Can You Grieve Someone You’ve Never Met? The Truth About Hidden Grief with Cindy Cipriani

And fortunately was, you know, survived. And I remember when I was in the hospital, I was so confused and I said a prayer and I asked God to give me clarity as to why I was still here. And I would commit to overcoming all my challenges so I could create a plan for me and my boys, because I really wanted to celebrate life again. And I didn't know it at the time, but that prayer, and there was five words it started with C, kind of became my personal guidance system to putting my life back together.

And I had had a lot of other losses in my life. You know, one consistent thing in my life, and this is going to sound funny to most people like us, but I watched the young and the restless since I was a kid. And my mom and having on after school, they became like my extended family. I watched them every day after I got married when I had my children, I have a son, you know, that's 44 as I had him as a baby, I would watch it.

Well, when my family stopped talking to me, they were my family. I got to see them every day, those characters, I got to see every day. There's a character on the show called Mrs. Chancellor, and she passed away in 2013.

She was born the same year as my mother. And so when I saw her every day, I thought of my mom, even though I couldn't talk to my mom. And when she passed, I was so devastated. And I found the letter that I wrote to myself on September 4, 2013, as to how upset I was at her passing.

And that was really when I realized all the grief that I had bottled up and had pushed aside to keep going forward, it all came to the forefront, you know, grieving my mom, grieving all these losses, grieving my dad who had passed away, grieving all of this stuff. And I started researching, I don't remember exactly what I typed in, but grief recovery method class came up. And it was going to be two weeks from then. And it was up in North Jersey.

And I told my husband, I don't know what this is, but I need to go. I need to go, I'm a mess. He didn't know how to help me. And so I drove up to North Jersey.

There was like 18 people in the class. And they were all like funeral directors, ministers, counselors. And I'm sitting there going, gosh, I'm, you know, I'm just a person who's grieving. And I'm like, should I be here?

And lowest was the teacher. And she said, you absolutely should be here. You are, you know, going to benefit from this so much. And we did our timelines.

And she said, you have to do this work on your mother. And I said, oh, no, no, no, no, no, I've processed that I find with her. It's Mrs. Chancellor that I'm not.

And she said, no, it's not. It's your mother. And I remember calling my husband and I was just bawling. And I was like, they want me to process my mother.

I don't want to do it. And he said, honey, you do need to do it. You need to listen to these people. And it was the best thing I ever did.

Thank you. Thank you. Cindy, there is a lot there. Thank you for sharing with us your journey.

So there's a couple of things. For those that don't know, my mom has been on the young and the restless for, you know, over 40 years now. And so she plays a character named Jill Abbott. And her main rival on the show has been Kathleen Chancellor for decades.

And she's a Genie Cooper who plays Catherine Chancellor. I knew my whole childhood, my whole, you know, until she passed. She was an amazing, amazing, amazing woman. Always so kind and sweet with me.

It was real. Here's a quick little side note. And then, and then we'll get to the regular scheduled program. I was in my early 20s.

And any time I would go to Vegas. And it wasn't, by the way, it wasn't many times. But, you know, I think I ran into Genie Cooper in Vegas three different times. One time I ran into her at the airport.

And she gave me a ride to my hotel in her, in her limousine. One time I just was, was, you know, in the casino somewhere walking. And I ran into her. And it was so, she was such an amazing woman.

Was such like a lively spirit. And I, I miss her a lot. She, she was an incredible woman. So I just wanted to, to say that about Genie.

And then Cindy, I, first of all, I want to give you a hug. My heart goes out to you. You covered so much real, real loss there. And I just feel weird not, not saying that, you know, I can't imagine what all of that was like for you.

And, you know, the, the, the one thing, again, I think everything you said, and, and we're going to hopefully get into this a little bit later. Just the, the amount of grief that happens if you are excommunicated from a church or a religious community, you know, that is a massive, massive loss that I don't think is, is talked about nearly enough. But, but aside from that, the last loss that you touched on, which is grieving a person that you never met, right? You were at the grief recovery course.

You have all of these losses that you've discussed with us. And you're like, I want to work on, you know, this character on young and the rest of us. And you said, this may sound weird to people out there, but I don't think it does sound weird because we all grieve public figures that we have never met, right? And a lot of the time we can be blindsided about that emotion, right?

And just recently with Charlie Kirk, many people were absolutely and are absolutely grieving that loss. And so we 100% can grieve someone we have never met. We talk about grief being the conflicting feelings caused by the change in or end of a familiar pattern of behavior, right? So, if young and the restless was familiar to you for years and years and years daily provided support, you know, all those kind of things, like you said, these were, this, this was my family that didn't abandon me.

And then one day someone on that show dies. Of course, that's massive grief, right? And I think anyone listening can look back in their history and think of a public figure who has died and really, really affected them, right? And then like you touched on, it also brings up our other pain that we have bottled up for years and years and years.

So that, I mean, again, for many people that's happening right this second out of out of a current story in the news cycle. But again, thank you for sharing that because I don't think it's odd at all. I think it's very normal. And I think most people can relate if they really go back and think about different losses that they've had with people that maybe they've never been before.

Yeah, I think all of us, you know, Charlie Kirk is a big one right now, but I think all of us can think of other people that have just struck us. You know, we think, you know, years ago, Princess Diana was one where the whole world breathed. Absolutely. And, you know, it's, it's funny with some of these soap operas.

People laugh at them, but there's millions and millions of people, you know, who watch them every day. For years and years and years and years and get connected to them. And I never even looked up their real names like to me, their characters were who they were. The funny thing is I met your mother in 2020.

I think it was 20 right before the pandemic. The last fan club that they had. Oh, wow. I think you're the pandemic.

I flew out there to meet the characters because I was like, oh my gosh, I can actually meet them in person. And the actress who plays Tracy asked me what I do and I told her I was an author. She asked me what I write about and I said, I write about grief and moving past it. And she said, oh my goodness, you have to talk to Jess Walton because her husband started the grief recovery institute.

And she said, what? I'm a grief recovery method specialist. I had no idea. I had no idea that that was a good question.

So that is incredible. Okay. So even after your certification, right? You you hadn't put any of that together.

I had no idea. Okay. Wow. That's amazing.

I I because every now and again, my mom on her Facebook page and it has a large following. You know, she'll she'll promote the grief recovery and sometimes people will come from from that. So I didn't know if that had happened, but that's that is amazing. So you had found it on a Google search and remind me what year did you get certified?

Do you remember? 2013. Okay. Yeah. So you've been you've been certified a long time.

Yeah. And it wasn't until so seven years after certification is when you you found out that that there was this other connection with the young and the restless. Yes. Yes.

I have no idea. Like I I never look up people's real names and backgrounds and all that. Yeah. I'm a fan of the show.

Yeah. Yeah. I got you. You know, it's funny too.

Like another little sidebar at the very infancy of the grief recovery institute when when my dad had just self published the book. And this was a very small thing. My mom because she was on the young, the restless, she would get to go on. You know, the price is right or like Hollywood squares and when lose her draw, I'm think I'm I'm not sure exactly don't quote me on which ones, but she would get to go to on game shows and then donate to a charity, you know, of her choice.

And so she was instrumental in helping this thing, you know, get off the ground way back when so that was kind of another little piece of it way way back in the 90s. So, so, but again, I just again coming back to really the first main topic I wanted to cover is we have hundreds of blogs, thousands of blogs. I think at this point, at least hundreds, but there are several several blogs that Russell Friedman is written and many of us have written. Again, Michael Landon is another one where we had so many calls at the grief recovery institute when Michael Landon passed away, right.

And his daughter Leslie Landon, Matthews, helped us write when children grieve so there's connection there. But but un, unconnected to that when he died, we had many, many calls about that because what was happening was. It turns out that a lot of single moms really loved what he was doing because he was helping in the household with good messaging on TV shows for the for their kids and it really touched them when he died. So this is not a new thing and it's very normal.

Again, I want to normalize this for people that are listening. People you don't have to have met someone and had a personal relationship with them to grieve the loss of someone. We have emotional relationships with these people, right. And that's and that's totally normal and that is something that we grieve.

Now, again, that is minimized. It's called weird. It's it's it's brushed, you know, aside like it didn't matter. The problem is is we keep that in our bodies, in our hearts, if we don't do anything about that, right.

So again, I'm glad that Lois, I would have probably done the same thing, right. I'm glad she steered you towards doing the work on your mom, right. Because this is something, you know, we could work on someone that celebrity, someone that we followed. We could do that work later, but we really want to focus on our entry point into the grief recovery method.

We really want to focus on these core core relationships that are tangible, that are here, where there's kind of a two-way conversation that goes on where there's stuff we did wrong, they did wrong, you know, all those kind of things. It's a lot easier to do the grief recovery method on a loss like that first. And I don't want to say easy. It could be very difficult, but it's a lot more clear on what what the instructions are, right.

Yeah, that I think is the benefit of working with a specialist. You know, the book is out there, anyone can buy it, anyone can read it. I got the book first. I had signed up for the class, but I got the book.

I ran, I think I got it. It horns a noble or something. And I read it in one weekend. It made so much sense to me, but I knew that I needed someone to help me through that process.

Because I don't think I would have, I know I wouldn't have chosen my mom. It was too raw, it was too deep. I wanted to push that to the side. And what lowest it was she heard in in my story that Mrs.

Chancellor reminded me of the loss of my mother. And that that was really blocking me from a lot of things, you know, to move forward. And so when you work with a specialist and you do your loss history graph, a lot of times people will not want to do the real raw one, right. They'll say, oh, I'm not ready or oh, this is, that's too emotional.

Let me start with this one over here. And I try and do the same thing that lowest did with me and guide them to the one that's really the at the center of their grieving experiences. And that's where they're going to get the most benefit. And like you said, you know, I did, I did my work on my mother, I still have my original timeline.

And then what I did was afterwards did all the other losses. And took my time. I, you know, at this point in my life, I've had 32 losses of people that I've been very, very close to. And have done the grief, grief recovery work on every single one of them.

And I weave this into my emotional wellness coaching by, you know, the first step is clarity. Well, how do you get clear? You have to figure out what is really at the base of everything. What's at the root of everything?

And it's, it's usually, you know, something has ended or changed. You have these conflicting feelings from a relationship. And you need to get clarity in that relationship. And you need to, you know, do the grief recovery work so that you can process all of that.

And be able to, you know, release those emotions. And to me, I just had a new client yesterday. And he said to me, how do you do this? Like how do you talk about grief all the time?

Isn't this like depressing to you? And I said, no, it's so exciting to me. I get so excited because I feel like I have the tools to actually help someone. It's not just, you know, because I had gone to psychologist, I had gone to some support groups.

And I just felt like it was either they were trying to get me to figure out my own issue, right? Or everyone was rehashing their traumas. And I would get even more depressed. So with grief recovery, it's like so much different than that.

It's an actual tools step by step, what to do. And every person I've done it with over the last 12 years has said to me, oh my goodness, like I feel like my shoulders went from here to here. Like, wow. It's such a release.

It's, I don't know how it works, but it works. Yep. And it's such a powerful, powerful tool. Yeah.

Yeah. I couldn't agree more. There's a couple of things that you touched on that I want to just clarify for the listeners. Number one, I totally agree.

I think the book is amazing. The book's in 22 languages. We cannot translate it fast enough. It works with all different types of people and all different types of places.

And I am so grateful for that. However, it's a book, right? It's it's got so many pages in it. And we have grief recovery specialists that are trained all over the world.

And if you go to our website and you go to our programs, you can search in your zip code. And you can find someone in the beauty of 2025 is even if we don't have someone physically in your area, we have specialists that work with people online all over the world in all different languages. And I beg of you, if you have a broken heart over a loss that's recent or long ago, please, please, please get in touch with a specialist. It is infinitely more helpful than just working through the book on your own.

They will be able to help you with nuances and lend you support that a book never could. And so I just want to double down on what Cindy said. You know, I implore you to invest in yourself, find a specialist, go through the work. The other beautiful thing about this method is it's not this open ended.

Hey, you're going to work. You know, I don't know how many sessions for the next five, 10 years. This is a seven session program, right? This is a seven week program.

Now you can work on going after that. Like what Cindy said, that's the second thing I wanted to cover. Cindy said that, you know, you've worked on 30 some odd losses from your lost history graph. And I just want to say congratulations.

And that's, that's huge. I've worked on many, many losses from my lost history graph as well. And that that's where I see the true change can come for people. A lot of the time we only work with someone with one relationship.

And I love the what I do, like you do, because I get to hear all the work that they've all the tools we've used, call Nate in this completion letter. And like I'm on cloud nine and I'm recharged to go help and work with the next person, right? It is this beautiful thing you're helping someone with and you're sharing in them actually processing it, removing the the loss from their backpack and moving forward. So, but again, if you have done this, this method before, I, you know, again, I beg of you, look into doing another loss from your lost history graph, right?

I've seen true changes on how people feel about themselves. You know, how they, how they attack a life by doing more of the work, right? In other words, I think people should do more grief recovery work, not just that one loss and then, and then go on. But so anyway, there's a lot there, but yes, Cindy, thank you for, for covering all that.

You've mentioned now, you've mentioned the the five C's, I think you said there was, you, you know, you mentioned that a little bit earlier. Could you tell us more about that work that you do as well? Yes, so I've trademarked a process and it actually came about from that prayer. I started going to domestic violence shelters and mentoring the women there.

I just, I just wanted to help because I, I understood the brokenness of how that feels to be in that position. So many, many years ago, I started going into homeless shelters and I started teaching them my five C's and there was a woman there and I'll never forget her. She said to me, you know, your Italian, you use your hands all the time, you know, I said, yes, she said, well, do you know your five C's kind of go with your fingers? And I was like, what do you mean?

And she said, well, you know, clarity could be your little finger and then commitment is your middle finger. That's your ring finger that we get married. That's like a commitment. And then challenges is like the middle finger, you know, life throws that at you as soon as you commit to something.

And then we create a plan to overcome the challenge. So that's kind of like your pointing finger that, you know, you're going forward. And then celebrate is sums up. And I was like, that is brilliant.

And it became the memory tool that I use to teach it. And it's so cool because even young kids will learn it and then they'll use their fingers to walk themselves through problems. You know, let me get clarity on what I need. Let me commit to, you know, I'm going to overcome this.

What's my challenge? What's stopping me? What's my plan and then celebrate my progress? Love that.

Love that. So and that and so you use that, that the five C's solutions. You use that in your emotional wellness coaching. Yes.

Okay, gotcha. And then and then you also use grief recovery as a tool when you think that's the right fit. I always use grief recovery tool. Okay.

Okay. That's part of clarity because what we, you know, somebody comes in with an issue. They don't realize that. Well, I haven't found I haven't found an issue that isn't isn't tied to grief.

Thank you. Let me ask you this, Cindy. Let me ask you this in terms of the clients that you work with, right? How many like I again started to put you on the spot and this doesn't need to be a perfect number.

But how many of you would what percentage of those people are very clear on their grief and that their grief is what is holding them back in a ways is. I would say 25% yeah, that's that's that's kind of what I was thinking you would say somewhere in there, right? So in other words, 75% of the population out there. Again, nothing is wrong with them that we're just not educated on this topic.

So they, you know, they come to see you Cindy and there's some problem. You know, or something that they're trying to achieve or you know, again, I don't know exactly how they see you. But I knew the answer would be most of them. No, no, that it's about grief.

And that's why we're so passionate about this podcast is so many of the challenges that we struggle with as people. At the root core of it, it's grief and we don't even know it. I'm excited to announce our premium in person certification training individuals who have a desire to help other people with grief and loss. Join us for a four day event that you will remember forever.

This is based on the proven four day certification we've done before. The curriculum is the same. But now you're going to get a ton of stories and education and training from Sandy. These are tangible tools that help people in any area of their life.

You're going to get a ton of stories and education and training from me. We will have double the amount of trainers to answer questions you have. Want to help people by missing information, this missing. I'm an advocate for the grieving process because I know that's like, why would you not tell somebody to heal?

There's going to be some tears in there. There's going to be some tissues. But well, I think what will surprise people that are considering this training is if you sat outside of the room when this training is happening, you wouldn't believe how much laughter is happening in this training. You wouldn't believe how much joy and hope you can see on people's faces as we're breaking and people are coming out of the room.

It's everything. The thing she was saying made me feel seen and normal and validated and not insane. I saw grief as this really bad dark thing instead of seeing it as the actual healing process. As someone who's been in this field for 15 years now, I would have loved to have been trained under these circumstances.

It's just such a premier training. You're going to probably walk away with some like lifelong friends. We did not want to say goodbye to each other at that end of that four days. Be able to help walk them through that and give them that same light bulb that came on in my head.

It was a trend that's transformative. It was such a rich time of learning and engaging, listening to people's stories, being present, being focused with who you're talking to, is such a big part of the grief recovery work. I had done a lot of things. I had done coaching.

I'd been in therapy. I'd done a lot of other modalities and they were helpful. But when I did the grief recovery method and when I walked through the method and continued to use the tools, life began to have color. I went from being very emotionally disconnected to being very connected.

Do not wait. Seeds are filling up. Sign up. You will not regret it.

I cannot wait to see you. Have a great day. Yes, absolutely. Because they could be coming to me for relationship issues.

They could be coming for, like I have some teenagers that come because they're graduating. They don't know what to do with the rest of their life. I have some people who come because they've lost a pet. Some of those are specific.

Like losing a pet, you know it's grief. But graduation people don't think that's grief. Relationship issues. They don't think that that's grief.

You know, there's just so many. And I love that's on the front of the book and I point this out to every single person. This is an action program. Because I have almost everyone come in and go, you know, I've been to therapists and I've talked, you know, and it really hasn't helped.

This is an action program that walks you through a proven process of clarifying your feelings and being able to tie that logic and emotion together so that you can release it and move forward. And I, you know, I'm probably your biggest fan out there. Wow, well, that is a bold claim. Well, I appreciate that.

There may be a couple of people that would want to challenge you to that. Lois Hall being one of them for sure. And I love that Lois trained you. Shout out to Lois.

Love you very much. Lois you are a hero of mine for sure. But anyway, yeah, that's and again, I don't know. I don't know what to do.

I think that's why we're doing this podcast is because it is very hard to, you know, to do from the title of the grief recovery handbook, you know, the action plan for moving beyond death divorce and 40 other losses. It's really hard to capture in a little sublime the depth of what this work can do for you, the depth of what it can do for your marriage, how it can change how you parent, how it can change how you show up for friends or what you can achieve professionally, you know, at the core so much that is that we struggle with this grief, right? Everybody nobody goes through life on the streets, right? And people are people are often surprised when they do their loss history graph of things that come up that they didn't even realize they're still holding on to.

I know when I did mine, I had a pet and, you know, I didn't think that it would bother me. I didn't think it was one of those things that was still bothering me. But when I did my loss history graph, I was very upset when I had to write her lost down and I hadn't gotten a pet since then. And I realized, wow, that's because I never processed that loss.

You know, she was with me for 14 years. A huge part of my life during the worst part of my life, right? And I did not, you know, the pets, you people say, oh, you know, just go to the another one, you know, or they, you don't have a funeral, you don't have a final goodbye, you don't, you're just supposed to go back to work the next day, like nothing happened. I find that the pet lost is so much bigger than people even once you admit.

And, you know, they're a huge part of our lives. So right now, I have a 14 year old dog and I'm like, oh, my goodness, like if anything happens to her, but now I know what to do. I have the grief recovery work. And I've already pre-started it, you know, in preparation.

So it's, it's, this work is, I think if you're going to do anything, it's you should be doing the grief recovery work in your life. No matter how old you are, no matter how long ago the, the loss was, or how recent the loss was, because I loved when the book said, you know, if you had a gash in your leg, would you say, well, I'll just wait, you know, until I lose a lot of blood before I go to the hospital. No, you are suffering right now. You need this right now.

You know, it's something that would help right away. And then I love the fact that I am able to take people on this journey to help them process these things and then say, okay, well, who are you now? Because every loss and every processing of your loss is going to teach you lessons about yourself. And then you need to sit back and say, okay, so who am I now?

Like, where do I go from here? So I break their, their life into different sections. And we go through, you know, what they really believe and why and, you know, who they are as a person. And what they want to do in the future, because a lot of times I found that people process their grief, but then they're like, okay, now what?

Now what do I do? Yes. Yeah. Well, and that's another big piece of it, right?

I want to stay on that for a second if you don't mind. You know, you said something to the fact of people, you know, are now assessing who they are. And guess what? Guess who gives us a lot of our belief system about who we are?

Our mom, our dad, our siblings growing up, we can't defend ourselves. We can't really say, you know, no, that, that isn't who I am, right? I'm not stupid or I'm not dumb or I'm not, you know, whatever the case is. So we all hope that we all have this happy childhood and all you're getting is encouragement and stuff like that, but we know that's not really how the world works for most of us.

And so we accumulate a bunch of our belief system and we go forward, even in our 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, believing all this stuff, good or bad, that someone else gave us 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago, right? And so one of the benefits of grief or curvy that we see time and time again is to go work on your relationship with your mom, your dad, it does not matter if they have died or they are living either way, you get to keep the part of the belief system they gave you that you like. And give them back the part of the belief system about you that you don't like or that is untrue, that you have proven it's untrue, right? Or, you know, whatever the case may be.

So that is constantly very hard to articulate to people, the benefit of grief or curvy, but we see that as one of the most positive outcomes for most people that come to us. That aren't maybe willing to, like you said, Cindy, work on the very raw one, you know, they may be too scared to work on that one right this second, but a lot of the time we encourage them to go work on Marmar Dad, because again, that will set you free of a lot of stuff that is not yours. That was theirs. Yes, and one of the questions on the grief recovery questionnaire is about, did you have early religious childhood religious training?

And when I first took that in that training and I answered that question, I asked, I'm like, why is this question on here? It doesn't make any sense. Why are you asking about religion and early childhood? And she explained that it was a loss of innocence and how, you know, we are not judgmental at all until we learn that we could be being judged, right?

There could be good and bad. So, am I good enough, right? Comes from that. And that was just so interesting to me, especially with my background, of being in a religion where I was not exposed to anything else.

Those teachings were the only teachings, and there was the only truth that I was allowed to be exposed to. And so, when somebody has that kind of upbringing, and it doesn't matter what kind of religious, excuse me, religion it is, when you suddenly don't have that and you find yourself on the outside, it's a very scary place. Oh, I can't even imagine. Because your thought that everyone who doesn't believe the way you do is an evil person.

So all of a sudden you're in the world of evil people, and where do you go to trust anyone? And yet the people that you trusted, and who said they loved you no matter what, now will have nothing to do with you. Wow. It's, wow.

Mind blowing, right? Can I ask you, and again, tell me to fly a kite if you don't want to answer any of the questions I have. But when you went and graphed this, you know, this hurt, did you graph the individual relationships of people and then the overall church, or how did you do that work? When I first worked on that loss, I worked on, there was a group of elders that make the decision that you shouldn't be there anymore.

So I did them as a group. Okay. And then there were certain individuals who had said, like my uncle, who was an elder in the church, came to me and said, you know, you let God down. That's actually what led to my suicide attempt.

Because I took my relationship with God very seriously. And for him to tell me that I had let God down in a way that couldn't be redeemed, I just thought, why be here? Right? Wow.

So I had to, I had to do grief recovery work on my uncle. Yep. And forgive him for saying that to me, forgive him for not understanding, not having any, any background, not having any training on how to deal with people in that situation. And I have to credit grief recovery with that because when you do the letters, when you do the apologies of forgiveness, the significant emotional statements, you really have to dig deep.

Yes. Yes. Because to forgive that, you know, people say I can forgive it, but I can't forget it all those things, right? Yep.

To get to the point where you can turn it to something that you can forgive, truly forgive, like realizing he was not a trained psychologist, he was not, he had no understanding of grief, he had, he would have never been in my position. He was doing what he was told, he was saying what he was told to say. And I had to forgive him and I had to forgive the organization and I had to realize that they're just imperfect people, just like me. And that, you know, I answered to God and God forgives.

So I need to forgive. Wow. And that is so powerful in any of the relationships is to, you know, that forgiveness part and a lot of people get stuck on that. You know, how can I forgive this?

It's not saying that what they did was right. Right. It's saying you no longer want to carry that with you. Yep.

And saying goodbye to the pain. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that this is getting out there to people.

You know, the other thing too that it would be impossible for Cindy to share nor would I want her to because that was for Cindy to do confidentially. But there's a lot of work out there that could probably help her with the awareness around yet he had lack of tools and he was just doing the best he could with what he had. And you know, all these things can are intellectually accurate and Cindy needed that piece of the puzzle. And the problem is is that most places you go will help you with that piece of the puzzle.

They'll help you with all the intellectual accuracy. But on the other side of it, what grief recovery really does beautifully is all the emotional work that Cindy did around. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. That's fine. But how did I feel when he did it? You know, what were the feelings I had when he said this right or he said that, you know, you let God down her.

And I was like, well, I'm not going to work again. That's for her to do not on this podcast. But she had an opportunity and avenue to do the emotional work that a lot of places I found do not know how to help you with. And that's the beauty of not only having the intellectual awareness to be able to forgive the man, but also be able to do the emotional work around what she felt when those things happened in conjunction with the intellectual, you know, kind of awareness that she she found about.

So I just wanted to touch in there because I know that happened. But again, it's really hard for Cindy to describe that part of it on a podcast. And again, I wouldn't want her to. Yeah.

Thank you for combining that because that's really the difference. Yeah. And again, you can believe me or not if you're listening, but you can pay a lot of people to help you find intellectual awareness. And that does feel kind of good when maybe you didn't have that clarity or that awareness, right?

But then they send you on your way and the problem is the hurt the emotional pain is still there. And that's really our bread and butter is helping people in an action based step by step approach that is very thorough for you to to dive as deep as you want to find all of the feelings around this event or this or the totality of this whole relationship, right? And that's what I just love about our work is is how thorough it can be emotionally. So, wow, I again, I can't imagine for you being having your back turn, having people turn their back on you, your family, all these people you know and you having to start fresh, right?

Having to really get clear on what your beliefs are around this or that. And so, wow, again, I'd give you hug if I was there with you. I can't imagine what that was like and I am grateful that these tools were helpful for you on that. So, my, I guess my question is when you were graphing and doing letters on mom, on dad, on your ex-husband, on the uncle that you spoke about, I imagine that you are getting more clear on who Cindy is and giving them back who they wanted you to be or they told you this was the only way.

And you were using the grief recovery method as a way again on finding who you were. Again, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but that's what I'm picking up. Yes, the work from grief recovery, it's hard to describe, but you know, as I did the work, it was becoming more clear what I could peel away and what I was left with. And I actually started a book, I called it my book of Cindy.

And I started writing down things I truly believed. And I didn't care if anybody else believed it or not. This was me and this is who I was. And it really helped to ground me and every time I did the work on another relationship, I realized that there were nuggets in there that were, that came to me that was like, wow, yeah, this is, you know, this is who I am.

This is why, you know, I felt the way I did during that relationship or, you know, that clarity would come to me. So I've been keeping my book of Cindy ever since then. And, you know, someday if somebody wants to read it, they'll, they'll know who I am. Sometimes I have to go back and remind myself.

And the interesting thing is that sometimes we believe something because we're not exposed anything else. And then you get more information and you learn something and you go back to what you believe and you're like, you know what, I think I need to adjust this. Because now I have more information, I understand it differently. So, you know, we're all works in progress.

But getting the clarity from the grief recovery work is just like, now it's just so grounding. And then you just build on that. Yeah, that's a great way to put it. And, and Cindy, tell us the listeners, if you wouldn't mind tell us a little bit more about your emotional wellness coaching, you know, kind of what, what clients that you serve, you know, who you're helping.

Tell us a little bit about the business that you're doing out there in New Jersey. Well, I've done this for almost 13 years. So I get a lot of people referring friends and family, you know, when they're going through something, they say, oh, you have to go talk to Cindy. Yeah.

I think the thing too that they like about it is that, you know, everything is very confidential. So I can go to networking events in my business community. And I know individually what people have been going through. No one else knows, right?

We all put on the business face and everybody's happy. I know what people have been through and, you know, who has processed their grief. And it's just, it's interesting because, you know, people come up and give me big hugs. And they're just like whisper in my ear, you know, thank you so much for helping my son.

Thank you so much for helping my neighbor. Thank you so much for telling me what to say, you know, when my coworker had a loss. And again, it cracks me up because they're whispering it. You know, it's nobody wants to talk about grief, right?

I'm going to say it out loud. But I'm very, I feel very privileged to be able to share the grief recovery method with them. Yeah, you know what's interesting, Cindy, is I often in our groups where like your certification had 18. I was just in a training where I don't know what the number was.

But anyway, there's a large amount of people. And at the beginning of the four days, right, it's only four days. But at the beginning of the four days, I'm like, you will not imagine, you know, how you're going to feel about all these people in this room, right? And basically all we do is we, we set a tone that it's okay to tell the truth about how we're feeling in that moment.

And we set up a non-comparative, non-judgmental environment where no one's keeping score, no one's grief is worse than someone else's grief next to them, right? We just all have broken hearts. And by day four, you know, these people are getting to be human beings among 18 other human beings, right? And so it's sad to me, like you said, Cindy, it's sad that so many people have to put on the business face, they have to put on the I'm fine face, when it would not be detrimental to us at all.

If we could tell each other a little bit more about how we were really doing in that moment. Again, we don't do that because we're going to be compared, it's going to be minimized, it's going to be judged, so we don't do it because that's hurtful. But if we all were educated on what to say and what not to say to other people and share a little bit more of that and feel less isolated with that, the world would be massively different. I tell this all the time to pastors at churches or people at businesses, I'm like, if you would only imagine if everyone in your church or everyone at your business was read into this work, you have no clue what your team would be.

Because Cindy and I, when we know what's going on with people, that gives you a lot more empathy, that gives you a lot more love and patience with people, when you know, pass their business face, their son is dealing with drug addiction, pass the business face, you know, that person was abused their entire childhood. Again, it's just, I think it's the way we should be able to treat each other and how we should actually interact with people, not the surface level, fantasy football, everything's fine stuff, because people are dying inside a lot of the time and they don't have anyone to go to with it. Yeah, the other part of what I do is I help in businesses. My husband and I own a large construction company and we have a lot of team members and they all know that I only work at that company part time because I do this the rest of the time.

And, you know, it's again a privilege for me to have our team members reach out to me when they're going through things. And again, I'm the only one that knows it, but I'm able to, you know, guide them in the grief recovery work. I'm able to give them resources that help them and their families. And it's really brought our company closer together also because they know that they're not just, you know, a person working for us.

They're part of our family. We want to take care of them emotionally as well as physically. And, you know, it just popped in my head right now. We had somebody in our company leave yesterday and I'm sure that everybody there today is feeling that.

Sure. So it's a good time for me to reach out to them and remind them that this is also a loss, you know, a loss of a coworker that, you know, they worked beside every day. And we're actually having a bowling party tonight. So I will bring it up.

Nice. Nice. That sounds fun. That sounds fun.

Great. Well, Cindy, we're kind of nearing the hour mark. And so where can people find you if they do want to connect with you? Also, I'd love for you to tell, tell the audience about your book.

And again, please, please don't be humble right now. I'm going to go out yourself because I'd love for people to work with you. Well, my book can be found on Amazon. It's called the 5c solution.

It's 5c's. And they can go to Cindy Cipriani.com. My last name is spelled C-I-P-R-I-A-N-I. They can also find me on psychology today.

If you go into psychology today and put my name in there, that pops up. So any of those ways, I also have another book I'm Amazon called Moving Pass, the death of a loved one. That was actually the first book I wrote before. I found grief recovery.

And it was because I was looking for something to help. And it's kind of a daily reading book. I don't refer to it that often because I found grief recovery. And it's so much better than that.

Well, thank you for your honesty. Not many authors are that honest at times. I was learning. I was learning.

No, I am so glad that you found this work. And you are absolutely the type of person that we're so grateful for that is doing more grief recovery with people. And on behalf of my father and Russell Friedman and all the people that came before us, I just wanted to say thank you for continuing on with this work and their legacy. And I think you and Jeanne E.

Cooper, Katherine Chancellor, would have got along famously. I think she would really like to use Indy. Well, tell your mother, hi for me. I'm glad to see her back on the show a little bit.

And I thank you. This was a privilege. It really was. I am not more excited about anything in my life than grief recovery and helping people move forward in their lives.

So I'm just so glad that I was guided to find this and that I can use it every day. Thank you so much. Of course, of course. And if you're listening and you're not quite sure why you're listening, trust me.

We will help you. We will help you find the stuff that you've been carrying that hurts and we will be a very loving gentle guide to help you with this work. And so please, please, please go to grief recovery method.com. You could look under our programs and you can find specialists that do work one on one.

If that's what you'd prefer. You can work with joint sign up for a group. If you want, we have pet law specific groups. If that feels safer, you can do this work in person.

You can do this work online. But again, we have thousands of people with hearts like Cindy's with hearts like mine who want nothing more than to help you. And so please, please, please look into that if you're listening and you feel called to do that. And of course, I'm on grief recovery specialist page on your website too.

Yep. Yep. And we'll make sure we link to your stuff as well, Cindy, your website and all that in the show notes. Thank you so much for your time, Cindy.

It was a pleasure talking to you. We'll have you back at some point in the future as well. I know we have much more to discuss. But you have a great rest of your day and listeners, please share, like, subscribe, leave a review that helps the algorithm, you know, it helps us get found with, you know, all over the place.

So have a great rest of your day or evening whenever you're listening. And until next time, this is the feel free again podcast. Thank you. You