The Joyful Mom Podcast

Send a message to Megan “Who Am I?” is one of the sections of my  Life After Child Loss Program . It is a part of my C.A.R.R.Y.ing Grief Framework where  the Y stands for You and learning to love yourself again.  3 Parts of Who Am I?: 1. Who Was I? The person we were, died the day our child died. You cannot continue to be the person you were, when you experience the death of your child. You are fo...

Send a message to Megan Episode Pointers: Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. The suffering comes in, when we resist what is. Whether it’s the emotion, the circumstance, the relationship, what is. The resistance brings suffering.  Byron Katie’s 4 questions in “The Work”:  Go through a situation in your life that frustrated you or caused you a lot of stress.  Replay that as if you were there...

Send a message to Megan You can contact her through the following: Website : www.katrinaubellmd.com Instagram: @coachkatrinaubellmd Facebook : www.facebook.com/katrinaubellmd If you want more tools to help you, I have a workshop called Stop Talking Start Feeling, it’s a workshop that dives into emotions, what they are, and how you can begin to feel and process them and get them out of your body in...

Send a message to Megan Episode Pointers: Acceptance is something that seems so hard to be okay with. You know the fact that your child died and yet something in you fights this reality. Because you don’t want to believe it. And maybe if you keep fighting it, it means it didn’t happen or it’s not true. You never have to accept anything. You don’t have to accept that your child died. You don’t have...

Send a message to Megan Guilt is a very normal emotion to feel because we think that is our  job to raise and protect our children, to keep them safe. It is also our job to  make sure they are okay,healthy, loved, and ultimately protect them from dying. The reality is, that we cannot protect them from dying, but it certainly feels like it's’ our responsibility and that we do everything we can...

Send a message to Megan Episode Pointers: In grief, we often focus on it’s negative side. We think that life has to be suffering, life awful and horrible the rest of our lives. It’s also easy to think that people are rude, mean, and they don’t care. It’s easy for us to focus and give our energy on the people who are not helping us rather than those people who have helped, support , and comfort  us...

Send a message to Megan “This is the biggest challenge. I've had other challenges in my life but this is far above any challenge that I've had, and any challenge that I think I will have in the future.” Tina Kadish Episode Pointers: We all have this anger. Think of it as like energy that comes up in your body. And we look to who we could direct this anger at. So sometimes it's  God,...

Send a message to Megan Episode Pointers:  There are certain things that we want to be gone right away, especially those things connected to their death. In other people’s experience, there are other people who came into their lives and pushed them to get rid of things or pushed them to pack away their child’s clothes when they weren’t ready yet. And, they regretted it or they had to go back and r...

Send a message to Megan Episode Pointers: Stop Talking Start Feeling is a mini-program that helps you process the emotions inside of your body. Many grieving mothers and other people have tried everything but they still failed to process their grief. They still don’t know what to do.  I’ve noticed that we get too focused on talking or trying to get through the experience. We forget that we need to...

Send a message to Megan Episode Notes: When we started to get people into their bodies, into their breath, and just feeling what they needed to feel, they got better, and faster. Yoga Therapy really looks at the person as a whole.  We all have these different sides and these different pieces of us. But sometimes we look at them separately. Therapy helps you look at all of those different pieces of...

Send a message to Megan Episode Pointers: I know how quickly we can begin to pick apart and judge ourselves.  I want you to look at yourself and your life with curiosity and ask: Where can I take responsibility?  Where is it not my responsibility to take? Do  I need to set up boundaries? When your cup is full, you cannot learn anything new. I hope you can open your heart and mind to talking about...

Send a message to Megan Episode Pointers: Grief does not give us the right to lash out at others. It does not give us a free pass on acting in whatever way we want. Lashing out to others and using your anger to hurt others only hurts you more.  Anger truly is an emotion that can explode and destroy so many things. It can come out as boiling frustration, explosive anger, resentment, or many other w...

Send a message to Megan Sharon has lost her best friend and her former fiance from suicide. In addition to that pain,she has also lost her father from a fall. This combination of heartaches and grief has put her in a dark place where she thought she was not gonna make it. However, she got up, faced grief, and even helped other people who are dealing with grief by founding her company, GRIEF REIKI....

Send a message to Megan So every day, you wake up, immediately get busy, because if you take a moment to think, you will start to go on the rabbit hole of what happened with your child, how you could have prevented it, and get very depressed and not be able to move. So all day, you exhaust yourself, you put your energy into other people, you run run run, you keep so busy, so that at night hopefull...

Send a message to Megan In this episode, we are going to talk about how grief affects our health physically. Episode Pointers: Grief, trauma, anxiety, and everything that came in between can cause stress. It will then manifest into physical symptoms. Thus, Grief can show up physically in our bodies. Emotions have a big role inside our bodies.  So, processing  your emotions are very important in de...

Send a message to Megan Sleep is a place where our bodies heal, process trauma and information that we’ve experienced in our lives. Sleep is so healthy for us to get but what do you do when you can’t sleep at all?  Here are my tips for you : 1. Brain Dumping   This is especially helpful for when you try to lay down and you cannot turn your brain off. When all the things going through your head are...

Send a message to Megan In this episode, Erica McAfee shared her grief journey, her different layers of grief, and how she used them and got inspired to create a maternal child health company for Black women, the Sisters in Loss . At the age of 14, She first experienced grief when her father died. For many reasons specific to her own grief journey, her grief didn't fully express itself until...

Send a message to Megan In today’s episode, we are going to talk about pregnancy after loss, specifically the fear of having another baby. Episode Pointers: I’ve talked to many women who are terrified of having another baby. There are so many unknowns, so many things that they fear, including forgetting their baby that died. Maybe they feel like they are trying to replace their baby who died. Anot...

Send a message to Megan In this episode, we are going to talk about how taking breaks in your grief works. Episode Pointers: It is a ton of work to manage your mind, your emotions, and sometimes you just want to throw it all out the window and just be where you are at. You recognize that you feel crappy, angry, depressed, but you just don’t want to do anything to change it right now.  I talk a lot...

Send a message to Megan Experiencing trauma or PTSD while grieving is so challenging. The pain is doubled. You need to deal both of these intense feelings. But how? In this episode, we are going to talk about dealing with trauma while grieving. No matter how many wishes or prayers we need to do, it won’t go away without doing the right actions. Most of you know that my 15 month old daughter died i...

Send a message to Megan This episode is more speaking to those around you to learn about grief and how they can help and support you on your grief journey. Episode Pointers: I often think that our brains are trying so hard to comprehend our loss, that there is no extra room for all the things that used to be easy in the past. It’s hard to keep up on bills, it’s hard to remember anything, it’s hard...

Send a message to Megan Are you healthy? What are the ways you do to make you healthy? Remember, that being healthy is not only physically but also mentally. So often, physical health takes precedence over mental health. And it shouldn’t be that way. Episode pointers: We cannot see what goes on within someone else’s body or within their mind. So often, as the person who is living in a stressed sta...

Send a message to Megan In this episode, I am going to share a very special tool for you to use to support you in your grieving journey. I often use this with myself and with my clients. This tool is the Emotional Freedom Technique/ E.F.T./ Tapping. This is a tool/tapping in which you tap on your certain parts of your body. First, we speak out all the painful and heavy things. We bring up the pain...

Send a message to Megan “Does it ever get better?” “Please tell me it gets better.” “I can’t keep living this way.”  Have you also asked the same question? Are you feeling the same way? Let’s talk more about these questions in this episode. Episode Pointers : Someone else’s experience doesn’t mean it has to be yours.  I remember feeling this way, and I remember wondering if I would ever have joy a...

Send a message to Megan “If you have other children, how are your anxiety or stress levels about them?” And the overwhelming response was- horrible, over the top, very high, through the roof. In this episode, I wanted to discuss this and offer a maybe different perspective on this. Episode Pointers: Please don’t let yourself do the shame cycle.                  - Shame does nothing in helping you,...