What is grief wellness? It’s a term we came up with when trying to define our lives.

When tragedy struck and reduced us from a family of five to a small family of two, we understandably had a difficult time adapting. We went through many trials and errors. Shell started working out and dieting to a point that was no longer healthy; Jay’s ambitions took over and pushed her to the extremes. Although we didn’t know at the time, we learned that’s how our grief was unhealthily manifesting itself into our lives. Grief is sneaky like that; it shows up in the ways you least expect.

We realized we needed to stop the madness, but how? Our grief certainly wasn’t going to go away, so we had to find a way of dealing with it that wouldn’t destroy us. After some bumps and bruises, we embraced wellness to release these unhealthy habits and start living our best lives.

What does that mean? Well, we do what makes us feel good and is healthy for our minds, bodies and souls.

Instead of dieting and living off tilapia and asparagus for a week (something Shell actually did once!) or living off heavy comfort foods (as Jay did), we choose what we eat according to how those foods make us feel. Most heavily processed foods make us feel sluggish and tired, and feeling bad physically translates to our grief and mental states as well.

If our bodies feel heavy and sluggish from eating heavily processed foods, our minds will follow suit and we may fall down a grief rabbit hole. However, if we eat healthier, lighter, nutrient dense foods like fruits and veggies, we physically feel good. Since we feel lighter and full of good energy after eating these foods, this translates to our mental health and makes our grief feel a little lighter.

It’s no cure for grief, but we learned that the weight of the foods we consume directly impacts the weight of our grief on our heads and hearts. It can’t prevent our grief from hurting because we always miss Art and Papa, but physically feeling good helps the bad days be a little less terrible and makes the good days even better.

We eat raw vegan in the summer and about 80% raw and 20% plant-based in the fall and winter. We enjoy being raw vegan, but sometimes it gets cold and we want some warm soup from our favorite vegan restaurant, and we don’t beat ourselves up over it. We love ourselves regardless of our choices and make most of our dietary choices because we love ourselves. We don’t eat oily or heavily processed foods because we know it’ll make us feel yucky, and grief already does that enough.

On our grief wellness journey, we have learned over the last few years how to love ourselves, which has led us to changing our lifestyles to be healthier.

We cultivated a healthy relationship of self-love and nourishment with food, and this along with physically feeling good helps our mental well-being. The vegan morals of helping animals and the environment also lifts our spirits and fills us with positive energy, because we are doing something beneficial to the earth every single day.

We are also yogis and learning more about yoga daily. We replaced our old obsessive, damaging workout routine with yoga to help us undo the damage and nourish our spirits through movement. We also meditate to clear our heads and make sense of our thoughts, which helps us cope with our grief and identify how griefy we feel that day. We learned to take mental health days when we need them. We practice positive self-talk and evaluate what works best for us. We learned to value our physical, mental and spiritual health; and our grief taught us to do that.

This is where the grief in grief wellness comes in. We never would have found our wellness path if not for our grief. Our grief journey taught us the importance of our mental health and the power our thoughts and foods hold.

To us, grief wellness means finding a balance of taking care of ourselves while grieving. We know this is difficult because we have lived through it. Our grief in the beginning was so heavy that we relied on what we call, “grief eating”; eating comfort foods to soothe our broken souls. Our food choices were poor choices to say the least.

Grief is tricky and can find ways to manifest in our lives without us realizing it can be unhealthy. The good news is that, by practicing wellness, we are able to recognize this and allowing ourselves the grace to accept, acknowledge and change the behavior without being hard on ourselves.

When we chose to change our journey to grief wellness, we envisioned healthier bodies, healthier minds and healthier souls. We knew grief would still walk with us, but we found that it was easier to walk with grief when we chose wellness.

Our wellness includes yoga, meditation, dancing, drinking water, eating raw fruits and veggies, and getting plenty of sleep. It also includes acknowledging our bad days, having mental health days, and openly talking to one another about our feelings. We practice gratitude daily and we share our memories of Art with each other.

Grief wellness doesn’t happen overnight. We are still walking our path and finding our way. Just know, if you’re looking for change, don’t be afraid. Think of one thing that you want to change and start there. Maybe you want to work on better rest. That’s a great place to start!

Make a list of things you want to change and start with one at a time. Pick one and work on it for 30 days, then add another thing. After the 30 days, the changes you made will become new healthy habits.

Most importantly, be patient and kind to yourself. You’re grieving and your life changed, but remember: you are always in control of how you want to live. It took us a while to fully understand that.

We promise you, once you invite in healthy change, the rest will follow. We are here to cheer you on and to remind you that you are not alone!

Grief wellness, we are glad we are making strides forward to a healthier lifestyle. We hope you join us.

Jay and Shell’s Tips

• Make a list of the things you want to change, and include anything from sleep to healthier food choices, or even just making more time to meditate and journal. Include big and small goals; the main point of this is just to have everything written out in one place.
• Pick something from your list and start there. Work on that one thing for 30 days. For example, if you want better sleep, spend 30 days working on that. Try different things and see what works! To keep our example of sleep, would you need to go to bed earlier? What ways could you discipline yourself to do that? This is the time to experiment!
• We highly recommend meditating and keeping a journal nearby! It’s just about taking a moment to quietly sit by yourself and calm your mind. You could play music, or even follow a guided meditation (we recommend Nora Day or Yoga with Adriene on YouTube). The point is to just take a moment of stillness and check in on how you’re doing today. Then, journal what you observed. Check out our grief journal here!
• Be kind and patient with yourself and your grief.
• Remember you’re not alone in your grief or wellness journey!

Aloha and gratitude,

Jay and Shell