Navigating Forward with Fear and Grief.

Permission, grace and encouragement with some Practical Magic.

Hello, Reader, and a warm welcome to all you lovely people who recently joined! Thank you for spending some of your precious time and energy here.

I’m Victoria. You can read why I’m publishing Carer Mentor here: Who Started Carer Mentor and Why?

Confession: I’ve not been in an uplifting mood moving into this new year, 2025. December was a cauldron of anticipatory grief, chunky fear and some stress. For many reasons, I feel more over these months than at any other time of year.

A recap of December: The articles moved through recalibrating hope to try and get comfortable in the human-messy-ness days:

• December 04, 2024 Creating a 'ComfortZone' and rekindling inspiration and hope. December: curiosity, connection and compassion.

• The ComfortZone

  “In December, I want to try to focus on hope rather than sadness—no toxic positivity, no silver linings, no denial of the yuck. podcasts, music and other well-chosen stimuli. Acknowledging the needling angst and uncertainty, I choose to rekindle inspiration and connect with compassion curiously.”

• The practical prompts: Inspiration 'Ten Annual Review Questions.' to give you pause.

• December 13, 2024: This Caregiver's 'Lens of Hope' No toxic positivity. It's a hope built on real life, not wishful thinking.

• December 31, 2024: 'Another Year? Not yet, thanks.' Caregivers, those grieving or anyone not quite 'there yet'. I see you.

This was at the heart of the New Year’s Eve article:

I remember what the ‘before caregiving’ me used to do—soak up books, ideas, and concepts, eager to improve myself, help my teams and kickstart a new year of …NEWness, excitement, magic, and possibilities.

There is still magic—I feel it. It’s just not in the NEWness; defining stretch goals or productivity targets. It’s more in the ‘human-messy-ness.’

A few minutes after publishing this article,

I had the call we were expecting from our close friend’s family to say our friend had just died.

A beautiful soul who’d been integral to my life for decades.

A few days away from the anniversary of my father’s death.

💔

I’d just said I could be okay with staying in a mess. Now, with this grief, could I walk my talk?

…and then the next day, New Year’s Day, The Isolation Journal’s seven-day journal challenge started: A New Year's Journaling Challenge Day One: Belief in Magic at The Isolation Journals (TIJ) by Suleika Jaouad. Thanks to

Suleika Jaouad

Holly Huitt

and

Carmen Radley

Sometimes, it’s best not to question but to openly embrace and be thankful for the opportunities as they gracefully appear. ¹

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My January 7th (TIJ) Journal notes:

At the start [of the challenge], I'd wanted to find ways to recognise and see more magic and light whilst carrying fear and recent grief. As if there was a technique or way to lift a veil or reclaim childlike wonder to see more magic outside of myself.

The shift came from the inner sanctuary exercise. Not how to find magic outside but the alchemy of what I already have INSIDE - cultivating my indigo mysterious sanctuary to cradle the fear, with grace, outside of time and space (thanks Cherie)

Because this, in turn, helps me be more OPEN to the potential of magic OUTSIDE...even if there's more fear, grief and sadness to come.

I could just say, 'I need to journal more', but I can over-intellectualise things..so bypassing words with more sketches/music/colour...nesting in my sanctuary is perhaps the most fitting next step, magic now.

Prompts to help remind me of the Journal Challenge.

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Navigating Forward With Fear

It’s not only The Isolation Journal’s Challenge that encourages² my path forward.

Since I started writing the New Year’s Eve article in December, there have been sparks of inspiration, some from personal practices I’ve built over the years, others from new connections and discoveries.

I’ll share these over the following weeks in this series: Navigating Forward with Fear and Grief. Annual/Indigo Sparks of Inspiration³

For example, I first listened to this podcast in 2020 after my Dad passed: OnBeing with Krista Tippett Dr Brené Brown: Strong Back, Soft Front, Wild Heart⁴ (2 January 2020) (52 minutes).

I’m glad I saved it to listen to it again before the New Year.

Two quotes from Brené, in this podcast:

(Timestamp 22.07) If you hold fear in front of you, it doesn't dictate your behaviour. But I think because we've lost our capacity for pain and discomfort, we have transformed that pain into hatred and blame. It's like it's so much easier for people to cause pain than it is for them to feel their own pain, right?

Strong back, Soft Front, Wild Heart - Brené Brown

(TimeStamp 27.02) I first heard that the saying strong backs soft front from Joan Halifax, who's a Buddhist teacher, and it spoke to me at the time, and I thought, I don't know what that is, but it sounds, of course, paradoxical, and I don't like it because it sounds hard. I'd rather have a strong front and a strong back and a strong everything. Our deepest human need is to be seen by other people, to really be seen and known by someone else. And if we're so armoured up, and we walk through the world with an armoured front, we can't be seen.

In this awkward space, I choose not to cliché my way out, use toxic positivity or offer smooth plans and ideas.

Music, art and meditation help my heart. Cultivating that inner creative sanctuary gives me my own soft place to land, and helps me Brave the Wilderness.

The nerdy researcher in me is eager to continue exploring recent sparks of inspiration.

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Walking alongside each other in Grief

For anyone who is suffering a recent loss. My heartfelt condolences. I’m walking alongside you. You’re not alone.

Personal Reflection: 'Grief, Love persevering'

As my friend

Anne

says:

‘It can feel like grief is a one-person experience. But Victoria is right. You are NOT alone. Connection during grief is priceless.’

This is why I curated this Bereavement/Grief Anthology.

Bereavement & Grief Anthology

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A Last Word. What’s Your Source of Encouragement?

In the unpredictable world of caregiving or for anyone receiving care, we all know there are limitations to our energy, and high demands on our time. I see you

Have you found an article, podcast or song / piece of music that’s offering comfort, encouraging you forward?

Warm wishes to you.

Please press your heart ‘❤️’ to guide others here

1. You’re never really alone if you know where you can connect with other empathetic souls. This is why I curated the iCARE Stack and part of the Carer Mentor’s mission.

2. Encourage: walking forward with fear. The word encourage comes from the Old French word encoragier, which means "make strong, hearten," and ‘Coeur’ heart.

3. Renamed to help defang the fear. Indigo as an emblem of my inner peaceful sanctuary. Not blue because that feels cold or sad.

4. Dr Brené Brown ‘Braving the Wilderness’