Healing After Loss: Navigating Grief with the 'Flow Method' & Spiritual Connection

Grieving the loss of a loved one often feels insurmountable, but what if there was a method to navigate those tumultuous waters with a bit more ease? This week, we host Denise Dillworth, who shares her personal journey of loss after her husband Martin's passing in 2009. Struggling with traditional counseling methods, Denise crafted her own unique "flow method" to help others move through grief more efficiently. Hear how she dealt with anger towards the hospital system and the transformative experience of feeling Martin's spiritual presence through subtle signs.

Explore with us the profound connection we can maintain with loved ones who've passed and how this can bring comfort and healing. Denise's heartfelt anecdotes about sensing Martin’s presence and the creation of her flow method provide a roadmap for those dealing with profound loss. Discover why confronting emotions head-on is crucial and how societal norms sometimes hinder true healing. With practical advice on dealing with grief authentically, Denise inspires us to process our feelings, validate our experiences, and embrace a newfound joy and self-love in our journeys forward.

Connect with Denise Dillworth here:
www.flowgriefacademy.com

Chapters

• 0:00 Navigating Grief and Anger Processing
• 15:12 Soothing Grief and Spirit Connection
• 18:48 Embracing Grief and Healing Pathways

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Lift One Self podcast, where we break mental health stigmas through conversations. I'm your host, nat Nat, and we dive into topics about trauma and how it impacts the nervous system. Yet we don't just leave you there. We share insights and tools of self-care, meditation and growth that help you be curious about your own biology. Your presence matters. Please like and subscribe to our podcast. Help our community grow. Let's get into this. Oh, and please remember to be kind to yourself.

Speaker 2: 0:36

Welcome to the Lift One Self podcast. I am your host, nat Nat, and I have a beautiful guest today. Her name is Denise Dillworth. So, denise, could you please introduce yourself to the listeners and myself and let us know a little bit about you?

Speaker 3: 0:54

Absolutely. First of all, thank you so much for giving me the honor to share my story and to maybe help somebody out there that's struggling with grief. Maybe help somebody out there that's struggling with grief. My husband, martin, passed away in 2009. He was only 55. I was 51. So that's 15 years ago now, and that pivoted me into doing what I do today, because I realized that there is no real help out there. The help that's out there is very limited. We are told to wait for time, we are told to go through the five stages of grief, and we all dutifully do that. I did go and see a counselor, go and see a therapist. I did all of that and it just doesn't help. So, um, you know, that's how my journey started and how I created my unique flow method for helping people move through grief as quickly as possible. We are not meant to stay in grief. We're not meant to be sad for the rest of our life.

Speaker 2: 1:59

Yeah, yeah. There's so many points that I want to jump into. Yet before that, would you join me in a mindful moment so we can ground ourselves in our breath and open our hearts Absolutely and for the listeners? As you always hear, most of you are listening to this podcast while driving, so please do not close your eyes when I ask to close your eyes. Yet the other prompts you're able to do and follow and you know, take that mindful moment for yourself. So, denise, get comfortable in your seat and when you're ready, you're going to gently close your eyes and you're going to begin breathing in and out through your nose. Bring in your awareness to watching your breath go in and out through your nose, bringing your awareness to watching your breath go in and out. You're not going to try and control your breath, you're just going to let the awareness watch the rhythm of the breath going in and out allowing it to bring you into the body, it to bring you into the body.

Speaker 2: 3:03

There may be some sensations or feelings coming up. Let them come up.

Speaker 1: 3:19

You're safe to feel. You're safe to let go. Surrender the need to control, release the need to resist and just be.

Speaker 2: 3:30

Be with your breath, Drop deeper into your body. There may be some thoughts or to-do lists that have popped up in your mind and that's okay, gently bring your awareness back to your breath, creating space between the awareness and the thoughts and going deeper into the body into the breath Again. Some thoughts may have popped up, and that's okay. Bring the awareness back to your breath, beginning again, dropping deeper into the body, creating more space between the awareness and the thoughts.

Speaker 1: 4:17

And just allowing yourself to be with the breath.

Speaker 2: 4:20

the breath Now, while still staying with the breath at your own time and at your own pace you're going to gently open your eyes while staying with your breath.

Speaker 3: 4:39

That was really awesome.

Speaker 2: 4:41

It's something that I incorporated with the podcast about a year ago. I understand the benefits of taking these moments for yourself and instead of telling people you should meditate, or let's bring it into the dialogue so people can, you know, take that mindful moment, because sometimes the discipline to do it for ourselves it's just not there. Yet when we join with somebody else, it feels more safe and secure to go into that. Beautiful, beautiful yes, how's your heart doing Great?

Speaker 3: 5:16

Yeah, great, yeah. Yeah, it's very joyful at the moment. It's got a lot. It's bursting out with joy and I can't even explain it. You know, when you just can't say what it feels like, you just know it's just, it's like a flower that's going.

Speaker 2: 5:34

Exactly exactly. It's funny how, when we start feeling, we come to recognize is very difficult to put language and words onto what you're actually feeling and expressing, because it's so multi-dimensional and it's so vast that words cannot really capture it. You just express it and feel and send out the vibrations so somebody can understand what it feels like through their nervous system. Now, before we went into the mindful moment, you spoke about Martin. You spoke about the grief, and you spoke about your flow, where you help people to get back into joy. Before that, though, when Martin transitioned to the other side of love, what did your grief process look like? And I read that anger surfaced. So I'm curious to know did you befriend anger? Were you able to face it, and what did that look like in your process of grief?

Speaker 3: 6:43

And what did that look like in your process of grief? Yeah, I was angry, not with Martin, but with the hospital system, because he died of a blood clot. He basically collapsed on the side of the road, was rushed through, obviously living in Australia. We were living in a rural setting, so the nearest hospital was an eight-hour drive, so they flew him down by a Royal Flying Doctor was an eight-hour drive, so they flew him down by a Royal Flying Doctor and by the time he got there he couldn't move. He was basically paralyzed from the waist down. So while they were doing all the investigations and everything, they had all the blood clotting equipment on him and everything, and it was two weeks later that he died of a blood clot and he was coming home. He was regaining his movement and everything and he was coming home and two weeks later, boom, he was gone to a blood clot.

Speaker 3: 7:35

So my anger and my frustration was with the system. Why didn't they pick it up? He was on all the warfarin, he was on everything else. And then my anger turned to him because he was always very stoic I'm okay, somebody else needs help more than me, I'm fine. And my I started questioning. Did he not raise the alarm when he was feeling sick? Did he not raise the alarm to say, hey guys, there's something wrong here? Or did he just go, it'll be okay, it'll pass? And these are questions we can never ask ourselves, never. So that anger sort of dissipated and went to. It morphed into guilt because I wasn't with him when he died. So it morphed into guilt. If only I could have. I should have, I could have seen. I could have maybe seen that. You know all those questions that we ask ourselves which really have no answers. We don't know. Could I have saved him? I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. And I fell into a hole. I really fell into a hole because I didn't know what to do with myself.

Speaker 3: 8:46

We had been together since I was 16. Wow, it's a long time, yeah, yeah. So got married at 19. I was a week before my 20, a week before my 20th birthday, so he was only 22. You know, we were young kids, getting married, having families. We grew up together, we fought together, we had businesses together, so our whole life was just one.

Speaker 3: 9:14

So when he died and so suddenly I didn't know who I was, I didn't know what to do. I could feel him with me. I knew he was with me, but I would also get angry for him leaving me on eight acres. That was his dream, not mine. That was always your dream, not mine. I didn't. You know. We moved up here and to live on eight acres so you could have a motorbike track, and now you've left me with this. You know that was, that was where I was, and a lot of people think, oh, I shouldn't, I shouldn't speak ill of the dead, I shouldn't do that. Hell yes, get angry with him, get it out. We have to feel that frustration and that anger, because anger is really frustration. We can't change the situation, so we get frustrated and then we get angry and we have to process that. We have to feel it.

Speaker 2: 10:11

Yeah, and you know more and more it's really recognizing we don't know how to feel helplessness. There is a sense of helplessness in there and then helplessness. You feel no sense of control. Sense of helplessness in there and then helplessness, you feel no sense of control, and it can feel very debilitating when you're trying to find control in the helplessness, rather than sit with the feeling and let it pass through you, you know, let it process of what the information is trying to surface and tell you in that sense of helplessness. Yet we tend to want to take action with that and there is such.

Speaker 3: 10:45

That's such a great point. Because in that helplessness and we want to control the outcome, because this is a new feeling, it's a feeling you've never felt before. It's not something that you can say, well, yes, I felt this when this happened We've got no memory or no anchors or no points to actually say, well, yeah, I felt this when and every grief situation is different. So you might have lost a parent I did, I lost both my parents but when I lost my husband, that was totally different. And you know, I've worked with ladies that have lost two or three husbands and each time it's different, because the relationship is different, the energy's different. So in that helplessness, we then shut down, because we want to control the end I'm okay, I'm all right, soldier on, you'll be fine and we shut down so tight that it it we become small, we start isolating ourselves. That's when addiction starts, because we're not feeling. And addiction is not just to alcohol.

Speaker 3: 11:53

I started getting addicted to shoes. I love shoes, I always have loved shoes. Shoes are my go-to. When I'm down, I go and buy a pair of shoes. I do, but I was finding that I would go out to the store and I would mull around and I had to get out of the house, right. So I'd go by myself and I'd go mull around the stores and have a look and I'd see a great pair of shoes and I'd go, wow, that's absolutely amazing. And I'd look at them, try them on. Oh, they're gorgeous. But hang on, they come in red, blue, black and beige. Now, what color am I going to get? Now, because we're in that stage of eh, we've lost control. Well, the control is I'll buy one in each color, because there's no decision. We can't make decisions.

Speaker 2: 12:41

Yeah, Now the thing with when people go through their grief process and if they can find the language. It can be really challenging to allow joy to come back in, to allow yourself to feel and receive joy. Do you recall when joy came back into your life?

Speaker 3: 13:07

joy came back into your life, like yesterday, like yesterday, even though it was 15 years ago, because we have this survivor's guilt and even if you don't realize you've got survivor's guilt, we all have it. Why didn't he I go rather than him? Or why didn't you know, in a case of a mother that loses a child, this is not right. The order order's wrong. I should have gone first. So we have a survivor's guilt. So it's heavy, it's slow, it's oh. I feel so sad. I remember the first time I was with my kids and my grandkids and we were having a barbecue sitting around and one of the kids or grandkids did something funny and before we knew it I was just laughing, my first belly laugh, and then I shut down. And then I shut down. I wasn't allowed to laugh. I'm not supposed to laugh.

Speaker 2: 13:56

Yeah, it's a very crushing feeling that you think that if you have joy, then you've forgotten the person and that it feels like a total disrespect of their legacy and their image that you are enjoying life, because how could you enjoy life when they're not in it with you? Yet for myself, what I've seen with grief because I've dealt with grief since I've been young, because my grandmother passed when I was 11. So she was like a mother figure to me, more than my mother, so it was recognizing. Oh, she's just here in a different way. Her presence is still here. It's just not a physical form that you get to share memories in that way.

Speaker 2: 14:46

Yet if you open yourself up, the profoundness of the presence, the messages, the safety and the security that you can feel with that energy is something that a lot of people know about. Yet there's still a lot of people that they're like, no, that doesn't exist, know about. Yet there's still a lot of people that they're like, no, that doesn't exist, or they don't want to open themselves up to the possibility of feeling this presence and feeling the energy. Could you let us know how it felt for you? As you said, you felt Martin and that he's been around. Can you tell us what you know? Was it right away or did it take a process?

Speaker 3: 15:27

tell us what you know. Was it right away or did it take a process? Well, because I was open to it. I've always been very spiritual and on on on that journey, so I was already open to it. Um, you know, when I lost my mom and I lost my dad, I knew that they were with me.

Speaker 3: 15:37

And when Martin died, um, I remember going to see, because he died so far away and I wasn't with him. On the day of his funeral we had an open casket where the kids could say goodbye and everybody could say goodbye. And when I saw him lying in that coffin, it was a weird sensation that came over me. Martin's mouth naturally went down you know how some people's mouths just naturally go down and he always, always used to say to him smile. And he would just lift his, lift lips up and say, hey, I'm smiling, are you happy now? You know that was the joke we had between each other. When I saw him in the casket you know how they dress the bodies and everything and I looked at him and of course you could see it was the soul was gone, it was just a body. But he was smiling and I just I couldn't.

Speaker 3: 16:28

I could have, but I didn't. I wanted to remain composed because everybody was so sad I wanted to burst out laughing and say oh my god, you've left me a smile. So I knew he was there. I knew he was at the service. He was with us with the kids. He was always. Whenever I felt down or I felt anything, a song would play. You know, when we left South Africa in 1988, we immigrated to Australia and the song Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now was number one hit and that became our theme song because we were immigrating, we were starting a new life and nothing's gonna stop us now and still to today. I know when that comes on it's like hey, hello, how are you?

Speaker 3: 17:17

you know it's and it'll always come when I'm feeling a bit in, you know, always, always, always, always when I'm feeling a bit in you know, always, always, always, always, when I'm uncertain about something or somebody said, you know it will always be to lift me up again.

Speaker 2: 17:31

Yeah, so I'm sure some of the listeners when they heard at the beginning that you had this process called flow to help people process the grief, to come back into joy, to feel alive, Can you let the listeners know a little bit what this flow process is and how you developed it?

Speaker 3: 17:52

Absolutely so after Martin passed away, as I said, I went and got help and wasn't helping me. So in my wisdom I thought I would then become a life coach to help me. I was never going to work with anybody, because I just wanted to help me and get the tools to help me. And I was told at the time do not work with people in grief, because people in grief, you can't coach people in grief. Okay, fair enough, I'm not, I'm coaching me.

Speaker 3: 18:24

But I realized that through going within and, of course, with my intuition and with my spiritual side, I went within and I used those tools to create the flow method and I realized what did I do? I reverse engineered how did I heal so quickly? And I reverse engineered it and I went okay, the first one, as you keep saying, is feel. We have to feel. And I said but we don't want to feel as human beings. It's too painful to feel, so we shut it down. And that's when we also don't get messages we're not receiving, so we don't feel. Yes, we feel sad. Yes, we feel like crying, yes, we feel depressed, but that's not feeling. We have to get beneath it. What are you really feeling? And we can't always say, oh, I'm feeling this, one, feeling that, but it's working through that. So that's the work we do together. So the first in the flow is to feel.

Speaker 3: 19:25

Because once we feel, we now know what we need to let go of not the love, not the life we had together, but that, what heavy burden that you carry on a subconscious level. What are you letting go of? Now you can start overcoming. Now you can start learning to love yourself. Now you can start learning to who am I? You know that that's a burning question always. Who am I now? And then become whole, and that's reimagining your new life. Where do I want to go? What do I want to do? Now that I know who I am, I know I've let go of that pain. I'm creating my new life of joy. So that's the process.

Speaker 1: 20:03

I love it.

Speaker 2: 20:04

It's very simple, yet it's not easy to apply because of our habits, of not feeling our authentic emotions, not having safety in our body, not knowing how to trust ourselves, not knowing how to validate our own experiences, that we're looking for other people to validate it. And also the power of choice. We can choose how we want to feel inside our bodies, despite the circumstances and the experiences. Yet it doesn't happen overnight. You know, it takes practice to remind yourself wait, I have a power choice of shifting my perception, because your perception has a real big control on your mental state and your emotions and how you're going to perceive and feel things and get triggered by things. And, you know, navigate through the impermanence of life. Um, yeah, very profound that. You know you did the alchemy, you took those impurities and you turn them into gold. Yet you didn't just keep the gold for yourself, you're sharing it with other people, which is very profound.

Speaker 3: 21:17

Yeah, and I'm now teaching others as well how to help others. That's the next step. So I not only help those, but if you then want to move on and become a flow grief release practitioner, I have a whole new program that we do that together. Beautiful. Yeah, because I find that people get stuck in grief. Yeah, and they really do, because there's this belief that we have to wait for time. Time heals all. Time is an illusion. Time is just time. What is time here, I am in Australia. It's what 8.51 am. I'm in your future, you're in my past. What is time here, I am in Australia, it's what 8.51 am. I'm in your future, you're in my past. What is time Exactly? Exactly what is time? So we get stuck in that time heals all. And then there's the old narrative of you know it goes through the five stages of grief. Yeah, it doesn't exist.

Speaker 2: 22:22

Yeah, it's really recognizing recognizing too, like I use the term time is a tool, not a toy. So you love it, I love it. Yeah, a lot of times people think they have to earn time or that time is going to smooth out things, when in actuality it's that you have to go in and do that warrior work of understanding yourself, to seeing what is causing these ruptures or the pain. And and like you said, the first thing with your flow is feel. And in a society that tells us to numb the pain, to go outside of ourselves and be distracted, we don't know how to actually hold space to feel our authentic emotions. But that is the elixir of getting back into self, to connect into within your body, so that you have the energy and the access to your intuition and your wisdom within.

Speaker 3: 23:17

What are you feeling? And we can't verbalize what we're feeling, you know. So many people say to me Denise, how do you help me feel I don't help you feel, you feel I can't help you feel. And that comes from another belief that we have in Western society is that somebody will come and fix me. I'm that somebody will come and fix me. Yeah, I'm broken. Somebody come and fix me. Now you're not broken.

Speaker 3: 23:41

You're going through a, an emotional time and you need to go through that. You need, you can't, you can't go under it, you can't go around it. You've actually got to face it head on and go through it, and by doing that, it's what you're feeling. I speak to so many ladies that say oh no, I'm feeling, you know, the best thing I've done is keep myself busy. No, please don't keep yourself busy. Yeah, Because that is just shutting you down. When you keep yourself busy. Or they say say, thank goodness I've got my grandkids. Or thank goodness I've got my other children. Or thank goodness I've got my business. No, forget about all of those. This is your time now to heal and be human be human.

Speaker 3: 24:29

Be human, cry, scream, do whatever it takes. You know I am after martin. The best advice I got was from an old school friend of mine in South Africa. We went to primary school and high school and everything together. And when he heard that Martin had died, he called me up and he said I know we haven't spoken in years. He said I've just heard Martin's passed away. He said but I want you to do one thing. He said I want you to scream at your steering wheel.

Speaker 3: 24:55

Passed away. He said, but I want you to do one thing. He said I want you to scream at your steering wheel when you're driving. I want you to scream. And I went oh thanks, gav. You know, and that is what I did. I took his advice and the minute I hit the open road I mean I didn't do it at traffic lights or anything like that, but the minute I hit the open road, while I was not around people, I would just scream and scream and scream and I didn't realize at the time why. And the benefit of that? It's because we're getting rid of that energy, we're releasing it in our own little cocoon of our car.

Speaker 2: 25:28

Yeah, and the thing is is when we were children, when we yelled, we were told not to yell. So we weren't even given a safe space to do that expression, because it annoyed and triggered the people. Um, so we were told don't do that.

Speaker 3: 25:43

So then we started disconnecting from our toolkit of expression and releasing it out of the body yeah, you know, my mother always used to say to me Denise, stop crying, you're crying for nothing. Now I know there's a lot of ladies and a lot of people here who's going to relate to what I'm about to say. If you don't stop crying, I'll give you something to cry about. So we shut down. We shut that emotion down. A lot of people don't cry when they lose a loved one. That emotion is so shut down until we start working together and we open it up again. We open up. Okay, give yourself permission. You're allowed to cry, you're allowed to do this, scream, you know. Go for a run, go to the beach, just get in touch, feel it. You have to feel it. It's so important.

Speaker 2: 26:33

I want to bring you into a reflective question. I want to ask you to take this awareness now and to go back to your 18-year-old self, and you have three words. You can tell your 18-year-old self to carry you to the journey to right now. What would those three words be?

Speaker 3: 26:55

Love yourself, love yourself, yourself, put yourself first, you matter.

Speaker 2: 27:01

So I know that listeners are like okay enough, nat, nat, I want to know where I can find Denise and get access to her. So could you let the listeners know where they can find you and connect with you?

Speaker 3: 27:14

Absolutely the best place is my website. Everything's on there flowgriefacademycom. There's a link there to book a call with me. I do a 45-minute to an hour sometimes. Call, free, brief release. Call, see where you're at and help you through. What's your next step. I offer that as a free gift from myself and I've just finished my book. I've just posted it on Amazon. So I now have my book on Amazon, which is Courageous Widows Turn your Grief Into Growth. It's a life journey, 15 years in the making. Congratulations, Thank you. Thank you, but it really goes through the flow method and how to heal and how to let go. So that's available now and I also have my podcast, but that's all on the website. The book I've got to still put that up on the website because that's just been published. I've just launched that, so that's my good news.

Speaker 2: 28:20

Congratulations. That's huge. I want to ask is there something that you would, that you feel called to leave for the listeners? Anything that you feel called in your heart, that is tugging at you, that you think a listener may need to hear?

Speaker 3: 28:38

yeah, invest in yourself, do the work because you are worth it. We are so conditioned, not that I don't matter, I'll give, I'll do this for everybody else, but not for me. When we fall apart, everybody else around us falls apart. So invest in yourself, and I don't mean financially invest, I mean, isn't that invest, but you invest in your personal growth. Invest in reading books, helping.

Speaker 2: 29:07

If you want to invest and do the program, that's great too, but that's not what I mean by invest in investing yourself so I want to thank you for sharing the most valuable gift you could give to anybody, which is your time and being here and sharing you know, your experiences and, as I said, the alchemy and allowing people to see what's possible and for the listener, at any time, if there was a tug or an opening or you felt seen, reach out to Denise. That limbic system is signaling that there's an opening, so don't ignore it and shut it down. Reach out to Denise because there's a vibration and there's an opening and a safety that she has for you to rediscover more profoundly what's within yourself. So thank you so much, denise, for being here, for doing the warrior work in your life and to sharing and creating in this world. It's truly appreciated.

Speaker 3: 30:10

Thank you so much for having me and inviting me on and for me being able to share and and just say to everybody that's out there that's lost a loved one life continues, love continues, it doesn't die as uh as I always say, energy doesn't die, it transforms yes, spot on absolutely. Yeah, transforms yes, spot on Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 30:34

Yeah, please remember to be kind to yourself. Yes.

Speaker 1: 30:40

Hey, you made it all the way here. I appreciate you and your time. If you found value in this conversation, please share it out. If there was somebody that popped into your mind, take action and share it out with them. It possibly may not be them that will benefit. It's that they know somebody that will benefit from listening to this conversation. So please take action and share out the podcast. You can find us on social media on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok under Lift One Self, and if you want to inquire about the work that I do and the services that I provide to people, come over on my website, Come into a discovery call LiftOneSelfcom. Until next time, please remember to be kind and gentle with yourself. You matter.