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Rock Your Shine: After you’ve been cracked wide open


Oct 26, 2022

What is the impact of unresolved grief?

 

What happens when we fill our days with busy tasks to ignore the grief we feel inside?

 

Eventually the pain will overflow and become present in other areas of our lives. So why do we bury our grief? What is the emotion we’re trying to push down and avoid?

 

Joining me for this conversation about unresolved grief is Judy Lipson.

 

Judy Lipson is the sole survivor of three sisters, losing her sister Jane in 1981 at age twenty-two in an automobile accident, and nine years later her sister Margie at age thirty-five after a twenty-year battle with anorexia and bulimia. 

 

For thirty years, Judy suppressed her grief and in 2011 founded Celebration of Sisters, an annual ice skating fundraiser to commemorate the lives and memories of her beloved sisters Margie and Jane to benefit Massachusetts General Hospital. Skating is a sport the Lipson sisters shared and brought Judy full circle back to her sisters.

 

Judy published articles for The Open to Hope Foundation, The Centering Organization, Grief Healing, and Love and Loss. Massachusetts General Hospital and SKATING Magazine featured numerous pieces on Judy’s philanthropic work. Judy has appeared as a guest on The Open to Hope, The Morning Glory, Surviving Sibling Loss, Where’s The Grief, Good Grief and U.S. Figure Skating Voices From The Ice Podcasts. 

 

Her passion for figure skating secured the recipient of U.S. Figure Skating Association 2020 Get Up Award.

 

Judy’s memoir, Celebration of Sisters: It Is Never Too Late To Grieve, released December 2021 by WriteLife Publishing. www.judylipson.org 

 

**TRIGGER WARNING** This episode covers sensitive subject matter and is not suitable for all listeners. If this topic could be a trigger for you, listen to this episode with a friend, a sibling, a loved one or a parent so you can talk about any emotions that come up for you. The contents of this episode are not intended to replace therapy and should not be taken as such. If you need immediate help, please call the crisis hotline listed below in our resources.


Listen in as we talk about:

  • [2:00] Judy’s journey through grief with the loss of her two sisters unexpectedly when she was only 25
  • [7:00] Pushing down the grief and how her parents coped with these two traumatic losses
  • [13:40] How losing her father sparked the beginning of her grief journey
  • [17:00] Why we don’t talk about grief and loss
  • [24:10] Why Judy was never angry about her significant losses
  • [25:00] The grief work she did once she was ready
  • [26:30] How writing her story helped her remember the memories that trauma had caused her to forget
  • [28:30] The Skating Piece 
  • [32:55] The differences she noticed within herself through grief work
  • [34:55] What self love looks like for Judy today

 

Resources mentioned in this episode:

 

Grief Hotline: 

 

Connect with Judy here:

 

Connect with Susan