In this episode, we welcome Teresea Archaga, a Certified Grief Counselor and support group practitioner with the American Academy of Grief Counseling, who has turned her mourning into a mission to help others. Teresea has experienced several significant losses in her life which led her on a journey of healing and self-discovery, and she has made it her mission to help others navigate their own grief journeys. In this conversation, Teresea shares her personal story of loss and grief, and she discusses how she has found purpose in serving others. She also offers practical advice for those who are grieving, and she encourages them to seek support from others. If you are interested in learning more about grief and how to cope with loss, then this is an episode you won’t want to miss. I am sharing my experience of loving the same man for 32 years, a mother to two adult children, a retired military officer, a breast cancer survivor, and my connections with others. Anyone experiencing suicidal thoughts should reach out to a suicide hotline or local emergency number in their country: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/suicide/suicide-prevention-hotlines-resources-worldwide. — Watch the episode here   Listen to the podcast here   Mourning To Meaning: Teresea Archaga On Healing, Loss, And Finding Purpose Introduction To Teresea Archaga Our guest is Miss Teresea Archaga. She is a Certified Grief Counselor and support group practitioner with the American Academy of Grief Counseling. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Human Development and a Master’s degree in Career Development. While her certifications and degrees are important for building knowledge and reinforcing her commitment to being a lifelong learner, nothing beats the lessons she’s learned and the self-awareness that she’s gained in her journey through grief and loss. She has experienced several significant losses that we are going to talk about in this episode in her life and healing from childhood trauma. Life as she knows it is forever changed. Without her loved ones, it was important for her to make meaning out of her loss and pain. She discovered her purpose and her purpose has been serving others.  We asked that at the end of her graduation program, “What would she do with her work?” and her answer was, “It remains to serve whoever needs her.” Teresea is going to open up and share with us about her personal loss, what she’s learned in her grief journey and how she is serving others. Let’s get into this conversation now.     We are welcoming Teresea to our community. Thank you for having me. You are welcome. Thanks for being here. I love having an opportunity to bring people to the community who want to serve, and the ability to serve comes from many different places. What is it that you do and how do you serve people?  I am a work in progress and I think that we all are in our grief. A lot of folks think that once that milestone hits, we’re done. What I’m finding in my experience after several consecutive losses, the work is never done and I find myself going back to other losses that I’ve experienced and saying, “I felt this before. What is it?” Now I’m able to put a label on it. I didn’t have a lot of support in my healing journey, which led me to where I am in finding my purpose. I want to use my experience, strength, and hope to help, encourage, inspire, and hopefully influence others to start expressing their grief more outwardly instead of swallowing it down and trying to ignore it.  Taking Action After Loss I became a Certified Grief Coach. I’ve always been a doer by nature. The talking is good but I want to also take action. It’s not enough to just say it. I need to take the steps to move forward. I think, in my case, I struggled with taking the first steps, and I don’t even know what that first step looks like. I think it’s just take a step, any step. It’s always in the right direction. That is a lot. Thank you for sharing that. Now I want to circle back to several of the different things that you mentioned. You talk about the idea of reaching a milestone, and it’s done. What does that milestone look like and what do you think people have a false conception about it?  Navigating The First Anniversaries After Loss My employer had three to five bereavement days and that’s just enough for you to make the funeral arrangements, make the phone calls, etcetera. The five days are over. I looked at it as my first milestone, getting through the first steps of it. What I discovered was, that’s not enough because then you because then you have the calm and then you have the storm. You might have that storm several times over. What do you do when you’re in the storm and you’re not knowing or anticipating that storm coming? Then you have the first holidays. Those are always a struggle. It’s mostly because you don’t know what that holiday or event looks like without that individual for the first time. They have the anniversaries of their deaths. Balancing Grief And Relationships How do you memorialize that? How do you honor them? If you’re struggling with relationships with those individuals, which I did in some cases, do you recognize or honor that memorial or that relationship? I think it was important that a lot of that processing was more for me than it was for the individuals I lost. They’re no longer here, but I needed them to make sense of it and to honor it in a way that felt comfortable to me. Thank you. I like that because you’re right. Three to five days? On day one, you’re probably disoriented, just in shock, and coming to terms with, “This is a thing.” If it’s happened on a weekend where you’re just floating through that and