Refurbishing Life After Loss with Gerontologist Holley Kelley

Refurbishing Life After Loss with Gerontologist Holley Kelley: Being in the amazing grace of life means that we will also experience loss. This show discusses this all-true reality of this part of our journey. We discuss how planning for our own future passing is so very important for inspiring your grand new beginning and a loving gift to those you love and the importance of living a regret-free life of appreciation. We also talk about the challenging stages of grief and that all loss are not people. And how animals grieve too. And that all losses are not human—we experience many kinds of losses in our lives. But what we do discover is that losses can serve as opportunities for growth if we give ourselves the chance to be a student of life, in all of life’s hard encounters. The psychological term for positive transformation following survival of a traumatic event is called post-traumatic growth. And this can be an opportunity to discover the most about ourselves, including new possibilities following suffering—and rediscovering ourselves and life again too. I call experiencing a personal metamorphous… because we are never the same. Because a loss is just that. We have endured incredible loss. We are forever different… thus I named this show “Refurbishing” life after loss, because the definition of refurbishing is “renovation.” We cannot be “restored” to who we were, we must “renovate,” and redecorate. And walking with extreme grief means sometimes we may feel the need to even resuscitate ourselves and eventually reconstruct our way to a life we really love again. And occasionally we need to give ourselves permissions to do so. There is life after loss. One day at a time, and through practical and positive processes, support, time, dedication, and beautiful honoring, cherishing, remembering and holding those we love close, including ourselves, everyone can find their way into loving and refurbishing life after loss.