Welcome to the Daily Ascent. I'm Molly Carmel and this is the podcast I always wish existed. A bite sized on the ground spiritual note that can shift your thinking and your outlook on life to help make us all a little bit more awake, alive and ascending. So I want to talk about something that's really been sitting on my soul that came up with a client recently that I think so many of us do.
And it has to do with control and grief and this amazingly radical idea of just what is the next loving choice? What is the next loving choice? So I have a client who's really in a moment right now, like some deep, deep grief that she's just uncovered. And it's the kind of grief that really takes over everything.
And I don't know about you, but when I'm in grief, it's really a full time job. Like, I sort of wish I didn't have a full time job when I'm in grief. There's really not a whole lot of bandwidth for anything else like that. Grief can fill a room and a house and a garage and a backyard.
And she also struggles in her relationship with food. That's part of the work that we do together. And, you know, I'm her general coach. We work on feelings, food, life, dreams, all the things.
And so she really came to understand that a lot of what she's going through is grief. And it's a very beautiful thing to watch because she was really avoiding it for such a long time, right? Keeping it at arm's length. And now she's like, oh, like, this is what it is.
And listen, I think that takes an enormous amount of courage to really look a feeling in the face. And then as she was sort of processing this, she said something that made me pause. She said, you know, I really think part of what I need to do is really, really stick to my food plan right now. And I sort of giggled, right?
Definitely not at her. Oh my goodness. But sort of the situation, because I so get it. Having big feelings can be so uncomfortable that we just want to find anywhere that we can control so we don't have to deal with this, like, unknown of a big grief bubble dropping down.
And so sometimes, you know, like, this really adherent food plan can feel like a solution to grief. Like if I can just get this one thing right, then maybe this unknown chaos or just emptiness will quiet down inside of me. And, you know, listen, a whole lot of me that makes sense because, like, I really understand the impulse, the human in me when everything feels out of control. Of course we want to reach for the things that we can control, right?
But here's the problem. She's having a hard time doing anything right now because she's in such deep grief. And frankly, she's trying really hard to follow a stringent food plan. And it's just, you know, listen, there's not a day I recommend following a stringent food plan.
But, you know, like, if she's having a hard time doing it, then in a season like this, she's adding insult to injury because not only is she trying to avoid the grief, but she's setting herself up to fail, which reinforces a belief that she can't follow through, which makes her feel worse, which makes the grief harder to sit with. Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. Sound familiar to anyone? So I said to her, with the.
With all the love in my heart, like, listen, I just don't think right now is the time for a stringent food plan, right? Like, and then I offered her this food plan. What if the food plan right now was just to make the next loving choice with your food? And listen, that does not mean eat whatever she wants or binge because she's grieving and she, like, quote unquote, deserves it.
Not throw everything out the window. But also not, like white knuckle, a rigid plan when her whole system is overwhelmed with accepting loss, right? Just what is the next loving choice? That's it.
One choice at a time. And she comes with an enormous knowledge base, as so many of us do, even if we dip the toe into the food work, right? Like, we know in our highest and best self what feels good in our bodies and what doesn't. So, you know, instead of a spreadsheet or a plan with rules and times and measurements, just what is the next loving choice?
And so that brings me to our pocket stage today. And it comes from Megan Devine's book. I love this title. It's okay that you're not okay.
This is my great title. And, you know, she's a psychotherapist who is just a really trusted voice on grief, and she writes about grief in a really, like, real life way. No platitudes, no. Everything happens for a reason.
And I love that. That's like my love language. And so she writes, some things cannot be fixed. They can only be carried.
True comfort and grief is acknowledging the pain, not trying to make the pain go away. Companionship, not correction, is the way forward. Let me read that again for those of you in the back. Some things cannot be fixed.
They can only be carried. True, comforting grief is acknowledging the pain, not trying to make it go away. Companionship, not correction, is the way forward. And like so many of us, my client was trying to fix her grief, right?
She's trying to control it with a food plan. And we try to control all sorts of things, right? And she was sort of trying to type a, organize her way out of it. And I love this reading because it's saying grief isn't the thing you fix, right?
It's something you carry, and the way that you carry it matters. You carry it with companionship, not correction, with tenderness, right? Not a need to do list. And so our word of the day today is tender.
And I feel like tender is the vibe. It's the energy underneath this idea of what is the next loving choice. You know, what I was really saying to her when I was offering that as a food plan was what if you're just tender with yourself right now? And it's a really underused word.
Like, we use it for steak or babies or puppies, but we very rarely use it for the way that we treat ourselves in a hard season. We try to use words like strong and disciplined and focused and committed. And, I mean, those words definitely have their place. But when we're in grief, when our whole system is flooded with loss, strength isn't really what we need.
We really need tenderness, because tenderness means that we don't have to have it all figured out. We just need to be tender one choice at a time, being kind to ourself with the very next thing we put in our body. Not even for the whole day or the whole week, just the next loving choice. And it's making an assumption that we'll come back, right?
That we'll come back. Grief is not forever. But by making this next loving choice, we assure that we'll come back to our, like, highest and best and excited selves again. And it goes without saying that we are a culture obsessed with control.
When something painful happens, our first instinct isn't to feel it, it's to manage it, right? To get a plan and get some structure and find the thing that we can grip onto so it doesn't feel like the ground is falling away. And food can be a really accessible tool for that, honestly. Because when we can't control a feeling, we can control food.
When we can't fix a loss, we can try to fix our body or our eating, right? It makes so much sense. It's not crazy, it's incredibly human. But this reading is really pointing to something important.
There are just some things that can't be fixed and certainly not fixed on this. Like right now, gotta get it done. Timeline, they can be carried. And when we try to fix what can only be carried, when we try to add weight to an already unbearable load, you know, we don't create any space for healing.
And my client really needed permission to be in her grief without adding another way to fail on top of it. And for those of you rolling your eyes, which I don't think is many of us ascenders, but just in case there's a part of you rolling your eyes, right? Being tender and making the next loving choice is not a cop out. It's actually a lot harder, I think, than fixing it and following a rigid plan.
Because at least a rigid plan tells you exactly what to do and does the thinking for you and shuts off the feelings, right? This big question, what is the next loving choice? It actually asks you to check in with yourself and to pause and say, like, well, what do I need right now? What does my body need right now?
What would, you know, it feel like to care for myself instead of punish myself? Like, what would kindness look like in this moment? Those are. Those are rough questions, right?
And it really requires being awake and present. And being present to grief is a really, really brave task because it's much easier to hide in a plan. And healing, I just want to say, really does look like tenderness, like a carrying grief instead of trying to outrun it and making the next loving choice and trusting that one loving choice at a time is more than enough. The grief will take care of the rest.
Right? So you don't have to have the whole thing figured out. You don't have to be perfect through your pain. You just have to be tender enough to ask, what is the next loving thing I can do for myself right now?
And so your reflective question for the day, where are you trying to control something that actually just needs your tenderness? And listen, if this is hitting home, if you've been in a hard season and you've been gripping or trying to grip unsuccessfully on food rules to get through it, or beating yourself up because you can't seem to follow a plan when your whole life feels like it's underwater, I want you to hear this. My stop starting over system. Like, we don't do rigid plans.
We do the next level choice. We learn that, we integrate it, and we meet you exactly where you are in the overwhelming, the mess and the grief. And we help you to build something that holds not a cage a container. And so if you're ready, you know, I'm obsessed with talking to you.
And you can go into our show notes and get a link to make a call with me, or you can go to mollycarmel.com to learn more and hand I am right here with you ascenders. Learning that tenderness is the farthest thing from weakness. It's actually the whole game. And if these episodes are speaking to you, can you get on your Instagram and repost and share and scream from the rooftops?
Because we're looking to add more centers to our crew. Am I right? So send it along. And until then, we rise together.
See you next time.