In this episode being aired during Bereaved Parents Awareness Month, please join Pat as she interviews Teresa Reiniger about her work as a coach supporting women, especially those who have experienced infertility and miscarriage. Oftentimes the grief of child loss is invisible to the outside world, leaving bereaved mothers with “silent” grief.
If you are grieving the death of your child and would like to get a free copy of Pat Sheveland's book: How Do I Survive? 7 Steps to Living After Child Loss, go to: www.healingfamilygrief.com and order your copy today.
Grief is not meant to be done alone so please reach out if you are feeling isolated or abandoned in your grief.
You can reach Pat at: patsheveland@msn.com.
#griefandlosssupport #griefsupport
Shownotes:
Hello, everybody. I am so excited that I have this wonderful guest, Teresa, who I met a few years ago when we were both at the Bereaved Parents of USA conference in St. Louis. We've connected off and on there. We just recently met up because she was interviewing me and I really wanted to interview her for our show. Hi, Teresa. Thank you for being here.
Hi, Pat.
I'm excited to be here. Always excited to talk about what we both do.
Yes, we have a lot of similar similarities in our life stories, but also in the work that we do and why we're that passionate. First, I would just like to start out and share a little bit about you with our audience. Teresa Reininger is the owner and founder of Living After Grief. She holds the grief certification from the Institute of Life Coaching and Training and a companion certificate with the National Share Organization. S he is a certified master practitioner and trainer of NLP, which is Neuro Linguistics Programming and Integrated Timeline Therapy. She is well studied in so many things that she can support people with. Having her own personal experience with her own loss and all three of her daughters struggling with infertility and multiple losses, she is a compassionate, you'll see that just a little bit, empathetic and very non-judgmental. Between her own lived experience, her wisdom, her training, she really understands and supports her clients as a grief coach. She can dive in there really quickly when she starts those relationships. In addition, as I just mentioned, we had just been on a call, but she adds tremendous value to the grieving community by offering a weekly interview of guests on her podcast called Labor Pain, the Labor Pain's podcast.
She has hosted that since June of 2020 and has released over 140 episodes. She also has worked for 15 years at a funeral home with industry leaders. I know as a certified celebrant and working in the funeral home industry, that is just a wonderful synergy with what we do in grief coach. Theresa's magic sauce of her coaching program is she is very clear on coaching versus therapy. I am so glad when I was reading this, it was like, Amen, because I teach grief coaches and train them in this. This is the big question always, especially when therapists get into the grief coaching, the biggest question is what's the difference? And as Theresa says, therapy is getting through the day. Coaching meets the client where they're at and plans for a thriving future. It's looking through into the future versus looking in the rear view mirror.
Being raised in a grieving home with 12 siblings, we were just talking about that. Oh, my gosh, 13 kids in the family has taught her to navigate her own grief and to support those grieving with every personality and unresolved or stuck grief. Her listening skills are impecable. What Theresa really does, and she's going to talk more about here is, she holds space for women who are grieving the child that they never held in their arms and those that have left this earth way too soon. Those that are grieving want to feel heard, understood and to have a compassionate companion to guide them to living again with the love that they feel amidst their grief. I so appreciate that because I always say, love and grief are one and the same. Had we never loved, we would never grieve. It's like, how do we allow our grief to coexist with the joy, the happiness, the peace so that people can go on and continue living their lives with purpose? Again, welcome. I'm so excited to have you here. And you have a big background. Let's just start. Do you want to tell a little bit more about your own story?
Sure. I can do that. I'll try to make it brief. Like I said, like you said in my bio when you were introducing me, I grew up in a grieving home. My mom, I think my first grief that I remember, I was pretty little, was probably at the age of two when my grandpa lived across the street, passed away. My dad was an only child. Crazy, right? Then he had 13.
Oh, my gosh.
I know. It really affected our household at that time because they lived across the street and were so close. Then the next that I really remember is when my mom lost our youngest sibling, which would have been 14, he was stillborn. I know recently, she just passed about seven months ago actually, but more recently I've asked her questions about that time, her grief and many things about that. The one thing I wanted to be clear with her was I didn't remember her being with us at the funeral home or at the cemetery. I asked her, I said, Mom, were you there? Because I don't remember you being there. I remember being there with my dad. She said, Theresa, I wasn't there.
I said, What? She said I was still in the hospital. That's how they did it back then. It just broke my heart to know that she wasn't there for that. Of course, it breaks my heart still. And that's that's where it started. Fast forward, lots and lots of years, losing grandparents, losing miscarriages myself. I have three girls and two miscarriages. And of three of my girls, all struggling, were diagnosed with being infertile. And then to have multiple miscarriages during that journey, a total of seven, really brought me, and at that time, thank goodness for me, I was working at their funeral home at that time, so I had support with around me. With that said, that's when my journey really became to doing my purpose and passion is what I do now, which is primarily my biggest focus when I started was the podcast to just work with women that were struggling with infertility and loss during the pregnancy and pregnancy to support them because there was so much grief in that community that I myself didn't even realize because when I had my losses, it was just like, Oh, it just happens, you move on. You're young, have more children.
It's okay. I did because that's what I was told. Then when now my daughters are going through this, me as their mother, grieving for them and grieving for their child that they're losing, was like, Whoa, these women need support. They need to be able to connect to other women so they can talk about these classes. That's where the podcast was created. That was a passion of mine to just be a vehicle, be a space where women could hear other stories and connect and just share their story because you and I both know sharing our stories brings so much healing to a person. That was born. It's little like you had mentioned, I've been doing that since 2020. Yes, in the middle of that memorable year is when I began that. Very soon after that, I'm going to say five months after that, I enrolled in my first grief coaching course because I was like, What can I do to support these women? There is so much grief. How can I support them? And the following year, all kinds of training, all kinds of courses is what I did the following year. And then the year after that is when my mom passed.
And here we are today in 2023. So that's a quick overview of my stories. Grief, and I can share with you, even having those miscarriages that I had 40 years ago when the holidays came this year with the grief of my mom, that grief came back because one of my children would have been born at Christmas.
Oh, wow.
That unresolved that... I'm like, You're trained in this. doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You intuitively hit on because my question was going to be, all those years ago and experiencing your own miscarriages and those little souls that you cannot hold in your arms and then having your daughters go through it themselves.
It's like, how much does that show up for you then? It's like, do you... We think we're going fine in life, right? And then you just spoke to it, then all of a sudden something will show up. And then it's like, where did that come from? And oh, my gosh. My little baby would have been here at Christmas time. And how old would that my baby be and all of that. That's a big deal for women and the people that are listening here and dads too. But we think it's all okay. We go on through life. Life happens. You may have more children. You may go through fertility pieces. You may choose like, I just can't go through that heartache anymore, wherever you're at. But it'll still show up. What you're doing is saying, you know what, there's support when we commune together with understanding, that is where healing occurs.
Yeah. Even being trained, I was like, Oh, it hit hard. For sure, it's all those things. And it really brought me to the unresolved stuff. And I think you call it the failed grief. It all will come back. I have friends that I can work with and that I talk to, and that's what I encourage everyone to do. Find that. You talk about this all the time. Find that support, which is so needed. Finding your tribe, finding those people. I had that. I had a vehicle, too, that I could use to help me support me through those difficult the last seven months, which were really difficult since my mom's passing. And to just encourage people to know that, what I hear all the time, am I crazy? To know that you're not crazy. Even me having lost a child over 40 years ago. I know I'm not crazy. And when I talk to my clients to just reassure them, they're not crazy. It's going to be with you.
That is one of the biggest things that I think you and I see with our clients and friends and family or whatever is like, there's this, I should be over it. This should not be showing up. Our mothers just needed to go on with their lives because both you and I were part of a grieving family and grieving mom. We just had it soldier through life or whatever. But I see in the corner, you have the book, The Grieving Brain.
It's just such an incredible book because it really talks about there's a physiological... There's things going on with the neurons and our brains and the whole... It's not just neuropsych, but neurobiology, that this is why these things will show up. Just over and over again, that's the one thing that I hear is, am I crazy? S o someone comes to you and says, am I crazy? What would you say to them?
No, you're not crazy. And a big piece of that is grief will be with them. Grief is with us. That loss is forever with us. And like you and I talk all the time with other people, the grief would not be there if there was not the love. I really emphasize that with people. You're not crazy. You just loved so deeply this person. That's where that really is rooted in the love. Society sometimes tells us what we just talked about, like, get over it. You should be over that. We want to compare ourselves to how others are grieving. When we're not grieving like them, then we put this, I've got to be crazy, like, what's wrong with me? Because I'm not grieving like them. I'm really experiencing that now with my 12 siblings. All 12 or 13 of us are grieving totally different from each other. Even though we were raised in the same household, our experiences within the household are different, and our experiences outside of the household as we become adults are totally different. Our relationships with our mother are different. To compare myself to my siblings to maybe not be as emotional as I am, or maybe when they see an item like I shared with you before we started recording, I took quilting stuff to the filters because my mouth quilted and I got all emotional and I was like, It's quilting stuff, but it just brought back so many memories.
Would that happen to my siblings if they took it? Probably not. But me, it did. To know that you're not crazy and to for sure not compare yourself to someone else is so important. So important not to compare because that I feel is where the crazy... Where we're think we're crazy comes from is because we're comparing.
And because other people offer up comparisons. And so it's like, oh, wait a minute here. I think about even my own... We're professionals in this, right? My brother died not quite two years ago, my oldest brother. Every one of us grieve differently. My grief is about the big brother who was nine years older than me that took care of me when I was a little girl and rubbed my feet when they were frozen from ice skating and took care of me because mom had to go to work when I was five, that type of thing. So he was like that adult in my life. I'm grieving that relationship that I had that he really was a caregiver and caretaker for me. My sister in law, of course, is grieving so differently because now here she is a widow and been together for 30 some odd years with my husband, I mean, with my brother. My nephews are grieving differently because it was their dad. My brothers, each one of my brothers had a different relationship with my brother. One was only 15 months. They were best friends. They were besties growing up. They ran with the same crowd.
So all of us have this different way. And there were times that I'm thinking, oh, why am I feeling this depth of grief? It would be so much worse for my sister in law. She was married to him for 30 some odd years. And then I would have to, Okay, Pat, go back to what you know.
Yeah, a reminder.
Yeah. But you mentioned something earlier, even those of us who this is what we do in our life's work, it's still going to hit us. W e have to lean into other people and into tools and resources and that type of thing. Tell me, when you're working with someone, what are some of like, you talked about finding your tribe, that type of thing. But what are some of the other key tools that you believe are really helpful, especially for these women that are really dealing with a loss? Sometimes the loss is so through miscarriages, you may not have, depending on when the miscarriage occurred, a real physical or tangible being child that you can gaze upon or have a remembrance of. What are some of the top things that you think are important tools for?
Yeah, the biggest tool I think that I use, I have been trained in using is really the listening ear for sure. But the other is what you had mentioned in my bio, which was timeline therapy. So the neuro logistics training that I have. Very quickly, because of my training as a grief coach, I know the grief that someone is experiencing now is in relationship to previous grief and loss. It's in combination of that. I know with my training that all of the majority of our emotions, how we deal with things, go back to how we were when we were 0 to 7 years old. Almost everything is connected there. With my training, as we talk, I will do a session where we can go back to resolve that. Really, it's going back there for an understanding of why they're grieving how they are. I'll give an example. I was talking to a client, and she had had a miscarriage. Through our conversation, found out that what was deeper for her was not really her loss, but she had a close friend. And this is what we talk about, what we do. I want to process this that this is not always going to be...
If it triggers someone or anything like that, I want to process it that this is just part of our conversation, what I did with her. I found out she had a friend that had just passed away that was pregnant, so lost friend and friend's child, and this woman was married and had two children. Where the grief was, she had a miscarriage, she had two children and a husband, and so now she had this grief of her child and the grief of this friend that she recently lost. As we talked more, I'm just going to paraphrase way big on this, was that she had postpartum depression and she felt she was having that with this miscarriage. She had that with her two previous children. We talked more and that's where really it started. Then I found out about the friend that had passed. Then I just sensed, there was more. Where we went back to was when she was two years old, her mom had a stillborn. All of the grief, the postpartum depression, and everything that she was going through, really, I worked with her to go back to where that was how to grieve was modeled for her.
She experienced it. Her mom said, I wouldn't have survived if you weren't here. Her mom was in depression, of course. That's what she knew. It was in her unconscious mind of how to handle grief. She didn't even realize it, really. That's something that I can do is surface those things. There's a realization, and now we know and we can work with that.
That sounds really, really good. really powerful. When we talk about with coaching versus therapy and using NLP, you're going back and in one session, you're just really unwrapping all of that. It's not about trying to go deeper into all the psychological impacts and all of that type of thing, because we know that as coaches, that is not our role. But you're just going in and unwrapping that. It's funny that you say that. I was working with a client last night, and she has this, she's a grieving mom. Her son died in his 20s, and it's been two years. And she comes to me because I feel like I'm crazy. I thought I was doing well, and then all of a sudden I'm just like, totally losing it and losing relationships and all of this stuff. And I just don't know that I'm deserving. I feel like I'm not deserving of having a decent life because of all this stuff. That was one of the questions that I had is where did that voice start that you're not deserving?
It went all the way back to that young childhood where... And that she was the product of a mom and dad who both had previous marriages and previous kids. She was the only child but had half-siblings on both sides, but she never felt like she truly belonged because then there was this half- sibling family over here where there were two full-siblings. There's a half-siblings over here where there were two full. That came through and has been coming through in her grief. We didn't spend and do all was a psychological deep dive, but it was an awareness for her like, Oh, I hadn't thought about that. I never felt fully belonged because I didn't belong to either one of those families as a full-sibling.
Yeah, you're right. It's just surfacing that the awareness of it now it's more conscious. With what we do now, it's just there. It's what makes it easier now to navigate and work through the grief to where we want to be. It's like you said, we don't spend a lot of time there, but we just bring that to awareness. Because when we're aware of those things, now we can work with them and we can navigate them and deal with them if we're aware of it. When it's so deep in our unconscious, it's hard to deal with. We're unaware of it. Just surfacing that. One of the things that I guess where I'm a little different than some grief coaches is really I can work with them quickly to surface in that awareness. The other thing really is for those that are struggling with infertility, it's the same, the awareness, what you talked about, the unworthiness with infertility, the blame, the shame, like, I'm a woman, I should be able to have a child.
Right.
Why not? It's got to be me. Why am I just like this? It's wrong with me? There's work that needs to happen there for them to really move forward. The other part of infertility is we haven't reached our goal as a woman. The goal is a child and so great grief. What happens to grief when we've had a missed cycle or we've had a cycle or we're going through IVF or whatever treatment and it didn't work? We don't like to say it was failed because that's not a good thing. It just didn't stick. Now we go to the next one. There's grief at that first one, but we're not going to deal with it. We're going to move to... We're going to reach that goal, so we're going through it again. Maybe this one stuck and there's a miscarriage. Now we have more grief. Then we go and we go and we go until there's a child. We got to work through some stuff now because there's a lot of grief that has been pushed down, set aside, unresolved that you and I know is coming out.
How powerful. I'm just thinking out loud here and listening to you.
When you're coming to infertility, for someone to actually get some grief coaching before they even go through the next IVF and all of that type of thing, because we know from genetic predispositions and stuff when we're carrying a child and that emotions. And all of that stuff can really affect our embryos and that type of thing. So if they could get some clarity around that and find some healing, we know that we don't completely heal from grief. Grief stays with us. But if they can get to a place where they find that happiness and the gratitude and all of those things so that that's not being carried in the womb, how powerful. So it's almost like a free coaching for during this time of IVF because I'm just thinking of people that I know. And even my own mother, I know I'm I know in my heart, now she would never have said that. And she loved me. She did the best.
But how difficult it must have been to have my brother and I after Greg died. And I came six years after that. So there's three year increments between my brother and then another two years for me. And I'm pretty sure if I was in her shoes, I would have been thinking, Oh, my God. I don't know that I can do this. I don't know that I can do this again. This is so much. And so you know that those emotions can affect the psyche of our unborn babies and that type.
Of thing. Absolutely.
So that's just a really powerful I'm putting a plug in. If someone's listening to this and you're actually going through the process, there's some really good things that could come out of coaching while you're going through the process to really bring you in that really healthy emotional state of mind to really make this even a more successful.
And so for me right now, it's really getting the word out to these women. I've had a couple of guests on my podcast that work with women as well, and it's really just for them is taking a pause. Just don't keep going through the treatments and pushing yourself. You really need to take a pause and allow yourself to grieve what has happened and not be like, Okay, we got to do it again. We got to do it again and keep pushing forward to really take that time and allow yourself to grieve that loss is the biggest part. And if they can connect with someone like myself to just talk about all of that, just to really work through that before they go on, absolutely. Their relationship with their spouse will be much better. The health of that next child, that next egg, embryo, will be much better. So yeah, there's multiple things that benefit by doing that. It's just an education to women out there that it's not beneficial for you to keep pushing through.
Of course, we're going to help you as best we can. Society, doctor, whoever for that healthy child. That's the end goal. And to do that in the best way for you and that child is what I guess I'm trying to say to encourage them to take that time.
I have a friend who she was living close to used to work with me many years ago, but she shared her journey of several miscarriages. After each miscarriage, she and her husband purchased a little stuffy doll figure. And then, hey, here's one. Then came the second one, then there came the third one. And I think there was even a fourth one. Then she had a healthy boy. Then another miscarried, so got another stuffy. And then came a healthy little girl. They actually did family pictures. And those stuffies are in there with her children because that was their way of really acknowledging that there was a life.
It's been tough. That grief is still there.
She's so grateful for these two little children and pouring her love into them. However, she still has those physical reminders and did not just wash away the whole acknowledgement that she had some life within her. S he wanted to acknowledge those children. I just thought it was just such a beautiful, beautiful expression as a way to tangibly...
Because we know that when grief is hidden away, like in my family, no one ever talked about Greg. It was never spoken of until 60 years after the fact when my mom finally opened up. And all that hiddenness brings a lot of additional trauma, actually, because we're holding it in. And that failed the Greek, right? Because we didn't give it air. Yeah.
Right. Wow. Yeah. Powerful. Really, yeah, with the infertility, just really in all grief, just speaking about it and finding someone that gets it and understands outside of, like we talk about, outside of the family or outside the doctor because the doctor wants to help you, too, and really finding that person outside of that, that gets it, that can listen, really share with them their worthiness because it's a tough time when they're going through infertility and losses like that. It is just a tough time for the women. Men, yes. Women, more so. Yeah.
Gosh, what you do is just so, so important. W e're getting to the end of our time here. But if there was one thing that you could share with the audience that you would like them to walk away with, what would that one thing be?
It would be to really take time to heal your grief. Take time to speak to someone because when we heal the grief that we have, the hope surfaces from that. That is really when we can live again. My business is about just living life again to the fullest, finding purpose. Purpose can be found with deep grief. Just really reaching out, like we talk about all the time, finding that person that you can truly, truly talk to, that will listen and can support you to allow the healing and the hope to happen.
Yes. I find the phrase for the acronym hope, honoring our purpose every day. We know that does help us to continue moving forward during these times when the grief surfaces, just like opening up your trunk and seeing all of the quilting materials of your mom. It's like, Oh, my gosh. Where is this coming from? that happens. I just want our audience to know that that is normal and that all feelings are okay. We tend to think that we shouldn't, shouldn't, shouldn't, shouldn't, we should ourselves, shouldn't, ourselves so many times. That's just not helpful. It's not honoring of yourself and honoring of yourself as a bereaved mother, daughter, husband, son, whatever shows up for you, wherever that grief is coming from, that honoring yourself is just as important as honoring your loved one. Thank you so much. Now I'm going to have your information in the show notes, but could you just let our folks know how they can reach out to you?
Sure. My business is Living After Grief. That is my website, www. Livingaftergrief.Com. Email, tresa, no h, t, e, r, e, s, a, @ livingaftergrief. Com. On social media, Facebook, and Instagram is the same, Living After Grief. Those are probably the best places to get connected with me, follow, join the community. Those would be the best places, I guess.
And then give one more plug for your podcast.
Oh, podcast. And I should add, probably the name of my podcast will change. I'm getting ready to just finish up my third year. It is called Labor Pain podcast, and it will be changing because I'm going to encompass more. When I started it, it was about infertility and loss and just a community for those people. Now I'm going to be incorporating and have been incorporating really since the beginning more about grief and navigating that grief within those communities. So stay tuned. Name still to be determined. Got three. I'm thinking about my post says that on social media. So if you go to my social media, you could be a part of what Naming My New, switching the name of my podcast.
Oh, I definitely have to go there and put my vote in.
Yeah. I haven't done it yet, but it probably will happen this week that I put that out there, what it's going to change too.
Awesome.
I'm excited about that.
Well, thank you so much for your wisdom, your love for others to be able to envelop them in compassionate support, walking with them to be able to find that healing in their grief and get the tools and the resources and the awareness to be able to really live a life that's full of joy and peace and purpose and all that good stuff. Thank you again.
Thank you so much, Pat, for having me. I really appreciate this time together talking with someone that we have so many similarities. Thank you again so much for having me on.
Thank you, everybody, for listening. I'll talk to you soon.
Peace out.
Contact us:
Cami Thelander: www.bearfootyogi.com
The Confident Grief Coach School: www.healingfamilygrief.com