Brandi has always followed her curiosity. She has a BFA in theater, and minors in physics and math. She also ended up getting a bachelor’s degree in physics, philosophy, and religion with another minor in math. Brandi also spent two years in a Ph.D. program in philosophy of science and science studies. She loves to think bigger about who we are in the world.

Two and a half years ago, Brandi lost her mother to cancer. Her mother’s battle with cancer was up and down, going through chemotherapy and surgeries to give her more time. Brandi moved back home to be closer to her mom in her final months. After moving her mother to hospice, Brandi realized that her mother’s body was like a prison for her mother. 

Brandi explains that, even though you want your loved one to stay with you so badly, you realize you have to let them go. There is so much heartbreak and absolute beauty in that moment of gut-wrenching loss but knowing that you were there as the person that your loved one needed.

Loss profoundly shaped Brandi. She learned that the stages of grief are not linear things. Her grief pops up at seemingly random times. But she actually learned something very important in a business mastermind. She learned that it’s okay to go fetal and feel your emotions. Brandi let herself feel my emotions anytime they came up. While grieving her mother’s death, Brandi also learned that being honest and vulnerable led to deeper relationships with her clients. 

Ultimately, Brandi knows that her grief was the price of love, and she loved her mother so much. 

You can connect with Brandi on Instagram – www.instagram.com/brandibernoskie

Losing Hugo was the greatest heartbreak of Brandi’s life. The loss of Hugo was particularly hard because Brandi had just lost her mom. Brandi didn’t have her best friend, her mom, to comfort her. Without Hugo, Brandi’s days feel emptier, and it reminds her of the emptiness she experienced losing her mom.

Brandi explains that when that love you experienced was unconditional, you process that grief entirely differently. She felt like she had time to process and grieve her mother while she was sick. However, Hugo’s death happened so quickly she didn’t feel like she had that time.

Brandi and Margy talk about how positive events in your life can still trigger the trauma and grief from loss. Margy recently got engaged and realized that when you hit a big milestone that is supposed to be a happy event, you can get hit with all the feelings of wishing your loved one could be with you to experience it. Ultimately, Margy and Brandi have found healing in feeling their emotions and telling their stories. The goal of this podcast is to create a safe space for people to feel those emotions connected to loss and grief and talk through them.

You can connect with Brandi on Instagram @brandibernoskie .

After rejecting an arranged marriage, Rubina ran away from home and attended college. She didn’t speak to her father for a few years, but thankfully Rubina and her father now have a great relationship. While she was in college, she had to rebuild a family with people she was meeting in an entirely new place.

Even though this was an immense challenge, Rubina reframed it in her mind as an adventure and as an opportunity. Reframing was integral for Rubina to not feel like a victim. With every challenge, she asked herself, “What am I supposed to learn from this?”

Rubina highly recommends that everyone should acknowledge and embrace that challenge that they’ve been through. For Rubina, she is thankful for the challenges because they showed Rubina who she really is and what she is capable of.

You can connect with Rubina at her website www.fireflystrategies.com/

Jacqueline lost her right-hand woman. Jacqueline and Alicia were in total flow. Everything they did together worked. Alicia was suffering from bipolar disorder. She never got treatment because she felt like if she got rid of the bad, she would get rid of the good. Alicia’s best friend died of cancer and became a trigger for her bipolar. 

After taking some time off, Alicia came back to work but she wasn’t the same. It was the first time Jacqueline believed in the soul. She would look into Alicia’s eyes, and her eyes were so empty, devoid of a soul. Jacqueline had stopped Alicia from killing herself a number of times, but Alicia’s 7th attempt at taking her life was successful.

Jacqueline was completely shattered. She was then told she would not be welcome at the funeral. Alicia’s husband categorically blamed Jacqueline for her death and the community stepped back from Jacqueline and her team. She felt like she was high-functioning walking dead. It took a long time for Jacqueline to deal with it and get through it.

If you are busy and don’t take the time, no matter how much time has passed you won’t be able to go through it and process that grief. Jacqueline realized she had never processed her grief. She had a stored grief reaction in her body, and 6 years later, she realized she had to do the work. You can’t side-step grief. 

Jacqueline reminds us that we can trust something, but until we believe in it we can’t actually bring it to life. Trust is the logical analytical assessment, but believing comes from deep within your heart. When recovering from grief, every step is important, and every step is an achievement. Every single day there is something you can celebrate. But you have to do the damn work.

You can connect with Jacqueline at jacquleinenagle.com and speakableyou.com.

Grief is not linear. Processing her grief was a series of surrenders for Debra. She continued returning to the promise she made to herself: “I will work with this, I will not deny this. I will continue to surrender to the question, what is here for me, what can I learn, what is possible within this?” That was a grounding place for Debra to return to when she was lost at sea under the waves of grief.

In Debra’s healing work, she uses the concept that grief has relationship to joy. If we minimize one feeling, like grief, we minimize them all, like joy. When grief comes to the heart, the heart breaks and that’s universal. Debra asks, how do we build the capacity of our heart? If we are seeking more joy, how can we build that?  

Debra started thinking about building muscle. When we work out and strengthen our muscles, the muscles are sore the next day because our muscle fibers have been stretched and broken. The process of those fibers healing themselves is what strengthens our muscles. Debra applied this concept to our hearts. Grief comes and breaks our heart and the process of working with grief helps us to build those fibers back together and strengthens that heart.

You can connect with Debra at Debralynnedriscoll.com. At her website, you can purchase her memoir, or you can download a sample read.