In 2008, Rachel McGonigle endured the unimaginable heartbreak of losing both of her twin baby daughters, Ellie and Aubrey, within six days. This devastating experience made Rachel painfully aware that society offers little guidance pertaining to healing after loss, and grief is one of our culture’s most misunderstood experiences.
After she had experienced overwhelming pain and frustration with the limited support she was receiving from therapy and support groups, Rachel took healing into her own hands and embarked on her own path to recovery, refusing to accept that the pain and emptiness she was experiencing had to be permanent.
Thanks to her courage and perseverance, Rachel discovered that healing after loss is possible. She successfully nurtured her own heart and life back to health, and Rachel is now dedicated to sharing the tools, skills, and insights that helped her heal with others.
Tune into this powerful interview about how we can become more powerful than the pain of grief, the negative effects of unresolved grief, the physical toll of grief, Rachel’s personal path to healing, and more, for a touching interview filled with inspiring and wise healing insights!
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL HEAR ABOUT THINGS LIKE:
● Grief is one of our culture’s most misunderstood experiences.
● The emotional and physical tolls of grief.
● The healing tools, skills, and insights that helped Rachel.
● What it means to become more powerful than the pain of grief.
● Why it is important for grievers to heal.
● The creation of the Teamotions tea collection to address emotional, physical, and mental well-being issues.
SOME QUESTIONS IRENE ASKS RACHEL:
● What kinds of therapy and support groups did you try?
● What was it about therapy and support groups that didn’t meet your needs?
● What were the emotional and physical tolls of grief that you were experiencing?
● What does it mean to be more powerful than the pain of grief?
● What is unresolved grief?
● Is healing a choice and possible for anyone?
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Rachel McGonigle: Finding Strength in Grief and Light at the End of the Tunnel
Would you like to feel stronger than your grief? You’re going to want to tune in to my wonderful interview with Rachel McGonigle. You’ll learn about the physical toll associated with grief and the negative effects of unresolved grief. You’re going to find out why healing is a choice and why it is important for grievers to heal. Come join Rachel and me for this healing, touching, and very wise interview.
I hope this finds each of you so very well. I’m delighted to have the pleasure of interviewing Rachel McGonigle, who, in 2008, endured the unimaginable heartbreak of losing both of her twin baby daughters, Ellie and Aubrey, within six days. Ellie lived for 7 days and Aubrey for 11 days. This devastating experience made Rachel painfully aware that society offers little guidance pertaining to healing after loss and grief is one of our culture’s most misunderstood experiences.
After she had experienced overwhelming pain and frustration with the limited support she was receiving from therapy and support groups, Rachel took healing into her own hands and embarked on her own path to recovery, refusing to accept that the pain and emptiness she was experiencing had to be permanent. Thanks to her courage and perseverance, Rachel discovered that healing after loss is possible. She successfully nurtured her own heart and life back to health.
Rachel is dedicated to sharing the tools, skills, and insights that helped her to heal with others. I’m looking forward to talking with Rachel, who happily resides in Northern Virginia with her husband Jason, their blended family of four boys, and their dog, Nala, about how we can become more powerful than the pain of grief, the negative effects of unresolved grief, the physical toll of grief, Rachel’s personal path to healing, and more for what will surely be a very touching interview filled with inspiring and wise healing insights.
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Rachel, a warm welcome to the show.
Thank you. I’m already so touched to be here. It’s beautiful what you do.
Thank you. Rachel and I were talking. I’m going to tell everyone before we begin that she is in Texas, right?
Yeah, I’m working. I’m in Texas working.
The work is to help the California Fire Department, correct?
Yes. I’m headed to California here soon to do fire support for the LA Fire and support the victims. I am working with some support organizations and getting training in place so that everybody is emotionally supported through this loss. There’s a misunderstanding that losing possessions is not grief or that if you are grieving, you’re superficial and focusing on the wrong things when, in reality, losing your home and losing your possessions is as devastating as a death and it deserves grief support.
They’re losing their safety. They’re losing their touchstones. They’re losing their memories.
The list of losses is long.
Overcoming Heartbreak: The Tragic Loss of Twin Daughters
You certainly are well-equipped to help all these people. We’re going to share with our audience what has made you so well-equipped to help them with their grief. Let’s begin at the beginning. In 2008, you endured the unimaginable heartbreak of losing your twin daughters, Ellie and Aubrey, within six days. What would you like to share with us about that devastating experience and your realization that society offers little guidance pertaining to healing after loss?
It sometimes amazes me that this was many years ago. It feels like a moment at times. It feels like a long time at times. When I think back, I could describe it as the worst. It was such a sad, overwhelmingly powerless time in my life because my little girls lived toward time and they got very sick. Part of that was they did suffer and we had to make intense decisions about their care and their well-being. I also had a two-and-a-half-year-old little boy at the time, so I didn’t only have my girls to focus on. I had another child.
It was fast and confusing. I felt blindsided. It then felt that in the blink of an eye, they were both gone and the dust settled. The message I was getting was a mother who loses a child will never be okay. I was 28 years old with a beautiful, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, happy little boy saying to myself, “This cannot be my future,” because my daughters were important. They didn’t just die. They lived. I wanted their lives to be honored, but their brother did not deserve to have a grief-stricken mother. He was a baby. It was no more his fault that his sisters died than it was anyone else’s. I felt, at first, very motivated and focused on being the mom that I wanted to be to him, but I admit it wasn’t just about him.
Grief does change us, but we get to choose how it changes us. Share on X
I’ve had people talk to me and say, “I didn’t have another child to focus on, so I didn’t have that motivation.” Believe it or not, my son wasn’t even enough. He was part of it, but he wasn’t even enough. I had to make a decision in myself that my life needed to be more than the grief of my daughter’s and that my dreams, goals, aspirations, values, connections, and all of those things needed to outlive their death. It wasn’t a selfish choice, but I will admit that I did factor my own well-being into it. I mattered, too. My heart mattered, too. The life that I was going to move towards mattered, too. I didn’t want to be done. I didn’t want my life to amount to being controlled by my grief. I wanted to fight for my son.
Look at what you’ve accomplished, and we’ll talk about how you accomplished it. You got through this devastating grief. You helped yourself to heal and you’re helping other people thanks to what you went through, in a way, which is very similar to my story. I went through this terrible accident. I’ve done all this healing, and here I am, helping other people to know that you can get hit by grenades in life, heal, transform, and keep on going. You are a role model for other people, too. You’re a tremendous role model.
That was my biggest frustration. I was looking around and going, “Who were those who’ve gone before me? Who can I model? Who can I follow?” Instead of finding people who wanted to lead me toward healing, I only found people who wanted to convince me that hurting was all there was. That was when I had the realization that a lot of grievers have not healed. It’s not this process that’s inevitable. You go through a loss, grieve, and then heal. It was more like you go through a loss and grieve, and then maybe, if you’re lucky, you exist.
I was frustrated, and this is why I teach what I teach. I promised myself that if I learned how to do this, I would teach everyone who wanted to know because I didn’t want them to experience the frustration I felt looking around for someone to guide me and there was nobody there. Grief is a universal experience. We all experience loss. It’s not an if. It’s a when, and some of us more than others.
This idea that we don’t have anyone to go before us, that there is no path, and we’re all reinventing the wheel and stumbling through on our own, to me, is a ridiculous notion. If we have something to offer and share, we should at least make it available. That doesn’t mean everybody wants it or everyone has to choose it, but I at least want them to know that it’s there for them should they ever decide that healing is something they want to choose.
They have to choose that they want to live and that there’s a purpose in their lives beyond what has happened to them. It’s a very tough and challenging path, but it’s rewarding when you make your way through it. Would you agree?
Yeah. There are a lot of mixed messages in our culture around what we’re capable of after loss. There are messages out there saying, “You don’t have any power anymore. It’s not up to you. Time either heals your wounds or maybe it doesn’t, but grief is your identity now.” I felt very rebellious against those notions. I said, “I might not have been able to choose to lose Aubrey and Ellie. I didn’t want to lose them. I would’ve done anything in my power to save them and help them. I wanted to raise them and I loved them, but that wasn’t the choice given to me. I was not in control of that, but I was in charge of my own inner world. I was not going to allow grief to be the decider of how I was going to feel in 1 year or 5 years or who I was going to become.”
Grief does change us. I don’t want to say that we’re unfazed. It does change us, but we get to choose how it changes us. That was where my focus was. I don’t believe that all of our losses or horrific life experiences are inherently good, but how we choose to respond to them instead of reacting to them can create good from something that offers no good.
We have to be participants in our own path. We have to create the good out of these things. That choice is the most important part. Healing is a choice, but our culture sometimes doesn’t phrase it as a choice. It breaks my heart. I get worried at times wondering, “Are there grievers out there who don’t even know that they have a choice?” It’s one thing if you don’t want to choose it, but if you don’t even know that you have a choice, to me, that is heartbreaking.
Finding the Right Kind of Help
That’s why we’re here to tell them that they have a choice and let people know that they have a choice and what that looks like. I want to ask you. Exactly what kinds of therapy and support groups did you try? What was it about those groups that didn’t meet your needs? Before you even answer that, I’m going to offer that when my husband died next to me in the car accident and I started going to grief groups, I had been in counseling and all before, so I had a little bit more of a handle even though I was devastated and all of that.
All of a sudden, in my support group, the woman said, “You’ve got it a little more together than some of these other people. How would you feel if they started to call you and discuss things with you?” I was still raw and I was not in any way the way I would’ve been now, which is ready to try to help someone. That turned me off, too, because I wasn’t getting the help where I was at that I needed. What was your experience? Did you go to group therapy?
I dove into support groups pretty immediately and was instantly turned off. I had a sobering moment, like a scared straight moment, at a support group. It was specifically for parents who’ve lost children. There was a couple there. You sit in a circle and go around and say what your situation is. I was new to the group. I was very early in my grief. This couple shared this sad story about how their fifteen-year-old daughter was murdered by their neighbor boy who had a major crush on her. She politely rejected him and it went badly. She ended up getting murdered.
It was horrific and sad. They were devastated and angry. At one point, they even talked about how they weren’t sure what to do with the rest of their lives. They were like, “What’s the point?” It was intense stuff. After we broke from that initial part, we went to get our coffee or tea and had a little break before we regrouped.
Another person in the support group came up to me and said, “I’m glad to have you here.” I said, “I’m so sorry about this couple. How long has it been? Offer my condolences.” The woman said to me, “It’s been eleven years.” I would’ve thought that it was six months ago. It was at this moment when I thought to myself, “I can’t be like that in eleven years. That cannot be me in eleven years.”
I switched support groups. I decided not to follow that support group. It was this reality check for me that if you are not proactive with your pain, it won’t automatically resolve itself and that if you don’t want to be there, you’re going to have to figure out a new path and what to do. You’re going to have to take responsibility for that. I thought, “Eleven years.”
Support groups eventually became a place where people stayed stuck. There’s a lot of commiserating and a lot of retelling of the same story. There are not a lot of healing activities and forward motion. The culture can be judgmental that those of us who want healing are almost accused of not loving our loved ones and our pain was the only representation of our love. If we left that pain, then we chose not to love our loved ones, which is completely untrue, but a myth exists.
I stepped into talk therapy. I did have a very competent talk therapist. I would never say anything bad about him, but he didn’t have a clue about grief. It was like, “Tell me how you’re feeling. I’ll encourage you. It won’t always be this hard.” I needed tangible action steps. I was desperate for things that I could do every day that would help support me and help me heal. I didn’t want ideas. I didn’t want to talk about my feelings. That’s when I stepped out into a different path and said, “These things are not working, and the reason why they’re not working is this for me in my life. I’m going to focus on those tangible steps. When I figure them out, I’m going to tell everyone else about them.”
Taking Healing into Your Own Hands
First of all, I want to know the emotional and physical toll of grief you were experiencing besides the devastation. I know that it affects us physically and all. What were the steps you took toward your path to recovery? After that, I want to talk to you about the specific healing tools and insights that helped you. Let’s talk about this path. It’s amazing.
There are lots of things. There are lots of ways grief was affecting me, but the big ones that I noticed was first, emotionally, I could tell that my light went out. The young, vivacious, life-loving, and people-loving woman that I was at 28 years old was hurting. Her inner world was lonely and she was scared. When I would look at myself in the mirror, I didn’t even recognize my old self. I would see this hollow version of myself looking back with fear in her eyes like, “Am I going to come through this or not?”
It was hard for me to muster up the hope. I’m a pusher. I’m a, “I’ll do the hard things. You can do it. You got this.” It was the first time in my life where, “You can do it. You got this,” was not working. It was not sufficient for me. I also noticed what was happening to my body. I was thin. I had given birth to twins. In a matter of months, I went from 145 pounds to 117 pounds. My appetite had gone down. My sleep was hit or miss.
Every day was about survival. It was, “Get up and take care of your son. Don’t do anything more than that because you don’t have the bandwidth.” I was emotionally exhausted as much as I was physically exhausted. I worried a lot. That was the other thing. I was never a paranoid person. I never worried much about bad things happening. All of a sudden, every noise, I check on my son. I’m like, “Are we seat belted in? Do we have a plan?” All of a sudden, the world became a very insecure place.
Those three things, the physical toll of grief on my body, this constant preoccupation I had with scary and bad things, and then also not recognizing my own self in the mirror anymore, those things were high on my radar and I was concerned. I decided that I was going to attempt to trust my gut a bit. I was still seeking information. I was reading. I was seeking out articles. This was 2008. Back in the day, we had AOL chat rooms and blogs. Things have evolved significantly since Aubrey and Ellie died.
I was trying to get information. I was reading books, but that information took time to get. In the meantime, I thought, “What helps me feel good?” That’s when I started drinking a cup of tea. Tea was helping me feel good. I realized I’d already been leaning on it but I didn’t connect the dots. Whenever I was overwhelmed, I had a cup of tea. Whenever I needed some reassurance, I had a cup of tea. Whenever I knew I was going to have to be into somebody or explain the story, I had a cup of tea. I have a cup of tea on airplanes. I have a cup of tea in the car.
The warmth, deliciousness, and quietness of it were there for me in the middle of the night and in the middle of the day. I began to build this little support system on my tea ritual. It wasn’t just the tea. Tea is a superfood and a powerful ingredient, but the ritual of steeping it, smelling it, holding the warm cup, tasting it, and taking time.
You were nurturing yourself.
That self-care started to inform other levels of self-care. I thought, “I need this reassurance in this cup of tea. I need this comfort.” As I’m trying to get a handle on my physical health, tea is also a superfood and I thought, “What other superfoods? What other things can help rebuild my body?” I was raised with natural health and a lot of alternative health perspectives. I said, “I’m going to be intentional about reintroducing this to my life. What supplements can I take? What kind of nutrition can I eat? How can I guard my sleep? What essential oils will be comforting to me?” It was anything that I could pull from that holistic natural medicine side.
I saw the effects, and I saw them pretty quickly. It wasn’t a magic cure for my grief, but I went from barely being able to function to making it through the day, then making it through a week, then getting a little bit better sleep, and then my appetite returning a bit. I saw that it was making a difference. I went from that scared place of, “I don’t know if I have what it takes to do this,” to, “I do because these little tiny steps had big dividends.”
I didn’t have to go to a retreat. I’m not saying anything bad about retreats. Retreats can be amazing, but I didn’t have to take big steps every once in a while when I could take little tiny steps every single day. That accumulative process was more restorative and more healing. More importantly, it built my confidence of, “Maybe I’m not healed right now. Maybe life still has some painful moments, but I’m going to get there someday.” That’s all I needed. I needed to know that I was in charge of what was going to happen to my heart and that grief wasn’t going to get the final say.
If you aren't proactive about your pain, it won't automatically resolve itself. If you don't want to stay where you are, you'll have to figure out a new path. You'll have to take responsibility for that. Share on X
It’s beautiful. You were giving yourself a glimmer of hope. I want to ask you two questions. Were you in a relationship at the time? Were you getting support?
I was married at the time to the father of my girls and my older son. All my children have the same dad. I was not getting much emotional support out of that relationship. I’ve worked with hundreds of grievers. Sometimes, we have to be careful leaning on our spouse because our spouse is grieving, too. It is okay to build a different support system. Also, he didn’t want to be my support system, and I accepted that pretty early on and said, “I’m not going to try to make you be. I’m going to go.”
I have found that if you look at grief on a scale of 1 to 10 and you grieve to a 10, which means you’re devastated, but it goes even beyond that, it often has roots in things that happened to you earlier on that are exacerbated by the grief, like any abandonment issues.
I teach my clients that, too. It’s your earliest unresolved loss. We have to go all the way back to the earliest loss that has been left unresolved. A lot of times, this big loss is what brings people to me. When we look at their life and uncover their journey, I see that there are lots of losses that came before that we need to resolve as well. You can’t pick the big one. You got to heal them all.
In a way, grief can be an opportunity if you can find the courage.
You’re exactly right. Grief will always present you with an opportunity, but it’s still up to us to decide what we’re going to do with that opportunity. I see people pick both directions all the time. I see people say, “I’m willing to learn. I’m willing to grow. I’m willing to establish a support system. I’m willing to do these things.” I see other people say, “It’s not my fault. It’s not fair. It’s different for me,” and whatever their reasonings are. Sometimes, those people choose later. Sometimes, they never choose. Even the opportunity still doesn’t have power over us. We have to choose whether to step into the opportunity or not.
That’s why you always say that you can become more powerful than the pain of grief.
Do that with support, skills, and tools.
The Importance of Support and Expanding Your Capacity for Healing
What kind of support were you getting while you were doing the tea thing and all that? Did you switch to a different type of support?
First of all, using a bit of instinctual inside of myself, like trusting. I did have a very loving family. I have two amazing sisters. My parents were wonderful. I had an amazing friend who showed up at a time in my life. We were close, but we weren’t even that close. She stepped into my life in this amazing way. Some people that I thought would step into my life didn’t, and that’s a hard lesson in grief. Sometimes, we have to recalibrate, adjust our expectations, and be willing to take in the support that’s available instead of lamenting and being angry about the support that isn’t.
There’s a lot of acceptance that goes on when you’re dealing with a situation like this because your life has been turned upside down and things get transformed, like friendships and relationships.
It’s a new lens. Also, people have different levels of capacity. The first thing that I noticed is nobody knew what to do with a grieving mom. I’d walk into the room and watch people walk right out. I represented everybody’s worst nightmare. As grievers, whether we lose a husband through a horrible car accident, lose a child, or lose a sibling or a parent, we are the living, breathing representation of what scares everyone else to death and these hard things about life that none of us get to avoid. That doesn’t mean we all will have similar losses, but loss is inevitable. It’s not an if. It’s a when.
Loss skills are life skills. Like all life skills, they have to be learned. We’re not born with this automatic download in our brain that says, “When the worst imaginable thing happens, do it like this. Do these things.” A lot of people are shocked by that. They’re going, “I’m at my lowest point, and now I have to learn new skills? I have to accept new tools? I have to become more self-aware? I have to forgive my friend who decided that they couldn’t support me well through this and be open to a friend who I barely even know but seems to want to show up well for me?” or whatever it is. The answer is you do if you want healing.
If you choose it, it’s not an easy path. Therapists say to me that the bravest people in the world go for help. They address their issues. It’s much easier to hide from it but the reward is at the other end of it.
Grief doesn't cause more problems, but it magnifies all of the dysfunction that has been glossed over. Share on X
You can’t even compare. Grief is also unique in the sense that our society is very supportive of people who want their grief to control their lives. There’s this forgiveness of, “I can’t imagine what you’ve been through. Whatever you’ve gone through, you’re right. It’s changed you,” instead of the support that says, I don’t know what you’ve experienced, but I believe in your capacity to heal. With the right support tools and skills, that healing becomes possible.”
People don’t have to choose it, but this belief that you don’t have any power over it is a lie. It is a lie that keeps people stuck. It is a lie that robs people of living to their potential. It robs them of deep, meaningful connections and relationships. That’s what unresolved grief does to people. It steals from them. That’s why my goal is if anyone shows up and says, “I don’t know how and I don’t even know it’s possible, but I want to resolve my grief,” I say, “I will show you the way.” I believe that it gives them back their freedom. It empowers them to be able to contribute, restore their value, and look at themselves in the mirror and like who they see as true when grief wants to rob them of that.
The other thing that is a little scary to people with their unresolved grief is often, unresolved grief has to do with the unresolved other issues in their lives. Grief opens the door.
It’s like a magnifying glass. Grief doesn’t cause more problems, but it magnifies all of the dysfunction that has been glossed over because of a different coping level. Grief robs you of your bandwidth. All of a sudden, you’re dealing with stuff with no capacity. You have to expand your capacity, which is possible. We’re not limited in our capacity, but it requires support and learning, tools, and perspective. You’ve got to be hungry for it. You have to want it because it isn’t easy, but it’s worth it.
I am fascinated that when you were at a speaking event, a woman challenged you, yelled at you, and said, “If you loved your daughters as much as I loved my son, you could never heal.” There’s someone who is like that couple that you met with their daughter. She’s got her story, she’s got her pain, and she’s sticking to it. How did you handle that? I’m sure she had a lot of rage because she was angry.
She confronted me publicly in front of many other women.
How did that feel in your body?
In that instant, it hurt because I felt judged. I felt that she was telling me that I didn’t love my girls enough. That was the initial immediate sensation I had in my body, heart, and mind. Pretty quickly, I was able to almost instantly shift into a realization that all of her words, her anger, and her pain had nothing to do with me and that she was struggling in her grief. I wasn’t excusing her confrontational behavior, but I did have a ton of compassion around like, “She’s a hurting woman and she doesn’t understand that she can heal and love herself.
How did you respond to her in front of that huge audience? What did you say to her?
I barely responded. All I said was, “If love and pain are directly proportional, what hope do any of us have?” She stormed off. She didn’t want to hang out. She wanted to confront me and let me know that it was different for her and that her hurting was a reflection of how much she loved her son.
I want to validate your poise and that situation because something like that would catch a lot of people off guard and not know how to quite respond to that rage.
I felt a sense of obligation to handle it well because I was speaking at that event. The eyes were on me, and I didn’t want to blow it. My sister was with me and she saw everything. Later, she said, “I don’t know how you didn’t burst into tears. I would’ve started crying in front of everybody.” Trust me, I had tears later, but they weren’t even tears about what she said. It was more that my heart broke for how hard grief can be. I remember being in that overwhelmed place, not sure I would ever get out again.
I know I’m stubborn. I know that I do not like to be told what to do with my heart. I love my autonomy. There’s a natural part of my personality that resisted the lie that grief is forever and once a griever, always a griever, but I also did have a wonderful support system around me. That gives you the courage and stamina to do things.
That’s why I developed my program because not everybody has that support system around them. Sometimes, they are very unsupported, they have counter support, or they have people putting a ton of pressure on them to stay in pain or to get over it and not validate their pain. Providing that support system for the people who don’t naturally have access to it can be a life-changing experience for grievers because support does make an enormous difference.
Grief Recovery Program: Reclaiming Physical and Emotional Health
Hungry For Healing
Let’s talk about your program. It teaches grievers how to reclaim their physical and emotional health after loss. You do one-on-one sessions. You do it also in a group format. I would assume some of your groups meet via Zoom. Let us know everything. Tell us all the ways. When someone is grieving and upset, how do you help them? How can they come to you to reclaim their lives when they’re in so much pain?
My program is very intentionally designed. It is a twelve-session program, so I don’t work one session at a time. The commitment is a full twelve sessions. Those are all of the steps that my program has in it so that we can address the physical toll of grief, the emotional impact of grief, and then the practical side of grief. What do tool skills, resources, and support look like long-term?
Ultimately, what I want is to equip them so that when they’re finished with me, they can lead their grief instead of their grief leading them. I don’t want them dependent on me. It starts out very specifically that we spend the first third of the program addressing the physical support needed. I get them on supplements. We examine their exercise, lack thereof, too much, or whatever. We examine their sleep. Are they struggling? Are they having trouble? Where can we help? We look at their nutrition. We get them set up on meal plans, recipes, awareness around food, and all kinds of things. We get the coffee out. There’s not a lot of elimination but there are certain things that we grow awareness around.
One of the things that you’re telling me, and I love this, is that you’re teaching them how to also embrace, love, and nurture themselves while they’re going through this, which is so important.
Willpower is not enough to get you through grief. You cannot will yourself through. If you are not building your body back up and restoring your capacity to even keep going, it doesn’t matter what deeper emotional work you want to do. If your body’s waving a white flag saying, “I surrender. I can’t go any further. I don’t have the nutrition. I don’t have the rest. I don’t have the chemical balance,” we need to start there. That holistic physical foundation of grief support is what we build all other healing on. Once we get our body tended to, we see the difference it’s making in our central nervous system. We improve our sleep. We start feeling a little bit less at the mercy of our pain.
We can then dive into doing the emotional work, which means we do identity work. Grief asks us an important question, “Who am I now?” We need to dive deep into who you were because of your loved one, who you are without them, and what other messaging shapes your belief about who you are. The goal is we want to work in our lives and we want to live from identity, not for identity. We need to distinguish, “Am I doing things to create who I am or do I know who I am and these things that are a reflection of that?” Grief puts all of that under assault.
We go into deep identity work, and then once we’re more aware of who we are, why we’re that way, what our value systems are, and what life can look like based on what’s important to us, we pile on the practical skills. What support system is around you? Are you asking for help? Are you setting boundaries with the areas in your life that are not healthy and supportive? Are we missing any skillsets? I do a lot of communication work. We learn how to tell people what we need, not how we feel, because our feelings are information. They are not the only thing that we’re supposed to tell people about.
I put together a practical grief plan for them so that with all of this support and awareness, then they can say, “Here’s how I self-care. Here’s how I make modifications. Here’s how I stay connected to myself.” By the time those twelve weeks are over, they know who they are. They understand what grief is doing to their body and exactly how to support it. They can then make informed choices to create the life they want, not the life someone else wants, because they are equipped, empowered, and aware.
That’s beautiful. It’s often a new life that they were not even aware that they could access. Give us an uplifting story of someone you’ve healed who has healed through your program and how that worked for her. I’m sure you have so many people in so many different situations that come to you.
I work with any kind of griever with any kind of loss. I don’t only work with women who’ve lost babies. I work with all kinds. The majority of my clients have either lost a spouse or a parent. Those are my biggest ones. I have all kinds, even intangible losses. People have lost a business. People have lost a home. People have lost their health. We work on lots of loss.
I particularly had a client whose name I will not share, but I’ll share her story. It was a horrible, tragic thing. She left her children with her sister. They were staying the weekend with their aunt so she and her husband could go on an anniversary trip. While they were away, her son drowned in her sister’s pool. It was a horrible, tragic accident. He got stuck under a floaty. By the time they realized that, he had drowned.
She called me and said, “I don’t just need your help grieving the loss of my son. My relationship with my sister hangs in the balance and I don’t want to lose her too. I don’t even know if it’s possible to come back from this, but I want to try.” Twelve sessions later, she said, “I didn’t even think this was possible, but now I know that it is.”
That’s beautiful. Her sister, I’m sure, had plenty of grieving on her end, also.
We also had husbands who were irate. We had nieces and nephews that were heartbroken. It was such an overwhelming, tragic situation. I even remember her face. She didn’t know what to do, but she also knew that she could not do nothing. She was not going to give up on her heart, her family, or her sister. To be honest, the work I did with her sister because her sister was holding so much guilt. She was resisting repairing that relationship. She was resisting healing like she should punish herself for the rest of her life.
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We did deep work there. It’s in those moments when I think there are things that happen in life that we can honestly look at them and say, “This is impossible,” but we want to make sure that our feelings don’t become our facts. Not because something feels impossible that it makes it impossible. At least it’s worth the try because you might surprise yourself.
How did her sister find you?
It was a referral of a referral.
You’re a grief coach.
I am a Holistic Grief Coach. I have a website and an Instagram page, but that particular one, somebody found me because I spoke at a conference. A friend of a friend said, “Maybe she could help,” and they made the phone call.
You were helping her sister and then her, which was beautiful. You were working with both of them.
Once I understood what the situation entailed, I said, “I need both of you involved. We got to do this together.” I worked with them both separately and eventually blended them into doing work together. It took time. It was not a fast process. When I say it took time, it took a number of months. It did not take a number of decades.
That’s another thing I want grievers to understand. You do not have to suffer for decades until you hope that one day you wake up and it’s magically lifted or that time has finally healed you. You can start taking steps that offer comfort and hope. It’s not an instant process. I don’t want to sprinkle pixie dust on it. It alleviates, shifts, and changes in a way that allows you to function in your life, gain different perspectives, and find real rest. That process starts with saying, “I don’t want to wait. I want to be proactive. I want to take whatever step I can.” Sometimes, that proactivity is a lot of resting. It’s a lot of learning. It’s a lot of hugs. It’s not always this deep push and striving.
We have to start there with this whole mentality that it takes our participation to get the ball rolling. It won’t descend from heaven and we’re magically fixed or healed or we’re like, “It all makes sense now.” It will never make sense. There’s no reason and no answer to questions that resolve the pain. I remember telling my mom, “God himself could come down and tell me why Aubrey and Ellie had to die. Unless he puts my babies back in my arms, it won’t matter.” I wasn’t grieving my lack of cognitive understanding. I was grieving not having my babies in my arms.
Teamotions: Tea Blends for Emotional and Physical Well-Being
Speaking of sisters, I want to ask you about your sister, Crystal, because you have an inspiring journey with Crystal that you created from your tea thing. You created a collection of six unique tea blends, which you call Teamotions, which I love. That’s so clever. They’re each tailored to address emotional, physical, and mental well-being issues. Tell us about that. You’ve started to say incorporating it into a routine helps a person thrive with their stressors. Tell us about Teamotions.
It was my sister who was watching me use it to comfort myself. Some days, I have 10 cups of tea and other days, I have 3 cups of tea. At one point, she sat with me. We had this big brown armchair. She nestled in with me while I was holding my tea and getting through my grief. She said to me, “I wish there was something that we could put in your tea that would help you feel better.”
It was a light bulb moment for both of us. We said, “That’s it. Let’s find what you can add to an already warm, soothing, delicious cup of tea that would enhance its well-being properties. This could be a tool for grievers, hurting people, or people who are stressed and overwhelmed,” because tea already has so many healing properties and we wanted to uplevel them.
We set out to create six different blends. Each one has a unique emotional component. We used adaptogen herbs, other healing herbs, tons of superfoods, and other botanicals to create organic, all-natural, whole-food, delicious teas that serve to support your emotional well-being. We had that company together for ten years and I left that company in 2019 to do this full-time and go into grief support.
She took the company on her own and got a new business partner. She is still making sure that the world has these beautiful teas to lean on and support themselves. They’re award-winning. They’re organic. They’re wonderful to use if you’re grieving, but they’re also a wonderful gift to give a griever, especially when we don’t know what to give them.
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You have a quiz that fascinated me and helped people identify which tea is right for them.
That’s my sister’s genius. She created that tea. It’ll help you assess what your physical symptoms and emotional symptoms are, and then tell you which teas will be most supportive and beneficial to you.
You also have a generous, free gift you’re offering members of the show. Do you want to tell us about that?
Yeah. I created an emotional well-being recipe book that offers my best teas, my best broths, and also my best blender soups. When you’re grieving, you need warm foods but easy stuff that doesn’t take 900 ingredients and 47 steps. I have that recipe book available for anyone who wants it. The recipes are amazing, easy, nourishing, and delicious.
Healing as a Choice: Can Anyone Heal from Grief?
Is healing in your mind? We’ve talked about healing being a choice. Is it possible for anyone who makes that choice? Are there people who don’t heal anyway?
I believe anybody can make that choice. If you haven’t read Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search For Meaning, that book is revolutionary when it talks about what it means to choose our attitude and our behavior in circumstances that we can’t control. I remember reading that book and hearing about how this man survived the concentration camps and how his entire family was killed in the gas chambers. Everybody would give him a pass and say, “You should be broken forever. You could be angry forever.”
It was some of the most atrocious things we’ve ever heard in our life. Even in that moment, he observed not only in himself but in others that even in the same situation, people were making different choices. Some were giving someone their last bite of bread. Some were sharing a blanket, while others were stealing or betraying.
If circumstances determine our capacity to heal, his experience proved that if they were all in the same circumstance, they should have the same response. They didn’t have the same response, which tells me that our choice to heal is internal. It is not determined by external factors. You have to want it. It has to be a decision that you align with. If that’s what you want, you can choose it. No one will force you. There’s no rule that says you have to. A belief system that says you can’t or it’s impossible is lying to you. Truth is important in grief because there is no path if we don’t have any truth.
That’s so true. If you don’t resolve it, I always liken it to carrying a backpack full of pain with you everywhere you go for the rest of your life.
It will control you if you let it.
Simple Practices for Finding Joy in Life
What is the Rachel tip for finding joy in life?
I have lots of them.
You can give us 3 or 4.
One of the things that is so valuable is carving out a minute every day to be present. We’re always preparing for the future or we’re always analyzing the past. This is how I maintain my joy. Whenever I’m drinking my cup of tea, which is probably 2 or 3 times a day, I use that time to check in with myself and be present to say, “What’s going on? Where am I at? What do I need? What’s important to me?” It brings me right back down to all the things that matter.
Even after loss or even when we have had this insane life experience that recalibrates our perspective, we’re still human and we can still get off course. That daily cup of tea is five minutes of self-care, comfort, and love that I say, “Recheck in.” I come away from those cups of tea re-grounded, refocused, a little bit more aware, and not distracted by all the things that have passed and all the things forward. It reminds me that even when life is so hard, there’s value, meaning, and opportunity in it. I can shift and make a new choice anytime I want if I feel that maybe I’ve lost my way.
I had another baby after Aubrey and Ellie died. I had a two-and-a-half-year-old when they died, and then I went on to have another little boy. I watch my boys and how they are thriving. They’re incredibly happy. They’re well-rounded. They’re capable. They’re strong. They’re doing well in life. Whenever I see them, I think back to all of the times I thought, “This is too hard. I can’t do this.” I’m so filled with joy that I persevered for their benefit because they will never understand what I felt, and it’s not their job to understand. It was my job to be their mother and create an opportunity where they would understand that they have choices instead of me robbing them of those choices.
If you hadn’t healed and transformed, it would’ve probably been a backpack that they carried around for the rest of their lives because they might’ve felt guilty being happy or whatever it set up. Look at the role modeling that you’re doing for them to let them know. They’re also learning from you that you can heal and there are things that people can do to heal.
You cannot guarantee that your life will be easy. I did all the right things. All I did was get pregnant again after my first baby to build our family because I was young and a mom, and that’s what we were doing. I did not commit a crime. I did not use drugs. I don’t have any of the things where I say, “I brought it on myself,” or, “I failed there,” or, “I did something wrong.” I did all the right things and still got all the wrong results. That is a hard lesson in life.
Even when I got the wrong results, I could still decide how I was going to integrate and process those results into my life and still decide who I would become in the face of life that didn’t go the way that I hoped. That is an important life skill. What happens when my boys face something that was not their fault, not their doing, and is hard and heartbreaking? I don’t want to hand them an excuse and say, “Life is ruined,” or, “Go ahead and hurt other people.”
It could be, “You’re going to have to go ahead and deal. That’s the way it is.”
I could say, “It’s painful. I will be here to love and support you, but you still have to decide who you become through this. It does not get to decide for you.” I’m not the only one that has been faced with that reality.
It’s a beautiful thing you’ve done with your life. What a blessing for your boys. My son is older than your boys. He said to me, “Mom, there’s been nothing worse than seeing you in total despair and nothing better than seeing you be able to have joy again.” That, I feel, is a legacy.
What a good son. What a sweet son.
That is such a gift that he gave me, but also in response to the gift that I gave him by healing and not throwing a backpack on his shoulders for him to carry for the rest of his life. I love your life-changing statement that grief doesn’t get to be the boss of me. That’s so great. Thank you for the remarkable ways you’re helping the grieving to heal through the tools, skills, and insights that helped you to heal by creating your unique healing teas that support people who wish to overcome their life challenges. From my heart, I want to thank you for this healing, inspiring, and touching interview. As I like to say, to be continued. Thank you and many blessings.
Thank you.
Guest’s Links:
- Rachel’s Website: The Grief Gal
- Rachel’s Book: Hungry for Healing
- Connect with Rachel McGonigle on Instagram and Facebook
- Teamotions
- Man’s Search For Meaning
About Rachel McGonigle
When both of my baby daughters died within six days of each other in 2008, I quickly realized that grief is one of the most misunderstood experiences in our culture. Society offers little guidance on how to truly heal after loss.
As I wrestled with my pain—overwhelmed by grief, exhausted from hurting, and frustrated by therapy and support groups that didn’t help much at all—I decided to take matters into my own hands. I refused to accept that the pain and emptiness of grief had to be permanent, and I set out to carve my own path to healing.
And I was right. Healing is possible after loss, and I discovered how to nurture it in my own heart and life. The skills, tools, and insights that led me to healing—the ones you won’t find in traditional therapy or mainstream advice—are now available to you. None of us have to endure years of struggle, trial, and error to find relief and that includes you.
In the last 16 years I have built a life after loss I’m proud of. Originally from Southern California, I now live in Northern Virginia with my husband Jason, our blended family of four boys, and our dog Nala.
