EP 239: Navigating Loss, Grief, & Trauma with Guest Expert Rachel Schromen

Nov 2 2023 • 36 mins

Do you try to shut out grief or pack away trauma in order to function in your life and work?

We’re often told that there’s an “appropriate” time and place to express emotion, whether it be the loss of a loved one, a past trauma, or even just the emotional overload of a bad day.

While holding those feelings in might be the thing we’re told to do, it’s important to understand that there’s a reason why emotions exist.

Not only are emotions pathways for processing our life experiences, but they are also gateways for human connection.

Today on The Bridge to Fulfillment Ⓡ, Blake welcomes Rachel Schromen, an estate planning and elder law attorney and owner of Schromen Law, LLC. Since starting to practice law in 2013, Rachel has been named one of the Top 3 Best Rated Estate Law firms in St. Paul (2018 – 2023) and was voted Minnesota’s Best Estate Law Firm by readers of the Star Tribune in 2021, 2022 and 2023. Apart from her law practice, Rachel is a hospice volunteer as an end-of-life doula.

In this episode, you’ll learn how Rachel first began to recognize that there was emotional work that needed tending to in her life. She shares her decades-long process of discovering why that work was so important, how it helped relieve her trauma and process grief, and ultimately, how it led her toward work that truly aligned her with her whole self and the work she was meant to do.

What You’ll Learn:

When Rachel first recognized that trauma was present in her life (5:02)
How we tend to cope when things are out of alignment (10:33)
Why showing emotion is a path to true connection (18:10)
A roadmap for recovering from grief and helping those you care about (23:43)
The healing power of vulnerability (32:31)

Favorite Quotes:

“When we allow ourselves to connect to the things that we're most passionate about in life is truly where we can make the biggest impact.” –Blake
“In society, we label the anxieties and stresses and things that we have as who we are. And often that isn't true at all. It's our way of coping. It's how we learned how to adapt in a world that felt unsafe.” –Blake
“ It's the human connection that really brings joy and passion to what I do. And that comes with the underlying issues of what I address for clients. I'm here to solve a legal problem. There's usually a lot of underlying emotional grief, etc, that to an extent, I can connect with that person on and support them through.” –Rachel Schromen
“I should be able to emote. Should I be inconsolable and need the client to take care of me? No. But there's an appropriate way to show emotion, and it took me a long time to step into that. ” –Rachel Schromen
“The people who showed up in the best way, unsurprisingly, were the ones who had experienced loss. One of my friends texted me and said, ‘Will you be home tonight, between 5 and 6? I'm going to drop off a meal, I will leave it at your door and ring the doorbell’. And I said, ‘Yes, thank you’. I still get emotional because it was one of the kindest things and I felt so loved and supported. If she had texted me and said, ‘Can I drop off a meal?’ I would have said, ‘No’. If she had texted me and said, ‘What can I do to help?’, I would have said ‘Nothing.’” –Rachel Schromen
“We're all having a human experience, you know? Why do we all feel so alone in it? We don't have to.” –Rachel Schromen