It has been a minute since we’ve had a new episode. Life has been really, really busy here and I’m just grateful I have so many episodes that I hope you’ve been listening to. But we are back. We are going to have some amazing episodes coming up for you. I got a new, if you’re watching on YouTube. We are on YouTube.

I have been doing video and audio. Here’s my cute new cup. I’m trying to hydro jug. This isn’t sponsored or anything. I just got tired of my Stanley spilling and I also dropped it a few times and like bent the bottom anyways, so I’m trying the hydro jug. So if you like it, uh, yeah, let me know what your, go over on Instagram and tell me what water container you are carrying.

I drink so much water, so I’m really excited. I want to jump right into today’s episode because it’s gonna be so good. I want to answer your questions that are running through your head. The questions that keep you up at night, the questions that you cry out on your knees in the closet, and we’ve all been there.

Each one of us are, will have moments where we’re gonna ask that question, how do I keep going? It definitely could be because of your loss, because of miscarriage, because of stillbirth, because you had to terminate a beloved baby or whatever kind of loss that you have experienced. But it could be so many other things.

There are so many other times, I’m not gonna get deep into it, but I can say I live in the United States and right now a lot of people are saying, how are we gonna keep going? How is this even gonna work? How am I gonna pay for groceries? How am I gonna buy eggs? There’s a lot of questions, so. There’s also less big things.

Like this morning I’m getting ready for a friend to come over. I haven’t seen her in a while. She hasn’t seen my new house since we moved and I spent so much time yesterday picking up, I decided today I am just gonna clean. I’m gonna like deep, clean, vacuum everything. Like do all the things to get the house clean and.

When I picked up my kids from school, I was telling them, please help me. Let’s be a team. Let’s keep the house tidy. And shockingly enough, they did not do that. They still have socks, and we’ve got Pokemon cards and we’ve got, you know, just like spills on the kitchen table from breakfast. And in the grand scheme of things, this is not a big deal, but there are days where you feel like.

How do I even keep going? How do I keep doing the day to day to day to day tasks that we have? If we’re mothering living kids, if we’re working, whatever we’re doing, it can get exhausting and it can feel really pointless even to try. And some days you lose it. Some days you look around and wonder like, what did I even accomplish?

Some days you look at your goals and wonder how you’ve been working so, so hard, but you feel like you’re in the same place. Maybe you’re making the same amount of money or zero money in a business that you’re trying to run or whatever it is. And. That can feel really difficult, but I want you to stick with me during this episode no matter how long it’s been since your loss, no matter what goals you’re trying to accomplish, no matter what you’re struggling with, I.

As I share 10 ways that you can keep going. These are in no particular order and not all of them are gonna resonate with you, but some really are. So listen for that one or two or three points that really resonate with you. You are really gonna be surprised when you hear number nine, but it’s so good and it’s one of my favorites and every time I teach this, people are like, what?

Uh, I didn’t know I was allowed to do that. So you can use these tips now. You can save ’em for a rainy day. You know if life is actually going good and you are going, you could even ask yourself. What am I doing? What tips do I have? For me, it’s always about your own inner wisdom, your tips that work for you, and if things feel like they’re actually okay right now, take a little time and journal and figure out what you’re doing that helps you so that you can use those in the times that are more difficult.

Now, some of these, I’m gonna be a little bit sassy. Because I think we all need to hear straight up truth and that’s okay. So here we go. How do I keep going? 10 tips for you. Number one, you just do. You know, we hate it when people say, I just couldn’t survive this. I couldn’t survive getting laid off. I couldn’t survive.

My baby died. I think in some ways we actually do believe this ourselves. We don’t believe that we’re doing well at surviving and we don’t think we’re gonna thrive, but you just do. You just keep going and you have to have some sort of trust, even if it’s not strong, some sort of trust that there are brighter days ahead, and also find the brightness within each day.

That’s how you just keep going. I. You just do it. You just put on your Nikes and you just do it. I think there’s so much power in this and we underestimate it. ’cause if you’re listening to this, you’re already doing this, you’re doing it. Number two, we learn. We live in the information age. There is no shortage of grief support.

There’s no shortage of self-development books, podcasts, and mentors. There is so much for free that money should not be an obstacle here. It doesn’t need to hold you back. Learning is one of my favorite coping skills. It might be intimidating to you, but just know that you can do this. In a way that works for you.

Like I said, just be intentional. There is nothing better about reading a book than there is listening to an audio book. There’s nothing like, there’s no hierarchy of learning. We all learn in different ways. We all gotta try different things. We all gotta find different people that. That touch us and that might change and shift.

Throughout my life. I’ve had lots of different mentors, coaches, people I thought were really, really helping me. And then some of ’em I’ve outgrown, some of ’em, I’ve changed. Um, there’s some books I read where I was like, oh my goodness, this is the answer. And then something different comes along and it changes.

But what’s really important is that if you want to keep going, you keep learning. Learn from a place of love. We don’t need to learn from a place of, I don’t know enough, I need someone else to tell me what to do. It’s just searching out those things that resonate with you and help you. And I think for sure in grief, a lot of us just do not understand it.

And when we don’t understand it, we feel like we’re failing. We feel like we’re doing something wrong instead of understanding, oh no, this is just what grief is like. So keep learning that will help you keep going. And I challenge you to pick something, anything that you wanna learn about, uh, and do it. Go for it.

Number three, just pick something to keep you going. Mine was kind of easy because I had living kids when I had my losses. These kids got me outta bed each and every day. They inspired me to learn about my grief because I wanted to help them in their grief. They helped me to want to do better and be better as an example to them.

Their wellbeing guides so many of my choices, and I also wanted to live for my babies. I wanted to alleviate other people’s pain now having a compelling reason, picking something to keep you going is a key to anything you wanna keep doing. And it doesn’t actually have to be noble. You could commit to thriving just to tick off the person in your life who doesn’t think you can.

Don’t underestimate what proving someone wrong can do for you. It’s pretty fun. And I actually just saw, I had been like writing out this outline and. I was scrolling social media and I saw an old, old interview with Taylor Swift. She had to have been like 19 or 20, but she said there was some old guitar teacher that she had that.

She had mentioned wanting to learn a 12 string guitar, and he was like, you’re too young. Your hands are too weak. Like you don’t have the coordination. You can’t learn a 12 string guitar. So she picked one out that she wanted. She waited and asked for it and got it as a Christmas present. And then she said she practiced until her fingers bled.

In order to learn the 12 string guitar as a child, if I remember right, she was very, very young when she did this, and I think that’s a theme. If you follow Taylor Swift, if you’re a fan or you just see her interviews, she gets a lot of hate. She gets a lot of criticism and she uses it to fuel her. So whatever you want, use it to fuel you.

Pick something that’s gonna keep you going. Number four, get busy living. I think we often get stuck in the rut of just existing. We get stuck in a rut of overthinking. We get stuck in a rut of telling ourselves, we’ll do it later. Do it now. Find even the smallest thing that lights you up. Now this, I mean, the sky is the limit.

There’s. Everything is on the table, but here’s some of the things I’ve seen people do. Uh, you add to the list, write grief, poetry, make art, take up running, do your first 5K. My first 5K was a running with Angels fundraiser thing for baby loss, and I stunk, and I’ve only done two five Ks, but I’m doing one more this year.

We’re planning in May, but do it. Go for that job. You were too scared to apply for. Go back to school, take care of you. Even if it’s the bare minimum, or you can make a goal to climb Mount Everest. It doesn’t matter. But we only have this one life. Get busy living it and I’m going to venture a guess that you have something in your heart and on your mind right now that you want to do that you’re too scared to do.

Do it. This is your kick in the pants. Number five is one of my favorites. How do we keep going, serve others in all the talk we have about self-care and boundaries these days, service is actually down in all areas. Volunteerism is down. Community service where we know and help our neighbors is down. You might not know where to start.

You might be afraid. You might think you have too much anxiety or you’re too tired, or you don’t have the capacity, but love overcomes all of that. If you believe in a higher being, they overcome that. We’ve been commanded in almost all belief systems to love one another, to help our fellow women to help the poor and the needy, and those that mourn.

You absolutely have the capacity and the rewards that come are magical. Don’t deny yourself the rewards that come from serving others, even in the smallest of ways. It’s truly a beautiful thing, and I think we get so much more reward than even the people that we serve.

All right, we are down to number six. Walk with Friends. Don’t do this alone. Don’t do life alone. Get your people and walk the path together. Find friends who are farther along than you. Invite new friends who are feeling lost to come with us. Open up to people. Who aren’t just like you send the text, make the comment, show up to the support group or club or church or exercise class, and I think this point is really important that we don’t know.

Who our next friend will be, who we’re gonna connect with, or who’s gonna be just like a great fit. I love, I don’t know about your algorithm, but mine loves to show me like unlikely animal friendships like a little mouse that’s friends with a dog or a little bird that’s riding a, a cow around or a chicken.

I saw one that was like a chicken that was getting picked on and he started riding on the back of this. Donkey and they’re like best friends and inseparable. And I remember being really young, first married, uh, my husband was in the military, we moved to California and I didn’t know anybody. But in the military, they teach you and you learn really quickly that you gotta make friends fast because people do move in and out a lot and you’re, you’re moving a lot and.

So you gotta learn to make friends fast. It is a skill, and one of my best, best friends that I met when we were living in California was a family that she was, I don’t know. Probably 20 years older than me, she had teenagers. Um, her youngest was like 13 years old and I was pregnant with my first baby. And I think a lot of times we think that people have to be just like us in order to be our friends or in order to be our support.

And that is not true. That is a lie. There is so much value in having friends in all walks of life, in being open to talking to whoever and finding common ground and having fun together. It’s, I, I don’t know if it’s because we’re in grade school or we are on teams. Like a lot of times, even with my own living kids, I have to say, Hey, just because that person is in a grade above you or a grade below you, or.

Isn’t, you know, your same gender or doesn’t do exactly your same activities, that they can still be your person and they are still worth getting to know. I think we do ourselves a huge disservice when we kind of try to cherry pick who we can be friends with. So this is another challenge for you. Make friends with someone that.

You maybe wouldn’t think you could be friends with, whether it’s a neighbor, whether it’s someone you see at your local coffee shop or whatever it is, make friends walk with them. Life is easier when we have a village and yeah, it takes effort and yeah, it can be scary, but it’s totally worth it. Number seven, this is one that you might think is tricky.

But invite children into your life. This kind of goes along with making friends in unlikely places, but I’m telling you, it is powerful to have children in your life. Now if you have living kids already. Get to know their friends, get involved. Coach that soccer team, volunteer at this school. I coached my son’s soccer team last year.

I don’t know, soccer, I’m pretty sporty, but soccer was not my favorite. I got kicked in the face with the ball at one point and I was like, Hmm, no, I’m not gonna do that. And soccer wasn’t, or football was not super huge where I grew up in Canada, but. I, I was like, sure. I’ll coach the soccer team, I mean, they were six, six years old, so I could, they, I could handle it, but, um, it was so fun to get to know those kids and it was so fun to hang out with them and kind of like bring them treats and, and have fun at our practices and all of that.

I, I really want you to understand. That I want everyone who listens to this podcast or who works with me to know that bellies, babies and children are not scary. They aren’t your enemy, and they don’t have to be a trigger, a reminder. Sure. Something you may have to care for yourself around maybe. But kids also have so much love to give.

They are adorable and they’re such good examples. They need you and it’s nice to be needed. I recently started substitute teaching a little bit and in our, you know, in our school district, they needed subs. And I was like, okay, I, I could try to do that. And it was so fun. One of the days I substituted for first grade class and they, they had to write in their little journals and some of the kids in their journals as we, they wrote in their journals and then we read them out.

Some of ’em were just like, I love Mrs. Watson. They had known me or met me like an hour before. I hadn’t really done anything extraordinarily special, but they just were like, I love you. You’re amazing. And it is so sweet, and kids are just awesome. Don’t be afraid of them. If you wanted a baby, like you wanted kids, you love babies, you love kids, let yourself love them, it.

Absolutely will help you Keep going. I think I will die on this hill. You don’t have to be afraid of them. They’re awesome. Number eight is dig deep into your beliefs. When life is hard, we often have a lot of questions. We might feel peace, we might feel more intensely mad than we ever have in our lives.

And I’ve experienced both of those. Lauren, I felt a lot of peace with River. I felt so mad. So mad. Um. We might have a solid faith to lean on, or we might feel like we’re floundering or we might be starting from like nothing. We might have no belief system ’cause we’ve never had to before, but all of that is good.

Use it. Don’t avoid it. I think personally that if you believe in a higher power, they can handle your emotions, they can handle your real raw questions. They can handle it. So let it out. Because you know what? Sometimes those rocky parts in our relationship are what really get us to where we want to be.

So if you want to keep going, don’t shy away from it. Dive into it. Dig deep into it. And this is a process, right? It’s not a one time thing. It’s not gonna be solved immediately. The wrestle is worth it. Now here comes number nine. This is the one that I think people are so surprised when they hear me say, but here it is, use unhealthy coping mechanisms.

Here in the self-development world, we’re all about finding healthier and maybe more effective ways to cope, better ways to take care of yourself, all of that. But you know what? Sometimes you just need chocolate. You just need to mindlessly scroll your phone and check out of life. You need to pick a fight with someone you really care about just to feel something.

You need to be petty and wounded and react from your trauma. We cannot be enlightened and intentional all the time. The trick is when you notice what’s happening, you love yourself in it. You fix anyone you hurt in the process, right? Get really good at apologizing. You give yourself grace. You give other people grace.

You love your body. After months of being in survival mode, it’s a gift to have a lower brain that keeps you going. When we think we don’t know how. That’s another thing that I think is so important. Yes, we talk about being intentional. Yes, we talk about like creating the life we want and using powerful tools, but if you just wanna keep going, it’s so awesome that we have a lower brain that does that for us.

You don’t have to always be in your higher brain. You don’t always have to be enlightened. Let that lower brain take care of you. It knows what to do. It knows what you need, and you can love it. And thank it. And also, I’m gonna say, you know, there’s no timeline on this, but if you are feeling like, oh, I’ve been coping in an unhealthy way, I might need some help, I might want to change this, definitely you can do that too.

But if you want to keep going, sometimes that’s what we do. Right. I probably was a total like sad zombie person. Most of the first year after Lauren died. She was still born at full term. I got pregnant a few months later. I was pregnant after loss. I was grieving hard. I was going through the motions and.

Yeah, I don’t remember a ton of details from that time, and that’s okay. Right. But I do remember that I just gave myself the space to have a really hard year to say, I am going to be in mourning. And I wish that we could just wear black. I wish that I didn’t even have to try to pretend that I was okay ’cause I wasn’t.

And I hated when people asked me that, how are you doing? How are you? And I knew they didn’t really wanna know. I just kept trudging along, and you can do that too. That’s how you keep going. All right. Number 10 is also one of my favorites, and I know that everyone lives in different places. We all have different circumstances, but I want you to get out in nature Wherever you live, find something green, find the sky, feel the breeze.

Leave your phone at home and just go listen to the birds sing. Admire the way the snow glistens in the sunlight let the rain wash over you. The quiet of going to the mountains for me has been so healing. Going for a walk. We’re so lucky where we live, there’s a trail right by a river, and it is just so gorgeous.

I love it in all the seasons. It’s been really, really pretty and I love it. I don’t do it every day. I’m not perfect at this. Even just stopping to look at the sunset and giving yourself that moment in nature. But another challenge I have for you is get a little more than that, right? Do a little more.

Make a little more time for nature in your life. Get a plant. I know some of us are scared of plants. People gave me plants. To keep alive after Lauren died. And I hated it. I hated them. A lot of them died. I got rid of them. I threw some out, I think. ’cause I was like, I don’t need one more thing to take care of.

I don’t have the capacity. But maybe you do. Maybe you get something easy, like a succulent that really requires like watering once a month or whatever it is. Just get some nature in your life. Get yourself out into nature. There is so much healing to be had when we ground ourselves in the earth, where we came from and where we’re gonna end up.

So that is my ten tips for you though, that those are my ten tips for you. Let’s speak grammatically correct. Um, but I have one bonus. It’s number 11. Get expert help. How do you keep going? Get help. Self-care can feel overwhelming. Our peers can be stuck in the same place you are and that’s nice when you wanna vent, but it not really great.

When you want to move forward, you might need more family and friends can range from super loving to just flat out terrible. I’ve experienced all of that and they don’t know exactly what you need. Even the best of them. Don’t know exactly what you need. Money and time are always factors. I totally understand that.

But you can choose to do what’s important. If you wanna keep going, that’s where an expert comes in. Finding the right person can also feel daunting. But if you’re here, I think you’ve already found one resource. Thank you for being here. It means so much to me. I would love to support you having an expert.

Will get you where you want to be faster and easier. Yes, you have to put effort in. You have to look at things you’ve been afraid to look at, but it’s what we’re here to do. It’s what you’re here to do. You can’t stay the same forever. You can’t just lay down and go to sleep. I know that some days we just wanna lay down and sink into the darkness, but you can’t.

You have a purpose, you have a light. There’s so much hope. So if you wanna keep going, if you’re asking that question, how do I keep going? How do I keep going towards my goal? How do I keep going and maybe grow my family again? How do I keep going and honor my baby? How do I keep going and just like kill it at work?

If things are really hard right now, wherever you are, wherever you feel stuck, this is the way. As the Mandalorian said, so I will just recap those. Number one, you just do. Number two, you learn. Number three, pick something. Pick a compelling reason to keep you going. Number four, get busy living. Bring some joy and some fun.

Back in. Number five, serve others. Number six, walk with friends, build your community. Number seven, invite children into your life. Eight, dig deep into your beliefs. Number nine, use those unhealthy co coping mechanisms. Let that lower brain keep you surviving until you’re ready to start thriving. And number 10, get out into nature or bring some nature in to your home.

That’s all I’ve got for you today. If you want to talk to me, reach out. Just email me, Amy at Smooth Stones Coaching. You can go check out my website. I’m on Instagram. Share this podcast with your friends. If you love it, leave a review. I will see you next time.