Parables of Grief
The Parables of Grief podcast is for anyone who has lost a spouse. We discuss the common everyday lessons learned in this journey of suffering when your best friend and confidant is dead. We address the loneliness, the secondary losses, and the hope that lies ahead on this path. We look to the Savior as the master healer in every episode, and we focus on the light he brings to our darkest hours. We cling to His promises, especially his promise that, “I will not leave you comfortless. I will come to you,” which is found in John 14:18.
Parables of Grief
Parables of Grief--When Bodies Speak, Hearts Heal
Grief often speaks a language that our hearts understand but our bodies may also echo. Join me, Mama Bear Wendy, on the Parables of Grief podcast as I unfold my personal story of battling idiopathic episcleritis amidst overwhelming grief. Discover how emotional turmoil can manifest physically and why it's crucial to listen to these signals. Through my journey, I explore the profound teachings of the Gospel and the heartwarming melodies I share with the children in my congregation, highlighting how the Savior's light guides us even when faith feels distant. Inspired by the resilience of Job and the wisdom of Elder Kent F. Richards, I invite you to embrace patience, humility, and faith in your own healing journey.
As we navigate this terrain of sorrow together, we touch on the unique paths each individual takes toward resilience and support. I introduce my resources at mamabearwendy.com, offering the Five Pillars of Resilience group and personalized support to remind you that you're not alone on this journey. With a virtual bear hug, we pause to breathe deeply, acknowledge our shared experiences, and hold onto the promise of hope and healing. Let's find strength in community and courage in our shared stories, knowing that brighter days are ahead.
The information provided on this website is for educational purposes only and should not be considered as a substitute for professional psychological advice. If you are experiencing mental health issues, please consult a licensed therapist or other qualified healthcare provider.
If you would like more grief support please see my website at Mamabearwendy.com for upcoming grief groups and 1:1 opportunities.
Although your experience and path will be unique, there is hope ahead in this path and you are not alone. I can see your pain and we will walk this road together. Here is a big bear hug from Mama Bear Wendy, your fierce support in the journey of grief, until next time.
If you enjoy this podcast please consider donating to help us keep going.
"Wendy has a beautiful way of sitting in the deep end of the ocean with you. Her presence alone is healing. She meets you where you’re at and doesn’t push you any further than where you want to go. She gently nudges you into new places with new perspectives. She is highly intuitive, sensitive and compassionate. She brings a depth to the table you rarely see. Her experiences have given her an extraordinary level of understanding and a safe place to walk to as she is a safe harbor fill of strength and integrity. She is raw and real and beautifully vulnerable and she is exceptional at conveying the words that are hard to find. She is a rare one." Christi D.
Hello friends, this is the Parables of Grief podcast and this is your host, Mama Bear Wendy, I'm here to share some love and light with you on your journey through grief and loss. I hope, as our healing paths connect for the next few minutes, we can walk together and find strength for the road ahead. One scientist suggests that what the grieving need most is to have others witness our pain and help us not feel so alone. I hope in our time together you will find the companionship and understanding that you need. The intention of this podcast is to use parables of grief to find the Savior and His promised healing in the daily and commonplace, to see how we are truly never alone and to find, like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, the Savior by our side, even if we didn't recognize him at first, because he showed up in unexpected and common ways. Also, there is much coming soon to help with your journey. The Parables of Grief book will be coming out by Christmas of 2025, and there are opportunities to join me in online grief groups and one-on-one companion sessions. Please check out my website at momadbearwendycom for more information. Hello and welcome. Today we're going to have a different kind of conversation. Perhaps I've debated all day if I was going to podcast today or if I was going to wait until I felt better.
Mama Bear Wendy:Since the passing of my husband, I have had multiple episodes of idiopathic episcleritis. Wow, that's a lot of big words. It means that my eyes go pink and look like they're infected, but they're not infected. It is some kind of autoimmune response perhaps, or I'm not really sure. So idiopathic is a really nice way of saying it's all in your head. As you might imagine, that doesn't feel very good, and so, although I've seen multiple doctors for it, and they usually give me prednisone or some kind of anti-inflammatory, it's not anything that doctors can fix. It seems to be like it suggests all in my head. It seems to be related to especially big episodes of grief, especially episodes where I have tried not to cry or places where I don't want to be seen or see. As you know, this month I have started podcasting and that is very alarming to my eyes. Apparently, they do not like it one bit, so I decided to show up today, even though I have idiopathic episcleritis. You guys can't see it, so why do you care? But the point is, sometimes in our grief we have idiopathic symptoms and our body tells us things that we are unwilling or unable to look at. So today, our topic is going to be pain, and the pain of grief is often very surprising to me. I feel like I am a person who has spent most of my life trying to be in control, and grief has taught me a lot about being out of control and that the true control is not with me and probably and certainly has never been so.
Mama Bear Wendy:Today, as I was trying to prepare to talk to you, I was thinking about the topic of pain, and in my Gospel Library app, I searched pain and I came up with 103 conference talks that talked about the Savior being the answer to our pain. I am currently serving with the children in our congregation and I play the piano for them, and we have a song that we learned last year that I wasn't super familiar with. It talks about how it has questions and then answers, and the questions were things like how could the father tell the world of love and happiness? And the answer was he sent his son to die for us and rise with living breath. So in every question, the answer is always the Savior, and I found it interesting that, as I was searching the question of pain, that the answer, again, was always the Savior, and I found it interesting that, as I was searching the question of pain, that the answer, again, was always the Savior. So we're going to start out with a quote, and this quote comes from the Atonement Covers All Pain. This is one of the first hits that I got in my search for pain. This is by Elder Kent F Richards, april 2011.
Mama Bear Wendy:Our great personal challenge in mortality is to become a saint through the atonement of Christ. The pain you and I experience may be where this process is most measured. In extremity, we can become as children in our hearts, humble ourselves and pray and work and wait patiently for the healing of our bodies and our souls. As Job, after being refined through our trials, we shall come forth as gold. So, as I told you, I've been having this idiopathic episcleritis Probably every quarter.
Mama Bear Wendy:My eyes blow up, is what I call it now and initially it was very frightening and like am I losing my eyesight? Am I gonna die? What does it mean? And I've gotten to where I kind of know what I need to do Again. The doctors can't really help me, so I've been looking at other alternatives, and one of the things that I've been doing is trying to understand why my body is doing this. What does it mean? Eyes, of course, are about seeing, and one of the things that I think my brain is trying to tell me is I don't want to see, I don't want to accept, I don't want to be in this new reality, and so I think when I am hit with the reality too hard, my eyes want to not work. I also find that, although I mentally know the answer is the Savior, during pain, there are times when it is really hard.
Mama Bear Wendy:It's really hard to be patient and wait, and before my husband died, I felt like my pathways to revelation to the Savior were one way. A lot of the things that I relied on to feel the Spirit that worked before my husband died are not working now. I think, because of the intensity of emotion that I feel, often the ways of feeling the spirit don't work as well, and so I've had to turn to alternate ways of turning to the Savior, because my feeling pathways are sort of all blocked or used or overwhelmed, perhaps, by the emotion that I have. I think that there are moments when that works still, but there are a lot of moments where it doesn't. So I've had to turn to writing a lot more than I did prior to my husband's death. I've had to turn to scripture study and conference talks and really immersing myself in the words of the Savior, to find Him in ways I didn't have to before, which can be really exhausting. It takes a lot of work to find the Savior that way, and sometimes I'm just so tired and, like today, the pain feels like I'm drowning in it a little bit. President Henry B Eyring taught it will comfort us when we must wait in distress for the Savior's promised relief, that he knows from experience how to heal and help us, and faith in that power will give us patience as we pray and work and wait for help. He could have known how to succor us simply by revelation, but he chose to learn by his own personal experience, and that's Henry B Eyring Adversity in the Ensign, may of 2009.
Mama Bear Wendy:One of the things I liked about this quote was, in my despair and grief, often I want relief right now. Often I want to feel healed right now. Often I want to be set free right now, and unfortunately that is not the way it works. I have had to wait Again. This I thing has been going on for over two and a half years, about every three months, and it is quite frustrating. It's very impacting of my appearance, which is a little distressing, but the bigger problem is it hurts and it's hard to keep my eyes open. It makes me want to sleep a lot, but maybe that's also the answer. My body is telling me we need more sleep in the world.
Mama Bear Wendy:So what have I learned from this? In this chronic problem that I'm having, I have learned patience and I have learned that something being all in your head doesn't make it not real. I have learned patience and I have learned that something being all in your head doesn't make it not real. I've learned that I have to pay attention to these messages my body is sending me and I have to stop and listen or it gets worse. I can't just blunder on and say we don't have time for that, so just quit. I have to actually sit in it and decide what it is that I'm doing and what it is that I'm not doing, that I need to be and look for healing in other ways. I know the Savior is the answer and although he doesn't always show up immediately, he does always show up, and I have great faith and experience that when he is desperately needed he does come, even when it takes longer than we hope, and there was no wasted time, as it appears on my side, but that what was necessary in the pain was learned and growth and things that had to happen because of it. I testify that the Lord does not make us suffer just to make us suffer. He doesn't enjoy that any more than we do, but he knows that suffering is a teacher and sometimes it's the teacher we need.
Mama Bear Wendy:So I hope you have a wonderful Valentine's Day. I think one of the reasons my eye is not happy is because Valentine's Day is here and I am sad. I'm really sad about it. It's not the same about why I was sad and I said your dad is really dead today. Some days it seems like he's less dead and some days it seems like he's more dead. And Valentine's Day, or when my car is broken down or when I need a priesthood blessing, those are days that he feels more dead than others and it's hard, it's really hard.
Mama Bear Wendy:So I hope you find some comfort on Valentine's Day. I hope you can find someone to serve and to love and I hope that you can remember the beautiful things about Valentine's Day with your special person, especially if they said certain things to you. I hope you will write those down, maybe place them around your house. In my grief group this week we took sticky notes and wrote things that our person said to us and at first it felt really hard and I was a little distressed that I couldn't think of a lot of things that he said to me and had a little bit of a panic attack of like oh no, I'm forgetting. But then I came up with several things and they are a great comfort to me and I have written them and placed them around my house and they bring me that twinge of sadness and happiness and I hope that you can remember the things and the places and the wonderful things, memories that you have with your person and that Valentine's Day doesn't have to be all sad but that it can be bittersweet, joy, pain, and I hope you have a wonderful holiday.
Mama Bear Wendy:Thank you. If you would like more grief support, please see my website at mamabearwendycom for my upcoming five pillars of resilience group and one-on-one opportunities. Although your experience and path will be unique, there is hope ahead in this path and you are not alone. I can see your pain and we will walk this road together. Let's take a deep breath together and here is a big bear hug from Mama Bear Wendy Until next time.
