Chapter 8
The Descension and Shattering from Grief
Julie’s Reflection Pause for this chapter is set out below in full, in her words. 7 questions to sit with, and a journal is all they ask for.
From the book
Reflection Pause: Surviving the Descension of Grief
Julie prints this at the end of the chapter. It is here in her words, unedited.
- Remembering the moments when you could not rise from your deepest shattering, what was the truth your body was trying to speak?
- What sensations, images, or memories arise when you revisit that space of exhaustion, and what does it reveal about the intensity of your love and loss?
- In the times when you had to hold others while you, yourself, was breaking, what inner strength or unseen support carried you through?
- Was it love? Duty? Faith? Survival? Something ancestral? What rises when you ask, “Who or what held me when I could not hold myself?”
- What parts of you felt most alone during that descension?
- What do those parts now need: comfort, acknowledgment, permission, or rest?
How might you offer yourself today what you desperately needed then? - Looking back, how did the descent, no matter how brutal, prepare you for the rising?
What seeds of compassion, clarity, resilience, or presence were planted in that darkness?
Hear Julie read
Live and Die Awake: Rising from the Ashes
8:51The meditation that opens the book
Listen to itThis chapter’s recording
Julie reads this one aloud on November 4, 2026, the day the book comes out. It appears on this page, at the address the code in your copy already points to, so there is nothing to keep or bookmark.
She will see it was this chapter you asked from. Every email has an unsubscribe link.