Grief on Purpose: How Laura Walton Found Power, Peace, and Purpose in the Pain

Laura Walton Interview

Tiff Carson: What if the worst thing that ever happened to you became the thing that led you back to yourself? What if grief wasn't something to get over? I. something to walk with, to learn from and to grow through. Today's guest knows this journey firsthand. Laura Walton has lived through unthinkable losses. At 21, she lost her father to suicide, and at 26, her boyfriend died of a heroin overdose. But instead of being swallowed by grief she built something from it. She made it her mission to help others navigate their own heartbreak without being told to move on or get over it. Laura founded Grief on Purpose, a movement that is changing the conversation around death and loss. We're diving deep into her story, her purpose, and the wisdom she's gained through both personal and professional experience. So let me ask you this. What if grief wasn't the end of your story, but the beginning of something new? Welcome back to another episode of Hard Beautiful Journey with Laura Walton. 

Hello, Laura. How are you?

Laura Walton: Hi. I'm great. Thank you for having me.

Tiff Carson: Thank you for being here today. I appreciate you wanting to share your story, and your hard, beautiful journey with me and my audience. 

Tiff Carson:  You’ve lived through some profound loss and now you help others navigate their own grief. But before all of that happened, before the titles and the work that you do, what was your life like before that, and what moments shaped you into the person that made you want to do this work today?

Laura Walton: Ooh, so my life pre grief. 

I think if I had to describe it, it was just sort of a, becoming, the word becoming is coming to mind. I was young so the first death experience happened when I was 21, and then the next one was 26. So I was still so young that my life pre-death was just in retrospect, I think kind of confusing and not clear.

Laura Walton: There wasn't a clear path in it, and so then oddly, or maybe not oddly, but it was with the deaths that I experienced that actually created that path.

Tiff Carson: So losing your dad to suicide and then your boyfriend to overdose, those are two massive losses in a short period of time, four or five years. Looking back, what did those monumental losses teach you about grief at that age that you didn't understand at the time?

Laura Walton: I don't think I understood grief at all period before those. So they taught me kind of what grief is, and along with that, what grief is not. So, you know, I learned that grief is a lot of things, but you know, I learned that grief is not something to get over. Grief is not something we can, you know, check the boxes, do all the right things, and then we're done with grief. Grief is not something that will necessarily ever be gone, but in different ways always be a part of your life and a part of your story and a part of who you are. So I think, yeah, through those I learned truly what grief is in a way that I never would have if I hadn't experienced that or if I didn't experience deaths until later in life.

Tiff Carson: So one of the things that I know I experienced in my grief journey is the loneliness of grief and how lonely it can be when you don't feel like anybody really understands what you're going through. And for me, my particular one was sibling grief and just the lack of acknowledgement of sibling grief and that that is such a special bond. Was it hard for you to find the right support when you were grieving and to find those people that understood you? 

Laura Walton: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That was really hard and that's one of the big reasons that motivated me to go to grad school, to become a therapist, to do everything that I've done thus far with grief is because I couldn't find support.

Tiff Carson: So what did you need back then that wasn't available to you then, but is starting to be available now?

Laura Walton: I think I needed people who weren't trying to fix me. A lot of the people I came across, whether they were just people, you know, friends, family, or whether they were professionals, approached me from a place of trying to fix me, trying to make it better. Trying to, to fix the grief, trying to get to that point where someday the grief wouldn't exist. Which maybe you don't know until you experience it, but that's just not the way grief works. It's not ever fixed. It's not something we forget about so I needed people just who were able to sit with that pain, witness the pain, witness the discomfort as hard and as terrible as it is, but just to be there, be present for it.

Tiff Carson: I think that's a big misconception is that people who have never, ever experienced grief, is that it doesn't go away and that's really hard to explain and help people understand. 

Tiff Carson: Is there something people have said to you or to other grieving people that you work with that they think is helpful, but actually is really not.

Laura Walton: I'm trying to think, it's been so long since my personal experience. I do remember one thing was, so my boyfriend died of a heroin overdose, and I remember that I went to a doctor, just a regular annual exam and I have a tattoo on my wrist that's a memorial tattoo for him.

And so the doctor saw that and was just asking what it was. And so I told her and I think she asked how he died. And so I told her how he died. And the first words out of her mouth were, were you using heroin too?  And that hurt, it stung. It wasn't a compassionate response. It felt like it was more of a…

Laura Walton: And the the answer is no to that, but it felt like it was more of a judgmental response.

Tiff Carson: I think people say these kind of things because grief makes them uncomfortable. So why do you think it makes people uncomfortable?

Laura Walton: I think because it's something that can't be fixed. Most other things in life, there's a way to problem solve our way through it. There are a lot of things that if we just figure it out or get to the other side of it or we can fix it, but grief is not one of those things.  It's not something that we can fix. 

Laura Walton: And along with that death is not something that we necessarily understand. I think as much as, to the degree, which maybe it might make people feel comfortable with it, because it's this unknown. I think there can be a lot of fear associated with that.

Laura Walton: And also, you know, if we talk about death or we see somebody else who is grieving, it forces us to think about death and think about, people who are grieving and maybe face that possibility of our own mortality or of somebody we love dying. So for many people who haven't experienced the grief, I think they do have good intentions, but it's just such an uncomfortable topic that we say really stupid things.

Tiff Carson: At what point did you realize that grief wasn't something that you eventually need to get over, but something that you want to carry with purpose? 

Laura Walton: I think I knew it on some level from the beginning following my boyfriend's death. So there were, about five years between my dad's death and my boyfriend's death. And with my dad's death, I just sort of dealt with it by avoiding it, but I didn't fully realize that until my boyfriend died. And then it just kind of smacked me in the face. But, when he died, I got that tattoo on my wrist maybe two days after he died. I was in the grief brain. Where there's no such thing as consequences and long-term, you can't think long-term.  You can't think of long-term consequences for anything you might do.

And it doesn't matter in that moment. So I got the tattoo and I remember a couple days after a friend of mine just commenting on it and saying, you have that tattoo that's gonna be there for the rest of your life. And I was like, yeah, but it doesn't matter because he's gonna be tattooed on my heart for the rest of my life.

So whether I have a visible tattoo that other people can see really doesn't matter because it's gonna be an experience that sits with me forever. And that shapes who I am, and I had a sense of that even really early on, but I didn't have a sense of exactly what that meant.

Tiff Carson: So what does it mean to you to grieve on purpose?

Laura Walton: It means to create intentional space and time for our grief, to get curious about it and witness it, and I think allow that to continue on as time passes. You know, my grief does look very different now than it did then. It's been 18 and what, 23 years?  So it's been a long time and it still exists, but it looks different and to allow for that, make space for that to transform, is also a part of the grieving on purpose.

Tiff Carson: So you just shared a Instagram post a couple of days ago, I think it was, where you even said that you have a new relationship with grief, with your boyfriend and how that's shifted for you. Do you want to talk a little bit about that? Because I have found that as well with my brother. That our relationship in spirit, in death, has evolved as well over the last few years.

Laura Walton: Yeah. You felt that too?  I love hearing that when other people say that because I've definitely felt that.  But it's not, at least to what I see, it's not something that's talked about a lot. I felt a connection with him since immediately after his death, I could feel that energy.

And it's the way that that has shown up and what that has felt like to me has evolved with time and it's gotten less loud with time.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.

Laura Walton: So yeah, the post that I had shared was, it was his birthday in December and I had a different experience on that day than anything I had ever had thus far in my experience with grief.

And I was just listening to a song that he had loved. And what came with it was this sense of really a joy and awe and that 18 years later, I could still have this continue with him in a different way. And just this like, a sense of, wow, that is so amazing.

That's so cool that that is a possibility of something we can do. And I had never, felt that in such a strong way before and that made me really kind of reconsider what grief is, you know how we define grief? Because up until then, the way I always thought about grief and the way you see it in a lot of people is it's very heavy.  It's very sad, very overwhelming, very lonely, very isolating. But this was not that.  And yet I would still call this grief. That made me kind of question a lot about what my understanding was, what the world's understanding of grief is. And it's still something I'm kind of working around in my head. I don't know exactly what that means or what that looks like, but it was a really interesting experience to have. 

Tiff Carson: Yeah. Like I said, I'm having the same experience with my brother, although, I felt him too, right from the very beginning.  He was very, very present with me. But there's days where I'm so happy that I have this connection with him and there's joy and I laugh and I can just feel him there and then the next day I'm crying, so it's just the waves, right. But where it's not a heaviness that I thought that I would feel all of the time.

Tiff Carson: Has it shifted for you?

Laura Walton: Yeah. It's, yes, it's shifted in that way and it's hard to articulate, but it's started me down a path of getting so curious about death and about spirituality. I wasn't raised with religion, so I had no belief system around this.

So when these deaths happened, I didn't have a belief system to lean on and so that sent me down a path of trying to figure it out because when they died, I'm like, but where are they? You know, trying to just wrap my head around that concept. And so that being the starting point for this path of trying to understand that. Now again, so much time has passed, I've created my own belief system around that.

That has evolved with time and I think that's a part of the awe as well, and being able to kind of build this whole new belief system out of a place of love.

Tiff Carson: Do you find that it's helping with your clients who might be on a more spiritual path than not to give them a little bit more understanding of what could happen with their grief?

Laura Walton: I, in the most broad terms, I try to not be too specific in what my experiences are because I don't wanna put that expectation on somebody else. I know that our experiences are so unique in grief, because we come into it from such different places, you know, whatever belief systems we already have in place, whatever the relationship is with the person, you know, there's so many different variables that make it unique to one person that I don't wanna taint that with what my experience is.  So I think my approach would be more so just being with the curiosity of what a person's experience might be and the permission that they can question that. They can deeper than that they can, if whatever it is for them doesn't feel true. Now that they've had this experience with death, it's okay for them to consider different options, different alternatives, and support them. 

Tiff Carson: Is that something you would recommend to other people supporting those that are grieving is to not project your experience of grief, or not project, but talk about your experience of it and just be a safe space for them to talk.

Laura Walton: I would probably suggest asking for permission before just dumping out your own experience because ultimately, I think it's up to the person who's grieving. Sometimes hearing people's experiences is helpful, but sometimes it's not. And they're the only one who can really make that call.

Tiff Carson: And the timeline, again, there is no timeline, but it might depend on where they are in their journey if they're more open to hearing about somebody else's experience.

Tiff Carson: So one of the pillars of my podcast is Use Your Voice. When did you realize that your voice had power in this space of grief?

Laura Walton: Ooh, that's a good question. I think I first started seeing seeds of that maybe when I became a therapist. I could share just the smallest pieces of my experience and like, oh, I've experienced that too in these ways. Not, again, not like putting too much out there that would take away from somebody else's experience, but just being able to empathize with what somebody was experiencing that maybe was where it where it started. 

Laura Walton: I think it's something that's continually evolving for me and maybe will continually evolve forever.  Part of my experience is because grief is what I do for a living. That's how I spend a good majority of my time. So whatever the topic is, I think when you spend a lot of your time with that topic, you kind of forget that not everybody knows as much on that topic that you do. Not everybody has spent that much time with it, and that's a continual reminding for myself that I've spent a lot more time with this than average person, and so whatever it is that I've come to understand or come to think about might not be something that's ever occurred to someone else and so that for me, that's a continual reminder of re-finding you could say my voice over and over again.

Tiff Carson: Yeah, for sure. Another pillar of this podcast is Find Your Tribe, and we've talked a little bit about it, that grief can be isolating. How can people build a community that supports them in their grief?

Laura Walton: It is hard to do, finding the people who aren't trying to change you. The people who aren't trying to take away that pain or fix that pain, but who are okay being with that pain.  Again, as you were pointing to earlier, depending on where you are in that timeline of grief and where you are also, I guess in the timeline of your life, that there's probably easier and more difficult times to find that, but the people who experienced grief, who have experienced a really significant death, are not going to try to fix you or you know, take something away from you because they know what it's like. So those are oftentimes the people who be the most supportive on a grief path.

Tiff Carson: I've always wondered this.  Do you think it's more important to find a community that has experienced the same typer of loss as you?

Laura Walton: I think in an ideal scenario, in my experience, it can feel most supportive to find similar types of loss. I don't think there's better or worse with grief and death.  They’re just different. And it's different too, for example, have your 90-year-old grandparent die versus to have your three-year-old child die, right? Those are two different experiences. And being able to be surrounded by somebody who's experienced something that's similar-ish to what you've experienced, I think that makes that road a little bit easier. 

Tiff Carson: What do you think is one thing that society needs to do in order to handle grief differently and how it's talked about?  What needs to shift or should it shift?  Should there be a change in how we handle it or, is it working?

Laura Walton: Well, I don't think it's working.  I think it's better than it used to be though. I will say that it's better than it was 20 years ago. And now you can find a lot even just on Instagram or, social media, people talking about grief and death more. So it's better, but it's not perfect. I think there's still a general approach to grief as being a disorder. It's listed as a disorder in the DSM, so I think with that comes this skewed understanding of what it is that I think we have the potential to do better with but we're just not quite there yet.

Tiff Carson: So I know how heavy my heart has felt in the deep grief journeys that I've been on, and it's heavy. It can be very heavy. As somebody who works in this field, how do you protect your energy and protect yourself while also holding space for so many deep emotions that people are going through?  How do you take care of you? 

Laura Walton: Yeah, it's a good question and it's something that I've had to learn and that has been difficult to learn in some areas. But one thing is learning to read myself, my own body;  so my own emotions and my own physical sensations, getting really intimate with that and learning to understand that that comes in as a helpful tool for me to be able to distinguish what is mine and what is not mine. So if I'm working with somebody and feeling something particular in my body. If I have the awareness of that, it makes it easier to know if this is possibly something of my own stuff that might be coming up for me.

And so therefore I need to do something about that. So if that's the case, then that would be something that would need my attention later. You know, when I'm on my own and I can give it my attention, but being able to circle back to those things to address in myself or to take care of whatever it is that came up for me and myself.  And then I also just have more general, you might call 'em, like preventative practices. I'm a big yoga practitioner.  If it's not yoga, some kind of movement every day is important to me to move the energy. Just staying within, that sort of routine is really helpful for me to stay connected to myself and stay in check with my own stuff.

Tiff Carson: So I'm curious, because I've done yoga before, but I haven't used yoga in my grief journey.  How does yoga help you process stuff through your body?

Laura Walton: So the physical part of yoga, we hold stuff in our body. You know, we hold emotions, we hold traumas in our body. So the physical practice of yoga, the asana, all just allows that energy to move. I think of any emotion that we might be experiencing just as energy that's living in the body and it needs to move. So for example, if you start to cry, that's energy in the form of tears, trying to move out of your body. But sometimes we stop it, we hold that back because we don't wanna cry 'cause we don't want somebody to see that. And so when the energy is attempting to move in some way and we don't allow it to move, if that happens over and over and over again, then that energy's getting stuck.

So yoga as a physical practice can be a really great way just to allow whatever the energy is. And we have stuff from 20 years ago too, you know, stuck in our bodies, so just to allow that stuff to move and to process.

Tiff Carson: Is that your go-to practice when grief sneaks up on you or have you found other ones besides yoga that have been beneficial over the years?

Laura Walton: Well, yeah, yoga, I would say is my go-to practice, but for me it's not just about the physical poses. That is a big one. And for me especially, I love a good sweat. There's something for me that's very grounding though about the sweat. So if I'm really needing it for whatever the reason is, if I go to a hot yoga class and just even just walking into that room, you know, and feeling the heat and the humidity just pulls me back into my body. So that is a super helpful tool for me. But also, I don't know how familiar you are with yoga, but traditionally speaking, there's eight limbs or eight paths we could call them, of a yoga practice and Asana, or the physical is just one of those limbs. 

Laura Walton: So the other limbs vary, but generally, they're tools in us helping to better understand ourselves, better understand what our beliefs are, why we might respond to certain things the way we do, where we tense up or get stressed when we're hit with something uncomfortable.  It’s really a self-study, a self-understanding. So that as a very broad practice as a whole, has also been very helpful for me in understanding myself and how I relate to my grief and what works for me and what parts don't and what parts maybe I wanna look at changing.

Tiff Carson: I'm curious, how has your grief journey been with your dad versus your boyfriend and especially in the way your grief journey has evolved. Is it the same with your dad or how's that been for you? 

Laura Walton: It’s been both the same and different. So it's been, in the sense that I, with my dad, I did have one. It came, this one came in the form of a dream, but one connection you might call it, with my dad after his death, but then that was it and he just kind of disappeared from being a regular part of my life after that. But I will say that connection was pretty impactful and that stuck with me, so he hasn't necessarily been an ever evolving part of my grief.  And my relationship was with him wasn't great, especially at the time of his death. But I will say in my grief with my dad, I've healed a lot of the wounds in our relationship because I've been able to get to a better understanding of what his life might have been like.  You know, what experiences he was having at that in his life and what might have led up to that and build more understanding of myself and with that more compassion towards him and that has created healing for me.  Whereas that wasn't necessarily or a part of my story with my boyfriend. So, they've been different in those ways.

Tiff Carson: What would you say to someone listening right now who is so completely lost in their grief, what do you want them to hear today?

Laura Walton: That they're not alone. There are people, you and I are here doing this and there are other people who do similar things who have had this experience happen. And we have made it part of our work, at least to talk about it, right. To normalize this experience. So they are not alone and although it probably doesn't feel like it, it doesn't feel true at all in this moment…they will survive this.

Tiff Carson: I can agree with you. After my brother passed away, I have a picture that my mom took of me laying on the grass in the rain, and I never thought I would get up off of that grass, ever. I was so heartbroken and devastated and couldn't breathe. I didn't know how in the hell life would actually go on, and so I've been in that moment, I've been in that guttural crying moment where you just don't want to be here anymore.  So, it does, it changes. 

Laura Walton: It changes.

Tiff Carson: It ebbs and flows and it changes.

Laura Walton: Yeah. If I know one thing about grief, it's that it changes. Some days you might call that change better. Some days you might call that change worse, but it changes.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm. It is constantly changing and evolving and it goes back eight steps and then it goes forward two steps and it's constant. So, just know that that happens and be okay with that, I guess is all I can say. 

Tiff Carson: If people want to get in touch with you and learn more about what you do, I'm going to put your stuff here on the screen.

Tiff Carson: www.griefonpurpose.com. Instagram is @grief.on.purpose, and you have tons of great stuff on there. Highly recommend going and checking out Laura's Instagram account.  What are some of the things they can find on your website that you offer? 

Laura Walton: On my website right now, there are self-led courses that I've created on both grief and trauma inspired by years of clinical work. I had the same kind of questions and misunderstandings come up over and over and over again within those topics. So that's the inspiration for those courses and providing the answers to the questions that many people have around these topics. And along with those courses, there are self-guided journals that give both action and journaling prompts as tools for people who, whether somebody goes to therapy or not is besides the point here, but that give people tools to kinda work through their own stuff on their own time, and in their own way, especially though if for whatever reason, they're not able to get therapy.

Tiff Carson: Yeah, for sure. So I end every episode asking my guests what they are grateful for, because even when life is hard, it is still beautiful. What are you grateful for today?

Laura Walton: I am grateful for dogs, in particular. My dogs.

Tiff Carson: What kind of dogs do you have?

Laura Walton: I have two doodles. One's a golden and one's a Labradoodle, so not only are they adorable, but they're just, you know, dogs are just so sweet and loving and loyal, and they love you. No matter if you're sad, no matter if you're grieving, no matter if you're happy, they love you. And that's pretty beautiful, and that's something I'm grateful for.

Tiff Carson: I was just thinking the same thing this morning when I was cuddling my Aussie Doodle.  I don't know what I would've done without her in the last three years, because I also went through a divorce in the last three years and she was the one that was there in those guttural crying moments and literally licked all of my tears away. 

Tiff Carson: Before we wrap up, I would like to do one thing. I would like for us all to take a deep breath together because sometimes in our grief we stop breathing.  I want us to inhale and then take a deep exhale as well and place your hand on your heart and feel it. Feel that it is still beating, that it is still here for you. And no matter what you've been through, just try and give yourself grace. 

Tiff Carson: Try and give yourself small movements, maybe a stretch or wiggle your fingers, feel your body, and just like my guest shared her gratitude, let's find one small thing that you are grateful for right now. And it doesn't have to be big, just something that reminds you that life is still moving forward. Because no matter how hard or beautiful that this journey gets, you are still here, still breathing, still healing, and that my friends is everything. So until next time, taking the next breath, the next step, and finding your way back to joy. I am so grateful for you being here, Laura, and thank you so, so much for sharing your journey.

Laura Walton: Oh, thank you so much for having me, and thank you for reminding me to breathe. I always forget that.

Tiff Carson: So do I. So it was for me too, so thank you.