S1E7: Debra

We Get It, Your Dad Died

In the final episode of Season One of We Get It Your Dad Died, host Margy Feldhuhn speaks with Debra Driscoll.

Debra Lynne Driscoll is a Grief Guide, Author, Healer, and Speaker. Through spiritual practice and creative process, Debra works with groups and individuals to ease the ‘ouch’ of loss and open to the heart and soul expansion possible when we surrender and journey with life, death, grief, and loss.

Debra first dealt with the grief after the man she loved took his life. Debra was only 20. Seven months later, Debra’s father unexpectedly died. She felt like she was swimming in grief, with massive waves hitting her. That’s when Debra began her journey of healing and grieving.

She realized she couldn’t continue to deny it, or force herself to be so busy that she doesn’t have the time to process it. Grief would come, seemingly out of nowhere, and strike Debra down again. Grief continues to get heavier the longer you go without processing it. Debra was on her journey of exploring spiritual practices and healing techniques so she could then process her grief.

One month before her son Sage’s 11th birthday, he passed away unexpectedly in his sleep. Debra was entirely devastated. She asked herself, “If I apply all these things that I have learned, will I be able to swim in these waves?” That is what helped Debra pick herself up and process the grief of losing her son.

Grief is not linear. Processing her grief was a series of surrenders for Debra. She continued returning to the promise she made to herself: “I will work with this, I will not deny this. I will continue to surrender to the question, what is here for me, what can I learn, what is possible within this?” That was a grounding place for Debra to return to when she was lost at sea under the waves of grief.

In Debra’s healing work, she uses the concept that grief has relationship to joy. If we minimize one feeling, like grief, we minimize them all, like joy. When grief comes to the heart, the heart breaks and that’s universal. Debra asks, how do we build the capacity of our heart? If we are seeking more joy, how can we build that?

Debra started thinking about building muscle. When we work out and strengthen our muscles, the muscles are sore the next day because our muscle fibers have been stretched and broken. The process of those fibers healing themselves is what strengthens our muscles. Debra applied this concept to our hearts. Grief comes and breaks our heart and the process of working with grief helps us to build those fibers back together and strengthens that heart.

You can connect with Debra at Debralynnedriscoll.com. At her website, you can purchase her memoir, or you can download a sample read.