Episode Details

Tina Yarger was 18 years old when she lost her father. Before that grief had anywhere to settle, she lost a childhood friend. And then she lost her mother too.

She was the oldest. Everyone needed her to be okay. So she held it together, functioned, achieved, built a life. And for ten years, the grief went underground and stayed there.

It didn't surface in a therapy room or a quiet moment of reflection. It surfaced in a training room during her clinical counselling internship, in a question about her mother that she expected to answer easily. And the pause that followed changed everything.

In this conversation Tina talks about what grief looks like when it has nowhere to go, the ten years of living a double life on the surface, the anger she wasn't allowed to feel, and why grief can't be healed but does get quieter.

Tina Yarger is a licensed professional counsellor, a pastor and an author. She has now built her entire life around helping others with exactly what she carried alone for a decade.

This episode is for anyone who has ever kept functioning when falling apart would have been the more honest thing to do.

TIMESTAMPS

00:00  Opening - what happens to grief when life doesn't give it any room

01:18  Welcome to Tina Yarger

01:38  Who Tina was before the losses - the seemingly perfect childhood

03:12  What was underneath the seeming

04:21  Her dad - who he was to her

05:44  Losing her father at 18 - the first few hours

07:01  Delivering the news to her younger brothers

07:57  A childhood friend lost in the same period

09:18  Losing her mother - grief on top of grief on top of grief

11:38  Why she couldn't deal with the emotions at the time

12:35  What paused grief actually looked like day to day

13:54  The weight of being the oldest and holding it together

14:28  What the drinking and parties were doing for her emotionally

15:44  What paused grief feels like from the inside

17:39  Ten years of functioning while empty

18:12  When the grief finally surfaced

19:00  The training room - the question she wasn't expecting

21:00  Looking at the story with honour and honesty

22:29  The anger she never allowed herself to feel

24:07  Grieving what was never there, not just what was lost

25:16  Walking out of the training room - what changed

26:02  Becoming a therapist, pastor and author

31:59  What she wishes someone had told the 18-year-old version of her

34:04  Grief can't be healed - but the frequency decreases

35:04  For the woman still functioning on the surface

36:09  The unspoken emotion - anger

37:21  If the 18-year-old Tina could see who she is now

38:17  Rachel's closing

HELPLINES  |  

UK - Cruse Bereavement Support: 0808 808 1677 or cruse.org.uk

UK - Samaritans: 116 123

US - GriefShare: griefshare.org

US - 988 Lifeline: call or text 988

My Free Guide:  https://unspokenemotions.co.uk/free-guide

CONNECT WITH THE GUEST

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1BaE5MLdMn/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Tiktok: Tina Yarger | GUIDED BY GRACE (@tinayarger) | TikTok 

Book: 

Listen Now