A Compassionate Inquiry® Practitioner & Facilitator, Pam is also an EFT Practitioner and Registered Massage Therapist trained as a Death Doula. Her empathic approach supports her clients on their paths to well-being and peaceful, fulfilling lives.
Manisha is a dedicated counsellor specializing in trauma therapy and functional medicine, a Compassionate Inquiry® Practitioner, and a Biology of Trauma Facilitator. Her comprehensive training supports her clients’ diverse mental health concerns. In this excerpt, our guests’ personal stories illustrate how grief bypasses our thinking minds and speaks through our emotions and our bodies. Listen to the full conversation on The Gifts of Trauma Podcast.
Dany Goldraij
PAM:
During my first month of Compassionate Inquiry® (CI) training, my father passed away. I was with him with my mom and the palliative nurse. When he passed, I started to cry, and my body took me out of the room. My mom followed me out. She lifted her glasses, wiped her tears, and said, “Okay, settle down. That’s not gonna help anyone.” It was said with such love and knowing because that’s what she had to do to get through.
At that moment, after just a couple of weeks of CI training, it hit me. “Holy shit, this is trauma!” After witnessing my mom’s response, I realized I had been trained to stifle because… that’s how you get through.
Emotionally, when you’re grieving, you can experience anything from rage that “comes out of nowhere.” Like if you burn the toast and explode with anger or start crying watching a TV commercial.
After my dad passed, I was driving home alone, and I started singing along with the radio, laughing, and having a joyful moment. And then I remembered, and self-judgment came in. “Oh my God, what’s wrong with me? I shouldn’t be happy; I should be sad.” Now I know that I was experiencing immense relief that after suffering for so long, he was finally free.
Grief also shows up physically. My back issues started when my dad got sick; it was anticipatory grief. The anniversary of my mom’s death just passed, and we’re coming up on the anniversary of my dad’s death. It all tracks. I know my current back issues are grief—not for my parents, but for my kids. One’s already in college; the other leaves this fall. That’s a level of grief I didn’t even know existed. I’m trying to honor it, but my old coping mechanisms are creeping in—the old training of stifling and muscling through. And my body’s saying, “No!”
We can try to think our way out of grief. That’s when judgments come in. “I should be in a different place. I should be healed by now.” Then we get walloped with a physical issue, like my lower back pain or achy joints, or digestive or breathing issues. My mom, my sister, and I ended up with pneumonia three days after my dad died. There was a bug going around, but I generally don’t get affected—and grief is held in the lungs. Today, I recognize that as grief, not just a random infection.
My experience with anticipatory grief, another way of trying to use our minds to avoid physical grieving, started with my dad. I thought, ‘I’ll do my grieving now so I don’t have to do it afterwards—so that I can be of service to others. I’ve got young kids at home, I have a husband, I’ve got a life, I’ve got a job. I’m going to grieve now.’ That was the worst plan ever. It’s the same with my son in college and my daughter going to university. I told myself, “I won’t be sad in September because I’ve done my grieving; I’ve checked all the boxes. They’re capable, they’re smart. Check, check, check.” And…I had a CI session about it just this week because I’m so hard on myself for being sad about what I think I should be happy about.
MANISHA:
Yes, cognitively you can plan it out to prepare yourself and get it all just right. But when it does eventually happen, none of that planning works. The challenge then is just staying with what comes up. And that is so difficult. There is pain and there is peace as well… You’ve got to learn to hold space for both—for that duality. No matter what you do, you can never, ever prepare yourself for grief. It hits very differently in your body, in your heart.
Dr. Gabor says, “Whenever there is tension, it needs attention.” So what I’ve been bringing in regularly with my clients is—whenever they share a story, I invite them to go into their bodies and notice what’s happening. Adult clients in their 50s often bring up the 1983 [Sri Lanka] riots. “We were going to school, and there were people burning houses, and there were dead bodies around us, yet we had to keep going to school.”
We know that experiencing trauma can fragment our memories. Many of us, including me, don’t recall, so inviting people to allow the wisdom of their bodies to guide their healing has been extremely powerful.
I learned about this when I was training in the Biology of Trauma, learning what happens to us on a cellular level during trauma. At that time I was also in my first year of CI training. One day in a dyad, in true Compassionate Inquiry® style, the questions took me back 38 years to a vivid memory of a conversation with my sister the night before she died that I had completely forgotten. That experience opened something I didn’t know existed. I continued exploring in successive dyads, opening up layer by layer. The pain and tears weren’t coming from a place of being hurt but from a place of healing and self-discovery. I realized then that my body had to feel safe to start talking, and in those virtual dyads and triads and groups, it felt safe to just be me.
After a recent breathwork session, I woke up sobbing. In those tears was a felt sense of crying for the loss of my sister for the first time, plus a profound sense of release. I also felt forgiveness for my mom. After her death, I was angry with her, but my religion says, “Forgive.” I struggled with that, but in this moment, there was a felt sense of forgiveness that freed my body to do what needed to be done. That experience was so profound, it became a calling for me to create safe spaces to do the work, for myself and others.
We don’t need to carry grief alone. It takes so much from us…. So in my April 2026 retreat with Dr. Sat Dharam Kaur, I’ll be bringing in drumming, art, dancing, movement, yoga, mindfulness, and group circles, all to create safety so the body can let go of what has become so heavy, let go of what it doesn’t need to carry anymore. And within that safety, our bodies will heal our grief.
The Gifts of Trauma is a weekly podcast that features personal stories of trauma, transformation, healing, and the gifts revealed on the path to authenticity. Listen to the full conversation, and if you like it, please subscribe, rate, review, and share.
Editor’s Note: This post is comprised of edited excerpts drawn from The Gifts of Trauma podcast transcript. Selected passages have been carefully woven together to create a cohesive narrative that speaks in the guests’ voices and faithfully represents their perspectives. – Rosemary Davies-Janes
