I am often asked how I listen to stories of sadness or other problems each day, my response is, ‘I love to see how resilient we are as human beings,’. I am always amazed at how our brains and bodies find ways to cope and overcome the challenges we face. Even though, these coping patterns may be unsustainable over time they kept us alive and moving. There is strength and room for celebration in this.

I want to start out by clearly stating there is no right or wrong way to grieve the loss of someone you love. The 5 stages of grief and loss we have held onto as a society since 1969 has been shown through multiple studies to be inaccurate. We don’t go through stages in a linear pattern coming to a place of peace and acceptance evermore. Grief is a much messier and individualized process. So again, I state there is NOT a wrong way to grieve.

So how do we provide ourselves compassion during loss? I am going to utilize the three pillars of self-compassion framework from Kristin Neff - mindfulness, common humanity, and self-kindness to answer this question.

How to create conversations free from shame. Regardless of whether the conversation we are talking about is with ourselves or someone else here are some rules I hold to for creating safety.

In a recent session an item was spilled and instantly I saw panic, worry, shame and then resolution cross a little face. I replied, “it’s OK”, the reply back was, “it is always ok… in here.” The comment really caught me off guard. I really started to think about safety from shame in relationships and how shame impacts relationships. I wondered about how we create safer relationships as parents, friends, siblings, children, neighbors, and co-workers.

Overall wellness includes more than just physical health. In order to be truly healthy we need to be well in the mind, body and spirit. This month’s focus will be on how to increase wellness in these 3 areas. Seeking wellness is difficult unless we understand what wellness is so let’s start by defining it.