Lisa Boehm – Healing: A Mother’s Guide to Navigating Child Loss

Transcript

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Hi and welcome to the.

You world Order showcase program.

Today we're talking with Lisa Bowens and her life changed forever when her daughter Katie died suddenly in a car accident, she quickly discovered that our society struggles with that loss and grieving.

And has made it her mission to change that in her book journey to Healing, a mother's guide to navigating child loss, she shares her experience with grief and how it intensified.

Her love for her daughter.

Now she focuses on gratitude and living intentionally as a way.

To honor her daughter's memory.

Lisas and author, speaker, grief educator and Angel mom Lisa is also the creator and facilitator of the Hope and Healing together community where she helps bereaved moms carry their pain and discover joy again.

Lisa loves sharing inspiring messages hope.

In the presentations that.

She gives as well.

Please help me welcome Lisa to the show today.

It's so nice to have you here.

Do you want to tell us a little bit about what you're doing?

How you got started?

What motivates you?

About 10 years ago I was working as a health coach and worked primarily with women who didn't have enough time to fit in a healthy lifestyle.

The worst thing possible happens and we lost our.

Daughter in a car accident.

And my Wellness business shifted at that point because I realized that resources for grieving families were sorely lacking.

So still working as a coach, still helping people and frankly, still using a lot of the same tools.

And language but.

To just a different group of people.

And as you and I were discussing, prior to hitting record, my voice, my message is different than most in the grief coaching sphere, and that is because I really try to deliver the message of hope.

And some people don't resonate with that at all.

I'm sure all of your coach is listening, you know, that's part of having an ideal client, right?

When we think we can serve everyone with a general message, we really serve no one.

So, you know, once I realized that I had to speak my truth and I had to say yes, I do believe life can be beautiful and meaningful again, even after this horrible tragedy.

I got some.

High hate mail and you know.

But I also know.

That the people that find me are the people that I really, truly want to work with and that I can help.

That is such an important message that every.

Almost every coach that I've ever.

Met and I've met quite a few of them.

At this point, they.

They have this heart to just.

Help people, we're just servants.

And we want we want to help.

Everyone and many.

Of us are.

And that's just like the mom hat.

I can help you with that.

But you really serve your clients best if you're really.

Narrowed in on what it is that you can help them do and you just stay in your lane.

Yes, you can help other people if they're your friends and you want to give them some advice, they probably aren't gonna take it.

But you can give it to them anyway.

You know what?

It took me a long time.

Even in the Wellness sphere, in fact, that was even a more important area to have a crystal clear message.

Who I helped, how I help them because.

I think it's so.

Easy to say.

Ohh you know I.

I give people more energy, you know?

Help them learn how to, you know.

Have more energy or, you know, live their best life.

And while these are all things that we all want, I think we really need to dial down our messaging.

Everybody defines happiness differently, so it's really not quantitative.

And when you're when you're helping somebody figure something out specifically like.

You help people overcome grief, but in a way where they can find happiness again.

That's and hope.

Hope is different than happiness.

Hope is the idea that happiness can come and you can accept happiness.

Rather than feeling like you're going to be stuck in grief forever, or that you have to be stuck in grief forever, cause I think that happens to people too.

What's your experience with that?

Oh, 100%. I mean, my daughter was 17 1/2 when we lost her. We have a, you know, our son at the time was 15.

He's now 23.

I had friends, neighbors, coworkers, people that I've known for years come up to me and say.

You know that your marriage is over now, right?

Or you know that your son is going to be a drug addict and have mental health.

Issues forever, right?

Even in the grief community.

Where you know, I started reaching out for.

Help the message.

That I saw and heard and read was that my life was over.

You know, and I thought.

I can't do this.

Wired that way.

And that's when I started kind of branching out on my own and just I thought, well, maybe there's one person, maybe there's one other person out there.

You know that wants.

To hear a message other than these messages.

I also wrote a book along the same lines, but it's really the last couple of years.

That as a.

Quote UN quote, coach, I call myself more of a.

Mentor, but as a.

Coach that I've really been able to step into my.

Truth and the more more I speak the words about hope and happiness, and you know all of these kinds of things, the more I am attracting the people that are curious about this messaging, they may not be there psychologically.

They may not be, you know, believing that this is possible, but they're kind of leaning in.

Because they're just, they're this first time they've heard.

It's so hard.

To live in that vibration of.

You know, everything's over now.

What am I gonna do?

You can't move forward when you're paralyzed in that in that grief and grief.

Is just paralysis.

It's it's like.

Your body trying to adjust to a new reality for you, and then being able to.

To have give people permission really to have hope to move.

Out of the grief.

To move on with their life and to honor the person that they've lost, but still.

Still be able to.

Because you're still living.

Absolutely. Yeah. It's, it's.

Breaking through a lot of different.

Preconceived notions really right and people feeling like they can't be happy because, Oh my gosh, my neighbor, my neighbor Sally might think that I I'm not grieving my child anymore.

And I said, well, the.

Fact is, we're gonna grieve forever.

I mean, really forever.

Just like you love.

Your living children or.

Your spouse or your special person forever.

You're gonna grieve that loss forever, but my message is that we can carry grief in one hand.

And joy, love, laughter.

Whatever gratitude, in the other hand, they're not exclusive of one another.

They don't cancel each other out.

That's such a powerful message.

How do you normally find your clients?

What? What's your?

I you know what?

I don't know that I've got this nailed down yet, but what currently works for me is sharing content on social media.

That's usually how.

People find me.

I I have.

A love hate relationship with social media, but it's where people are.

That's the fact.

But usually they'll see a blog that I've written that something that resonates or they'll see a real on Instagram something short that's, you know, made them think about something they want to check out my profile.

I try as much as possible to.

Have links to all kinds.

Of free resources wherever I can.

On my website on Insta, on Facebook.

Doing podcasts like this or you know, in the grief spa.

I've also started.

Speaking but my my message on the stage is a little bit different.

Not everyone has lost a child, right?

Not everyone can relate to that.

But talking about resiliency.

Burnout stress, I mean, these are all things that are directly related to to what we what we face in the grief sphere.

So I I see.

Losing a job or getting disabled.

Suddenly those are all things that cause grief in our lives and.

Right.

In fact, my my day job I've spent.

32 years.

Working in oncology, so I give radiation treatments to cancer patients.

And when people say, well, how, how can you feel gratitude?

After losing your daughter and I said.

I work with.

Families, many families who don't get to have 17 and a.

Half years with their child.

I got 17 1/2 healthy. Beautiful.

Years with my daughter.

And I I've also been speaking a lot because of my connection in healthcare.

Speaking to healthcare workers, we are.

So ill equipped.

You would think that doctors, nurses, pharmacists and radiation therapists, oncology professionals are so well versed and trained in grief.

No, I literally had half a page of notes from an outdated textbook.

And that's all anybody that's newly graduating has.

Too, it's startling.

So anyway, I do I do some.

Lunch and learns.

And that kind of thing with the healthcare professionals?

That's a very needed.

Yeah, sadly pursued.

The the yeah.

And you would think that they would get it because.

You know, they deal with it all the time.

By the time people are doing chemo, they're.

You know, having worked very closely with doctors for 32 years, I can say with all honesty that.

I I think I've worked with one physician.

Who was comfortable saying the D word?

Death and having those.

Hard conversations, you know, I can give you this treatment.

I can offer you this treatment.

Your quality of life may not.

Be so good.

Here are the facts.

You will die from this disease.

So let's look at how we can, you know, and.

Have this amazing conversation with his patients.

You know, and I don't want to pin this all on physicians, but nobody wants, even as human beings, you know, none of us.

Are getting out of here.

Alive. And I hate to.

Be glib about it.

But that's the fact, yeah.

You know my father-in-law, for example, is in.

He's OK ish.

He's not well.

Nobody's had this conversation. My husband's siblings, they refused to talk about the possibility that dad could die.

You know, and it's just we need.

To have better skills at.

Having it and it's.

A hard conversation.

But we need to be.

Better equipped to talk about this.

We shall talk about birth either.

Since it's become birth and death have become a hospital event instead of a natural process of.

You're born, you live and you die and.

My daughter's getting daughter in. Law's getting ready to have a baby. Probably coming today or tomorrow.

He has no idea.

About the process.

And you know, you kind of drip to.

Her I've had five.

So I kind of know the drill.

You do that if.

This is going to happen and then this is going to happen and the hospital is going to try to push you to do this and this and this.

But you don't have to. The baby's going to.

Come when the baby.

'S ready the.

More you let them intervene.

You're gonna end up with other complications.

But you can't just like.

Just they just don't listen to that message.

And death is kind of the same.

Way you know.

Death is a process.

It doesn't happen.

You you go through steps.

And then it happens.

Just like birth.

You know, birth is.

A month long process.

It's a nine month process, but the actual process of giving birth usually happens over a period of a month to.

Get your body going and.

You get there, but.

I don't know it it just.

Seems like once we moved.

It to the hospital's responsibility. We stopped talking about it. We stopped teaching our children about it.

Being able to comfort each other.

Because we don't know what the process is.

What is? What is your?

Book about and.

What's the title of it?

It is called journey to healing, a mother's guide to navigating child loss, and that's exactly what it's about.

I wanted to make sure that it wasn't my story.

When people pick.

Up a book.

It's for one of two reasons.

It's either for entertainment or it's to gain knowledge.

So I wanted.

The reader, who was probably going to be a grieving mother to when she picked up that book that she was actually going to come away with.

Some helpful strategies and tools and some hope.

So I wove my own story through, but it's much more of a how to survive.

And there's over 100 different tips and strategies. Small baby step type things that that parents can take on this journey.

Sounds very helpful.

And do you have like a coaching program?

I know you. You're.

You do workshops and and your speaker, but.

You have actual programs to help people through this.

You know as a as.

A coach, I think we at least I did.

You know, you kind of throw spaghetti at the wall for a while in.

Your early stages just.

See what works.

You know, so.

I wrote a book and I quickly realized, OK, well, there's very few times in my life that I've read a book and thought there.

Now I know everything about this.

I'm good, right?

It's the same with grief.

So I thought.

Well, Gee, so then I created short courses 6 to 8 weeks.

But same thing.

I just felt so bad at the end.

Not the poorest, because then these women just thought.

Well, now what do I do?

So I actually have.

I resisted this for a.

Long time just because it.

Seemed like it might be a yucky thing, but I've actually created a membership.

Initially I thought.

Who's going to want to be a member?

Of this awful club.

But I tried it out on a pilot project and I'm about a year and a half in and it's been a wonderful thing.

It has a very low cost entry and we have a very active community and again I've had people come in try it.

It's not their jam.

They leave, but it's.

You know the the feedback that I.

Get is is.

We have guest speakers in there.

We have different workshops on on journaling.

We have one of our our Members is actually a yoga instructor, so she'll lead us.

Through Greek yoga.

What else do I have coming up here?

All kinds of.

Things where we will do different things.

I had a retreat last year, but it's just really based on community.

People who know exactly what you're going through, even if we've lost children of different ages or through different means.

You know, when it comes right down to it, you know, you know, so that's just been a beautiful thing and that's.

That's the biggest source.

Of revenue that I have, I do some one.

On one work.

Not that often, because I've just restricted it now to people who are in the.

Membership just because I know the work they've done.

I know where they're at and when we have a session we can really.

Hit the ground running.

In my book is another source of revenue.

And then speaking is the last.

Sounds really good. What's the?

One thing that you would like.

The people listening to this podcast to take away.

You know, you just gotta keep trying.

Like, if, if you're like I said, sometimes you gotta throw spaghetti at the wall to see what.

I think we can get so stuck in our own heads.

Ohh I should be doing this.

Oh, look at that person.

Ohh, they've got this.

This, this and this I have to have all that stuff.

Do what feels.

Right for your heart, because that's where you're going to be able.

To pour in.

All the energy and people are going to see that as really authentic, right?

If you are trying to not necessarily copy, but you know do what.

The masses are doing.

You know it.

It's not going to feel authentic to you and it's not going to.

Feel authentic to your.

Followers and it's OK to be different.

It's OK to have a different message.

OK, to do different things.

You just have to find what works, and sometimes that means falling on your face, trying something, throwing it out there no interest.

OK, moving on.

I don't think that's a bad thing.

I've come to realize that those are.

Excellent learning moments.

That's the universe nudging us.

Back into our lane.

Now, and sometimes when things don't come easy.

You're not supposed to be doing this.

When you're when you're operating in your.

And your zone of genius.

Things are just easy, they just happen for you, I agree.

So people can.

Get in touch with you through your website through your.

You know what? I don't have a Facebook group anymore, but everything that you want to know about me, whether it's speaking or, you know, social media contacts, anything like that, best thing is to go to www.griefsupportformoms.com and everything.

Is right there.

Perfect.

We'll make sure that we put those links in the description of the podcast.

Thank you, Lisa, so much for taking the time to chat with us today.

It's been really an honor to have you.

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