The Femme Cast | Unapologetic Visibility & Impact For Soul-Led Women

How I’m Moving Through Grief During the Holidays: An Emotional Alchemy Transmission (In Real Time)

Maria Rei

The holidays can crack you open in ways no other season can.

In this deeply real, in-the-moment episode of The Femme Cast, I press record the day after Christmas, during a snowfall, in the middle of layered grief, and without polishing the edges. This isn’t a retrospective. It’s a lived transmission.

I share what it’s been like moving through a year of profound endings: friendships that fell away, a relationship that ended, a job that slipped away, and the loss of my beloved dog Pippa, whose presence once shaped every celebration. Grief doesn’t arrive neatly. It lives in the body as fatigue, thirst, overwhelm, and sudden waves triggered by memories, smells, and quiet moments.

This episode is for anyone navigating grief during a season that demands cheer.

We explore what grief actually does to your nervous system and why you’re not failing if you need more rest, more water, simpler food, and fewer plans. I share practical, soul-led ways to care for yourself when capacity is low: shortening visits, saying no without explanation, letting go of performance, and allowing honesty to deepen connection instead of strain it.

But this conversation goes deeper than coping.

We move into emotional alchemy. Not as a way of bypassing pain, but as honoring it as an initiation. I share why grief is love with nowhere to land, and how rituals, memorials, memories, and creativity give that love a place to move. Instead of asking how to escape hard emotions, I ask a different question: What wants to be created through this?

This episode weaves visibility without performance, impact without force, and what it means to live soul-led when life dissolves what once defined you. You’re not broken. You’re moving through a portal. A portal where something powerful is being activated beneath the tenderness.

If your heart feels heavy, let this meet you there. Your grief is not a flaw, it’s a portal. Stay with yourself. Let the emotion move. There is infinite potential on the other side, and this is your invitation to step into it.

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SPEAKER_00:

Hey you guys, what is up and welcome back to the show. I am so excited and grateful to have you guys here. You will likely hear traffic be behind me today, and you will also likely hear some snow plows because we're in the middle of a really pretty snowfall. So there may be some noise in the background. So I apologize for that in advance. I hope you're having an amazing holiday season. Right now, I'm recording this and probably posting this on the 26th, to be quite honest. This is this is very much a real in the moment episode that I wanted to kind of put out into the world just in real time. Like I didn't want, I didn't want to sit on this. I didn't want to wait and create it later. I didn't want to, I just wanted to just kind of step in, like really just get into my heart space and and share with you guys in real time what's kind of going on and and what I've kind of moving through. And you know, many of you know, like I've shared, you know, I've been moving through a lot of grief lately. Yes, because of the loss of my fur baby Pippa, but also because there was a lot of loss this year that, you know, I didn't really get a whole lot of a chance to grieve as it was happening in real time. Loss of friendships, loss of a relationship, loss of a job. Like there was just a lot of things that kind of fell apart this year. And I, and as I mentioned in the last episode, as you know, we're gearing into the new year, you know, closing out this nine year and moving into the one year, you know, a lot of people are letting go of a lot of things and have let go of a lot of things this year. And it was kind of meant to, and it's it's by divine design that we're letting go of a lot of things. But, you know, having said that, you know, it's never easy. It's not always choices that we would often make. And, you know, it's sometimes their choices are made for us, or maybe the universe forces our hand to make a choice that is very uncomfortable. But either way, you know, things fall by the wayside for a reason. I do, I do believe that if something's meant to come with you, it will. I don't believe in this thing that, you know, I mean, we really I don't believe that we can really fuck things up to the point where it's we lose something that really is intended for us. I think there's a lesson in those things for sure. You know, I I think there's a lesson in everything that we move through. But I really do believe that if something is truly meant for us, it will stay. And so many things I want to say. There is something very unique about moving through the grieving process during the holidays. You know, like it or not, you know, the the the holidays are often a very emotionally triggering time for so many people, whether it's in a good way or in a bad way, you know, like in some in some ways it can actually trigger both. It can trigger joy and love and connection, but it can also trigger feelings of loss and regret and you know, so many things kind of you know thrown into the mix all at the same time. And, you know, I can I can honestly say that that has been the theme for me this year is you know, moving through all of this complex, like all this multi-layered, multidimensional emotions all within one short window of time. That sometimes is a blessing, sometimes it's not, sometimes it makes it extra challenging. It's just a whole mixed bag of stuff, you know, and you know, moving through grief during the holiday season can be especially difficult, but especially easy because depending on on your circumstances, right? For me, this period has, you know, obviously there's been a lot of moments, you know, going into the holiday season where I don't know, like memories get triggered, you know, smells will trigger memories, events will trigger memories, seeing certain people or celebrating certain festivities or certain customs will trigger so many memories. And suddenly it's like, you know, you're fine one moment, then you find yourself having a flashback to last year or the year before when things were different, you know, before whatever said person, place, or thing you lost, and you know, suddenly you're just kind of transported back, and you're suddenly faced with all this overwhelming, overwhelming emotions of grief and loss and and stuff. And, you know, it can happen at the drop of a hat. Like, honestly, like moving through this season, like there's been so many moments where I've been so like happy and peaceful and joyful and connecting and surrounded by love, and then all of a sudden something will bring me back, or something will remind me, or you know, I'll remember the friendships I lost or the relationship I had to let go of or the job, or most, most, most, most vividly the last couple of weeks. You know, I'll see Pippa's little corners around the house, and or I'll remember how, you know, how excited she was every time we opened presents around the tree, and or how she would demand that lunch be served like now, like she would smell it cooking, she would see all the plates moving around and serving bladders and things being like placed on the table or on the serving whatever. And she would just be like demanding that we all sit down and eat like now and not an hour from now when when lunch would be ready. So I just remember how she would like be barking at everybody at the table and demanding that they all like give her treats under the table. It's just, you know, like it's all these little things where I was remembering how it was last year when she was here and every year before then, and just feeling the void now of her not being there. But also like Christmas was very different this year because you know, everything just just everything just got figured out differently, and and and so it made it almost comforting because it wasn't the same schedule. And so not all the memories were triggered, and the fact that it was my great nephew's first Christmas, you know, brought all this love and joy into the event and made him the focus, which took some of the focus off of what was missing so that we could focus on what we were celebrating and just a lot of mixed stuff, you know, so many blessings, so many things to be grateful for, but then also at the same time so much sadness. And, you know, moving through grief during the holidays is is very unique because, like I said, there's many things that can trigger your your the the that those feelings of loss and sadness. And there's many feelings and many things and circumstances that can trigger this overwhelming sense of love and connection, too, which is so healing when you're moving through these experiences. So has it been easy? No. You know, if I if I obviously had control over this, I probably would have chosen a totally different timeline. If I could, if I had, I mean, I have if I had any control, I wouldn't have lost her to period. But if I did have control over when, it probably wouldn't have been right before the holidays. But it is what it is. And there's been a couple of things that I've I've sort of done to manage the grieving process and to move through it as best I can. And you know what, to let it be messy, to let it be imperfect, to let it feel uncomfortable at times. And I think that's part of the beauty of it. You know, I think that, you know, if there, if emotional alchemy teaches us anything, it's sometimes, you know, being in the discomfort is the most healing thing that we can do for ourselves. You know, we don't want to stay there, we don't want to set up house there and unpack and and and you know, make it our permanent residence. But there is definitely something beautiful to be said for feeling all the feels and being in the moment and allowing it to just be present and to trust that, you know, something amazing and magical is waiting for you on the other side. Right. So there's been, you know, like I said, there's been moments where, you know, I've been very positive and very optimistic. There's been moments where I've been focused on so much love and connection and also stress. There's been holiday stress, like typical like baking and cooking and planning and organizing and, you know, doing all the things that we need to do for the holidays. And then there's been intense moments of grief where, you know, in the moments of my notice, something would remind me of something would trigger a memory, a smell, a sound, a location, an event that would bring me back to the last year, the year before that. And I would just break down and cry or cry and then go completely silent and just kind of need to just, you know, be still for a little while, or just maybe even just rage it out, get angry and get hurt and get frustrated and not understand why things had to work out the way that they did. And there were so many things that, and I don't want to share with you guys because I really there's so many details about how it all unfolded that I don't want to share with you guys because the last thing that I want to do is like dump my trauma on my audience. But it has brought up so much anger and frustration in terms of how things unfolded for her, because that's not what I would have chosen at all, at all. And just how, you know, some of the things that you know I really didn't think I would be grieving at the end of 2025, and how much things just unfolded so wildly different than anything I could have ever imagined, you know, with everything friendships, relationships, job loss, and then ultimately Pippa. But, you know, having said that, there's been a lot of blessings, and I think the biggest takeaway in all of this is you know, it gets to be messy, it gets to be imperfect, and it gets to be in the moment. And here's some here's some things that I've been doing to kind of move through it with a bit of ease and a bit of grace, and you know, allowing it to do its thing. Because I do believe that every emotion can be alchemized into something amazing. I really do believe that pain is a portal, and whenever we move through a painful experience, it's because there's something truly magical waiting for us on the other side, even though we don't know what that is. And, you know, like I shared in the last episode, you know, Pippa has been sending, she's very vocal in the afterlife, and she's been sending a lot of messages from the other side, basically saying, you know, whatever is lost will be replaced by something greater. And I have been receiving that message again and again. And it's funny, I originally I kind of said only in my in my most positive moments, but most recently in some of my more difficult ones, that came up as that message came up again, and was I was reminded of that when I was moving through a very difficult moment where I was just overcome with so much grief and so much sadness. And then that message came through, and I just I couldn't help but stop and just say thank you for that message overwhelmed me with a feeling of reassurance. But, you know, having said that again, here are a few things that I've been doing to kind of move through the grief, even in the hecticness and the triggering and the intensity of the holiday season. So, number one, you know, it is the winter solstice, right? There it days are shorter, the nights are longer, schedules are busy, most people are taking time off work, right? Most people are slowing down, or at least not maybe not slowing down in all aspects, but you know, maybe taking more time off work to spend more time with family, you know, whatever your situation is. I do suggest if you are moving through grief at any time, not just in the holiday season, but at any time, you intentionally take space. Take space to slow down, to rest. Grieve, grieving is an exhausting process. Like the level of energy drain that I have felt having to move through this, like I just feel tired all the time, I feel sleepy all the time, thirsty. Oh my god, does grief make you dehydrated? So take space, you know, take space to slow down, to be present, to not have to always think and overachieve, to replenish yourself, to feel the feelings, to to, you know, just allow your mind, body, and spirit a break because it does take a lot out of you. And part of the healing process, I really do believe, is rest. We need rest. Whenever we're grieving, we need a lot of rest. Our body needs rest. Our mind needs rest. Our emotions need it, it all needs rest. And especially, I think, over the holiday season, because we always feel all this pressure to perform, to bring cheer, to love, to connect, to give, to, you know, make this season so magical. And, you know, the reality is that when we're grieving, sometimes we have zero capacity for any of the above. And that gets to be okay. And I'm never one, I'm never one to condone performing, right? In order to, you know, nurture our connections and our relationships. But the reality is many of us do end up performing over the holidays, whether we're performing that, you know, we're not overcome with stress over the holiday season, or we're not overwhelmed by all the things that we have to do, or we're not feeling the financial burdens of, you know, and and and chaos of all the things that we need to do, create, present, give in order to make this season feel joyful, right? Or at least the way we've learned to make it feel joyful, right? I think all of that can make us feel, even like seeing like the number of people like you have to connect with and the number of events you have to go to, and the number of family members that you may have seen or may not have seen in a very long time. Maybe some family members that you love, and maybe some family members that you don't love, right? There's always a level of trying to kind of per not perform, but you know, just doing what you can to make it the best experience possible, to be kind, to be loving, to connect, to to to, you know, maybe sit across the table from some of the people that maybe you're not, you know, getting along with. Like I know a lot of my a lot of my clients have, you know, these massive family dinners completely divided, totally multiple like different personality types, like sitting at the table all at the same time. It can be very uncomfortable, you know, and and and sometimes you do often feel like you're performing in order to get through all that. So that's why I think, you know, giving yourself space to just be with yourself, to be with your thoughts, to be with your feelings, to let your body rest, to let your mind rest, right? To let your emotions have a break, I think is so crucial if you're moving through grief at this time. And space to feel your feelings. Very, very, very important. You know, sometimes, you know, the biggest way we can we can block ourselves emotionally and end up with a whole bunch of stored and unprocessed emotion is just keeping ourselves too busy to the point where we can't feel it. We don't have time to feel it, to process it, to be present with it, to allow it to move, to work its magic, to bring us the gift and the lessons that it's here to give us because we just keep ourselves so damn busy. And so, you know, taking space, giving ourselves time to slow down, to be present, to feel the feels is the healthiest way to actually move through the experience. Allow the feelings to move through the body and process so that they don't end up getting stored somewhere where we don't want them to be, so that we can get to the other side of whatever this is that we've lost, whatever grief that we're feeling, or whatever it is that's coming up for us. And then the the, you know, also, you know, taking the time and space to nurture your body. Like I said, sleep. Sleep is so important when you're grieving. Hydration, hydrating your body is so important, and you're gonna be so thirsty because it is a real energetic release that's happening. You are releasing something that you once loved, you are releasing a whole lot of emotions that that experience is bringing up in you and releasing emotionally and energetically is extremely dehydrated because the body uses the moisture to help. I can't explain the science behind this. I just know that this happens. Like I know that even if you've ever had a healing session with me, I always tell my clients make sure you drink a lot of water before and after, you're gonna be thirsty, and they're almost always thirsty. Something about releasing emotions and energetics and healing and transmuting that actually takes a lot of hydration out of your body. So you're gonna want to restore all that hydration, drink lots of water, and just do your best to try and eat healthy foods, you know, and also give yourself permission to eat your feelings sometimes because that's what we need. I've done plenty of that over the last couple of weeks, and I'm shameless about it because my body needed it. But right now, my body is saying, hey, can we get back to some sort of a healthy eating routine? Because we're not feeling our best right now, and I'm honoring that too, and that gets to be okay. All right. But give yourself some grace, give yourself some patience. You know, let yourself, if you need, if you need something outside of what you told yourself is nutritious for you to have, just because, you know, it's gonna make you feel a little bit better in the moment, go ahead and do it. Just don't, you know, never, you never want that to be a habit, right? You always want to go back to feeling the feelings, processing the emotions, and moving through them and getting to the other side, which because I've been so present with what I've been feeling, I had my moment where I was kind of like, you know, I just want to kind of sit here and eat my feelings and binge watch Hallmark movies and cry my eyes out and journal. And I did that, and I did that for a few days, and I was able to get through the holidays and take up space and or sorry, take space for myself and take time for myself and give myself grace. And now, you know, my body is telling me, okay, you know, thank you. We needed that. Now let's start getting back into a semi-healthy routine, slowly but surely, one little baby step at a time. And I'm present for that as well. Whereas before, I might have stayed stuck in that overeating, denial, escaping sort of approach to dealing with things, right? But because I allowed myself to move through it, so does my tendency to want to stuff and eat my feelings, escape through television or binge watching Netflix, or whatever else, behave what other whatever other behaviors we turn to in these times, right? So that's you know, all of that all of that can't be done. Without you giving yourself permission to take more space, to take more time, to do less. Maybe say no to a few things. Maybe take more time for yourself. Maybe make visits a little bit shorter. Maybe, you know, take a little bit of extra time off work or make your days a little bit slower at work or whatever. You know, whatever that looks like for you is how can you make more space to do all these things for yourself that you are going to need because you are going to need them. Right. And because this is the busiest time of the year and there's so much, there's so much expectation attached to everything. It really becomes a powerful choice in choosing yourself to say, yes, there's a lot of expectation around the holiday season, but I know that I need this right now. My body needs this, my soul needs this, my emotions need this, my mind needs this. So I'm going to make this choosing myself and choosing, giving myself some space a priority for me because I know how much I need this right now and I know how good it's going to be for me. And that then just becomes a powerful practice in choosing yourself. And I, you know, you know, you know how I strongly advocate for that again and again. So I also want you to give yourself permission to not perform. So even when you are out and about or connecting with people or hanging out or spending time with family or with friends, I want you to give yourself permission to not perform. You know, letting everybody know, hey, I'm moving through this experience and it's been a little bit difficult and I'm gonna do my best. You know, I had a conversation with my sister the other day, and I said, you know, I kind of I have a lot of sadness because, you know, this is, you know, her grandson's and my great nephew's first Christmas. And I just want to bring so much joy to that. But I feel like I'm coming into this holiday with a heavy heart because of everything that's kind of unfolded this year. And I, you know, I don't want, I don't want that to cast a shadow on his first Christmas, but also it's gonna be really hard to just kind of compartmentalize all that and just focus on this, focus on on just creating this epic first Christmas for him. Now, in the end, it actually worked out that we were able to just focus on him for Christmas, which I'm so happy about because it was his first Christmas and he did get spoiled rotten, and it's everything that I would have wanted for him for Christmas. And I was able to just kind of I was able to very naturally put my grief aside and just focus on that for the day. But I think it's because I did all this work up front in feeling my feelings and moving through the experience and allowing myself space to do that, and also just giving myself the permission to say, hey, I might not do it perfect, or I might fuck it up, or I might have some moments where I'm feeling a little bit sad, and just giving my myself permission to do that. And that kind of that just kind of took a lot of the difficulty away. And then, you know, when I, you know, hanging out with friends, I would say, you know, hey, I can't wait to see you and I want to spend time with you, and I haven't seen you in so long because of everything that's been going on, but I am moving through this right now, so I'm not gonna be my normal self and and just letting that be okay, you know, and just choose choosing to lean on those relationships. I give you the space to do that and and to to not feel like you always have to be perform or on the ball or entertaining everybody or saying something witty or laughing at every joke, or you know, always being, you know, always feeling forced to be positive and joyful and optimistic when sometimes you just don't feel that way. Right. And I think it's so important that we honor when we're in those those periods and not try and fake our way through it, you know. And I think we build so many more, so much more intimate relationships that way when we can actually be our real, an apologetic, authentic self rather than a performance monkey who's basically just doing everything the world is teaching them that they should be doing in order to be liked. When my friend came over over the holidays, we actually he came over and we binge watched the first half of Emily in Paris, which we had been talking about doing like all season. And so anyway, he came over and we were binge watching Emily in Paris, and you know, I was so happy to see him. And we we touched base, and you know, we hadn't seen each other in a while because of everything that had been going on, and you know, we we kind of, you know, very quickly did a quick catch-up before we we we we turned on the series, and then we just binge watched the first five episodes of it, you know, and I told him everything that had happened, and you know, he was, you know, he was really supportive through the whole thing and kind of checking in on me to see how I was doing as as everything was kind of unfolding with Pippa. And so when he came over, I said, Hey, you know, I had a really hard night last night, had a really good cry, feeling better now, but still wasn't a hundred percent. And so we watched the show, we laughed, we ate, we had hot chocolate, we had ice cream, we did all the things that we normally do when we like when we binge watch Emily in Paris. But I was, I just gave myself permission to not be my my usual bubbly, energized, sarcastic self. And it was perfectly fine. I I was able to just be who I was in that moment and not who I always was. The last thing I will say, the last thing I will say, and that is this if this period has taught me anything, it's that grief is really nothing more than an immense amount of love with no place that that has lost its place to land, right? The more grief you feel, the more love there was. I have never felt this level of grief before, and I have lost, believe me, I have lost pets, I have lost friends, I have lost relationships, whether it's because of breakups or because people have passed away. You know, there's there's I've not I've had my fair share of loss. But this level of grief I have never felt before. Whether it's because it was accumulated grief over the years, over the year from from everything that I've lost this year, whether it's because you know, Pippa was such a source of love and joy for me and such an important, like such a big part of my daily life. Like I really feel her absence so much. So what I will say is the greater the grief, the greater the love, the greater that impact that that person or thing had on your life, right? And so with her being gone, it's just this overwhelming sense of love that I I lost what I devoted it to, right? Which was her. So oftentimes, you know, if we think of it in that sense, that grief is just an immense amount of love with nowhere to land, we have to find someplace else for it to land. Whether that's in a memory, you know, oftentimes I'll just think about my, like if I if I feel those moments, you know, when I feel the sadness and the grease over like take over, I'll give myself a minute, I'll let myself feel it, I'll let myself cry, and then I'll remember a memory of her, something that I loved, and I will visualize it and I will see it, smell it, sense it, and pour all my love into that memory. And suddenly I'll feel so much more love and peace with how things unfolded. Or I'll find something else in my present to devote that love to, whether it's another person that's there with me in that experience, whether it's a project or a creative project that I'm working on, I will find ways to pour that love into something else, something more physical, something tangible. I've created a memorial for Pippa. So whenever I feel like I need to connect with her, I will I will connect with that memorial, I will write her a note, I will have a good cry, I will hold her blanky that she passed away in. You know, I will do all these things to find a place for my grief to land, a physical place where I can devote that grief to, and really just tap into that feeling of love. Because if that, if that poor dog was anything, she was just she always brought so much love and joy. And so, you know, the least that I could do in this whole process is finding ways to feel that love, even in her absence. And that has made the grieving so much easier, and it's almost made it just so much more beautiful of a process than you know, you would think moving through this. So, and the one thing that I have, you know, because I always talk about emotional alchemy and alchemy, you know, emotional alchemy is something that I believe in so much. One thing that this experience has actually taught me that is new, because I do believe emotions are creative energy. And I believe that when we allow ourselves to feel our emotions fully is when we tap into our divine creativity and who it is that we're meant to be in the world and what it is that we're here to create. And so one thing that I have been doing, because I've always, you know, talked about, you know, you know, taking our emotions, feeling them, and then transmuting it into what we want to feel in order to manifest what we want. I've actually kind of stepped away from that in this experience because I do believe that there was a bigger reason why everything unfolded the way that it did. And I do believe that it's meant to lead me down a different path. I'm kind of leaving myself open to that. So, one thing that I've actually been doing through this entire process, and that I'm continuing to do, is when I do feel the grief, you know, in traditional emotional alchemy fashion, I will ask the grief, why are you here? You know, what is it that you want to say? What is it that you need from me right now? What can I do to support you? Right? And those are the questions that I always ask. And usually what I ask, and you'll know this if you've followed me for what for quite some time, is what feeling would you like me to move to move towards instead? And I've stopped asking myself that question in this period. And I don't know if this is a permanent thing or if this is something that, you know, just moving through the season. But what I've been asking is, what would you like me to create with you right now? Would it, what is it, would it, what would you love me to channel this energy, this emotion, this experience, this feeling into creating right now? And, you know, the response has been absolutely magical. And it's different every time. The answer will be different every time. Sometimes it's as simple as creating a ritual for myself in the day that will support me through, you know, through these, you know, through this period. Sometimes it is as simple as, you know, just creating again that safe space in order to feel and and to be in the moment. And in many other ways, it's actually inspired some really powerful work that I can't wait to share with you guys in the new year that has come as a result of all of this. So, you know, ask, you know, your most difficult emotions because I do believe they are creation energy. They are creative energy, creation energy. We get to create and do some really magical things with the energy of emotions if we allow ourselves to ask yourself what it is that they would love for you to create. If you can think of your emotions as your creative fuel, what would they love for you to use that fuel to create with? And see what see what comes up. Just see what comes up. I guarantee you it'll be magical because I do believe that every experience that we have triggers an emotion very intentionally, and those emotions are very intentional. And the things that they that they bring out in us are very intentional. We just have to be find the courage to sit with them and sit in the discomfort of experiencing them long enough to allow the magic to unfold. And too many times in this world, we are taught to ignore feeling those feelings. We are taught to numb them, to distract from them, to suppress them. And so if we can't feel them, we never access the magic. And I I I do believe by doing this work to be present with our emotional experience, we tap into a magic that we didn't even know we had and a superpower that we didn't even know that we had. So ask your emotions why they're here, what they want to say, what they need from you, right? In order to honor them, in order to feel them, in order to move through them, but also what it is that wants to be created through them. And you will be surprised at the magic that waits for you on the other side. So let me know if you love this episode. Let me know what you take away from this. Let me know if you're moving through some grief as well. And I send you love if you are. You can leave a comment below wherever you're seeing this episode, or you can email me at mariahthefemcoach.com, or you can DM me at the femmecast and let me know. And of course, if you love this episode, please leave a positive rating and review wherever you're seeing this. Let this get into the hands of more people who might be moving through grief at this time who need this. So until next time, you guys, massive love.