Healing Is Not Forgetting: Learning to Live After Loss

We rush people through grief. We praise them when they look better, function again, and smile again. But what if healing doesn't mean returning to who you were and never will? I'm your host, Edna White, and this is Keeping It Real On Purpose. Today's conversation is all about the truth of most grieving people quietly carry. They're not broken. They're living in a world that expects them to be. Our guest, Maria Balanick, is a certified grief educator whose life changed after the death of her son. What she discovered reshapes how we understand loss, identity, and what it actually means to move forward. Welcome to the show, Maria. Thank you, Edna. I am so grateful to be here with you, and I love your topic. Grief is my lane. I've made it. And so, of course, as you had said, in grief, we feel that we're broken. And people expect us to pick up those pieces and kind of look back to what we were before. Right. Right. Yeah. And I love how you said that. It's perfect. So tell us a little bit about you and your background so we can get the lay of the land and we could just get this conversation moving. Oh, definitely. So in my prior life, I was a realtor for 26 years. And during that time, yeah, you too. And my son, when he was 16, was diagnosed with an incurable blood cancer. So he lived with that for 11 years. And after he died when he was 27, there was something in me that just stopped. I felt numb. The world as it was wasn't anymore. And I always go, I lived in 10 years in limbo. That limbo became that autopilot, that looking on the outside, like everything was fine, but inside, falling apart. People kept telling me too many cliches. The cliches of, well, he was ill, you knew he was going to die. Yeah. You have another child. You have to. And the more they said this, the more I felt that what is wrong with me? Like, what? Why can't I get over this? Because I think that's the expectation. The expectation of what we've led to believe is something happens. You pick yourself up out of those bootstraps and you just continue on with life. Right. We totally get that. What no one ever mentions is the feelings that we feel. Right. The numbness or not being able to say their names or to share stories about them, everyone now doesn't want to hear anything about what you're experiencing or even about your child or your person. And that is what I found. I was trying to fix myself and then realizing, but grief isn't going anywhere. Nope. I always miss my son. Why can I not share about him? Why can I not share what I am feeling? And that's when it turned around and I chose to support others, to sit with them. And that's how I became a certified grief educator. Yeah. So tell us what happened when you figured out there was nothing wrong and you made that turning point. Well, I was reading books. Actually, I was just looking at myself in the mirror and not recognizing who I was. There's a look in our eyes. There's that quote that says our eyes are the souls to us, which is so true. And all I saw was emptiness. And one of my fears was being that we see it in the movies. You see that that cranky old woman that is so nasty to everybody. Yes. And everybody just walks by that house and goes, oh, you should see, you know, such a sad story. Her son died and she never got over it. Yeah. And in some ways, that's what I thought life was going to be like. And in some ways it when I see and even when I'm talking to other parents, especially parents who've had a long term loss where they were not able to share their stories or talk about their child, even though they're living life, there's a part of them that feels empty. Right. And some of the and the people that I've helped talk to when they get to share. I know one lady, it was 30 years ago that her daughter had passed away. Wow. And when she ended up being able to share and talk about her daughter, she felt lighter, like, wow, someone is acknowledging my pain, my grief. I don't have to hide it. And when I say hiding, I'm not saying that we have to relive or share the traumatic story of how they passed away. We share their life, who they were, however short of a time they lived. Yeah, that makes sense. So instead of fixing grief, you allow grief to exist. Yeah, yeah. I have an acronym called care. So we give ourselves our daily care, which I call the pillars of care, which is about giving ourselves compassion for our feelings, for what we've experienced. And instead of being harder to ourselves, give ourselves kindness. And in the choices that we make. So the second part is a is acknowledgement. We have thoughts and feelings all the time. They pop up in our minds. Most of the time, we focus on the negatives. Instead of saying, Wow, today, this is what I'm feeling. And it's okay. Or these are my thoughts. And whichever one, whether it's sadness, anger, even if it's something that makes you smile, acknowledge it and say, Yeah, this is why I'm feeling today. Today, I'm feeling really good about myself. Or today, I'm feeling really terrible about myself. Both of them are okay. Yeah. I think we don't get to that point that we feel okay. And it's okay to be okay. And you know, it's okay to be sad. It's okay to be mad. It's okay. We don't make emotions. It's okay to have emotions. And that's kind of why what gets us lost. So true. I mean, how many times do we just want to repress and hide our emotions? All right, we put on this mask. I'm always thinking of the Venetian masks, or when you're looking at the masks that we put on. I mean, it's not a physical mask. In some ways, it could be. But we hide in behind it going and pretending that everything is fine. And, and that actually does more damage to our bodies. And sure does. Yeah, it numbs us it gets us numb. More so than normal. So what do I know that you said a lot of people lose themselves. And I heard you say you kind of lost yourself in this. What did what really happened in that loss? What did you know, if you could make a picture of it for us to see what it looks like, or maybe what it feels like, you know, the emotion that you go through? What would you say it would be? I think we tie our identity to a role. All right, we kind of go mother, wife, partner, realtor. Right. I mean, so when we're tied up to the title, and all of a sudden, something is taken away, especially all of a sudden, do we still have that same role? One of the aspects that I had was, if I'm a mother of two boys, am I still a mother of two boys? Or now am I a mother of one? Oh, that's good. It used to stump me all the time. I mean, when people ask, how many children do you have? What do you say? And, and at the time, it was like, well, I had two and one die. And sometimes you don't want to share that information, if it's a stranger. Right. And now I do say, I have two sons, because really, I will always be a mother to two sons. That's what I had. Mm hmm. That's right. Yeah. And the way you change the narrative around that, even for, you know, even when you lose your job, you know, or that's a loss, or you, you change your like, me and you change from real estate to coaching, like that's, that's a loss. You know, it's like, what do we do now? We were always used to be ripping and running in the roads, you know, what do we do now? You know? So that's even a loss, but just changing the narrative around it is something else. That's really, that's really good. That's a good, that's a good way to be. Really is. And it is, it takes a while, because when we're in it, we don't see, I always go, it's like having those blinders. You know how the race horses have those blinders on? So they can only see forward. Right. And in grief, we don't even, we can't even see forward, because forward is scary. Yeah. And that part of the, the aspect when I go healing isn't forgetting, we can heal our hearts. A lot of times, we feel that if we move forward in healing, it means we're going to forget about a person. Yeah. Right. And as a mom, it's like, I can't move forward and leave my child. I mean, there's that aspect that we're tied to them. And we can't move forward, because we're afraid that we're going to lose that connection. So it sounds like grief became clarifying to you. It did. Isn't that amazing? I mean, all of a sudden, you're looking in this mirror, not looking at myself. And the thought that came to me was, there's got to be another way. Yeah. And so then that took a different route in regards of so what is that other way? And that other way is walking with grief, grief walks with me. It's not something that I need to get over. Right? It's not something that I need to move on from. It walks beside me, or with me. And what I've learned is saying is that I'm carrying love and loss in the same breath. Right. Well, that's good. That's really good. And then it's like a burden that's being lifted from you. Once you make that choice that say, yeah, I can talk about my child. I can talk about my experience, my loss. And it's carrying that love and the loss together, because I know that it's, I go, it's the exhale, we get to breathe. Because a lot of times we're just holding it. You know, absolutely, absolutely. We're not breathing. We're like, we're taking like little breaths in between. Breathe is going to control the lose control to breathe. It's so true. It's, it's the fear that holds us back. And we don't even know what we're afraid of. Yeah, that's the aspect that I find in grief, is that we believe that we're going to fall apart. If we express our emotions. I always, and I've talked to so many parents and people that say the same thing. They're afraid of letting go. Because we have this aspect of again, that fear of letting go. And we're just going to be screaming in the void. And, and who knows, maybe I'm trying to think of that famous artist that has the painting, The Scream. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. What is that? I know, I'm thinking, okay, is it Matisse? Is it? I don't know. I don't have no idea. No, I don't think it's Matisse. It's someone. I can't remember that. I could see it vividly in my mind, but I can't bring up the name. Right. It's the thing with a long kind of screen. In grief, that's what we feel. I mean, that's what we feel on the inside. And letting go feels like that's what I'm going to look like on the outside. Yeah. You hear this audience? So audience, we're going to shift this part. And we're going to ask our guests today some questions that people get wrong about grief, since she's the expert. So we're going to ask you a couple of questions, and it's what they get wrong. And you get us right. Okay, you get us right. All right. What is the biggest misunderstanding people have about grieving individuals? That there's a one size fits all. That is good. Explain that to us. Well, we're, as a society, we've been taught the five steps to grief are the seven steps. And part of that is that's a one size fits all. Everyone should follow the same kind of steps. Well, in reality, there is no steps in grief. And all of us are unique, our relationships are unique, and how we do grief is going to be unique. It's going to be different. It's going to because we're all different. And so some of us will be more emotional. If that's your personality, some of us will be more stoic. And so there's really no right or wrong way to do grief. It's only your way. Got it. So healing isn't forgetting, it's integrating. So you told me that I'm walking with it. I'm accepting it. So it's integrating it, right? Oh, I like that word integrating. Yes. That's good. That's good. Okay. Many listeners feel guilty laughing again. I know when I was, I felt when I was younger, that crying was wrong. And I didn't cry for a very long time until I was 19, I think 12 to 19. And, or they're afraid to love again, or build life again. How do they how do they start to begin to give themselves, I guess, permission? And that's really where compassion starts. Emotions are emotions. And we're taught, as you say, like when you said you didn't cry until you were 19. And you gave yourself permission. Right. And that's really what it is. It's giving ourselves permission. However, we can only give ourselves permission when we have compassion for ourselves. That makes sense. Yeah, permission, permission. So we want to get to like, you know, the part where you said forgetting, you know, because that's your thing forgetting is, you know, healing is not forgetting. Break that down for us. Well, a lot of times, we, when we think of healing, and your your leg breaks, or your arm breaks, when it heals, it means that you can move forward, or you can use it again. It's never really the same. Because if you broke your bones, the bones never, never go back to what they were originally to. And so in grief, when we think of healing, a lot of times people feel that if you've healed, you're going back to who you were before the loss. And we've changed, like loss changes us. And no one can go back to who they were before the loss. We in some ways, there's that Japanese starts with a K, where they take the broken pieces and put it back together, and use gold paint. And showcasing that, yes, the vase broke, we can put the vase back together, it's still a vase. However, the vase is going to show the brokenness of it, of where what the trauma said, it's experienced. And that trauma has made the person who they are now in becoming, so it doesn't define us. It actually comes with us, it kind of forms. I don't know if I'm explaining it correctly. But when we heal, and it's healing our heart, it means that we have more love than pain. We remember with more love than pain. Yeah, that's good. That's good. Yeah, no, it's never going to know. You're always going to remember. You always, you know, and it's going to come up. Is there a part of what you survived during that loss that you hadn't, or you had struggled with, to trust yourself with? There was a lot of times during that, the 10 years that I was in limbo, not trusting myself. And now you and I both as realtors know, that when you're in real estate, you got to trust your own decisions. You got to be more than confident in everything. Everything, right? And all of a sudden, after my son died, my oldest son died, Stefan, I became anxious. I didn't trust my choices anymore. I second-guessed myself, which is very unusual. I mean, you and I both know in real estate, you cannot second-guess yourself. That's where mistakes happen. In grief, all of a sudden, I couldn't move. It felt like I was frozen in the sense of, do I do this? Do I do A? Like, even just the simple choice of saying, do I want coffee? Do I want tea? Seemed like an overwhelming problem. And so some things, and I think, and I actually believe that it was because there was so much being added on. And one of the other aspects that came up is old wounds from our past rise up. Things from our childhood that we were taught, you know, you got to get over it. You got to fix yourself and things like that. So this is where all these words of fixing and things like that, like, oh, I should be over this now, have come up. And in some ways I'm like, oh, but if all these things from my child's coming back up, my insecurities, all the things that were said are coming up. That really means that, did I really heal? Did I only just push them down in the belief that I'm over it? In this with this, like the toxic positivity that we're kind of saying, you know, if we turn everything into positivity, then everything will rise up. It doesn't. Nope. Nope, not at all. I know when I was grieving with my, you know, my brother, when he passed away on his graduation night and he had a swimming accident, somebody pushed him in the pool and he drowned. And I was angry with everybody. Somebody said, asked me questions and, you know, a while afterward, not the same day, but like much later, like three, four months later, they said, your brother was looking down on you, right? And you're holding on to this. Because I was, I was seething with anger with everybody, right? Seething. And they asked, you said, what would he think if you were holding a grip on this? Because, you know, they said to me, you're gripping anger, like it's, you're yielding. Were you, were you ever, I guess, posed with that question? Well, thank you so much for sharing that, Edna. And, you know, my heart goes out to you at the, for your brother and definitely say his name. Yeah. And you know what, when people used to say that, I used to want to slap them. I, yeah, I think I smacked a couple of people when they did say that to me, so. It's how dare you say like that. You don't know what they would say. Yeah, that was, and I still dislike it. Because A, it really isn't about you. It's about the other person feeling comfortable or uncomfortable. You had every right to be angry. That was your emotion. Now, could you have done something about that? No, but right then and there, that's the anger that you felt, which is totally natural. Part of when people are asking that is what they want is they want someone to be not in pain. They don't, they're uncomfortable with your pain and your anger. So they want to change it in some ways going, well, she'll snap out of it. No, you've just made me more angry. It's true, they do. They make you really angry, even more. Or get over it, or they'll say, well, they'll say something like, God knows, and I'm like, are you kidding me right now? Are you just kidding me? That would just make me go crazy. He's in a better place now. How do you know? How do I know? It's all these crazy things instead of just like, and I learned from hearing that, I was like, I would never, those are some things I would not say to someone. I'd just be there for them. I don't even say, I'm so sorry for, I don't even say condolences. I'm here, just here. I can't say anything else, because I know you've heard it all. Everything that could come out of somebody's mouth. A lot of it, for me, it was like, they wanted to be the savior of me. They wanted to be the one that got me out of this funk, that kind of thing. They wanted to get some credit. I wasn't going for it. One of the aspects is, our emotions are our emotions. When we acknowledge our emotions, and there isn't any right or wrong to emotions. They're emotions. That's what we're feeling right then and there. When we acknowledge it, then it gives us the freedom to say, okay, I'm angry, and it's okay for me to be angry. This is what I'm feeling right now. Maybe in the next five minutes, I'll have a different emotion. They always used to say, and they lay the steps of grief on you. I said, they almost sound like the 12 Steps of Al-Anon, or something like that. That's not the sequence. I'm not at sad. I'm at mad. What did I skip over? It made me even more confused. I'm like, okay, so do I have to go back to sad, or do I have to go back? I'm at mad. I've been at mad for a year now. Do I go through sad? What's the next one I'm going to go through? Am I going to go through any of these things that's going on? It just made me even more confused and even madder. That's what took me so long to get out of it, is hearing people say those things. That's the part that is the expectation of other people wanting more. When are you going to snap out of it? At times, I'd look at them. I didn't really say anything. One of the reasons why I'd get up and walk out, because we do. We want to say something that is really even more so. What I've come to understand is people mean well. Their intent isn't to hurt. However, the words that they say sound very disrespectful. That's one of the other reasons is to have this education, is to say, as you said, we don't want to say when people go, thoughts and prayers. Thoughts and prayers aren't going to do anything. It's one thing to say, I'm keeping you in my thoughts, or my heart breaks for you. When someone else has experienced loss, they know what the journey is going to be like. They can guess at what your journey is going to be like. They won't know exactly what it is, because the relationship is going to be different. The circumstances are different. However, we can give compassion and empathy to someone else also. That's right. Where in your life during that loss, were you waiting to feel ready? Because I know I was waiting to get out of it. During my waiting period, I was still doing real estate, because it seemed like the only thing that I could do functioning, because I knew it. After 26 years, it was like, yeah, I knew it. I could do it. I could focus on the legalities, which took me out of the emotions. During that time, I was really out there trying to fix myself. I think I don't know how many books I read on grief. I'd read them and I'd go, no, you don't understand. Yes, that's the books. All the books, right? Some of them they did, and some kind of didn't, depending on what it was. I also took some courses. Again, with that belief that if I fix myself, yeah, I got to change. It was always this, I have to, I must. Instead of saying, no, this is where I'm at, this is what I'm feeling, and it's okay to feel it. One of the books that I really liked was written by a Jewish rabbi, which I really did like, in the sense of it stated, bad things happen to good people, good things happen to bad people, or something of that title. There's this aspect, and I don't know if you're in a faith community or not, I always go Christians are the worst, because that's my faith. And I can say that about any other religion except for mine. Yeah, right. There you go. There you go. And so I'd kind of go, because you constantly hear people give it up to God. Oh, you know, if only you had enough trust in God. So in some instances, it felt like my son died because I didn't pray enough. In some instances, my son died because I didn't have enough faith. And I was still in pain because I wasn't giving it up to God. And I just really felt like telling people to swear a word that I cannot say. You have to be in the mood to say that one. You just can't say it. And it was basically saying, like, you have no idea what my relationship to God is. God is the one who is holding me together. And I really did. I envisioned, and I could feel it. God was the one who had the arms wrapped around me. God was the one that was holding me together and saying, I got you. And God was with me throughout the whole journey of my son's journey with cancer. God was with me when I was a teenager. So God has always been in my life. The relationship that I had with God is my own personal relationship. And I shared my relationship with God to my son, Stephen, because a lot of times people would go, wow, like, he's so religious. He's so faithful. And I'm going, you know, and without going to It was something that I would give him. And I would say the same thing when I couldn't be at the operating room, inside the operating room, whenever he had crises. I would always say, I'm sending in, like, God is beside you. Jesus is holding your hand and Mother Mary is holding your hand. You're protected by them. They're always there. I may not be there physically, but they are there with you. And so there was that trust there. Oh, definitely. And even I used to say, God, you didn't really ask me. I thought we had a conversation where Stephanie lived. Yeah. You know, you had to live all these other times, all these other crises, things happened, and he made it. And this one here, you didn't. Yeah. Yeah. So my question, our question, our answer is always, if people want to be angry with God, with their God, that's okay. Yep. God can handle it. Yep. Exactly. All of that's okay. So for the audience, what would healing look like if they carried it different during grief? Healing is, as I mentioned beforehand, about having the pillars of care, in the sense of when we give ourselves compassion, when we acknowledge our thoughts and feelings, when we're able to release the regrets, the guilt, the blame, the shame, and then it allows us to exhale. And exhaling means that we can let go of the breath that we're holding and live in life in however that shows up for us. So for some of us, it could be continuing. You and I have chosen to not be realtors anymore and be coaches. Yes. That is where life has led us, or our grief has led us. And so sometimes it's, it's what do we do in around our own lives, where we can have our feelings of sadness. And I know you have mentioned before, Edna, about what happens when all of a sudden we feel joyful, where we have laughter. And that is also part of grief. One of the reasons I say we carry love and loss in one breath is because we have the loss, we have love, which includes all emotions, where we can have sadness, we can have laughter, we can enjoy our moment, and still miss our person, wishing that they were here. That's good. That's really good. So if you were to give us last words on grief and, and encourage somebody who may be experiencing it, or, you know, what would you say to the audience right now? Someone out there. And it's going to be different for each person. When we're in the rawness of grief, allow the rawness to just set. And I, and I truly believe it's about giving yourself permission to sit in your emotions, and seek support of someone who you feel understands you, that lightens your load. That's good. That's good. How can my audience find you? Because we're gonna, you know, even list your information anyway, but how can they find you? So my website is mariableannick.com. And they can reach me at hope at mariableannick.com. That's beautiful. Well, Maria, thank you for being here today. You let us know grief is not a disorder. It's not a weakness. It's love continuing at the presence ends. And today's conversation, if it hits you today, audience, please, don't rush yourself back into who you were. Like Maria said, you're not supposed to be the same person. You're supposed to become a truthful one. So we want to thank you for being here today, Maria, and being our guest on this very important topic. And you taught all of us something different, something new, and something that can take us to the next level. And if you're navigating life out there, after loss, and need direction, you know who to contact, either Maria Blanick or me. And we'll help. We're not going to fix. We're not going to pretend, just clarity. And we want you to be the best person you can be, all by keeping it real on purpose. I'm your host, Edna White. And my guests, Maria Blanick, are saying goodbye for now. Goodbye. Thank you so much, Edna.