42 - Everyday Grief & Learning to Feel Feelings (feat. Aundi Kolber)

This week, our guest host is trauma therapist Aundi Kolber! She talks about how grief is the bedrock of mental health, why smaller traumas & losses are still so important, what it means to really feel our feelings, and how learning how to respond honestly to smaller day-to-day moments sets the stage for encountering larger events.

Things Aundi mentions in this episode/other resources:
- Hear more from Aundi on episode 32 - Trauma, Attachment, & Creating Safety.
- Hear more about grief on episode 17 - Grief & Loss (feat. Dr. Elizabeth Horn & John Pavlovitz).
- Hear more about emotions & feelings on episode 21 - Emotions Aren't Evil (feat. Marc Alan Schelske).
- Aundi mentions being an Enneagram 4 and references recent episodes featuring Dr. Holly Oxhandler & Dr. Jon Singletary
- The work of Dr. Brené Brown
- The work of Dr. Dan Siegal
- The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk
- Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved by Kate Bowler
- the poet Nayyirah Waheed (here's her website, her Instagram, her Twitter, and her books on Amazon).

Connect with Aundi on her website, Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

Quotes:
- "Grief is a normal part of what it means to be human.” (tweet)
- “A lot of people grew up with the experience that it wasn’t ok to feel feelings.” (tweet)
- “Grief…kind of represents what our body needs to do to move through difficult emotions.” (tweet)
- “We can have smaller losses and smaller transitions. We have to learn how to feel those too.” (tweet)
- “There’s this idea in the Bible that as you steward a smaller thing, you have permission to steward a bigger thing. I think it’s actually very similar with our emotions.” (tweet)
- “If we’ve never learned how to feel smaller emotions, it’s hard when we get to a point where we’re having to feel bigger emotions.” (tweet)
- “Grief is a bedrock of mental health.” (tweet)
- “Grief is like this microcosm idea that can change in it’s size, but is always at it’s core about knowing how to process.” (tweet)
- “Our emotional experiences are just about as unique as each of us are, and that’s ok.” (tweet)
- “Acceptance is not necessarily being happy.” (tweet)

Connect with Robert on his website, Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

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Intro/Outro music for this episode is ‘Fall Down’ by Rivers & Robots.