Grief and Trauma: Healing Doesn’t Mean “Moving On” (with Maria Belanic)

Renae: Well, welcome, Maria. We are so glad to have you here for the TraumaWise parenting Summit. Thank you so much for being here.

Maria: Well, thank you, Renae, I'm so honored and privileged to be able to share about grief and trauma or what my experience has been with yourself and your audience to give you different insights.

Renae: Beautiful. Yeah, I would love for you to introduce yourself to everyone so can meet you

Maria: well. Thank you. So my name is Maria Belanic. I am the co founder of healing heart. I'm a certified group educator by the world renowned David Kessler. But more than that, I'm a bereaved mom,

Renae: and I think that really does pave the way for us to to ask if we can unpack a little bit of her story. Clearly, this is how you've come to this work, and in the bereavement and grief and loss space is from your own lived experience. So I invite you to share only as much as you're comfortable with. Share with us. How did you enter into this space?

Maria: Well, and I don't know if your audience has ever felt this. There are moments that I found myself replaying, wishing that I could change the outcome, and so I was in the loop of the COULDA, what I should have right? It's basically I was just having scenarios. If I had done this, if I could have done that, maybe I should have done this. And I was actually feeling guilty, guilty for things that I hadn't done, guilty for things that maybe I thought I could have done differently. And sometimes I know there were two aspects that I felt really guilty about, that I was a terrible mom, that I had never taken my sons to Disneyland. And I know it was one of these things that weighed heavily on me, and it seemed to it was one of those could have, would have, should have done. Why hadn't I taken them to Disneyland? I'm a terrible mom, because I hadn't. Now it really wasn't. It was just a thought that I had, that I had given permission to become bigger than it really was, and that fed into the guilt and the regrets that I had felt after my son had passed away. And so, yeah, so for me, it was, I mean, I can kind of start like my oldest son, Stefan, was diagnosed at 16 with an incurable, rare blood cancer, and so we lived with that for 11 years. And he did grew up to be a young man. So when anybody looked at him, he looked like the picture of health. He was fit, he was athletic, he was looked like he walked out of a GQ magazine, and his friends would all kind of say, you know, all the girls want to date him, and all the guys wish they were him. But it wasn't just how he looked, it was how he made people feel. He made you feel seen and that you mattered. And so it was at that heart of it, and throughout his treatments, throughout all the emergencies that we went because cancer causes chaos in a person's life. And so we did that for 11 years, and it became second nature to us. It just became part of our life until the moment that it wasn't until the moment that he passed away. And I remember feeling like that. It was surreal that all of a sudden it was like I was expecting him to get up and kind of go, yeah, no, I was just joking, and I was there when he died. So this is what made it sort of surreal. We surrounded him. We were there when he passed away in the hospital, and yet I didn't want to leave, because all of a sudden, that moment, that second, the world looked the same, but ours had shattered, and unless someone has gone through that or experienced it, they really don't know how all of a sudden, life becomes almost a before and after, and that is what I found. I mean, I found that for 10 years I was sort of living in limbo. I was surviving on empty because that guilt of what I couldn't stop. I mean, I felt guilty that I didn't even find a cure for cancer, for the type of cancer that he had. And so our minds, I think in some ways, when we've experienced trauma, go into a different realm of where we feel that we had control, because we have this regret for what we couldn't change, and we feel that, if only I could have done this, because I'm so as a mom, it's like I'm super human. I could fix everything, because as a child, that's what they look at. They look at us that we could fix everything, and that's what I felt like, even to Stefan, because I was his advocate. I was his go to person. I was the voice for when things got tough, and all of a sudden I didn't have that voice in for me to protect my own self. And there was a truth that I never really said out loud, that I felt guilty for living and and that is that survivor's guilt,

Renae: yeah, well, thank you for for sharing the the narrative of how you came into this space and and I think that the the piece that especially for when We're talking about TraumaWise parenting, is our hope is that there are not a lot of parents who are participating, who've had the same experience, but that from your experience of navigating from one reality to the next, and also that liminal space, You know, you called it limbo. I call it liminal of when there hasn't been a conclusion yet we don't know how it's going to go, that I'm going to project from my own lived experience of having been in that liminal space, that it can be very, very isolating, and so that that when people like to have conclusions they don't want to, they're uncomfortable often to sit in the pain with someone, especially when there's not an answer. And I've, I've so many times that that people want to love paper, their thoughts, their work, there. Couldn't you just this? What about this? And that's not this is not about a fixed thing. It's radical acceptance of the reality that we're in and also an acceptance of the reality that we we can't control the outcome, and whether, whether a parent is going through that from a their child has looked differently than they had anticipated, or that there's been death in the family, or that there's been significant struggles in the community, or there's been a natural disaster, or there's been a global pandemic, any of those types of relational disruptions and traumas where we don't feel safety in ourselves and in our relationships. There is a there is a before and an after. But as a culture, and especially, I would say this is, I don't know how if it's so much, I know you're coming from Canada, and so I don't know if it is, as in Canada, we can certainly talk about that, but certainly in the United States, the the the hustle culture and the pain avoidance is very prominent in that we're affected to push through. We're expected to, you know, brush, brush the dirt off, and walk it off and and come on, you gotta. Can't let them see you sweat. You can't let this you cry. You're responsible, especially as a mother, to hold the emotional core and and calm for everybody. And so what? What would you what have you developed for your own source of support in this. And then you that you would you share with other people for how you're navigating between this before and after, and then the after. That's not really an after, because it continues to go,

Maria: I'm glad you brought that up, Renae, because it's so true. I always say I lived in the in between, because at one aspect, whenever we experience something, and you're right, grief is like the loss of a person, but it's so much more. And it's not only the loss of a person, because it's not just about death, it's about everything that we've lost that we never signed up to lose a relationship, an identity, sense of safety, even the version of ourselves that we thought we were or we're going to be right and you're so right about this hustle culture, I think, actually, I even believe that a lot of times, most people are uncomfortable with the pain, and we only want to see people in this, what we call the happy stage. We only want to see people without What are true emotions, which are sadness, which are anger, which are frustrations, which are anguish, because any trauma that we've experienced, and I know that you've mentioned and there are, there's so many natural disasters right now happening in the world that affect so many people, and that is grief and trauma at the same time being interwoven. And a lot of times is that the majority of people think trauma is just a story that we remember, rather than it's something that our bodies hold unless we find a way to express what it is that we're holding on to. Because a lot of times, we don't even know that we're holding onto it. And I say that because I totally get the isolation. I always go it's probably one of the reasons why I stayed in limbo for 10 years is because you hear the cliches. Aren't you over it yet? Oh, come on. It's already happened. Move on. All these things that we hear that are so cliched, that are platitudes, maybe they're meant. I know I've learned this one now that because beforehand, when people said something, it was like I was ready to explode, and I kept and I bit my tongue, that no one intends to say things out of malice. They really do want to say something out of good intention. Unfortunately, it lands as disrespect. It lands as not caring. And that's sort of like another thing that needs to to be spoken about is, what should people say? I you know right now, this isn't what we're talking about, because that's another aspect of it. But when the pain goes unnamed, when we're holding it on, I go we start to wonder, for the problems, right? That there's something wrong with us and it's not and you're not, because we're human, and the pain deserves a space to be seen. And so part of the three shifts or insights that I that helped me move forward was one is seeing grief not as a timeline, not as something to get over, but maybe something as a companion to walk with rather than running away from. And you're so right? Our culture is, if it's something that's painful, if it's something that is uncomfortable, let's ignore it, right? It's sort of like, I mean, I use the expression, let's sweep it under the carpet. If we don't see it, it must not exist. And so the second shift was basically that trauma adds this layer, this frozen moment, almost in our time, that we keep replaying over and over, and it keeps our body on edge. And so it's finding ways then that can help release it, whether it's movement, whether it's writing, finding different ways of doing it. And also the third shift was about really grasping that healing isn't forgetting. For the longest time, I really thought that if I were to heal, I would forget. And so that aspect is we can remember without pain, but it's not going to erase our memories when we look at it. I mean, I look at remember things that happened in my childhood, I mean, or even later on, when I was in my 20s, I had a head on collision with a five ton truck. I'm here. I survived that. I remember it, and now I remember it without the pain that I felt when I had gone and it's the same. Thing now, with my son's death, I remember it. It's still sad, it's still painful, it's not the rawness anymore of when it first happened.

Renae: Yeah, thank you for sharing those, those shifts, and I'd love to hear, how do you organize, how do you through that process? What's a framework that you have that helps you to travel through that that holding these because when, when we're in the midst of we're not I don't know that any of us are looking through it for a checklist. We're in the midst of a traumatic event, or we're in the midst of grief, but there will come a time when we're like, okay, I I actually am ready to take that toward not staying in this space, I would like to figure out how to how to approach this in a way that is respectful for my reality, that does tell the full truth of what happened in the TraumaWise belief is that the grief and loss is an essential part of the healing of trauma, that we do leave space for the telling, the full telling of the truth, and so that we can release with compassion, and we can grieve that loss, and then we can accept the reality that we're about into. And so I'd love to hear. How would you frame that for people?

Maria: Well, it's excellent that you say that, because I do have a care framework, and care is my acronym, and it is and it starts off with compassion. It's compassion for yourself, because a lot of times when we've experienced grief, when we've experienced trauma, we look at ourselves and we may question, Who am I? And we happen to be our harshest critic, right? I mean, that is one of the things that really popped up for me, is that we may give other people compassion for their experiences, and we forget to give it to ourselves. So it's really about stop performing and stop behind hiding behind this mask that it's okay to be messy, it's okay to be human. And it's giving that compassion that says, Yeah, today I'm not feeling good. Or today. Yeah, something made me smile, and it's knowing that both can coexist, rather than having this either or, because I think a lot of times it's we feel like it's either an either, either I gotta be sad or I gotta be happy. However, I can't have both. And yet, the truth is both coexist at the same time, and then the A is for acknowledgement. And I love how you said acknowledgement, and I use acknowledgement too. Acknowledgement is acknowledging our feelings and our thoughts. It was only by when I acknowledged that Disneyland that's really just it. It's not a figment, but Mickey Mouse is a figment. He's not real. I mean, it's real character. However, it's not a real person. And why would I give Disneyland that role, or the power to say whether I'm a good parent or not, so that's the acknowledgement, is really acknowledging what our thoughts are, what our feelings are, and not even having to explain to anyone or to apologize for Your emotions and you're right. I'm Canadian. As a Canadian, we say sorry for everything you bump into us, we'll say we're sorry. We bump into a wall, we'll say we're sorry, and so we're kind of sorry for even feeling our emotions. And that is something that leads us into the R of releasing, of releasing the guilt, the shame that we have, the regret, everything that our body holds, because, again, with the A, we're not acknowledging it or giving ourselves compassion for everything. Which leads me to the E, which is embracing, embracing who's becoming a lot of times, because we've heard it so much, when are you getting back to normal? When are you getting back to that person that you were? Guess what? Grief and trauma changes you the. Person that you were beforehand is no longer there. And sometimes we're running or wanting to get back to who we were beforehand, and not allowing who we are now, of who we're becoming. And sometimes that scares us. It scares us of moving forward into the future, because, as you said, we're so used to having a culture that says you gotta have your goals, you gotta have your dreams. You have to have success in all of this. And when a trauma happens, all of a sudden, we're in that in between, where we're sort of like out there in the ocean without the paddle, and we're like, where am I supposed to go now? And it's okay to float to sort of say, I don't have it figured out. I don't know who I'm becoming. And slowly figure that out, or slowly let that bloom into who you are, because I really believe that with grief and trauma, we start aligning with what our core values are. We get back to that inner whisper, that inner wisdom that we have that says this is what you believe. These are your values. And we get that, and we're kind of like, yeah, never mind what the world is telling me, what do I believe? What is right for you? What is right for me? Yeah, definitely. The the

Renae: fire of the crucible burning away the fluff and and the stuff that doesn't matter. And you come back to what is salient and and at the core of it, the at the, I believe, at the core of every human, some people, it's very much deeper than others. But the core of every human are life giving values. So again, they may be covered with lots and lots of things that don't look like humanity. For some people, it's where you might look at them and say, I don't know where. I don't know up. But I really do believe that everybody has this core and that when we, when we are, allow ourselves to mark the time, attention to the reality of the pain, and not avoid it. And that's not that we're luxuriating in it, because you don't do that, it is luxury, luxuriating in it would be another form of actually dismissing it. It's painful. It hurts. It's it's costly. It takes things away. It takes away that, that sense of safety, it takes away that, that sense of trust. It takes away that sense of connection. And saying, okay, yeah, that's the reality is, I'm is all the way I'm feeling. And once I acknowledge that, and then, and then, I can look up because I'm not, I'm not as spurred with all of this idea of of that it's my fault. It's never going to end. It's it's it. I deserve this. I'm, I'm a terror. You know, all these lies that would cover up these values. Because inside of us, our values are generally going to be love. It's going to be that I'm connected and I'm belonging with community. It's that I have a I have a purpose, of a way of bringing light and life into this world that is part of how I am, and it's and trauma covers all that up, and so as we get that fluff burned away, or the stuff moved us to the side and back and say, what's the important you do have this opportunity to say, this is how I'm going to show up in the world, and here, where are my safe people at? I think that's the other part of this for me, is that there is this you start to learn who are your safe people, and they're the people who can, who also are extending compassion, who are also okay with the time that it takes for you to release, who are also acknowledging the reality and also who are embracing who you're becoming, and not trying to put you back into the mold of who you were before, But saying, oh, I want to, I want to celebrate that it's not. It's not. I'm not putting a bow on by saying, Oh, look who you've become because of this, this tragedy or this loss. But I am celebrating that I get to see the real you. I'm celebrating that, that I'm learning. More about myself in my own capacity for compassion, because I get to travel with you, and so I think it's also this important piece of it, so we are not the person who is who is going through that grief and loss. Sometimes it's going to be our kids. Sometimes it's going to be a community member, a parent, another family member. But when we talk about compassion, that word really translates to suffer with it means we are entering into the emotional reality of someone else, and so as we're walking with them, we're we, we are respectfully acknowledging and in and and releasing with them and embracing is part of being connected humans. And so I appreciate that framework and that way of of giving us something to to think through and think about how, how are we going to approach whether we are in a caregiving situation, whether we are the person who's going through the event. How can we practice this in small ways beforehand? How can we go back, maybe even, and apply it to things that maybe have been unresolved? It just gives us the opportunity to think of it in another way, which is part of why we have a summit is that there's many, many different strategies for things, and they're all, they all have validity. And so I'm excited for the people who have been able to learn from you today and hear from you and hear about your story and your framework. Thank you so much for sharing that. Then I'd like to close us today by asking you if somebody is only going to be able to engage with a few minutes of your interview today. What is the most important thing that you would want them to walk away with?

Maria: What I'd want them to walk away is to give themselves permission to live again. I It's one of the aspects that I found with grief and trauma. We feel that because we're surviving, that we have no self worth. And realistically, we are people that are worthy. Right? Your audience is worthy. Anyone who has experienced anything is worthy, and that they can give themselves permission to live again, to feel joy, to to have hope, to to have light, to move forward and not forget, or not let the the pain stop them, because both do, I always go. It's holding love and loss together. I mean, that's I explain. It is about love for yourself or the person that is no longer here. But really that includes self love, because we need to love ourselves first, knowing that we are worthy of that self worth, that self identity, and holding our loss. Because, as you say, grief and trauma are intertwined so with love and loss.

Renae: Well, Maria, thank you so much for sharing your inner wisdom, that inner whisper that you have given words to, that you've given a framework to bringing your gentle and sweet spirit to the summit. We're so thankful to have you here. Thank you so much for your time.

Maria: Thank you so much, and it's been definitely an honor and a privilege to share and hopefully my words have impacted someone's life in a way that makes them feel worthy and loved and not alone. Thank you. Bye.