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If you want to move through grief—releasing pain rather than suppressing or endlessly recycling it—you need to experience compassion.
This isn’t just my personal opinion; it’s been my lived experience. And while it’s not yet widely understood, neuroscientists, psychologists, and doctors are beginning to recognize that without the love, compassion, and support we need, grief can negatively impact our heart, brain, and body. Reference: Compassion Heals
Let me say it again:
If you want to heal, you need to experience compassion.
I experience compassion as one of the most transcendent experiences a human can have. When we really allow ourselves to embrace and experience another’s pain and suffering we allow a spring boarding of sorts into our heart: into our unconditionally loving essence and nature. Our heart kind of explodes in loving support, a reaching out, a kindness that is healing and honoring.
In my experience, compassion expands from the heart like a gentle warmth. It is sparked by the suffering of others, yet it activates our greatest gift—our capacity for unconditional love.
Yes, we feel the weight of humanity—the sadness, the loss, the disappointments—but instead of closing, our hearts awaken. Compassion is that sacred force within us that responds to suffering not with judgment, but with the wish for healing and well-being for all beings.
Compassion softens the muscles around our eyes. It gently turns our mouth up into a kind, subtle smile.
Compassion is soft. It is warmth, understanding, and kindness offered gently, without imposition or attachment.
Compassion is embodied, shared suffering. It asks us to feel our own pain authentically while recognizing that we all experience pain, creating a deep connection between us.
Compassion acknowledges the innocence of all beings. Fueled by unconditional love, it dissolves blame and judgment, inviting healing and understanding.
Compassion is not about fixing or rescuing another from their pain—it’s about being fully present with our own and others’ pain, in complete acceptance, love and support.
Compassion emerges when we stop running from discomfort and open our hearts to life’s rawness. It is the courage to stay, to feel, and to love without conditions.
Through my experience working with hundreds of clients, I’ve seen how hard it can be to find our own love and courage within our own Heart, when we’re experiencing so much pain.
For some, pain has only ever led to more pain, and so finding or feeling love within our own Heart in these moments can seem impossible.
If that’s true for you, it’s likely that you didn’t receive enough compassionate love and support growing up. This doesn’t mean your parents or caregivers didn’t love you—they absolutely did their best. But they may not have been able to truly support you in feeling your pain because they struggled to face their own.
Compassionate love says: You can feel and express whatever you need with me. I love and care for you no matter what.
But most of us weren’t raised with this kind of love. Instead, we were taught:
It’s not your fault that no one protected your heart in a way that allowed you to fully feel your pain—all the way through to the love and sweetness that lies at its core. And it’s not your parents’ fault either. They weren’t shown how to do this for you.
But would you be open to the possibility that now is your time?
I believe you wouldn’t be reading this if you weren’t ready for a new experience—if you weren’t ready to allow real love and support into your life.
And as you read this book, I encourage you to be open to the love and support that Ellie and I are sending to you. Though Ellie is no longer here in her physical body, I feel her love, energy, and presence with me every day. And though I’m not physically next to you as you read these words, please know that my heart is with you. I truly hope you can feel the love I’m sending to you now—and I know Ellie and Fenix are too.
I also can’t encourage you enough to find a support group—a space for real connection with safe, loving people. It can be over Zoom, but it needs to be real-time, face-to-face connection. Texting and Instagram comments won’t create the deep support we all need.
If I have a free online group available, please join. Let yourself be held in the love and support you deserve.
Over time, with enough compassionate love and support, I know your heart will grow and recognize that it holds the way forward for you.
And more importantly, instead of pain only leading to more pain, you will come to see that your pain has led you to greater love and deeper connection.
If I hadn’t found my greatest love and gifts, at the heart of my most painful experiences of being abused and abandoned by others, I couldn’t share this so boldly and so completely.
I can’t do this work for you, but I can let you know that greater Love and unique Gifts will be found at the heart of your grief and pain.
Hang in there. We believe in you. And we love you.
I believe self-compassion is the key to transforming grief, pain, and loss into healing, growth, and even greater love. It's not just for grieving—it’s necessary for any kind of meaningful change in life.
Until recently we didn’t believe that the brain could be changed after adulthood, let alone be so dynamically healed and rewired. And from my own experience, the experience of hundreds of my clients, and from recent research: Self-Compassion is the missing link for humanity. Reference: Compassion Heals
Most of us are unconsciously addicted to self-criticism. We think being hard on ourselves will help us improve, but in reality, it holds us back. I’ve seen this pattern in myself and in hundreds of clients.
When you develop self-compassion, you’re not just healing your grief—you’re transforming your entire life.
Consider your best friend shares with you that they just lost their job or business, and that they feel lost, confused and embarrassed, maybe even ashamed. How do you feel towards them? Do you feel softness, and kindness and warmth towards them? Or do you feel critical and judgmental of them? My guess, is that you would feel profound kindness and support. Yes?
Ok now put yourself in your friend’s shoes. Really imagine it. Imagine you’ve just lost your job or business. Let yourself be aware that you might feel some loss, confusion, even shame?
How do you feel towards yourself? Most people answer that they feel critical, hard, even harsh towards themselves. They experience an energy of pressure and punishment.
Developing self-compassion is no small feat, but might be the most truly life-changing skill you ever cultivate, and so the time and patience required is going to be worth it.
The reason I finally allowed myself to feel my emotions and grieve my childhood wounds was because my struggle with bulimia had become unbearable. I was at a breaking point. Either I had to change, or I needed to check myself into rehab.
A friend told me about a Master’s program in Spiritual Psychology that had been life-changing for her. I enrolled, and within months, I realized I had been spiritually bypassing my emotions for years. I wasn’t healing—I was avoiding.
Through this work of compassionate grieving, I learned something profound: grieving and healing happens in everyday upsets, not just in the past.
At the time, my biggest emotional challenge was my boss.
Every day, I felt unappreciated and dismissed. I poured myself into projects, only to receive little or no acknowledgment. To make things worse, I had a crush on him, which made the emotional rollercoaster even more painful.
I kept blaming him for my suffering. It was easy—most people agreed he was a bit of an ass. Even now, as good friends, he’d probably agree.
But here’s what I learned:
The issue wasn’t him. The issue was how I was relating to my pain.
I had to stop waiting for external validation and start offering myself the love and support I so desperately craved.
This was life-changing.
For years, I tried to escape my feelings through meditation, journaling, or working out, but nothing truly shifted. It wasn’t until I sat with my pain, let myself fully feel it, and responded to myself with deep compassion that I started to heal.
And then something remarkable happened.
As I allowed myself to feel unlovable, unimportant, and unworthy, childhood memories resurfaced—memories of feeling the same way with my stepfather. I realized my reactions to my boss weren’t just about him; they were old wounds asking to be healed.
Instead of seeking validation from someone who couldn’t give it, I turned inward. I started writing to my inner child—Little Zoë—letting her express her pain and giving her the love she had always needed.
The transformation was undeniable.
Within six months, my boss’s actions no longer triggered me. He could still be an ass, but I didn’t take it personally. Instead of feeling unloved, I felt compassion—for both of us. And in the same time frame, I released bulimia forever.
This is the power of self-compassion.
When Ellie, my beloved dog, passed away, I was shattered. I canceled everything for a week.
Grief came in waves. One moment, I was drowning in sorrow, convinced I’d never feel joy again. The next, I felt an unexpected sense of peace, grateful that she was free from suffering.
For the first few days, I couldn’t receive love or support—not from myself or anyone else. I just needed to cry. Looking back, I see this as a necessary part of grieving: it’s okay to not be okay. If we don’t fully allow ourselves to feel loss, it lingers beneath the surface, stretching grief out longer than necessary.
At some point, though, grief shifts.
For me, that shift came on the fourth day. I picked up my healing journal and poured my pain onto the page and I called Ellie’s name I was ready to be loved and supported by her and by me. [I share intimately about this experience in 8 • Reconnecting Over the Rainbow]
Her presence was so real—just as if she were lying beside me, chewing her favorite toy.
And then, something even more profound happened.
As I continued journaling, I began to feel her responses—full of love, courage, and clarity. Over time, those moments of connection grew stronger, and the sorrow softened.
Just as surely as spring follows winter, I know that if you surrender to the process, you will feel your Rainbow One’s love again. And in that love, you will discover the gift of self-compassion. The timing is beyond our control, and it almost always takes longer than we want—but trust that healing will come.
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