234. Grieving the Loss of What Your Life Used to Be (with Chuck and Ashley Elliott)

By cpaine | October 31, 2023

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Do you miss a title you used to have, a role you used to have, or a person or thing that used to be a big part of your life? If so, today’s podcast episode will encourage your heart — especially if letting go of what your life used to look like has been hard. Chuck and Ashley Elliott joined me in-studio recently to talk about their brand new book I Used to Be ___ : How to Navigate Large and Small Losses in Life and Find Your Path Forward— a book that pretty much all of us can relate to!

Chuck and Ashley have been married for sixteen years and have served as marriage educators, in addition to Chuck being a pastor and Ashley being a therapist. They are also deeply familiar with grief and loss and they share some of what they’ve walked through in this episode.

In this episode, we discuss the process of grief, the dangers of belittling our pain or comparing it to others, how to determine if we have unprocessed grief, how anger can actually be such a valuable warning flag, and why so often what we think we are frustrated about isn’t actually what is frustrating us.

They also talk about the three A’s to change: awareness, assessment, and action and how we can use these as tools to move to a healthier, more wholehearted and healed place — so that we can live with more joy and less stress and anger.

In This Episode

[0:35] – Today’s show features Chuck and Ashley Elliott — marriage educators as well as a pastor and therapist.

[3:18] – Ashley shares some of the grief and losses that she and Chuck have experienced.

[4:56] – Where does the concept behind the title of the book come from?

[7:37] – Everyone likely feels that they’ve lost a part of what they once were.

[11:44] – How can we identify a loss that we aren’t properly processing?

[14:31] – Chuck shares how anger is sometimes a mask for other feelings.

[17:12] – Ashley discusses the three A’s to change.

[19:47] – What do you do if it feels like nothing is working and you’re just stuck?

[24:33] – Ashley shares openly about their miscarriages and speaks to parents who have walked through the grief of infertility or losing a baby.

[28:54] – We end this episode talking about the power of your presence and how sometimes that is the greatest gift we can give to another.

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