In this episode, Lisa reflects on the surprising parallels between gardening and grieving and what her first sprouting bell pepper seeds taught her about wholeness.

Drawing on the wisdom of "lazy gardener" Ann (a Tennessee gardener Lisa has been learning from), she explores how plants grow more robust root systems when they're stripped back, not in spite of the loss but because of it.

The metaphor opens into a deeper meditation on grief as a force that disrupts unnatural patterns, breaks hearts open the way seeds must crack to sprout, and ultimately humanizes us by returning us to our interconnectedness with each other and the world.

Lisa also shares a vulnerable personal discovery: a pattern of reaching for old comforts (specifically, food) whenever she steps into a new, more visible identity.

She offers a gentle practice she's been working with — pausing for just two minutes in the moments she'd normally leave herself — as a way of honoring the tender in-between space where one self is dying and another is emerging.

Join Lisa as she invites listeners to consider their own questions: Where do your losses connect to your root system?

If grief is love, how is that true in your life?

For Further Reflection:

What connections do you see between human and heal, between being humanized and being made whole? Where in your own life have those words pointed to the same thing?

Think of a time you were stripped of something precious. Looking back now, can you see where new roots grew? What in you became more connected, more alive, because of that loss — not in spite of it?

If grief is love, where is that true in your life right now? What are you grieving that you wouldn't grieve if you didn't love?

Lisa describes catching herself at the refrigerator and saying, this is where I normally leave; I'm going to stay with you for two minutes. Where in your own life do you tend to leave yourself? What might it look like to stay, just briefly, just gently?

Is there a new identity sprouting in you right now — something tender, unfamiliar, not yet stable? What would it mean to tend it the way you'd tend a seedling: a little water, not too much sun, patience with how small it still looks?

Lisa reflects on a question that's been sitting with her: What if we renamed this podcast? From Grief Heals to Grief Humanizes because maybe that's the truer thing grief does.

She traces the thread from her peepaw's death by suicide when she was 13 (and how quickly life moved on around her, and within her) through her divorce after 23 years of marriage — the moment she first became "ripe," as she puts it, to actually enter grief. What the divorce took wasn't just a relationship; it was a whole stack of identity cards she'd been carrying: wife, mother, life coach, Christian, pastor. Stripped of all of them, she found herself face to face with something she'd long questioned about herself: whether she actually knew how to love, whether she was even real.

She also shares what spurred her to record this particular morning: waking up covered in hives after breaking weeks of clean eating, looking at herself in the mirror, and, instead of panic, feeling something close to joy. Her body said no. And she laughed. Because that's a relationship.

Along the way, Lisa touches on:

• Growing up in a colonized, industrialized world that treats people as commodities and how that gets internalized
• Why grief is such a powerful disruptor of the numbing strategies that "work, until they don't"
• The obsession with being "one of the good ones" and how that very obsession keeps harmful structures in place
• What it means to contribute to our collective humanity, not just personal healing
• A closing reference to Pádraig Ó Tuama's poem The Facts of Life: that the structures that constrict us may not be permanently constraining

Currently reading: The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee

Grief gives gifts. If that’s true, it opens up a conversation that asks what are the gifts that grief has given me.

The first gift that comes to mind is that my life is more than this body. Before Chip died, I’d lost several loved ones including my grandparents and sister.

It was different with Chip because I stayed in conversation with him.

I wrote to him at the end of each work day and after a while it was like he was writing back. I could sense his presence.

Two weeks after he passed a friend insisted I go to the doctor because she was afraid of the toll his absence was taking on my health. As I waited in the exam room, one of our songs came on and I felt his arms holding me while I rocked and cried in his embrace.

Sometimes while helping others through their grief journey, I sense the presence of their loved ones joining us and I’ve even encountered their person(s) when I’m alone.

These experiences soften my attachment to life in this body while expanding my connection to all living things. Past. Present. Future. As if the skin separating me from another dissolves.

I’m more curious. More open. More grateful.

The less attached I am to my body, the more brave I am and bravery feels important to me now.

Click here for a more intimate listen to the gifts I have received through grieving.

Last time I sought to answer the question, “How did I get here? What happened to (for) me?” to become a woman that my Bible college, homeschooling, good christian, pastor’s wife selves, would not recognize.

What came out was surprisingly emotional. At points it was hard to get my words out through the tears.

Then I was asked to do part 2 and share how those experiences brought me to where I am now and how I feel about this version of myself.

This episode is a totally different vibe – goofy, fun, and hopefully answers those questions.

Xoxo

I asked myself, “How did I get here? What happened to (for) me?” and this is what came out.

There are lots of tears as I trace my journey and think about how I became a woman that my Bible college, homeschooling, mom, christian, pastor’s wife selves, would not recognize.

I wonder what parts of your story will awaken as you hear mine.

Xoxo

Billy from episode: https://www.julylifecoach.com/about

Damien from episode: https://www.damienryanofarrell.com

Katrina Come Hell or High Water https://www.netflix.com/title/81676595

For nearly six months my girlfriend was pushing down the thought that she can’t stand her hubs – especially because he was sick. What kind of woman is contemplating divorce after her husband is diagnosed with a chronic condition. She couldn’t let herself think like that!

Or could she? She decided to experiment. What might it be like to notice the thoughts floating in the river of her mind without condemning herself? Could she simply become aware of them? Could she pay attention to her thoughts and the feelings that accompany them?

Could she notice the urge to eat, drink, or otherwise numb herself while noticing?

The answer is YES!!!!! She did it…

With her permission, here is the story… And the outcome.

Just WOW!

If you listen and find the episode helpful, please like it and share it with your friends. Your voice matters, so I invite you to leave a review.

Thank YOU!

LMZ

Stop. Will you pause for a breath?

When I pause and notice, it reminds me that I am alive and I am being lived. What do you notice?

This week’s Grief Heals episode is an offering, not a lesson. A slow, 25-minute walk with breath, grief, body, voice, and the quiet ways emotions try to set us free.

I don’t know what you’re holding these days. If you’re like me, it's more than you can even see.

So, this is for us because it’s about:

• The link between suppressed emotion and chronic illness
  

• The difference between anger and violence, and why I now believe anger is one of the many voices of love
  

• The ache of emotional poverty and the path to becoming resourced
  

• Why we’ve confused numbness with being nice
  

• The generational cost of withholding truth
  

• What happens when we finally scream aloud, witnessed and unedited
  

• And how love might move through us, as us, if we let it
  

This is for anyone who’s ever felt shame for feeling too much, or for not feeling at all.It’s for those of us who want to do better by our neighbors, but have been taught to ignore our own pain.It’s for those who long to breathe fully and live fully especially when it hurts.

After you listen, I invite you to ask yourself:

What part of me has been waiting to be heard?

Let that question breathe with you awhile because what speaks may surprise you.

P.S. Here are the people and practices referenced: Rachel Sachs and her Mind Your Body work (I’m on Day 137 of journal speak!)Francis Weller’s In the Absence of the OrdinaryGabor Maté’s When the Body Says NoHaka, a powerful reminder that emotion belongs in the body, voice, and community.

Let’s keep learning how to feel all the way through, so that we come home to ourselves and one another.

Release Jan 5, 2026

Subject: Salt, then sour, then sweet… and a sky wide enough for all of it

https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/yh2OfgeebmYqBgABc7e27er79a9zPg3yQMXH2XMJc59SnpGjNSUNJPQpHNH4vE0g.n0fvOWXE_jnEz3RF?startTime=1764002383000

Passcode: 91&M!QN5

Before I recorded this, I listened to Salt, then Sour, then Sweet, which plays at the end of Come See Me in the Good Light.

It surprised me when I slid down the wall, feeling the weight of my body too heavy to stand upright. Squatted down, my hand over my heart, I could feel the ache, the beauty, the memory, the love… all of it living in me at once.

Like life, this episode isn’t linear. It weaves and connects through pain, shame, old church doctrines and new kinds of dignity.

I used to despise my weakness, especially the parts of me that didn’t feel smart enough, composed enough, good enough. Becoming a ‘christian’ helped me cover grief with Scripture and performance, to wrap pain in Bible verses and shoulds.

Now, I believe that what love does is notice.

Maybe grief is LOVE, noticing.

Today, I share old stories in new ways – The divorce that felt like failure. My naked body in the mirror, never again to be touched by a lover. Shame when I accidentally posted something too vulnerable and felt stupid and exposed.

How I softened to the despised and rejected in me.

In a world that prizes the hero, the strong, the conqueror, it is so good to feel grief that holds, instead of hides.

Healing is not born on the battlefield, but in the mirror, the backyard, the breath, the body that won’t be ignored anymore.

So, if you feel like you’re too much, or not enough… if you’re tired of trying to outgrow your wounds… if something in you is slowly being smoothed like river stone by years of holding and noticing and being held…

Come listen.

P.S. A few things that held me as I recorded this:

Salt, Then Sour, Then Sweet ~ song.

Come See Me in the Good Light ~ the new doc on Andrea & Megan’s love story.

The Beast in Me on Netflix ~ a living example of that Gospel of Thomas line: “If you do not bring forth what is within you, what is within you will destroy you.”

Before I recorded this, I listened to, Salt, then Sour, then Sweet, which plays at the end of Come See Me in the Good Light.

It surprised me when I slid down the wall, feeling the weight of my body too heavy to stand upright. Squatted down, my hand over my heart, I could feel the ache, the beauty, the memory, the love… all of it living in me at once.

Like life, this episode isn’t linear. It weaves and connects through pain, shame, old church doctrines and new kinds of dignity.

I used to despise my weakness, especially the parts of me that didn’t feel smart enough, composed enough, good enough. Becoming a ‘christian’ helped me cover grief with Scripture and performance, to wrap pain in Bible verses and shoulds.

Now, I believe that what love does is notice.

Maybe grief is LOVE, noticing.

Today, I share old stories in new ways – The divorce that felt like failure. My naked body in the mirror, never again to be touched by a lover. Shame when I accidentally posted something too vulnerable and felt stupid and exposed.

How I softened to the despised and rejected in me.

In a world that prizes the hero, the strong, the conqueror, it is so good to feel grief that holds, instead of hides.

Healing is not born on the battlefield, but in the mirror, the backyard, the breath, the body that won’t be ignored anymore.

So, if you feel like you’re too much, or not enough… if you’re tired of trying to outgrow your wounds… if something in you is slowly being smoothed like river stone by years of holding and noticing and being held…

Come listen.

P.S. A few things that held me as I recorded this:

Salt, Then Sour, Then Sweet ~ song.

Come See Me in the Good Light ~ the new doc on Andrea & Megan’s love story.

The Beast in Me on Netflix ~ a living example of that Gospel of Thomas line: “If you do not bring forth what is within you, what is within you will destroy you.”