July 7, 2024

Living the dream with grief expert Denise Dielwart

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In today’s episode, we explore the profound journey of grief with Denise Dielwart, an author and grief expert. Denise shares her revolutionary Flow Method, a transformative approach that helps individuals navigate through grief more swiftly and effectively. Drawing from her personal experience of losing her husband, Denise discusses the importance of feeling emotions, letting go, overcoming, and becoming whole. Join us for an insightful conversation that offers hope and actionable steps for anyone dealing with loss.
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www.flowgriefacademy.com

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Welcome, um, to the living the Dream podcast with curveball. Um, if you believe you can achieve chee chee, welcome to the living the dream with Curveball podcast, a show where I interview guests that teach, motivate, and inspire. Today we're going to be talking about grief, as I am joined by author and grief expert Denise D Arat.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Denise has a flow method that can help people get through grief in months instead of years. She has 15 years of experience of it due to the loss of her husband. So we're going to be talking to her about her method and everything that she's up to and, uh, all about her grief flow method. So, Denise, thank you so much for joining me today.

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> Denise D Arat>Thank you for giving me the opportunity to, uh, share my flow method, um, with you and your listeners.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Well, can you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?

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> Denise D Arat>Absolutely. So, um, I lost my husband in, um, 2009. I was only 51, and he was only 55. Totally out of the blue, unexpected. Uh, he woke up in the morning, went to work, um, and just basically never came home. He died of a blood clot.

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> Denise D Arat>So, um, which, you can imagine sent me into a complete frenzy, a complete. I didn't know what to do. Suddenly, my life had ended.

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> Denise D Arat>Um, I, um, tried so many methods. I tried counseling. I tried therapy. I tried reading books. I tried so much that just wasn't helping. And everybody was telling me, just wait for time. Time heals all. Oh, my goodness. You've just lost your husband. Just let it be. Go through the five stages of grief. And every day, I just felt as though, uh, I was getting worse and worse and worse and worse. And my grief was getting heavier. My sadness was getting heavier, and I could feel myself sinking into depression.

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> Denise D Arat>And, uh, that's when I actually realized that grief doesn't heal and that I had to heal myself. I had to live Martin's legacy. I had to live my husband's legacy. And he wouldn't have wanted to see me sad and crying and depressed every day. Um, he was a happy, jovial person that loved life, lived life to the full. And I really felt that I wanted to make him proud, make him proud of me.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Okay, so, you know, kind of let, uh, us know about your flow method and how you decided, uh, to come up with it after all that you been through and, you know, sorry for your loss.

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> Denise D Arat>Yeah, absolutely. So, through my journey and through my self discovery, I, um, became a life coach. Now, when M. Martin died, I was a bookkeeper, uh, tax agent. I was heavy in the corporate world, and, um, I found myself really struggling to concentrate, really struggling to move forward because your head, I didn't realize at the time, is that our head goes to mush our grief, changes our brain.

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> Denise D Arat>And, um, the only solution I found was to become a life coach so that I could get the tools to heal me, to heal myself. I was never going to intend doing what I'm doing now. If anything, I was going to become a business coach. That was going to be the outcome, if anything. But as my journey progressed and I saw how quickly I healed, I thought, you know, this is really selfish of me not to help others that are grieving. It really became my life's work to actually pass forward and debunk the myth of waiting for time, going through the five stages of grief, because that's external to us.

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> Denise D Arat>We have to heal from within. So that's where my flow method was born. My flow method stands for feel, let go, overcome, and become whole.

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> Denise D Arat>I reverse engineered how I healed myself. How did I heal so quickly? What did I do differently to what everybody else is doing out there? And my first realization and my first aha, uh, moment was I allowed myself and gave myself permission to really feel my pain. Because here's the thing. When we go through grief, which is trauma, we don't want to feel that pain anymore. We felt it initially. It's awful pain. It's there. The heartbreak, the loss, the, uh, emptiness, it's constantly there.

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> Denise D Arat>So what we do is we mask that pain, and we do that on a subconscious level. We're not even aware that we're doing that. We mask the pain.

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> Denise D Arat>We start living in the land of. I'm, um, okay.

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> Denise D Arat>How was your day? Oh, it was okay. How are you?

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> Denise D Arat>I'm okay when we're really not okay. So the very first step is to really go down and feel that pain, feel that emotion.

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> Denise D Arat>What emotion are you feeling? And then acknowledge that emotion, because once we do that, we can then let it go.

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> Denise D Arat>So we're not letting go. That's the l in the flow method.

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> Denise D Arat>We're not letting go of the love, of the life, of the memories. We're letting go of that deep grief, heartache and pain, because it's that that's stopping us from moving forward.

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> Denise D Arat>As long as we're holding on to that and we're not feeling and we're not letting go of that feeling and those emotions, we can't even begin to start overcoming. And that's the o, uh, in the flow method.

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> Denise D Arat>We can't overcome. What are we going to overcome? We don't know because we don't know what we don't know. And I know that sounds such a cliche, but it's true.

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> Denise D Arat>If we don't know what we're supposed to be healing and what we're feeling because we numbed ourselves out, numbed ourselves so down from the pain we can't overcome. And those emotions fester beneath the surface like a festering wound.

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> Denise D Arat>They just fester and fester and fester.

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> Denise D Arat>But the good news is, once we do, we do start overcoming. We then become whole.

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> Denise D Arat>And it's in that overcoming and that wholeness that we start reimagining our new life, start learning to love ourselves, start, uh, rediscovering who we are. So I remember when Martin passed away, um, I didn't know who I was. We got married young.

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> Denise D Arat>I met him when I was 16. So you can imagine, you know, I didn't have lots of boyfriends or dating or anything like that. He was. It got met him at 16. He, um, was 1819 when I met him. Um.

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> Denise D Arat>We got married young. I was 20, 1920 when we got married. He was 21, 22 when we got married, you know. And, um. Yeah, then we had our kids young. So my whole life was him, as was his life was me. And we grew up together.

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> Denise D Arat>We grew together. But after he passed away, I had to find out who I was.

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> Denise D Arat>And it's not just with losing a husband. You know, I've got clients that have lost children, and that throws the family totally off balance because it's not normal. It's not in the normal realm of life that our children die before we do.

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> Denise D Arat>So the guilt comes in, why didn't I do more? I could have done more. Why did they have to die? And all this narrative starts plaguing the family unit. And if we don't heal ourselves, especially as the mother and I know that fathers are there, too, but the father's grieving, the kids are grieving. But as a mother, we are the glue to the family.

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> Denise D Arat>The family look to us. But what we do is that we give and we give and we give and we want them to be happy. And we don't give back to ourselves. We don't start our inner journey on ourselves.

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> Denise D Arat>And I've seen it so many times with my clients that their whole families are on the brink of collapse because of the loss of a loved one.

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> Denise D Arat>So, uh, it's really important, it's actually quite urgent that we heal as quickly as possible and we release that grief. Now, grief never will. Never ever, um, grief doesn't ever heal.

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> Denise D Arat>So we'll never heal the grief. And that's another, you know, myth and misconception that, oh, yes, I just got to heal my grief. How long does it take for me to heal my grief?

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> Denise D Arat>And my answer to that is never, never, never. Because grief is love. It's an emotion we cannot heal. Love. How do you heal love? You don't.

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> Denise D Arat>We don't even learn to live with it. What are we learning to live with? The pain, the heartache? Uh, we have to heal ourselves. We have to become and reimagine our new life without our loved one.

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> Denise D Arat>And that's the key. And the key is, it's an inner journey.

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> Denise D Arat>It's learning who you are. It's learning to love yourself again, if ever. Uh, did you know, I ask all my clients, do you love yourself? And what do you think the answer is? No, I've never loved myself. I hate looking at myself in the mirror.

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> Denise D Arat>So how can you really love and help others if you don't give yourself that love first? Does that make sense?

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>That makes perfect sense.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Talk about some of the darkest moments that you went through after losing your husband, Martin.

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> Denise D Arat>Oh, there were so many dark moments. Um.

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> Denise D Arat>I remember, um.

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> Denise D Arat>I remember locking myself in my walk in robe. Um, and I had my little, um, poodle, Lulu, with me at the time. She was only a puppy. And, um, I'd lock myself in the darkness, and I just scream because I didn't know how to process it. My brain just was all over the place. I didn't know how to process it. I was living on my own, um, on eight acres, uh, which was Martin's dream. He had built a motorbike track out the back for the kids. And, you know, I've got three kids, and I had eight grandsons at the time, young grandsons. And, um, we had built a place for our family. And all of a sudden, it was just me in this void, in this eight acres of not knowing who I am, where I'm going, what my life is going to be. Um, we both worked from home. You know, that whole life just disappeared. And, uh, you know, rocking myself in the darkness, I was shutting myself away.

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> Denise D Arat>I also then, you know, I found myself one day.

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> Denise D Arat>I was. I'd squeezed myself between the toilet and the wall in my.

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> Denise D Arat>In my. In my clock room because that was the smallest space I could fit myself into.

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> Denise D Arat>And I didn't realize that.

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> Denise D Arat>I was just trying to. I was just trying to stop the pain, trying to stop the hurt and be as small as possible. So it didn't affect me.

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> Denise D Arat>And, um, you know, unfortunately, grief and the loss of a loved one is very misunderstood. You know, at the funeral, everybody comes and rallies around and they. You know, if there's anything I can do for you, please let me know. I'm so sorry for your loss. Oh, my goodness. This is terrible. Um, you know, you don't have to do this alone.

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> Denise D Arat>We're here for you. But the truth is, is that once the funeral is over, those people leave your life.

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> Denise D Arat>And I have found out the hard way, and so do my clients. We don't expect our, uh, friends to leave. We think that they're going to be there forever. But because your life has changed.

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> Denise D Arat>Their life hasn't changed.

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> Denise D Arat>They go on with their life. They've still got their families. They've still got their life intact.

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> Denise D Arat>But your life has changed. My life changed.

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> Denise D Arat>And because of that, I changed. We change. We die when our loved one dies.

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> Denise D Arat>Whoever it is that part of us dies. Uh, whether it's your husband, your wife, your child. Because that life we shared with that person is no longer. It's no longer.

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> Denise D Arat>But where we get stuck and where we get stuck in the darkness and in the dark places is we try and keep that life alive that we shed.

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> Denise D Arat>And it's impossible. We have to create and reimagine a new life for ourselves, which is not easy to do on your own. You know, if somebody. You know, somebody said to me, Denise, what do you want? I don't know. I've just lost my husband. How do I know what I want? You know, um. A lot of my clients that have lost a child, you know, um, they don't know what they want. They've just lost a child, which is unthinkable, that they could lose a child or they've lost a parent. And suddenly I remember when my mother died. I'm, um, an only child, so I remember when my dad died. I was 18 when my dad died. But it didn't somehow affect me that badly because I still had my mother. And I had just.

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> Denise D Arat>Martha and I were just starting out our new life, so I had a backup. I had people around me.

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> Denise D Arat>Um, when my mother died, she died young. She was 59. I was in my forties.

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> Denise D Arat>Um, and I felt like an orphan.

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> Denise D Arat>Yes, I still had my. Still had my kids. My family was intact, but my lineage had gone.

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> Denise D Arat>I felt like an orphan. I had no siblings that I could share that grief with. Um, and that heartache was. And then, of course, when I lost my husband, that just. That was my life over? That was gone. And I had to reinvent who I was.

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> Denise D Arat>I had to rediscover me. Who is Denise? Who am I?

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> Denise D Arat>Because the Denise that was the wife, the mother, the business partner, because Martin and I were in business together, was no longer.

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> Denise D Arat>I couldn't hang on to that anymore.

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> Denise D Arat>And that's the inner journey. That's the inner, uh, inner growth and moving beyond, not waiting for time, not talking about it. I see so many of my clients that have been in therapy for years. Absolutely years. I remember, you know, this one client, a young girl, absolutely beautiful person, um, lost her husband 15 years before we started working together in the, in the flow method.

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> Denise D Arat>15 years she had been crying. 15 years she had been going to therapy. Psychologist, psychiatrist.

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> Denise D Arat>She was on medication. Nothing was helping. And within the first week of us working together, she started laughing. She started releasing that pain, that heartache.

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> Denise D Arat>Because we don't talk about it. We take action steps, and that's what grief needs.

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> Denise D Arat>Grief and loss and trauma needs action, because the more we talk about it, the more it becomes our life and the more we cement it in our brain. We actually hardwire it in our brain.

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> Denise D Arat>So we have to break that pattern and do something different.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>So tell us about some of the other methods that you explored to, before developing the flow method.

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> Denise D Arat>I saw a. I started losing things. Now, I didn't realize at the time that, um, there was a thing called, um, Grief fog. Fog in the brain. Grief fog. I started losing things. I started, um, repeating myself. Bear in mind, I was only 51 at the time. And my daughter said to me, mumdhouse, you're losing it. You're getting Alzheimer's. You need to go and speak to somebody. So I did. I went and saw a psychologist and I saw her for maybe six or eight months every week, every Wednesday. And, um, every Wednesday we'd go there and I'd talk about what I'm going through. What are you going through? How are you feeling?

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> Denise D Arat>Um, you know, what do you want to do? But it was an hour of talking to. There was no action steps. I didn't realize at the time because I'd never been for therapy or anything like that before.

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> Denise D Arat>And, um, I remember asking her one day and I said to her, how long am I still going to feel like this? Because I really feel as I'm not progressing. And she said to me, Denise, you've just lost your husband. This is going to take you at least five to seven years, because grief takes time.

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> Denise D Arat>And it was in that moment on my drive home that I instinctively knew I needed to do something different because this wasn't working for me. Therapy was not working for me. I also joined a lot of other grief groups with other widows and people that had lost loved ones so we could share our stories. Um, again, that wasn't working for me. Grief share everybody. We share your story. You listen to somebody else's story, it doesn't work. Reading books. We can get whatever we could read in a book about somebody else's grief journey. Yes, it helps relieve your journey, but it doesn't create transformation. It doesn't create you reimagining and rediscovering who you are.

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> Denise D Arat>I even read self help books.

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> Denise D Arat>Uh, I did all of that. And it was only when I started my inner journey with somebody, with a coach that was helping me through my journey, that could see my patterns, that could see my beliefs, could see what was keeping me stuck, that my journey really accelerated and I healed really quickly.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Tell us about any upcoming projects that you're working on that people need to know about.

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> Denise D Arat>Well, I've got my, um, I've got my, uh, eight week flow, um, beyond grief program, which is for, um, anybody that is struggling. Uh, we work together really closely for eight weeks. Um, that's a deep dive into you, who you are, what's keeping you stuck where you want to be.

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> Denise D Arat>At the end of the eight weeks, I promise you, you'll be a different person. You'll rediscover who you are.

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> Denise D Arat>You'll go, oh, my goodness. Within the first week of us working together, you have aha. Moments.

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> Denise D Arat>Then if you after that, say to me, Denise, I really want to help others. I, uh, have the academy of transformational grief coaching as well, which is only for people that have experienced loss. So I then teach you to be a certified flow transformational grief coach. You learn how to help others through their grief, how to support others in the right way, to take action and to move forward.

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> Denise D Arat>I also have my inner circle, which is a monthly membership for those that don't want to do either of the two. So we have our monthly circle membership, um, where we meet every week. Every week we meet on a Zoom call and we discuss moving forward. It's not a membership where we talk about how sad we are. It's about how we're moving forward in our grief, which helps everybody. Which helps everybody.

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> Denise D Arat>And then, of course, there's also my grief unlocked podcast. So there is a lot. And, uh, there's so much. The best thing, you know, is go on my website and have a look and click where you want to go, navigate to whatever. Whatever is resonates with you.

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> Denise D Arat>And that's flow, because that's where I have everything.

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> Denise D Arat>You know, you might not want to, uh, work with me for eight weeks, or you might not be ready. You might not want to help others, but you might want to be with others, or you might just want to listen to my podcast. So I really try and meet everybody where they're at in their grief journey because it's different for everybody.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>About that website. That's my next question.

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> Denise D Arat>Yep. Yeah, it's flowbeyondgrief.com.

00:22:06.789 --> 00:22:15.490
> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Okay. We'll close us out with some final thoughts. Maybe if that was something I forgot to talk about that you would like to touch on or just any final thoughts you have for the listeners.

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> Denise D Arat>Um, yes, actually, that website is not flowbeyond grief. It's thegriefacademy.com.

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> Denise D Arat>so it's. My website is griefacademy.com.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Okay. You got any final thoughts?

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Griefbeyondacademy.com.

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> Denise D Arat>Yeah, so it's flowgriefacademy.com.

00:22:38.807 --> 00:22:41.319
> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Flowgreefacademy.Com. Now we got it.

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> Denise D Arat>Flowgriefacademy.com dot yeah, flowgriefacademy.com.

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> Denise D Arat>um, yeah, it's don't do grief alone. Don't do grief alone. We try and do it alone. We try and handle it. I've got this. I can do this. It's just grief.

00:22:59.067 --> 00:23:09.319
> Denise D Arat>No, it's not. Your life and your brain has changed, because grief changes our brain. It changes the chemicals in our brain.

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> Denise D Arat>If we don't work with those chemicals and we don't release them, that becomes our identity and how we live the rest of our life. Always with this underlying pain. Always with this underlying pain. So to you'd never heal from grief. Grief doesn't heal. We do. You know, um, if I had a billboard in New York, what would it say? Grief doesn't heal. You do.

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> Denise D Arat>So stop trying to heal your grief.

00:23:42.430 --> 00:23:50.609
> Denise D Arat>Start doing the work on yourself. Start doing the inner work, because that's where the healing is. You have to heal.

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> Denise D Arat>And I want to add as well, you're not broken.

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> Denise D Arat>You're just going through some awful emotions right now.

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> Denise D Arat>You're not broken.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>You have it, ladies and gentlemen. You know anybody going through some grief? Or if you're going through grief yourself. Follow rate review share this episode to as many people as possible. Jump on your favorite podcast app. Give us a review.

00:24:18.940 --> 00:24:34.240
> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Follow us. If you have any guests or suggestion topics, see Jackson 10 two. Net is the place to send them. Thank you for listening and supporting the show. And Denise, thank you for joining us and sharing your story and telling us about the flow method.

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> Denise D Arat>Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to share and, um, don't be shy people. Book your call with me. God. You know, go to my website, flowgriefacademy uh.com and um, start your journey today.

00:24:48.599 --> 00:24:56.872
> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>For more information on the living the Dream podcast, visit www.djcurveball.com.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>until next time, stay focused on living the dream.

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> Denise D Arat>Dream.