Two Devastating Losses in Two Years: Marie Crews on Grief, Signs From Her Son, and Learning to Live Again
Even after going through a tremendous amount of loss and grief, there is always the opportunity and hope to regain joyfulness and live again. Marie Crews learned this after going through two devastating losses: the unexpected passing of her mother and the sudden death of her son. Joining Irene Weinberg, she shares how she refused to be defined by her grief by embracing self-love, giving herself comfort, and transforming her pain into compassion. Marie also shares how her journey of self-discovery transformed her into a certified grief coach and empowerment life coach who now teaches women how journaling can help them integrate grief, relieve trauma, and reconnect with their inner wisdom.
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL HEAR ABOUT THINGS LIKE:
- Marie’s complicated relationship with her mother
- How grief and loss shaped her pain into a deeper well of compassion, courage, and hope
- How Marie’s son communicated with her from the other side
- How Marie’s Nautilus Way helps women connect with their loved ones and release grief and trauma
SOME QUESTIONS IRENE ASKS MARIE:
- After finding your son the night he took his life, you began hearing from him. How did he first come through to you?
- How did working with a medium, when both your son and your mom came through, help you with your grief?
- How do you see grief showing up uniquely for each individual?
- After your son passed, how did you work with the guilty thoughts and beliefs that surfaced?
- How does your signature approach, The Nautilus Way, serve as a foundation for every healing path you offer, and how do you incorporate mediums into your retreats?
- In what ways has grief changed you, and how do you see that transformation as a kind of rebirth?
✨ The Nautilus Way: Write Your Way Free
Join Marie’s simple yet transformational four-step journal-writing process that creates accelerated healing while guiding you through some of life’s most heart-breaking circumstances.
👉 https://griefandrebirth–mcrewscoachingllc.thrivecart.com/the-nautilus-way/
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✨ Join Marie’s Free Journal Jumpstart Workshop
Ready to transform the way you think, feel, and show up in your life? Start with Marie’s Journal Jumpstart Workshop—a powerful, self-paced introduction to The Nautilus Way.
This free experience will guide you through the first steps of using journaling to question your thoughts, shift limiting beliefs, and unlock new possibilities from within.
👉 Get started today by emailing info@mariecrews.com to access the workshop.
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📖 Marie’s book, Even When… She Rose follows one woman as she confronts her past, breaks generational cycles, and learns to rise again even after life reopens old wounds. Buy here on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4sxNpVO
GRIEF AND REBIRTH LINKS
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Two Devastating Losses in Two Years: Marie Crews on Grief, Signs From Her Son, and Learning to Live Again
I hope this message finds each of you very well. I’m speaking to you today for my studio in West Orange, New Jersey. I could not be more delighted to welcome Marie Crews, who is a certified grief guide and empowerment life coach. Marie has led transformational women’s retreats for over seven years and she is the bestselling author of Even When… She Rose.
Marie grew up in rural Louisiana, where she was raised in poverty and became a single mother of two at a young age. Her determination to break generational cycles fueled her pursuit of stability and purpose. Eventually, she felt called to support women’s healing, leaving Corporate America to launch her coaching practice and continue her psychology studies with a focus on the mind-body connection.
After losing her mother unexpectedly, Marie faced the sudden passing of her son’s lesson two years later. Even in her darkest moments, Marie refused to let grief define her. Instead, she transformed her pain into a deeper capacity for compassion, courage, and hope, and qualities that now infuse every aspect of her work. During Marie’s 25-year journey of self-discovery, she found that journaling was the anchor that carried her through healing, grief, and every major life transition.
That insight led her to create the Nautilus Way. Her powerful writing process that helps women integrate grief, relieve trauma, and reconnect with your inner wisdom. For the past few years, Maire has led life-changing women’s retreats as she built a golf-front home in Florida as a dedicated Sanctuary for these transformational experiences. Including one retreat created specifically for grieving mothers in every setting women walk away with validation, self-trust, and a renewed sense of peace.
I’m looking forward to talking with Marie who’s joining us from Navarre, Florida, about how the sudden losses of her mother and her son broke her heart open in a way that revealed profound courage, compassion, and connection. A quality she now offers to women around the world where learning to live again after loss.
We’ll explore the signs she has received from her son, the pivotal moment she chose not to remain an endless suffering, and the transformational practices she now teaches to help women release grief, rewrite their limiting beliefs, reconnect with their loved ones and spirit and rediscover joy. This conversation will surely be a tender, uplifting reminder that grief does not end love. Healing allows us to carry our loved ones forward with us. I could not agree with you more about that. Marie, a warm heart felt welcome to the show.
Thank you so much, Irene. I am looking forward to this conversation. I just appreciate those of you who are providing the space because together, we can lift others and bring them hope. That they get to decide their path through often unimaginable grief.
Turning Pain Into Compassion, Courage, And Hope
Look at this world. People can surely use healing and hope. That’s for sure. Let’s talk about where you started then, we’ll make our journey to what you’re doing and also to begin. Can you describe your relationship with your mom and your son? Share how each passes so suddenly. Also, explain how grief shaped your pain into a deeper well of compassion, courage, and hope.
My mom and I had a pretty tumultuous relationship. She was lovely. Everyone loved my mother. She was Joan Aviv in life and I was a little more serious. A little more depth. We were a mismatch in energy caused by lots of things, which is an entirely different conversation. Luckily, I had grown to look at her. I had listened to some Katie Biring work and some other people in that field who would suggest that, “She wasn’t meant to feather your nest.” I’m pretty sure it was Katie Biring who said that.
I remember it almost set me free. I could release the anger that my mother didn’t have what I needed. I was also raising my son who I coincidentally did not have what he needed. Even though I was doing the work and I was in it trying to heal and trying to do the thing. Anyhow, my mom and I had amended or found a common ground before we lost her very suddenly in a heart attack. We found her. That was my first brush with deep grief loss in general of anyone super close to me.
I was 42 at the time and she was still very young. She was 64. Some people are super close to their mom and their moms their best friend. My mom wasn’t my guidance person. What happened to me when I lost my mom was the impermanence of life. It slapped me in the face pretty hard. It’s like on any given Thursday, someone could just be gone. In my mind, I hadn’t even played with that because it hadn’t happened to me. What that did was spiral me. I had always suffered with intense anxiety my whole life.
You didn’t have a perfect childhood or anything?
My dad left when I was six. My mom has four kids. The whole deal.
Why would you need anxiety?
My first marriage turned out to be a drug addict. It was my childhood sweetheart. All the things. I had a lot of anxiety but I had never suffered from depression. I was already in the coaching world. To be honest, I had compassion but not really. What I thought was, “Go do the things that produce energy to give you serotonin and stuff.” I didn’t understand depression in the way that it robs you of energy to create the thing that will help you come out of the depression.
My mom’s loss pushed me into that. I remember thinking, “I don’t even know how to get going.” It was wild. I then navigated my mom’s estate. Which wasn’t a large estate but it was a lot of paperwork. It was repeating. It was telling people. Our country is not great on the bereavement side of things. I don’t know which country it is.
They don’t want to hear it. They don’t want to feel it.
Even the Bereavement Department failed miserably. That was when I was 42.
You were still struggling with your mother and then a couple years later, something happened with your son? I want to also hear how you did not meet your son’s needs?
I’d been in therapy since my twenties. My husband became an addict. I started an Al-Anon group and individual group. All the therapies, all the way through my twenties. I’ve come to recognize it’s very unusual.
I was like that too.
We were meant for this conversation.
It also prepares us for what we’re doing later on.
I was well-versed in self-care. I knew how to process. I was processing my mom’s loss. By about a year or so, I could catch my breath, maybe less than a year. I felt like my old self again. I felt like I got her back, and I’m back. I was an entrepreneur. I picked up my business and started moving and shaking again. I’m reclaiming my life. Months later, my son committed suicide. I know some people don’t like that term, but call it whatever you want. We can soften it.
He’s still on the other side. He’s fine.
I’m not worried about it but a lot of people are like, “I don’t like that term.” I have to value your opinion. Let’s not get into that.
How Marie Lost Her Son To Suicide
What was the thing about your son that would put him in a mindset to want to take his life?
That would go back to the other question of how were you not wired for him? He was a brilliant, artistic, curious, and creative young man who wasn’t meant for this society in the way that school zaps the life out of kids like that. There’s no place for them. I was a very young mother. I had two kids by 21. My ex-husband, who had his own set of crap, became an addict. All the way through my twenties, when I’m trying to raise these little people, my energy is being sucked out trying to keep this man afloat. Trying to save him so I could save us, meaning our family. Quinten had very high needs. He needed a lot of attention.
Was he high sensitive, would you say?
I remember when he was five. That put me at 26. He was my second child. I remember watching a show, maybe on Oprah or something. It was about Indigo kids. I was like, “That’s my little Quinten.” I remember this boss I had at the time who I adored. He was so good to me. I remember him saying, “Marie, there is no school for Indigo kids. We have to teach them how to live in the world as it is while we try to change it.”
I remember thinking, “Okay.” He never fit. He never found his place. We always, in the world, even in our home, felt different and odd, and he was. I would be lying if I said he is just a normal kid. He was not a normal kid. He was very different. Now, you would never know it if you looked at him. He was a beautiful child, a beautiful young man. He was very social that they didn’t put him all the way on the spectrum, but not social. I could see underneath.
I could see where he was awkward, and then Quinten began to date. He had a lot of dispositions that were odd. The world does not favor people like that. The world believes that if you aren’t cookie-cutter, you’re not good enough. I learned later that in Quinten’s brief college experience that he went on a full ride too and then didn’t go. He had entertained suicide maybe three years earlier. He heavily entertained it.
The world does not favor people who are indifferent. If you are not cookie-cutter, you are not good enough. Share on X
I’ve been in touch with a friend of his who made it. She is still here with us. She helped me understand because there were no signs. People tossed it up and down and all over about why someone would choose that. My opinion is, we could call it mental health. We could call it whatever. I call it for him maladjustment to our societal way of doing things. Quinten would have been fine in the medieval times sleeping in a hay loft and entertaining the Kings and Queens, is a Ballard, or a gesture or whoever.
He literally would have thrived in that arena and swords and all that. In this world, it was too cookie-cutter for him. It was too structured, rigid, and rules. I was a very different human than him because in my childhood, I had raised myself. My internal parent was a dictator. She was authoritarian. She didn’t have room for screw up. She’s like, “Get it done, you.”
I got a lot to do. Let’s do it.
I’d be like, “Come on, Boo. I don’t need to talk you into liking going to school. Get up and go take a bath.” I didn’t have the time or the energy or at that time, capacity. I saw him, and I knew. The thing I struggled with the most was feeling inadequate because I knew that what he needed, I didn’t have to give it.
Today’s Marie would have known what to do. Marie, who was so young and so overwhelmed by so much, didn’t know what to do.
That makes me so sad because I get mad sometimes about that life, like, “Why would you give me a kid?” I wrote about that in my novel. I’m like, “Why would you give me a kid that I didn’t know what to do with?” To me, that is so unfair. My mother and I had had the same struggle. I had a depth that my mother did not have the capacity to meet because of her own traumas.
Marie, could you think about the fact that maybe they’re both your teachers in this lifetime? Look what you learned. You’re dealing with all these women and all these circumstances. They are part of what’s shaping who you are. You probably agree with them that you would go through this with that.
Certainly. We had a conversation before we all popped up on the Earth and said, “Let’s see all this works out.” I do believe that. At the time, it was very frustrating. It was thoughtful and adequate. I also had another child who was extraordinary, but like me, very self-driven and very self-motivated. She figured out how to fit into the world even though she’s also an alternative. Anyhow, I always say my son was my biggest teacher, for sure.
Did you find him when he took his life?
We did. We came home. We had gone to a celebration for my husband’s nephew and we came home late. He was living with us. He was in massage therapy school. He was at the top of his game. He was feeling amazing. I had even said to a friend two weeks before, “I think he’s going to make it.” I didn’t mean he was going to live. I meant he was going to be okay. I felt like it was clicking for him, like, “Pick a path. Go down the path.” I’m so like, “Go get it done.”
If somebody said, “What do you think happened that day?” I think he was staring down a life that was neutral and was exhausted. He was tired of trying to be someone that the world would approve of and he wasn’t going to. He couldn’t yet and wasn’t meant to figure out that he needed him to approve of himself and that he was okay. Knowing him and I knew him well. We were oil and water. We fought a lot but we had good deep conversations.
That day, I think he said, “I’m done. Let me go see what else is out there.” That’s what I imagine. Now, a lot of people paint this picture. Was he in emotional pain? 100%. I’m not making this pretty. I’m thinking he just said I’m done. He was so fantastic, so imaginative and creative. He probably wondered what else was out there. He probably dreamed about what else was out.
“Let me go check that out.” He was right, he did check that out and find out other things.
My favorite is to imagine him riding a dragon. That’s what soothes me, because we don’t know. We’re all making it up. I’m like, “He’s probably riding a dragon somewhere.” We found him. That whole night is tragic and awful as you see in the movies and worse. When it’s real, it’s in slow motion.
You can’t even conceive of it. It’s like, “What?” It’s so surreal. He’s come through you already, though, right?
How Marie Connected With Her Son From The Other Side
Immediately. Let me give a background. Most of my life, I was, let’s call it Christian-based. At some point, fundamentalist. I didn’t believe in talking to anything that was non-physical. In the sense that in some of the doctrines I had been involved in. Not all. It was evil to interact with spirits beyond if they were consecrated as saints. They could tell you which ones were okay. If you were talking to your loved one, it might be something bad.
You feel the form of control with that.
Now, I have my own opinions of it, but I don’t know. I just believed it. When my mom passed, I remember having a conversation with some girlfriends of mine. They had gone to a medium. I thought it was fascinating. I wasn’t afraid of it because I was already spiritually expanding. I didn’t have the drive to talk to my mother at all. I just did it. We weren’t even that close when she was here.
You were complete enough for what you had been through.
Nor with my mom had I said, “Is she okay?” No. She’s okay. I wasn’t worried. When I lost my son, all the framework was not good enough. I was desperate. I probably would have danced around naked and run over coals if I could find out where he was and was he okay. I would have done anything. I only had one job and somehow, I had failed. This is just my mindset at the time. Now, my only job is to figure out and ensure that he is okay so that I can breathe. I was desperate.
I was desperate for answers and he hadn’t left any. Although I looked at everything for two years thinking surely he left me something to tell me why. It was all in pulsive. We found him and went through it. The very first time I heard from him that I didn’t tell anybody, because I thought they were literally going to think I’m nuts. You hear if you lose a kid, they’re going to lock you up old school. They don’t even lock up the crazy people anymore, the real crazy people.
I was sitting on the front porch. I don’t know the time frame because you lose track of time when you lose a kid. I’m guessing it was maybe around day three-ish. I didn’t sleep for many days because I was terrified I’d wake up and relive it. My mind kept going, “I have to stay awake. I got to stay away.” It was wild.
I was sitting on the front porch by myself and I’d somehow got away from my darling husband who was hovering a little in good care. We had this bush and it had these little flower things. There was a little yellow butterfly. It was fluttering. If you knew my kid, he was like fire dancing all over the place. He was just busy, especially as a child. This butterfly is moving and moving and I am sobbing. The worst kind of crying.
I’m pulling an air and I don’t know if I said it out loud or just in my head, but I said, “Q, why did you have to go? I don’t know that I’ll ever tell a story that I won’t pull all of it up in me.” I wasn’t expecting an answer. I have no base for speaking beyond. It wasn’t like a thought that maybe he’ll talk to me. It was just an utterance or a yearning, I would call it. I did not hear it audibly, but I heard, “Look, Mom. I’m free.” I remember being like, “Crap.”
I knew I heard it. If it were me making it up, that’s not what I would have said. I knew it was him. I didn’t understand how because I had no framework for this. There weren’t even conversations about this other than that one medium conversation. That was the first time. I didn’t tell anybody. Not even my husband who I’m super close to or my daughter whose way into that stuff by this time. I didn’t say anything because I was like, “They are going to think I’m crazy.” Many times, it kept coming and coming and it was odd times.
I have no doubt that he’s the one who helped me through the PTSD of finding him. When I would imagine it or I was sobbing thinking about finding him, he would say, “Mom, I wasn’t there. You know it wasn’t me. I was watching you.” He would say it to me over and over. Again, I didn’t have a framework. It wasn’t like I read a book. The book said, “When they die, they’re watching you.” I wasn’t making it up from something that I didn’t have knowledge of.
I felt the energy and it would call me. I could imagine and I could see it because it never goes away. The images are right there. That’s what PTSD does. I could hear him and I could choose that it wasn’t him. I began to separate the two which healed my PTSD. I could have the whole image and it doesn’t touch me the way he says, “Mom, I’m free,” touches me. It’s wild and entrusting what we can do if we bring in our framework.
Marie’s Signature Approach The Nautilus Way
That’s amazing. You’ve taken this experience because when you’re working with people, you use mediums also now, since you had that positive experience with a medium. I want to talk to you about this Nautilus Way of yours. This is your signature approach called the Nautilus Way. It has become a lifeline for so many. How does it help women connect with their loved ones, release grief and trauma, uncovering limiting beliefs, and begin rewriting their inner dialogue? That’s a lot to come out of what you lived through, but it’s a wonderful thing. Tell us all about that.
Before I even lost my mom, I had started a very habitual journaling practice. I had always been a journaler, but this was habitual. This was every day. I’m doing the three pages and came from the book The Artist Way by Julia Cameron. It’s just a stream of consciousness, but it’s showing up for yourself for three pages.
It’s allowing what’s hidden and what’s there that you’re maybe not aware of to come out on the page. I started these three pages maybe a year or two before I lost my mom. It’s for both of them but especially, I was so desperate after losing Quinten that it took me a while to go back to my journaling. I knew I would meet myself on the paper and I didn’t want to see her. This was just indescribable what was happening inside of me.
Anyhow, by the time I realized what my journaling was, what I had already been doing and then kept honing and allowing Quinten to show up on the paper to talk to me a handful of times. Maybe about eighteen months after that, I ran my first retreat. In my first retreat, I wanted them to receive what I was receiving through my journaling. I didn’t know how to give it to them because there wasn’t a process. There was, but I didn’t know how to teach it. I didn’t even understand what it was.
There wasn’t a framework. I kept trying and then they wouldn’t get it. I had this small retreat and I don’t know. It’s like it just showed up. I didn’t go into the retreat saying, “Let me make a system.” I just went into the retreat with this, “I want them to get it.” What came through was a four-step process. I created the scene, with no intention of creating it.
It was wild. I didn’t even understand cognitively what I wanted them to get other than the healing medicine of journaling that I was getting. Again, there was no structured process. This came out. It was four steps. I said, “First, we’re going to do this, and then now let’s do this.” It was somewhat supernatural. It was like I channeled this process.
You didn’t know yet that you were so connected to the other side. Your son was amplifying that connection.
He was a creative writer. Now, I can call it his legacy. At that time, I was just so angry at him. All of it that I was like, “This is crap. I worked so hard to help this child and I lost him anyway.” Now, I know. I’m like, “How interesting that the thing he was gifted in, I’m now utilizing to bring peace and joy back to women, or help them find their own.” The journaling process came out of my impetus to give this healing medicine that I was using, that walked me through both of these losses.
It evolved from there. It caught fire. I honed it and created an online space for it. Every retreat after that, it got smoother and clearer. I utilize journal writing for all the work I do because I found that even in my own therapy, sometimes we can waste a lot of time circling. When you go into journaling, what needs attention next, what’s going to unlock the next door to the next door will literally show up for you on the paper over and over. Instead of circling it in your traditional way of just like, “I don’t know.” It shows up and through the process you bring the healing to it.
Let me ask you about that. Everybody’s grief is different. You’re giving them all this process but they are all different. How do you see grief showing up uniquely for each individual? In what ways can these past experiences and emotional tools lack them complicate that breathing process? People are coming almost like emotionally naked to you. They’re bringing all this stuff and they’re all very different. What does that look like for you?
I have come to know and not even believe that we all have it internal guidance or higher self. If your thing is faith-based, then like God talking to you or through you. Our answers are all within us. All this work does and what I do with the work is they allow what needs attention and healing next to come through onto the paper.
What I’ve found for myself and other people is that women who have some tools who are meeting this deep grief with some things in place are going to encounter less suffering. Now, I want to be clear. Early grief, especially profound in the case of losing a child, has its own life. I liken it to the ocean. Even though I’m an excellent swimmer. If it’s a red flag day and I go in the ocean, those waves are knocking me down no matter what. I don’t get a vote. That’s what early grief is like.
I keep saying, “When you come up for a breath and you can take a breath, that’s when you get to decide what and how you’re going to approach grief, holding it and having compassion for it.” Back to your question. Someone’s ability or the tools and the healing that they bring into the grief process are going to significantly change their experience of it. Versus someone who comes to me and the first look at their internal world is through the lens of losing a child.
They’re starting almost from, I don’t want to call it square one because it’s not square one. They’re going to have a profoundly different impact. Some of us who have some tools know how to compartmentalize already. We know how to take that and put it over here and at least don’t make a bigger story of it. Somebody new to all of it is going to pull them under. It’s like somebody being in the waves that don’t know how to swim.
Let me ask you another thing. When you’re dealing with all these people in the waves, they don’t know how to swim. I’m sure a bunch of them also are feeling very guilty. Especially the ones who lost their children and all that. You must have had guilty thoughts. How did you work them through? How do you help other people who are going through all this? Do you just encourage them to write it on the paper or is it much more complicated than that?
All of it’s much more complicated, and the answer is yes. I encourage them to allow this internal guidance that we all have. Move them to what needs to be said next. It’s interesting. If they don’t have any tools, the first thing that we want to bring into play is that if we’re talking about guilt. I’ll talk about my story because it’s the same with the other women that I work with.
The guilt that I carried was a belief that it was my job. How did I fail? I must have known. The medicine, the antidote, is that Quenten’s journey was Quenten’s journey. It had very little to do with me. I also talk about our lives in general like bumper cars. Some people that are closest to us are bumping us a lot, our children, especially because everything they do bumps us hard sometimes. He still had his own bumper car. He still had his own journey. Even a seven-year-old who passes from cancer had their own internal decision. This is just what I believe, prior to coming into their little beautiful body that they were going to leave at seven.
For reasons that we don’t know this side other than that they give us opportunities for our own growth and expansion. Quinten didn’t need to leave so that I would expand. Quinten needed to leave because Quinten was ready to leave at 22 years old. I got a choice to expand and grow and live with the grief. That was my opportunity and my choice. His life didn’t happen so that I would do what I’m doing. His life was going to go down like that no matter what and we saw it.
Some people do not choose to do what I’m doing with their grief. It doesn’t mean anything more than I had autonomy over my decisions and Quenten had autonomy over his. Suicide looks worse like they decided. I believe in a spiritual level everybody decides. Wayne Dyer talked about that. I remember I liked that.
How Marie Pulls People Out Of Their Suffering Through Retreats
You’ve changed. Your grief has changed you. It transforms you and becomes a kind of rebirth, which is so grief and rebirth. Talk a little about that. I want to hear about your healing offerings because I know you have retreats, workshops and one-on-one coaching and you use the Nautilus Ways. Let’s talk about your own transformation and what you offer to help other people to transform and pull themselves out of their suffering.
I would say my rebirth is in the clarity that came. The clarity about everything I ever believed got restructured in the loss of Quinten. It opened my mind. I talked about getting desperate to know that he was okay. In looking for is he okay, it forced me to look beyond traditional thought processes and belief systems. It carried me to a place that I know is so much more expanded. I often say how arrogant are we to believe that we know everything?
We are often so arrogant as to believe that we know everything. Share on X
I couldn’t agree more.
This is my catchphrase lately. If I don’t know everything, we’re making it up because none of us knows. If I get to make it up, then I’m putting my son on a dragon. I’m not putting him struggling somewhere because if I don’t know and I’m creating. What we say to ourselves creates our emotions. I’m creating something that feels good so that I can get through this life with some joy and some peace. I believe that he’s okay. Not only is he okay. He knows beyond what we can know on this level.
Only does he know more. He’s your inspiration for what you’re doing. He’s your light that keeps you going, would you say?
I do believe that. I believe that because we were connected while he was here in a way that a lot of times was very stressful, but he was a pretty spiritually expanded little guy.
I would say he’s having the time of his life. I would think that he’s very happy.
I think so. I’ve heard from him. He helped me with the guilt. Back to your other question. One of the things I teach is like in every moment of every day, we are doing the best we can. Even and especially when it looks like we aren’t. Some people are like, “That person did this.” I’m like, “Yes, and they too were doing the best they can even when it’s all horrible.” That can relieve a lot of guilt and put things in perspective.
In my rebirth, I don’t know that much of me is the same. I don’t know that much of how I see the world, the level of compassion that I’m able to bring. I remember when I write. I do a lot of my processing openly on Facebook. One day, I was in the store and I was just pissed off because my default emotion is anger. I was just pissed in the store. I was probably being malicious. All I know is I wrote about it.
What I said in the right up was, “I had a new perspective that maybe that the woman in the store was being ugly to me. Maybe she’ll just lose her kid. Walking through the store and seeing the ketchup she would have bought him. Maybe that’s what she’s so angry at and why she’s being such a prick. Maybe it’s not because she wants to be miserable.” Losing him changed the lens through which I saw life.
You got a tremendous source of empathy from it. Compassion of empathy. All of a sudden, you saw things that were way below the surface of what was going on for people.
That’s saying, “Hurt people hurt people.” I saw it because I was so angry. What people saw was my anger. What was underneath the anger was a pain that they didn’t want to see. If I would have fallen on the floor and cried my eyes out in the middle of the grocery store. People don’t want to see that. I changed my perspective that day. If someone’s being ugly, it literally tells you the amount of pain they’re in underneath the anger.
Tell me about your healing offerings and your signature retreats. I’d love to hear a successful story or two from people who have experienced them. I’ll bet you’ve got some good stories, Marie.
With my retreats, I have Defying the Gravity of Grief, which is exclusively for moms who’ve lost a child. Any kind of loss. A lot of people are like, is it just for suicide? It’s for any. We have a mixed group. Some people come and their kids pass through an accident or whatever.
You learn from each other because the experiences are the same but different.
One of the moms who came, her son died in a car accident. He was on his way to her house. Her guilt is immense. I was thinking, “If your kid dies in a car accident, where is the guilt?” For her, she had the same amount of guilt because somehow, it was her fault. That retreat is special because the mamas walk in and they can put the good, the bad and ugly on the table because everybody in the room gets it.
They bond like crazy in your retreat.
It’s instantaneous. With the other retreats, there’s getting to know you, informality and warming up. Everybody’s feeling everybody out. When you walk into a room and you know that everybody in here has lived in the corner thinking they can’t breathe. You feel safe, validated, and seen. It’s because women were nurturers. You don’t get to put your full grief on display much because you’re taking care of your family.
Women are nurturers. They refuse to put their full grief on display because they are taking care of their families. Share on X
Even my siblings who I’m close to were grieving, too. I couldn’t show them the depth of this because it’s so ugly and so painful. You almost just protect them from it. Anyway, I held off on doing those retreats, by the way. It’s my second year running those because I didn’t want to be in it. I was like, “I’m not touching this in that way.” It just kept calling me. Finally, I did it and now I know why. I have a retreat called the Empowerment Experience. It’s relaxing and renewing. This is for all women going through all of the things who just need to catch their breath.
They want a tool that they can use outside of the retreat. A lot of times, they show up and they don’t even know what they need. They know some things are missing. That retreat is special. We may have someone there because of childhood trauma or sexual abuse. The next person might be there because they’re in midlife. They’re having maybe a medical issue and they are rearranged in their whole life and don’t know what is next.
Midlife messes women or can mess women up a lot. Maybe in the same room, I would have a mom who has lost a child or someone whose parent passed or their sibling. That other retreat holds all of the other forms of grief. Not just lost because it’s all grief. That one’s open to everybody. Everybody who comes to retreat gets my online journaling process because my goal is for you to receive a tool.
That preps them. It gets some ready.
They go through that online course before they come. When they show up, I’m not using three hours to teach. We get to get into it.
You’re more witnessing them now. We’re participating in the exercises that bring healing. The online site sets them up but now they have a tool. This tool is structured in a way that you find yourself and you find your answers in the same journal session. It’s not like you open the wound and leave it open. We open the wound and we close the wound with the medicine.
I had to do some work around because we don’t know how to love ourselves until we do. The journaling is the structure and the format of all of it because it keeps it contained and driven in a certain direction. Also, you don’t ever finish a journal entry without some level of what I call moving the needle. When we do that repeatedly, the needle keeps moving.
Are you saying they’re becoming more and more conscious and becoming more aware? They’re reprogramming the way they’ve been handling things. I am going to bet that you have a promo or offering that you’d like to share with our audience. Perhaps they’d like to sign up for a retreat or workshops. Let’s talk to them about that.
I’ve had people who don’t come to retreat, and they just work with me one-on-one, or I’ll run like small groups. I’ll have groups of two or three women because we learn from each other. I love group work. Sarah can do a whole session and Mandy is going to get more from Sarah than she gets from her own work. She’s going to see herself within that without the defenses rising. You go like, “I do that.”
The promo that I have put together for Grief and Rebirth is a 15% off everything. My main program is going to be about $50 off the main online program, which gets you two 30-minute sessions with me. I love the work, so I’m open to all of it. It’s also 15% off anything, so if somebody wants to come to a retreat. Whatever they’re looking to work with me or in my organization with, they’re going to get a 15% off. I feel very called to do more of this work. Again, my goal is to make people independent. I have women who’ve lost a child who can use this journaling to get out all of this stuff that’s coming at us all the time. It’s all about independents.
Do you have a good story for us like a feel-good story that people can see the changes that happened to them through your retreat?
At one of the first workshops that I ran, a woman came. She loved my workshop and decided to come to the retreat a few months later. She showed up with something in mind that she wanted to work through. What showed up on the paper was not that. She almost left the first night. I just held it with compassion. I said to her, “You take care of yourself. I was so confident that if you stay, I promise you, you’re going to get what you came for.” I just see it so much and I know it. She stayed. On Saturday, we do these exercises and we write all this.
How long is a typical retreat?
Four nights. I also run a private retreat. I have a group of nine ladies come in from Washington State in April. This will be a mix. This lady sat on Saturday and said, “I got more out of this retreat and this specific tool than I’ve gotten out of ten years of therapy.” Now, I know enough to know that therapy primed her and got her ready to receive what she got at the retreat. However, I also know the transformational value of the tool.
The retreats one thing. It’s immersive but the tool itself. Imagine if you could do your own self-therapy every day? You can. That’s what I was doing and what I teach. That’s one. I would say, at my mom’s retreat, the biggest impact is the medium comes and then we write about what they learn and what they get from the medium.
That is life-changing. To find out even that your child’s on the other side and that your child is still aware of what’s going on with you. They have already left you.
It is so life-changing. For my mom’s retreats, it’s hard to pull a story. What I can offer is that I have a mom that just came to the retreat I had in March. She lost her daughter a few years ago and has worked herself to ignore it, like to not look at it. She felt pulled and she came. To watch her leave with peace and leave with a way to connect to her daughter. A tool again that is yours. It’s private. Working with me after is great because you go deeper and deeper but you have it to do by yourself.
Those stories with the mamas are just pretty profound. A lot of them hinge on the medium. Also, we do an exercise where I teach them and show them how to let their child talk to them. I tell them where they can find them. One lady is like her son told her, “You can find me in the sunrise.” It’s changed everything for her because she has decided to believe that. When the sun comes up and she happens to see the sunrise. She feels deeply connected to her son. It’s wonderful. I don’t think this is the only way but it’s a way.
Why Healing Does Not Require Leaving People Behind
It is a way and there are many different ways. That’s what we’re exploring here. Yours is helping a lot of people to heal. I wanted to tell people why they feel that healing is important for people. I know you’re talking about the difference it makes in their lives. A lot of people fear that healing means they have to let go of everything and they don’t want to let go. Can you explain? It doesn’t require leaving our loved ones behind. The relationship can continue after death. Do you want to talk to us more about that? You must have people coming who are so scared that this kid is gone forever or whatever.
What happens in the beginning is the intensity of negative emotion, meaning the pain of loss, is so intense. It’s so big. Sometimes, we can bond with that. The idea of not feeling that in our minds, we can connect it to losing them. If I quit crying, if I quit feeling this abject pain, if I stop doing that, then it almost feels like a loss, like an emptiness.
What I would like to offer, like what happened to me and what has happened to most of the women or all of them to my knowledge that I’ve worked with is there’s a space. Once we understand it, I can hold that the grief doesn’t leave me. Even talking about the stories and about Quin and imagining him. It’s there. It doesn’t go away.
What happens in the healing is that you learn to hold both. I can talk about him. I can even complain about him and what a pain in the ass he was. I can hold the full truth of my son, the Good, the fun, and the funny. I can have that and I can have this pain of the things that I’ll never have with him again. His friends are getting married and all. In my opinion, healing brings you to a place where you get to have both.
I don’t just have pain connection. I have heartwarming, fun memories. I get both. It’s like when they’re here. You have both. There are pain. They make your heart bleed and then make you laugh. They’re tender. I get both now. That’s what the value of the healing is arriving. This is how I put it, allowing peace and joy to coexist with the great grief. It all makes a bigger bond to our child. A more in-depth and a more real bond because now it’s not just pain. It’s everything else that they were in our lives, too.
You can let the whole package in. You’re not just focusing on the pain of it. From all the women and all the people you helped, it’s invaluable because they drop their baggage. They drop their backpacks of pain. That’s what I would call healing it, would you say? They can process it and, in a way, they can let go of it. It doesn’t mean they’re losing their child. It just means they’re like going up the story.
I do think it’s a very nuanced thing for a mother to think of letting go of the pain because it could still hit me. It’s not as intense. There are days where I’m connected to what’s missing in a way that shows up. I tend to talk less about letting it go or dropping it and more about holding them both. Holding them both because what I’ll tell you is, the bigger this gets, the higher the memories, the more often the good memories, the good things and the good emotions. The less heavy this feels. It’s balanced in a way. If someone is tied to the backpack, suggesting that they might let it go can be scary. We teach them how to hold it until maybe one day they don’t pick it up as often.
It’s very smart. That sounds a little bit like joy when people can be in such grief but something good happens. You can give yourself permission to feel that joy.
Permission is a good word. What I would say is, way back when, the first thing I had to do was choose that I wouldn’t sit in the suffering. I give myself permission to be in my life and learn how to carry the grief and allow these other things to come back in.
Despite the grief and suffering, give yourself permission to be in your life and allow other things to come back in. Share on X
Discussion Wrap-up And Closing Words
You gave yourself such self-love. You gave yourself such comfort and guidance. Your journey through unimaginable loss has become a guiding light for so many others, Marie. Whether you’re working one-on-one facilitating small groups or guiding women through deep healing at your retreats. You bring the same intention to help them write their way free. Thank you for sharing your story and your extraordinary wisdom with us. From my heart, I wish you abundant blessings always.
Irene, thank you so much. This has been a hard conversation but a necessary and a healing one.
I think we helped a lot of people.
I hope so.
To those of you who are reading and who are touched, we send you much love and care. Check out more about Marie. As I like to say, to be continued.
Guest’s Links:
- Connect with Marie Crews
- Connect with Marie Crews on Facebook
- Connect with Marie Crews on TikTok
- Connect with Marie Crews on Instagram
- Even When… She Rose
- The Nautilus Way: Write Your Way Free
- The Artist Way
About Marie Crews
For more than 15 years, Marie Crews has guided and empowered women through growth and transformation. Along her 25-year journey of self-discovery, she created The Nautilus Way: Write Your Way Free, a proven process that accelerates emotional breakthroughs by rewiring limiting beliefs, gaining clarity, developing confidence, and shaping their lives with intention.
As a coach, speaker, and retreat facilitator, Marie helps clients Marie’s story is one of resilience and reinvention. Raised in poverty in rural Louisiana, she became a single mother of two at a young age. Feeling called to support women’s healing, she left corporate America in 2012 to launch her coaching practice.
In 2017, Marie lost her son suddenly, less than 2 years after her mother’s unexpected passing. Even in her darkest hours, she refused to let grief define her. Her persistence in rising from profound loss, combined with years of coaching experience, uniquely qualifies her to guide women with compassion, courage, and hope.
Marie has led life-changing women’s retreats for over 6 years and is the best-selling author of Even When… She Rose.
