Mantra with Jemma Sbeg - I Honor My Emotions as They Guide Me Through Grief

Episode Date: April 21, 2025

This week's mantra is I Honor My Emotions as They Guide Me Through Grief. Grief is a deeply personal journey, and allowing yourself to feel your emotions is an essential part of healing. In this episode of Mantra, we explore how to create space for your emotions, listen to what they’re telling you, and find strength in your vulnerability. Honoring your grief doesn’t mean rushing to move on—it means embracing each feeling as it comes and trusting that it will lead you toward peace. This Mantra will encourage you to walk through your grief with compassion and courage, one step at a time. For ad-free listening and early access to episodes, subscribe to OpenMind+ on Apple Podcasts. For more from OpenMind, follow us on Instagram @openmindstudios. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is Open Mind. Welcome to a brand new week. Here is your mantra. I honor my emotions as they guide me through grief. I'm your host, Gemma Spagg, and I'm here to guide you toward a more centered and fulfilling life. Each week, I'll share personal stories and insights that are focused on a specific mantra plus journal prompts

and a weekly challenge for all of us to help put it into action. Think of mantra as your mental reset button, a way to stay centered as you juggle work, school, family, and whatever else life throws at you. Each mantra is a simple, powerful phrase you can repeat to refocus your thoughts and bring a little bit of calm into your day. It's a small tool with a big impact, clearing your mind, lifting your mood

and rooting you in the present. If you've listened to my other show, The Psychology of Your 20s, you know I'm all about those little nuggets of insight that make a big impact. So whether you're looking for some extra inspiration or you're trying to ground yourself amidst the chaos, you have come to the right place.

At Open Mind, we value your support. Share your thoughts on social media and remember to rate, review and follow Mantra to help others discover the show. For more exclusive content, monthly bonus episodes, early access and at free listening, join our Open Mind Plus community on Apple podcasts. This week, I'll catch you up on what's been going on in

my life and then we'll dive into today's mantra. I honor my emotions as they guide me through grief. I want to say this at the top of the episode. Grief is never linear. It's something we will all experience yet it is rarely talked about openly. So I think this mantra is so important to me because it really invites us to acknowledge and look at our grief instead of resisting it. It allows us to move through it all with self-compassion. So stick around. I'm excited for this episode. We'll be right back after this short pause. Hey, it's Gemma. And if you love mantra mantra then you need to check out Starstruck with Ali

Luber. Each Wednesday Ali sits down with celebrity guests for raw one-on-one astrology readings, decoding their birth charts and revealing how the stars have shaped their biggest life moments. From career highs to relationship drama, nothing is off limits. Starstruck is an open-mind original powered by Pave Studios. New episodes drop every Wednesday. Just search Starstruck wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome back. We're going to talk about this week's mantra in just a few, but before we do it's time for my high's, low's and who knows. This is a who knows. It's a little bit different. I want to tell a story that I've been thinking about a lot as I've been

thinking about this episode, considering grief and what it means to me. And it's a story about my granddad, one of the people that I've lost in my life. Recently in Queensland, we had a cyclone, Cyclone Alfred, and where I grew up was pretty hard and everyone was okay, but this tree that we used to play when we were kids came down in the backyard, and the beach where we used to go with my family basically is all washed away. So it will take a couple of months, weeks however long for it to come back. I was looking at this footage of this beach being washed away,

it's called Crumman Beach. I was thinking about this time when I lived with my granddad for probably three to four months. Every single day, I didn't have my driver's license. He was 76. He would drive me down to the beach and he would sit in the car, and I would be there for sometimes an hour and just watch me to make sure that nothing happened. Then he would get me a McFlurry from McDonald's and drive me home.

It was just the most beautiful, special memory and thinking about what's been happening up there, it just really reminded me of all those really beautiful times and how special it felt to have all the attention on me and how special it felt to know that he really, really cared about me. And it's so funny because these episodes are always so serendipitous. It's like, they always know when to crop up. But before we break down this mantra, I just want to say right now, if you're listening, I do feel very bonded to you in this moment, even if I don't know you. I feel that we are all sharing probably

a lot of the same feelings and experiences right now. And there's a lot of peace and comfort knowing that what is often dark, deep, I don't know, sometimes beautiful emotion joins us all. So I don't think anyone exits this life unscathed by grief in some form. And as much as we have the urge to run away from it, I think grief encapsulates all the beauty we possess as humans. I think it encapsulates our ability to love, how special it is to have memories, the bond we can experience with others, even our capacity to feel deep

sadness. Basically, I think the extent to which we feel grief is often the extent to which we can feel any emotion. A small part of that is quite special when you think about it. But let's get into it. It's time for this week's mantra. I honor my emotions as they guide me through grief. I want to begin by saying this if it's not already clear, but grief does come in many forms. Our first thought often goes to the grief that of course we

encounter with the death of a loved one because that kind of loss is so profound, leaves so many unanswered questions. You know, where does the love go? How do I live? How can we survive without them? What happens next? All questions we have and many, many more. It's very shocking. It's paralyzing. It defines every other experience we have at least for a while. But I think grief is also appropriate and also needs to be acknowledged in the face of any loss. Loss of a relationship, a breakup, some might even say.

Loss of a pet. Grief over a time in our lives that we no longer have. It's this intense love mixed with pain and they're in this constant battle. Are we grateful for what's happened or are we terrified and devastated that it's no longer there? You know, we do sometimes feel so lucky to have the memories and the moments and then other times it just feels like this thing is so heavy, we're never going to get out from under it.

Such as being human. I think that is the definitive human experience right there, trying to hold two equally large and heavy truths at once. But yes, there is a hidden beauty in it all. And when we honor our emotions and ride the roller coaster and hold on, just hold on for the dips and the highs. I think we can at least learn something. At most, we feel more in touch with the human experience and

like this very deep pool of love that exists in each of us. The truth is, we need to grieve. If someone has passed, if a death has occurred, you need to grieve. Grieving is remembering. Grieving is continuing to hold space for the person and the good feelings. And in a weird way, we really do need that.

Grief is definitely hard, but I think the society's reaction to it is the main problem or lack of reaction. That's what makes it so much harder. It often feels like the moment you start grieving, the moment someone passes, the moment that something ends, this timer starts and you only have a certain amount of time to get over it before it becomes unacceptable. As a society, we are not very good at dealing with grief.

We are okay with happiness. We are okay with happiness. We are okay with anger even. Grief? No. The moment you say to someone, oh, you know, this person is no longer in my life. My grandfather died. My mother passed away. Oh, you know, I used to have a sister, but she's not here with us anymore. You can see it in someone's eyes. There's like immediate reaction from most people to shy away from it. Even though most of us have experienced something similar in our lives, we just can't talk about it. In Western culture in particular,

we have such a clinical perspective on death, that it makes it really hard to fully feel it. We also don't have any of like these sacred traditions or the holidays or the celebrations that other cultures do. We don't hold space for those who pass in the same way. You know, in Mexico, they have the Day of the Dead. In Japan, when I was there recently, I was in Okinawa and they literally have people who they hire just to maintain the graveyards and make them into these almost shrines and monuments of remembering. Petru Paksha is a 16-day Hindu holiday where families pay homage

to ancestors who have departed from the material world. There's so many more examples. If you live in like the U S or the UK or Australia, like in a very Western culture, what do we have? We have funerals, but everyone wears black and then homemade lasagnas and then. Nothing. People will show up for the day, but the support slowly fades away. You stay right where they left you. You just stay still in that moment. And there is very limited space or opportunity to continue to celebrate this person.

And you know what? Grief is too big to ever be held by just one person. It's a collaborative community emotion. It's something that needs to be spread across multiple souls. I really believe that. And you can't really do that the way you need to in practice in the society we have today. Like you can't create community around your grief. There's not as many rituals.

It's harder to talk about this shared emotion. Another element of this, I think, is that people don't want to look at grief for too long because I think they know somewhere deep down that it's in their future. You will grieve one day. There is this weird feeling of one day. One day I'll lose someone as well and I don't want to know what that feels like before I have to. Don't spread it. You're contagious. I don't want to know. I don't want to be part of this yet. I don't know how to explain it really, but it's something I've seen a lot and I think it makes it a lot

harder for people who are actively grieving or just grieving in general to feel like they can admit they're not okay and talk about it. Okay, let's get back on track because what I really want to talk about now is the roller coaster of grief and letting the emotions that come with it guide you rather than pin you down. I heard this analogy the other day on a grief Reddit page, strange place to hear it, but nothing I've come across can describe it better. Grief looks like this.

Imagine you are on a boat in the middle of the ocean and the ocean is calm and it's clean, it's beautiful and then there are these strong winds and then there are these huge waves and your boat is hitting the big waves and you are crushed on either side and it just feels like you're drowning. It's chaos, It's terrible. You see no sun in the future. That might last for a few minutes, a few hours, and then it calms down again,

and it's clear, and it's beautiful. And you think, wow, this is gorgeous. And then you get hit by a storm again, and the cycle repeats. The storm is still as big. The clear days are still as beautiful. You just get used to navigating the switch and you become a more experienced sailor to kind of use this analogy. So the stormy weather, it's still scary, it still hits you just as hard, but you know how to deal with it and you know it will pass and you know that it's part of the process.

I think this analogy is a nicer way of saying, time doesn't make it easier, it makes you more skilled. Every emotion you feel, that emotion is strengthening you in some way, even if it doesn't feel like it, you're learning from it, it's powerful. It's so powerful because the love you felt was as well.

I don't know why, but knowing that, knowing that my grief is as big as my love was really helps me lean in. The other thing I like about this metaphor is that it goes against what we have been told about big emotions, which is that we have to feel them as little as possible, that our grief should be made smaller. we should be working on making it smaller over time. I just don't agree with that. No, I don't agree with it. When we let ourselves feel and we say, okay, I'm going to give you permission to take your time to roll through this, to let the boat throw me a little bit, let myself be immersed. The waves don't hurt as much and they pass quicker.

Let your grief embrace you. You are allowed to actually feel terrible. Sometimes it's kind of good to feel terrible and to feel so sad because trust me, you need to feel that way and it allows the emotion to pass through you quicker than trying to fight it. I think it also allows you to be happier with the moments where you are just simply happy. If you let yourself grieve when your body and your soul needs to, you feel okay with being happy when the moment calls. I think you also fall into the natural rhythmic cycle of grief.

It's bad, it's terrible, it's good, it's awful, it's terrible, it's a bit better. It's all part of it. But when you never let yourself feel, you feel none of it. Not even the highs that life promises us. Not even the love that still remains. Further problems can also sometimes emerge when we feel multiple ways at once. So call it survivor's guilt,

whatever you want to label it, it's this sense of feeling sadness and also gratitude, joy but also nostalgia. You don't just feel good, it's not just a one emotion anymore. The good thing to remember though is that it's actually incredibly rare to only feel one emotion at once. This is a crazy fact.

Humans have access to some 34,000 different kinds of emotions, and I think grief brings every single one of them to the surface and makes it impossible for you to ever just feel one at a time anymore. That's how incredible our capacity to feel is. So it's okay to be grieving whilst also being excited for the future. It's okay to be grieving whilst also feeling hopeful and nostalgic and joyful and peaceful. When all we have is grief or numbness, we may not be honoring our emotions well enough. Maybe it's guilt, maybe it's shame,

but if your whole life is all grief and you think you owe it to that person to always be sad, I don't think that's how your loved one would want it. They would not want you to feel this way. They would say to you, seize whatever love or happiness you can find for me. That's how you can honor me. I don't need your attention 100% of the time. I know I'm with you subconsciously. I know I'm with you in spirit. It's okay to forget me for a moment

when the moment is calling you. I want to return to a point I made before because I don't think I gave it the space it required. How can we create a world where grief is not seen as something to get over, but something to integrate into our evolving selves? I believe this process starts with us. It starts with the holders of grief.

And it starts with taking that leap of faith and being honest when we're feeling a lot or not our best and creating that space or bridge for someone else to meet you where you are and say, hey, me too, I feel this as well. I have this beautiful friend, Stacey, and the reason that I think we bonded so quickly and immensely was because from the get-go, we were open with our emotions and we were open with the day-to-day experience of grieving, but also the day-to-day experience of being happy and feeling sometimes okay,

sometimes not, and getting to see all the emotional sides of something. Of course, you're going to feel shy about it at first. The depth that it will bring to your relationships though, and the comfort it will bring you to know that someone else understands you is immensely gratifying and immensely special. I like this theory that's called the continuing bonds theory. That's similar to what I was just talking about and this theory basically challenges the outdated stages of grief narrative that we have to move through five stages and once

we get to acceptance, we're never depressed again, we're never bargaining again, we're never in denial again. The continuing bonds theory is that for the rest of our days, we probably will continue to nurture an internal relationship with someone. We will find ways to continue to let them influence and guide us. There is not a discrete timeline or section of emotions that we are feeling all at once at one point. There is acceptance some days, there is deep sadness and denial other days. But if we find a way to integrate them into our lives, it feels like we can move through

those emotions a lot easier. Find a way to stay connected with your loved one, get a tattoo of them, keep that framed photo on your desk so people say, who's that? You can say, it's this person that I love. Don't be afraid to bring them up in conversation. You're doing people a service by talking about it. You never know who one day will think back to

that conversation that you had about your grief when they are grieving and say, wow, I learned a lot from that. I learned a lot from that person. I feel better about discussing it because they discussed it first. I just think sitting with grief isn't easy. It's a process that asks us to be still with emotions that are very big, heavy, uncertain. But when we stop resisting that and allow ourselves to truly feel, we create space for understanding and for healing and for the possibility of moving forward without forcing

our grief to be done. We allow ourselves to still feel it. And that's so important. Okay. So coming up, let's get personal. I'm going to share a bit about how grief has shown up in my own life and how learning to honor my emotions through it has changed the way I carry loss, love, the present moment, everything in between.

So stay tuned. We'll be right back after this brief pause. So stay tuned, we'll be right back after this brief pause. Hey, it's Gemma. And if you love mantra where we explore weekly wisdom and self-discovery, then you have to check out Starstruck with Ali Luber. Just like we explore mantras to guide your week, astrologer Ali Luber reveals the deeper astrological forces shaping our careers, relationships and personal growth, giving you cosmic insights you can apply to your own life.

Every Wednesday she sits down with celebrity guests for raw, in-studio astrology readings that uncover the fated twists, planetary influences and life-changing moments written in the stars. From career highs to relationship drama, nothing is off limits. Expect deep dives, jaw-dropping revelations, and astrological insights you won't hear anywhere else. So whether you're an astrology newbie or a chart-reading pro,

Starstruck is your all-access pass to the astrological side of fame. Starstruck is an open-mind original powered by Pave Studios. New episodes drop every Wednesday. Just search Starstruck wherever you listen to podcasts. And now that we've looked at the meaning behind today's mantra, I honor my emotions as they guide me through grief, it's time to get personal with you guys and share some of my own insights and reflections about this phrase.

There have been many times in my life where I've tried to outrun my grief. I think because I have a complicated relationship with death, and because I have a complicated relationship with some of those people that I miss. I think about when my first big adult relationship ended, I definitely was grieving, but I don't think I properly grieved for at least three months. Then suddenly I was like, wow,

this person's moved on and I'm still at day one because I wasn't allowing myself to feel this. When my grandfather died, that was really hard and it was a very complex way to experience loss. We were so close, he was such an integral, he was almost like another parent to me. We had such an incredible bond and he actually

passed away during the COVID lockdowns. And in Australia, when the lockdowns were happening, you weren't able to cross into a different state. So I went to his funeral over Zoom in my bedroom in Canberra with none of my support network around me. I didn't have any family. I was alone in this space. I didn't get to say goodbye. Luckily, some of my other family members did. I didn't get that space. And you know what? I still

feel very almost resentful of it nowadays. Where I'm like, why? Why didn't they let me say goodbye? Like, would it really have hurt anyone to say goodbye. But it's just the way that it is. I didn't get to be in that space with him. I didn't get to go to the funeral. I didn't get to take part in any of the rituals. My grief was really, really delayed. I would still go up to my family house and he wouldn't be there. But because I hadn't been able to see him in

those final days or acknowledge that he was gone, there was this weird part of me that's like, oh, he's just at the grocery store. He's just on a trip, like he'll be back. I imagine some part of that was very, very protective, but at some stage I also began to feel very guilty about it. Did I not love him enough? Was I broken? Was I just actually this really cold,

callous person? My breakthrough, this is going to sound very bizarre, was two years later. I still thought about him constantly, but I was just waiting. I was like, I just want to cry. I just want to feel sad about this. I know there is this thing that needs to come out.

One day, I was watching Little Women, the movie at my house, and it was like 3 PM. And I was just watching this movie. It's kind of on my phone for a little bit. And then I was deeply engaged in it. And it was the scene where Beth dies. Spoiler alert.

Sorry, if no one knows that's what happened, but Beth dies. And I was watching it and there's this like really intense things around it. And I was just watching it and I just started. Rying. and there's just like really intense things around it. And I was just watching it and I just started crying. I just sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. And I did not stop for at least three hours. And I was thinking about it, I was like, wow, maybe I've avoided all these movies about death, TV episodes about death, books about death.

I've avoided going to other funerals that I probably should have gone to because I wasn't going to other funerals that I probably should have gone to because I wasn't ready to process this loss. Here is this first encounter I've had with what that would have felt like to actually get to mourn him in the moment, and it is so devastating and it's dark, but it's also so beautifully cathartic. I felt like, okay, this is remembering.

This is keeping him alive for me. It also made my emotions so much more accessible as well. This is what that moment really taught me. It taught me when we fear grief, we unknowingly close ourselves off to so much more, and it doesn't actually make the grief better. The pain just borrows inside of us deeper and deeper, and then it will violently come out the other side in unexpected ways.

That's what happened to me. There's also a weird bitter beauty in grief that sometimes feels nice. I wouldn't change it, but that moment, it made me feel more human than I think I had in a long while. It made me feel more connected to my grandfather. And nowadays I have this ritual where every time I think of him, like I look up at the clouds and just say, like, hey, I'm checking in, just thinking of you.

You still have some part in my life here. One of the best ways to honor your emotions as they guide you through grief is to create rituals like this, where you stay in touch with your grief. You, you have a regular check-in with it, so that there's no fear and avoidance there. Create plans with your family to have an annual dinner, to have an annual celebration of their life, to have an annual Christmas tradition.

Have a spot that you can visit. One beautiful thing that my grandma did was that she planted this beautiful tree in the backyard of her house, and we got her a bench and we put it up there. It's like this space where you enter the grief bubble. Other traditions or rituals, writing them a birthday card every year, making sure that they show up in your stories.

You don't feel weird about saying, oh, my dad did this for me once. Oh, my sister used to love that. My best friend, she was great at that thing. Cook their meals, meals that you know they loved, cook them, really engage in that process. Carry a token of them, something that you can hold onto.

As a connection, I heard of someone having a grief pebble or a grief stone that they carry like in every handbag, every suitcase, every meeting, to every spot they went. And anytime they were thinking about that person, they held this stone and it was like this connection to them. You know, I had a friend say this recently, grief is a portal. It's like there's people on one side who've never experienced grief and there's people on the other side and you can never go back.

There's things you see on that other side that you can never unsee, at least not for a long time. It feels very violent going through it. And then you get to the other side and you're transformed. And over time, you feel better about it. You don't feel better, but you feel like this is normal, and this is something I can do. My final point here is I want to talk about

what grief has given me that I never expected. I speak about my grandfather a lot, but I've lost friends, I've lost other family members. I just think grief has made me feel safer about death. I know that there are people on the other side who I'll get to see again. I can see that they went through that and yes, they're not here anymore, but they're also probably not in pain anymore.

Grief has taught me to value my family more. It's made me want to do family trips with my, you know, what I previously would have avoided, and I've made all these memories. Grief has also allowed me to feel more grateful for the moments that I do have of being alive, and for the very, very small things that sometimes we overlook. I want to talk about the deep thought of the day here. Grief doesn't follow a straight path, and neither does the deep thought of the day here.

Grief doesn't follow a straight path and neither does the way we learn to honor it. And so as I sit with everything this mantra has brought up, this is the deep thought that really fits all of these emotions and it's just the perfect way of describing what it feels like to me. This is from Earl Grohlman. Grief is not a disorder, a disease or a sign of weakness. It is an emotional, spiritual, and physical necessity.

The price that you pay for love. Listen, I love this quote. I also have a love hate relationship with this quote, because I know it's true and I wish it wasn't so. Grief is the price you pay for love. Yeah, it is. And I think it would be a much worse fate to not love someone at all, to stay closed off. And maybe you'd never experience loss. There's a lot of other stuff you'd never experience either. Grief is also this beautiful spiritual experience of knowing,

wow, I love someone so deeply that their absence has caused me to feel this so profoundly. Isn't that just so human and remarkable to feel this way? Aren't these memories, my ability to have these memories of this person, my ability to feel like they're still here, that's magical in some way, and the absence of grief would probably be more troubling. Now, I'd like us to take a few moments to pause and really sit with this mantra. It's been very heavy today.

I completely understand this is probably bringing up a lot of emotions. You can probably hear it in my voice. It's bringing things up for me as well. But let's just take a moment. We're going to listen to our custom music track that's going to help create space for you to absorb today's insights and consider how you might bring this mantra into your next week and maybe even beyond.

Again, if this practice isn't your style, if you don't really want to think too much about this mantra today, that's okay. Feel free to skip ahead about 30 seconds. But as you settle in, let's keep our mantra in mind. I honor my emotions as they guide me through grief. Let it guide your thoughts as the music plays and give yourself a moment to reflect and connect with what this mantra means for you. Beautiful. Now that we've explored how we can honour our emotions through grief, it's time to

talk about how we can turn our emotions through grief. It's time to talk about how we can turn our reflections into action. I'll share some journal prompts and of course our weekly challenge right after this short break. Welcome to Over 50 and Flourishing, the show for any woman who feels like she lost her compass in this sea of midlife. I'm here to tell you, it is never too late

to change your course and awaken the healthy, wise and wonderful woman within. My name is Dominique Soxa and I love to ask questions. That's why I spent nearly three decades of my life in the TV news business. I mean, let's face it, this stage of life can be complicated. Children are moving out, relationships are being examined, our parents are aging,

and we're having to manage all of this along with our menopause. It's easy to lose sight of ourselves, but can I just say, we matter. I will bring you thinkers and innovators who share the same passion of flushing out these ideas. It's my goal to leave us all feeling inspired, thought and intent

driven and with a sense of purpose in whatever we pursue. Let's celebrate growing older together and embrace our prime. It's our time. Welcome back. Let's take this week's mantra beyond reflection and into some real meaningful practices for our daily lives, starting with our journal exercise. Remember, if you don't have your journal handy, that's totally fine. Just take a moment to sit with these questions and let them unfold in your thoughts wherever you are. So here are my prompts to help you explore and connect with this week's mantra.

I honor my emotions as they guide me through grief. First, have you ever felt pressure to grieve a certain way or within a certain time frame? How has that influenced your ability to honor your emotions? Next, think about a time when grief surprised you, when it showed up in a way you didn't expect? What did that moment teach you? And finally, grief often comes in waves. How can you create space in your life to acknowledge and sit with those waves when they arrive? Every week I also like to share a challenge inspired by our mantra to help you take what we discuss and turn it into real actionable steps in your life.

I'd love to hear how it's going this week, so reach out to me at mantra open mind for your thoughts, feelings, and discussions. Each month, I love responding to your questions and comments in our special bonus episode available exclusively on Open Mind Plus. But today, I'm calling this week's challenge the What I Wish I Could Say Challenge. I want you to either speak or write down words you never got to say. Maybe to a person you lost,

maybe to a past version of yourself or even an experience that ended too soon. Allow your emotions to be fully unfiltered. This is just for you. Be patient with yourself if you can't think of anything. That's okay. Go away, come back. Sit with whatever comes up. Love, anger, gratitude, regret, something else entirely. There are so many emotions you can be feeling right now.

Filter them all, put them all down onto this page. I don't know. I think that they can probably hear them. I think that they'll know what you're trying to communicate. As a reminder, reach out to Mantra Open Mind on Instagram to share how this challenge is working for you. All right. As we wrap up this week's episode, I want to share a few final thoughts about this mantra. I honour my emotions as they guide me through grief.

I want to remind you, as a society, we are not very good at talking about grief and we most certainly should be talking about it more. When we don't talk about grief, it means that we are not prepared for when it will inevitably come. We do not share strategies. We do not find community. We do not find camaraderie. And we shy away from rituals and conversations about whoever it is in our life that we feel we've lost. I don't care what anyone else thinks. If you want to talk about that person, if you want to bring them into your life, please, please do. Bring them up in conversation,

make them visible, make them known. Talking about our emotions normalizes them. The people who might feel uncomfortable with that will one day perhaps be very grateful that you did normalize it for them in the future so that when they go through this same experience they feel open to talking about it. It's a beautiful thing. Grief is not a solo emotion. Grief is a shared emotion. Grief is a community emotion. Grief is something that as a society we need to be better at managing. So please create your rituals, keep this person in your life and ride the wave. Your emotions are never going to be the same one day to the next when it comes to grief but the secret is they are all valuable even if they feel terrible. I

promise. If you have one takeaway from this episode, let it be this, grief isn't something you need to fix. It's not something you need to outrun. It is something that requires you to honor it and learn from it and learn to carry it with you as you move through life. So my lovely listeners, my friends, please be gentle with yourself as you grieve and trust that wherever you are in your grief right now, that is exactly where you're meant to be. Thank you for joining Mantra, an exclusive Open Mind original powered by Pave Studios. At Open Mind, we value your support, so share your thoughts on social media and remember

to rate, review and follow Mantra to help others discover the show. For ad-free listening and early access to Mantra with me, Gemma Spegg, we invite you to subscribe to Open Mind Plus on Apple Podcasts. I will share another insightful and introspective mantra with you next Monday. Until then, keep showing up for yourself and your journey. I'm Gemma Spegg. See you next Monday. Until then keep showing up for yourself and your journey. I'm Gemma Spegg, see you next week. Mantra is hosted by me Gemma Spegg and is an open mind original powered by Pave Studios. This episode was brought to life by the Mantra team Max Cutler,

Kristen Acevedo, Ron Shapiro, Stacey Warren Kerr, Sarah Camp and Paul Leberskin. Thank you for listening. Ever wonder what the stars have to say about your favorite celebrities and yourself? Ali Lubar is breaking it all down on her brand new show Starstruck. New episodes drop every Wednesday. Just search Starstruck wherever you listen to podcasts.