Grief Unplugged®

Dr. Tasha Johnson is a highly competent, results-focused, and highly effective leader with a portfolio of strategic leadership in academic achievement and educational reform outcomes. She has extensive experience in child development, supervising compensatory educational programs, budget management, and teaching in urban and youth-serving educational settings. Her passion emerges from her experiences at the grassroots level as well as through her senior practitioner-focused policy efforts. In her spare time, she is an avid gardener, facilitator of culinary experiences, and connoisseur of international dining experiences.  She balances her life with  Latin dancing - salsa, cumbia, bachata - all around the world while mentoring others to pursue their passion projects.  Her professional credentials include a BA and BBA from Southern Methodist University, a Masters in Administration Planning and Social Policy from Harvard University, and a Ph.D from New York University.   To learn more about her, visit her LinkedIn page:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/tasha-franklin-johnson-ph-d-b7336aa/, and to follow her passion project, pop over to Y.M.U. YummyU! on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/youngmindsunlimited/Schedule your Heart-to-Heart Conversation with me here: https://bookme.name/HeatherDHorton/lite/heart-to-heart-conversationRediscover Life & Joy Retreat, May 12-17, 2026 - click here for more details - http://bit.ly/3YDkL8i

Hello & welcome to the Grief Unplugged podcast. I am your host, Heather D. Horton.  Grief Unplugged is a podcast that frees professional women from the blockages of unresolved grief so they are able to find purpose in their pain and embrace their new "normal" while sustaining productivity at work and in life. In episodes 1 & 2, I told my story about the event that changed the trajectory of my life and gave specific details of how I have navigated my 13-year grief journey.  In episodes 3 through 7, I provided you with a vast toolkit of resources to begin shifting you from grief to a place of gratitude when you are ready. Episode 3 explored giving yourself permission to grieve as one of the most fundamental ways to begin moving forward instead of remaining stuck in your grief. In episode 4, I showed how you can stand firm in your faith and face your fears because there is nothing wrong with you.  You are not inadequate as Marianne Williamson, Our Deepest Fear, describes in her poem but you are greater than you could ever imagine because of where you are right now and what you have gone through. I also talked about what therapeutic support means and how you have to be intentional about it to support you on this journey.  In episode 5, I showed you how to leverage your emotions, invite them to tea or your favorite non-alcoholic beverage and then escort them out the door and take back your power.  In episode 6, I showed you how to start to transition from focusing on the death/loss you experienced to remembering and honoring the life of the person you loved or the thing or situation that no longer exists.  In episode 7, we talked about the importance of Incorporating new traditions into old traditions as you navigate your grief journey.  The focus today is taking all the tools in the toolkit and beginning to embrace the gift of now. If you knew you could handle anything that could/would happen to you, what would you be afraid of?  Nothing.  That's what Susan Jeffers says in her book Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway.  Remember that whatever happens, you can handle it.  If you need to, feel free to listen to episodes 3-7 again as many times as necessary.  You can handle it.  One way to maintain your momentum on your grief journey is to create a gratitude journal.  Every day for the next 30 days, I want you to write down 3-5 things for which you are grateful.  At the end of the 30 days, you could create an ebook to help others be able to find that same gratitude in their lives or even choose to live another day after experiencing loss.  I believe small gestures like this will help to empower individuals, impact communities and ultimately change the world.  I encourage you to be the change you want to see in the world.  You have an obligation to live your life for the rest of your life.  When you get to a state of being powerful, you begin to openly affirm what your legacy will be, what your life will look like in six months, one year from now.  What deferred or unfulfilled dream(s) are you ready to pursue now that you've begun to shift your grief to gratitude?  If you find it challenging to determine what your legacy will be, I want you to think about some causes/activities you were passionate about in the past.  What excited you about that cause/activity?  What have you done in your past that you think you could stick to now?  What will you celebrate in three months?  I encourage you to journal your answers to these questions to help you map out the future you.  I hope you realize that you are developing the blueprint for a successful journey to a place of peace, love, and gratitude.  Give yourself permission to move beyond grief.  Embrace the journey, embrace who you are, embrace all there is……  Melodie Beattie who wrote the book, The Grief Club, says "Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life.  It turns what we have into enough and more.  It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity.  It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events.  Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow." Remember everything in life is temporary, including life itself.   Decide to Say Yes to the Gift of Now.  As renowned Certified Professional Coach Dora Carpenter says, when you decide to say yes to the gift of now, no one and nothing can shake your tree.  When you are ready, I want you to yield to the present, embrace the possibilities of your potential, and surrender to the outcome.  In August 2017, I decided to say yes to the gift of now.  I realized that my personal story of overcoming adversity had the ability to redirect the trajectory of individual lives, empower communities and change the world.   I accepted the call to action and decided to no longer keep my story to myself.  I resigned from my Federal government career after 18+ years to help professional women navigate through the wilderness of grief by leveraging their emotions to find purpose in their pain, to embrace their new normal and sustain productivity in their personal lives and their careers.  How did you wake up this morning?  If you didn't wake up happy, why not?  When you wake up each morning, I want you to ask God four things before your feet hit the floor - What would you have me do, where would you have me go, what would you have me say and to whom would you have me say this.  Then take a moment to listen for the answers before starting your day.  I want you to stop existing and start living.  Friends, the best is yet to come when you are able to move from grief to gratitude and embrace the gift of now.  To further maintain that momentum, you need to create a personal power plan.  You need you to set powerful intentions for your life starting now.  At the beginning of each month, I want you to set powerful intentions as if it was the last day of the month and your intentions had already come true. Write your intentions in the present tense; I have, I am, not I will.  For example, I am 5 lbs lighter.  I have completed a 5K.  Use positive, inspiring, and concise language.  Be direct, strip away any doubt, worry or hesitation. Your words have power, they speak to your mind.  When you set powerful intentions, you create your own life and circumstances instead of settling for what someone hands to you or waiting for a handout.  If you are bold enough, I challenge you to also set three powerful intentions for your life.  Think about it as if it were the last day of your life and your intentions had already come true.  What would you family say about your legacy when making your final arrangements?  As part of your personal power plan, I need you to eliminate all excuses.  Know the obstacles that lie ahead for you and plan for them.  Also celebrate your wins, whether you make baby steps or huge leaps.  Always find something for which you are grateful.  And constantly evaluate your support system – your circle of influence.  Make sure your support system is always supporting you even when they don't agree with you.  You see, you need the following people in your circle of influence:  Peers – those who are where you are and supporting you, your network of likeminded friends & associates; Mentors - those who are where you want to be, you look up to them; Those who you can mentor - you only want those that really want to give back and help – if you give 100% and they give you 100% - who appreciate your help.  The people that are the closest to you (your family) may not be as excited with you about this new journey you are on – it's called innocent envy.  Instead of helping you, they may retreat or distance themselves from you.  I need you to be ready for that! Don't be disappointed, don't let anyone or anything steal your dream, let nothing or no one shake your tree.  Embrace the gift and possibilities of now!  Go in peace and prosper!  I want to thank you for listening to this episode. I hope you will join us for our next episode of the Grief Unplugged podcast.  I truly believe that community = strength.  So, if you are interested in engaging further with our community, you can join our private FB group, Professional Women Transcending Grief by searching for my FB business page -  @hortonheatherd, and click Visit Group right under my picture!  If you are interested in one-on-one grief support, access my website at www.heatherdhorton.com and click on GET SUPPORT to schedule your breakthrough session and learn more about my 90-day intensive grief coaching program, Reclaiming Your Power.   To stay engaged with the podcast, search for Grief Unplugged on iTunes, GooglePlay, SoundCloud or Libsyn.  Please subscribe to the podcast, so you know when the next episode is available and feel free to post a review, let me know what topics you want to hear discussed and share the podcast with your tribe.  Until next time, keep moving forward.

Hello & welcome to the Grief Unplugged podcast. I am your host, Heather D. Horton.  Grief Unplugged is a podcast that frees professional women from the blockages of unresolved grief so they can find purpose in their pain and embrace their new "normal" while sustaining productivity at work and in life. In episodes 1 & 2, I told my story about the event that changed the trajectory of my life and gave specific details of how I have navigated my 13-year grief journey.  In episodes 3 through 6, I provided you with a vast toolkit of resources to begin shifting you from grief to a place of gratitude when you are ready. Episode 3 explored giving yourself permission to grieve as one of the most fundamental ways to begin moving forward instead of remaining stuck in your grief. In episode 4, I showed how you could stand firm in your faith and face your fears because there is nothing wrong with you.  You are not inadequate as Marianne Williamson, Our Deepest Fear, describes in her poem but you are greater than you could ever imagine because of where you are right now and what you have gone through. I also talked about what therapeutic support means and how you have to be intentional about it to support you on this journey.  In episode 5, I showed you how to leverage your emotions, invite them to tea or your favorite non-alcoholic beverage and then escort them out the door and take back your power.  In episode 6, I showed you how to start to transition from focusing on the death/loss you experienced to remembering and honoring the life of the person you loved or the thing or situation that no longer exists. Today I will show you the importance of Incorporating new traditions into old traditions as you navigate your grief journey. It is an opportunity for you to create renewed attitudes, behaviors and perspectives resulting in transformational awareness and actions.  At this point, we have come to realize that we can't change the past.  Noted author Corinne Edwards says it best; we have to give up the hope for a different or better yesterday.  Stop hoping things would have happened differently or that things could be like they were in the past.  Create new traditions to remember your loved one or that loss.  The only point of power you have is right now.  You can still include something old in the new tradition.  Brides are even able to include something old on their wedding day.  Maybe just tweak the old way by including something that puts your signature on the occasion.  You may be hesitant about changing an old tradition.  You may be concerned that you are moving on from the person or situation or letting go of that memory.  Without beating yourself up, I want you to allow space for you to open your heart to consider other possibilities.  One of the new traditions I created after losing my mother was how I celebrated the holidays.  From childhood to adulthood, my extended family all lived within a 5-10 mile radius of each other.  We did everything together, sporting events, church, family dinners on Sunday, birthdays, anniversaries, holidays.  You name it; we were together.  After my mother passed, I didn't want to see or be around anyone related to me.  Not that I blamed anyone for what happened, but as an introvert, I just wanted to be alone with my thoughts for a long time.  But I had little say over that because I wore a C-collar to mend my neck fracture for three months after the accident.  Someone had to drive me everywhere, or I was always with someone which is hard after living alone.  The moment that I was able to drive again and eventually move from Louisiana to Arizona, I began to create my traditions.  I decided for my sanity that I would spend one holiday by myself each year.  No family. No friends. No one but me and whatever I decided to cook.  My mother loved to cook, and I was very fond of her cooking.  I had managed to learn how to make a few dishes just like she did.  I would set the table for myself and enjoy the dish by myself in peace and quiet and focus on memorable times with my mother.  My extended family and even the families that adopted me while I lived in AZ thought it was a bit extreme, but I had to create boundaries for my sanity.  As the years passed after my mother's death, I begin to tweak the traditions again and starting coming home for the holidays more after my nephews were born.   I had to make a new tradition to get back to the place of gratitude for appreciating being with my extended family during the holidays.   If you need a little inspiration to get to the place where you can think of something new, I encourage you to try this exercise.  It's called the 50 Smiles Project.  Take just two minutes to write down everything that makes you smile.  You can this once a week or daily.  One of your ideas may help you to create that new tradition.  One of the biggest roadblocks you will encounter when trying to incorporate new traditions into old traditions is forgiveness.  The antidote to forgiveness, however, is love.  It frees us from emotional suffering, being held hostage to bondage emotionally, physically, and psychologically.  Letting go of the hurts and even perceived wrongs opens one up to receive the abundance of life.  Don't let unforgiveness rob you of your joy.  Grief is usually heightened during the first year after trauma/loss.  You begin to ask yourself, am I supposed to celebrate this? Is this honoring that person or experience? Am I reopening wounds by doing this?  Planning helps to eliminate the challenges that come up during these times.  It may seem silly, but it is so important that you plan for the all the special days that will occur especially in the first year.  Things go much more smoothly when you have a plan.  A tool that I use when coaching clients is called the Firsties project.  It gives you the opportunity to show gratitude to a life well lived and the opportunity to honor that person's life and legacy.  It also gives you an opportunity to cherish the memories of your experiences that occurred before your loss by adding your unique touch to the new tradition.  This exercise is not only good for firsties but just in general when special days occur whether it be birthdays, father's day, mother's day, the anniversary of the death or experience, etc.  July 30, 2017, would have been my mother's 70th birthday.  A flood of emotions came to my mind just thinking of that milestone and what we would have done if she were still alive.  I don't officially celebrate Mother's Day regarding my mother anymore; however, my mother's birthday has become my mother's day celebration of her.  I would take a sewing class as my mother was a supreme seamstress in her memory or spend the day at the spa with one of my adopted mother figures in the area to honor my mother.  I knew it was her 70th, July 30, 2017, but it didn't hit me until the actual day came.  I didn't have a plan.  It was on a beautiful Sunday, not a day to be inside.  I normally volunteer for several hours at church on Sundays that year.  I just thought that I would find some way to celebrate after my volunteerism ended. Surely someone would be available to help me reminisce and celebrate.  However, everyone I called was unavailable.  I called my sister in NC to make sure she was ok.  Then afterward I was so distraught that all I could do was take a nap.  My energy was zapped.  I slept for 3 hours.  It didn't seem like taking a nap was the thing to do to remember my mother.  I honestly felt like I let her down.  But in the end, I remembered that she loved to rest on Sunday.  So once I quieted my spirit, I was able to enjoy that same rest and honor her in the process.  It was nothing big, but I still celebrated her with the new tradition I created. When thinking of incorporating new traditions into old traditions, I want you to ask yourself this question and truthfully answer it, in what areas of my life do I need to prune?  It is only when you make the choice to let go that you can fully allow and receive all the beauty and joy that is available to you.  If you don't prune negative people, unhealthy lifestyles, non-supportive people from your life, you tend to remain stuck in your grief.  My challenge to you is for you to think about the areas of your life where you need to prune as you incorporate new traditions into old traditions and continue to shift your grief to gratitude.  I want to thank you for listening to this episode. I hope you will join us for our next episode of the Grief Unplugged podcast.  I truly believe that community = strength.  So, if you are interested in engaging further with our community, you can join our private FB group, Professional Women Transcending Grief by accessing my business page on FB by searching for @hortonheatherd and click Visit Group right under my picture!  Or if you are interested in one-on-one grief support, access my website at www.heatherdhorton.com and click on GET SUPPORT to schedule your breakthrough session and learn more about my 90-day intensive grief coaching program, Reclaiming Your Power.   To stay engaged with the podcast, search for Grief Unplugged on iTunes, GooglePlay, SoundCloud or Libsyn.  Also, please subscribe to the podcast, so you know when the next episode is available and feel free to post a review, let me know what topics you want to hear discussed and share the podcast with your tribe.  Until next time, keep moving forward.

Hello & welcome to the Grief Unplugged podcast. I am your host, Heather D. Horton.  Grief Unplugged is a podcast that frees professional women from the blockages of unresolved grief to find purpose in their pain so that they are able to embrace their new "normal" and sustain productivity at work and in life. In my three prior episodes, I have provided you with a vast toolkit of resources to begin shifting you from grief to a place of gratitude when you are ready. You know that giving yourself permission to grieve is fundamental to moving forward. Next, I showed you how to stand firm in your faith and face your fears because you are not inadequate as Marianne Williamson describes in her poem but you are greater than you could ever imagine because of where you are right now. We talked about what therapeutic support means and how you have to be intentional about it to support you on this journey.  And lastly, you learned how to leverage your emotions, invite them to tea or your favorite non-alcoholic beverage and then escort them out the door and take back your power.  Now, I want you to take the next step and start to transition from focusing on the death/loss you experienced to remembering and honoring the life of the person you loved or the thing or situation that no longer exists.  Think about and focus on the essence of who your loved one was or what that special thing or experience meant to you, the values the person or thing instilled in you, the accomplishments gained by having experiences with that person or thing, the lessons learned, gifts shared, memories treasured and the legacy the person or thing left with you.  When you begin to think about showing gratitude to a life lived or a situation experienced without someone prompting you to do so, you are beginning to shift yourself from grief to gratitude.  Remember that the reason you grieve is because you loved that person, thing or situation.  They added value to your life and validated you.   Grief can also teach us something about life if we allow it to.  Repeat.  I believe that after listening to my prior episodes and really applying the principles I discussed in your life, you may now be more open to this revelation of honoring the loss.  So, I want to ask you a question - What can you use or what did you take from the experience you gained after having spent time with that dear deceased loved one or dealing with that specific situation?  Honoring the story about your loved one or your experience is synonymous with opening up to grief.  When you are able to talk about it, healing occurs more successfully and rapidly.  I want you to think of a way to deposit the value that you received from your loved one or experience into someone else's life to not only help them to move forward but also to help you move forward.  There is a quote from Thomas Campbell that says to live in the hearts we leave behind is not to die.  Repeat.  If the memory that you cherished about the person or that thing still lives in your heart, that person still lives with you or there is still hope despite your situation.  After my mother passed away, my sister and I sold her house and divided all my mother's remaining possessions amongst the two of us.  We had given away tons of clothes, home goods, furniture, etc. but kept the things that were most sentimental to us.  Among the items I kept were my mother's wedding gown and her wedding ring.  I moved at least four times after her death but I never managed to let go of much of anything each time I moved.  Normally when people move, they tend to declutter somewhat so that they can start afresh in the new space.  That was not me. I wanted to hold on to my mother's things for as long as I could as a reminder of her and the memories we once shared.  Instead of decluttering, I just always rented an apartment home large enough to accommodate my things and her things that I took from my childhood home. And I carried around those items for 10 years.  Finally when I moved back to Washington, DC in December 2014, 9 years after my mother's passing, I felt it was time to determine if I really needed all the things I cherished from my family home so that I could begin to start to live in the present rather than the past.  I specifically rented a space that was half the size I would normally rent to force myself to declutter to make space for other people and situations to come into my life.  I became so overwhelmed by the lack of space and the amount of clutter and unpacked boxes around me that I hired a professional organizer in 2015 so I wouldn't lose my mind because I had to bring my A-game to work in this new position in the C-suite.  When in doubt, hire a professional is my motto.  Remember I said in an earlier episode that I realized my grief experience was God-orchestrated.  Well, my organizer's mother worked in a ministry that collected old wedding gowns used to make funeral gowns for preemies since they were not sold in stores.  While we were decluttering, my organizer waited patiently before presenting me with the opportunity to repurpose my mother's wedding gown.  Once he had learned more about me, my upbringing and what my mother meant to me, he encouraged me to donate my mother's wedding gown to his mother's ministry.  My mother was a supreme seamstress so acting on this opportunity was a no-brainer.  My mother's dream was to be a fashion designer.  She lived in the pageant world for a few years before committing her life to help students advance in the classroom and being the best mother my sister and I could ever have.  As a mother to us and so many others, she taught and led, my mother, exuded servant leadership and showed unconditional love to any and everyone that graced her presence.  I realized the moment my organizer shared that opportunity with me that this was the reason I still had my mother's wedding gown 10 years later.  To donate her dress to such a cause would be something she would have felt honored to do if she were still living.  I also realized that I was not ready to let go of the dress until that moment.  We took pictures of the dress so I could remember it in its original splendor.  When he left my house that day, it felt weird that I no longer had that box, but I focused on the legacy it would carry in serving someone else's need.  Then, months later on a day that I was having a major grief burst, uncontrollable outburst of tears that happens with or without a trigger,  on a day I just wanted to see and talk to my mother, my organizer sent me a screenshot of a FB post where his mother posted a picture of my mother's original wedding gown alongside the funeral gown she'd made for a preemie that had transitioned.  It was truly the highlight of my day, although bittersweet.  That picture helped me move one step closer to a place of gratitude for having experienced the wonderful love, the life, and legacy of my mother, Cherral Ann Jack Horton.  She would have been 70 if she were still here physically.  In what way can you make someone else's life better in honor of your loved one?  What lessons have you learned as a result of the loss or grief that you experienced that you can incorporate into your own life?  Has your grief/loss taught you anything about forgiveness?  How can you take that lesson forward on your journey?  What action step can you take to build the legacy for which you want to be remembered?  Another way to honor legacy is to create rituals of remembrance.  You can create personal, family or community rituals to honor your loved one or commemorate a life experience that reminds you of a lesson learned as a result of your grief/loss that can help others.  For personal rituals, do what feels right for you.  A personal ritual for me is to go to the cemetery every time I travel home to Baton Rouge, LA to change the flowers on my mother's gravesite.  I bring flowers in her favorite color home with me.  Her favorite color was yellow. I go to Southern Memorial Gardens and I clean the area around the gravestone, I change the flowers, and I sit down and just have a conversation with her and reminisce.  I can't buy her beautiful clothes and jewelry any longer, but I can adorn her gravestone with the most gorgeous flowers just the same.  It gives me such peace just to be there even though I know her soul is with the Lord.  A family ritual that my sister and I just started was making my mother's famous potato salad for either Thanksgiving or Christmas.  It was a recipe that my mother never wrote down.   Every time we had a family gathering, my mother would make pounds and pounds of potato salad.  I know because my sister and I would have to peel and cut up all the potatoes and help stir the pot.  For years after my mother's death, I had no desire to make or eat potato salad.  In my opinion, no one's potato salad could ever taste as good as my mother's potato salad.  Then all of a sudden two years ago, my sister and I were both home for Christmas.  We bought all the ingredients from the store that we thought we remembered in our mother's potato salad.  We put our heads together and we were able to create my mother's recipe impeccably.  So now we continue that ritual annually and get praise from our family members that we are outstandingly carrying on the torch. I even make my mother's potato salad by myself as my dish when I attend holiday gatherings I am invited to in honor of my mother so others who never met her can experience her to some degree.  There was definitely love in that potato salad. One thing I desire to accomplish as a community ritual is to create an endowment in memory of my mother to the Southern University College of Agriculture, Family and Consumer Sciences to honor her legacy as a distinguished graduate of our alma mater so that some young lady or young man can realize her/his dream of becoming a fashion icon as my mother always dreamed.  Focusing on the legacy left with you is a vital part of helping to begin to create your new normal and sustain your productivity at work and in life.  It gives you something else to live for.   I want to thank you for listening to this episode. I hope you will join us for our next episode of the Grief Unplugged podcast.  I truly believe that community = strength.  So, if you want to engage further with our community, you can join our private FB group, Professional Women Transcending Grief or if you are interested in one-on-one support, email me at [email protected] to get more information about my 90-day intensive grief coaching program, Reclaiming Your Power.   To stay engaged with the podcast or learn more about my products and services, access my website at www.heatherdhorton.com. Also, please subscribe to the podcast so you know when the next episode is available and feel free to post a review, let me know what topics you want to hear di

Hello & welcome to the Grief Unplugged podcast. I am your host, Heather D. Horton.  Grief Unplugged is a podcast that frees professional women from the blockages of unresolved grief to find purpose in their pain so that they are able to embrace their new "normal" and sustain productivity at work and in life.  In the second episode or part two of my story, I detailed how I sought therapeutic support while navigating through the wilderness of grief.  But I want to go back and explain what therapeutic support means because therapeutic support is vitally important to help you to continue to move towards a place of gratitude, or even to find purpose in your pain after you have begun to give yourself permission to grieve.  You have acknowledged that your all your feelings and emotions are normal and natural, that there is nothing wrong with you.  You have begun to accept that you can't change the past and are beginning to take action to live out this new normal but also realizing that this is a cyclical process and you have to prepare yourself for the next thing that is coming.  It is how life works.  So, therapeutic support, what does that mean?  The term therapeutic is an adjective meaning having a beneficial effect on the body and mind or producing a useful or favorable result or effect.  Support is defined as the act of helping someone by giving love, encouragement, etc. or something that holds a person or thing up and stops that person or thing from falling.  When we seek therapeutic support, we allow others to hold us accountable, and we exercise good self-care – meaning we are aware and recognize the need to make time to care for and nurture our body, our mind, and our spirit.  Time spent alone processing your grief will move you forward only so much.  You must be intentional about taking action as grief never goes away.  But life continues.  Your reaction to your triggers and emotions are what change if/when you do the grief work.  People tend to label emotions around grief as "negative" hence the grief avoidance society in which we live.   Those emotions include but are not limited to, fear, sadness, discouragement, jealousy, blame, revenge, worry, disappointment, frustration, anger, and guilt.  However, what makes any of these emotions inherently negative except perhaps the way make us feel physically?  May I submit for your consideration that there is no such thing as negative emotions.  How would your life be different if you were able to move from just coping with your emotion to leveraging your emotion for growth?  A power principle that I gained from my Coach Diversity Institute training states Emotions show us the way.  They point us to our next level of growth.  What could you learn from your emotions if you fully embraced them and all of your unique life experiences?  What would be different for you if you were able to use your emotions as a springboard to reach that place of gratitude after experiencing grief?  As a certified grief expert, I help clients process experiences that do not feel so great and help them find meaning and purpose in those events.  I help them to understand their anchor and find purpose in their pain.  Unresolved pain will continue to rear it's ugly head until you deal with it.  It is like waste, it must come out of the body in some form or fashion.  Similarly, the pay we experience must come out of the body otherwise it is harming us.  If your trauma or grief experience were tailor-made just for you, what would the lesson be?  If your trauma or grief situation happened to make you great, what could you learn from it?  I believe my trauma experience was tailor-made for me.  I survived my accident to make manifest the glory of God that is within me.  From childhood, I have always been a deep thinker.  I was smart, but I have also presented myself to the world as a closed book.  I remember the first time in middle school when I saw the statue of Le Penseur in my French textbook.  It portrayed how I saw myself perfectly – head down, hand under chin, sitting slightly bent forward deep in thought.  I was never one to share my thoughts openly unless I was forced to share.  Either I didn't think my idea was smart enough to capture anyone's attention or I didn't think the receiver was worthy of hearing my breath. However, the day of my accident in 2005 was the beginning of my Awakening, my journey from Heather 1.0 to Heather 2.0.  My training with Coach Diversity Institute took the shame I felt about my traumatic experiences and brought my voice to light.  Coach Diversity Institute placed the microphone in my hand to help me to begin to share my story with others and make a choice to live an abundant and purposeful life by leveraging my emotions to find my power or reclaim my power.  I was reminded that I already knew how to overcome any challenge that crossed my path.  It has taken me more than twelve years to get to this point despite my varied professional experiences over the past 18 years.  My story of resilience in the face of adversity is rerouting the trajectory of individual lives, empowering communities from diverse backgrounds and ultimately changing the world.   When people, professional women, begin to release the pain, the guilt and the shame that they carry around with them daily, through the transformative power of coaching, professional women, particularly women of color and marginalized communities, can begin to dismantle injustice and create systemic change in our lives and in the world.  When you find you are experiencing grief or any of the other emotions I described earlier that are associated with grief, I want you to use this exercise to shift your mindset from being powerless to being powerful. The shift can happen in an instant.  I want you to close your eyes and imagine that grief is a guest of yours in a beautiful setting, maybe a park or a garden.  Take a few deep cleansing breaths to center yourself.  Imagine that you are having grief over for a cup of tea or your favorite non-alcoholic beverage.  What questions would you like to ask grief?  If you could name grief, what would call it?  I want you to gently engage grief by asking questions of it and take your time to listen for the answers.  You could ask questions like what is your intent?  How do you plan to hinder me today? What are you doing here?  What do you want from me?  What do you want me to learn from you? What are you offering me today?  What do you want me to know?  What do you want to show me about myself?   When you have all of the answers you need and the time comes for a visit to end, thank grief for stopping by and escort it out the door.  When you open your eyes, I want you to take a moment to journal your insights so you can refer back to your journal as necessary when grief returns.  Know that you can always invite any emotion to tea and visit with them and escort that emotion out the door when you are done.       Power is the ability to co-create the future by standing present in the moment connected by your purpose, vision, desires, and acting by trusting your creative impulses.  Standing in your power means not allowing the past, current reality, systems of oppression or anyone or anything else define who you are.  Power is being able to chart your way forward no matter what happens.  How will you activate your power going forward? I want to thank you for listening to this episode. I hope you will join us for our next episode of the Grief Unplugged podcast.  I truly believe that community = strength.  So, if you want to engage further with our community, you can join our private FB group, Professional Women Transcending Grief or if you are interested in one-on-one support, email me at [email protected] to get more information about my 90-day intensive grief coaching program, Reclaiming Your Power.   To stay engaged with the podcast or learn more about my products and services, access my website at www.heatherdhorton.com. Also, please subscribe to the podcast, so you know when the next episode is available and feel free to post a review, let me know what topics you want to hear discussed and share the podcast with your tribe.  Until next time, keep moving forward.