Inanna Sanctuary: Integrative Health

Inanna Sanctuary: Integrative Health Contact information, map and directions, contact form, opening hours, services, ratings, photos, videos and announcements from Inanna Sanctuary: Integrative Health, Alternative & holistic health service, Cranbrook, BC.

As an experienced trauma informed psychosomatic therapist, RN, Emotion Code practitioner & certified herbalist, I walk with you as you listen to the secrets your body has been whispering, as you release trapped emotions & tap into your body's deep wisdom

Genuine caring information for men who are struggling and exposing the pattern of targeting these men to profit from the...
01/20/2026

Genuine caring information for men who are struggling and exposing the pattern of targeting these men to profit from their struggles. This is excellent information!

The Grief of Identity LossGrief does not always arrive with a death. Sometimes, it arrives quietly, without a funeral or...
01/12/2026

The Grief of Identity Loss

Grief does not always arrive with a death. Sometimes, it arrives quietly, without a funeral or flowers, in the still ache of who we no longer are. Identity loss, particularly when shaped by chronic illness or long-term limitation, ushers in a profound and often unacknowledged form of grief. This grief can be just as deep, just as consuming, and just as sacred as mourning the loss of a beloved person.

When the body changes — through illness, injury, disability, or prolonged pain — we are not only facing physical suffering. We are facing the unraveling of a self we once knew intimately. The identity built through strength, reliability, competence, and contribution begins to slip from our grasp. What we once offered freely — our labour, our endurance, our ability to provide or protect — may no longer be available in the same way. And for those whose sense of worth has been shaped by service, work, and care for others, this loss can cut to the core.

I witnessed this deeply through my son-in-law. He was a man who worked tirelessly…first to support his family of origin, and later to provide for the family he created with my daughter. His identity was woven from devotion, skill, and responsibility. He was very skilled in his work and carried a strong ethic of contribution to both family and community. Being a provider was not simply something he did; it was who he was.

When he developed a serious chronic illness, everything changed. For years, he lived with ongoing pain, multiple surgeries, invasive treatments, and repeated medical crises, several of which nearly took his life. And yet, he continued to work, to travel for jobs, to push his body far beyond what it could sustain. Each attempt to maintain his former identity came at a cost. He experienced acute health emergencies in distant locations, creating additional emotional and financial strain…not only for himself, but for those who loved him. Still, he could not bring himself to stop. To let go of that role felt like failure. Like erasure.

This is the particular cruelty of identity grief: the world continues to reward endurance long past the point where it is safe, while offering little language or permission for surrender. There was no clear moment where he could say, This is over. Instead, there was the slow, relentless shedding of an identity he loved and believed in…one that had given his life meaning and dignity.

Less than two years before his death, he was diagnosed with stage three cancer. He was only forty years old.

And it was here, at the edge of his life, that something shifted. In this final chapter, he began, slowly and humbly, to ask for help. To receive care instead of always giving it. To allow others to step in. And what unfolded was extraordinary. People came from everywhere — family, friends, community — grateful beyond words to finally offer something back to a man who had given so much for so long. He was loved by so many, and that love was no longer something he had to earn through effort or sacrifice. It simply surrounded him.

The grief of identity loss is layered. It holds sorrow for the self we once were, fear of what lies ahead, and the ache of being unseen in our struggle. It often carries shame, especially in cultures that equate worth with productivity, and a longing to be recognized not for who we are trying to become, but for who we once were and are now losing. Because this grief does not arrive with ceremony or clear markers, it is often endured alone.

Yet within this loss lies sacred ground.

When we allow ourselves to mourn the identities we have outgrown, or been forced to relinquish, we honour the lives we have lived with honesty and tenderness. This is not about spiritual bypassing or rushing toward reinvention. It is about allowing the full weight of change to be felt. Grief asks us to pause, to soften, to meet ourselves in the rawness of unbecoming.

Over time, something new may emerge. A quieter identity. A truer one. One not defined by output, strength, or usefulness, but by presence, love, and the courage to receive. My son-in-law’s final years revealed this truth with heartbreaking clarity: that being held is not weakness, and that allowing others to care for us can be a profound act of love.

The grief of identity loss is real. It deserves ceremony. It deserves expression. And it deserves reverence. In naming it, we reclaim our right to mourn what has passed…and to open, gently and honestly, to what may yet be possible.

“To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.”
~ Mary Oliver

We live in a grief-illiterate culture.Instead of teaching people how to grieve, we teach them how to function around the...
12/01/2025

We live in a grief-illiterate culture.

Instead of teaching people how to grieve, we teach them how to function around their grief. We label normal, sane heartbreak as “disorder,” rush to pathologize deep sorrow, and then wonder why so many of us feel numb, dissociated, or like we’re “doing it wrong” when someone we love dies.

Our ancestors understood something we’ve largely forgotten: grief is not a personal pathology, it’s a relational event. It belongs to the whole village. The old ways gathered people in kitchens and living rooms, around fires and gravesides…wailing, singing, holding each other, feeding each other, telling stories until the tears and laughter braided together.

Now? We sedate. We prescribe. We hustle harder.
We scroll. We binge. We pour another drink.
We treat grief like a problem to be fixed instead of a holy task to be tended.

And because we refuse to meet grief in community, the system keeps trying to invent new ways to “manage” it for us.

Right now, researchers are studying intranasal oxytocin — a hormone spray up the nose — to see if it can shift how widowed people react to photos of their dead spouses. Small studies show it can reduce avoidance and slightly change brain connectivity in people with complicated grief.

Let that sink in: instead of giving people circles to cry in, songs to sing, altars to tend, bodies to lean on, and time, we give them brain scans and hormone sprays and call it “progress.”

This isn’t about shaming anyone who uses medication or experimental treatments. Sometimes those things are needed and lifesaving.
But no nasal spray, pill, or fMRI machine can give us what we most desperately need in grief:
• people who will sit in the wreckage with us
• rituals that help our bodies do the grieving they’re wired to do
• communities that don’t flinch at tears, rage, or silence
• permission to hurt for as long as love requires

Grief is not a malfunction. It is love trying to find its new shape.

Until we remember how to grieve together, we’ll keep medicalizing what is, at its core, a sacred human capacity.

If you’re grieving, you are not broken. You are not “too much.” You are doing something our culture has forgotten how to hold…and that doesn’t make you sick. It makes you human.

~ Freyja Inanna



Photo credit Pexels

“Grief is not something to ‘get over.’ It’s something to move with, like a dance, like a wave.” Available worldwide on ...
12/01/2025

“Grief is not something to ‘get over.’ It’s something to move with, like a dance, like a wave.”

Available worldwide on Amazon 🙏🏼❤️📚

Grief is love moving in new ways. Draw it. Sing it. Remember it. Feel it. There’s no “right” way to grieve.
11/21/2025

Grief is love moving in new ways.

Draw it. Sing it. Remember it. Feel it. There’s no “right” way to grieve.

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Agents of Emancipation!

Mika and Freyja are a sacred, passionate partnership, well grounded in the healing arts and the alchemy of rebirth, and are the co-founders of 'Inanna Sanctuary LLC'. They are known in their circles for seeing beyond the constraints of society’s traditional beliefs around healing and shame and taking a more holistic and open view, both in their own life paths and in their work with others. Mika and Freyja, are powerfully matched catalysts for growth, showing up as teachers, mentors and Life Alchemists with their unique blend of intuition, connection, experience and talent. Freyja’s twenty plus years of training and experience as a registered nurse and midwife working intimately with women and their families as they go through pregnancy and childbirth have given her a deep connection with women and she knows how to engage with them fully in the process of stepping into their power. Midwife (german “Mit-wife”) literally means “with woman” and was the perfect preparation for Freyja’s work as an Trauma Release practitioner as she supports each woman through the intense and transformative process of rebirthing her true identity. Freyja also has training in aromatherapy, crystal therapy, and is a certified herbalist, certified reflexologist, Reiki Master and Psychosomatic Therapist. Mika was educated in engineering and physics as an adult, and has thirty years experience in the nuclear, medical and semiconductor industries. Mika has brought a unique perspective in their studies and research over the last twelve years into healing trauma, past and present, and how history relates to religion and cultural norms. Also a Reiki Master, Mika combines an analytical, philosophical approach with an intuitive nature for effective, synergetic results. Mika and Freyja have drawn the best pieces from many different modalities, including Psychosomatic Therapy, Reiki, NLP, Crystal Therapy, Sound Medicine, Aromatherapy, EFT and others, and integrated them to create their own signature process. Their art is in the combining of their gifts in a way that expresses their passion for creating healing at a deep level and shifting society’s thinking around emotional health and relationships. Together, they work with strong, motivated women and men to help them release stored emotions, shame, blocks and trauma so they can access their full power. When you really embrace your capacity to experience life at a deep level, you live life from a place of feeling tapped in, turned on and powerful…glowing!

“People come to us to set themselves free!”