Grief Coach Navigates Loss of Mother
Part One
By Luke Schmaltz, VOICES Newsletter Editor
Julie Foster is a life coach, a grief coach, and founder of A New Path Life and Grief Coaching. Foster recently went full time into this enterprise after running the Recovery Education Collaborative for Bay State Community Services.
Foster shares the story of her journey and her strategies for helping others with grief. Her mother died of cancer in 2018.
Duty Calls
“When my mom died, I was working in the recovery field and as a mental health counselor,” Foster begins. “So, I took a year off. My husband and I packed up all our things and moved into my parents’ basement. I spent that year being my mother’s primary caretaker and wow, what a journey that was. It was physically and emotionally very difficult. She lived one year, exactly, after being diagnosed.”
“I went into this mode of focusing solely on what she needed and what was going to keep her alive while putting all my own needs aside. I stopped going to recovery meetings, exercising, and eating well. My needs didn’t matter during that time.”
“I am so grateful to have had that year with her and I would never change any of it. I saw it as a way to make living amends, because as a teenager I was probably a real asshole – sneaking out in the middle of the night and such. What stopped me from drinking was a drinking and driving accident I was in 23 years ago. All this time later, I think of how that affected my parents.”
“All through that year, since I am a grief therapist, I assumed I would know how to grieve. That was the furthest thing from the truth. I did not know what to do. I went from being her caretaker and making all the decisions to then wondering what my role was once my mom died. I realized I had to focus back on myself, which was really hard.”
A New Beginning
“I started with Weight Watchers and lost forty pounds,” Foster says. “I began creating rituals and habits which helped keep me grounded. After my mom passed, I had all this grief energy I didn't know what to do with. I didn’t want to hold it anymore. So, every morning, I went for a walk on the beach. I turned it into a kind of meditation where I would look for sea glass. If I found a clear one, it was my mother sending me a message of clarity. If I got a green one, she was sending me a message of abundance. It was a sort of game I created.”
“I did this every day, and it made me feel better. Being open to messages from your loved one can help you process while staying connected to them. Combining my daily rituals with a healthy diet and regular exercise was very helpful.”
“Grief affects your body so much – in ways you may not even be aware of,” Foster continues. “Grief is not a nice, neat little thing you can put in a box, tie it shut with a pretty little bow, and put it away in a closet. It comes with us and stays with us for the rest of our lives. It is a matter of determining who I am now without this loved one, this job, or this relationship and how do I move forward in this life.”
Immersive Growth
“The Grieving Brain and The Grieving Body are two books by Mary-Frances O’Connor that I found deeply informative,” Foster explains. “I am using some of the information to inform workshops I am creating for my clients because so many of them ask, ‘Why do I feel so overwhelmed? Why does it feel like I am walking through mud? Why can’t I just do simple tasks?’ I explain to them that these issues are the effect of grief on your brain and your body.”
“Our brains develop these habits with the people we love and are connected with. So, when that person is gone, our brain is still looking for the pattern. If your spouse has passed and they were the one who did the laundry or the cooking, your brain is still looking for the meal and the clean clothes. That’s why it is so important to create new habits – in order to heal.”
“Once I hit my own grief wall, I realized that it wasn’t easy to find grief support. I found a grief group through hospice, and I had my own individual grief therapist, but I still felt like I needed more. I did energy healing – reiki and sound healing – once a week to cleanse my nervous system because it had been in fight or flight for a year.”
“I also went to a program called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. It was an eight-week course offered through UMASS Memorial Health Center. They teach you the fundamentals and basics of how to meditate. I was looking to heal my body as much as my mind.”
“Mindfulness is important because we are expected to go, go, go all the time – productivity is rewarded, and rest is not. I was doing the opposite, which was trying to rest, so I kept at it.”
Responding to Grief
“Another thing that helped me was the Grief Recovery Method which was recommended to me by a medium. This approach, developed by the Grief Recovery Institute, is very similar to going through the Big Book with an AA sponsor. It is an evidence-based, action-based program that you can follow with a certified grief recovery specialist, so that’s what I did. I met with this woman once a week for eight weeks. We read the Grief Recovery Handbook together and I had homework as well. It felt very much like going through the twelve steps – it was educational and transformational.”
“I went through this learning experience with an amazing woman who had lost a loved one in the Boston Marathon bombings,” Foster says. “At first we talked about the messaging and myths we get about grief. Most people learned to grieve generationally – by watching their parents and relatives grieve. Those funerals and wakes had plenty of booze and plenty of food. Is that what is supposed to fix things? Is that what is supposed to make us feel better?”
“We also examined the antiquated approach that three days of bereavement is plenty, and then you should go back to work, and everything should be totally normal. Doing this exercise of looking back and examining how grief was handled in the past made me realize that when I lost my uncle (my godfather), when I was in high school, was the first time I drank to feel better. That’s what everyone else around me was doing and I was only 14 or 15 years old.”
Confronting Loss
“This process is a little uncomfortable because you have to look back at the losses you experience and how you reacted to them – what you did or didn’t do. Then you pick one of those losses and focus on that relationship and write about what you wish you said and any unfinished business with that person.”
“This approach can be applied to all kinds of loss,” Foster explains, “Such as the end of a relationship, the loss of a job, moving, divorce – any type of loss. At the end of this process, I felt like I had lost 50 pounds of rocks I had been carrying for a long time. It gave me a level of clarity I didn’t have before, and it changed the way I was going about grieving. Then of course, I wanted to help others, so I got certified as a Grief Recovery Specialist.”
“The Grief Recovery Institute offers an online training program, which I really enjoyed. All my classmates were like-minded in that they wanted to help others with grief. I got certified and at the same time I had been going through a year-long life coaching program, which was something I have always wanted to do.”
Never Forgotten
“For my own grief, I continue to examine the old habits and rituals of learned grief behavior while adding ways I can honor my mom,” Foster says. “Although she has been gone for seven years, I celebrate her birthday every year with a birthday party. I want to continue to celebrate her life. Grief can be very isolating, but I don’t do this alone. The opposite of grief is community. My nieces are now 11, 13, and 15 years old, and along with my siblings, we honor my mom together every March.”
“We also get together and do things my mom liked to do. I believe we can continue those bonds with our deceased loved ones to keep their spirit and memory alive. It is our responsibility to carry it forward.”
Part Two will explore the methodologies behind Julie Foster’s company, A New Path Life and Grief Coaching while delving further into her grief and recovery journeys. Please stay tuned to the October issue of VOICES for the rest of the story…