What if healing doesn’t come from fighting your way through grief but from accepting what is, one honest step at a time?

In this powerful episode of Finding Your Fierce, host Carolyn Colleen sits down with John DeDakis: award-winning novelist, writing coach, and former Senior Copy Editor for CNN’s The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer to explore the quiet, courageous work of healing through loss.

John shares the pivotal moments that shaped his life: facing an existential crisis as a young man during the Vietnam War draft, choosing acceptance over resistance, and discovering only in hindsight that grief had been woven through his writing for decades. What began as storytelling became an unintentional path to healing, clarity, and purpose.

Together, Carolyn and John reflect on why healing is often gradual, why it’s only visible in the looking back, and how creative expression, whether through writing, art, or reflection, can help us process grief without forcing outcomes. This conversation reframes fierceness not as pushing harder, but as the strength to surrender, listen, and trust what’s unfolding.

If you’re navigating grief, transition, or a season of deep uncertainty, this episode offers a compassionate reminder: acceptance can be one of the fiercest acts of healing there is.

Links and Resources:

1. Dr. Carolyn Colleen Website
2. Join RESET: a free daily reset for clarity, calm, and intentional living.
3. John on LinkedIn
4. Upcoming Retreat with John DeDakis: Writing Through the Pain of Loss

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