Regaining Life After Loss with Denise Dielwart: The FLOW Grief Method

Welcome to the Real Life Momz podcast. It is time to take a break from all our to do's and carve out this time to focus on yourself. I'm Lisa Foster, your host, and today I'm here with fellow mom, grief coach, author, and founder of the Flow Grief Academy, Denise Dielwart. Denise is here to help us regain life after loss using a unique flow method.

Hi, Denise. Welcome to the show. Hi, Lisa. Thanks so much for giving me the opportunity to speak to moms about grief. It's such an important subject that, , We don't look at and when it does hit a mom, it's exceptionally hard. And I am so glad to have you because I've been podcasting for about three years now and I have never touched this topic.

And it's interesting because I almost wonder if I, you know, didn't touch it because it's hard to talk about. But I really like that you have helped yourself by creating a method, but also have helped so many other people [00:01:00] and not just to cope with it, but just to also to transform their life. So I love you to tell your background story a little bit about why you developed this method and kind of what brought you to it.

Absolutely. So my husband passed away really suddenly in 2009. He basically went to work, , and had a blood clot. So it was, you know, kissed him goodbye for work and he never came home. So, uh, he was young. He was only 51. Uh, at that stage, my kids had all moved out cause I had my kids young and they had their kids young.

So they had all moved out into their own homes and I had nine, eight grandsons. I've got nine now, eight grandsons, all at ranging from the ages of three. Up till up to about 12. So. You know, like the three year old never got to know Grandad. Um, the others have a faint memory of him. You know, the older boys now, when we talk about Grandad, they [00:02:00] remember all the things that he used to do and the funny things and how he used to make them eat the vegetables and things like that.

But the younger ones have a very faint memory. So, it's really important to keep that memory alive. But that's what started me on my journey, is that I went for counselling, I went for therapy, I did all the stuff that everybody tells you to do. Everybody's got fantastic advice. Really, it's like, go and see a counsellor.

You're not coping. So that's what I did. I went and saw a, a counsellor and um, she told me, you know, Oh, I'm going to be like this for the next five to seven years because grief takes time and you have to wait for time and you have to go through the five stages of grief and it's a long, long, long journey.

And I sort of kind of accepted that. And then after about six months of in this treadmill of not being able to, to break out or feeling any better, I am. challenged her and I said to her in one of our sessions, I said, when am I going to [00:03:00] start feeling better? And that's when she said, Oh, you're just trying to push it.

You can't do it too fast. You can't, you can't heal grief like that. And. That was my, that was my, that's it, I'm done. I've got to find something else to do. I can't keep going on like this. I was a year, I was 51, so I was still pretty young. Yeah. My kids had just lost their father. My grandkids had lost their granddad.

And I knew that I had to heal me. So that I could help them in their journey as well. I didn't want them to see me crying. I didn't want them to see me upset because obviously we hide those feelings. And that's when my journey began I thought, you know what, I've got a whole new life ahead of me.

I'm going to become a life coach. I'm so broken, but I'm going to become a life coach. That was hilarious. And, um, I did. I became a life coach. I did all the NLPs, all the hypnosis training, all of that to help me. Was never going to help people in grief, [00:04:00] ever. Because my previous life, I was a bookkeeper and a tax agent.

So my natural progression from the, from the life coaching was to become a business coach. And help people in businesses. I knew what a profit and loss looked like. I knew how to help you grow your business. I could do that in my sleep. But the universe had other ideas. Every CEO that I spoke to, every um, manager, they said to me, Denise, why are you in business?

You have healed yourself so well, why aren't you working with people in grief? And I, of course, pushed it back. I'm not doing that. No, no, no, no, no. Been there, done that. Bought the t shirt. I'm not doing that anymore. Not going to do that. And here I am 15 years later, working with people in grief.

Because we have to heal ourselves. Grief doesn't ever ever heal. You know, we're coming up to the Christmas period now, the holiday season, which is a really, really tough season because you don't have that person with you. Now, we can either go, oh, it's [00:05:00] gonna be hard, it's gonna be terrible, or we can celebrate their life.

So, my mission with what I do now is to help and educate as many people that have lost a loved one, that grief is not a life sentence. It's a new beginning and it's a new journey.

What I'll just tack on to that very quickly, what's grown out of that now is the Flow Grief Release Practitioner Certification that, that I'm opening up. So I'm teaching others that have experienced loss, the tools to heal and help others by becoming a certified practitioner. Practitioner.

Yeah. So it's just this big ripple effect. So great. So, okay, so you created kind of your own method called the flow method, right? And it has about four steps. In it. Can you talk us through these steps yeah. So what happens when we, when we lose somebody, especially as a mother, [00:06:00] and I say that with my hand on my heart is we internalize everything.

Because we don't want to hurt or let our other loved ones, whether it's our husband or our children or whoever, see that we're hurting because we have to be the strong one. We're the mother. We are the strong ones, right? And we've been conditioned to do that as well. The very first step in the flow method is to feel.

I reverse engineered how I healed myself and that's how the flow method was born. So what did I do first? I had to give myself permission to go down that grief pit, to go down into the shadows of grief and feel, really feel that pain. Not just feel like crying or feeling sad. That's the surface. We all feel sad.

We all feel lost. We all feel lonely. That's, that's just the surface. But what emotions are beneath that surface? What are you truly feeling? I remember I used to lock myself in my walk [00:07:00] in robe, my walk in closet, and in the dark, with my little poodle Lulu, and I used to just rock in a fetal position.

And um, one day I let out this guttural scream from the pit of my stomach, and I actually, oh my goodness, is that me? I couldn't believe that this noise was coming from me. Well, that was the first time I actually released and felt. My pain.

Which I imagine is so difficult because you know, it's a hard place to go there and feel that pain when you're in so much pain from your loss. Yeah. We don't want to go there because we're already in pain as you say. We're in pain. We're it's too painful to go there. Why would I want to put myself through that again?

And feeling is not. reliving the story over and over again on that one moment of time when they passed away. It's not that. That's not feeling. Feeling is feeling that emotion. What am I feeling now? And sometimes it's hard to actually verbalize that feeling. [00:08:00] Sometimes we can't even verbalize it. We just know, but it's important to feel.

It really is important to feel because the L is for letting go. So if we quite don't feel, we cannot let go of that pain. The letting go is not letting go of the memories, letting go of the love, letting go of the life we had together. It's letting go of the pain, letting go of that emotion that's stopping you from overcoming.

That's the overcoming. Because once we let go, we can now start a new journey. We can start the overcoming. Okay. Because we know what we're feeling. We know that we've let go of that. It's like, Oh, okay, I've let go of that. But then that leaves an empty, an empty space. And we have to fill that empty space.

Yeah. And that's when we overcome and become whole. That's when we start reimagining. Now, we've got the tools. We know what to do. We can start reimagining a new life.. So, I like that. Flow. So, F is feel. Is L let go. Is that right? O is overcome and is [00:09:00] the W become whole. Wow. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I love that and it happens in layers. So an emotion will come up and you'll go, Oh, I'm feeling this, I'm going down and you'll let it go and you'll go, Oh, okay, this is what it is, whatever it is, um, where did that come from?

And then, okay, I'm overcoming, I'm letting go, I'm becoming whole, this is what I'm going to do. And then you go gaily along and suddenly, boom, another one comes. Because you've now created a bigger space for yourself, so you're growing. It's not being stagnant, we're not talking about our, our grief. And this is where traditional therapy is great for the initial stages, when you need to talk to somebody, you need to get it out, how you're feeling.

But there comes a time where you need to go, okay, what's next?

I have clients that have been five, six years in therapy.

Why? Why are [00:10:00] you sitting there in five years of therapy if it didn't work the first time? But they've seen five or six therapists, not realizing that they all work in the same modality. It's talk therapy. We can't talk our way out of grief. We have to take action. So

what are some techniques to be able to let it go? Let it go. So the first thing is to recognize, okay, Who am I being right now? Not what am I doing?

Who am I being? And what am I letting go of? That's the first, first step. Breathing is huge. Deep breath into that feeling so that you can let go of whatever's coming up. And like I said, sometimes we can't even verbalize it. We don't even know what's coming up. We just know that there's stuff coming up and that's okay.

Breathe through it. Just sit there. Meditate. Now meditation doesn't have to be put on YouTube or put on a meditation can be sitting and just watching the ocean, [00:11:00] going to a park and just sitting, sitting and watching kids play, whatever it is for you, but just meditate and empty the mind and then you feel lighter, but you still don't know exactly what did I let go of? And that's okay. You don't need to know what did I let go of? When did I let it go? How did I let it go? We don't need to know all of that stuff. I know sometimes like the body just holds on to things, right? It's like you've talked about it, but you still feel it. So I get it. And, and the body just holds on to things. So like that breath, that breathing, and just getting it out of your actual body is also a component of of letting it go.

That's kind of what you're doing with that breath work. So that's really helpful. Now, when you were going through this, like, if someone were to give you a nugget of advice back then, what would you wish you would have heard that you would have known [00:12:00] that maybe moms can know now?

It's okay. To, to scream, it's okay to have a bad day. I got a nugget of advice, and God bless him, he's since passed away, with an old school friend of mine, um, in South Africa, because I'm originally from South Africa, so, and Gav said to me, When you're driving, And you're on your own in the car, scream, scream at the steering wheel.

You've got to get that energy out. And that was the best advice that I've got ever. And I still do it to this day, 15 years later, when I get really like, and you can feel the energy building, I'll just scream at the car, in the car. And as a mother, you've got so many Responsibilities, and especially a mother of young children.

You're looking after family, you're looking after the husband. The husband's grieving differently to the wife. The kids are all grieving differently. There could be tension in, in, in the family as well because You grieving your way as a [00:13:00] mother, so nine times out of ten internalizing it, not showing our emotions.

The husband is working and he's busy as well, so he's doing his thing. He's not showing emotions. And then I see it so often, then the wife, the mother goes, well, you don't care about the child we just lost, perceives it that way, that you don't care because you're just continuing with work. Meantime, he's dying inside.

But he doesn't want to hurt her or the kids either. So it's this, this constant revolving door of nobody really wants to show their emotions. And that's the first step is to feel them as a family, as a unit way. Sit down. What are you feeling? How are you feeling? And very often they don't want to say anything, but as a mother, it's, I always say, mom, you start first.

This is what I'm feeling. Yeah. Because it can be, I can see how you can like isolate yourself so much, even if it's like a. Something the whole family is grieving [00:14:00] about, , because yeah, everyone's just trying to, I guess, process and stay strong in their own way and, and could be able to like continue on.

It's almost like that, oh, overcome and whole, but like nobody gets to the overcoming whole because they're just trying to, like, survive, right? Just trying to go day by day and it's very isolating. And yeah, so I, I do love, I do love the screaming method. And I, I'm going to say, I not even just grief, I use the screaming method in my car.

It's such a lovely place, especially if you're in your garage, because sometimes I'll do it before I leave. Cause I do feel like I scream pretty loud that people walking past me could hear me. And I, you know, I don't necessarily want that. But I will do that when I just get to a point of just boiling overwhelm in the house, especially when the kids were little.

Oh yeah, and I would scream because I remember that from like my college days where we used to have midnight scream. Even in the pandemic, we had something called midnight scream. [00:15:00] And everybody would yell and it's such an, it's an amazing release because yeah, you, you just get it out and then you feel kind of like a little shaky after then you calm down and by the time you can drive off, it feels good.

And, and yeah, you're alone. I love that. Um, so I definitely love that method, but yeah, I like that if, especially if it's not just you and it is a whole family event, bringing it up. Like you said, like, let's talk about it. I mean, can people, are there like little things like a mom could bring up to their family if they're going through this as a family, maybe they lost a spouse or, , unfortunately like a child or somebody or a grandparent that really affects the unit.

, is there like a question that you can just. put out there that the family can just kind of talk about. The first thing is to start talking about the person you've lost. Yeah. Yeah. What society does is with like with my husband was, I've got a beautiful lady that's now a certified flow grief release practitioner.

Um, she [00:16:00] lost her daughter while her daughter was away at school. So she wasn't with Naomi. Um, she just got the call that her teenage daughter had passed away at school. Nobody wanted to speak about Naomi.

Nobody wanted to speak about her. It's the same as me when Martin passed away, my husband. Nobody wanted to speak about him. Even, even my kids, you know, didn't want to speak about dad. my eldest daughter, mom, I don't want to speak about dad now. I'm not ready yet. And that's normal and natural deflection of grief because it's not wanting to feel that pain.

So if I take my eldest daughter, um, she didn't want, she was never ready to speak about dad. She is now, but in the initial stages, whereas my youngest daughter had pictures up everywhere on the walls with him, she had blown up canvases. So the opposite, the complete opposite of how they grieved.

So there's no sort of way that you can sit down and say, okay, this is the structure. This is how we're going to do it. Is to just really bring up the fun things that that person, do you [00:17:00] remember when, you know, like Martin was, was, was one that would sit on a chair and being in Australia, we'd have like a hundred degree heat and the, you know, there's all plastic garden chairs.

He once sat on one of those chairs and that was the heat, the legs just did that. And we were in a conference and of course, In the middle of the conference, it just went, and bits of chairs fell everywhere. And he ended up on the floor. It was really comical because we just looked at him and the kids laughed.

We were all there together. I said, do you remember the time dad fell off that plastic chair? And that opens up that conversation. Yeah. Yeah. And starts them talking about and reminiscing the good things, because we don't want to focus on the death, on the time that they died, because that's what talk therapy does, is how you're feeling.

I know it's tough. It's not easy. We all know that, but let's focus on moving forward, draw a line in the sand and say, you know what? They lived. We are [00:18:00] living their legacy. It feels like so much nicer to talk about. Just, , the memories, and I always like when I hear there are certain traditions and certain cultures that like, you know, it's a, like the funeral is like a celebration, right?

Which, you know, feels, could be, feel weird for some, but. I always like I'm inspired by that because it feels like they're so happy and they're really celebrating the person and they are talking about stories and it's just such a nice way to remember them and now talking to you also realizing that is kind of very therapeutic to do together versus you know just feeling Sad.

I mean, I remember my own dad's funeral and it was like, we didn't talk very much. It was just kind of like, this is what we do. And you know, this is the next step. And like, it didn't feel like a big conversation about like just his, , life. And to celebrate his life would have been really nice.

Yeah. [00:19:00] Yeah. You know, we had after Martin's funeral, we had, um, I lived up in acreage at the time on eight acres and Martin loved to fire. So after the funeral, whoever came back to the house, you know, we had his favorite beer and we had a massive bonfire. Nice. And that was the celebration. Um, we played all his music and everything like that as well.

So it's really important to celebrate their life. And it's not just, Oh, you were having a celebration of life. It's, it's to really celebrate that they loved you. You loved them and they came into your life for a reason. Even with a child, even with a tiny little baby. And, you know, there's a lot of, a lot of mothers that lose a baby at two, three weeks.

And they go, why? What did that? Why? That child came into your life to bring you love, to bring you joy. And it's to [00:20:00] celebrate that little glimpse of life that you had with them. But it's important to, for everybody around so that you. And I hate to say this, the mother is the universe of the family.

Mother breaks down, the mother, the mother cries, the mother disappears, the whole family breaks down, cries and disappears. And that's why in grief, when we lose somebody, whether it's a child, whether it's a parent, whether it's a husband, we as mothers and woman, we become stoic, we soldier on, because we have to be strong for everybody else.

I did that. Mm hmm. I did that. It was my natural thing. Okay. I have to be strong. I have to be here for the kids and the grandkids and show no emotion. So how do we actually get past that? Because that is a big mother role, like in anything, whether it's great for, you know, your day to day life, just keeping it together, right?

If mom's happy, everyone's happy. I mean, like that. That's, that's true. It's a saying for a reason, but [00:21:00] how in a time of whether, you know, it's lost grief stress, like how can we still like feel like we can keep the unit together, but still be feeling our own emotions and not allowing everything to just kind of fall apart?

Because I think that's part of it, right? We feel like if we drop a ball and, and break down that everything else is going to come tumbling down on us as well. It's to start loving ourselves. And I know it's such a cliche, love yourself and then you can love everybody else. I love it when I hear that, people say that, it's such a cliche, if you don't love yourself you can't love anybody else.

But what is self love? It's not just going to have a hot fluffy bath that's not self love. Self love is putting yourself first.

Your needs first as, as a woman, as a mother, it's your needs first. What do I need right now? And not dismissing them,

not saying, Oh, I haven't got [00:22:00] time. I've got to go to kids. I've got to do this. If you having a busy day and you having a down day and you just want to sit in your pajamas all day and you don't want to take the kids to school. Don't. . Don't feel guilty about it. It's okay.

Because we keep ourselves busy. I'll just keep doing this. And then eventually that busyness stops. And that's why we fall apart maybe five, six years later.. It's that grief bubbles, that, that lost bubbles beneath the surface. It doesn't go away. We just keep masking it with busyness, with being there for self pleasing, self doing for other people.

You know, people pleases. Oh, what do you need? Do you need this? Do you need I'll do it. Yeah, when you keep busy, I mean, it masks having to actually feel what you're feeling. And yeah, so if you keep going, then you don't have to sit with yourself. It's, yeah, it's kind of like a, yeah, distraction. And then what I'm hearing, and really, it's coming clear is like, this isn't just about grief.

It's like, you know, By, by [00:23:00] prioritizing yourself now, right? And making these healthy choices to really honor yourself, feel, love yourself. Then, when and if something happens down the line, you are already prepared. You're already stronger, because you already have that foundation of taking care of you.

Totally. I remember, uh, one of my widowed, widowed clients said to me,, why don't they teach this stuff in school? Don't get me started. Why don't they teach half the stuff in school that you can actually use, right?

Besides, , multiplication, division, whatever. Like, I mean, honestly, there's calculators for that people, right? Like this is the stuff we need to learn. Yeah, totally need to learn. And then I had another lady who said to me, um, she said, Do you know that if I had done this before I met my husband, I would never have married him.

True, right? I mean, but true, like for a lot of situations, if you can [00:24:00] love yourself and prioritize yourself, a lot of things in your life would look much differently. That's different. Now, a lot of couples, um, when they lose a child, the marriage falls apart.

Now there's two reasons for that. The first reason is they should never have been together in the first place. And this, the loss is actually putting a magnifying glass over their relationship. And the other one is that they don't understand each other's grieving. They expect each other to grieve the same.

So, it's so important to do the inner work on yourself. Not on anybody else in the family, but on yourself. Within yourself. Do the inner work. Who am I? What, what drives me? What do I want? What am I, you know, where, where am I? Who am I being? Why am I feeling like this today? What triggered it? You know, I uncovered a belief, a real deep limiting belief with my mum.

Always I was a, I was a, I did ballet and I did music and all the stuff that you do as a kid. [00:25:00] And my mum always used to say to me, Denise, practice makes perfect and just soldier on.

So when I lost Martin, what did I do? I wanted to be the perfect mum. and friend and everything to everybody. And how did I do that? But just soldiering on, but I didn't realize that that was a subconscious belief running, running the show for me. One of the many. And we go, Oh no, but wait, there's more.

There's always more or they pop up. Even when we worked on them, they will come back out in times of, you know, stress. And yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And, you know, I still find myself sometimes just soldiering on and go, hang on, stop. Yes. But I'm aware of it now. So that's what that that that's what doing the inner work on ourselves.

Yes. It's about the grief. Yes. It's about the loss. But what that grief and that loss does is brings up all those emotions.

Yeah. And if you've been working on [00:26:00] them, then you'll be able to also identify those. earlier. It is really hard when you're in that state, not that, you know, that you should be doing it if you haven't worked on it yet, but it is really hard when you're already in that state of grief and mourning and just being in this position and then also tackling all those limiting beliefs and, you know, uncovering.

And so the more, yeah, once again, the more we can start working on ourselves, the more we're prepared for really. Any situation. And we cannot do it on our own. We just cannot do it on our own. We can get to a certain limit, but then we bump up against ourselves. Because we have limiting beliefs.

Because we can, we only know what we know as well. We don't realize a lot of those limiting beliefs are hidden beneath the surface. Yeah. Yeah. So we can think, well, I'll go and read a book or I'll watch [00:27:00] YouTube video or I'll get the information. But that's information. It's not the transformation. We need somebody to pull us through that to actually take a helicopter view and go, okay, this is where you're at.

Do you realize you're doing X, Y, Z, where did that come from? And then to start going down into that. Yeah, and that just brings me to how do you find the right people? Because like, you know, most people will turn to therapy and maybe for some that is working. Um, but how do you, are there things that we should be looking for?

How should we know that we're in the right place or how do we find the right place? Well, if you've been in therapy for longer than six months and you're not feeling any better and you're sort of thinking, okay, well now maybe it's the therapist and I need a better therapist because so many of us therapists hop thinking that it's the therapist's fault and it's not.

It's the modality. It's not the therapist, the [00:28:00] person. It's the, it's what they're teaching and it's, it's what they do. As I said, therapy is great for the initial. It's talk therapy. You talk about it, talk about it, talk about it. So if you feel that you feel stuck, that you're seeing a therapist and you're just not where you want to be, now it's time to go, OK, maybe I need to heal me.

Maybe I need to do the inner work. What is next? If you're asking yourself what is next, you're ready to start your inner journey. Yeah, and I like that question too, because I agree people, can keep going and going and going with whatever it could be physical therapy, it could be regular therapy, you know, it could be talk therapy, it could be anything really.

But yeah, you always need to question yourself. Am I improving? You know, give it time, but like you're right, like six months is plenty of time to, you should be making gains. And if you're not, let's like, yeah, let's change the channel and see what else is out there that we can maybe look into helping.

I, I really think that is important for [00:29:00] sure. That, that what else is the best question you can ask yourself. Yeah. What else? Yeah.

Mom's listening today. What is one thing that you really want them to do?

And I can, I'm hearing it in my head already that what you might say, but I'm going to let you say it anyway, so mom's listening to this today, whether you've lost a child or you haven't, or maybe, you know, somebody that has is to. Give yourself permission to go down.

Give yourself the permission to feel and to put yourself first. It's okay to go down that rabbit hole. It's okay to scream. It's okay to cry. It's okay, and you don't have to do it when your kids and your husband and everybody's there. Do it in, you know, I used to sit in my walking robe because that was where I felt safe.

It was dark. I had all my clothes in there. I didn't see anybody. It was basically soundproof and I could scream and I could cry. But it's so important to do. Yes. [00:30:00] Yes. Now, where can the listeners find you? So online at flowgriefacademy. com. I've got all my links there that how you can get hold of me and book a call with me.

I also offer a free, , 45 minutes, sometimes it's 60 minutes, sometimes it's longer, discovery call to see where you're at in your journey and, , ask us. I know that a lot of ladies want to help others as well. Now they've got to the stage where they go, well, I want to help other mothers. I want to help other widows and, um, That's really important as well because when you become a Flow Grief Release Practitioner, you've got all the tools that we spoke about today.

You've healed yourself. So your journey along the way is to also heal yourself. So you're healing yourself while you're going through the program, plus you're now getting the skills and the accreditation to help others. So you're getting the method. Yeah. I mean, that's beautiful. I love, it's just a gift that keeps giving.

So I [00:31:00] love that. And the world since COVID is grieving, whether we like it or not. Yeah. The world is grieving and there's a lot of sadness. It's a lot of grief and my absolute calling and just, ah, let's lift the world up. Let's create and who's better to do it than woman. We are the nurturers. We know how to lift people up.

Thank you so much for sharing your story, for your knowledge, for your method and that's kind of reaching the world through who you're training and all the people that you're helping. So thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing. You're so welcome and thank you so much for having me on and giving me the opportunity to share.

Thank you for listening to this episode. It was so nice to meet Denise and learn more about her flow method. If you need more resources around grief, please visit her website.

The links are in the show notes and just like Denise said, we need to love ourselves. And let's start by putting ourselves at [00:32:00] the top of our to do list.

Come join us next Tuesday, where we'll have another incredible episode with another incredible mom.