How Honoring Your Grief Finally Opens Your Heart to Love | Mariposa | EP208

Send us Fan MailIn this episode, we sit down with April’s mentor Mariposa to explore what grief really is, why our culture is so ill-equipped to support it, and how learning to honor loss — instead of avoid it — is the only real path to opening your heart for love again. This conversation is for anyone who has ever felt stuck after heartbreak, afraid to trust again, or ashamed of still caring about someone they lost. Discover how to hold space for grief in relationships, why rushing to recover actually keeps you trapped, and how sacred practices from indigenous traditions can help you move through loss with dignity, power, and hope — keywords: how to heal after divorce, processing grief after a breakup, how to open your heart to love again, grief in relationships, emotional healing and intimacy.Follow Mariposa on Instagram to learn more about her!In this interview, you'll learn:1. Why grief is not a weakness but a sacred teacher that shows you what you truly value2.How to hold space for your own grief without being swallowed by it3. Why one partner almost always begins grieving a relationship long before the other even knows it is ending4. What it actually means that "grief is love with nowhere to go"5. How unprocessed grief from a past relationship gets silently projected onto the next person who loves you6. Why American culture is so ill-equipped to support grief, and what other traditions do instead7. How to hold space for a grieving partner without trying to fix or rush their process8. The difference between avoiding grief and becoming consumed by it, and how to walk the middle path9. How to grieve the life you never lived, including the partner or children you never had10. Why grieving your ex inside a new relationship may actually be a sign you are finally healing11. What anger and rage have to do with grief, and when they help versus when they keep you entangled12. How to keep your heart open to love again after bitterness and heartbreak have tried to close it13. The one practice Morwenna returns to again and again when grief feels too vast to hold aloneWith Love and Safety,Chad & April ❤️What we discuss:00:00:31 - April introduces Morwenna and the reason grief became the topic for this episode00:01:34 - Morwenna introduces herself: guide of consciousness, ceremonialist, and how grief first found her at 2300:03:51 - Why grief in romantic relationships and the loss of a dream is so hard for the human experience00:05:31 - "Grief is love with nowhere to go": April shares her first real encounter with grief through divorce00:06:40 - The Serenity Prayer and the power of accepting what we cannot change in grief00:07:26 - Chad: how his father's suicide shaped every aspect of his life and still surfaces in unexpected ways00:08:33 - How people avoid grief out of fear they will never come out of it00:09:20 - Why grief can feel so out of control, and the human instinct to negotiate with or escape the feeling00:10:17 - The two extremes: avoidance versus being consumed, and how to create space for grief as it is00:12:33 - Grief as a teacher: how loss reveals what we did not value when we had it00:13:16 - Morwenna: actively grieving the time lost with her children as a single working mother00:13:56 - April: grieving her marriage while still inside it, and what her sister helped her see00:14:57 - Chad: being the partner who did not know the relationship was ending, and the grief gap that creates00:16:11 - Why it is nearly impossible to compare how two people grieve the same loss00:17:12 - April: crying for hours while putting on a mask before Chad came home, preparing herself for what she knew was coming00:19:19 - How to hold space for a grieving partner: Morwenna's guidance for couples00:21:51 - The Serenity Prayer again: sitting with powerlessness when your partner is in grief and you cannot fix it00:23:28 - Grief, powerlessness, and the collective: feeling overwhelmed by what is happening in the world right now00:24:07 - How to reclaim a sense of power inside grief: energy, thought, creative action, and nature00:26:47 - Grieving the life you never lived: not finding a partner, not having children, the loss of a dream that never arrived00:29:23 - Waiting for the "then" moment of happiness, and why choosing it now is the real work00:32:15 - Chad: a decade of being single after divorce, the grief of the life not lived, and the shame that comes with it00:33:54 - Morwenna: the story of the Colombian elder whose wife left him, and what he did with that grief00:36:41 - Why the United States has such an unhealthy relationship with death and grief, and how other cultures hold it differently00:37:56 - The Celtic tradition of singing someone to the other side, and grief as a celebration in other realms00:40:03 - How unprocessed grief stores in the body and what that can look like over time00:41:44 - Why we give even less honor to the grief of a relationship ending than to death, and the cultural scorn that comes with it00:43:45 - Why we need to honor a relationship's loss fully before we can truly move into something new00:45:21 - Grieving your ex inside a new relationship: why it can feel threatening to a partner and what it actually means00:47:52 - April's moment in Hawaii: crying over her ex-husband while Chad held her, and his response that changed everything00:51:20 - Chad: why someone who shows no grief about their ex might actually be a more complicated sign than someone who does00:53:13 - Morwenna: anger and rage as a necessary part of grief, and when putting energy into that emotion keeps you entangled00:55:23 - April: how texting angry responses during the divorce kept fueling the cycle, and learning to take the higher road00:56:35 - The guilt and shame of the partner who had to initiate the ending, and how that can show up as self-abandonment00:57:46 - Stages of grief carried into the next relationship: April's ex-husband and 15 years of unprocessed wounds finally surfacing01:00:20 - How to keep your heart open to love again: Morwenna on honoring bitterness without attaching stories to it01:05:57 - Closing wisdom: going to nature, sitting with your back against a tree, and remembering that you areSupport the show🔔 Subscribe for more great content and share this with someone who needs to hear it. Ready to get to work on yourself and your own relationship?❤️ Work With ChadInstagram |  @chadonlove❤️  Work with AprilInstagram |  @aprilbenincosa  Follow or Contact Safe to Love:Email | [email protected] |   safetolove.org YouTube |   @SafetoLoveShow Facebook |  Safe-to-Love Instagram |  @safetoloveshow TikTok | @safetoloveshow