From Grief to Grace—Processing Our Collective Grief

As we get closer to the end of an unprecedented year, I’m reflecting back on experiences, losses, lessons, emotions … and one that really stands out to me is grief. We’ve recently covered grief on the show, but I think it’s worth revisiting because this is a very deep and complex topic. It’s difficult to break it down into “quick and dirty” tips.

But luckily, I got the chance to speak to someone who is an expert on grief both through professional and personal experience, and who will be able to help us understand how grief works, and how there is love and beauty in it.

Dr. Patti Ashley is a best-selling author, international speaker, and psychotherapist with over 35 years of experience. She works with individuals and families to break through ingrained barriers to personal freedom and authentic growth, and to excavate the truth of self-love, belonging, and connection. She is the author of Letters to Freedom (2019) and Shame-Informed Therapy: Treatment Strategies to Overcome Core Shame and Reconstruct the Authentic (2020).

Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation.

Dr. Jade Wu: In your work, you refer to moving from grief to grace. What does this mean? What experiences of moving from grief to grace have you had?

Dr. Patti Ashley: My fiancé died of a sudden heart attack four years ago. And he had lost his wife a few years prior to him and I being in a relationship. He was working on something he called “from fear to love to grace.” And so I'm continuing the legacy of that in my work. When you love somebody so deeply and you lose them, it breaks your heart open to a higher love. And there's a state of grace, which is the state of knowing that it's bigger than myself, and yet I have to accept what is.

When you love somebody so deeply and you lose them, it breaks your heart open to a higher love.

And the reason I became a therapist is that I lost my father to a sudden heart attack when I was eleven. And then my partner died the same way. So that's why I wrote my memoir Letters to Freedom. It was so profound for me to think that my whole life I've been studying grief and helping people get through grief and how it's different as an adult from a child. And then having this experience as an adult, I really wanted to allow myself to experience what I was feeling. So I developed my work through the years to give people a place to talk about grief.

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