest and you've got to own what's yours. So as I was going through grief recovery on that last manager relationship, yes, there were all kinds of things that I could hold them responsible for, but there were four major things that showed up for myself.

One was they told me they didn't want me there, they didn't like me and they were being forced to hire me. Who takes a job like that? Well, I'll tell you in a minute who takes that job. Then for the first six months, they sabotaged me at every turn.

And because I'm kind of a type A personality, I found a way around all the roadblocks. Again, missed all the warning signs. Three years into the job I resigned and they wouldn't accept my resignation. So I chose to stay.

And two years later, I was done. I was done mentally, physically, emotionally, puddle on the floor. But as I was processing this relationship, I realized that I had taken the job because he didn't like me and I needed to fix that. And every time he put a challenge in the way, I needed to fix that because he didn't like me and I needed him to say, you know, good job.

And as I processed that relationship, what I thought was really interesting was all of the previous bosses that were similar to that all kind of left with him because it was the repeated pattern over and over and over again. He just seemed to be the worst of the worst. And so the grief recovery process gathered all of that up. And with the other healing that I had done with my loss graph, what I found was bit by bit.

I started to reclaim those things that I'd lost. My confidence increased. My self-esteem went up. I could validate my own worth.

I was proud of my accomplishments. I could own my skill level. All of those things, the people pleasing just kind of went away because they were always, I think, of my body trying to get my attention that I had a lot of inner work to do. Even though I thought I had already dealt with it with other, you know, forms and tools that I picked up along the way.

And so once I completed that relationship with him, I've never had to repeat that pattern. And even though I'm an entrepreneur down, I work for myself, I also work out of a mental health office. So I guess in essence, I still do have a boss. She is completely different, completely different than that pattern that I had before.

Does that answer that question? Oh, absolutely. That's such a brilliant example. And thank you again for being willing to kind of talk about your own past here as an example.

I love that. You know, the other place that I was going to kind of go with where I think we see this a lot. And I think grief recovery can be a real gift for people. So like you said, they don't have to repeat the pattern over and over because I don't want to, I don't want the listeners to miss what you said, which is you had a massive part in replaying this over and over and over.

Right? So often we think, you know, it's like, why is this happening? Why am I continually finding myself in this situation? And it's like, what I love about grief recovery is it puts the ownership in us because, you know, ultimately, we're allowing ourselves to be found in these positions time and time again.

And like you said, right, it's in our work. It's not about learning a lesson. It's about processing and healing from what is emotionally unfinished. And therefore you won't find yourself in a situation like that again.

Or if you do, you will quickly get out of that situation because you understand, you know, that that work is yours to be done. So I love your, I love your example out of a professional setting. And I think you'll agree one place this plays out very often with with our clients and with with us too is in romantic relationships, right? Often in life, we find ourselves in very similar patterns with different people, but the pattern or the tone or or what we're allowing to happen in the relationship is very similar, right?

And it's not this coincidence, right? It goes back to just like what you talked about. It goes back to unfinished emotional pain from our past. And somehow we think it's acceptable to be in this or that's what we think is really the only way to go or or you know, like you said, Tammy, like we want this person, we want to prove to this person are worth or we just because of our own parents and the environment we grew up with.

Our belief system is, is this is an acceptable way to be treated or to be talked to or you know, whatever the case is. And so I think a lot of the time people don't come to us around these type of topics, right? In other words, they don't come to do grief or recovery work around, hey, I keep finding this pattern of boss in this kind of work. I mean, or they don't come to us and say, hey, I'm really working on finding the right person romantically.

So I want to do grief or recovery work for a lot of that to happen. But these are the benefits of the method and what it can do for you. And that's kind of, I think, what we're passionate about is figuring out a way to tell the world, hey, if these patterns do exist for you, we give us a try. Like, have us be your first stop because you absolutely can do amazing grief, recovery work to unburden yourself from a bunch of past hurt so that you do not find yourself in similar situations.

If you realize you don't want to be in these type of situations. So I think romantic relationships this happens very often. I think also, like you said, professionally this can happen. I also think like this is a very important topic you're bringing up because of parents.

If we're unfinished with how we were parented, we are very, very likely to bring in a lot of those same parenting styles into our relationship with our children, right? And then you hear that the cliche saying, like, I sounded just like my father, right? It's like, well, we kind of know why in the group for recovery world. And if you don't want to sound like your father, becoming aware of it, that's a great first step.

But unless you go unpack and grieve and complete a bunch of stuff that's unfinished with your father, you're probably going to continually sound like your father, especially at those most stressful times of your parenting career. Because again, right, we go back to what we're familiar with, not necessarily what's healthy or what's ideal. And, you know, I know society talks about this kind of stuff in a lot of different ways, but they don't talk it in the way we do, which is, no, we want you to get emotionally complete with your father so that you don't keep doing recurring patterns like what your father did, right? And that's very different than the other stuff being offered out there.

So again, I'm so glad you brought this topic up because it's really limitless what you can help your clients with, especially, I mean, I can't even imagine as a coach, Tammy, right, with all these different things people are wanting to work on with you and all the breakthroughs that they want to work on, the the grief recovery method is such a great start point because you really can't help your other tools really soar with them, right? And you know, it's funny. You kind of touched on it in the fact that you know, the message I really would like people to know is, you know, you don't need that crisis to do great recovery, but so often it's human nature that we need to hit that crisis point in order to do the work that we need to do. And so, you know, someone will call me and they will have experienced a really awful loss, you know, kind of that tipping point loss.

And so they call and, you know, I can't, I can't process this. I can't live like this anymore. Can you help me to complete this grief? And yet, almost without fail, they sit down in that third week to try to identify, okay, what are those losses that maybe perhaps are incomplete?

And almost without fail, they'll say to me, you know, this is what brought me to you, but oh my gosh, I had no idea. All of this stuff was here. And I've had so many people say to me when they're done the program that, yes, this was a great, great grief program, but it's probably the best personal development program that they've ever experienced. And I would agree with that because like you say, we have to take accountability for our own part in our own story.

And I think the way that the grief recovery program is structured because there's so much support as you're going through it, your ego kind of gets parked, you know, I say to my clients, writer Ron doesn't enter into this, we're just going to kind of park that to the side. But what it does is it allows us to step away from victimhood because it's so easy to say, okay, that's mine. That's theirs. This is mine.

I'm going to own it. And it becomes harder and harder with the relationships that we work on to stay in that victim mentality because you realize it's so empowering to be able to take ownership of that history. Yeah, no, I love that. Really well put.

Yeah, I know for me that was also the case where because of time or, you know, memories fade or they get a little distorted, I think a lot of the time just time passing can really kind of like help buttress up that idea that we were the victim. And all of a sudden, all we're remembering is kind of the ways we were wronged. And the way we do the method where we like you said, kind of put on hold ego and kind of we're not keeping score here. We just want you to chart out all the stuff that hurt that they did.

And then all the stuff that you felt kind of icky about you doing, right? And then before you know it, it really kind of gives you a more accurate memory picture or an accurate assessment of kind of what that relationship was. And I think more importantly than that, like you said, then you can take ownership of the stuff that maybe you messed up within the relationship and complete that. And so it very much is a humanizing process in most of the work I see people do.

And it's empowering because like again, if we feel victimized 100% and we had no part in it, that's a very trapping place to be, right? Because where do you go from there? But when you actually help discover, hey, maybe bare minimum, maybe my only part of this hurt in this pain was allowing myself to be in this relationship again, right? And that could be all the difference in the world, just actually truly taking responsibility for allowing myself one more time to be in a position where this could have happened to me, right?

That can be very, very empowering for people. And I think that's really going back to our previously conversation when we're, you know, when we're coaching people and we're talking about mindset and we're talking about being positive, that's I think really what we're trying to get people to go to is real personal accountability and then understanding that they are steering their ship, right? So and again, that's very hard to do if we feel like we're just victim of past circumstances and past events 100% right? And we have no part in it, right?

You know, Tammy, a big part of our work is helping people find at least one percent responsibility on how they move forward because again, right? Yeah, good. And I think that was clear in that example of my in my career because, you know, my potential boss said, I don't want you here. I should have said thank you for your honesty and walked out the door, right?

You know, when the roadblocks were there, I should have recognized them and I should have left. When I rescinded my my resignation, when I chose to stay another five years, at the bottom of that story, yes, he may have hurt me, but he couldn't have hurt me if I hadn't put myself in that situation in the first place. And I need to own that. It doesn't let him off the hook.

It doesn't mean I don't have things that I still need to process, but yes, I agree with you 100%. We've got to say, I did this. Yeah. And it's very freeing to be able to say that.

Yeah. And, you know, and if I may, right? To interject into Tammy's story and create a hypothetical here, you know, again, shut me down whenever you want, Tammy, but I feel like you'll probably let me run with this. If, if so, that was Tammy's fourth boss, I believe, that was kind of that pattern where it's like, I'm going to get you like me.

I'm going to prove that I, that I'm good at what I do. And, you know, whatever else was going on in Tammy's heart. And then at the fourth boss, she realizes, hey, I need to do some grief for Curvery work around this boss. And if you, if you heard what she said, she said, you know, doing the completion work around what was unfinished with the pain and the hurt around this boss magically kind of let all the other bosses kind of go, right?

So it was all kind of like a package deal where she could get complete with these past bosses. And that's great. And that's what we want for her. But I guarantee you, and this is what's really important about this story is Tammy, the next time she runs into a job opportunity or a boss that that at all looks or smells like the last four bosses, she is not going to let herself, she's not going to allow herself to be there or to take that job or to stick around in that job long term, because it feels so much different.

The stimulus will feel that much sharper and that much more abrasive because we have gotten complete with what we, what, what, what, what, what once felt familiar, right? So now to feel very unfamiliar, same with if you go out on the first date with a guy after you've got complete with a lot of the past kind of bad information you had about how to be treated, you know, you'll know on the first or second comment, oh, read, read alarm, read alarm. This guy is exactly those people and I don't want that anymore because it doesn't feel familiar anymore where it used to feel comfortable, right? We, I mean, you, we all know, but humans can sit in a tremendous amount of pain that feels familiar until we do something about it and then it won't be comfortable or even feel familiar.

And so, you know, the odds of Tammy ever working for a boss like that, I would say are 0% now because of the grief or recovery work, where, you know, if we didn't get complete with that boss or the culmination of all those bosses, then it would just be well, I guess you haven't learned your lesson yet, Tammy, because you're still in that, you know, in that kind of weird working relationship, okay, next boss, I guess you haven't learned that lesson. It's like, yeah, because it's not about learning a lesson, it's about processing the emotional backlog of stuff. Yeah, well said. Yeah.

Well, Tammy, another thing that we kind of covered a little bit in the pre-interview that I'd love to go to and this has come up a lot recently with several of our guests, but I think we need to just keep mining this and exploring it, because it's really a pain point in society, right, is COVID, right? I think it's very interested to talk to different specialists and check in with different specialists that are out there in the trenches working with people, helping them heal their hearts, and COVID keeps coming up. So, you know, what can you tell us, Tammy, about you, you were an active specialist through COVID, you're helping people after COVID, you were obviously a specialist pre-COVID. What kind of input do you have just in terms of the state of affairs or where are we at?

What would you like to comment on around COVID? Well, I think there's two things that really stand out for me. One is, I don't think the world, I'm going to go that big, recognizes that the COVID experience was a grieving experience. I think it's being totally missed that it's something that we need to process on an emotional level.

And the other thing is I found that people who were already full to the brim with unresolved emotions that they didn't know that they were caring or harboring COVID became that tipping point. And here's in my opinion anyway, this is why I think it's so big. As you know, there's kind of five maybe possibilities as to why we might grieve. So, there's an emotional loss of any kind.

There is the conflicting feelings brought up by change and something that's familiar. There's those things that we wished have been better, different or more, are unrealized hopes, dreams and expectations and those things that were left unsaid. Now, I can work with a variety of people and sometimes not all five of those boxes get checked off in a relationship graph. So, most often there's an unsaid communication, but you know, it may not involve all five of those examples, but with COVID you check off all five boxes and it does not matter what side of the narrative you're on, you're going to check off those boxes because we all had an emotional loss.

We all had what was familiar taken away from us. We all experienced regrets and disappointments and I don't know how it was for you in the States, but up here in Canada, we were literally told by our government that we weren't allowed to speak to people who disagreed with us. And so, you know, I did the Grafrey Covering Method on the COVID experience about 18 months in. I kind of hit my wall about 18 months in.

I went, I can't do this anymore. And as I unpacked everything and I looked at it, what I realized, the biggest trigger point for me in the whole experience, was we weren't allowed to talk. And I make my living listening to people and talking to people. And so, you know, in all the rest of my life, you could sit down with a glass of wine, a cup of coffee, a cup of tea, whatever, you could sit down, you could have a healthy disagreement, a healthy discussion, and that's how we learn.

We learn from each other. But for me personally, that became the tipping point. We weren't allowed to talk. And then it just kept spilling over from that over and bigger and bigger and bigger.

And yet, because people don't recognize it as a grieving experience or emotions that need to be processed, as you know, you know, use the analogy that the cork in the in the tea kettle or the steam kettle. The pressure just keeps building. And then the next thing that comes along, well, the emotions get even hotter. And the reaction becomes more strong because we're being driven by all these unprocessed emotions that have happened over the last five years.

It's just, I just think it's such an important topic just to even open up the thought process that maybe there's some work that needs to be done emotionally. Yeah. Now, I want to stay on this topic for a bit, Tammy, if you will, because I can almost hear people listening. I can almost hear them thinking, well, this is kind of a stretch, guys.

You guys are kind of reaching Tammy and Cole, like, what do you mean grief around COVID, right? So let's, let's break this down a little bit practically speaking. And I really hope if you are a listener, again, we, we, we're here, we're here with the grief recovery method. We're here to help people with grief full stop period.

So, I really don't want you well in your listening. If you can, please, please don't worry about what camp you're in in COVID because obviously there were camps that were formed. And really the goal is no matter what camp you're in, if you come to grief recovery, we're going to lovingly, non-judgmentally, just work with you. And all that matters is kind of what you're working on.

And we won't give me an opinion because again, it's frankly, it's unnecessary and unwanted, right? So what do I mean by that? For some people who were very, very worried about the actual physical, you know, virus of COVID and all of that kind of stuff, right? In terms of a practical grief event, we have many people who felt a genuine loss of safety, right?

So that camp, it's like, there's your loss right there, right? There's a loss of innocence, right? It's like, there's a, but again, I think the real practical one for a lot of people is they just had a massive loss of safety, right? Because it was very scary for many people are like, am I going to get it?

Am I going to die from it? Is someone I love going to die from it? And there's a loss right there. Okay, for other people who didn't really feel like the the actual virus was as dangerous as it was being portrayed, they felt a loss of freedom.

And that's a very, that's a very massive grief event for another person. Again, we're not ranking, we're not, I'm not trying to get in a debate with anyone listening. I'm just telling you that like when Tammy says that everyone accumulated unresolved grief around COVID, that's what we're really trying to spell out right now. So, you know, so you have that.

Let's say that you and your mother or your father completely disagreed on how to treat COVID or the, you know, the steps you could take around COVID. And, and you're not invited to Thanksgiving or to the holiday dinner because of the take you have and because it's different than the take that other person has. Well, that's a massive loss of trust. And a loss of trust in your mom or your dad or your son or your daughter or your, you know, sibling, that's a massive loss event too, right?

Like, notice we're using, I'm using the term loss because that is grief, right? We can all agree when someone dies, that is a loss. Well, look, when, when you lose your innocence forever, that's a loss. When you lose your safety, when you lose your control of your body, when you lose your freedom, those are all losses, right?

That's why we can go into a prison system and do grief recovery right away because there's a loss of freedom there. So, you know, right there, so let's just recap because I don't want to miss them and Tammy, chime in with any others, but we have loss of innocence. You know, we have loss of safety, we have loss of trust, we have loss of freedom, right? I don't think anyone could argue with COVID.

That's what, you know, millions of people were feeling one or a combination of all of those, right? We haven't even obviously gotten to people who actually lost a loved one to, to, to, to die of COVID, right? And then, right? And then we have, okay, again, I don't care what your anyone's position is on the, I'm pro vaccine, I'm anti vaccine, COVID vaccine, like, you know, even me saying this on a podcast, we may not even be able to have this podcast get out there, right?

So I'm in, I'm in kind of new territory here, but my point is, is if you, if you believed one way on the vaccine and did not want to take it, now we have loss of a job, right? So now we have loss of financial safety. So now we have like what we had for now, we have five losses, okay? And then other people who are interacting with you and they feel like the, the, the, the vaccine is the solution.

And so they think if you didn't get it, now you're putting their life at danger. So now we have a loss of trust or loss of safety again on another level. And again, the, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, I don't, I don't want to say, I mean, historically, right? People, humanity, the globe has grieved a lot of large, large things, right?

So I think it would be kind of silly for me to be like, this is, this is the main one or the biggest one. Again, I don't even think we need to rank it, rank it. I think Tammy, kind of what, what you're talking about and why we're passionate about talking about this is because it is, it's going unaddressed as a, as, as, you know, as a grief event that the world is grieving actively day to day. And I think it's going unaddressed, unrecognized, but I think it is unique.

I'm just going to challenge just a little bit that last date you make. Please, please, with unique in the fact that you think of all the world wars, you think of all the conflicts, it was between two countries or three countries or maybe six countries. I don't know, I don't know my history that well. But this was something that the whole world moved in lockstep with.

Like everyone worldwide heard the same things, experienced the same things. So I think that's what makes this so unique. It doesn't matter if you lived in Australia or you lived in France or you lived in America, you lived in Canada, we were all going through the exact same situation. And I was on a podcast just a little while ago with a gentleman from Australia.

And they were locked down for something like 283 days or something. He said, the world has no idea what that does to you emotionally. Like, you literally are locked down for almost a full year. And then he brought out another point that I hadn't really thought of.

So what about those people that were classified as non-essential workers? Yesterday they got up, they had a purpose, they went to work, they earned a paycheck, they felt like they were contributing to society, and then today they got up, and now they're just being told, your services aren't important. And so like you say, it creates financial change and and loss of control, and again, a loss of trust, a loss of safety. And it was the gentleman in Australia that brought that up.

And I thought, oh my gosh, I never even looked at the non-essential workers in that way. They were victims of this in a completely different way. It didn't matter if they had chosen to got the vaccine or had not chosen to get the vaccine, they were still being told that they were no longer needed. Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah, I was going to say I can't imagine either, but I guess I don't know how I qualified because again, I just, yeah, I went to anyway, we don't need to get into my personal story around COVID.

But I hear what you're saying, and it's a great point you bring up, and I was going to add to that, right? Like I have friends who were very much going to be, that were very much classified as as first responders as essential. But then again, one day the government decides unless you take this action, then you're not essential either. And in fact, you can just lose your career, right?

And so, you know, again, the whole world, the point is the whole world is reeling from this event. And it is so easy for you or me, Tammy, or someone listening to like your gut reaction is to be kind of tribal and be like, well, I'm in this camp and I'm sensing something from coal or I'm sensing from Tammy. And so I'm in the other camp and like the point is is we all believe we're right. Otherwise, we would, you know, change our position.

So it's not about being right, right? Because one size believes they're right. The other size believes they're right. The point that we're trying to make is grief recovery specialists is that we want to help people because you believe in your heart, you're right, which is great, and you're grieving and hurting over whatever grief and loss you had around this horrible tragedy.

And that's the only place we care to work from is what is true for you and your heart and let us help you unpack that, right? And I think if we can just shift back to that versus these camps and right or wrong, we'd be on a better track than we are right now, right? It's like I constantly over the last five or 10 years like Tammy, I can't tell you when I when I kind of did this work and I saw my dad getting older, I saw Russell Friedman who is this kind of co-founder getting older and I just didn't know who was going to carry this torch of this beautiful work long, long term. You know, I made a commitment to do grief recovery because I felt like it was that important of the world and I wanted to dedicate my life to it as they did their lives to it.

I was so naive, though, I just thought, oh yeah, I'm going to help people agree for curry for the rest of my life. Little did I know, you know, this is 2010. Little did I know that like shortly after I kind of took over in 2017, the world was going to be divided almost weekly on hundreds of topics, right? And people would be emailing me their list of demands of I won't promote your work unless you do this, this, and this.

I won't promote your work unless you tell me the way you voted or, you know, and it's like, whoa guys, like I'm here to help people with grief, right? I'm not here for a political movement. I'm not here to take a stand on this or this or this, right? And it's like I'm very grateful that I have a background in a 12-step program that has 12 traditions in it.

And really those 12 traditions, one of them is like, hey, we don't have an outside opinion on this, this or this because we're here for the singleness of purpose of helping other people with this disease, right? And so I saw in the 12-step program over the years, I've saw them weather storms and they and they and they could feel connected and feel safe and help each other even when the world outside was divided over X, Y, or Z, right? And so I was so grateful I had that example because that's when all of when we started again, when we got divided over COVID and we got divided over social issues and we got divided over elections and when we got divided over wars being fought and when we got, you know, I could go on and on and on about all of the division that we're supposed to participate in every day.

I had a real example of an organization that has been around since the 30s that got to weather a bunch of stuff and and so that's where I, you know, I want to remind specialists and hopefully those that are listening that aren't affiliated with us, like we have in this work we have a singleness of purpose which is to help our fellow grieving person, right? And Tammy doesn't get a vote in my grief, I don't get a vote in Tammy's grief, a best as best that I can do is be a heart with her for her articulate the tools so she can go set herself free of whatever hurt that is, right? So, you know, and again, I know this is kind of a long rant. I'll turn turn the floor back over to you here in a second, Tammy, but really the rant is about this.

Whatever you felt around COVID is valid for you, right? You live that experience and you're grieving it and and we can help you with that. And and again, it's 100% like we have a saying in this work which is every griever is unique. Therefore, every griever, you know, so therefore, every relationship is unique and every griever grieves at 100% of whatever the relationship or the loss was for them.

And that's all we need to do to get started with this work, right? And I have seen people week after week after week come together in spite of their differences, in spite of the different things we're arguing out there, you know, out there in society because we're just reminded that we're all just helping each other with with this loss and then this loss and then this loss. And and so that's all to say I have seen grief recovery unite people time and time again in a very divided world because it humanizes us. It it reminds us that we oh wow that clear that person is clearly heartbroken over that this person is clearly heartbroken over that and you see that we're all just struggling, right?

And and and and right or wrong becomes irrelevant because you quickly see different people have strong beliefs on what right or wrong is based on a lot of stuff, you know. And you know I think another way to make this kind of relevant is if you take my childhood for example so let's use my childhood as opposed to COVID but it's still in relevance to COVID. If you ask my mom and my dad and my sister and me for what my childhood was like you would get four completely different stories right and coming back again to that it doesn't matter who's right, it doesn't matter who's wrong. I always say to my clients we're healing from your perspective.

That doesn't mean your perspective's right, it doesn't mean your perspective's wrong. But in order to heal you have to tell the story from your perspective. And what I find is when people tell their story from their perspective without judgment, without intellectualizing it, without judging it, what they do is they find themselves in a place of compassion, tolerance, and an openness to understand the other person's point of view. And I think that's what happened to me when I processed my COVID experience.

I was able to diffuse the triggers, I was able to take the power away from the emotion where I'd been reacting with emotion. And I was able to step back into that observer's place. And from that place of observing that's where that tolerance comes from because you're not engaged, you're not engaged in the battle, you're just watching it, right? I don't know that helped or made it more complex.

No, no, I'm really glad you said that because that is absolutely the truth, right? Look, if I see someone and I'm working with them on grief recovery and let's say they're working on one of the losses that we mentioned in COVID, right? And they are heartbroken over something that is clearly 100% of a heartbreaking event for them. And let's say that I disagree with that part of COVID, it really doesn't matter because like you said, the tolerance is there, the love is there, the empathy is there because I'm truly seeing this person hurting over this, right?

And so it's a lot easier to, again, to find those things because I'm a human being, you know, you catch me on the wrong day and I can have a shortage of tolerance or empathy or love. And I'm the president of the grief recovery institute. So that's hard to say, but it's the truth, right? And that's kind of what we come from is like I'm a human being.

And if I think I'm really right, then and you catch me on the wrong day, I can have a shortage of those things too at surface level. But the minute I get into the work with someone, and I can really see their pain and they're working truly from their pain and they're wanting to relieve themselves of that pain around whatever the loss is. It's impossible to not be rooting for that person within 10, 15 minutes or a day or two of learning that person saying, yeah, they're heartbroken over this and they want to do something about it. And again, like it's irrelevant at that point what might might take or my stance is on that one thing or that other thing.

You know, and again, I've seen people from different religions come together just advocating and rooting for each other in this method. I've seen people from different skin colors. I've seen people from different genders, you know, like all these ways were pitted against each other. When you take all that stuff away, you strip all that stuff away and you just have 10 or 12 people in a room that are all just hurting and willing to be open with their heart.

It's almost impossible for other human beings to not just rally around each other and rise above all that other stuff. That is kind of the surface level stuff that we're all told is the most important stuff. And you can't talk to this person if you disagree with them or if you have a different take on this. And so again, just chalk it up to another thing that you wouldn't necessarily think that Griefer Covery does for people, but it's one of the most unifying programs I've ever seen.

You know, time and time again. And I think too, you know, as you learned through Griefer Covery, like we're taught to intellectualize our pain, right? And our mind is very complex. It wants to know the why and it wants to get to the bottom of it and how come you did this and whatever.

Your heart speaks a much different language. It's very simplified. It's like, here's what happened. Here's how I felt.

Here's how I complete that. And what I found with clients that I work with is let's use the example of, okay, let's use the example of a dog. So the dog has been very, very sick and it's taken a long time for the vet to figure out what is wrong with the dog. Now, too much time has passed to cure the dog.

Now the dog needs to be put down. And so the person has come to me because they're grieving the loss of their animal companion. And all they're focused on is why? Why did they miss this?

Why did it take so long? Why did my dog have to die? Why? Why?

Why? Because they're processing this loss intellectually. And what I find is after they go through the Griefer Covery process, they still don't have the answers to those questions, but the question is no longer important. So now, if you take that example and apply it to COVID, imagine how much we could diffuse this division that we have between ourselves simply by removing the need to know why and just simply to step into a place of compassion, understanding and tolerance.

I love that, Tammy. I should have you on as a guest for my podcast. Oh, wait. No, that you're articulating these things so wonderfully.

And that's what I love about this part of my job is this. I love having this podcast because again, we get to see Griefer Covery through the lens of so many different people. Again, different countries, right? It's like, you're in Canada.

I'm in the US. We can't translate the book quick enough, you know, worldwide. It's just it's this little engine that could that that again, just rises beyond all of the artificial kind of like places that I feel like it would, it would, you know, where progress would be slowed. It just, it keeps reaching different corners of the globe because it is just a humanizing non-judgmental, non-comparative program that actually has actions, so it's not vague.

And it really gets to the heart of whatever you're struggling with. And including a worldwide pandemic that that lasted years. And like you said, depending on where you were at during that pandemic, you know, you have different hurts and different heart breaks over over over the situation. And they're all valid, you know, and there's work to be done for all of us because the alternative is just stuffing it down, burying it, and then pretending like it's not affecting every decision we make, right?

Like we're pretending that it's not affecting the intimacy we have with our friends and our family and our loved ones, right? It's affecting our equality of life negatively, right? We talk about unresolved grief, robs us of choice, right? If we're too busy holding up the armor because we can't get hurt again because we don't know what to do if we ever get hurt like that again, then we're going to live a limited life.

That's, you know, and that's just kind of unfortunately the the fact of the matter. And, and, you know, we don't want that for people because we see the alternative, which is giving people tools to empower themselves to set themselves free of those things so they can go live the life they want. You know, well, and I think it's really interesting because I take every opportunity I can to normalize this conversation. Like somebody invites me on a podcast or something or into the community to do a presentation.

I love to do that so that we can normalize this conversation, but I'll tell you a funny story because when I first got certified, my husband and I would watch TV and of course I'm like, you know, that's unresolved grief. That's unresolved grief. That's unresolved grief because every story, every plot, every play, every novel, it's all driven by unresolved grief. So when Nighty looked at me and he said, you know, not everything is unresolved grief.

Oh, I thought, oh, maybe I'm being a, maybe I'm being a little jealous about all of this because I was really passionate. And then about a year and a half later, he went through the program and he completed his grief. And now when we're watching TV, the first of the two of us to identify the plot as being driven by grief is him, not me. I love that story.

Yeah, and that's, I mean, that's what I lead with in the beginning of my four day training. I'm all stil always I lead with that. I was like, unfortunately, some of you are already here. You already know that unresolved grief is everywhere and affects everything.

You know, just based on life experiences. Unfortunately, you may know that. You know, and then to other people where this is more kind of like I'm getting a certification professionally, just, you know, maybe now and then a client will have grief and I can help them with it. Like you guys need to listen up because, you know, grief, grief, you will never see grief again the same.

Like you will see when you leave this four day training, you're going to see, you know, every single person on that freeway, everyone at the airport, everyone at the coffee shop, everyone at the birthday party, everyone at the Little League game, like just imagine they all have this backpack and they all have many, many losses in their backpack and, and it's all unresolved grief, right? And like you said, all art is grief. All art is unresolved grief. All the songs you listen to, all the films you watch and the television and the poetry, Tammy, you hit the nail on the head.

It's all unresolved grief. They're, they're, in fact, there wouldn't really be a, our, an art world without, without grief, right? Unfortunately, all of those people that, that produce all of that art, you know, are very talented. A lot of them are very talented.

Obviously, what they do with art, but they're promoting really bad tools on how to, you know, deal with the grief. And that's where we come into into play, right? And so, you know, again, don't listen to that song or that poem or that show and whatever they're doing in that show to, to help with the grief, just know that that is not a good way to deal with the grief, you know? But unfortunately, you know, we, we, you know, we do take that stuff in and then we say, okay, well, one, you know, when, when my girl breaks up with me, every country song here in Idaho plays is go get drunk at the bar with Jack Daniels and Budweiser.

You know, and again, if you feed a child that 10,000 times from 800 different songs, that's what they are going to do as a tool when they have their first breakup or when they have their divorce, right? And unfortunately, that turns in alcoholism, you know? And so, you know, we were kind of joking about it, but I'm going to get serious right now. It's, it is really a, a, a, a travesty what we do in terms of the art because we lead people astray with suggesting solutions that are not solutions, you know?

And so I do want to, I do want people to just be aware of that. Like again, if you list, if you're in the, if you listen to country music, and some people are cringing, but again, if you're a country music listener, think about how many songs are about alcohol. You know, it's, I started doing that when I had children, you know, and they, oh, it's harmless. I'm just listening to us, you know, some song in my, but my kids were in the back.

So I started pairing attention to lyrics. And it's like every single country song is about alcoholism. You know, every single one of them, it's insane. Right?

And you could go to hip hop, and that's be another theme on dealing with grief. And then you could go over here to rock and roll. And that's a different way to deal with grief. But ultimately, like all of the messages are like the wrong tools.

Right? So just, it's, it's an epidemic, right? Not to go back to COVID, but unresolved grief is an epidemic. And I say that on every podcast, but like Tammy said, right, her, her husband before he did this work, thought it was silly.

And then he did this work and he sees what we see. And so I, you know, again, I just want to really beg you, if you're a regular listening listener to this, if this topic interests you, there is a reason. Right? If you're being called to this stuff, there is a reason.

And it may, you know, you may at surface level think the reason is, you could use it professionally, but just know that Tammy and me and every guest I've ever had, the work starts with us, right? We had, we had a bunch of unresolved grief from our past. And this work was beneficial for us long before it was beneficial for other people. And, and so consider it, you know, consider this work.

And Tammy, where, where can people find you if they want to work with you? What's the best way for people to get a hold of you? Probably two ways. One would be to visit my website.

So it's tatoms.ca. And it's not a sales website. There's all kinds of resources there, ebooks and blogs and videos, that sort of thing. The other way would probably be through my email, which is tdatomsatrodgers.com.

Okay, great. And we'll put both of those in the show notes and Tammy's a smooth operator. So she's like, this is not a sales website. Just browse it.

I'll do the selling for her. Tammy have, since she got certified in 2016, she has been a professional loving empathetic specialist, the type of specialist that we dream of at the institute, the type of specialist that we hope to attract. She's exactly the type of human being that we're honored. Uh, does this work.

And so whatever her program costs, just sign up for it, do the work with her. Um, I promise you, you won't be calling her back or me back looking for a refund, um, because I know time and time again, she helps people truly. Um, and I'm, I'm willing to be that bold because again, uh, I know, I know what she's capable of. I know what this method is capable of.

So, you know, get a free resource or two, but just figure out how to work with her. If you need to do some work and, and I promise you, it'll be beneficial for you in a very deep way. Um, so Tammy, I just want to thank you again for joining us. Any kind of final, uh, words you would like to, to, to depart with, uh, with the listeners?

Well, first of all, thank you for your kind words. That was very nice. Um, I think the final word I'd like to leave everybody is it doesn't matter what's happened in our lives. It doesn't matter if it was our fault or if it wasn't our fault.

At the end of the day, it's 100 percent our responsibility to take care of the wound so that we're not bleeding on people who didn't count us. Yeah. Wow. Beautifully said.

I bet good. No, that's, that's a beautiful, beautiful way to say it. I'll, let me give you a real life example. A couple of years ago, my hero, my, the, my father, who I would tell you is the best father in the world.

He got sick with cancer and over a course of several months. I had, I had to watch him with her away and, and die, you know, and at times of very painful death. I, I, I had to see my mom turn into a widow after 40 years of loving this man and my sister, uh, you know, just heartbreaking over this. Okay.

So after my dad died, I'll tell you, I felt 100 percent of victim of an event I never wanted. I never voted for, you know, and I wish never happened, right? And what Tammy just said is that some point after that, I had to accept one responsibility, a 1% responsibility for how I was going to move forward from that event, not taking ownership of the event. I didn't want the event.

I was a victim of the event, but at some point, I have to understand I have four children and they are vibrant and they're larger than life and they have this amazing optimism and this capacity for adventure and happiness. Okay. And if I didn't go get complete with what I need to get complete with with with my father, I was going to be doing them a disservice as their, as their father, because I would be living. I don't want to say a shell of my former self, but there would be components that were a shell of my former self.

So, you know, it was my obligation even after a tragic event I never wanted. It was still my obligation to accept one percent responsibility moving forward. What was I going to do with that loss? What tools were I going to utilize to free myself of what was weighing me down around losing that amazing man, right?

So, hopefully that clarifies kind of what we're talking about. Sometimes again, sometimes you are at 100% the mercy of the circumstances that that life dealt you, right? We're never trying to take that away from you. We're just trying to help you with the lifeline of yes, we hear you, but how are you going to, what tools are you going to take to move forward from this?

Right? And so, again, Tammy, thank you for joining us. Thank you for your time. I would love to have you on again.

I'd love the way you articulate this method. Listeners, thank you for your time and listening. Please like and subscribe to this. Leave a comment that helps as well.

Share this with friends and family that you think would benefit from it. And get in touch with Tammy or with us if you want to talk or you have some questions or anything like that. So until we meet again, Tammy, thank you. And yeah, and listeners, you have a great rest of your day and we will we'll see you again next time on the Feel Free Again podcast.