When Kids Graduate and Bodies Change: Processing Grief and Finding Freedom [Podcast Transcript]

Title: When Kids Graduate and Bodies Change: Processing Grief and Finding Freedom 

Podcast Date: April 29, 2025

Listen Here: 

Description

Today, Heather vulnerably shares the grief she's experiencing over facing her son's graduation this month and how similar this kind of grief is to the grieving that we experience on our body image freedom journeys. Heather talks about how many women face the "Can I get a do over?" feelings at the end of eighteen years of parenting or when they reach mid-life or later. Looking at the five stages of grief, Heather explains how important it is to "feel to heal" and how grieving can help us process emotions in a healthy way so that we can truly find freedom.

Resources mentioned in today's episode:

The 40-Day Body Image Workbook

The 40-Day Journey

Christian Body Image Coaching Groups

Comparison-Free Life Book

Aging Gratefully

Connect with us at: https://www.improvebodyimage.com 

Drop Heather a message at: [email protected]

Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript is AI-generated and has not been edited for accuracy or clarity.

[00:00:02]:

Life audio. Hey there, friend. Heather Creekmore here. I'm so glad you're listening to the Compare To podcast today. This is the show for you if you struggle with the mirror or the scale or aging or postpartum or whatever your body issue is, you have come to the right place. And if you are brand new to the show, hey. Welcome. We're so glad you're here.

[00:00:26]:

Today, I wanna talk about grief. What a super fun topic, But it's May. Happy May. How did it become May already? We just finished a series on aging. And I wanted this episode to be part of that series, and yet it wasn't a perfect fit. But I wanna talk about grief and graduation because, you guys, I have a senior. I'm graduating my first child this year. Some of you are like, yeah.

[00:00:56]:

Been there. Done that. And some of you are like, oh, no. That's ahead for me. And some of you may be in the exact same spot I'm in preparing for graduation in a few weeks or a month or so, and there's grief involved. And there's a lot of similarities I found between the grief I feel as I think about launching a kid and the grief I felt around my body. So if you are a mama getting ready to send your 18 year old out into the world, or if you are just a woman on a body image journey, and you're like, why am I sad some days and mad some days and totally chill other days? Hey. You've come to the right place.

[00:01:39]:

I'm glad you're here. Let's get to today's show. Grief. What? Topic. Oh, friend. Like, I've wanted to sit and record this episode for a month now, but honestly, I was afraid I would be crying too much to make it through the episode. So finally, hopefully, perhaps, I've hit a day where I'm able to talk about this issue coherently without bawling. Because the truth is I'm sad.

[00:02:25]:

It hurts so much more than I thought it would to think about graduation. I mean, everything this year, if you're a mom of a senior, if you've gone through this, or if you're gonna go through this, here's your warning. Everything this year has this finality around it. You're finding pictures for the slideshow. I've gotta make this presentation board for this senior chapel. I've got to go to the, you know, senior night at the sports events, and everything is the last or the final. And so that drives some emotion for sure. But even without any of that, I'm finding myself looking back and questioning.

[00:03:23]:

Did I do okay? Did I do the right thing or things? Did we mess up? What could we have done better? What should I have done more of? And it's question after question after question. And my heart hurts a little bit because I can't go back. There are no do overs in parenting. You don't get to go back and do it again. Those eighteen years flew by. And I'm a little mad about it because I was a mom of four under four. And so the number of people that would stop me at the grocery store, at Costco, at Target and be like, oh, you've got your hands full. But it goes so fast.

[00:04:18]:

And at the time, I remember feeling like, please, I just wish things would go fast. Like, I wish today would go faster. I just cannot wait until 05:00 when my husband gets home. Like, help. This is too much. It's going so slow. And then all of a sudden, you find yourself a couple weeks away from graduation and realizing that that old adage, the days are long, but the years are short, was true. It was true.

[00:04:50]:

Now hear me. I am so excited for my son to go off to college next year. Praise God. He's gonna stay close about an hour and a half from home, and we are so excited for him. He's so ready for this next chapter. I am just I kinda wish I could go back to college. I loved college. So I'm I'm a little maybe envious.

[00:05:14]:

Like, oh, you get to go have this new fun adventure and meet all these friends and do all the college things, and, oh, it's gonna be so awesome. So I'm excited for his new chapter, and I'm sad for mine. Sad may not be the best word, but it's how I feel today. You know, because the truth is I know that this is part of life. I know God's plan doesn't stop when you launch children. I mean, my goodness. I've got another one to launch next year and then two more after that within the next three years. So I'm gonna go through this graduation thing four times in the next five years, the blessing of having kids close together, I suppose.

[00:05:59]:

So maybe by the fourth one, I'll be really good at it. Or maybe I'll be really falling apart because my baby will be leaving home. But either way, the grief is interesting to me because there's good and there's bad to it. Right? There's loss, but there's also celebration. And as I pull friends, I mean, this has become my question of the last few months. How are you feeling about graduation? How are you feeling about graduation? It's been interesting because some of the women I talk to are like, I can't think about it. I just am keeping busy. I'm just not gonna think about it.

[00:06:40]:

I'm just, like, not gonna worry about this until it actually happens. And then some women are more like me. Like, I'm preprocessing. I'm crying daily. Like, I just don't know if I can handle this because it feels like an overwhelming flood of emotions. And then I've met some that are in the middle, like, oh, it's fine. And I'm not sure how to be like that. But it feels to me a little bit like what happens on our body image journeys.

[00:07:11]:

There must be a point when you do recognize loss. And let me spell that out a little bit better. Right? Because it might not be that you've lost your ideal body. It might not be that kind of loss. You might still look the same way you did when you were 20. There might not be changes that have occurred for you physically yet where you feel that kind of loss. But I think the only way you get free in a body image freedom journey is to recognize that somewhere along the line, you made an image of yourself into an idol. You took the ideal you, and it could be more than physical.

[00:08:05]:

It might be personality too or like what you're like. I'm the on time girl with a great house and a great car and a great wardrobe. Like, it could be bigger than just my body looks like this. But in order to find freedom, you have to come to the point where you recognize, I've made this thing like the thing. And after you recognize that, right, if it's truly an idol in your life, which it is for so many of the women I work with, and it was for me, then you have to come to the place where you surrender that idol, where you come to the lord and you say, I'm so sorry, god. God. Please forgive me for making them an idol. Please forgive me for making that such an important part of my life, maybe even more important than you were in my life.

[00:08:50]:

Lord, forgive me for having that as an idol. And you recognize that and you repent and you are forgiven, praise Jesus, for his blood, death, resurrection, like, all the things. You're forgiven, my friend. You're forgiven. You don't have to live there anymore. You don't have to go back and remember all those days you spent serving that idol. You can move forward, but there's grief. And there's a couple different kinds of grief.

[00:09:19]:

Right? There's perhaps a grief of I spent so much time chasing that. And that's what I've heard from clients I've worked with. This is something that comes up all the time in the forty day journey that we do where we walk through my forty day body image workbook. It is such a powerful experience for women to come together in those group calls and just share honestly from their heart, and this comes up all the time. I'm so sad that I wasted ten, twenty, thirty, forty years chasing this idol only to end up here, not in a better place, not in a place where I'm happy with my body still even after chasing for forty, fifty years. But I'm in this place now where I'm broken because I recognize, oh, what a waste of time. Man, what other productive things could I have done for Jesus in all that time I was trying to fix my body? And there's grief involved. There's the same desire maybe that I have with parenting where it's like, oh, I wish I had a do over.

[00:10:25]:

I don't know if I did it right. Like, if I could just do it again, then maybe I would nail it this time. But we don't get any do overs. And so that's when we have to trust the Lord for his grace and redemption and mercy. I love the verse that God will restore the years the locust has eaten. Right? All those years, some wasted, but he'll restore them. He's gonna use your story for your good and for his glory, but there might be grief involved. We're gonna explore other ways there might be grief involved right after this quick break.

[00:11:06]:

So there may be grief involved once you realize, oh, my word, my body image, my body, my size, my look has been an idol for this long in my life. You might have grief around wasted time. You also might have grief around what's actually happened for you in your body during that time. Perhaps you had an eating disorder that maybe harmed your body physically. Right? There's a lot of physical repercussions of eating disorders. That's why, oh goodness, friend, I take them so seriously. I didn't used to. Honestly, when I just wanted to be skinny, it was like, whatevs.

[00:11:46]:

Like, oh, there's gonna be harm? That's okay as long as I'm skinny. But, friend, I take that so much more seriously now. Maybe that's a blessing of aging. But there may be ways in which you now too are on the other side of an eating disorder and thinking about all those years you spent maybe starving or maybe binging and purging, And maybe you're feeling grief around that, wondering if God can restore the years the locusts have eaten when you weren't eating. And he can, and he will, but there may be grief involved. And then the final thing I think we have to grieve is this reality of a lost dream. And there may be other dreams that you've had for your life that you've lost. Right? Maybe it was a dream of having a child or maybe a dream of having a certain job, maybe a dream of marriage, maybe a dream of a a good marriage and that marriage didn't last.

[00:12:53]:

Maybe the dream of a certain kind of husband and he didn't turn out to be that guy. Maybe your dreams for your children that haven't come true the way you hoped that they would come true. We all have these dreams, these desires that we hold very dear. They're very precious to us. And those of us with body image issues tend to have dreams about what it would be like if we were just a little bit more like our ideal. Right? That's that idol, That idol of ideal image. Try to say that three times fast. But the idol of ideal image is this figment of our imagination.

[00:13:35]:

Right? And scripture talks about casting down imaginations, but, you know, we'll go back to that later. But it's this imagination, this concept of who I should be. So the ideal Heather weighs this amount and looks like this and ages like this and dresses like this and carries herself like this and speaks like this and keeps her home like this and has her children like this and has her marriage like this. And she's this kind of wife, and this kind of mom, and this kind of employee, and this kind of podcaster. Right? And all of these dreams aren't bad. They really aren't. But yet, again, when they become so important to me, they can become an idol. My ideals become my idols.

[00:14:33]:

I talk about in my book, the comparison free life. And when that happens, I've got a spiritual problem. Right? Because then I'm chasing my idols. I'm chasing my ideals instead of chasing Jesus. And my hands aren't open fisted with what I want. My hands are very closed fisted. I've got a tight grip. Heather's body must look like this.

[00:14:55]:

Heather's home must look like this. Heather's family like, you get it. It's a tight grip, friends. It's control. We love control. Most of us with body image issues, we just do. And so there's gonna be grief involved as you get healthier, as you get further along in your body image journey. Your fist cannot be clenched so tightly anymore.

[00:15:20]:

You're gonna have to open your fingers, and you're gonna have to surrender it to Jesus and say, I am sucky at running my own life. I am not doing a good job. Chasing all these ideals is making me crazy. God, you're going to have to help me, please. I really do surrender all this time. And when you surrender it, there's gonna be a relief, and there's also gonna be grief because you're gonna feel like you lost something. You're gonna feel like, what do I chase now? Like, this feels strange. What do I think about if I don't think about my body all of the time? What do I do if my hobby isn't working out and meal planning? Like, how do I cope if things change for me physically? Friend, it's a big stuff and it's grief.

[00:16:20]:

And if you don't grieve it, or let me say it a different way, if you don't feel it, you can't heal it. So I encourage my clients to feel the grief. And honestly, that's what I'm trying to do with graduation. I'm trying to feel the grief. Now I will give you the full Heather pathologies here. I'm also, I think, in the back of my head thinking, maybe there's a way that I can cry enough now for the next couple of weeks that when I'm actually sitting in that graduation ceremony, I won't be bawling my eyes out because I really like to get a good picture, and I know it won't be a good picture if I look like I've been crying for an hour and a half. Oh, yes. Some body image habits die hard, but I also know I I have to process this.

[00:17:15]:

I have to sit in it. And so recognizing that feeling it is what will help us when we're going to be trying to healing it. I was trying to get that word thing to work out, and boy, I should not be a spoken word artist. But we gotta feel it to heal it, friend. And so let's talk, just as we close today, about what to expect with grief. And you can apply this to anything. Okay? You can apply this to your body image stuff. You can apply this to aging because there's a ton of grieving involved with aging.

[00:17:50]:

I mean, just recognizing when you look in the mirror, like, woah. Like, I just don't look like the same person I look like ten, twenty years ago. It's hard. And there's grief involved there. There's grief involved with loss of all kinds. Right? Loss of a marriage, loss of a family member, a loved one. Right? And even graduating a child. Did you know this is the biggest senior class? I was reading an article.

[00:18:18]:

This is the biggest senior class for high school seniors that there will be for a long, long time, like, the foreseeable future. So this is like the pinnacle. So I'm hoping that I'm touching several of you who have graduating seniors on this topic. But knowing what grief looks like, like how grief actually practically shows up in our lives, I think can really help us. Because a lot of times when we're grieving and we haven't acknowledged that we're grieving, we just feel like we're on the crazy train. Like, some days I'm happy, happy, some days I'm sad, some days I'm angry, some days I'm fine. What is going on? And to recognize, oh, no, this is all just part of grief, I think helps us feel more sane. So in my forty day body image workbook, I have a day called a closet full of grief.

[00:19:07]:

And the context for this day is really this reality that most of us have a closet full of clothes or at least some clothes hanging around that don't fit us anymore. Why do we keep them around? Well, maybe part of it is we're not ready to close that chapter on a life we used to have. So an example of this would be when I first, came home, when I stopped working altogether and was just gonna be with my kids and raise babies. I didn't need suits anymore, but I had a closet full of suits. And it took y'all, it's embarrassing. It probably took ten well, maybe not ten. It probably took six or seven years before I was ready to sell or give away all of my suits Because I hadn't fully processed, I hadn't fully grieved the reality that my single working girl twenties were well past. They were over.

[00:20:09]:

I was never gonna need one of those suits again. And that involves grief. And so if you're looking at a closet full of clothes that you wore in your thirties and now you're my age, 50, and you're like, oh, maybe I'll wear that again. I wish you go look at it a second time because I know I'm looking at my closet like, oh, that was probably more appropriate for a 30 year old than a 50 year old and having to get rid of some stuff. But anyway, let's get back to what are these stages of grief. So there's five stages of grief according to an author named Elizabeth, Keebler Ross. And she's kind of the, I don't know, the queen of all this. She wrote about it years ago.

[00:20:50]:

The thing to understand is that the stages are not linear. So it's not like you move from one to the next to the next to the next and, like, you graduate. Like, oh, yay. I'm fine now. Like, can I get the fast track on that? It's not like that. Instead, the stages of grief, you can, like, bounce in between two of them and then, like, skip to number four and then go back to number three and then be at five for a while and then something will happen. You've probably had this happen before. You'll hear a song on the radio or, I don't know, see, like, something that reminds you of what you've lost, and you might just melt down.

[00:21:27]:

You might just lose it. You might be like, I was in acceptance for weeks, and then all of a sudden, I'm back to feeling depressed again. So here are the five stages of grief according to Elizabeth Kubler Ross. They are denial, which, oh, friends, denial ain't just a river in Egypt. Right? Like, ah, in denial with body image issues, we're saying things like, I can still fix it. I know. I can still make it happen. I know.

[00:21:55]:

I can still get my dream body. Like, maybe I just didn't try hard enough last time. Maybe I just need to do better. Maybe I just need a new plan. Maybe the 800 plans I tried already weren't right, but there's probably one out there. Right? And this denial oh, friends. We love denial. Because in some weird way, denial gives us hope.

[00:22:16]:

Right? Like, okay. I can just pretend none of that thirty or forty years of dieting ever happened and just start again afresh, like, hoping that the definition of insanity is not true and I can try the same thing again and I'll get different results this time. Right? Oh, so releasing the dream. Man, surrendering that idol is so key here, but denial is gonna tempt you. And then the next one is anger. Right? And this is what we talked about just a little bit already. Like, some of you will feel anger that you wasted so much time. Or, oh, how about this one? My hand is raised so much money.

[00:22:58]:

Oh, so much money. Oh, it's embarrassing how much money. You know? And it's not like I'm shelling out hundreds at a time. Right? It's $20 here and $10 there and $15 here and oh, but it's painful. If I stopped and counted it all, it it would probably be shameful. And we get angry. We feel, oh, why was I conned into all of those schemes? Why did I spend all that money? Why did I spend all that time? Right? And we have to recognize when we're in anger that blaming, condemning, that's, like, never gonna free us. Right? But I do think it's okay to have sort of a holy, righteous anger where you're like, oh, I'm kinda mad at the enemy that he kept me distracted for that many years, that many decades.

[00:23:50]:

Man, I'm gonna just be mad today that I wasted all that time. Now, you know, scripture tells us be angry and do not sin. Right? And I think that righteous anger is within that category. Now being angry and, I don't know, blaming others or, not loving others well because you just have such an angry disposition, where you're like the attack dog. Anyone that posts anything on Facebook about losing weight, you're like, yeah. You know, I wouldn't necessarily recommend that. That might cross the line. But it's good if you're feeling a lot of angry feelings.

[00:24:27]:

It's good to understand, oh, that's just part of grief. Bargaining is a third one. And at this stage, this is where we're like, woulda, shoulda, coulda. Like, oh, what would it have been like if I hadn't gone on that diet, but had instead started lifting weights? Or what would it have been like if I had been eating keto my whole life? What would it have been like if I had never gone on a diet ever and, like, only had, like, just a natural relationship with food my whole life? What would it have been like if my mom never put me on the scale? Bargaining is us trying to go back to our past and say, maybe if I would've oh, maybe then things would be I would be diff like, and, friend, theologically, like, we have to remember that God is sovereign, and we did make choices. And and hear me, friend. If you feel shame around your choices, there's no need to feel that shame. God has forgiven you of anything that was actually sin. And some stuff's not sin.

[00:25:32]:

It's just, like, mistakes. Like, it just wasn't wise, which isn't sin. It's just maybe potentially foolishness, but that's not the same as sin. And if there are areas in your past that you feel like, oh, that was just foolish. Why did I do that? Like, know that most of us actually, all of us, we can only operate from what we know at the time. Right? And so we do, like, age into wisdom in some respects, and we just do the best we can with the information we have. Right? And so maybe a silly example of this is me not eating any, fat in '19, like, '92 to '95 because fat was considered bad for you. And so were there long term consequences of that? I don't really know.

[00:26:24]:

But it is interesting to think about this reality that our brains need fat. Like, now you don't have to convince anyone to get on board, but, you know, eating avocados is good and getting, you know, fat from good sources is really healthy for you. And yet, years and years of my life, actually, when I was using my brain a lot in college, were not, included inclusive of any kind of dietary fats. And so if I messed myself up then, I just worked the best I could with what I knew at the time. I can't spend too much time obsessing over what happened there. I have to just trust God again that he's gonna redeem the years the locusts have eaten and move forward. The fourth stage is depression, and many women who struggle with body image issues wrestle depression and anxiety. And a lot of times, we think that depression and anxiety is about how our bodies look or about, like, being ashamed to be with other people or being ashamed to have people see us or we feel like we failed because our bodies don't look the way we hoped they would look.

[00:27:30]:

But I want you really to reconnect this depression concept back to that ideals idolatry concept because I think that's really where the depression anxiety comes from. That's what's driving the depression and anxiety. It's this feeling that I should have done better. It's this feeling of loss. It's this feeling of I wish things were different. Right? And and then woven in there is also fear. Right? Like, I'm afraid. Like, what have I done? Like, I'm really sad because what if I've done something bad and it's gonna make things bad? Like, I'm gonna hurt myself, like, I've hurt my health or, you know, any number of things.

[00:28:11]:

Right? And it can just make us feel sad. It can make us feel disappointed. And so while you're in the depression stage of grief, I want you to embrace this concept. And Mary Demuth and I talked about it a couple weeks ago on the show, but it's this concept of lament. Right? That's what we saw David do through the Psalms. He lamented. He cried out and said, God, help me. Like, this hurts.

[00:28:38]:

This stinks. Oh, I don't like this at all. I feel like I'm gonna die. Help me. Help me, God. And he just wrote it all out, laid it all out. Now an important thing to recognize, and I talk about this in my comparison free life book, There's a difference between lament and complaining. And I think it's very important to recognize the difference.

[00:28:59]:

And the difference is God's sovereignty. When we lament, we're saying, God, I know you are in control, but this hurts me a lot, and I'm not sure I like it. When we complain, we're saying, god, you cheated me. Right? God, you're not being fair. God, I I just I don't like this, and I'm kinda mad at you that you haven't made it better. And so there's a slight difference, but god embraces. He welcomes our laments. Wouldn't say he loves our complaining.

[00:29:29]:

But when we recognize his sovereignty and go to him just to be honest and authentic, like, I don't think we have to hide our true feelings from God because he already knows. So friend, if you are feeling just really bumped about what your body looks like, where you're at with your body, with your body image, if you're just just bummed, depressed, discouraged, anxious, afraid, bring it to him. He can handle it. In fact, I have an exercise in the forty day body image workbook where you write your laments to God. And I would just highly encourage you to do that. Take a minute and understand that he loves you so much that he invites you to do that. It's okay. And then this final stage of grief is acceptance.

[00:30:19]:

And acceptance doesn't mean that you never miss what it is you're grieving. Right? Sometimes you're gonna miss this is gonna sound strange to say, you're gonna miss your eating disorder. You're gonna miss those days when all you did was work out and try to starve yourself, even though your sane brain knows that was not good for you, that was not healthy, and you were not happy then, you are going to be like, I kinda miss that. Oh, I wonder what it would be like to go back to that. Right? So acceptance doesn't mean you won't have those days. Acceptance instead means that you are fully aware that you have come to a better place, that you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that chasing those idols was not good for you. It was destructive for your body, for your mind, for your spiritual walk most of all, and you don't really wanna do that anymore. And so you're trying to make peace with your body.

[00:31:22]:

You're like, okay. I guess this is it. This is what I look like. And, you know, and I think there's a way to try to pursue health and pursue, you know, eating well and pursue feeling good in your body without making it an idol, without making it, I've gotta get to this ideal, I've gotta change this, this is my focus, this is my dream. Like, there's a way to do that that's healthy. But for a lot of us that have body image issues or eating disorder history, it's gonna take some time before you're able to even consider a, shall we call it, health goal. Because it is gonna be so easy for that health goal to just sneak right back in and become an idol. So just be aware of that.

[00:32:07]:

But acceptance isn't resignation. It's not giving up, which is what a lot of us type a people with body image issues think it is. Acceptance is making peace and saying, okay. God, I am not in control. You are. It's learning to live more fully in your body, recognizing that you are more than a body and you were made to be more than a body. Like, God has something for you to do in this body that you have. It's practicing body kindness.

[00:32:42]:

It's saying, thank you, Lord, that you put me on earth and you gave me this body to do life in. Now show me what you have for me. And those are the five stages of grief. And friends, I wanna invite you to not grieve alone because there's a lot of people in your life that are not gonna understand your grief. I mean, I feel bad. I talk to friends with younger kids, and I tell them I'm just really sad. Oh, this is really big having one graduate. And they're like, I'm sorry.

[00:33:18]:

They have no clue. They can't feel it. They have no idea. And that's okay. I'm not mad at them for that. But if you're grieving body image issues, if you're grieving body change, if you're grieving aging, friend, don't try to do it alone because there are like, your husband's gonna be like, okay. I don't know what you're talking about. I mean, there's probably not a lot of people in your life that are gonna get it.

[00:33:45]:

But there are women in our community who will get it. We are willing to walk with you, to encourage you that it's okay if you're sad, and it's gonna be okay. You're gonna you're not gonna stay sad forever. You're gonna come out to the other side and things are gonna be brighter. But it's a season. Just like getting ready to graduate, a kid is a season. Your body grief is a season too. So, friend, let us help you.

[00:34:15]:

If you're in that season, hey. Reach out. Heather at compare do dot me, we've got coaching groups starting this week. It is not too late for you to get in on a coaching group. The next forty day journey will start mid June. Don't try to do this alone. We're here for you, and we want you to be able to grieve well so that you can find body image freedom. Hey.

[00:34:38]:

Thanks so much for listening today. And if you're in my boat, if you've got one graduating, reach out. Heather compared to dot me. Hey. Let me know that I'm not the only one who's grieving in this season. And, hey, I am so glad you were here today. I hope something helps you stop comparing and start living. And if you haven't left a review of the Compare To podcast yet, now is the time.

[00:35:00]:

Friend, would you just pause a second and leave us a five star review on Spotify or Apple, wherever you get your shows? That would bless and encourage us so, so much. Thanks again for listening. Bye bye. The COMPARITY podcast is probably part of the Life Audio Podcast Network. For more great Christian podcasts, go to lifeaudio.com.