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171. Affirmations, Meditation and Mindfulness in Grief with Ashmeeta Rama Madhav
84 Plays5 months ago
Ashmeeta Rama Madhav is an educator, grief support advocate/expert, entrepreneur, author, and lifelong learner. She has been intimately acquainted with grief since her early twenties, having experienced miscarriage, rejection, and the loss of her parents and husband, which exposed her to a range of profound emotions. Her story is one of love, acceptance, forgiveness, gratitude, growth, and self-discovery, a narrative that resonates with those who have faced loss or are on a path of self-discovery following loss.
Through her personal experiences, Ashmeeta has developed a deep appreciation for the significance of personal growth within the journey of the soul. Her mission is to share the knowledge she's gained with others. At the heart of her book, "What’s Your Story?" is her passion for helping others and sharing her experiences. Through this book, she shares her personal journey through grief and self-discovery with the intention of providing and inspiration to those confronting similar experiences.
Ashmeeta's desire is for others to recognize that profound loss need not signify the end of one's story; rather, it can mark the commencement of a new and meaningful chapter. Her message is one of hope and healing, and she is here to help guide the grieving to feel alive again.
https://storyoutellyourself.com/
Contact Kendra Rinaldi to schedule a free discovery coaching call or to be a guest on the podcast
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Transcript
Introduction to Grief Support and Podcast Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
doing that reverse the things that we could do to support others and make and encourage and motivate and inspire other people in this instance I feel needs to be turned towards yourself use those same abilities to help yourself so that you could propel back into feeling like you want to live again because that is something that happens as well
00:00:29
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Grief, Gratitude, and the Gray in Between podcast.
Exploring Grief from Life Changes
00:00:37
Speaker
This podcast is about exploring the grief that occurs at different times in our lives in which we have had major changes and transitions that literally shake us to the core and make us experience grief.
00:00:53
Speaker
I created this podcast for people to feel a little less hopeless and alone in their own grief process as they hear the stories of others who have had similar journeys. I'm Kendra Rinaldi, your host. Now, let's dive right in to today's episode.
Meet Ashmita Ramamadav: Educator and Grief Advocate
00:01:15
Speaker
Today, I have Ashmita Ramamadav. She is an educator, a grief support advocate, an expert, as well as an entrepreneur and an author. Her latest book, it's titled, What's Your Story? And it talks about her own grief journey, as well as giving lots of insight and tips and tools for the reader. So welcome, Ashmita.
Weather, Grief, and Personal Stories
00:01:43
Speaker
Hi, Kendra. Thank you.
00:01:45
Speaker
I'm glad you're here. And we had just started talking about the weather. You said, I have sun behind me. You said you had gloomy weather today. So you said you're in Washington. Where in Washington do you live? Yes, I live in Redmond area. And yes, we have a rainy day today. The sky's all gloomy, but yeah. Just wait a minute. Just wait a minute, and I will change.
00:02:15
Speaker
Just like with grief, right? In one minute, it could be that way, gloomy, and then in another minute or another moment, the sun ends up shining through the clouds. Absolutely. Yes, that is so correct.
00:02:31
Speaker
I am grateful for you being here. And today we'll be talking then, as I said in the intro, about your own grief journey as well as the book that you wrote and your journey as a grief educator and advocate as well. So tell us about, first off, your upbringing. Where did you grow up? You live now
Cultural Enrichment through International Moves
00:02:53
Speaker
in Washington. Where did you grow up? I grew up in South Africa. That is where I was born.
00:02:59
Speaker
my parents were born in South Africa as well so yes that basically my entire life was in South Africa until I married my late husband and his career kind of took us around to various well to the UK and then eventually brought us to the US and
00:03:19
Speaker
in the U.S. we still ended up moving around. So it's like every couple of years we're moving. Yes. Well, what do you find in moving? Do you find that moving ends up also bringing, we were talking even before we started recording regarding energy, like do you feel that moving brings with it also some energy of change when you move? You know, I have always been the type of person who love to
00:03:49
Speaker
I like change. I don't know. It's such a weird thing to say, but yes, I like change. I like to be in different places. So the idea from a young age, the idea of being in a different place, it's really exciting to me. I wouldn't say so much about that. I wouldn't say that so much for my late husband, though. But together, we definitely made a huge, really amazing team because we pushed each other. And every time we moved, I noticed that, especially initially when we moved,
00:04:19
Speaker
It was exciting. It was, oh, we're going to a new country. We're going to learn about different cultures. We're going to see what it's like to live in a different country. And then the second third, depending on where you end up, sometimes, you know, the ideas you come up with in your head, the way you think it's going to be and what it really ends up being are two different things. And you put in a piece of this apple, you've got to deal with it. Right. So, I mean, it has come with these ups and downs, but
00:04:48
Speaker
I wouldn't take it away. I wouldn't change it for anything in the world. It's opened up my mind so much. I have met people from all over the world, different cultures, and some of them are like really good friends. So I will not change that for anything in the world. It's such a blessing. I think that the aspect of even meeting people of different cultures, backgrounds, religions, all that aspect as well ends up
Children's Adaptation to Change and Growth
00:05:16
Speaker
enriching your own life and your view of life as well when you interact with people of different cultures and you yourself experience then that culture as you're moving as well. It just brings out the humanness in all of us, you know, culture, religion, all of those things are set, it kind of gets set aside and you just look at each other as just one human being to another, which is the way it should, in my mind, is
00:05:42
Speaker
what I've come to believe it should be, you know, just one human being interacting with another human being, and that's it. I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more. Now, you have three children. What are their ages? And were they then, when you guys were moving so much, they were also part of this journey around the world? I have eight children, yes. My two oldest are boys, and they were, yes, very much part of the journey.
00:06:11
Speaker
My third one is I have a daughter, and she is 12. So she was basically moving for her has only been moving from Michigan to Washington in the middle of the pandemic. But the other guy, my older two, for them moving from the UK to the US and then moving from one state to the next state and then again moving after my late husband passed away. So for them it is
00:06:41
Speaker
They do take their heels in the ground. No, we don't want to go. We like each other. That kind of stuff, you know, kind of open up their minds. Hey guys.
00:06:49
Speaker
It's an adventure. Let's just take it as an adventure and see where this takes us. You know the way you play games and you want to get to the next level. Let's try that out. You know, you never know. You never know. I tell that to my kids too. Like when we moved here, we lived in Atlanta before and when we couldn't move here, they're like, I miss Atlanta. And I'm like, so I tell them, remember when you guys used to say we miss Atlanta? What if we were to
00:07:13
Speaker
move somewhere else. Maybe you'd also, you know, that because they end up loving here, right? Like, you see, you would have not known we liked it until we moved here. So yeah, it always is. It's like that life is that way. And it's if you experience a lot of change as you're younger, it does end up, I feel, helping you navigate other changes that are bigger as you
Experiencing Deep Grief and Loss
00:07:42
Speaker
grow and change. So you've experienced a lot of different changes in your life that are also associated then with the grief and the loss of a loved one. You've experienced miscarriage and then the passing of... In the book, you talk about the passing of your mother and then the passing of your husband, Bipin, and then we were sharing, your father passed right after you released the book.
00:08:10
Speaker
The book, I love how you wrote it because within it, it's not only your story, but it's also tools and insights of what you yourself have gathered in your own journey, as well as reflections for the reader themselves. So thank you for that gift of your book.
00:08:33
Speaker
So let's start with the journey of your mom's passing since it's and then we can go from there and how it was for you navigating grief then when you had experienced it some years earlier with the loss of your first pregnancy. So with the loss of my first pregnancy, I think, you know, with like with marriage or with
00:08:59
Speaker
when you find out that you're having a baby all of that excitement and all of that planning and everything that just pulls your life and you're kind of in this euphoric stage in some phase you know in your mind just like oh I'm gonna have a baby and I'm planning this and all that kind of stuff and then suddenly for that to all just disappear and not to really have any specific answers as to why that happened
00:09:26
Speaker
Yes, it happened. It usually happens around this time. If this was meant to happen at the time, I know my stress levels were really, really high. So I could extremely high because there was, you know, it was a really traumatic period in my life. Six weeks of my life were really traumatic in so many different ways.
00:09:49
Speaker
And I think the outcome of the whole thing was the loss. I mean, I find out I'm pregnant and then going through all this trauma and at the end of the whole thing, I don't have the baby anymore either. So it was really, really traumatic for me. And I was like, I basically went into myself judging myself, which was the first thing I noticed a trend.
00:10:13
Speaker
And I don't know if all human beings, I'm generalizing here, but I think that's what we do first. When anything bad happens to us, we judge ourselves. We think that there's something we did wrong and that's why this is what's happened to us. So I went down that avenue for a while. Thank God for my mom and my family, my dad, my brother. I come from a very tiny family.
00:10:37
Speaker
its immediate family and Thank God for their support. I appreciate their support and everything that you know, they encouragement and things like that which helped me to Maybe push myself out of that perspective when my mom passed away that was a fame It was such a strange experience. I spoke to her on the Tuesday and
00:11:02
Speaker
No, I spoke to her on a Monday. She was in the hospital. She had got, they took her to the hospital over the weekend. They put her into ICU by the Monday. They were like, okay, she's fine. They put her back into the general ward. And I even spoke to her that morning, uh, I'm here in California. She is in South Africa. Spoke to her that morning. And she said, and I was like, whenever she ends up in hospital, I just get really panicky. I'm like, mom.
00:11:27
Speaker
Are you sure you're okay? What do you need? I just get into that mode. And she's like, I'm fine. And she said she was fine. And I just, I don't know why I blurted this, but I blurted out, mom, I don't want anything happening to you. I don't know what I will do without you. She was my rock. She has been my rock, my best friend and my rock in so many, so many ways. I can go on and on about that. But her immediate answer to that was,
00:11:57
Speaker
You know what? You have two beautiful children and your priority should be with them." And I was like, mom, I know that. I just snapped at her even. I was like, I know that, but I don't want anything to happen to you. And she didn't respond to that any further. But I think a few hours later, my dad called back to say that, hey, you know what? Things have changed. And she is now unconscious. And the doctors feel that she doesn't have much time.
00:12:27
Speaker
All the preparations, got myself to South Africa, takes two whole days to get there. How long you were in California? What is the length of time then? Two 10-hour flights. So from California to the UK, overnight layover, or like layover there, and then another 10-hour flight to South Africa. So by the time I got there, it was Thursday evening. Thursday sometimes, yeah.
00:12:56
Speaker
And then on Friday, what was it Friday? Oh Lord, I'm running blanks now. But anyway, it was the end of the week. I know it becomes a lot of that with the grief brain in that moment. You don't even know the days. And the way the whole thing transpired was on the Saturday morning, around two or so. So it was so weird. The Saturday morning, around two or so in the morning is when we got a phone call.
00:13:23
Speaker
And they were like, well, you guys need to rush over all of that kind of stuff. We went to the hospital. We could see the breathing and the heart rate and everything going down, but then kind of stabilized. And this was around eight o'clock, maybe 7.30 or whatever it is.
00:13:41
Speaker
Then they, I guess everyone decided, my dad, my brother, my aunt had come with as well. They decided they'll go home and freshen up and come back. I, for some reason, refused to do that. I was like, you guys, you know, whatever. I'll stay here. I'm staying right here. I wasn't ready to let go of my mother. I really wasn't. And I sat there and prayed and, you know, spoke to her, even though I was getting no response back. But I still kept going. I was like, maybe some miracle happened and, you know,
00:14:10
Speaker
Who doesn't believe in Michael? But I guess it wasn't meant to be. And I didn't know that this happens when a body is preparing to die. At that time I was really ignorant and I didn't really know, but I saw a difference in her breathing. And I panicked. And you're not allowed to use cell phones in the ward. So I stepped out to go and make that phone call to my brother and my dad and say, hey, her breathing is weird. You guys need to get back here ASAP. And I walked in.
00:14:40
Speaker
You know, this is like etched in my memory now. I walked into the ward. There's the central station where the nurses are and around it are all the beds, right? I walked in. I see the central station. I see my mom's bed. I see the curtains all open. I see a nurse standing next to her and she sees me and the first response she says to me is, uh, please don't overreact. You were expecting this. And I,
00:15:10
Speaker
like for a minute there, so three things happening. My eyes are looking at the screen and I see the slide, I see my mother there, and then I have this person saying to me, don't overreact, you were expecting this, you know, this was meant, this was going to happen. And I'm like, okay, what, where, like, you know, I was totally messed up. And the only thing I could think of that, that I guess, if you compare that to weight, what drew me more was my mother.
00:15:38
Speaker
So I didn't even pay attention. It hurt what she said, but I didn't even give it any like attention or put any emphasis on it. I went straight to my mother and I could feel this jittery feeling inside of me, this uneasiness, you know? And that's how she passed away. Ashrita, as you're saying that, that part, it's interesting because we even before we started recording, I had said that I wanted to talk about how
00:16:06
Speaker
people around sometimes dismiss our grief. And just in that moment of this nurse who's in a space in which empathy should have been given instead gives you an order to some extent as to how it is you're supposed to react to this finding of your mom passing. And that just gives me,
00:16:35
Speaker
chills because it just it makes me really think that people really don't want us sometimes to be breathing because of how it makes them feel. It's not about it's because they really do not know how to handle it themselves and what it brings up in them that then they don't want
00:17:01
Speaker
to have someone lose it, per se, in front of them. So let's talk about that part of the support, or lack thereof, or empathy, as you were experiencing grief, and how that also is something that shaped you even writing this book. I know then a few years later, you experienced Bipin's grief. So let's talk about that, empathy within grief. How was that?
Support Systems and Emotional Processing
00:17:30
Speaker
in your journey. So my mom's passing was a definite life changer for me because as I said earlier, you know, the one person that was my rock, she was really my rock in so many ways. And I noticed as I was grieving, but still living at the same time because
00:17:52
Speaker
My dynamics at that time was we were new in a country. We had just moved to the US. It was about a year, a year and a half or something to that effect. So fairly new in the US, getting used to the culture, getting used to how do I live in this space that I'm in, right? Having two young kids who are still early elementary,
00:18:15
Speaker
And then my husband is also, you know, so as a family, we were getting used to all of this stuff. It was fun. It was enjoyable. I, you know, but at the same time I'm grieving. So I found myself and by trade, by education, I actually am a early childhood educator. So my, um, awareness of child development and all of that was something that I was really put into rearing my children.
00:18:46
Speaker
because I had the knowledge, right? So I was practicing and using it on my own kid. But I found that even with that knowledge, because I was grieving, it was making it so much more difficult. The grief was making living for me really challenging.
00:19:04
Speaker
And I did not realize at that time that, you know, there were three great support groups that you could go to. I didn't really have any friends. I was still making friends, still forging those relationships, you know, so there wasn't any like friends that I could like turn to any of that support system. So it really was, there wasn't really much of a support system per se in my immediate
00:19:29
Speaker
In your circle where you live. Yes But however, I did have a support system on the phone. So I had my brother I had my his wife who Was very very supportive at the time and she was like almost newly married you would say because they didn't have any children at the time and then my dad was not very supportive but Having said that he lost his wife He is
00:19:59
Speaker
from a generation where men don't cry, they're strong, and they move on. He's from that generation. He wasn't that touchy feely type of a person, but yes, he was very sensitive. He was a sensitive person. He was a very kindhearted and sensitive, but he just wouldn't show it. So going for support there was not gonna be very helpful. He'd just be like, stop crying, get over it, get over it. Well, because even for him, even for him, the fact of his, because he's grieving the,
00:20:28
Speaker
loss of his wife. Then seeing his children also grieving, it also makes it feel like, well, I'm helpless because I'm grieving. It's like, how am I supposed to get, you know, take you out of the water while you're sinking? If I'm also sinking, you know, that type of feeling. And like you said, like we were just saying before, it does make us a couple of, and I could even think this even as a parent when our children
00:20:53
Speaker
cry that, you know, one of those things that sometimes people say is like, Oh, stop crying, or it doesn't hurt. Or because again, we, because it, we do not know what to do ourselves sometimes. And it's like that helplessness as a parent, that that ends up being sometimes not, I try not to do that, but we, you know, minimizing their pain.
00:21:14
Speaker
But culturally, certain times, those are things that we might have heard or seen as we were growing up as well. Yes, true. It's that uncomfortable feeling that you feel when you're not sure how to react to another person's pain or situation or whatever it is, right? So living in it, doing all of this,
00:21:36
Speaker
the same time I remember one instance because it was becoming a little bit of a pain what was the way I was in that specific time right and how I was before my mom passed away definitely was my husband could see it if my late husband could see a difference in me he could see the
00:21:58
Speaker
withdrawal, which wasn't something that I was even doing deliberately. It just happened. I didn't really want to be around. Well, it was kind of very confusing because I wanted people to talk about my mom. I wanted people to ask me about my mom, but nobody did.
00:22:16
Speaker
So it made me feel like she never existed because nobody ever spoke about her. Right. This is just from my perspective. I mean, forget other people, but this is just my perspective. So nobody's talking about my mother. So she never existed. Why aren't they talking about her? And then just the whole feeling of like they, you know,
00:22:43
Speaker
I guess people didn't talk about her maybe because like what we were saying earlier, you know, I don't know why I do this. I do this a lot because I like to give others the benefit of the doubt. So I'm like, okay, maybe they didn't do this because of this or that or whatever it is. But that's a good thing because that shows you're being empathetic towards them in their own journey too.
00:23:05
Speaker
It's okay to give them the benefit of the doubt. I know, but you know, honestly speaking, if you look at something from both perspectives, here you have a human being who basically has lost something really crucial in her life. What kind of supports does this human being have, right? To be able to move forward
00:23:32
Speaker
or just move, forget about forward or sideways or anything. Just have that motivation to move. And what's involved in that type of a situation is the supports that you have. A lot of it is internal work. A lot of it is you working with yourself and understanding your feelings and things like that.
00:23:51
Speaker
But it gets enhanced and it gets really meaningful and it helps a person to sort of in a way snap out of it might not be the right term, but you know, along those lines to snap out of it and kind of get back on track. If you have that support system to help you stay on track. And in my case, when my mom died, that was not the case. I mean, I had my brother and my sister in law, which I valued because they were there for me. They allowed me that.
00:24:21
Speaker
a space to talk and talk and talk and keep talking about the same thing, you know. But for, no, but for your husband, Bipin at that time, for him, it was harder to really see his wife going through this and therefore was not able to hold space for you
00:24:44
Speaker
That's the thing, it's sometimes not that we even, as people that are supporting somebody that's grieving, it's this thing that it's not something to be fixed. Grief is not something to be fixed. It's something to be witnessed and it's something to be supported. And as those of us around someone that's grieving, all our role is, is just to hold space and be there for the person.
00:25:10
Speaker
not, and not judge them, not tell them to come on, like just, you know, move up. No, like you just said, even just a snap out of it. It's not something like that. It's not an on and off switch. So therefore just by holding space and allowing that journey to unfold, that in itself is enough as a supporter.
Tools for Self-Discovery and Healing
00:25:38
Speaker
you know, friend or spouse or whatever it is our role is in that dynamic. Yeah. So you didn't, you didn't have that. So you're, you had already started your personal growth and development and kind of self discovery some years back after your miscarriage. So after that, how did, at what point did you start implementing some of the things that you list
00:26:06
Speaker
in your book like gratitude and meditation, did you start implementing that during your grief journey, your mourning process of your mom, or was it after Bipin died? What was it for you? At what point did you start using some of these tools?
00:26:23
Speaker
So a lot of these tools were things that I used on and off as needed basis kind of a thing on what was going on in my life at that specific time. And what worked, like which one of these tools is going to really benefit me and help me to feel unstuck, to get me out of the space that I feel like I'm stuck, right? It's that feelings that kind of make you feel that way. Meditation, I've been delving with
00:26:51
Speaker
dabbling with that for like forever I feel from my early you know teens because I've already always been intrigued by meditation and I wanted to experience what the enlightened human beings experience with meditation and I'm still getting there but so I've always you know so meditation has always been something part of my my journey
00:27:14
Speaker
Gratitude, however, was something that I started learning. Forgiveness and gratitude is something that I only really, I think, have understood and can practice more effectively now after my late husband has passed away. I have been practicing gratitude and all of that, you know, and forgiveness to some point to the limit of my understanding.
00:27:46
Speaker
Because it becomes, it takes on a whole, gratitude and forgiveness takes on a whole new face based on your spiritual maturity, based on how you can let go or maybe even see and even be empathetic. It's like the empathy that I would love to get from people around me.
00:28:07
Speaker
for me to be able to give that empathy in two ways to others, but also to myself. Yeah, it's exactly what I was going to say. Yeah. Cause you, you mentioned before how much we judge the first thing we do sometimes is judging ourselves in, in, in our own, you know, life and, and then that aspect of
00:28:28
Speaker
not giving
Coping with Spousal Loss and Finding Positivity
00:28:29
Speaker
empathy to ourselves, you know, where it's also, you know, that happens often. Now, when Bipin died, like, what were the circumstances of his passing and how, because here it's a whole other ballgame. You talked before with even just experiencing
00:28:50
Speaker
Your mom's passing, here you are in another country, grieving on your own, your family's in another, not just a country, in a whole other continent. And then that isolation to some extent and the change. You also mentioned during your miscarriage, it was not only the fact of not having the child, but the change of identity in that moment as well, because here you are, you were going to be a mother, then no, now you're not.
00:29:17
Speaker
Here, when a parent dies, you're still a child, even if the parent's not there. You're still a child because your dad was still living at that moment. So you're still a child. You're still a sibling. So that part doesn't. But when a spouse dies, then you no longer a wife. You're a widow. So all these things. And then you're also now with your children this rule on your own. So it's a whole other thing. So how did you implement?
00:29:47
Speaker
gratitude and meditation in that role. I was asking too many questions, but throwing it out there, throwing the ball at you there with all these thoughts. Yes. No, you're fine. So it started with the whole pancreatic cancer thing. Okay. Life was going just fine. It was going just fine. And then the pancreatic cancer showed up and within a space of a year, I had witnessed
00:30:17
Speaker
a healthy human being, a healthy, thriving human being deteriorate to basically skin and bones. And also, you know, the level of pain that he was experiencing, which he really didn't, uh, sort of, he was a trooper. I have to be honest. He was a trooper. He didn't want to go. Right. I, who wants to, let me just say who wants to know. None of us want to.
00:30:48
Speaker
But he really tried to keep it together for as long as he could. But witnessing all of that and being his caregiver, being his caregiver took over so much of the attention and time that while all of this was happening, and I only realized this after the fact, while all of this was happening, I did not realize that my life, the way I know it,
00:31:15
Speaker
is going it is slipping through my fingers like imagine picking up sand and then just there's nothing you can do to hold on to that sand right before you know it there's nothing left and that's basically what happened but I didn't even realize it because I was so involved in caring for him and just the dynamics of the way things work. After he passed again initially it was all the dynamics
00:31:41
Speaker
getting everything together, what is all the logistics and all of that kind of stuff. It knocked me many times when I found myself alone and that is mostly when you're not doing busy work, when you actually have some time to just
00:32:00
Speaker
sit down and when you do that is mostly just before you go to sleep it's my time you know and that is when it's just flooding because it's like okay you were busy all day you had enough to keep you distracted but guess what this is here this is your reality you got to deal with this somehow or the other because this is what you're presented with right um and initially i
00:32:29
Speaker
I guess the busy work kept me busy enough to not acknowledge it. But I noticed that the one thing when I finally decided to acknowledge work with my thoughts, like somebody calling me a widow would make me feel very uncomfortable.
00:32:49
Speaker
So I had to do a lot of internal work thinking with myself, right? Asking myself those important questions like, so it's a word that refers to something that happened to someone. So it's a form of a label. Is that me? What does that mean to me? How do I identify as that?
00:33:09
Speaker
So it took a lot of my own internal, you know, things, because at the end of the day, if I buy into, I'm a widow and then all of the cultural stuff that, and all of the movies and everything else that I grew up or I witnessed or I saw, and if I buy into all of that and I make that who I am, that is what I'm going to be attracting into my life. And that is why I think thoughts are so, so important. So I decided that, you know what?
00:33:40
Speaker
I witnessed some two times, I witnessed life leading. Because when my husband died, I was holding his hand right there next to him. I looked away for one second because the lady took my attention to a family picture. And in that split second, he was gone. He took his last breath. And every time I think of that, it reminds me how fragile life is.
00:34:11
Speaker
how beautiful and what a gift it is. It is a gift and I need to remind myself of that every single time that I feel sorry for myself or I feel like I'm a victim or I feel like everyone around me is doing something to me or why is nobody understanding my situation. I need to you know and that is kind of like what's a turning point for me helping it helps me to keep myself in check because
00:34:41
Speaker
end of the day, everybody's struggling with something. Everybody needs, you know, but this is my experience. This is something that happened to me, right? Nobody is fully going to understand what I need. So how about if I actually start helping myself and then the people around me who care about me, the people around me and the support systems that are there,
00:35:09
Speaker
Then I go and use these things or inform people about how to help me, how to be with me while I am being with me, you know, while I'm working with me as I did with all of this. It has definitely changed things, but as you, you know, as you asked earlier, like gratitude and forgiveness, forgiving myself for feeling that I could have done better.
00:35:37
Speaker
I could have helped my, I could have done something different and my husband would have still been alive. That thought just forgiving myself that yes, you know, certain things I am human and I need to remember that I'm human. I don't have certain powers. I'm not super human. So I'm grateful. So what I kind of say to myself sometimes when I find myself going slowly spiraling into these weird places because of one thought is
00:36:08
Speaker
I'm grateful for what I had. I'm grateful for the opportunity to have been loved by him and make it about him, not me. That he loved me. He cared about me to such a degree that we had such a beautiful life together. We had the opportunity to spend 23 beautiful years together, ups and downs, whatever it was, but it was ours, right? And that is all that was meant to be. It's a book.
00:36:38
Speaker
It's another chapter in my life. I have a new beginning. What am I gonna do with this beginning? So, yeah. You said a lot of things. I'm sorry. No, it was good. No, hello. I'm the one that like posted a question that is not really like a question but like a statement and then like a reflection. So, no, no, no. I just wanna make sure I touch on some of these things.
00:37:06
Speaker
the my mom died of pancreatic cancer. So I can relate to that. I don't say I understand because I don't as we know, grief is very unique, but I can relate to
Conscious Grief Handling and Personal Growth
00:37:19
Speaker
what you were saying. And there's similarities of that. I was very intrigued
00:37:31
Speaker
by what you said regarding the label. And I love that because I've yet to experience, like, you know, I haven't yet, I won't, I haven't experienced, let me put it that way, the aspect of losing a spouse, but having lost a sister, having lost a mom, those aspects I can relate. And I've never felt like, I remember there was a book that it was like,
00:37:54
Speaker
called motherless daughters. I was like, I'm not a motherless. My mom still is, you know, just because she's not. So that reminds me of how you were saying regarding the label of widow. And I had never thought of it because I've never been in those shoes. So thanks for that perspective of the fact that for you, embracing that label, it was as if you were giving more energy again in that direction
00:38:24
Speaker
of something when it wasn't necessarily what you wanted your life to kind of revolve around. Am I gathering correctly what your thoughts and feelings were on what you had mentioned that? Yeah, because I mean, fundamentally, I think, you know, if we leave all of these labels out, we all human beings, we all have experiences how we and we have choices. We have choices. Things are going to happen to us.
00:38:51
Speaker
All kinds of things. Sometimes we have no control over things that happen to us. I mean, you hear so many different stories of people who have made it, survived, made beautiful lives for themselves after crazy accidents or whatever it is that's happened to them. What is it like? Even athletes, it's that mind. It's how do you allow that mind to draw you down?
00:39:14
Speaker
It's taking control. Imagine a chariot with five horses and those five horses represent your five senses. And the mind also is a form of a sense, right? Taking control of all of that, not allowing the situation to control you. And that's where the choices come in. What choice? I have choices here. What am I going to do? And that's basically the first step. Yes, this happened to me. I don't like that this happened to me.
00:39:44
Speaker
I'd love to have my husband because there are times when I struggle, you know, I really struggle with so many things, but I have choices. We teach our kids that. Why are we
00:40:01
Speaker
we teach our kids that right when we especially when they become difficult about no I want this I want this this is your choice this or this we give them those boundaries and we give them choices life is doing the exact same thing to us as adults you have this experience but you also have choices you choose
00:40:21
Speaker
to spiral down or you choose to find those so that's all the lining you choose choose to find a glimmer of hope you choose to find or whatever positivity that you can out of this experience find it and go with it and see where it takes you that's in a nutshell
00:40:42
Speaker
It sounds, yeah, it's like, right. It's one of those things that you can have. It's like a standard, right? This is a standard. Let me strive to that standard. Within that, there's going to be challenges. We're going to stumble. But if we have that standard of, okay, right now I have a choice. I can lay in bed or I can put one foot on the ground.
00:41:11
Speaker
even if that's the only choice you made that day in your grief journey, that was still a choice. Now I've done that. Now I can leave this foot on the ground or I have a choice taking a few steps forward and maybe going on a walk around the neighborhood today. That's another choice. So there are actions we can take day in and day out within our morning process to allow us again,
00:41:41
Speaker
I keep on thinking of, again, energy because we started our conversation off mic regarding energy and what do you focus on, expand step of aspect, but then the same. It's like, what do I want to pour energy into today? And in what direction do I want to pour energy today so that my life starts heading in that direction?
00:42:06
Speaker
energetic direction yeah yes awesome so it's like showing up for yourself right we have cheerleaders we have we cheerleaders for our kids we we do all of these things for our kids but in this type of a situation where you're dealing with grief you're dealing with loss it does involve a lot of doing that reverse the things that we could do to support others and make and encourage and motivate and inspire other people in this instance
00:42:36
Speaker
I feel needs to be turned towards yourself. Use those same abilities to help yourself so that you could propel back into feeling like you want to live again, because that is something that happens as well. I feel, you know, honestly speaking, I feel dead inside. I really do. I feel like I died when my mother died. I feel like I died when my husband died.
00:43:02
Speaker
But here I am, I'm still alive. I'm talking to you. Exactly, exactly. But when I say I feel like I died, it's because of that lack of motivation, that lack of excitement that I used to feel towards certain things that I enjoyed doing. And certain parts of you did, like the certain parts of your identity of your life did shift and change. So there is a death associated even within ourselves.
00:43:28
Speaker
in these different changes because something new, you were talking about chapters. Again, it's a new chapter. There was an end, there's a beginning, which is like, what does life look like now without that person in it? And that is part of it. Now, I want to read a part of your book regarding the aspect of when you say proof, and then you go into different things. Happiness is a state of mind.
00:43:58
Speaker
It is an attitude that I adopt towards life. I am responsible for my own happiness. By taking responsibility, I hold myself accountable. My peace of mind is important to me. So every time I feel angry, irritated, pressured, or manipulated, I remind myself that my sanity is at stake. I love that it feels like an affirmation for
00:44:26
Speaker
for the day. Did you do those type of things of starting your day with, because you mentioned meditation and prayer and gratitude, did affirmations play a part in your life? Because even just that statement in your book feels as if it's like, okay,
00:44:47
Speaker
This is Ashmika every morning when she sits on her bed. Yes, affirmations are definitely... Affirmations was actually something that I first started dabbling with after I had miscarriage early in my 20s. That was the first thing that actually started with affirmations. And then I also did some reading about the subconscious mind and how sometimes
00:45:13
Speaker
if you really want to make lasting change it needs to come from the subconscious mind and not the conscious mind. So and as I did more research into that I discovered things like subliminal tapes and that kind of stuff where the affirmations are behind marked by some music and it's calming music so it could be like rainfall or you know birds chirping or whatever it is and the theory behind it was
00:45:41
Speaker
that if you listen to these affirmations, depending on what aspect you're trying to work on, say positivity or forgiveness or whatever, and they have different ones with different things. So let's just focus on positivity here. So if you're working on positivity, there'd be a specific recording of that. And if you listen to it, it's like what they say about a habit.
00:46:07
Speaker
It takes how many days to change your habit? 21? They say 21. I haven't got more. But there's a timeframe, right? There's sort of like a to reprogram the mind, reprogram your habits, right? So in the same way, the subconscious mind can reprogram. And I was really intrigued by that. So I decided to experiment with myself. And I would continually listen to this. I put it on when I go to sleep every night.
00:46:36
Speaker
And I did it for more than six weeks, longer. I just kept doing it. And honestly speaking, I feel like it did make a real difference in my life. And this was then at that time when I really didn't know much and I was just, I was younger as well. So I was, you know, but I was really in a space of, I just needed to feel like I wasn't used and I wasn't, uh, yeah. So.
00:47:07
Speaker
And how do you still implement that now? Because you incorporated it in the book, that affirmation, pretty much of happiness. Do you still then use it now? And you've started back in your new 20s, you still use that now? I still do. And that's what kind of sort of molds my thoughts as well in any situation. So it's not like an affirmation, something that I only do when I'm meditating or at a specific time of the day.
00:47:26
Speaker
You were awesome.
00:47:37
Speaker
any situation I find myself in, you know, I find myself in situations where, you know, interactions with people where maybe our personalities are not, and I am feeling intimidated by that person. Oh, I'm feeling that that person is too overpowering. I start using my affirmations. Otherwise, I'm like an open book. If someone does something to me, and I don't like it,
00:48:06
Speaker
You are going to see it on my face. I can't hide it, no matter how much I try. And it's something I noticed about myself. So, okay, you know, I've got to work on this because this is me. This is not the other person's problem. I'm the one who's feeling this because of their actions. So those affirmations have definitely helped me to keep me in
Developing Empathy and Learning from Grief
00:48:30
Speaker
check. I'm always parenting myself, it seems like.
00:48:33
Speaker
Yeah, but that's the reality you said, like all the things we say to others we should do first within ourselves and it's so true. And in that aspect of even when you said of the feelings that show up, let's say in a situation, if you're intimidated by somebody or something like that, we could even turn it into if you're around someone that's grieving, you can also then
00:49:00
Speaker
try to reprogram or have an affirmation that you do, that realizing that it's not that person causing that discomfort in you, it is the way that you feel about grief probably itself, that it's bringing that on you. So even shifting that energy as you are someone walking alongside someone else that's feeling to re-shift the way you feel about it and not trying to change the other person.
00:49:30
Speaker
It's like my late husband, the one time he said to me, and I bring this example up only because of what I gained from this conversation with him. He said to me, I know you lost your mom and I know she was really close to you and I know it's really difficult for you. But he was coming from his perspective, obviously. He said to me, and he was really supportive.
00:49:58
Speaker
And he loved to communicate it, but you know, he wanted to like know everything, how he could help. So he really was doing the best that he could, uh, as far as trying to support me, but his best was not, and he did the best with the knowledge that he had. So no point in fingers at him or saying that he was, he didn't show up from you. And it's not, I'm not even going there. It's not about that. He did the best that he could, but he said a statement to me. And I think that was a game changer for me.
00:50:25
Speaker
He said to me, I have never lost a parent before. I don't know what it feels like to lose a parent. And that spoke to me. It said to me that, and I don't even know how come this happened in my mind, but it said, that statement said to me that here is a human being or who has not lost a parent, doesn't know how, who will never understand how you feel.
00:50:51
Speaker
no matter how much he tries to understand how you feel he is never going to understand how you feel but he is there for you and he's going to help you he's going to do whatever he can to be there for you but he's never going to understand so it is my responsibility then to not put that on him because this is my path that i'm walking it's like with him and his cancer he was walking that path nobody could understand
00:51:19
Speaker
Truly what was going through his mind and his body but you know every time I just like I feel like crying just watching Because as a witness just watching what happened to him, right? So him as the person actually experiencing it if he could tell We'd be totally blown off our feet and our minds would be like, you know totally Wow. So insane token That was a team team changer for me
00:51:45
Speaker
it said to me you need this is your thing you need to find ways to help yourself and that's where i started venturing out and i went on to looking at scriptures and self-help books and mindset and yeah all those things but scriptures have helped me a lot and i kind of they got involved in my whole search as well
00:52:09
Speaker
So, and they're part of your, there's a lot of different quotes that mean a lot to you with, you know, in the book, especially at the beginning of each chapter you have some of these quotes that mean a lot to you in there as well. Yes, yes. Yeah. So Ashmita, it has been
00:52:27
Speaker
an amazing conversation. We could probably keep going for another hour on it. But I want to make sure that I've asked most of the questions that you want to share, but is there anything else you'd want to share with the listeners before we wrap up and also tell them how to access your book before we share that?
00:52:49
Speaker
Um, you know, I think we've covered everything or the biggest thing is grief. Yes. It's a personal journey, but also just realizing that we have just this one life and let's not, you know, just take that, take that first step of being kind to yourself. And pain is not, pain is actually a way
00:53:17
Speaker
is your body's way of bringing attention back to you. So if you listen to that pain, this is emotional pain I'm talking about now. If you just listen to that emotional pain and allow it to be your teacher, it will take you through this journey of grief.
00:53:39
Speaker
and you will find that as you're going through the journey, things start making so much more, things just become so much more comfortable because it's different for everyone, right? So don't be afraid of the pain. Actually embrace it. You'll be surprised at what, at your journey. So don't let these experiences take over. That's all. Yes, yes, yes. Thank you, thank you. And again, the book is What's Your Grief?
00:54:08
Speaker
What's your story? Oh, as I'm reading it here, by the way. I'm like, I have it on my screen right now. What's your story? And it's number one way to create a new reality with your
Conclusion and Encouragement for Feedback
00:54:25
Speaker
thinking. And again, this was Ashmita Mata. And how do we get it? I know I'll put the links below, but how can our listeners access your book?
00:54:36
Speaker
Uh, so my book is on Amazon, uh, as well as my website. So my website is actually called story, you tell yourself.com and story ends in Y. So it's only just one Y there, not two Y. Uh, just in case. So story, you tell yourself.com. And that is through my website. I have every, that's where you'll find me everything. The podcast, um, my book blogs that I write.
00:55:05
Speaker
anything of that sort, it will be there as well as I have a Facebook group called Girl Story Hub, where I periodically put stuff like little sayings or things like that on there as well. And if I find any resources that could be helpful to anyone out there.
00:55:23
Speaker
Perfect. Thank you Ashmita. Thank you once again for sharing your story and now him seeing how the listeners will then reflect on their own life and their own story. I know I did as I was reading your book. So thank you for that. My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me and it's been an amazing conversation. I am grateful for you being here. Thank you.
00:55:56
Speaker
Thank you again so much for choosing to listen today. I hope that you can take away a few nuggets from today's episode that can bring you comfort in your times of grief. If so, it would mean so much to me if you would rate and comment on this episode. And if you feel inspired in some way to share it with someone who may need to hear this, please do so.
00:56:24
Speaker
Also, if you or someone you know has a story of grief and gratitude that should be shared so that others can be inspired as well, please reach out to me. And thanks once again for tuning into Grief Gratitude and the Gray in Between podcast. Have a beautiful day.