Grieving Awake with Joya

Joya Sosnowski
  • 5.0 (10)
  • Self-Improvement
  • Updated Weekly

Grieving Awake is a podcast about awakening the heart through life's sacred thresholds. It's an exploration of what it means to listen to the soul and become more fully human through grief, loss, love, and the experiences that change us forever. Through conversations that weave together consciousness, grief, contemplative practice, intuition, mysticism, science, and the mystery of being human, we explore how life's greatest thresholds can awaken us to a deeper relationship with ourselves, each other, and Spirit. Every conversation is an invitation to become more heart-led, more intuitively guided, and more deeply connected to Spirit.

Episodes

  1. Aug 13

    Your Ego Is a Wild Horse - And Grief is the Pen It Can't Escape From

    Send us Fan Mail Grief can turn your inner world into a courtroom where your ego argues, your heart breaks, and your spirit quietly waits to be trusted. I’m Joya, and I share the moment everything changed for me: after my son Weston left his body, I began receiving him within 24 hours and spent months learning to trust what I was hearing and feeling. What follows is both tender and intense, because it’s not just a story about loss, it’s a story about learning to stop abandoning myself. I read from my journal a channeled conversation with the Magdalene frequency, including a prayer that asks to be led from darkness to light. We explore why doubt pushes us to seek external validation, and why the ego panics when it cannot control grief. The core metaphor is unforgettable: the ego is a wild horse. You don’t tame it by force or self-hate. You love it into service so it can partner with your soul, your body, and what you hold sacred. Along the way, we talk forgiveness, shame, integrity, and how judgment often hurts most when it’s self-inflicted. Then Weston “drops in” with teachings on trust, grace, heart-brain coherence, and what it means to feel separation while remembering love. Whether you approach this through spirituality, mindfulness, or grief healing, you’ll leave with practical tools you can use anywhere: the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding practice, awareness in your hands and feet, breathing into sensation, and “name it to tame it” emotional labeling to calm the nervous system. If this supports you, subscribe, share it with someone grieving or waking up, and leave a review so more people can find it. What part of you is ready to be loved into surrender rather than forces into compliance? grievingawake.com joyasosnowski.com Follow me on IG Email me

    Your Ego Is a Wild Horse - And Grief is the Pen It Can't Escape From

  2. Aug 5

    Why You Can't Let Go — What Mary Magdalene Knew - and Taught Me - About Grief and Regret

    Send us Fan Mail Regret can masquerade as wisdom, but a lot of the time it’s just unexpressed grief looking for somewhere to go. I share a “Magdalene download” that hit me hard: grief is tied to love and to regret, and when we’re aligned with truth, grief can stay clean. It becomes a pure sadness for what’s no longer here, without collapsing into the mental loop of wishing the past could be undone. We move through a teaching from the Gospel of Mary Magdalene and unpack the ideas of “the good” and peace as a return to origin. I explore the Aramaic roots that reshape the conversation: tabah as true natural harmonious oneness with God, bisha as unripeness and the illusion of separation, and shlama as wholeness and restoration. If you’re drawn to Mary Magdalene teachings, spiritual healing, or the meaning of peace beyond positive thinking, this offers language for what your body may already know. Then we get practical and embodied. I talk about discovering how hyper-rationalization can be a trauma response, what it’s like to live up in the head, and why grief often has no words. That’s where sound comes in: vocal expression, “sounding the body,” and letting the energy move until it completes and softens into breath, tears, and calm. We close with a guided inner sanctuary practice to witness intrusive thoughts, choose wholeness over separation, and return to the heart. If this supports you, subscribe, share it with someone who’s carrying quiet grief, and leave a review so more people can find this work. grievingawake.com joyasosnowski.com Follow me on IG Email me

    Why You Can't Let Go — What Mary Magdalene Knew - and Taught Me - About Grief and Regret

  3. Jul 30

    What Grief Does to Your Brain — and the 4 Foundations That Keep You From Getting Stuck

    Send us Fan Mail Grief can hijack your mind so completely you reach for a loaf of bread instead of your wallet and then wonder if you’re losing it. This shocking experience sent me searching what was happening to my brain. I’m Reverend Joya Sosnowski, and I’m naming what most people never get taught: grief is the process of losing someone or something foundational, and it can also be the process of rewiring your identity as your reality changes. We talk about what happens in the brain during grief, including why your sense of self can feel unplugged and why grief brain fog is so common. From there, I share the first four foundations of Grieving Awake: present moment awareness, radical acceptance, self-kindness, and non-resistance. You’ll hear how emotions move like waves, why the body’s chemistry supports release through tears, and how “pain multiplied by resistance creates suffering” becomes a real-life map for surviving the hardest moments. I also introduce what I call the second grief: the argument with the loss, the endless what-ifs and self-blame that deepen the wound. To help you come back into your body right away, I guide a simple 5-4-3-2-1 grounding practice and a heart-centered self-compassion mantra you can repeat when your inner critic gets loud. We close with a short practice and an invitation to keep walking this path with support. If this resonates, subscribe so you don’t miss the next practice, share this with someone who needs a steadier breath today, and leave a review so more grieving hearts can find Grieving Awake. grievingawake.com joyasosnowski.com Follow me on IG Email me

    What Grief Does to Your Brain — and the 4 Foundations That Keep You From Getting Stuck

  4. Jul 3

    Grieving Awake: Remaking this podcast and following the whispers of the soul

    Send us Fan Mail Grief can feel like the floor drops out, but what if it’s also the moment your real life starts asking for your attention? I’m rebranding the podcast as Grieving Awake because grief is no longer a side topic for me, it’s the doorway I’ve been walking through. I talk about why I missed last week while finishing my book, and why this next season needs to match the truth of what I’m here to share. Grief isn’t only about death. It shows up after divorce, betrayal, career disillusionment, spiritual awakening, and any experience that shatters your identity and the world you thought you lived in. The heart of my message is simple and loud: grief dismantles your identity. It rewires you. And the way you move through that initiation shapes who you become. We also name the trap of spiritual bypassing and “high vibe” pressure, and make space for a more grounded kind of joy that can coexist with pain. I share the tools that help me stay conscious inside grief: daily meditation, mindful self-compassion, non-attachment, radical acceptance, somatic practices, and expressive arts. We explore how building nervous system safety creates a container for your feelings and naturally realigns your external world. I’m also opening the door to future conversations on after-death communication, near-death experiences, and the science of consciousness, because I don’t believe science and mysticism are separate, they’re both reaching toward the same mystery. If you’re navigating trauma, addiction patterns, or the sense that your old self no longer fits, press play and walk with me. Subscribe, share this with someone who’s grieving in any form, and leave a review so more people can find Grieving Awake. grievingawake.com joyasosnowski.com Follow me on IG Email me

  5. Jun 17

    Identity Rebirth After Loss: How Grief Rewires Who You Become

    Send us Fan Mail Your identity can feel solid until life interrupts the script. When reality changes fast, through death, heartbreak, illness, or even the quiet realization that you don’t want what you used to want, your brain’s predictions get scrambled and your sense of self goes with it. I talk about what “identity rebirth” actually means, why so many people are feeling an identity crisis right now, and how disruption can become a doorway instead of a dead end. We dig into the neuroscience idea of the predictive brain and how repeated thoughts shape your wiring, your nervous system, and the life you build next. I share why grief is more than death, it’s the loss of anything meaningful, and how the mind can accidentally get stuck rehearsing the worst day. From there, I offer a grounded path for grieving awake: staying in the present moment, practicing radical acceptance, and treating yourself with real kindness when the ego is panicking and everything feels messy. You’ll also hear the core practice I lean on to rebuild from the inside out: choosing a truth that lights you up, holding faith in your heart, and building trust through action in your gut and nervous system. We zoom out to purpose and collective consciousness too, including the reminder that purpose doesn’t have to be big or public. Sometimes it’s as simple as dancing in your garden and meeting each moment without masks, steady in who you are and flexible in how you respond. If this resonates, subscribe, share it with someone walking through change, and leave a review with the one truth that lights you up right now. grievingawake.com joyasosnowski.com Follow me on IG Email me

    Identity Rebirth After Loss: How Grief Rewires Who You Become
  • 5 Episodes

5
out of 5
10 Ratings

About

Grieving Awake is a podcast about awakening the heart through life's sacred thresholds. It's an exploration of what it means to listen to the soul and become more fully human through grief, loss, love, and the experiences that change us forever. Through conversations that weave together consciousness, grief, contemplative practice, intuition, mysticism, science, and the mystery of being human, we explore how life's greatest thresholds can awaken us to a deeper relationship with ourselves, each other, and Spirit. Every conversation is an invitation to become more heart-led, more intuitively guided, and more deeply connected to Spirit.

Information

  • Creator
    Joya Sosnowski
  • Years Active
    2019 - 2026
  • Episodes
    5
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Turn Up Your Light Podcast | Rev. Dr. Joya Sosnowski
  • Show Website
    Grieving Awake with Joya