Spiritual Healing: Turning Grief Into Purpose

When Alexa Bigwarfe’s identical twin daughter, Katherine, died just two days after birth, she learned what so many of us discover through profound loss: we cannot heal alone, and there is no single path to healing. What followed was a deeply personal journey of spiritual healing that moved through writing to heal, breathwork for healing, grief retreats, and community healing spaces, as well as exploring multiple healing modalities to address trauma triggers and complex PTSD.

Today, as an author, publisher, and healing guide, Alexa embodies what spiritual healing looks like when we commit fully to emotional release, inner child healing, and the courageous work of breaking generational cycles.

The Beginning: When Loss Cracks You Open

Alexa’s healing journey began in the most heartbreaking way. Her identical twin daughters developed twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome in utero. Katherine was receiving too much fluid, while her sister received too little. Born nine and a half weeks early, Katherine lived for only two days. Her surviving twin weighed just 1 pound 10 ounces but is now 13 and thriving.

Her ex-husband responded to the loss by shutting down, creating ambiguous loss, losing both her daughter and her emotional connection with her partner. This isolation drove her to seek healing modalities and support, joining Facebook groups for twin-to-twin transfusion families and, critically, beginning writing to heal.

Writing to Heal: Finding Your Voice in the Pain

Alexa created a blog under “Kat Biggie” (named for Katherine). She was angry, sad, raw. Journaling for healing had always been part of her life, but this was different. This was public. This was vulnerable.

“I really started sharing my story and I saw how it was impacting other people,” Alexa told me. “Writing the words helped me, but seeing that my words were helping other people not be alone was magical.”

This is one of the most powerful aspects of writing to heal: it creates emotional release while building community healing.

We process trauma triggers by naming them. We work through cPTSD healing by documenting our experiences.

Alexa discovered Americans are terrible at dealing with grief. People avoided her, afraid to mention Katherine. So she started writing about how to support someone on a grief journey, educating from her lived experience, practicing spiritual healing through giving others tools to be present with grief.

From Blog to Book: The Permission to Thrive Journal

Eighteen months after Katherine’s death, when a friend delivered a stillborn baby, Alexa felt compelled to help. She pulled together over 30 mothers to create “Sunshine After the Storm: A Survival Guide for the Grieving Mother.” She started a nonprofit that sent care packages to grieving mothers, sending 30-50 annually through fundraising.

But Alexa knew there was something else needed. It took years because “I had to heal enough to know what helped me get there.”

The result is the “Permission to Thrive” journal, a six-month guided journal incorporating multiple healing modalities: gratitude practice, breathwork for healing, journaling for healing, and self-care tracking. Each page includes healing affirmations like “It’s okay to let go of pain while keeping the love intact.”

Alexa wanted it to be “the most beautiful journal anyone has ever had” because grieving people deserve beauty. And the journal is beautiful. While the subtitle says “for grieving mothers,” the healing modalities work for healing from abuse, cPTSD healing, inner child healing, or any grief recovery.

Healing Modalities: A Multifaceted Approach

Alexa’s healing journey demonstrates that there is no single answer to how to heal. She went through yoga focused on breathwork for healing. Breathwork creates space for emotional release by regulating the nervous system, helping us process trauma triggers in our bodies. She practiced gratitude daily, journaled consistently using writing to heal, and committed to self-care.

The Permission to Thrive journal incorporates all these healing modalities because Alexa learned that healing from abuse, cPTSD healing, and grief recovery all require multiple approaches working together.

The Layers Keep Coming: When Grief Stacks

Alexa thought she had done good healing work through her blog, nonprofit, books, and grief retreats. Then life demonstrated otherwise.

Over a decade, her father had dementia and multiple strokes. Her favorite aunt died at 59. Her best friend died from ovarian cancer. Her marriage ended, creating ambiguous loss.

“While I thought I was doing so much good for myself by writing and starting a nonprofit, in a way, I was stuffing. I wasn’t addressing my own pain.”

I understood this completely. For 45 years, I built a wall around my trauma by staying busy, never slowing down to feel what needed to be felt. Alexa was practicing community healing for others while avoiding her own inner child healing work.

The body keeps score. Alexa ended up in the hospital.

The Breaking Point: When Your Body Says Enough

Alexa’s health crisis began when she finally started addressing the military sexual trauma she’d experienced and never dealt with. She saw posters at the VA for programs supporting women with this trauma. After dating a fellow veteran and opening up about buried trauma, Alexa started having panic attacks. She was diagnosed with complex PTSD.

Then her gallbladder had to be removed. The surgery was textbook. But her body had other plans.

She started gaining massive amounts of fluid, 40 pounds over two weeks. Her belly became huge, just like Katherine’s belly had been with fluid at birth. Alexa became convinced that Katherine’s spirit was making her feel what Katherine had experienced.

She spent three weeks in the hospital, nearly died, and had her kidneys start shutting down. Then, three more weeks at her mother’s house, unable to walk without a walker. To this day, they have no medical explanation.

But Alexa knows what happened spiritually. She went through a near-death experience that forced her to stop stuffing, which made her do the deeper healing work she’d been avoiding while staying busy helping others.

Spiritual Healing: Learning to Listen to Intuition

For those of us on a healing journey, spiritual healing means learning to trust our intuition, to believe there’s meaning in our suffering, to understand we’re being guided even when the path seems dark.

Alexa describes herself as “very spiritual, more spiritual than religious.” She believes she was chosen for a specific purpose, feels guided by Katherine’s spirit, and experiences downloads of information about her path.

Before our conversation, I asked the universe for whatever message was supposed to come through. Alexa does the same, seeking that download and staying open to spiritual guidance on how to heal.

Alexa noticed she always falls “smack in the middle” of experiences. She lost a child but brought one home. She experienced military sexual trauma but avoided more extreme forms. This ability to hold the middle ground and understand nuance is her gift. It allows her to help people across the spectrum of suffering.

Community Healing: We Cannot Do This Alone

Throughout our conversation, one theme emerged: the healing journey cannot be traveled alone. Alexa found community in Facebook groups, through her blog, through Sunshine After the Storm, and through grief retreats she organized.

Now, as a publishing consultant running Kat Biggie Press, Alexa helps other women share their stories, teaching them how writing to heal transformed her life.

“Community building is where it’s at for me,” Alexa told me. “At the root of everything, I did not get here alone. I got here with lots of women who supported me throughout the way.”

This is exactly where I am. I did not heal alone. Now I create community for others through my work as The HEALing Mentor.

Healing Retreats: Creating Sacred Space

Alexa has organized grief retreats for grieving mothers and is contemplating expanding into broader healing retreats incorporating all her gifts: writing to heal, breathwork for healing, community building, spiritual healing practices.

She dreams of starting a healing farm or retreat center where grief and healing retreats could take place in beautiful spaces.

Healing retreats offer concentrated time and sacred space away from daily responsibilities and trauma triggers, surrounded by a supportive community.

How to Heal: Lessons from Alexa’s Journey

Based on Alexa’s healing journey, here are practical insights for anyone asking how to heal:

Start with writing to heal. Journaling for healing creates emotional release. Get a beautiful journal (like Permission to Thrive) and commit to showing up on the page.

Explore multiple healing modalities. Try breathwork for healing, yoga, meditation, Reiki, and EMDR. The healing journey requires experimenting to find what addresses your trauma triggers.

Use healing affirmations. Statements like “It’s okay to let go of pain while keeping the love intact” help rewire thought patterns.

Seek community healing. Find your people through grief retreats, online support groups, or healing retreats. Connection reduces isolation and accelerates spiritual healing.

Address cPTSD healing specifically. Complex trauma lives in the body. You’ll need body-based healing modalities beyond talk therapy.

Do inner child healing work. Much suffering comes from childhood wounds. Inner child healing helps you give that younger version of yourself what they needed.

Practice breathwork for healing. Breathing bridges the mind and body, calming panic attacks and processing trauma triggers.

Trust your intuition. Spiritual healing requires listening to that inner knowing. Pay attention when you feel pulled toward certain healing modalities.

Expect layers. Healing happens in spirals, working through the same territory at deeper levels as you become ready.

Create from your pain. Whether through writing to heal, art, or music, transforming suffering into something beautiful is powerful medicine.

Remember permission to thrive. You’re allowed to heal. You’re allowed to be happy again while still honoring what you’ve lost or endured.

The Spiritual Healing That Changes Everything

What gives me profound hope about Alexa’s story is her lifelong commitment to spiritual healing. She keeps showing up for the work, exploring healing modalities, building community healing spaces, writing to heal, and teaching others.

She named her publishing company after Katherine. She published the Permission to Thrive journal on the 12th anniversary of Katherine’s birth and death. She carries her daughter as her North Star.

Alexa jokes that “for a baby that was only here for two days, she’s had more impact than any other human on earth when you just take it down for the amount of time here versus what’s come out of their life.” Katherine’s brief physical presence created ripples through every woman Alexa helps, every person who reads Permission to Thrive, every mother who received a Sunshine After the Storm care package.

That is the power of turning pain into purpose. That is what spiritually healing ourselves makes possible.

Your Healing Journey Begins Now

Alexa’s story demonstrates that learning how to heal requires courage, community, multiple healing modalities, and commitment. Whether you’re working through grief recovery, healing from abuse, or doing inner child healing work, the path involves trying different approaches, building a supportive community, and trusting the spiritual healing process.

The healing journey is worth it. Emotional release is possible. Community healing reduces isolation.

Writing to heal processes what words alone cannot. Breathwork for healing calms the nervous system. Healing retreats offer concentrated transformation. Healing affirmations rewire thought patterns. And cPTSD healing, while challenging, frees us from living in constant fear of trauma triggers.

You can travel this path supported. Journals like Permission to Thrive provide structured guidance through healing modalities. Publishing opportunities through consultants like Alexa help you share your story and discover that writing to heal transforms both writer and reader.

Healing from abuse, grief recovery, breaking generational cycles, inner child healing work, all of it is possible when we commit to spiritual healing. When we explore healing modalities. When we seek community healing. When we trust our intuition about what we need next on the healing journey.

As Alexa discovered, you can still be sad for what you’ve lost while living a fulfilled life and being happy. You have permission to thrive. Two souls intersected briefly to create purpose for thousands.

Your suffering, transformed through spiritual healing, will create ripples you cannot yet imagine.

Begin now. Start with one healing modality. Write one page in a journal. Take one healing breath. Reach out to one person for community healing support. That is how to heal. One brave choice at a time.

Ready to begin your healing journey? Learn more about Alexa Bigwarfe’s work at AlexaBigwarfe.com. Order the Permission to Thrive journal. Explore resources through Sunshine After the Storm for grieving mothers. Consider attending healing retreats or grief retreats to deepen your practice of spiritual healing. And for more resources on healing from abuse, cPTSD healing, inner child healing, and breaking generational cycles, visit our Resources page and watch or listen to my podcast, Let’s HEAL! with Beth Jones.

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