Grief Heals

Lisa Michelle Zega | Jump Up and Down Productions
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Mental Health
  • Updated Weekly

We live in a grief-phobic society which tends to minimize loss and avoid the grief that leads to healing. Lisa Michelle Zega, a professionally trained and experienced grief coach, discusses loss and how to experience the natural consequence of grief, leading to healing and wholeness.

  1. 11h ago

    Grief As Witness, Unity and Belonging

    What does it truly mean to find inner peace and connection in the wake of suffering, loss, or major life transitions? In this episode of Grief Heals, host Lisa Michelle Zega reflects on a powerful line from Neil Douglas-Klotz’s The Hidden Gospel: "You cannot seek unity without being unified."  Sharing transparently from her own path, which includes navigating divorce, distance from family, and years of treating self-improvement as a way to "fix" herself, Lisa explores how true healing occurs when we stop striving and start simply witnessing. In this episode, we explore: The Power of Neutral Witnessing: How observing our feelings, bodies, and past experiences without judgment alters our relationship to our grief.The Observer Phenomenon: The parallel between scientific observation changing the outcome of experiments and how compassionate awareness changes our emotional landscape.Internal Belonging vs. Fixing: Shifting away from using healing practices as "weapons" of self-judgment and stepping into true internal belonging.Mirroring and Tolerance: How the parts of ourselves we refuse to tolerate or witness often dictate where we judge and struggle to connect with others.Reconnection and Grace: Using breath, presence, and space to cultivate peace with all stages of our life story and relationships. Whether you are navigating the loss of a loved one, a relationship, or an identity, tune in to discover how gentle, compassionate awareness can help bring you back into unity with yourself. If this episode resonates with you, please consider leaving a comment, sharing the episode, or following the podcast!

  2. Aug 24

    Carving Sorrow, Carving Joy

    Welcome back to Grief Heals with your host, Lisa Michelle Zega. In this grounding episode, we explore the exquisite, inseparable relationship between our deepest heartbreaks and our greatest moments of delight. Diving into Kahlil Gibran’s classic work, The Prophet, we reflect on the powerful truth that sorrow carves out the very spaces within us that allow us to contain more joy.   The conversation begins with a gentle invitation to step into the rarest place we visit: the present moment. Lisa shares personal anchoring techniques to help pull us out of our busyminds. From this space of awareness, she introduces a practice inspired by a friend: learning to "sing over your life". Through apersonal chant born while climbing a Texas live oak tree, she shares how melody can help us tap into the deep energy of being connected to all things and embracing divine community.   Finally, we look at the seasonal rhythms of our emotional lives. By examining Gibran's imagery of balancing scales and hollowed wood, Lisa suggests that finding a sense of "rootedness,” much like a massive oak tree, allows us to remain steady through life's shifting emotional weather. Join us for an episode that promises to expand your capacity to receive new joy, honor your grief, and remind you that you are held in a grand, interconnected embrace.

  3. Aug 11

    Untying the Knots of Grief

    When life goes off-script, grief often feels like an enemy that robbed you of the future you were supposed to have. But what happens when you stop fighting the loss and make space for it instead? In this episode, Lisa Michelle Zega uses Aramaic spiritual wisdom to explore what it means to "love your enemies" when the enemy feels like grief itself. Drawing on her own journey through divorce and loss, Lisa offers a gentle invitation to slow down, release the pressure of who you thought you were supposed to be, and discover how heartbreak can become a pathway back to your truest self.

  4. Jul 27

    Journey to Internal Unity

    Lisa explores the profound concept of unity and its intersection with personal healing, sparked by a powerful passage from Neil Douglas-Klots' book, The Hidden Gospel: Decoding the Spiritual Messages of the Aramaic Jesus. The quote, "You cannot seek unity without being unified," serves as the foundation for a deep dive into the nature of human suffering, self-compassion, and the transformative power of the "witness". Lisa discusses how observing our own experiences, emotions, and pain through a neutral, compassionate lens—rather than trying to constantly "fix" ourselves—fundamentally changes our relationship with our suffering. She shares reflections on major life transitions, including a past divorce and changing dynamics with their children, as pivotal moments that ultimately forced a reconciliation with self-belonging and naked vulnerability.

  5. Jul 13

    Beautiful Gayle

    When I found out Gayle was in hospice, I began talking to her in my morning meditations. Somehow, I knew we were meeting in the spirit world and didn’t question the experience.  That changed when she let me know she’d be leaving her body on Father’s Day. I had to be making it up, romanticizing her reunion with her husband of more than 50 years, who exited his body on Mother’s Day. I became critical of my experience – even ashamed of my silly mind.  On Father’s Day, I confessed my foolishness to Sissi, who made space for all the feels and once again I was at peace. I laughed with Gayle at my silliness on my morning walk, and felt her spirit reaffirming that she was indeed leaving that day.  Then my hubby and I left to my cousin’s for a Father’s day celebration with the family. By the time we got home, fed the dogs,and began settling for the night, I’d forgotten all about the morning – I wasn’t thinking about it being Father’s Day because all the festivities were behind us.  Then my phone dinged with news of Gayle’s passing. I sat frozen in disbelief, then my body began to tingle as if connecting the dots. Tears mingled with joy, wonder, and the need to share all of it with my hubby.  More mystical experiences have continued to happen since then, some that you can hear in this talk.  The most recent was yesterday, when I sat down to journal. At some point I began writing to Gayle, which surprised me, and then I spoke out loud, “I need more play in my life and wonder if you would like to play with me”. This time I didn’t doubt her answer, knowing she said yes.  When I got an impulse to climb the tree I meditate under each morning, I wasn’t thinking of Gayle. That is, until I was perched up high laughing that I really did it and there she was. I sensed her presence, saw her smile in my mind’s eye and knew we were playing together.  It was so magical that I climbed down, got my phone, climbed back up, and sent a video message to Gayle’s daughter telling her about the experience.  So enjoy this tribute to my dear friend and notice what newness awakens in you toward your loved ones.

  6. Jun 29

    The Resilience Paradox: Finding Joy in Discomfort

    In this episode, Lisa explores the concept that "grief is love" and how reframing our relationship with discomfort can lead to deeper resilience and joy. She discusses how societal conditioning often leads us to reject "bad" feelings, ultimately limiting our capacity for true connection and peace. Key topics include: Reframing Grief: Understanding grief as a "great disruptor" that offers empathy and a new way to be with oneself.The Resilience Paradox: Why the capacity to stay present in discomfort and uncertainty is a prerequisite for experiencing joy and happiness.The Power of "Containers": How community circles provide the necessary space to hold complex emotions without the need to "fix" or apologize for them.Sensing Safety: Moving beyond survival-based "resilience" to find true safety by gradually tolerating the unknown.The episode also highlights upcoming "disruptor circles" focused on reparenting and reclaiming humanity, starting July 2nd. For more info: https://legityou.com/disruptors-circle-home-page

  7. Jun 9

    The Wind Knocked Out of You

    What does it mean to be made whole? Made whole not by acquiring something missing, but by returning to what's already here? In this episode, Lisa explores the surprising connections between grief, sacred breath, and unity, drawing on Neil Douglas Klotz's Aramaic rendering of the Beatitudes in his book The Hidden Gospel. When Klotz translates "blessed are those who mourn" as "ripe are those who feel at loose ends, coming apart at the seams — they shall be knit together within," something opens up. Grief isn't a wound that leaves us permanently broken. It's an invitation to soften, to breathe, to return. Lisa shares from her own experience of loss, the years of painful disconnection from her sons after the end of a 23-year marriage, and how that grief, entered fully, became the doorway to a depth of love and connection she had never known before. For anyone who fears that loss will leave them forever less than whole, this episode offers something real: not a promise that the pain goes away, but that the pain itself, breathed into and stayed with, can knit us back together in ways we never anticipated.

  8. May 25

    Grief in Context

    In this episode Lisa reflects on loss that isn't death, the disappointments, broken promises, and unmet needs that shape us long before we have language for them. Drawing on a story from her coach Billy Soule about imagining his mother's childhood losses, she revisits her own experience at a Hoffman Institute retreat years ago, where she was asked to imagine her way into the early lives of the parental figures who raised her. What opened there, and the conversations it later made possible with her mother, became a turning point in how she understands inheritance, blame, and the resources our caretakers had — or didn't have — to give. Lisa moves into the larger question the episode keeps circling: mothers mother in a context. So do all of us. The contempt so often directed at mothers, the isolation of grievers waiting to "get better" for everyone else, and the coping we do alone are symptoms of a culture that pushes grief to the fringes rather than holding it in common. Grief, she suggests, is one of the most universal human experiences and one of the most abandoned. This episode is an invitation to bring it back into the circle, where it can do what it's meant to do: humanize, integrate, and make whole.

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About

We live in a grief-phobic society which tends to minimize loss and avoid the grief that leads to healing. Lisa Michelle Zega, a professionally trained and experienced grief coach, discusses loss and how to experience the natural consequence of grief, leading to healing and wholeness.

Information

  • Creator
    Lisa Michelle Zega | Jump Up and Down Productions
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    96
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Lisa Michelle Zega | Jump Up and Down Productions
  • Show Website
    Grief Heals