Grief, Personal Growth and Individual Healing with Mandy Capehart

Mandy Capehart is a trauma-informed Certified Grief Educator and Somatic Embodiment Life coach, author, speaker, and Master Mindset Coach located in the Pacific Northwest. She is the founder of The Restorative Grief Project, an online community of grievers and grief supporters looking for movement while they heal. Her own experience with grief left her searching for resources while offering empathetic, long-term support without minimizing the pain of the moment. When she found nothing, she created it for herself and for you.

Her first book is titled, “Restorative Grief: Embracing our losses without losing ourselves” released in 2021. This is a memoir and 31-day guidebook for managing grief and growth in the aftermath of loss, no matter how long it lasts.

You can hear more about her grief work on her podcast, Restorative Grief with Mandy Capehart.

Mandy is a storyteller through and through, always in pursuit of adventure, grace, and opportunities to express gratitude. No matter the medium, her work revolves around learning how to honor our process of becoming. She currently lives in Southern Oregon with her husband, daughter, border collie rescue pup, and way too many houseplants.

Connect with Mandy and get your own copy of Mandy's free ebook, "How To Regain Control of Grief," when you sign up for her newsletter! https://www.mandycapehart.com/

Transcript

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welcome back to a Magical Life. I'm your host, magic Markley, and today Mandy Capehart joins us. Mandy is an author, speaker, podcast host. And Certified Grief and life coach in the Pacific Northwest. She's the founder of the Restorative Grief Project, an online community of grievers and grief supporters looking for movement while they heal her own experience with grief. Left her searching for resources, offering empathetic long-term support without minimizing the pain of the moment. Wow. Welcome, Mandy. Thank you, magic. I'm so, so glad to be here with you guys today, and I'm so glad that you could join us because grief, we all deal with it at some time, some better than others. without getting too deep here for you, what kind of grief drew you to this work? It is a really important question because when I asked myself the same thing, I decided I'm either a hundred percent in or I am not gonna be able to do this work because I. When it comes to who I am as a person, I have to be fully engaged with a thing. And grief is one that historically most of us can't fully engage with. And so what sped the process up for me was when my mom died in 2016. Uh, she was diagnosed with cancer about four months prior. And so it was all very quick and I was processing my own grief vocally and through different leadership and speaking roles at that point. And then, Over the course of four years between her passing and the start of the pandemic, I realized I was creating a community around loss that was meaningful, that was intentional, and that was really shifting the way I understood healing and the way that my community was understanding what healing looks like. And so when the pandemic hit, I had this overwhelming sense of responsibility to create avenues for grief literacy. In my immediate community, but also in the, in the generation I'm a part of and the generations to come because I don't wanna live in a world that doesn't understand how to move through loss with compassion. And as we've watched over the last few years, we still live in that world that doesn't quite understand how significant grief and loss is over the entirety of our lifetime. And so that's really what. Drew me in a hundred percent to say this is going to be the passion of my life and where I go with all of this grief work. Thank you for sharing that. I think that's really important to touch on that, you know, as coaches, as counselors, it often comes from our own experience, but so many people do not look at grief as something that they can heal through, and I'm so glad that you're doing your work. Yeah, I agree with you. Thank you. I think the idea of Wounded Healers, as we call ourselves is really common. What we run into is people who are really motivated and excited to share what they've experienced and how they've started healing and, and what has helped them, but they don't necessarily recognize that. It's all individual. Our stories of loss are as individualized as our D n A and the things that help us move through things are as individualized as our stories. And so when we start to become prescriptive, I think that that's where it becomes very, I guess the word is dangerous as coaches and as counselors, that we have to recognize that our experiences are not going to be what moved the needle toward healing for everyone else. And so that's one thing that in my own practice and my own work, as much as I can say, this is my story and this is what has helped me, here's how I got there. Is really the process that my clients go through as opposed to, here's what worked for me. The process is, here are the questions that I asked. What do you think your conclusions are gonna look like and how can I help you find conclusions that are meaningful for you? Even if that specific thing did nothing on my healing journey. I love that. Now look, we ask the same three questions of all of our guests, and everyone gives such a different answer. It's kind of amazing, and I really can't wait for your answers. So here's the first one. What can your expertise do to accelerate health, not just physical health, but emotional and spiritual health? Well, it's a good question for me. My entire framework for grieving is a whole self model that approaches who we are in our mind, heart, body and spirit. And knowing that in grief, we become misaligned with who we are. our identity, our idea of self, present, past and future is all thrown into disarray. And so what we look at is what our values are as humans. What is it in this season of life, whether it's grief, whether it's past grieving, whether it's pre grieving, whatever it looks like. What are the values, the core values that define who we are and how we show up for ourselves, for others, for the world, and for our faith if we have a faith practice. And then from there, I am very intentional with clients about helping them understand, well, what kind of thoughts, what is your mind going through right now? And. How can we actually realign your thoughts with your core values so that you do feel more in control of the thoughts that you're thinking and more present with your thoughts? And the same is true with the emotions we experience, the physical experiences in our bodies, what we're feeling, and then the way we connect to. The world around us and to ourselves through our spiritual practices. So for me, it looks like constantly reevaluating our alignment with our values and what we're experiencing and finding wholeness through just becoming present and aware of who we are. Now, on the other side of loss, I. I think loss and working through our grief certainly changes us, and I think many people just aren't really prepared for that change. They, you know, want to be the person they were before the loss, and it's just not really a feasible thing. Is it? I wish it were, but I don't know anyone who has been unchanged by grief. So it's a secondary loss. This loss of our identity or our sense of self or placement in the world, whether it was a loss of a relationship, loss of a home, loss of a loved one, I. Loss of a job. There are so many different forms of loss that we have ascribed as part of our identity. And so as we are watching things removed out of our control or sometimes in our control, but even still from our lives, we have to reckon with this new version of who we are and how we show up for ourselves and for others. And I think that that's where it becomes really difficult because when it's a controlled loss, Like I chose to leave this job. There are still big pieces of who we are that are connected to how we identified because of that job, and that's worth grieving. It's not like you can say, oh, well I chose this loss and so it doesn't matter, and now I just have to deal with it. Maybe leaving gave us a healthier perspective on who we are. But that doesn't mean it still doesn't hurt. And so the same is true with grief events that we have no control over, like losing a loved one or being evicted or illness. All of those things inherently change us because they shift our values, they shift our understanding of who we are and how we show up in the world. And. There's no good way to consistently avoid it to the point where it doesn't impact you in some way. Like there's just, there's no way that I have found, I could be completely wrong. There might be people who can say, oh, I survived this loss because it didn't matter. I was unaffected. But I, I always have very big questions for those moments when I get that kind of pushback. Look, we talk about we here as well, Mandy, and I know through the loss and grief that I've worked through my personal and emotional wealth, was Boyd it gained. So what are your top three tips to creating wealth? Not just the financial, but the personal and emotional wealth? I think it goes back to our values. I think what we consider to be valuable or that which makes us wealthy in life is. Interchangeable with our seasons. So there are going to be seasons in life that I'm rich with friendships, and that is what is most meaningful to me. I think knowing where you stand is really the starting point for any of this. I like to say that you can't move forward until you know where you're going. I. But you can't know where you're going until you know who you are. Because if I know that I'm a truck driver, then I'm gonna be able to drive a truck and move forward. But if I don't know that that's part of who I am and what I do, I'm never gonna know that that truck is available for me to drive. Probably a crazy metaphor, but the point being, if I can take time to recognize what matters to me, that's where I'm gonna invest my time and my attention. So if mental wellness and alignment and healing through grief is what makes. Creates value and wealth in my life. Then putting the time and effort in spending and investing my time, my one thing that I have that is limited and immeasurable to an extent, then that is where I'm placing my value and that's where I'm going to gain the most return if I can be present and intentional with it. So I think creating wealth in our personal lives is a matter of. Again, just recognizing like, who are we and what do we want, and how do we create the environment around us that we can actually pursue it. Great. Now look, my final standard question is around the weight loss journey. Have you ever battled your weight? If so, what was the trigger to lose that? And what can you offer the listeners around their weight journey, particularly around stress, which is a key issue? And I will ask a second part of this question in a moment. I think it's a really sensitive topic because I know in relationship to my work and grief that our weight is something we have very little control over when it comes to the play and with stress and grief triggers stress in a way that we. We just know so little about it. one of the tools that I use in coaching is the Enneagram, which is a motivational tool that examines motivations of individuals and helps us see the box we're living within. Um, personally I am a big emotional eater, so when I am stressed, I will comfort food. My face all day, every day. and the same goes for when I am grieving or when I am feeling low. My activity level is lower for me as someone who in the Enneagram framework, identify as what's known as a body type or someone who experiences the world through doing things and through engaging my body and through being active. Those are indicators for me when I'm comfort food eating or when I'm not being as active, which sounds silly to say, but this is not true for everyone. So that framework has helped me recognize, whoa, I am really in a low side of stress. My internal motivators and my internal framework is cracked, and that is contributing to. On health in my life. And so I think again, it goes back to just recognizing like, who are you at the baseline? Because some people don't have struggles with weight. Some people don't experience a problem with consuming food. Some people, it's the opposite. When they're stressed or when they're grieving, that they stop eating. And so recognizing, again, just in, even in a season outside of active grieving. Who you are and what your values are allows you to then move through all of those situations with a lot more compassion for ourselves and just more grace for what we're experiencing and mercy for our humanity. Because sometimes, man, we put ourselves on pedestals as if we're supposed to be perfect or have it all figured out, and grief is that great equalizer that says, no. Not only do you not have it figured out, no one does. okay, so following on from that, the second part of this question, when we gain weight, when we lose a whole lot of weight or drop a whole lot of weight, we can kind of miss the person that we used to be. I know from my own experience when I gained a whole lot of weight, my brain said, you're still the skinny fit person. But my body was saying, but you can't do all these things. And there was kind of this. Grieving process for my body, grieving process for the things that I used to be capable of. So how can people get around that? Because not all grief is the loss of a loved one. It can be the loss of your former self. Right. Yeah. I've worked with some athletes on this very topic for like considering people who work at very high level athletics and then 20 years later they cannot accomplish the things they used to be able to accomplish. It's a really painful place. I think it's really complex in that it's what's considered disenfranchised grief. So this concept that because it wasn't a death, it's less meaningful. Well, the truth is our identity is a huge source of loss. If we over identify with our abilities or with the people we're related to, or even the cities we live in, then as we shift, we lose a sense of grounding and we lose that sense of. Confidence in the people that we are and the bodies that we inhabit. And so again, for me, it goes back to asking my clients or asking former athletes, Hey, Your body, what are you experiencing and what are your core values now, because who you were when you were 20 and being able to do, you know, huge gymnastics and back flips and swimming, triathlons, all the things, your values were different. Your values in this season of your life cannot be the same that they were because. It will leave you in this sense of accessing the past as if it were the present. What we want to do is recognize the past served a great purpose, and it has brought us to the point that we are, whether we like it or not. We, in this present season, get to decide who we are becoming and move towards who we are becoming by aligning our values with what we want and often. When we have that conversation about our values and what is to us, a lot of stuff comes to the surface that we realize. We've internalized misogyny, for example, like internalized this idea that, well, I'm behaving in a way that my value says I need to be really thin when the truth is I wanna be really healthy. And those two things aren't always coinciding. They don't always work hand in hand. And so identifying our values and where they come from gives us a sense of empowerment that we can then, Move through with curious questions, with some compassion for ourselves about, well, where are we picked up? This idea that we have to be thin and is that causing me more grief or am I actually in a better place right now emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually where I feel grounded, where I do feel connected or where I can see a path forward? So I hope I answered your question, because that, that's one of those questions that I, I really feel so strongly about just because those internalized values that are actually in create dissonance with what we want and who we wanna can be very, very, very painful because they're often subconscious values that we've taken on as our own. Very much so. And you know, you touched on something important for me and maybe some of the listeners can. Relate to this. When I was thin, I wasn't exactly healthy, right? You know, I was thin and I was able to do a lot, and yes, I was quite fit, but the common cold could sideline me for a week rather than two days. So it wasn't exactly an ideal place to be. So I'm glad you touched on that. We've spoken about a fair bit today, and I really wanna now touch on the work that you do with the Restorative Grief project. Can you tell us more about what that involves and you know, what the listeners need to know about working through the grief? Yeah, so the restorative brief project was the second step in my. Pivot towards a career in grief work. it started originally as writing my book, restorative Grief, embracing Our Losses Without Losing Ourselves, which really is a 31 day guidebook that's couched in my story of loss and the different tools and techniques and methods of movement that helped me find healing and that helped me remain and really find alignment. For my own process, the grief project came about after I wrote the book when, the valley that I live in experienced a wildfire that destroyed thousands of homes. It was so traumatizing and the majority of my coaching practice filled immediately with fire survivors, and so, What happened in that was I saw the need of more conversations around how to be a healthy and supportive grief supporter in a way that was actually meaningful for Grievers, but also to create a psychologically safe place for grievers to say what they need to say without expecting that they have to defend themselves against platitudes or spiritual bypassing or other statements that. Center, the supporter, the speaker instead of the griever and the one that really needs support and finding out what they need. So the Restorative Grief Project is a free, private, online coaching group that is really self-guided. It's full chock-full of step-by-step, like teaching quadrants or guides that you can take yourself through, kind of like a devotional or a journal or any kind of instruction type format. But it's also private and. We cultivate conversation around all of these different topics around the prompts that I present on a weekly basis. And the restorative grief project has become this very intimate, safe place for people to show up and say, this is my story. These are the griefs that have in my life, one after the other. And there hasn't been a stopping point in seven years and I don't know what to do anymore.'cause no one in my life knows what to say. No one in my life knows how to be with me. So the idea is that we then not only create that space where someone can just say that and be seen and validated that that sucks, but also that they can, one, be equipped to walk through it in a way that they begin to see their values and they begin to recognize. What it might be that could help them and then empower them to know how to articulate that to the people in their lives that show up and wanna support them as their healing. because one thing that I found in all this work is that grief supporters don't know what to do. Nobody knows what to say. Everybody centers themselves by saying, I'm so sorry. I can't imagine that happening to me, or, I don't know how you do it, or all these, I. Statements as opposed to, I see you and I'm here. How can I be supportive for you? But saying that in a way that actually carries meaning for the griever, because it's one thing to say, I wanna be here for you. Let me know what you need. It's another to recognize that that puts even more pressure on the griever to know what they need. And for anyone who's listening that has lost someone. I dunno about you, but when my mom died and all the other people who I have loved who have passed, I had no idea what I needed. I needed them back. And that smart remark doesn't do any good for anybody other than to create boundaries, you know, and push people away. So, long story short, the Restorative Brief Project has created this beautiful environment and community online where Grievers can be honest and grief. Supporters can find out how to support. They're grievers more intentionally and effectively. Great. So look, we are in difficult times and we are seeing an increase in incidents of young people dying. And I'm not going to go into why or how, but it's there. So how can. Mothers and fathers deal with the younger people passing away, like that's kind of something we're not really set up for. It's a great question. I have worked with many people who have lost their children both to illness, to suicide, to All number of things, even through divorce, losing access to their children. Uh, and I think we have this interesting idea that as parents, we have to be the strong ones for the siblings or for other kids. and it's just not true. Grieving is such a natural part of who we are, and it's a natural part of life. It's the other side of the coin, like. Life on one side, grief on the other. It's intermingled, it's connected. And when we pretend that grief is not impacting us, when we step it away or we create these armored areas of ourselves, we're doing it out of this idea of self-preservation, right? Stiff upper lip, keep calm and carry on kind of atmosphere, but it's such a disservice. And so when it comes to child loss, especially when there are siblings, I really believe that that is the environment where we have the opportunity to change the tide as families and as generations, because there will never be the right answer. There will never be a book or a resource that really hits home in the way that every single person could benefit from like, same thing is true of my own book. I don't recommend it to everyone. I get to know their story and then I say, I don't actually know if my book's gonna serve. It might cause more damage. Don't read it. Because every resource and every answer is not going to show up for people how they need them. But when it comes to parents experiencing child loss, what I have found to be the most meaningful is inviting them to tell their stories. And letting them know I don't have any answers. But you are not carrying this by yourself because I know that that feeling of isolation, especially as time passes, 2, 3, 4 years after the child has died, there are going to be people that create their own rituals and their own ways of moving through the loss of your child. But when it is your child, your life feels often like it has frozen in time, even when you have other children. And so, I think personally finding ways to create rituals of remembrance and, little ways that you as an individual show up on behalf of yourself and your child that has been lost. I. Is so crucial because the, the relationship doesn't end it changes dramatically, of course, but we still have relationships with our family members who have passed. It's just that they're not participating actively anymore, and so we then have the deciding opportunity to define what it looks like. I have a client who made this beautiful decision to honor a child with a tattoo every year. That's not advice for everyone, but for this family, it's absolutely perfect and stunning. But it took a lot of work to get there, and I think that that level of intentionality and doing the work is how we can move through it. Because there is no answer. Like for everything that I just said, I don't have any answers, but I do have compassion and I do have the ability to help people continue to ask questions of themselves, of, well, what would be meaningful today? It may be that getting a tattoo every year is only good for five years, and then you run out of space. What then? So it's always this matter of like, well, again, what are my values? How do I maintain my relationship and my love for this child that I've lost and move forward? Bringing them with me, integrating their memory and their story into my story today and this new version of who I am. Now we've seen some division in the world recently, and again, not diving into the why or the how, but it's there. How do people grieve a loss of community or a loss of friends, and particularly when they know that there's other people pulling strings behind that loss, how do they, yeah. You know, reconcile that those friends are now gone even though they know they're still there, but they're not there. Do you know what I mean? Oh, absolutely. This is one of the biggest questions I've been asking both of myself right now, and also of a lot of people, in community. It's actually part of my own podcast that we're working through this big series, developing this right now.'cause there's zero easy questions on this one either. Community loss is so bizarre because you're right, everyone is alive. Probably still in the same, often it's still in the same town, still in the same grocery stores, still in the same connections, but there's no connection. There's no communication. When that communication breaks down, there's so much confusion. There's this sense of blame. There's a sense of like, Authority, someone was in charge of this relationship and they removed me from the community, or I removed myself, and there's accusation and there's just so much at play, especially when there was a common thread and now, All communities have some kind of a common thread, right? We all have children that are the same age, or we're all neighbors, or we all go to church together, whatever that is. But when something shifts and you have to remove yourself from a community, or you have a political divide that you cannot overcome and you are removed from a community, anything like that, oh boy. It really goes back to the values. I have been wrestling on my own with community loss and trying to recognize the loneliness that occurs. Is not undone by recognizing the values that I carry and what's important to me because they're not black and white. We're nuanced individuals that wanna know that we're loved and that we can love others that seen and that we can see others and that we're known and that we can know others. And that core bit of who we are as humans is. So easily dismissed when hurt is involved. So I don't have an amazing answer for this yet'cause I'm still figuring it out on my own. I will say we have to recognize what loyalty to ourselves looks like as community members, as family members, whatever. If we are disloyal to ourselves, we will betray ourselves first before we betray other people. We will say no to us to make our yes available to someone else, even at great cost to ourselves. And this might just be my, showing up because I was raised in Christianity and we were taught that you serve and you offer and you put yourself, behind in order to put others first, which is fine. But as I am asking more questions, I'm recognizing, wow, there were so many times that I betrayed my own values. I betrayed who I am and how I wanted to show up in community because I thought I had to do that in order to belong in this community. And I think that sense of belonging is really so crucial and so connected to our core selves that often we have to figure out. What is the risk I'm willing to take to create my own belonging? Because community is what we make it, and I'm not talking about 50 people around us that we see on a weekly basis. I'm talking about those core two or three people that are really our true spirit, connected close people, and I think that that's where it begins, because when. you know, I can join a church, I can join a book club. I can do whatever I want and create community. But if I'm not known, seen and loved for the authentic version of who I am, I'm always going to be experiencing a grief event in that community because I don't feel that I can be vulnerable or honest, and there's no psychological safety for me to fall apart. If I do, there's criticism, right? Or there's spiritual bypassing or buck up buttercup. Everybody goes through this sometimes and that stuff just isn't meaningful. So community loss is worth the work it takes, but I think it really again, comes back to who are you and how do you wanna show up in your community? What does community actually even mean to you? Does it mean belonging to a huge organization? Great. What kind of an organization? It's a matter of. Being involved and being seen, uh, on a little micro level where you are intimately known. Awesome. What does that look like to you? It's kinda like dating. You just have to put yourself out there sometimes and it's gonna suck and there will be rejection, but eventually you hope you can become honest and really learn more about yourself and show up. And dating, isn't that a whole swimming pool of grief? Yeah. I'm glad I haven't had to do it in a long time. Now, is there something we haven't touched on around the work that you do or something that you feel the listeners need to hear before we wrap up? Hmm. I think I would simply want to communicate that. You're not gonna find a guru, to deal with your grief. But becoming aware of loss in the world around us is what leads us to greater compassion on behalf of ourselves and on behalf of other people. So when you find someone like me talking about loss, it's okay to test what I'm saying against your reality. It's also okay to reject what I'm saying because it doesn't actually fit into your framework. I think it's really simple with grief because it's, it's not a new concept, but the conversations around it and it actually being discussed publicly, that's quite new, and we tend to have this very ethnocentric perspective, understandably so, because we are where we are, we're raised in our culture, we have our own privileges and prejudices and preconceived notions about what is right and what is. Helpful, right? but the more that we allow ourselves to take a step back from and observe who we are, where we are, the more compassion we can grow in, the more we can break out of that binary of good and bad, and really recognize that grief is a gray space. There are no black and white answers. There is no good or bad. There's just helpful and unhelpful and recognizing that. We get to choose how we show up for ourselves means we also get to choose how intentionally and lovingly we show up for other people. And I, I'm a big believer that the more we do it for the individuals in our lives, the more they will carry on and do it for someone else. In that same way, in a curious and compassionate way. Not one that is, you know, bullish and says, I know the answer. I have an idea, or you should do this because I, I don't know about you magic, but I have been should upon. As I say it many times by people who think they have an answer for how to help me grieve and it, it's just not true. So I hope that helps. I hope that makes sense. It does. And I have been should upon and yeah, not, not a pleasant place to be. No. Well, look, thank you so much for joining us. Now before we let you go, we love freebies here. Can you offer the listeners a freebie. Yes, I do have a freebie, so on my website, mandy capehart.com, you can sign up for my newsletter and you will receive a download link for my free ebook called How to Regain Control of Grief. The entire thing is pretty quick read, but it's based on the idea that when we recognize grief as. A psychological event as a internal, this is something real and normal and actually quite healthy to experience. We can then come alongside of ourselves and our brains, our bodies, our hearts, and our spirits, and partner with who we are inherently to regreen a sense of control over what we're experiencing in grief. Lovely. Now that website was www.mandycapehart.com. Mandy, thank you so much for joining us. so listeners, Once you start processing grief, once you start working through it, it's not something that needs to be stopped. You need to let it happen. I hope you've gotten so much out of today. Again, Mandy, thank you for joining us. Absolutely magic. Thank you and well done. I love that you wrapped it up the way you did because it's such an ongoing process. Thank you for saying it that way. My pleasure. Listeners, again, thank you so much for your time, and please jump onto our Facebook page at a Magical Life podcast. Jump onto Apple reviews, let us know what you think, and on the Facebook page, let us know who you need to hear from. If you would like Mandy to come back and we delve into this bit more, please just give us a shout out for now. Go forth and create your magical life.