05: Why You Won't Heal Until You Let Yourself Grieve
In this episode, I'm breaking down why grief is an essential part of any healing journey. Whether you're healing from chronic illness, a relationship, trauma, or a major life shift, grief is the process that allows you to complete old chapters and step fully into new ones.
I share my personal experience with topical steroid withdrawal (TSW) and how I spent years resisting grief instead of feeling it. That resistance kept me stuck and drained my energy. Once I stopped fighting it and started moving through the waves of grief—past, present, and future—I finally started healing.
Grief has a purpose. It teaches us lessons, helps us let go, and creates space for what's next. If you've been avoiding grief or feel stuck in your healing, this episode will show you why walking through that door is one of the most powerful things you can do for your emotional healing and mental health.
CHAPTERS:
00:00 Why grief is essential for any healing process—not just when someone dies
01:07 My TSW journey, grief, and resistance
02:18 How grief is transformational
02:51 Examples (even in unexpected situations)
03:36 3 waves of grief
04:13 Grieving the past, present, and future
05:38 How relationships shift during grief and healing
06:19 The purpose of grief
07:27 The next step: sitting with grief and letting it move through you
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Content Warning: This episode discusses mental health struggles. I'm a registered nurse sharing my personal story for educational purposes only — this is not medical advice. If you're struggling, call or text 988 (U.S./Canada) or visit https://findahelpline.com/
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[00:00-00:18]
What if the reason you're feeling stuck in your healing journey isn't because you're doing something wrong, but because you're not letting yourself feel something specific? In this episode, I'm gonna talk about one of the most underrated but necessary steps for any healing journey, and that's how to start moving through grief. I'm Cassie.
[00:18-00:44]
I'm a shamanic practitioner, an emotional integration coach, and a registered nurse that used to be really sick. I spent 8 years healing from a severe skin condition called topical steroid withdrawal, or TSW. It was one of the most physically tortuous experiences you can imagine, and during that time, my mental and emotional health plummeted. I suffered from severe anxiety, PTSD, depression, so much that many times I didn't even wanna be here anymore.
[00:44-01:07]
So I know firsthand what it takes to truly heal and how to come out on the other side. So you might think of grief as something we mainly experience when someone dies, but it's actually essential for any healing process, whether you're healing from physical illness, a romantic breakup, mental health struggles. Grief isn't just an emotional response, it's a transformational process.
[01:07-01:39]
When I was at the start of my TSW journey, my world was turned upside down. I was living what felt like a pretty normal, healthy life until then, and suddenly I was extremely disabled and near bedridden for about the first year. This shift, not just in lifestyle, but physical pain, emotional and mental stress, was overwhelming, and I felt like my life had been taken away from me. This was really hard for me to accept, and because of that, I was in constant resistance.
[01:39-02:18]
I was emotionally and energetically resisting all the change that this physical illness was bringing me. I was constantly thinking, "I wish this wasn't happening to me. I wish I wasn't going through this. I wish I was living my old life again." And while it was okay to desire these things, I was doing it in a way that was gripping onto these thoughts and draining my energy instead of moving through them with intention and even the hope to eventually let them go. I was using my energy to dodge the grief, to suppress it, to glaze over it, rather than using my energy to allow myself to feel it as fully as I needed to, and this cycle was exhausting.
[02:18-02:51]
What I didn't know back then was how essential grief actually is in allowing us to heal and to move forward, and that grief in itself is a process that transforms us in our greater journey of healing. Grief is the sorrow we feel from the loss or death of something, and in any process of healing, even if it doesn't seem like it, there's a part of you, an old part of you that's ready for completion. It's ready to come to an end. It's ready to fall away and to die because you're ready to move on to your next thing, into your new role, into a new identity.
[02:51-03:19]
For example, I became a mom recently, and even though this was a joyous and wonderful thing that I wanted to do, there was still an old part of me that needed to fall away, that needed to come to an end so that I could fully step into this new role and a new identity as a mother. Even if this old thing was an unhealthy lifestyle or a bad habit, something that wasn't good for you, you still feel grief around losing it because it was your comfort zone to some extent.
[03:19-03:41]
For example, I once was in a relationship that was abusive. Even at the end when I realized what was happening and I realized that I wanted to do something different and move toward a direction that was healthier and happier for myself, there was still grief I needed to experience to complete that old part of me. So throughout the healing journey, grief can feel so overwhelming because it comes in waves.
[03:41-04:12]
And I'm not talking about the 5 stages of grief that you might have heard of, but this is a different way to think about it that will make it seem just less overwhelming and more manageable to handle, and a little easier to allow yourself to feel it fully when you need to. So in my health crisis with TSW, especially in the beginning, I needed to grieve the past. I needed to grieve the life that I had left behind, that I was forced to leave behind, and I would be confronted with this grief of the past so often.
[04:13-04:36]
Every day when little things would come up like washing my hands or putting clothes on that I used to be able to do with ease and that I wasn't able to do anymore, it would just fill me with so much grief and sadness and anger and confusion, and I would just wish that I was living that old life again, and I would grieve that that wasn't the case anymore. And it really did feel like a past life.
[04:36-05:06]
So then as I continued to move through TSW, more of the present grief started coming up, and this was the stuff that I had to grieve that I thought I was gonna be doing at this time, but because of this unexpected event that happened, my current plans had to change, and that made me really sad. Some of those things were things like travel, things like social plans, a lot of social stuff that I was no longer able to do and that I felt like I had to pull out of.
[05:06-05:38]
All of the things that you planned to do in your life today that you have to assess in the moment and say, "You know what? I am not able to do this right now anymore." And there's a grief, a sadness that comes with that. And finally, there's grief of the future, and this is when you're thinking forward and thinking about all of the things that you thought you were going to be doing or the way that you thought your life was going to unfold ahead of you, and it's clear that, at least at this time, it's not gonna be that way.
[05:38-06:19]
And this also includes how your relationships are in relation to your grieving period or whatever the thing is that you're grieving, whether it's your relationship with your kids or your spouse or a boyfriend, girlfriend, your friends. My relationships in my entire life fully changed when I was going through this, and there is grief and sadness that comes along with that too, even if it's something that hasn't happened yet.Moving through grief, every aspect of it, and no matter what the grief was about, whether it was health or a relationship or an opportunity, moving through it is what allowed me to learn the lessons that that experience was there to teach me.
[06:19-06:59]
The grief is functional. It's not just here to give us a bad time. And when you try to avoid it or suppress it or glaze over it, then you miss out on all those lessons, the reasons that these experiences happened. And just FYI, it's very likely that you'll keep getting served the same lesson in life, just in a different scenario, until you finally learn it. So, I started thinking of grief as a doorway, and my resistance to feeling it was like, imagine me then holding the doorframe and digging my heels in and screaming, "No, you can't make me." But no matter what, the health crisis was going to push me through.
[06:59-07:27]
So, once I stopped digging my heels in and let go of the doorframe, I allowed myself to just start walking through. And just letting yourself starting to feel the grief and dip your toes into it and be willing to walk through that door is a huge accomplishment in itself, and for me, it was something that I was really proud of. What made it easier was trusting and knowing that it was part of a greater process for my own benefit, for my own health, and for my own healing.
[07:27-07:49]
And you'll find that once you let yourself walk through, it doesn't end there because then the next natural step is to sit with the grief, to process it, to let it move through you. And if you want more tools to help you in this next step, I have a really good video on being witnessed and finding the right support system. I'll link to it here and in the description.
[07:49-08:08]
I hope you found something valuable in this episode. Please give it a like so that I can help more people just like you. Be sure to subscribe. I put out new episodes every Tuesday with more tools and stories for your healing. Finally, if you want more right now, I have a free video training on affirmations that actually work. The link is in the description, and I'll see you next time.
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