117: Stop Waiting For Time to Change Everything

"Time heals all wounds" is the biggest lie we've been told about grief.  I used to believe this lie, myself.  After any sort of big emotion, I thought time would eventually clear it away.  

This is a super-short solo episode where I break down why this common, widely-held belief is actually a myth, and what you can do about it.  

This is the second episode in my summer series on how to answer all the insensitive questions and remarks we get as childless women.  Tune in each week all summer long if you want to have more authentic, less-awkward conversations. 

If you are someone who wants to stop waiting around for time to heal your wounds and take action instead, so you can answer all the questions with grace, send me a DM on Instagram with the word, "grace". 

Where to find Sheri:
Instagram: @sherijohnsoncoaching
Website: sherijohnson.ca

If you are a childless woman looking to up-level her life in a major way, join the Love Your Beautiful, Unconventional Life Retreat, coming up at the end of February 2025.  Book a Retreat Call with Sheri here if you have questions or want to know more!

Where to find Sheri:
Instagram: @sherijohnsoncoaching
Website: sherijohnson.ca

Transcript

Time does not heal all wounds. I understand why you think it does. I certainly did. I don't know even I don't even know where that saying comes from, but now I know that it's a lie. Waiting for time to heal your wounds is a bit like saying that time will fix a leaky faucet.

When you first notice the faucet leaking, it's loud, dripping. You hear it, you first notice it, but then all the other noises in house sort of start to drown it out during the day and forget about it. During the day and forget about it. But whenever things are quiet in the house, it gets loud again.

And this is how pain works. The busyness of the day drowns it out for a bit, but then when it's quiet, or maybe just someone draws your attention to it, AKA a trigger, suddenly it's there again. And this is why you need to stop waiting for grief or anger or resentment or whatever it is that you're feeling as a childless woman to go away. In this episode, I'm going to share why this is one of the first steps to actually letting all the questions about having kids and sensitive remarks and the advice letting all that bounce off of you. So stay tuned if you want to know more about that.

Welcome back. You're listening to the awakening with podcast and Sheri Johnson, your host, Siri Johnson, your host. This is the next episode in a series that I'm doing about having authentic conversations and answering questions that you don't really like as a childless woman with grace.

So there's this myth out there that any sort of grief or triggers that you're feeling are just going to go away with time, or maybe the myth is that you'll grow around your grief. I've seen that out there as well. Or maybe you're feeling like this will just always be there. There's always gonna be a little bit of that grief there. And I totally understand why you feel this way. I felt this way as well.

Now I know differently, but you might feel this way because I know you've grown up with this belief that time heals all wounds. Can you ever...Can you even remember where, when you first heard that, time heals all wounds. I can't I don't like I've been around forever. I know that I've heard it forever, but I don't actually remember the first time I heard it was probably as a kid. Maybe I heard some adults saying it to each other.

So that might be one, one thing you've grown up with this belief, but maybe you're in your 40s, or even 50s or 60s, and because the triggers haven't yet gone away, you've started to think they're just always going to be there. Perhaps by the time I hit my 70s and 80s, I'll be so far away from from it that I just won't feel it anymore. What I'm here to tell you is that neither of those is actually true. This is what I've learned. 

What if it's just a matter of having the right set of tools to get the leaky faucet fixed, and it's just that nobody's taught you how to fix the faucet, and maybe you just haven't had the motivation to do so that's that's a possibility too, because maybe you're like me, and you also just hope that the leaky faucet will fix itself.

That has been me, and it's, spoiler alert, it does not tire. I've tried it, the leaky faucet actually gets worse. The drips start coming faster and louder and gets bigger. And maybe that's actually also what happens to the triggers. They also start bugging you more.

So here's another example. We also wait for time to bring us our happy, authentic, purposeful use the words you prefer that life, and you might be someone who believes that once the triggers go away, that meaning and happiness and purpose, whatever it is that you want in life, are just going to magically show up. But then time doesn't take all those emotions away, and time doesn't cause your best life to appear.

All of it requires you to change. It requires you to take some kind of action, to do something different, and again, you might just need the right set of tools in order to do that, or maybe a new together, and I can show you how to do that too. I'm thinking that if you're listening to this, you are probably looking for ways to feel better. You maybe want to be able to respond to that dreaded question, "Do you have kids?" with ease, with more grace and less awkwardness. And maybe you're tired of retreating it to yourself when someone says, oh, well, you can borrow my kids. Anytime anybody ever say, that to you? they definitely have to me.

You want to be able to change the subject maybe easily when somebody is talking incessantly about their kids or their grandkids a little bit too much. And so you're here because maybe you already have this inkling that Time doesn't heal all wounds, that maybe there is something you can do about it, and that really is just that's the first tiny, micro mindset shift that I wanted you to get from today, that maybe there's something I can do.

And if that is you, thank you, welcome. You're in the right place. This is just one little piece of one pillar of the purpose beyond parenthood, framework I teach that I use in all my one on ones in my group program, and it can actually change your entire outlook on everything.

So if you want that, find me on Instagram. I'm at @sherijohnsoncoaching. I'll link that up in the show notes, and just send me DM with the word "grace". 
If you are someone who wants to live with grace, who wants to respond to all the questions, the advice, the remarks with grace, just send me that word, DM. It to me. 

This is a super short episode. It's the second well in my summer series on how to answer the questions, the incentive, remarks, the things, all the things, if you want to answer those authentically and with grace. keep on listening. I'll be back next week. Bye now.