Healing Through Journaling: Grief & Joy After Addiction Loss with Shawn Dinneen

If you’ve ever wondered how to keep living, and even loving, after losing someone you can’t imagine life without, this episode is for you. 

I sit down with Shawn Dinneen, creator of HeartStrings Journals, to hear her deeply personal story of grief, resilience, and rediscovering life and new love after the devastating loss of her fiancé to an overdose in 2022.

***Video version available here***

Shawn shares how journaling became a lifeline during her healing journey, inspiring her business and mission to support others navigating loss. We explore the messy middle of grief, how community, self-reflection, and courage help us carry sorrow while making room for hope and love again. This is an honest, tender conversation about loss, resilience, and the ways grief and joy can coexist.

Key Takeaways:

• Healing after loss is personal, nonlinear, and requires compassion toward yourself.
• Journaling and reflection can provide a powerful outlet for processing grief.
• Stigma around addiction obscures the humanity of those affected.
• Systemic barriers make seeking help for addiction challenging.
• Unresolved pain and trauma frequently underlie addiction.
• Community and shared experiences help break the isolation of loss.
• Opening your heart to love again is possible, even after profound heartbreak.
• Grief and joy can coexist, and healing doesn’t mean forgetting.

Guest: Shawn Dinneen

• heartstringsjournals.com
• Submit your story to Paths of Purpose
• Shop HeartStrings Journals
• @heart_stringsjournals

Hosted by: Nina Rodriguez

• Creator of Grief and Light, Grief Guide
• griefandlight.com
• @griefandlight
• Resting Grief Face on Substack

Subscribe for more conversations that explore grief, healing, and what it means to be human.

Transcript

It's hard. You have to put in the work. Like I was intent, I would, well, I called it intentionally grieving. So I would go and do something that I knew was going to make myself really upset and cry. And maybe that was going to the cemetery or maybe that was packing up a box of stuff that I didn't want to put away. I've learned that doing those hard, scary, daunting things open up again, so much space for the joy and the fun and the beautiful things to come in your new part of your life, the new phase.

You just lost your loved one. Now what? Welcome to the Grief in Life podcast where we explore this new reality through grief-colored lenses. Openly, authentically, I'm your host, Nina Rodriguez. Let's get started. What if writing isn't just a coping tool, but a way back to ourselves after loss? Today, I am joined by Sean Denine, who turned to journaling to cope and make sense of her grief after losing her fiance, John.

to an overdose in 2022. That personal practice eventually became Heartstrings Journal, a line of thoughtfully designed journals for grief, gratitude, daily reflection, and everything in between. Most recently, she also created Paths of Purpose, a storytelling series featuring real journeys of those who have turned their pain into purpose. And in this conversation, she's going to share her journey from the raw grief of losing her fiance

to then finding moments of peace through solo traveling, dating again, and rediscovering her purpose after loss. Sean, welcome to the Grief in Life podcast.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here with you.

Yes, we're in this beautiful space together. And most recently, I participated in your Path to Purpose publication. Thank you for all you've created. Yeah.

Thank you for participating. Like just to tell you a little bit about why I started that was like getting into this rut where I was finding a lot of content creators that are like grief content creators were making content that made me feel like they wanted me to stay stuck and almost like remain in that sadness and kind of rehash the stories and rehash what was making us feel sad. And instead I wanted to shed light on the beautiful things that can come from these painful experiences we have.

Most of the features so far have been grief related, but it's open to anyone that's experienced any kind of hardships that then led them to something bigger. But I really wanted to show this experience of resilience and being able to take our pain and turning it into something that can be useful to heal others, that can be stories of just encouragement rather than talking about all the pain and sadness and no way to get yourself out of it.

Well, that's very important and I agree because there's this balance of saying, hey, it's okay to feel what you feel. And also it's okay to feel the joy and keep moving forward. it's one of those like there's a time for this and a time for that. And both of them are very important. So thank you for creating that. Is that something that you felt like you needed early on in your grief?

Yeah, so like I said, there's one content creator I'm thinking of specifically. I won't say who it is because I don't want to put them on blast or anything like that. But she just kept talking about dates and things. was time and time again, the videos I was getting from her were things that made me feel sad. I felt sad for her experience, but it was putting me back in a place where now I was feeling these heightened grief emotions, which are okay.

but it didn't need to be spurred on by someone that was supposed to be doing grief content to help us feel better. So I wanted to have a place where people could come and see that it's not always gonna be like that. There's ways to pull yourself out of it. You're gonna have these highs and lows, these waves of grief we all know about, but you can still have joy and happiness and a beautiful life. And I wanted to show the people around me that I've seen do incredible things after their losses, whether it have been...

spouse or a parent, a sibling, a child, whatever it might be, people have taken it in so many different directions and I found that so encouraging that it could it can be this powerful tool to push you in this positive direction and then in turn you find yourself in this like grief community where it's just like so much support like even with Get Griefy How I Met You, we have the collective and it's just

all of these amazing people doing these incredible things. And now I also have a community of resources. So if someone needs something, I just go to my network and I say, who has something for this? And then I'll get people with support groups, our podcasts, our books, recommendations. So it's just really this domino effect of positivity.

Isn't that ironic how it works because we've, I could maybe speak for the collective in the sense that we've found so much joy and the ability to laugh and live and find hope again within this community, the context of this community and exactly all the things that you named, it's so true and it comes from embracing it fully. Were you a stranger to grief prior to the loss of your fiance or was this the first time that you ever experienced grief?

Yeah, so absolutely this was, so I lost my grandma when I was in college. I mean, at that point we weren't super close anymore. So it was kind of just like, it wasn't as impactful of a loss as when my fiance passed. Like that was the person that I was with every single day. We did everything together. He passed a month before we were supposed to get married. Like it was tragic. And it was something I had absolutely never experienced anything close to it before. So I had no idea.

what to do or how to handle it. All I knew was that like my life had imploded and I knew I had to find a way to not stay stuck in that like sucked into the couch, just like pitying myself kind of feeling, cause it's really easy to do that. And I think you have to really actively work to not stay stuck in that place. So I immediately was like,

I'm gonna try everything. I'm gonna find a grief coach. I'm gonna find a group. I'm gonna find a therapist. I'm gonna listen to books or listen to podcasts, read books, everything. Any tool that I could like put into my toolbox, I was trying it because I thought I could just find this like magical cure that I wasn't going to be stuck in this little grief hole anymore that I was gonna be like, okay, I found this, I'm better. Here's the magic pill. Obviously we all know that that's not the case. That grief is forever.

but I did find journaling to be a really impactful tool for myself. I was recommended by a grief coach to start journaling and I had never been a journaler either. So I was new to grief, I was new to journaling, I didn't know what to do. And I started just doing like lists. So I would make myself write three good things from my day, three bad things from my day. And then sometimes I would find that I had like other thoughts after that and I would continue writing. But I always made sure that I had.

good things on that list, even when it felt like nothing was good at that point. That gratitude practice, even though I didn't realize that's what it was at the time, was really helpful and like keeping that positive mindset and reminding myself that like good things were still happening, whether it was just that Duncan Jonas didn't screw up my coffee that day, like the little tiny things that we could be grateful for. then in turn, that became a kind of a reflection practice where I could look back into my list that I was making.

and see, it was really hard for me to write three things. Now I have a whole list of good things and my bad list has gotten shorter. And that growth over time was also a really nice reflection process to have to look back on. So that's how I started my Heartstrings Journals is that I printed one for myself with that like area to have the good list, the bad list and the other thoughts. Just because I really just didn't want to write it over and over again. I wanted it to be there for myself.

And people saw that and they were like, where did you get that? That's such a good idea. And so it just spiraled from there. I love to do like graphic design kind of things. So now I have over 80 different journal covers with different prompted insides or blank line inside, depending on what people want.

I was also writing letters, which I found really cathartic. Like I said, I was brand new to grief. I never was someone to visit a cemetery. I never had anyone to go visit in a cemetery, so I didn't know what to do for that either. So I would keep a journal in my glove compartment in my car, and when I would go to the cemetery, I would write John letters while I was there. And so that became one of my journals as well. I have one called Letters to My Loved One, so that's intended as a place to write letters to the person that you're missing.

And it was just a really nice way for me to be able to still like keep in contact with him, update on my life, tell him what I was feeling and just have that open communication even though it was kind of one sided, but like it felt like that. And so yeah, it's just kind of spiraled from there. And now I do a lot of local vendor events selling my journals. I do custom journals for people. It's just, it's always expanding workshops.

I'm open to any collaborations, new ideas at any time. It's just really opened up this whole new world for me.

That is wonderful. And I took a look at your collection and it's not just limited to grief. There's also like gratitudes and dreams and there's blank ones. So there's options if you're listening or watching and you're curious about this, there's other options that's not specific to grief, even though the grief ones are incredibly helpful. And was that intuitive to you to do the lists or is that something that maybe like your therapist suggested? How did that come about?

Yeah, it really was just intuitive. was like, I don't know what to do with the journal other than in my head. was like, when you're a little kid and you're doing dear diary, today, Suzy was mean to me on the bus or whatever. That's what journaling was in my head. So I was like, I need to do this in some way that is thoughtful and beneficial to my situation. And that was what I came up with. So it was an actual process for me, but now it's really become something that I can recommend to other people. I have a lot of people come up to me at vendor events and they're like,

I can't journal, I don't know how to do that. Or so-and-so should journal, but they probably won't. And I get to show them my journals that I created and how simple and easy and accessible they are for anyone to do. Even if parents want to sit down with their kids and like open up that dialogue of let's do this after dinner, we're going to sit down and we're going to talk about three good things from our day, three bad things from our day, and just open up that conversation. So it's really very versatile for anyone in any experience.

whether you're going through something traumatic, whether you have nothing going on, you're just kind of bored and trying to figure out your life. It's good for everyone. And I have my daily reflection journal. And then I do also have a specific gratitude prompted journal, which is all gratitude related, really simple, easy prompts. So it's less intimidating to me than just looking at a blank page and not knowing what to do with it. Cause that can cause frustration, at least for me.

Now I'm annoyed that this is a task and a chore and it's frustrating. So the prompts make it more of a worksheet and something easy to do. It's quick and it helps you get that same benefit that the gratitude practice does or the reflection process does.

Absolutely, and it is a really powerful practice. I feel like a lot of people hear, journal, journal. And it's so common and yet people don't do it. You know, they don't take the time to express themselves onto the sheets of paper. And I like that you have the prompts because like you said, some people do express overwhelm as to like, I don't know where to start. I don't know what to write. Where do I even begin with the magnitude of what I'm feeling, especially if you just lost a loved one. But it is incredibly powerful to give your words, your thoughts somewhere to go.

and it's private, you could do it on your own timing and it doesn't have to be this long drawn out like, your diary today on that, you know, it doesn't have to be this very long thing. Sometimes something short and sweet that you felt like expressing to mark that day, you create that room. I've heard you say that before. It creates a room for all the other emotions to come about. Has that been your experience?

Yeah, definitely. So the two things that were most beneficial to me in my grieving, especially early stages, where I was going to a group. So I went to a group for young widows and I was journaling. And both of those things were when I could feel everything building up in my body and maybe I didn't necessarily know what was going on in my mind. Those things would give me that release. So if I was able to write it out.

And whatever I would start with would lead to other thoughts. So it really helped me process my thoughts and my emotions and dig out the things that I didn't necessarily, or I didn't have the awareness of that's what was going on. But I could always feel it in my body. Like I could feel the tension and I could feel like that, like anxiety, like panic building almost. And when I was able to write it out and process, it really gave me a sense of relief that I hadn't felt prior to.

Now that makes perfect sense and it's true, it unearths things that you didn't even know were there. But let's take it back a little bit to the beginning because this is the after, but you're young, John was young and you had all these plans for life until this one month, that's incredible, one month before the wedding, this all changed forever. So who was John? And talk to us about that version of you that had to navigate so much.

Yeah. Well, he was really just an incredible person. And it's so unfortunate, the stigma around overdose and people that are lost to overdose and that even struggle with addiction that are still here. Like, I have to separate them in my mind, the addict version of him and the version that I knew, because they were not the same person. And the person that I knew and the man that I was going to marry, he was an incredible person. He had so many friends, deep, close,

friends that he'd had since childhood. All of their moms were his mom. He was deeply loved by a lot of people. And you hear this a lot with people that have passed from overdose, that they were the light in the room. And he was that. He was always the life of the party. Like he was who everyone wanted to be around. If he wasn't going to be at a barbecue, people didn't want to go. Like people wanted to be where he was. He drew people to him.

He would chat with old ladies in the supermarket line. Like he was just so open and carefree. And that was not who I was at all when I met him. Like I was very concerned about like what people thought of me and I was very self-conscious. And he kind of showed me this way of life that was just like, what are you so worried about all the time? These are just people. They're just other people. They're not judging you. You're the one judging you and you're putting it on them. And so.

He opened my mindset to a completely different way of thinking and living, and I'm so grateful to him for that. he wasn't struggling with addiction for the majority of our relationship. It was maybe a few months before he passed that it really was this insanely fast downward spiral. I found out about the drug use and I felt like I was swimming in this quicksand trying to help him and save him.

Trying to get help for someone in that situation is a battle in so many ways because people think they don't need help. They think they can do it by themselves. So he was well aware. He told me before he passed, he said, these drugs are going to kill me. And that's not what I want for myself. That's not the legacy I want to leave behind. so we were driving to clinics that would turn him away because we didn't call first or we would get 1-800 numbers that wouldn't answer and would say,

leave a message and you never hear back from them. The support that was needed in that time so emergently and quickly wasn't available. And it was just like, even now looking back, I don't know what we could have done differently because we tried. We tried to find different places that would just talk to him. Cause I think he really just needed to talk and process things that had happened in his life and his personal traumas and his childhood and things that.

Men don't necessarily typically talk about as men. They want to suppress it all and say, no, I'm good. I got this. Everything's fine. And it wasn't. And so I think he really was like suppressing some deep rooted emotions with the drug use and the drugs that are going around on the streets now are just so insanely powerful. If you can try them one time and not be addicted, you are extremely lucky because

The mind control that they have over people is, it's crazy. It's unexplainable. And I am fortunate that I've never been an addict. I don't know what people get out of using drugs. I can only imagine, but it really was, to me, it felt like a numbing kind of thing. And as sad as it is to say, I think that he felt he did people a favor by leaving. I don't really know how to explain it, but.

So much had gone down in the months leading up to his death that he did addict behaviors of asking people for money, borrowing money he knew he was ever going to pay back, pawning things at the store. He got himself into such a hole with all of these people that he knew that deeply cared about him and would have done anything to help him. I think he got himself in a situation where he didn't know how to repair that. And so was just digging the hole deeper and deeper and deeper.

And I really think that he thought he did people a favor, not by intentionally overdosing. Of course he didn't do that, but I don't think, I think that was like, we're all lucky that he's not there to burden us anymore. And that's of course not the case. His friends still message me years later saying how much they miss him. There's still people sending me snap chats from going to visit his grave site.

posting on his social media pages. He's still so missed by so many people because he was that huge energetic personality. it's drugs are just such a horrible thing. And I wish there was more we could do to make people understand and more we could do to help people that are suffering from addiction rather than just assuming that they're a junkie or some terrible person because that's not the case. That's someone's fiance. That's someone's brother. That's someone's

They're just humans and they got themselves in a bad place, but they're usually still the best people that we know.

Thank you so much for sharing and speaking so candidly because that is a refreshing take, especially from somebody who can absolutely relate to everything you're saying. John sounds like he was a light, a wonderful person, clearly very loved, and a wonderful partner. And also, we are human and we have our struggles. And I always revert back to this quote by Dr. Gabor Mate. It says, do not ask why the addiction, ask why the pain.

The source of so much of this is deep, deep pain that has not been dealt with, like grief or trauma or something happened. And it's incredibly overwhelming. We don't know the depths to which somebody's affected. Like you said, it could be childhood, could be one life experience, multiple things. Some people just have a natural sensitivity to life, which is what makes them so wonderful and so lovable and such a light.

I could relate in that, for example, my brother was the same way. He was the person that lit up the room. So funny, so lovable. Would walk old ladies across the street, would help people whose cards got stuck on the side of the road, would pick up turtles from the streets so they wouldn't get squished. Like these gentle hearts, they're so beautiful, they're so loving. And also there's something that deeply burdens them.

I believe that addiction is a way to self-medicate, to self-stude, to calm our nervous system in a world that they don't feel like they have many other options. So don't want to speak on their behalf, obviously, because we don't know. But thank you for speaking about the reality of loving somebody who struggles with addiction. And I know one thing for sure, they don't want to leave that way. I know that for sure. This is not what they imagine for themselves. A lot of people think

or they choose the drugs over me. No, they don't even want this for themselves. It really is like a hijacking of my body, spirit, all the things. So thank you for that. And we honor him through this conversation as well. He was more than just that end point.

Yeah, you almost just want to beg them to love themselves as much as they give love to everyone else. Yes. it's hard.

Truly. And so in your early thirties, new widow in this new paradigm of a month from now, I was supposed to have a wedding and now I'm facing a funeral and life without him. So, you know, obviously journaling helps and you went solo traveling.

So I've always loved traveling, but if you had told younger me that I was gonna go on a solo travel trip anywhere, I would have been like, no, I'm not. That's crazy. I would never do that. But I found this travel group. So you go as a solo traveler, but you meet up with a group of other solo travelers. So everyone there is on their own, but you're not alone. You have this group. I needed to go see something in the world that made me...

believe that life was still gonna go on and be beautiful and give a shock to my system. So I did this solo travel group trip with, it's called FTLO Travel for the Love of Travel. And it's for people in my age range. I think somewhere between 25 and 40 is the age range. So I was very specific about what I picked because I wanted to go with people that were my age. I didn't want to be a young girl with a bunch of moms or vice versa. Feel like I was the mom with a bunch of teens that wanted to go to the club or whatever.

So I picked my trip very intentionally and I went to Ireland and Scotland and it was honestly the best thing I have ever done. still talk about it to this day. Scotland is like a fairy tale land. It's so beautiful there.

One of my like dream locations. I see pictures and I'm like, I must.

Yeah, you have to go. So I went to Edinburgh and the castle is above the city. So I remember driving into the city on our bus and just being like, I am in a fairy tale right now. And on top of it, nobody there knew me. So at that point, I just got to be whoever I decided I wanted to be. No one knew that my fiance had passed away. No one knew my story, my trauma, my grief, my sadness, and all these burdens that I was holding in. Like I just got to feel normal for a minute.

because I didn't have to like have people checking on me or treating me like I was made of glass or not knowing what they could say and couldn't say to me. So I just got to experience life authentically in whatever way I decided in that moment that I wanted to. So in so many ways, it was just like I said, that shocked the system that I needed to be like, okay, like we can do this. We're going to pull ourselves up bare bootstraps and like life is going to still continue and we're going to find moments of joy and happiness and

Go see these amazing places and know that he's still there with me in spirit because I would find things along the way and be like, no way. The signs are just crazy. Like once you start noticing the signs, the signs will blow your mind. I was going to the airport and ladybugs have always been one of my signs. There's a ladybug on my airport shuttle. I'm like, no way. We went to this big, beautiful church with stained glass windows, incredible. And then there was a place where you could light a candle for your loved one.

so that they could remain there with you. And all these nice little things happened along the way that I knew I was meant to be there in that place and time and that I was on the right track and doing the right things. And this is where my journey was supposed to take me. So would highly recommend to anyone. you're like, if you have the funds to do it, it was really truly an amazing experience.

It does help. in whatever way it's accessible to you, so much of this journey is collecting evidence that things are going to be okay, that life is still worth living, that tomorrow will still happen, God willing, until it doesn't. Right. And in the meantime, we keep moving forward. So it's beautiful that you did this intuitively and definitely traveling helps if that's an option. Did you happen to meet somebody that

you could relate to their story during that trip. Sometimes these little synchronicities happen or was it completely detaching from the reality of the loss in that moment?

Well, so oddly enough, one of the girls that was on my trip with me, her husband had passed away and neither of us shared that until it just came up naturally in conversation. We were both just kind of like, no way. There's no way that we both ended up here. And then she had a ladybug tattoo on her. So it was just like one thing after another after another that was when the signs are signing, they're just glaring like neon lights.

So yeah, was rude.

And the reason I ask that is because I've noticed that there's something bigger at play. At least that's what I believe. You there's always something bigger at play here. And you didn't go there to meet somebody in your similar journey. But if you ask, once you open the door to certain conversations with people, you'll notice, my gosh, we were so meant to be in this place at this time, in this moment, for similar purposes. And the ladybug tattoo is just like a validation of that. That's amazing.

There's so many times where I've gone on trips and people just start talking to you if you're on a plane, the person next to you and you have these similarities. When I was going to Ireland, the man next to me happened to be from the town that me and John lived in. And on the way back, I had this woman and she was reading a grief book next to me and I happened to have one of my journals and was able to give it to her. So it's always happening around us and

We kind of think that grief is this isolating experience, but the more I'm open and vulnerable about sharing my experiences and talking, the more you realize this is an experience that most people have and can relate to. And then you just find these little connections all over and it makes you feel like you're less alone.

100%. And I love that. I love that you were able to notice that and then give her one of the journals and who knows what ripple effect that's had in her life. Whenever she picks it up, I'm sure she remembers that moment. It's these little synchronicities personally, the quiet ones that we notice on our own and also the ones that we get to share with other people. It's so beautiful. And that was not that long ago. It's 2023. You embarked on this personal journey immediately, it sounds like. And also,

Now I understand you have a new partner and I know that could be a very strange experience and a very confronting experience for somebody who's lost a life partner. How do you open that door again to love and to welcome a new person in your life?

Yeah, honestly, it's so bizarre. I mean, dating is kind of like a sucky thing to deal with anyways. There's so much failure involved because you're trying people out and it doesn't work or you have to go and sit for an hour and have dinner with someone that's kind of weird or whatever. but I, I forced myself to just try. So I got on dating apps and did all the things. I went on dates and it was really hard.

felt like cheating because I was, I was still with my person. He just wasn't here anymore. So it really did feel like cheating for like a very long time. So I had to overcome that. And then also I had to navigate, do I start off with this topic? Do I work my way into it? Like, am I going to scare people off? What are they going to think about it? And so when I met my current boyfriend, actually we just been together for a year. The 20th was our one year anniversary. Happy anniversary. Thank you.

He was just so open to hearing about my experience and I didn't catch any weird looks. didn't ever feel weird talking to him about John. He was just very open to navigating this with me as a partner. And he did, he's done so many kind things. A lot of stuff in my basement was out of hand. That's where I threw all the totes that had John's stuff in them. There's just cobwebs down there because I didn't want to go down there with that stuff. It was a mess.

And at one point he was staying over one weekend and I had run out to do something. I don't, I don't know. Maybe it was probably a vendor thing, honestly, from journals. And he like organized all of the stuff in my basement. He was like, I know this is weighing on you. I can feel it down there. That's where your trauma is stored and I'm going to help you. And still that makes me so emotional because it was genuinely.

things to do to be able to see that in me that it was too difficult for me to do on my own and then to take so much care of not throwing away anything except for if it was truly trash and looked like trash but just organizing things in a manner that was accessible for me to then go through slowly on my own time and get everything back under control. And he has been that way ever since. Being this soft place for me to land with all my emotions and trauma and baggage and grief.

He just listens. I wasn't sure I would ever find something like that. And I knew that if I were to find another partner, I wasn't going to tiptoe around the fact that I had a fiance before. I wasn't going to not talk about him. I wasn't going to not bring up like great times in my life just to not make that person feel weird, which I felt was really a struggle that I was going to run into over and over. And I never ran into that with him. And he just, he just lets me be me. We have

really great open communication about anything. if anything's bothering him, he lets me know, we work through things. I always tell him he's an outlier because there's no other men out here that are out here doing what you're doing. Like, I don't know how you treat me so nicely, like, especially when I'm grumpy and I don't want to talk about things and I'm not good at like accepting help and all these things that you get from losing your partner and then living alone for so long. Like you become this kind of stoic.

No, I can do that by myself. I don't need your help. It's hard. It's hard to be vulnerable and accept that help from someone else, but he's cracked that open. Now he calls me on his way home every day and asks me if I need anything on the way home. And he's very kind and caring, and I'm so thankful that I found him. And it's funny because he's really not like John. I think you assume you're going to find someone similar to your previous partner, but he's not like him at all. He fills in all the gaps that were left.

after John passed. And so he just meshed in perfectly with what I needed at the time and still do.

He sounds wonderful. And I'm so happy that you have somebody like that in your life because you're very deserving. And it's so nice to find that person. I do have conversations with widows of different ages, know, so later in their life and also young like yourself. And they say like, wear this one of a kind unicorn of a person, but it's

It's true because the person that we're with feels like a unicorn and in so many ways in the context of today's dating world, it feels very special and it is very special. also somebody's newly widowed, let's say, or somebody's trying to open their heart back up in this moment. There are partners, men, women, whatever you're looking for, who are willing to walk this road with you, beside you.

and it takes having that clarity of what it is that you're looking for. And like you said, you were going to talk about John and you were going to embrace the fact that this happened. It doesn't have to be every waking moment, but it has to be a part of your life because it is a reality. You didn't choose this. This happened and this is part of how you carry him forward. And would you say that grief was a clarifier to the type of person that you were looking for in dating?

Yeah, I think so. So prior to being with John, I had been in an abusive relationship for about seven years, so for a really long time. So that was clarifying in itself of like what I was going to accept and what I wasn't. I thought I found what I needed in John, obviously not knowing what was going to come in the future with all the addiction, but it's just built on that since then as just maintaining boundaries and not feeling bad about them.

and not letting how someone else is gonna feel affect me maintaining my boundaries. I've done a lot of work in therapy about boundaries because I'm such an empathetic person. I might know what they are, but it's hard for me to actually maintain them. Cause I always feel bad about like how the other person's gonna receive it. But boundaries are really important. And then on top of it, another one of those things where social media kind of fueled that staying stuck is I was finding in a lot of widows groups.

It was just people commenting about how that was my person. I'm never going to find someone else. I'm never going to move on. I will never look. That was it for me. That's the end. I'll be all, no, there's no conversation to it. And I, I just really disagreed with that mindset because you don't have to actively be looking for another partner after you've lost yours, but to be entirely closed off from the idea of it is just preventing yourself from potentially having.

another amazing person come into your life. So I always like to tell people, don't say these forever statements. You could say, I can't imagine what that would look like right now. Or I just can't see that for myself, but maybe keep an open mind because having that closed door to anything, whether it's taking your rings off, a lot of people are hard and fast about it. I will never take my rings off. You don't know. And if you're going to stick with these, these never statements.

You could be having someone equally as good as the person you lost come into your life, and maybe they sent them to you. I say all the time that I manifested Matt, my boyfriend, because he was everything I was looking for, and like the universe sent him to me. Just think, having an open mind is really important.

So huge, yes. Grief is not this or that, it's this and that. Just because grief, especially early grief, feels like this is how your life is going to look like forever and ever and ever, that's not a true statement. The pain shifts. Two things we have guaranteed in life is that we will all go at some point and also that life changes and it shifts and so does grief and so does loss and it can shift more often than not when you lean into it. To joy you never even imagined was possible and this is just one of those stories that reinforces that.

And how do you honor John's memory today? Do you still have time that is just between Sean and John in your life today?

Well, so mostly I think I try to embody the characteristics that I admired so much in him. So now I will find myself chatting with random strangers at the grocery store I used to think was so weird when he would do it, or just opening up conversation with people around me and just having more of this carefree, not so worried about people's opinions of me. And so I just try to carry that with me in the way that he was. And I know that he wouldn't want me to

be sad and mourning him and not living my life to the fullest. He would be upset about that. He would hate that. So I just try to continue doing things that bring me joy. And I know that that would bring him joy. If all of these people that we've lost are as great as we say they are, none of them would want us stuck in this sad place. They would want us out living our best lives, smiling and remembering them when we see the Cardinals or we see the dragonflies. Like they're showing us signs.

that they're still here with us in spirit, they want us to be happy and experience joy. So that's what I try to do the most and share that with others. Like I try, I try to keep people away from that stuckness.

And definitely the journaling helps, the work that you're doing with Paths of Purpose helps as well. You mentioned earlier that you do in-person events. So could you tell people where are you located? Where could they find some of these in-person events and any other offerings that you have online? And where can they find that information as well?

Yeah, so I do events all over Connecticut, different vendor fairs. So whether it's at like a winery, a brewery, a lot of the adult book fairs, I don't know if that's happening around you, but that's a big thing now around here. I'm kind of like the scholastic book fair you had when a kid, but re-imagined for adults. I'll do journaling workshops, either incorporated to other grief events, or I did a resilience building workshop.

back in January that we may revisit at some point again, but again, that would be in Connecticut. I'm also working with Kate Mollison. She has a business called On Tuesdays Where We Wear Black. She's a fellow widow and she's putting on a grief awareness and education conference that's gonna be in Hartford, Connecticut in September. Still working with her to find sponsorships, raffles and outreach. So I'm always getting involved in new and different things, but everything's always on my social media pages. So you can go to my Instagram, which is heart understrings journals.

or TikTok, Heartstrings Journals, I post everywhere. I share journal prompts, I share where I'm gonna be, I share any updates, or if I have little thoughts about grief that I wanna share, it all goes on social media, so you can find me there.

Perfect, and of course those would be in the show notes so you can click away and connect directly with Sean. Is there one journal prompt that is go-to for you or something that was really helpful maybe in your early grief?

Yeah, I think the one that I go back to is writing a letter to my grief. And it changes over time. And I think that's interesting. So periodically I will write a letter to my grief, addressing it, dear grief, and just telling it how I feel about it. And I had went to a grief workshop and that was the first time that she gave us that prompt. And it was eye opening that grief's kind of like this best friend that you don't want to have.

So it was like, I hate you and you suck, but like we're in this together and you're my buddy now. So it's this weird juxtaposition, but I like to do that one every now and then just to check in and see how it's evolved and how things have changed.

And how have things changed? Because, for example, in my own practice, I have a journal strictly for conversations with my brother, right? All the things that I never got to say afterwards or that I wanted to say or update. Sometimes it's like, hey, mom and dad did this and your turtle has a new pond or I got a dog or, you know, just things that I wish he would know. And I trust that he receives it somehow as being able to communicate these things in a loving way and give them a form of expression.

How have you seen your journal entries evolve and what would you say to that earlier version of you from today's perspective?

would just tell myself that it's not going to be this heavy forever. So it's still hard and it's still sad and there's still that hole. I'm sure if you're in the grief world at all, you've seen that picture of the jar with the ball in it and it's like the jar gets bigger, the ball stays the same size. That's really how it is, it feels for me. It's not crying every day and it's not this extreme sadness.

There really are ways to manage it where you can still honor that person and honor that relationship, but it doesn't need to be so heavy all the time. It will get lighter and easier to manage and you'll find people that help you carry it as well. So in the beginning, I lost a lot of connections and a lot of friendships and people that I just...

They weren't serving a purpose in my life anymore. If anything, they were dragging me down in a time where I was already down as far as I felt I could go. But now I have people that lift me up in different pockets of people. So if I do need to talk about John, I have people to go do that. If I need to talk about grief or if I need to talk about whatever, I have different little pockets of people that I can go through for different things. So it's all doable. It feels like it's going to be terrible forever, but

It really, it grows and it can become something bigger and better. If you try, you have to put in the work. I'm sure sometimes when I talk about this stuff, it sounds so much easier, easier said than done. It's hard. You have to put in the work. Like I was intent, I would, well, I called it intentionally grieving. So I would go and do something that I knew was going to make myself really upset and cry. And maybe that was going to the cemetery or maybe that was packing up a box of stuff that I didn't want to put away.

I've learned that doing those hard, scary, daunting things open up, again, so much space for the joy and the fun and the beautiful things to come in your new part of your life, the new phase.

Such wisdom in that because it's so true, the leaning in part, it seems counterintuitive at first, but it's the allowing yourself to cry. When you feel overwhelmed, put on a sad song and just let it cry out. At of the song, you'll probably feel better and you can be like, okay, where was I? Going back to your in-person events, I think you were talking about that the focus is more on resilience after loss. Is this specific to widows or is this open to everybody?

Nope, it was open to everyone. So we did it around New Year's because it was a shift in mindset from New Year's resolutions that are these lofty goals and we wanted to build more actionable plans. Get yourself where you need it to be. So I've tried to intentionally move myself out of grief specific niche and into this more, if you've been through hardships, there are ways to find a way out of it and to build resilience and to go on whatever path you're wanting to go on.

So I don't want it always for myself to be a specifically grief focused. That's where my story came from. But I want anyone who's struggling with anything, whether you've gone through an abusive relationship, whether you've gone through trauma as a child, there are ways to shift your mindset and lead yourself on a different journey than what you currently are doing. But you have to do it intentionally and you have to focus and you have to put the work in.

And in your own opinion, what does resilience look like after loss?

so for me, resilience is intentionally putting in that work to know that you want more and better for yourself and to not let yourself stay stuck in these sad points and, and sucked into that bedrock kind of situation, forcing yourself to do things out of your comfort zone or things that might seem scary. Like the worst that's going to happen is maybe you go somewhere and you go home. You don't want to be there anymore. Like you get to do whatever you want.

But part of doing whatever you want is having that life that you want that looks different than what you're currently feeling. And there is a way out. So resilience to me is just putting in that work and that focus to get yourself to achieve whatever your goals and dreams are for yourself and your life.

Beautiful. And we're getting to the end here and I just want to give you the floor to say or touch on anything that feels important to touch on in this conversation.

else I have to say, I feel like I've said a lot here. We touched on a lot of things. I think just if you are in a spot where you're like really deep in your grief, you don't know how to get out. I just told this to someone recently. I was like, look for your griefy people. Like you have to find your griefy people. And for us, it's the collective from Get Griefy Magazine, but there are pockets of them everywhere. Find yourself a grief group. Find yourself a support group. Go try a book club.

Try things until you find something that works for you because it's not a hopeless situation even though it might feel that way.

Sean, you are such a light. Thank you so much for this time for sharing your story. I know it's going to help many. And again, if you're listening or watching, just being sure you check the show notes for all of the links to get your Heartstrings Journals. If you want to submit a story for a passive purpose, I'll also include that link and just to connect with Sean and her beautiful work. Thank you again for being here and thank you so much for being you.

Thank you, it was so nice chatting with you.

That's it for today's episode. Be sure to subscribe to the Grief and Light podcast. I'd also love to connect with you and hear your thoughts and your stories. Feel free to share them with me via my Instagram page at griefandlight. Or you can also visit griefandlight.com for more information and updates. Thank you so much for being here, for being you. And always remember, you are not alone.