Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - When Grief Becomes Your Greatest Teacher with Devi Brown

Episode Date: April 23, 2025

What happens when your world falls apart—and you’re left standing in the wreckage, asking, “Who am I now?”  In this moving Language of Love Conversation, I sit down with the wise and radiant Devi Brown to talk about grief, trauma, surrender, and the surprising strength we find in our most broken moments. Devi shares how a series of devastating events—including the death of a dear friend, the end of her marriage, and the unraveling of long-held identities—sent her into a deep spiritual reckoning during the pandemic. Yet what emerged was a new, more rooted version of herself, one anchored in faith, self-worth, and radical presence. Devi opens up about how she learned to stop resisting pain and instead, soften into it—finding not only healing, but beauty and transformation. We talk about faith (even when you're not sure what you believe), the difference between self-worth and self-esteem, and why it's okay (and necessary!) to fall apart. She also shares tools from her new book Living in Wisdom, including daily practices to reconnect with your body, spirit, and sense of purpose, even in the depths of sorrow. Here’s what we explore: Why trauma often comes in layers—and how grief can open the door to deeper healing. The difference between surrender and giving up. What it means to have a relationship with God (even if you weren't raised with one). How to recognize the sacred in everyday “tiny joys.” The difference between self-esteem and true self-worth. How meditation can help you move through pain and connect with divine guidance. The practical power of mudras, breathwork, and daily ritual to restore your soul. Why being present with your pain increases your capacity for joy. You can connect with Devi on her website or LinkedIn, and don’t forget to grab a copy of her book Living in Wisdom for even more insights and inspiration. If this episode resonated with you, I’d love for you to visit my website and explore the Good Grief course—it might be just what you need right now.  And if you’re looking for a supportive and healing community of grieving souls, join us at the Grief Healing Collective platform. We’re in this together. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, I'm sex, love, and relationship therapist, Dr. Laura Berman. And for the past 30 years, I've been helping people just like you learn to love and be loved better. Here on the Language of Love Conversations, I'm talking to some of the world's most influential and revolutionary experts, thought leaders, spiritual teachers, and celebrities about love, sex, and relationships from a mind, body, and spirit perspective. and that way my goal is to awaken your mind body and soul it's time to become fluent in the language of love debbie brown thank you so much for joining us on the language of love i'm so excited to talk to you oh my god such an honor and such a fan of the show i was so excited to do this oh me too you know i've been following you for a long time and i love all of your wisdom and all of your

content. And when I heard you had a new book out, I was like, we got to talk to her about the book. So as I said, the new book is Living in Wisdom. And I loved it. I mean, I already loved your content and your voice, but after reading it, I really fell in love with your mind and your heart. It was just really beautiful. So I'm excited to get into it with you. We're going to get into all sorts of things. There's so much we could unpack here, but when I was thinking about my peeps here and just even selfishly the things that really stood out to me, we're going to be getting into, because the impetus, it feels like, or at least part of the stimulation for the teachings and even the system you developed that you share in this book grew out of your own grief. So I want

to get into that. We're going to get into faith. We're going to get into trauma. We're going to to surrender. We'll see where the conversation goes because we never know here. No big deal. But the beginning of your story that you share, that it was a whopper of what I call an AFGE, another, I curse here just so you know, another fucking growth experience is what I call them. These things that kind of break you open and break you apart. I know that like leading up to this, this all kind of came to a culmination in the middle of the pandemic. You were no stranger to trauma, to grief, to upheaval. You had lost many friends. You had already been no stranger to grief. But I was wondering if we could just start there with what happened and what catapulted

you into the great AFGE or the breaking apart that led to the breakthroughs. You know, I think one of the interesting things is when we think of trauma, a lot of us tend to think of like one specific thing or, you know, when I was first kind of getting training in meditation many years ago, it was the last sentence of the book that said you may encounter someone that's been to war and has trauma and meditation may be hard for them. but so many of us have so many compounded experiences of trauma so many things that are really complex to our lives i think another percentage of people it goes even deeper than that there might be certain themes and patterns of pain or trauma that seem to follow you or replicate themselves in different areas so i think that is something that very much was my path i had a lot of really substantial, challenging, and confusing things happen to me starting from a very young age. And it felt like every year I was hit with a new thing that maybe another person's

one thing that happens. And so, throughout my life, that had always been something I was kind of studying in myself without really having the words for, trying to understand. When I started kind of my first round of healing is what I like to call it, which started for me around 2010. I started meditating. I started approaching my childhood. I started looking at things, but there's still so many blind spots, right? Because this is our life's work. And so when the pandemic happened, we were actually within, I want to say, the first several weeks of the pandemic, I got hit with an onslaught of things. One of my dear friends chose to end her life and I decided to get divorced after being in a relationship for nearly a decade. And I remember

it was all kind of happening in the beginnings of it the same week that George Floyd was happening and it was just an impossible kind of feeling. And I'm teaching meditation every day and I'm you know, showing up for this huge teacher community within the wellness company that I was working for. And so it was such a high level of grief, of multi-layered grief, like the loss of a person. And then the pandemic brought forward for all of us kind of a deeper view at even the things we thought we had resolved. So I was kind of grieving a lot of loss. Then I was grieving really just the utter annihilation of my marriage, of being in connection and community with someone I loved and I thought I was in deep friendship and partnership with. And at that time, I was a

mom of an under two-year-old. So it was like- Big old AFG system hitting you. Storm, major tsunami. yeah tsunami and those are the moments that you just have to look around and say okay god yeah there's nothing i can control here there's nothing i can do who are you calling me to be right like who am i supposed to become and i think i had gotten really good at that surrender but this throughout my life but this was kind of that deeper layer and it was just like all right god i'm not even going to try to pick the pieces of this up i'm going to let all of it shatter on the ground and, you know, let's see what happens. Yeah, that's so beautiful. I made a note. There were so many beautiful things you say in the book, but there was this one place which is relevant to

what you're saying. I would not let my heart wither and die. I would slowly bring it back to life. I would let it stretch open. And in the right divine time, God would show up and show me what I was. I think that's so beautiful because obviously when you've been through, we're going to drill down more into this trauma idea, right? But even what you were referring to just now, this idea of compounded throughout your whole life, all these different things that for many, and I've had my own version of multiple traumas. Most people just experience one of these or maybe two of these in their life. However, I would say that I think the majority of us maybe don't have huge, horrible, major things that most people would consider the big T trauma in our life

happened multiple, multiple, multiple times, but we have lots of little ones, small T, I don't want to say they're little because they impact us in big ways. So we're going to get into that. But this idea of surrender, I think it's so important. And it's something that I talk about and it was so helpful for me to read how you speak to it because it's something that I really have only been learning to do since my son died fully. I mean, I would play with it and try it. And as you said, think I did it, you know, but it was on a whole new level because it's hard for me to explain to people like you have to if you're going to get through it yes you have to feel it to heal it but there's also like a not fighting it you know

there's a softening into it and you speak to the softening and the power that can be found there and that allowing the shattering to stop fighting the pain how that is where the change starts to happen oh my god yeah you know I think it's interesting right because I think a lot of people the first feeling they have when really like really hard things happen like the dark stuff that you will be thinking about for the rest of your life yeah you know when those things happen it feels like um you're trying to just tape and hold all these pieces together so you can still somewhat recognize yourself and recognize your life and i understand that and depending on what else is happening in your life that is necessary and safe for some people to do for a

time but when big things happen to you you are meant to change form you know are meant to really allow yourself to completely dissolve to completely shatter into something else and i think But that exact moment, that was the very first time I had gotten so good at putting the pieces back together and making it beautiful, right? Like very, very like Kintsugi style, like I'm putting the gold and then the piece and feeling proud of myself for the way that, you know, brokenness seems to just, I can be, you know, unbreakable. It can pass me by and, you know, and I needed to do that in the times that that was happening. because I did have to keep going, and I didn't have support, and I did need to figure it out. But then I think for some of us, especially those on the wounded healer path, God really commands you to be on your knees for a time. There are things that you have to learn.

There is a brokenness you have to understand. There is a pain in yourself and in others you have to build the capacity to bear witness to. And I think when that feeling comes in, if we can allow ourselves to just fall completely apart and not try to fix it and not kind of try to control it and find what that deeper layer of trust with God is. Because if we are in trust of God, and this is my belief, so Jess, all respect to any beliefs of whoever is listening, but I believe in God and I live for and with God. So, when you're in a place of brokenness like that and in that deep, dry valley, we can fight against our faith and not know it. If you say, I have faith in God and I have trust in God, but you don't let go and you keep trying to keep

moving forward, you keep trying to find the solutions, that's not what faith is. And that's not to go against the idea of faith without works is dead. You know the difference. You know when you're being called to also participate with what's happening and when you're being called to stand by and step aside and let God God. And I think that was the moment I really allowed myself to be in. And because of that, it allowed me to become something I couldn't really fathom. It gave me new access. It gave me deeper layers. It changed the way I was able to be in my body and able to be in community with other people forever.

You don't know that while you're in it, and I wasn't getting any reassurances while I was in it, right? That's the scary part. You can't forecast it. You can't vision board it. You can't demand that someone tell you it will eventually be okay. That's where trust is built. that's where faith is built but if you can let yourself do that my god my god there is just so much freedom and so much beauty to come yeah i have definitely and that gives me chills hearing

you say that and it's interesting because and i want to talk about well first of all i want to talk about faith which we're going to get to in a second but just even this idea of the metamorphosis I've been saying this for so long now because I've experienced it myself, and now that I'm helping so many other people and guiding so many other people through this process, that grief in all its forms is a profound portal of transformation. that breaking apart that loss whether it's a loss of a job a loss of a partner a loss of someone you love is such a breaking apart and breaking open and it's that classic metamorphosis of the but you have to turn to mush the caterpillar has to turn to mush before it can reconfigure as the butterfly and i remembered it was maybe even a week or it was really soon after our son died We were sitting on the sofa. My husband said, you know, I know a lot of people, a lot of couples don't make it through something like this, but we're going to make it through. And I knew that. I said, I think you're right, but I also am so aware right now that there is not a cell in my being that is going to be the same.

on the other side of this. I have no idea who I'm going to be. I have no idea what it's going to look like. I hope you like her, but I have no idea. I was raised in a very secular way. There was no God. My abusive, narcissistic father was God, and he was not a very friendly God or a very dependable one. So I didn't until much later in my life, due to another series of AFGEs, kind of had an awakening, which I think is one of the cool parts of this. You came to yours with a kind of built-in faith, right? And we can talk about where that came from. I want to ask you in a second. But for me, and I think for many of us, when we go through something hard, especially a loss to death, I think, what I've been seeing is that in a longing to somehow see if there is

something on the other side, or if we can connect, or if there is something beyond this 3D world, we open the door just to crack and we peek through. And then what you see on the other side, you're like, holy shit, whoa. And then if you walk through the door, it's so cool to me how grief can be not only a portal of transformation, but a portal of awakening. So I'd already done a version of that maybe 10 years before losing my son. And I felt a real connection and an awareness of a divine force, of a higher power, of universe, whatever you wanted to call it. But I couldn't wrap my head because obviously all the images I have of God or growing up or whatever was around organized religion, which I don't subscribe to. So I didn't really have

any kind of personal relationship with God, so to speak. It was like this power that makes everything happen, and it's in everything, and it's beautiful, and it's quantum, and all of that. And that definitely helped. But what I've gone through over the past four years has opened the door to really longing for and building more of that two-way relationship with God. And I think that, and faith is always, right, just choosing to believe in something you can't prove, right? right? But it's scary as hell to do. So I'm wondering if you can speak to, because I know I'm not the only one that struggles with faith and a concept of God. And for those of my peeps here who maybe don't have a relationship with God and want to or are curious about it, what would

you say? Oh my God. I mean, just like so much that you said there, I just, I really want to honor your journey. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Yeah. I really, really honor what you walked through and what you have built and created in spite of that. Thank you. You don't make me cry. I'm like so matter of fact now when I speak about it, unless someone reacts to it and then I get emotional. Thank you. I think even like this, right? This is how I feel God. This is how I no God. I wasn't raised with God. I wasn't raised in a household that there was an againstness to God, but there was just no talk of God. There was no time for church. I kind of heard of church. I kind of heard of the Bible, and I know that sounds very crazy, but it was raised by a single

parent. So, in a lot of ways, there was a lot of isolation for me. And so, I didn't know about religion, but I was getting a lot of information emotionally and spiritually throughout my childhood. I had never really heard stories about Jesus, but I started thinking about Jesus, if that makes sense. As like a little girl, I started feeling an energy of something being with me. And as like a very isolated child and only child again, which is a very specific experience. A lot of people don't necessarily understand, but I think it's only 12% of the global population are only children. I think that still stands. So it's just a very different experience. You kind of have different ways of communicating or being in community. And so

we were moving around a lot. So there was never steady home or community for me, but there was this steadiness that I felt that I didn't know what it was. And I think from a very young age, I kept investigating that steadiness. I didn't have any guidance on how to do that or any real ability to maybe ask the most poignant questions, but I was aware of it. And I would just continue to kind of engage with it and be with it. And the way that I would feel that power the closest, from a very young age, I was really obsessed with the sun. And I still am. If you follow me on Instagram, it's like sun porn. It's just like all sunshine, sun rays on my stories. but I used to close my eyes and let the sun hit my closed lids and just study the orange glow

that would be in my eyes and I would feel safe. I would feel like there was someone there that protected me. That was really the beginning of the foundation. And I remember at a young age, again, without really knowing much about any biblical stories, like just the understanding really arrived in my heart of do unto others as you would have done unto you. And I think for a long time, what was confusing about having that feeling and knowing on my heart, but being in a world that seemed so narcissistic, everyone around me and all the adults that I kind of saw out in the world were saying one thing and their behavior wasn't meeting that. So, I was seeing a lot of people say this is who they are or they love God, but then their choices and their behavior

didn't really support any of that. So, internally, I really, I felt confused and I felt lost because I'm like, well, if we're supposed to do this, how come no one is treating me the way I want to be treated? Yeah, amen. And so, I think that's when some of my real dialogue with God began and some of my anger with God. And I think that's how I began my relationship with God, because to build a relationship with God as above, so below, it's like every other relationship. It is complicated, and sometimes it's hard, and sometimes you are angry and confused.

You know, we are having this deeply powerful experience with an energy we can't even fathom, right? Like, none of this is, like, scientifically provable, yet it is. So it's like in that dynamic, I want everyone to know who is maybe in a relationship with God, seeking it or struggling within the confines of it. Our relationships with God are like our relationships with ourselves and everything else. There are peaks, there are valleys. There is sometimes a lack of faith. There is sometimes this just like magnificent amount of faith that cloaks you, this miraculous energy that encircles you and fills you with just indescribable gratitude for all of it, the grief and the joy for all of it. But it's all cyclical. It's a cycle, and it's dependent on how you're co-creating with God, how you're making choices, what is currently happening in your experience. But our relationship with God is something I believe we should be pursuing always and just really having our hearts open to and committed to doing the work of for our whole lives.

It's going to continue to change form. The way we know faith will change and grow. Sometimes there will be doubt. Sometimes there will be confusion. And even that doesn't mean you don't love God and aren't loved by God. It's all part of what this conversation of having a human experience really is. Most of us have no idea how to move through loss. There's no roadmap to follow when you're trying to navigate grief.

And I realized this when I lost my son three years ago. As a therapist who understood grief, a whole new level of pain opened up to me when I lost my 16-year-old son. And since then, I have been building resources that have allowed me to navigate through loss, not only in a healthy way, but in a way that has transformed me for the better. We can move through the most terrible loss with grace. And that's why I have created the course, Good Grief, Healing from Loss with Love. You can find it on my website, drlauraberman.com, right there on the homepage, as well as free resources letting you know how to support others who are going through loss.

None of us has to do this alone. I want to talk about sort of some of the practicalities too, if you're someone who's seeking to have a deeper relationship with faith and with spirit. And, you know, I assume when we're talking, at least for me, when I talk about God, it's the God of your understanding, whether that's Jesus, Allah, Mary, Yeshua, whoever, universe. But there is this, for me, I had this real resistance for a long time to personifying God. And God is still not like a man in the cloud or a woman on a whatever, or even Jesus, although I think Jesus is amazing and is a very dear friend and guide of mine. But I think one of the things you talked about in the book, which I was like, yes, because

I feel so strongly about this too, was this idea of how we outsource our worth. And, you know, one of the things that I am always, I mean, on a daily basis, a million times a day, whenever I'm talking to individuals or groups or counseling or whatever, obviously the issue of self-worth comes up and people talk about how to build self-worth. And I'm always saying like, look, there's a difference between self-esteem and self-worth. Self-esteem is I love and accept myself because I'm a good person or I'm kind or I'm smart or I'm generous or whatever those things are. I'm good at sports, whatever you want to pick. But self-worth is this understanding that you are unequivocally and undeniably worthy of all the love in the world simply because you exist.

because it's something I've really only developed over the past two years inside myself, the ability to do this. But I talk about it all the time, this sense of being able to rest in the arms of God, which you were kind of describing, where I will literally, and I'm going to ask you in a minute ways to do this, and I'm guessing you're going to say meditation is one of the ways. We'll get to that in a second. But often when I am meditating, or even if I'm just like waking up in the middle of the night with a pit in my stomach and thinking about ridiculous things that are stressing me out. I'll hand it over. God, just take this from me and let me rest in your arms. And I imagine myself just sinking. It's not human arms. It's not literal arms for me.

It might be for someone else. But I sink into this velvet where it just envelops me. And I let myself and soften into that and let myself be enveloped. And it is so much better and beyond whatever human and as a recovering codependent that was where I always sourced my emotional safety and worth was outside myself for most of my life until I maybe hit my late 30s so I think it's so important and so fulfilling and so beautiful but also to me I always say you can't if you start tapping in and tuning into that higher power and getting that guidance it's hard not to recognize how lovable you are because you just do. What would you say to that? And how do you start building that relationship? What advice would you give just from the practical side?

Yeah, I so resonate with that practice that you have. I think I have one that feels so similar, you know, that idea of like, let me relax into God. Let me really kind of live the understanding that it's not an opinion, it's just true. We have control of nothing. We control nothing. And I think when you're not relaxing into God, that creates a lot of anxiety, a lot of fear, a lot of confusion. Being alive is hard. Being alive is challenging. And when you don't have faith or you don't have that worth that you've built up in yourself, you're constantly moved by the fact that you don't have control and all the things that are happening or could potentially happen to you. And I think when you kind of just rest in the fact that it's going to happen anyway,

right? Everything is by design and nothing happens without God's permission. And I know that is hard to sit in depending on what you apply that knowing to, but I control none of this anyway. So, I am only bringing myself suffering by being in delusion, thinking that I do. Why not? Why not relax in God? I think that's where I landed. And as soon as that piece clicked, it was just, that is now my default setting. That is now the absolute first thing I do without thinking. And my work more so is to stay present in the circumstance of being alive in as much integrity and stability and love as I possibly can. Something that I deeply recognize and I have a lot of respect for is that I recognize that I am here to bear witness. I recognize that

to be alive and to be in the role of observer, which is where meditation helps bring you, it is to take in a lot of the sorrow and grief about being here. But it also creates a lot of space to see like the profound beauty and the miraculous divine nature of being here as well but it's both i think even on a healing journey and a lot of people think when you go on one you're going to come out and it's no worries forever right it's like no the worries are always here it's how you relate to them that changes so it's like even on a healing journey even on as someone that's been meditating for over a decade and always looks to seek the enlightenment in things or come to a more enlightened understanding,

I also recognize the fact that no one promised any of us that the human experience would not be challenging. And I think when we fight that by wanting things to be good all of the time, we're just pursuing happiness, just being grateful to be alive when there's pleasure are present, I think we really do ourselves a disservice. The idea of bearing witness means that there is burden to that as well. I am holding something. I am bearing the weight of something. But we have to keep our eyes open. We have to keep pouring into ourselves. But we have to be here for all of what this is. And this is what it's always been since humanity began. So I think some of the really tangible ways someone can begin to be in pursuit of God is to really start to switch the

lens from looking and striving for happiness and really recognizing the moments that are simply enough. That is what really led me, I think, to the experience that I'm currently having with God, where I've never felt that my life was more beautiful. I never felt that I was more worthy and lovable. I never felt more full in the knowing that all my needs are met or they will be. I think that really came into not thinking anything was necessarily wrong or bad or deficient or broken when things weren't going my way. Really staying open to notice and be aware and just continue to be in participation with things. We have to let our lives change form on a daily basis. And I think when we do that, we begin to not just see God more and talk with God more, but we learn so

much more from God. Our heart and our minds are actually open to receive the guidance that is most beneficial to our experience of being alive. When you aren't fighting against what is happening or making it bad or wrong, yeah, just getting curious. And I do think that comes in part, although I know many people have had a million horrible things happen to them and they haven't gotten here but I know for myself too when you've been gobsmacked enough then you really do get the message we have no freaking idea what's gonna happen two minutes from now people zero everything can literally change in a split second from now for the most horrible horrible horrible worse or the most amazing, miraculous, good, and everything in between.

But we are not in the dragger seat as much as we like to think we are. And there is a peace in that when you really get that. You know, it can be scary as shit if you haven't ever thought about it before. But there is like a Jesus take the wheel kind of energy to it, which I think is really beautiful. And the other thing you said about switching the lens to just the good enough moments and even just being curious, which I'm going to ask you more about in a moment, about bad things happening and how to hold that and how to be present with that without being sucked into blame or what am I doing wrong or why is this happening to me or all those stories we tell ourselves. But this idea of the good enoughness and the finding the grace and the appreciation, not needing everything to be perfect and exactly as you want to be in that place of grace. You speak to this idea of the little joys is what it reminds me of.

So to me, this is a perfect place to bring those in. So tell us about the little joys because I love that. Yeah, the tiny joys. Tiny joys. Sorry, I said it wrong. No, I mean, they're little, they're tiny. Right? There are the small little morsels for me that make life worth it, even on the hardest days. I think sometimes each of us is called to become more with less, right? And I think that there is

opportunity to see the blessing in that. When people are transforming, it's so important to strip yourself of all the things that you think you need or all the things that you kind of falsely believe make you you. So you can actually get into those crevices of who and what you are and build a more solid foundation that your worth can now rest upon. And so I found that for me in a lot of the moments I was in, I had to realize that I didn't actually even know how to feel joy. I think that was something that was really surprising for me at first on the healing journey as you're kind of dismantling yourself, you're recognizing that so much of what you thought was joy or happiness was actually like you in performance or you in performance with

others. You know, it's like I always kind of bring this forward for people who are dismantling in this way. How often does something great happen to you and you put up this big announcement on Instagram or you throw the party or you give the speech and everyone is like, yeah, and it doesn't feel that way inside. I noticed that when I was really kind of early in my professional life, I was getting these huge wins and I couldn't feel them. And I was like, why am I such an ungrateful person? And I was judging myself, but it wasn't that I wasn't grateful. I didn't know how to have space to feel good or feel safe in goodness because I didn't have a lot of practice with it. And so that's the thing about joy, joy, feeling authentic, real joy, which is

truly a sense of enoughness and an opening to the love that is always present and around, it takes practice. You have to kind of get your reps in. You have to build your tolerance to feel it in your body. And by doing it sometimes in the smaller ways that just bring you a personal private smile, that's how you can really do that. So for me, the tiny joys are like, how do I keep my oven lit? How do I even on a hard day do something that sparks that little flame inside and keeps my fire burning for my life, that keeps my fire burning for myself? And sometimes it is a little flickering baby flame of a tea light candle. Sometimes it is a rager. It is like a forest fire inside. It is like that crackling fire on a winter night.

But being kind of present with the fact that whether it is that tea light candle or that raging flame, that's enough. I'm, each season of what I'm able to have and give is enough. So, seeking tiny joy specifically for me means like seeking beauty. I am a Venus and Taurus for the astrologically minded. I'm all about sensory and pleasure and feeling and beauty and nature and sight and richness, like the richness of soil. So some of the ways I like to do that is every day I set up like a little scape.

I have a garden. And so I'll get a flower or a leaf or something natural from outside. I'll put it in this little copper dish I have. Next to it, I'll light some incense. And then just for a few moments, I'll kind of watch the sun come through my window and move through the smoke or with prisms I have hanging in my window, watch the rainbow reflection hit different walls. And I really can't tell you how much that brings me to life, especially on a tough day. The work that I do, I'm always steeped in some of the sadder parts or the harder parts of the human experience.

You know, I often find myself having the privilege to sit at the bottom of the ocean with people. That is the nature of the work that I do. And the way that I restore myself, the way that I keep vitality kind of vibrant in my heart is to fill my day with those teeny tiny pleasures, those teeny tiny moments of witnessing beauty, seeing the sun, stopping to bear witness to it, literally picking up the leaf or the flower and pressing it to my face. That's how I stay in my human experience. That's how I stay in my gratitude. Yeah, that's beautiful. I do the same thing for me. Dappled light gets me every time. And I think it's such an important thing. I was really careful, or at least I did my best to try to model that for my kids, stopping in the moment to appreciate these tiny moments of beauty around us or the smells or the textures or the senses.

I think it's something, especially in today's world, that we aren't trained to do, but it also discovered, which I didn't really think about before, that the more you are willing to feel, the more you can feel. Would have agreed with that long ago. But what I didn't understand is that the more pain I was willing to let myself feel, the more my capacity would stretch for joy. Now, I had to be willing to feel joy, right, which is a whole other conversation. And you kind of started speaking to the way to kind of start moving into joy. I think the tiny joys is a beautiful place to start and to stay, you know, but that I have found that I actually have a greater capacity to somatically feel joy as a result of somatically feeling the bottom of the ocean, as you were saying. Ah, that is just like the absolutely realist, realist thing that I think is just such a breakthrough for those of us when we get there, right? Like it's like you fight, fight, fight for so long against some of those harder feelings or the feelings that aren't as accepted by society like deep depressive sadness or real anger. We look at those things, but as, you know, not elegant or not civil, but in fact, it's like all of those emotions are just absolutely sacred. They are as sacred as every single other emotion. They're all necessary. They're all part of what this human experience is. And God, what you said, I agree with so deeply. It's like when I really let myself kind of look at some of those deeper, darker themes of my life and just accept the fact that this is my life, I can access joy in my body in a deep breath, in a second, in a second, in a split second.

And I feel I used to go months to years without knowing if I was feeling joy truly or without it feeling restorative for me, without it aiding me in recovery. And now it's like really, like truly just taking something in like a child's smile and taking a deep breath as I'm witnessing it. My body is filled, filled to the brim with love and presence. what a beautiful thing so much of your book we're talking about more of these ethereal concepts but it's super practical and you have steps and you have guides and mudras and meditations and all kinds of beautiful practices and a whole system that you kind of created out of your own pain with everything you had learned up until that point and then co-creating it with all your knowledge and the downloads you were getting and just intuiting it as you went and you kind of

created this system one of the things and you kind of alluded to this a minute ago is i don't remember exactly how you said it but starting to excavate the crevices right the places where the pain lies and that i love how you say to kind of start at the tippy top penthouse of your pain like the tip of the iceberg because as we were saying there are layers upon layers and trauma by the way i always say loves an open door so as you're going through something a loss a pain whatever all those as you were saying that you were discovering all those earlier earlier earlier compounded things are all coming up for air and being like oh is now the time let's let's all come together and come at once right so there's this idea of you're never starting from scratch

every healing again and again but also for many of us if you've never done any healing work or even if you have this idea, it's starting at the penthouse. I'm wondering if you can speak to that a little bit. At the end of the day, it all always comes down to our original wound. Period. It always does, right? Everything else was simply a symptom of the original thing that happened to you or the original need that wasn't met. And then we are just replaying that curriculum over and over and over again until we really bring it up for review. Instead of starting and just focusing on healing how you feel about a breakup, you got to actually first go to how you feel about your parenting, right? Like you have to go to the deeper layers. And then what you usually find

is it creates a lot less work for you to do. Because once you get that root, it's like getting the queen bee in the hive. As you get the root work done, the rest of it kind of dissolves and disappears on its own and the new experiences are allowed to pour in. So, I think, you know, speaking to the practices, what I found was, and I really wrote this book for people who were a lot like myself, high-level intellectualizers, people that think their feelings before they feel them, that have the vocabulary to express what they're going through or have a certain amount of awareness to understand what's happened to them and this is why they behave this way. But I think the thing that's really important for people to know on the

journey is that awareness is simply the first step. It is not the end. And a lot of people stop there and you can really high on your own supply, right? Like you can get really into yourself and your awareness and your ability to spot patterns and call things out. But that is literally the introductory step. After that, you are invited to more. I think that that sometimes is the scary part for people. If you think, well, I've already healed that. Why am I crying about it again? Or why is this showing up in my life? And it's like, you get to bring this up for review now because of all the work that you've already done. Now you get to experience it differently and clear that pattern in the other ways that it showed up.

And I think that that's what life and doing the work allows you to do. You heal it with your family system, if that's what the root is. You heal it with the past relationships. Then you get to heal it in, well, how did this show up in the workplace? You may not have noticed that at the time because you were fighting these kind of bigger themes and bigger experiences. Then you get to notice, how does this show up in my one-on-one relationships? How does this show up in the way I interact with strangers?

And you're just always kind of invited to these new lenses of perception or these new kind of prisms that you can kind of dive into. And so I think when you get to that point, to be quite honest, the work gets kind of fun because you look at it and you know you have the tools for it and you know the deep alignment that comes into your life when you say yes to the work. One of the things that I love doing in this book was really sharing some of those practices. I'm deeply studying in a lot of different healing modalities. I'm a multidisciplinary healer, which simply means I've studied a lot of healing traditions,

gained certain levels of proficiency, mastery, certification in different ways to do energetic healing, emotional healing. And there's just so many wisdom traditions and so many incredible paths. we don't have to really choose just one now sometimes it's really powerful to build discipline and mastery in a certain path of being that you feel called to and i deeply respect that and i also think it's so beautiful at this time in the human experience than this year to be able to look back across history and really pick and pull and say okay what can this do for my body? Like, what can this do for my spirit? And so when I was in some of those deeper throes,

but even so much earlier in my journey, when I was studying Ayurveda, when I was studying meditation and metaphysics, I brought that back forward to the table, my tried and true practices. Then I heavily leaned into Chinese medicine. I heavily leaned into energetic work. I deepened my meditation practice by really being present with what is called mudras or particular hand placements and i think the one that most people recognize the most probably be that or even at jali mudra which is simply hands in prayer position usually right in the center of your heart so according to ancient vedic tradition those hand placements open up energetic channels within your body and your presence with even noticing how disarmed your hands can become like it can be a

little rigid at first and then slowly kind of fall into a more relaxed position, that shows you how you're feeling inside. It creates this new network of wiring to really let you know what you're feeling and where you're feeling it. A lot of us exist in the world and don't exist in our bodies. And being alive, we're having two experiences at once. We're having our interior experience. We're having the internal experience inside of ourselves, the one that typically only we know about. And then we're having the external experience, which has so many factors layered on top of it and usually really rests in the way that we're being perceived and received with other people. And so in that dynamic, we're kind of jumping in and out of our bodies. When you do

practices like this, you're building more foundation for staying in for this experience. And I found through my practices that mudras were a really powerful way to do that and do that with some urgency. A lot of the practices I bring into this book, and again, these are only samplings of literally textbooks and textbooks and textbooks and centuries and millennia of histories of healing that exist throughout various cultures that have been used over time. But I found that the practices that I chose for this book help alleviate suffering a little bit quicker. Yeah. You into a space of at least being allowed to taste what a new feeling feels like so that you

can then begin the lifelong relationship of finding the things that meet your unique needs. yeah and going into whatever rabbit holes right pursuing more like okay this really resonated with me when i tried it you're absolutely right you introduce all kinds of different modalities and technologies for going beyond to going into feeling the grief not just being aware of it or feeling the pain beginning to heal it beginning to integrate it you know beginning to recalibrate yourself all the things that go in to the healing beyond the awareness piece or just talking about it, right? Because we can talk about it and read about it, but it's really about the practice. One thing you spoke to is this idea of repeating the curriculum. One of the things, you know, I do,

I have this Grief Healing Collective, which is this online membership platform where we do all kinds of healing activities together, and I give them tons of resources, and I do retreats, and I do these Grieving Mama meetups once a month. So I've been with grievers intensively. I mean, I always worked with grievers in the past, but I would say over the past couple of years, intensively and in addition to it that what i was observing about grief being a pathway to awakening what i also think is so beautiful about it is that i'm thinking of this one woman in particular whose adult son died and she was just filled with rage and pain obviously and she started having the you know ptsd come up real hard from her earlier traumas makes sense right because as we were

talking about tip of the iceberg penthouse right and how everything starts coming up to be cleared and what i think is so beautiful is that she's been doing now she discovered emdr for her that's been unbelievably healing and as a result of wanting to heal from the loss of her son she now is healing all this old old childhood trauma and generational trauma and it's opening up new pathways for her that are so unbelievably beautiful. But for her, this idea of, for me, my big core wound, there are a million wounds that Sammy's loss triggered, but it was like this feeling of abandonment and disconnect from God really is what it was. An early childhood abandonment, but also that disconnect. And I remember saying to my therapist healer, sort of

my person that has been my ongoing teacher and mentor, I get the assignment because at this point, not only had my son died two years prior, but now my eldest had become suicidal and was serious about it. He's 27. So I was out of control. And I was trying to wrap my head around losing two of them. And I said to her, I get the assignment on a certain level. I need to be so connected to my faith and my connection to God that I can just hold this possibility and know that as painful as it might be I will survive it and I get that but like why I remember saying to her why the fuck does it have to happen this journey through my kid and she said Laura because that's the only fucking way it would happen that's the only way you would do it and I was like shit

you're right that's what it would take for me personally I'm not saying that's true for everyone but that's what it was going to take. And to me, that's just like such a beautiful hint or connection to, it's all divinely being orchestrated. And when you can kind of take a step back, I think it's so beautiful. There's so much more I want to talk to you about, including meditation. I have so many things, I mean, because you're the guru of so many things, including meditation, even though I don't believe in gurus, but you know what I mean. You're an outlier, as Malcolm Gladwell would say. You're a master of this. But one question I just want to ask you is, with meditation, and especially if you are now stepping into this to heal, or maybe even you've always practiced like me, and then after something horrible happens, you alluded to this earlier that with meditation, when your mind gets quiet, that's why a lot of people don't like to meditate, right? is because all those feelings come bubbling to the surface.

So is there any guidance or advice you can offer? Because obviously there's going to be a resistance to doing it. You start to meditate, you know it's going to help with the neuroplasticity of your brain and with your spiritual connection. It has all these benefits, but it's painful when you start to do it. So what would you say to that? You know, meditation, you are going through so many layers of awareness and enlightenment. And that is why it is a practice.

It is something that you are meant to be in exploration with over time. When you first start meditation, and not to speak for everyone, but I think a large amount of first-time meditators, meditation does exactly what it's supposed to do. It clears space. But in order to clear space, very often you have to look at, review, and release what is coming up. And so that is the beginning invitation to do so. And so when you're beginning your practice, what you usually notice first is all the barriers

you have up against doing said practice. Notice that you are annoyed by it very often. It might be making you angry. You might be frustrated in judgment of it. You might feel like it's a competition. I need to excel at doing this. I need to do it right. But it's really the beginning stages, you're building your capacity to simply sit with yourself, to simply be present with yourself without inviting in external stimuli.

It's really interesting to look at why that is creating a reaction. We don't have a lot of practice in society anymore. How often are people just sitting down and being, right? Like we're not. You are instantly, the first free second, even in traffic, pulling out a phone because you must consume. And there's no judgment in that. We were all tricked into doing that. All of that happened to our brains without our permission.

Didn't know any of this was going to become how we react to ourselves in life 20 years ago when we started playing with the internet or smartphones or social media. So we are the bridge generation. this is something that we all suffer with and have to figure out. But when you're in the beginning of meditation, that's what you're going to face. Once you're able to sit still and close your eyes, a lot may come up because this is the first time you're allowing yourself to be disarmed. It's the first time you're allowing yourself to kind of begin to temper into what it feels like to be in your interior space. And so if there is anything unprocessed, right, if there's anything that's been shoved deep down anywhere, all of that is kind of bubbling up

with excitement because it can't wait to be free. It can't wait to be released. It can't wait to be noticed so that it can be tended to. As long as we're approaching our meditation practice, and this is what happens over time, but this is what to be present with. You have to approach it without expectation or judgment. You're not going to come into enlightenment tomorrow unless you are maybe the Buddha reincarnate. It's not going to happen on the first meditation. It may not even happen in the first year, but there is no more important work you could be doing with your life than slowly learning to be in mastery and pursuit of mastery with what this practice is. So I think those first layers are the layers that unburden you. Those first layers are the ones that release. Then

you're invited into kind of higher awareness. And this is where I think we're able to really connect to the divine nature of being alive. You are coming into a freedom of thought. You are coming into space, which allows these downloads to come into your life, these instantaneous spontaneous awarenesses, sometimes these healing of deep-seated subconscious patterns and thoughts can really now be cleared in the blink of an eye, and you may not have to learn things through pain anymore or through physical experience anymore. And I think even that stretches your capacity to be with yourself, but now in a completely different way. And every time you're kind of up-leveling your IQ about who and what you are and why you're here and how you're intended to serve,

All of this practice is deeply connected to so many things, the unburdening, but also the alignment of purpose, the alignment of really being in your life as the authentic nature of who you are. And so after you get into that layer of now really being able to open and access your intuition, your downloads, your deeper knowing, your deeper connection with the divine, you're then invited into an even higher path than that. And it keeps going and it keeps going and it keeps up leveling. Eventually you get to a place that I'm really enjoying in my life right now where meditation feels like absolutely pleasurable. Like I am in meditation and I am moaning. I am like just like, oh my God. you know it's like this pleasure smile is escaping on my face and the second i close my eyes i feel

free you know and i find myself when even when i'm not meditating and i love my practice i do it twice a day but even when i'm not meditating now if i'm just out even with people and there's nothing happening i'm trying to close my eyes i'm trying to go there yeah trying to feel so Meditation helps you get out of the ego of your feelings and then reconnect with the divine nature of what it is to feel. Beautiful. Boy, was that a good description. Thank you, thank you, thank you for all you are, all you do in the world, all your wisdom

and guidance. I'm so excited for this book, baby, to be out in the world. you guys, it is called Living in Wisdom, A Guide to Awakening Your Highest Self and Developing Self-Mastery. And where else can, we'll put this in the show notes and the link to get the book, but where else can people find you? Because I know you have apps and you have a wellness community and you have all kinds of offerings. Yeah, thank you so much. So I also did the audiobook for this, which I'm really excited about. So check that out, too, if you feel called. I lead meditation on what is called the Presence app. On that app, you can find some really amazing

fellow meditation teachers. I have many, many, many meditations on there, and often I'm leading daily meditation on such a host of different topics and wisdom traditions. And then you can also listen to my podcast, which is called Deeply Well. Of course, available everywhere you listen to podcasts. And I'm always exploring higher consciousness, self-care, pain, holistic healing and health, and having some cool people on. And yeah, those are all the ways that you can consume me right now. You can visit my website, debbiebrown.com, and of course, IG and all the places, just my name. Beautiful. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Dr. Laura. What an honor and a privilege to be here with you.