Finding Your Light Through Grief: Ceremony Of Gratitude

Hello, Friday. How are we today? Are we doing good? My name is Jean Mitchells. I'm here. I'm excited to be here on a Friday. It's beautiful. Hi, Jules. If you live in Minnesota or maybe even Wisconsin, there's been a lot of smoke the last few days. Really, all week. Hi, Andy. Good morning. So today feels kind of nice. It feels cool. I don't know if I like that part, but it also doesn't feel as smoky, so I'm gonna have a voice. Hello, Amar. Hi. Did you get your job? Amar, curious to know if you got your job.

I'm super excited to be here today. I'm not always here. Hi, Emily. How are you today? Very hazy up north. Oh, I hope it all blows away. So. So my invitation. Speak wonder. The whole team's here. Yay. Interview soon. All right. Still manifesting. So if you are an energy person, we are in the middle of Mercury in retrograde. And so I find that it is a time of great pause. A time to slow down, to breathe, to take a pause, to try to not shove everything forward and allow yourself to just kind of pump the brakes a little bit.

And I say this because two things. One, whenever it's Mercury in retrograde at our spin studio, I'll be teaching a class, and somebody inevitably will ask me, and I'll be like, yep, it's that time. But the second part of it is energetically, we're in this place called. Yeah, the big exhale. I love that. We're in this place called the Lions Gate Portal. Now, if you're into energy, here's what that means. Starting on roughly August 1st until August 12th. So mercury in retrogrades in here until August 7th.

It's a time of manifestation. It's an eight. Eight is the most powerful time of the year for manifesting, putting out your intentions. CREAT vision board. You know, we do that at the beginning of the year, but really, 8. 8 is the time of the year to do that. Put those intentions out there, put those dreams out there, put those perspectives out there. So we're one, in a space of slowing down, Mercury in retrograde, and two, manifestation. So what if we took a pause, pumped the brakes from all of the work we're charging ahead on?

And what if instead we took a step back and said, are we working on the right things? Are there things that I'm doing right now where I feel like I'm in the hamster wheel? Is it setting me up for my future self? Maybe yes, maybe no. Maybe it's Maybe we don't know, right? So I wanted to introduce that today on this Friday, because I find that taking a pause sometimes can be really scary. Slowing down might mean we need to feel the feels. Slowing down might mean our thoughts creep in. So sometimes running fast is our way to escape.

Running fast is our way to avoid processing. Running fast is a new opportunity for us to. To forget, slide through, pass something by. So I always find Mercury in retrograde to be a moment of disruption because it reminds me that if I don't take time to look up, I could trip and fall. Or literally, during Mercury in retrograde, I walk into stationary objects. It's almost as if I expected to move out of my way. The number of times I've tripped over a garbage can or something, it's significant. And I laugh every time because I'm like, I know, I know, but here's why this is important.

So today is a day to talk about grief, right? And finding our light through grief and doing a ceremony of gratitude. So why did I start by telling you about the great pause, the big inhale, Mercury in retrograde manifesting? It was because to me, taking the time to have a ceremony of gratitude for the loss, loss of a job, loss of a family member, a friend, the pending loss of something, you know, preparing to lose someone if we're caring for an aging parent, as I did and as I know speak, wonder is.

There's also this, this back and forth battle of preparing for the day that you never want to come and then sitting in every moment between here and there and not knowing. Right? So I'm going to read this comment quick. Feel the feels. Don't be scared. I was brave and powered through some anger and it was cleansing. Very necessary. Yes. I love this. So in that field of feels, I was working with one of my mentors and energy workers yesterday and they told me, asked me if I ever heard it scream therapy.

And I was like, what? I'm like, I just saw a TV show where this guy took this girl out into the woods and told her she should just start screaming at the top of the lungs. She's like, yeah, that. And I was like, well, tell me more why? And she's like, scream therapy actually is a, an opportunity for you to release all the feels that you're feeling. It's a ceremony, it's a ritual. I haven't done it yet. I need to get in the woods first. She said, no, you can just turn up the music really loud in your car.

I was like, I gotta have some really loud music then. But here's the deal. Finding your life through grief, it can be really hard and daunting and. Sorry, I'm sitting outside and uptown's really active today with some sirens, so I hope that you can hear. Okay. But feeling the. Allowing yourself to rediscover that light. Rediscover your light. It's not that the light is gone. It's that the light has changed, shifted. When we lose something, whether we lose our job or feel like we lost our identity because of a relationship, or we lost a parent or a friend who passed away, like, grief can be overwhelming, it can be stifling, it can immobilize us, and it can feel like we may never find ourselves again.

But here's what's beautiful about all of that. In order for us to feel grief of that magnitude, it must be mean. We felt love of a magnitude that was greater. I'm going to say that again. For us to feel grief in such an intense magnitude, it means that we felt love at a level that was greater than the grief that we feel today. It's a lot of love. So a lot of identity. It's a lot of connection, It's a lot of meaning, it's a lot of purpose. And so for me, what I've decided, I've been on this journey and I shared it a little while ago, and I think I even did a comment post.

I'm doing a ceremony of gratitude around my grief. I'm doing a ceremony every single day for 21 days. And I'll probably do it longer. Where I am celebrating life. I'm taking at a minimum five minutes because sometimes that's all I have between the things. But if I can, a nice 10 to 20 minutes would be great. But every single day, usually in the morning. Although I just did a ceremony before teaching a spin class and I was told I couldn't do that anymore because there was sugar in it. And I. I had a lot of energy today.

But I'm doing a cacao ceremony. It's a deep, dark chocolate. It's a ritual. You could do any ceremony of gratitude. But I'm doing it with a cacao ceremony because it's a very ancient practice and there are also a lot of medicinal benefits to cacao. So every single morning when I can. But I will do it at some point during the day. I think I'm on day 10 now, so so far, so good. I do this little ceremony, I make the tea and then I go sit outside if I can, or I sit In a place that has quiet or a plant or one of my samples.

And I visualize. I visualize the earth around me. I visualize my favorite place, which is always the ocean. And I try to feel what it feels like when I'm in that space. I try to focus on feeling the chair that I'm sitting in or the mat that I'm sitting on. Oftentimes, my dog Major, will come lay on the floor with me. He likes to be around us a lot. So sometimes when I do this, actually every time I've done it, he comes and lays down by me. So I feel his fur and the softness of that and the gentleness of his love when he's with me.

And I feel my lungs as I take a breath. And so I allow myself to be really present in that moment. Then I do anywhere from three to five statements or stories of gratitude. And I do it every single day in the same cup. And the reason why I choose the same cup is, to me, that reminds my brain that I'm doing a ritual. So if I use this one cup, and I only use it for my cacao ceremony, my brain starts to associate that cup with this moment. And that moment is my gratitude moment. And the first few days that I did it, I'd give myself like a C.

Like, I did it. I did the thing. I said I was going to do the thing. I did the thing. And I was probably at about a C. I think I'm somewhere around a B minus right now. So I'm on my way up. But what I noticed today a little bit differently was a slight shift. And this cup in general, reminds me of my dad. It looks like a teacup. It looks almost like a Japanese teacup. And there's a big memory and a story there with him and I. And so when I use that cup, it reminds me of him. So already I feel like I'm at home in my heart.

Because my dad is home in my heart. And so then I do my gratitudes. And this morning, I was grateful for cleaner air than what we've had the last few weeks. So I could feel breath again. And I was grateful that I was up in the morning early and I got to come and teach a spin class. And so I was grateful that my body is strong enough to move. And today I was grateful for the fact that I got to come on here and share with all of you my gratitude today. So that was in my ceremony. And today I was grateful for last night, where I got to be with some really great People and just be present and have a friendship and really enjoy that moment and that friendship.

And so every day I'm practicing that ceremony because when I do that, it's also helping me to process my grief with my dad, because my dad and I were very close, and that cup reminds me of him. And every day one of my statements is somehow grateful that I had, and I insert different ones. An experience with my dad. So grief is just a reminder of how great we loved. And if we think about it that way, or how great, if we're grieving the loss of a job, how great of an experience that was. Maybe it was a manager, maybe it was the job, maybe it was the team, maybe it was the company.

So whatever that was, you know, like in this moment, my ceremony, my finding my own light again is through the ceremony of gratitude. And every day when I use that cup, I get to be grateful for the impact that my dad had on my life. Now, not everybody has had a great dad, and so I recognize that. So. So that might be triggering for some people, or maybe they didn't get to say goodbye or all these different things. So there might be little bitty triggers in here, and that's not my intention. It's to find whatever that representation is for you.

But I found even in the last 10 days alone, that there's something already starting to shift in my brain. And that the loss that I felt so significantly for the last two and a half years now, it's not that the loss still isn't there and that I'm not so grieving that or grieving the loss of some work that I had done. It's that I also get to remember how great it was and how important it was and who I am today, because I had that experience before. So what does that sit with you? How does that sit to you?

What does that feel like to you? Is there a ceremony of gratitude that maybe you would want to join me in for the next 21 days? And if so, what might that be for you? And let's check in with each other. So Speakwinder says she's also been reminiscing a lot. Images and memories returning to you in full color, riding with these remembrances while they're visiting. Yeah, I love your eloquence with words. Speak, wonder. Writing these remembrances while they're visiting. And that's what they are. They're a visit.

It's a checking in. It's a connection point. It's a vacation, it's a holiday, It's A checkpoint. So today, my invitation to you is during this Mercury in retrograde portal, which is for another week, August 7th. The energy of the universe is asking us. It's calling us to slow down. It's asking us to slow down. So inside that pause, what do we get to do with that? My invitation to you is to activate that pause. Activate it in a way that says, I'm taking time for me to pause, slow down, think, stop charging ahead, reflect.

Am I charging ahead on the right things? We have the Lionsgate portal on 8. 8. The most powerful day of the entire year to manifest our intentions. And that window of preparation for that day is now. And it lasts until August 12th. So what do you want to bring into your life? Do you want to bring in more healing? Do you want to bring in more gratitude? Do you want to bring in more ideas, more work, more friendships, more time with friends? What is it that is going to create the most meaning in your life?

And lastly, it's about the ceremony, the ritual. How do we continue to rediscover ourselves, refind our light through ceremony? And my invitation to you is a ceremony of gratitude. Ordinary things have glory in them, and they are all around us. Exactly. I'm sitting outside our studio. There are people moving their bodies today. But I get to hear the birds that are sitting behind me, and they're so cute. And I'm protecting one who's creating a nest. When everybody tells me it's not supposed to create a nest on this pillar, I'm, like, putting little droplets of things so it can have things to pick up, to put in its nest.

Because I know inside that nest is new life. And isn't that what this is? A rediscovery, a rebirth, a new life for us? So not only do we get to celebrate what we've lost and the beauty and the contribution of that loss had in our life, but we get to celebrate what we get to create because of that experience. Move through that and move into it. So, Friday. I am so grateful to be here with you guys today. I hope you have the best day. Find a bird. Find a bird's nest. Go outside, take a walk, take a breath.

Maybe not a super deep breath if it's still hazy out, but find a breath, find a moment. And I offer you the invitation to find some gratitude within the space of something that maybe you lost. Because inside there is a piece of you that is still flourishing and still ready to continue to be alive and growing. So I hope you have the best day. I love you all. You are loved. And I'm proud of you. See you soon.