0:00

I've got a very special episode to

0:02

share with you today, and it's part of a series

0:04

we're releasing called Something to Normalize.

0:07

One of the reasons I've always loved the Wolf

0:09

Parable is because it normalizes

0:11

being human and having difficult emotions.

0:14

These podcast episodes feature my partner

0:16

Ginny, talking with her friend and previous

0:19

guest of the show, Brandy Lust. In

0:21

these unguarded conversations, they'll

0:23

be sharing their lives and perspectives as

0:25

women, alongside insights from

0:27

experts, researchers, and writers

0:29

on topics that are hard to talk about. We

0:32

tend to keep these things to ourselves, though,

0:34

and when we do, it can breed a sense

0:36

of being the only one, feelings

0:38

of shame, or evidence we're somehow

0:40

doing life wrong. Brandy and Ginny

0:42

hope that by giving voice to experiences,

0:45

feelings, and thoughts we often keep

0:47

to ourselves, we can create a community

0:49

with less shame and a deeper sense of

0:51

belonging. I am so happy to share

0:53

their voices with you. I think you'll find these

0:56

episodes a wonderfully nourishing and

0:58

supportive addition to the regular scheduled

1:00

When you feed podcast episodes, you

1:03

are used to hearing here and now

1:05

I'm proud to present to you Something to

1:07

Normalize.

1:19

Welcome friends, and welcome friend

1:21

Hey, Brandy, Hi Jenny, Welcome

1:24

everybody to our

1:27

conversation here on

1:29

our podcast Something to Normalize.

1:31

Today, we're going to be

1:34

normalizing the experience

1:36

and landscape of grief. And it's

1:39

a weighty topic, right

1:42

and a universal one, and

1:44

we're going to be walking this road together.

1:47

So I feel like when we kind of carry the

1:49

burden of grief together, it doesn't

1:51

feel quite as heavy as when we're alone.

1:54

So hopefully this conversation

1:56

will allow us to just wade into

1:58

these waters with one another and come

2:01

out of it feeling some

2:03

sense of healing and not aloneness

2:06

and a little bit wiser.

2:08

What do you think that sounds beautiful?

2:11

You want to tell folks who you are? Jenny?

2:14

Yes, Yes, great idea.

2:16

Brandy, Yes, So I'm

2:18

Jinny Gay and I am a certified

2:21

mindfulness and meditation teacher, and

2:23

I help people become more

2:25

aware of and work skillfully in

2:28

navigating our relationship with thoughts

2:30

and emotions and experiences so

2:33

that we can feel less stress and less

2:35

struggle and more freedom, more

2:37

joy, more ease with life.

2:40

And I'm Brandy and

2:43

I help organizations to

2:45

build cultures that support well

2:48

being.

2:48

Yeah, so, today, like I said, we're going to be exploring

2:51

the topic and experience of grief, right,

2:53

so specifically grief over

2:55

the loss of a loved one. I mean, I specify

2:58

that because we can have grief

3:00

over the loss of really

3:02

anything, be it a person

3:04

or a pet, a relationship,

3:07

a dream we had that will no longer

3:09

happen. I mean, you know, anything

3:11

that we lose can cause us to have some grief.

3:14

So we might venture out into that,

3:16

into the other terrain of grief. But I

3:18

think you and I have had personal

3:21

experience with grief of a loss of a loved

3:23

one, right, So we thought we would start

3:25

there and just kind of share a bit about

3:27

our own experiences so we

3:29

have some context, right of like where we're

3:32

coming from.

3:32

Yeah, And I know your grief

3:35

experience is much

3:37

more recent than mine, and so

3:39

I'm happy to start the conversation and

3:41

talk about how that was for me. And

3:45

then I want to give you lots of space. I

3:47

know that place can be tender so a way that feels

3:49

supportive for you. So I can talk

3:51

about the most profound experience

3:53

that I have of grief in my own life is

3:56

certainly losing my grandma,

4:00

who was a mentor to

4:02

me in my spiritual life as

4:04

I was growing up.

4:05

She was a new agent. So she would give me like.

4:08

All of these different books that I should be

4:10

reading and just really

4:12

talked to me always like I

4:15

was an adult and like my opinions

4:17

mattered to her, And we

4:20

had a special relationship because

4:22

I was her first grandchild. I

4:25

was a girl, and she, you know, just really

4:29

wanted to have that bond, and

4:31

so I was also named after her. My middle

4:33

name is Rose. She passed away

4:35

eight years ago, and it was

4:37

after having had cancer

4:40

for over a decade. But

4:43

the actual death process, once

4:45

it began and ernest lasted probably

4:48

about six or seven months. And so it

4:50

was that time in my life where I

4:53

was navigating a lot of personally

4:55

tumultuous things at the

4:57

same time. And I've definitely talked about that on

5:00

the podcast previously, But I

5:03

was trying to balance

5:05

out a lot of difficult things that were happening

5:08

in my life while also really

5:10

really wanting to be present with her. And

5:14

I still feel tremendously honored

5:16

that I was able to be.

5:19

Kind of a partner in her death process.

5:22

So I once a week would go and

5:24

spend the night at her house instead

5:26

of going home, and we

5:28

would just set up late into the night, and she

5:31

would retell her life to me

5:33

and sometimes share things with me that she hadn't

5:35

really shared on exactly that way

5:37

before, and so I was

5:40

really honored to have

5:42

held that experience for her. And

5:45

what I remember about that time in

5:47

regards to grief is that she

5:50

was feeling very alone in her death process because

5:52

it wasn't something that people wanted to

5:54

talk about with her, and so I

5:56

was the safe space where she could really flesh

5:59

out how it felt to be dying

6:02

and knowing that she was

6:05

going to die, and other people

6:07

around her actually weren't as comfortable

6:09

with that as she was.

6:12

And I remember one really important

6:14

conversation for me.

6:16

Because it's always been something that's sort of lodged

6:18

in my heart, is like, if that's the one thing that

6:20

I did in the world, I

6:23

would feel satisfied with that.

6:24

And it was just the conversation.

6:27

We were talking about this the idea of dying

6:29

and people not really feeling comfortable with it, and

6:31

she said, you're like a lifeboat,

6:34

and I feel like you're just saving me and

6:37

everything that she has given me in life. Just

6:39

the fact that I could exchange in that moment like

6:41

some small thing was really profound.

6:44

Her death process was not pretty.

6:47

I know that you know, Jenny, because you've sat with

6:50

someone in the actual dying process.

6:53

And at the same time, I

6:56

really felt this.

6:58

Energy from her.

7:00

This I almost see it as like a glowing

7:02

yellow light. That's how

7:04

I perceive it even in my mind now.

7:07

That just made me.

7:08

Feel comfortable to some extent

7:10

with what she was going through. And

7:13

what I want to say about grief

7:16

is that that light that I

7:18

felt and experienced actually

7:21

stayed with me after she died.

7:24

And so I still

7:26

don't really have words to explain exactly

7:29

what happened, but I

7:31

remember when she took her

7:33

last breath, it was like I just like

7:36

sort of gasped almost I was sitting

7:38

on the bed with her and had my hands on her

7:40

body when she

7:42

took her last breath, and it

7:45

just it shook

7:47

me in this way where I remember

7:49

yelling, like sort of

7:51

crying out from grief, but then also

7:54

just this like gasping for air sort of

7:56

feeling that I had in the moment, and

7:59

then just this knowing it

8:01

was like she had left her body and now

8:03

she was everywhere.

8:04

That's what it felt like.

8:07

I was really honored

8:09

to have walked with her, not just in her

8:11

death experience, but also planning what

8:13

would happen after she passed away.

8:15

And so I was the organizer

8:18

of her celebration of life. And

8:21

she was an artist. She'd

8:23

written poetry, so we had little booklets

8:25

of her poetry, and we had some of her

8:28

paintings around the room. And

8:31

people really showed

8:33

up for her in mass, and it was

8:36

very beautiful, and

8:38

a lot of people because they were

8:40

so close with her, the folks that she'd chosen to

8:42

participate in the ceremony, they

8:44

really struggled to even

8:46

just get language out. Even

8:48

the person who was supposed to sort

8:50

of manage the ceremony had

8:53

some trouble with that. And I just remember

8:55

feeling so strong that day because

8:58

I knew that I needed to get up and sort

9:00

of claim this light that

9:02

I was feeling, and that I

9:04

felt like it had left me with just this

9:06

gift that I didn't know how it was going

9:09

to go out into the world, but

9:11

I knew that it was important for me to

9:13

stand up and be strong and sort of say like

9:16

she was a person who brought

9:19

love into the world, and I want to do that too.

9:21

I want to continue to walk along that path.

9:24

And so that grief experience of feeling

9:26

her presence it's poignant

9:29

because I both felt her everywhere and

9:31

she was completely gone. So

9:34

the dichotomy between those two

9:36

things sometimes meant that I would

9:38

just be driving in the car and

9:40

then completely lose

9:42

it, you know. I had, I

9:44

would say, a lot of moments that were really

9:47

challenging in that way where grief

9:49

really overtook me. And then I also

9:51

had a lot of moments where

9:54

I felt her presence so clearly.

9:56

I'm specifically remembering pulling over

9:58

my car, I'm looking up at the

10:00

sky.

10:01

It was this beautiful morning.

10:02

Sky and all of these colors, and it

10:05

just looked like there was a path of clouds leading down

10:07

to earth and feeling like, yeah,

10:09

she's up there, and

10:12

I don't know what that means, you know, up

10:14

there around here wherever. But

10:17

those two things are really what

10:19

I remember. Both the sharpness

10:22

the poignancy of wow,

10:24

I cannot believe that she's not here, combined

10:27

with this just sense that she's

10:29

everywhere and so I'll pause

10:31

there. This happened eight years ago, so I've

10:33

had a lot of transitions in my grief process

10:35

since then. But I'd love to hear

10:38

some of your experience with grief and why

10:40

this topic is so important to you.

10:42

Well, I would love to share that. Can

10:44

I ask you a question first about your

10:47

story?

10:47

Yeah? Of course?

10:49

So do you still feel

10:53

that light? Do you still feel

10:55

that her presence as everywhere?

10:58

And also she's gone, and

11:00

or has that really evolved

11:03

since her death up until now? For you, I

11:06

do still feel her presence.

11:08

I think it's dissipated to

11:11

the extent that it's not it's

11:13

not as visible for me twenty

11:16

four hours a day like it was immediately

11:19

after she passed away. But actually,

11:23

in preparation for even just this

11:25

conversation, I sort of

11:27

sat down and interfaced

11:29

with her a little bit. I guess you could say I

11:32

was going to talk about this later.

11:34

But a few months ago I had entered

11:36

into this.

11:38

Training program and made really great friends with

11:40

someone who was in the program who happened

11:42

to be a real believer

11:44

and practitioner of taro, which

11:47

my grandma did tarot readings

11:49

for people.

11:50

And when we cleared out her house.

11:53

I picked up a decka for tarot

11:55

cars, and they're these beautiful, like very

11:58

nineteen seventies style

12:01

tarot cards that just smell

12:03

like an old book and they're just incredible. And

12:06

my friend had said, you have to use

12:09

those, like She'll talk to you through

12:11

these tarot cards. And so it's

12:13

become something that I do to

12:15

stay connected to her. I just

12:18

pull them out and sort of say, okay,

12:20

you know, and sometimes I have something specific

12:22

that I'm thinking about, and sometimes I just want

12:24

to kind of get a feel for where I am. But

12:26

I really get a sense

12:29

of her when I'm doing that, just that the power

12:31

of that ritual. So I definitely

12:33

still feel her presence, and

12:36

I do still feel the loss. And it's incredible

12:40

how at certain moments it overtakes

12:43

me and it's like it happened yesterday.

12:44

Yeah, Yeah, it is, isn't

12:47

it? And it sneaks up when you sometimes

12:49

it's a dodgy thing that seems

12:51

to have an agenda in a timeline sort

12:54

of of its own. Yeah,

12:57

I mean, do you feel like you're grief the

12:59

pain and the feeling of grief

13:01

over the loss of her, You

13:03

know, how has that changed? Like how

13:05

would you describe it today compared

13:08

with how it was in the early months after she

13:11

passed.

13:12

Yeah, I mean, I

13:14

think I'd like to bring in another voice

13:16

here, because in preparation for this conversation,

13:18

I did do a little bit of research, and

13:22

one of the things that I found to be a good

13:24

description of kind of how I experienced

13:26

it is the difference between grief

13:28

and grieving. And grief

13:30

is the poignant emotion

13:33

of loss. It's that overwhelming

13:35

feeling that just sort of hits

13:37

us like a wave, takes our breath away. And

13:40

then grieving is actually a learning process,

13:43

and that learning process is

13:46

how we begin to understand

13:48

what life looks like without that person, what

13:50

are our new habits, what are our

13:52

new ways of being? And

13:55

that learning impacts

13:58

the way that we experience

14:00

grief. And so over

14:03

time, understanding, the

14:05

cognitive understanding, and the new habits

14:08

and all of those things actually

14:11

decrease the experience of grief,

14:14

or if not decrease the poignancy. We

14:16

have much more of a sense of our own capabilities

14:19

to move through the world without that person, and

14:21

so they interact with one another. I

14:23

want to mention too, these ideas

14:26

that I'm describing are from Mary

14:28

Francis O'Connor, who wrote a book called The

14:30

Grieving Brain, and

14:32

I read a little bit about this in

14:35

an interview that she did with NPR,

14:38

And that's a good analogy for my own experience

14:41

because I have learned

14:43

to navigate the

14:45

world without her present in it, and

14:48

I still feel that poignancy, but I also

14:51

feel strong in my own capabilities, if that

14:53

makes sense.

14:53

Yeah, it makes total sense. It makes total

14:56

sense. I really connect with a lot

14:58

of what you said there. Yeah, well, thank thank you

15:00

for diving into that weighty but also

15:02

beautiful territory. I'll share

15:04

a little bit about my story, which

15:07

you alluded to, is more recent. So I

15:10

lost my mom October fourteenth

15:12

of twenty twenty two, which,

15:15

at the time we're recording this was

15:17

just about three or so months ago. But

15:20

it was not a sudden and unexpected

15:22

loss. It was a loss that was a

15:24

long time coming and happened little by little

15:27

because she had Alzheimer's

15:29

disease and she was diagnosed

15:31

about seven years ago,

15:34

and looking back, loved

15:36

ones that have this disease can sort of probably relate

15:38

to this. I feel like it started even earlier than that. I'm

15:41

starting to see things that made sense

15:43

in a certain light at the time

15:46

makes sense in a different light now. So

15:49

I feel like the grieving process

15:51

for me really kind of started

15:54

with that diagnosis because

15:56

what I knew was a couple of

15:59

things. I knew she was dying

16:01

and it would take a long time, and

16:04

I knew that she was

16:06

not the same mother as the mother

16:09

I had known for most of my

16:11

life. And so that

16:13

diagnosis landed on me with

16:15

such a wave of

16:18

disorienting sadness and felt really

16:20

overwhelming and bewildering and

16:23

unbelievable. And the grief

16:25

I felt it was a weight that

16:28

even if I wasn't actively crying,

16:32

I felt present, really present

16:34

sort of all the time, and it made it hard

16:36

to do life with any

16:38

coherence and focus. I

16:41

can remember having moments

16:43

of realization, like I was sitting in

16:45

a traffic light by her house. Eric

16:47

and I were her primary

16:49

caretakers, so we were there two weeks of every

16:51

month with her in her house, and we

16:54

arranged all the care that she ended up

16:56

having, so we were very involved, I'm

16:58

grateful to say. And I was by

17:00

her house in the car and it just hit me

17:03

like I never got to say goodbye to

17:05

the mother I always knew,

17:08

like when was the point that she clicked

17:10

out? You know, I mean, of course it was little by

17:12

little, but like there must have been a tipping point,

17:15

and like when was that? How long ago was

17:17

that? And I was so sad that I

17:19

didn't get to tell that mom,

17:21

thank you and I love you and I'm so you know

17:24

that kind of thing. And then

17:26

as the disease progressed and

17:29

we hit different points of like where

17:31

she would lose different capabilities,

17:34

that loss would be present again. And it

17:36

was as if, you know, I would just be met

17:39

with the experience of losing her in

17:41

a very present way. My grief

17:43

would be very accessible and present to

17:45

me over the experience

17:47

of losing her, so like you know, when she

17:50

started to not be able to like speak

17:53

very well or intelligibly, Like I

17:55

can remember sitting in the car with Eric.

17:58

We were driving home because she had

18:00

entered into this delirium

18:03

and it was so acute that she

18:05

was going to the hospital. Her caregiver was taking there.

18:07

So Eric and I were headed there from Ohio, and

18:09

I remember talking to her and

18:11

saying, like, we're coming. I could not understand

18:14

a word she was saying back to me, and it was

18:16

just so scary because I was like, oh my gosh,

18:18

is this how she talks now? Like this was

18:21

seven years of moments like this, And I feel

18:23

like what that equated

18:25

to for me was losing her

18:27

little by little and grieving that little by

18:29

little along the way, as opposed to

18:32

it being a one time loss at her death.

18:34

And in ways, I'm really grateful

18:37

for that because it's

18:40

almost like she t traded her

18:42

own death for me, you know, which I know is not

18:45

the truth, but like that's what it ended

18:47

up being, is that I didn't lose her all at once.

18:49

I lost her little by little, and it made it, I

18:51

think, maybe more bearable in some ways

18:54

and more agonizing

18:56

in others, because it was a seven year

18:58

experience as opposed to ripping

19:01

the band aid off of one big

19:03

loss. So it's not like there's ever really

19:05

a pleasant way to go about this. But in

19:07

hindsight, it had its benefits, but then it also had

19:09

its, like particular agonies. I

19:12

also think I early on really

19:14

was struck by how not only was I

19:17

sad, but I had a really difficult time

19:19

being with her grief or even

19:21

projecting onto her what I

19:23

thought she might be going through as it relates

19:26

to this diagnosis in her own death.

19:28

And that was actually a really

19:31

helpful realization because it helped ME begin

19:33

to distinguish between my grief over her

19:35

death and then the grief that I anticipate

19:37

she might be having versus like her

19:39

actual experience. They were

19:42

all one big ball for me of yarn that

19:44

was like initially really impossible

19:46

to untangle and therefore kind of really difficult

19:49

to navigate. You know, it is felled, messy

19:51

and big, and I think in a

19:53

lot of ways it illuminated how kind of enmeshed

19:56

we were. That's kind

19:58

of when I began to really feel my

20:00

way into drawing some helpful boundaries

20:02

around what was mine and what I could

20:04

process and feel in a healing

20:07

way, and that I couldn't

20:09

grieve for her. She would

20:11

be walking down a road I couldn't walk with her, and

20:13

I really wanted to do it all for

20:16

her because she was cognitively so limited

20:18

already. But what actually

20:20

ended up being was that what I saw for her

20:22

anyway, is that that also helped her

20:25

not necessarily feel the full

20:27

weight of that diagnosis, because she didn't

20:29

quite understand the full implications,

20:31

I don't think, and you

20:33

know, I could let go a little bit of feeling

20:36

like I could do any of it for her. So

20:38

there was just a lot there, and over time

20:40

that evolved in various ways.

20:43

Actually, in hindsight, the first four

20:45

years were the hardest for me because

20:47

she was the most present and I could

20:49

interact with her, and that meant

20:51

things like, you know, she couldn't understand

20:53

that I had gone to the grocery and bought her food, so

20:55

like, she constantly felt like there was no food

20:58

in the house and I constantly was

21:00

having to reassure her there was. But that was impossible.

21:02

She never I mean, even if I showed it to her on the counter,

21:04

she would say, well, I just went and got that, and

21:07

you know, the caregivers are going to eat that, and I'll

21:09

have no food by dinner time. It was an impossible

21:12

thing to comfort her, right, So then I

21:14

had to sort of learn how to be with the

21:17

grief of not even being able

21:19

to make it better for her in any way, you know,

21:22

so much to it. But then

21:24

when she died, I'm so grateful that I

21:26

was able to be with her. It took her a week to

21:28

go through the dying process, and I was able to be with her

21:30

that whole week. It felt really sacred,

21:33

and I was able to be with her the moment

21:35

she took her last breath, kind of like

21:37

what you said, I had my hand on her chest,

21:40

telling her I loved her, and

21:43

that felt like such a gift to be able

21:46

to see it through to the literal very end. And

21:49

immediately she looked different to me after

21:51

she died. It was like she was not her anymore.

21:55

And almost immediately

21:57

it was like she wasn't bound by

21:59

her body anymore. I almost felt closer

22:01

to her than I had felt in the last seven

22:04

years, because all of a sudden she was released

22:06

from the disease, and like it was almost

22:08

communion with her again. I felt her

22:10

in me, like I could feel her presence

22:13

in and with me very

22:15

closely up until her funeral really,

22:17

which had to be some time after. I

22:20

mean, I would ask a question like help me, or

22:22

what do you think about this? And it was as if I could get an

22:24

immediate answer, and it was really clear to me

22:26

that like it was from her. And

22:29

then after the funeral, I felt

22:31

like it wasn't as close, like she

22:33

wasn't in me. Anymore, she had gone somewhere

22:35

else. But what I've come to know

22:38

and realize is that the connection

22:41

with her still lives inside of

22:43

me. Right I don't know where

22:45

she is, but I do

22:47

know that I can connect with her

22:50

and the memory of her in a present

22:52

moment way inside of me, and

22:54

I can actually nurture that, and that

22:56

feels like connection with her. I

22:59

certainly had had some acute grief

23:01

after her death. It's almost

23:03

like since I was able to be present with the grief through

23:05

the seven years of her slow death, I

23:08

don't feel like right now I have a lot

23:10

of residual grief to deal with over

23:12

that stuff. I can be very present with what's

23:15

here right now, and so it

23:17

feels different than I thought it would feel in that

23:19

way, not quite as

23:22

incapacitating as I thought it

23:24

might feel to have her die. So

23:26

yeah, I mean, that's my story as it stands

23:28

today. Over her loss. I miss

23:31

her so much and

23:33

it completely boggles my mind that I

23:36

don't know if I'll ever see her again

23:38

in any way, shape or form, because I just don't know what

23:40

happens after death. It's staggering

23:43

to me and I can't even comprehend that. Yeah,

23:45

but the memory of her that I've connected with is

23:47

the mother she was to me when

23:50

I was a little girl, which are the happiest

23:52

memories of her I have, really and

23:54

so I love connecting back

23:56

to that and remembering that. So yeah,

23:59

I'll pause for that for a

24:01

minute. Thank you for listening, Brandy.

24:03

You're such a good listener.

24:05

It's nice to hear all of that story together.

24:08

I mean, you know, we've talked in bits

24:10

and pieces about things, but this has

24:12

been a really present experience throughout our friendship,

24:15

so let's just good to hear all of that.

24:19

I've started sending a couple of text messages

24:21

after each podcast listener with positive

24:24

reminders about what's discussed and

24:26

invitations to apply the wisdom to your

24:28

life. It's free, and listeners

24:30

have told me that these texts really helped to pull

24:32

them out of autopilot and reconnect

24:35

them with what's important. When you get a text

24:37

for me during your day to day life, it's one

24:39

more thing that helps you further bridge

24:41

that gap between what you know and

24:44

what you do. Positive messages

24:46

when you need them from me to you.

24:49

So if you'd like to hear from me a few times a week,

24:51

via text. Go to oneufeed dot

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net slash text and sign up

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for free.

24:56

I did have a question that I wanted to ask

24:58

about described how the

25:01

grief process has been different since she passed

25:03

away. And we've talked a little bit about this before.

25:06

What's been really different than

25:08

what you thought? It sounds like the fact that some

25:10

of that acute grief has already been experienced,

25:13

that's part of it.

25:14

Are there other things that are different than what you thought?

25:16

Yeah?

25:16

Yeah, I'm so grateful you asked that question. You

25:19

know, one of my biggest fears my entire

25:21

life up until now

25:23

was losing my mom. I honestly

25:25

did not know how I was going

25:28

to do life like it was this big,

25:31

scary, awful thing

25:35

that I was terrified of for

25:37

my whole life. And I think some of that comes

25:39

from, like my mom lost

25:42

her mom when I was just

25:44

one one and a half years old from lung cancer.

25:47

The trauma of that was something

25:49

I don't have a verbal memory of, but

25:51

it left this imprint on me, I think,

25:55

And then throughout life she would talk about

25:57

how permanent death is

26:00

in this life and how like time is the most

26:02

precious thing we have, it's

26:04

so limited you know, we just need

26:06

to cherish our time together, you know, we

26:08

won't always have one another. And standing

26:10

on this side of her death, now, what I think

26:13

she meant was just realizing

26:15

the preciousness of life, because you know,

26:17

it just is so finite. But

26:20

what it felt like to me was

26:23

like always feeling like I

26:25

wasn't spending enough time with her and that I would

26:27

always regret it later, like I just

26:29

couldn't see myself past her death. The anticipation

26:32

of it felt like this was going to be something

26:35

that is questionable if I would ever really

26:37

recover from. And what it's

26:39

turned out to be is

26:42

something that I can navigate.

26:46

It's not to say that I don't feel deeply sad,

26:49

and it's not to say that I don't feel

26:51

like or I haven't had moments of feeling like

26:53

my north star has like gone out,

26:55

and it feels like I don't know how to be in the world

26:57

without my mom in the world. She's

26:59

my touchstone, you know. I mean, it's certainly

27:02

disorienting, and it's deeply

27:04

sad. All of those things are absolutely

27:06

true, and I'm okay, I am so

27:08

grateful because coincidentally,

27:10

or that's not the right word, but like, at the same

27:13

time as she was dying, I was really

27:15

developing and learning skills

27:17

on how to be with my own uncomfortable

27:20

emotions or unpleasant emotions,

27:22

And so I feel like I've upskilled in

27:24

a lot of ways on how to be with this really

27:26

difficult thing. So I don't want to say it

27:28

did not feel as bad as I anticipated, but in

27:30

some ways it did not feel as like ruinous

27:33

to me as.

27:33

I thought it would feel.

27:35

But I will say that the gift of normalizing

27:38

has been so abundant

27:41

in the process of grief for

27:43

me, learning about grief, talking

27:45

about grief, talking to other people about grief,

27:47

reading about grief, having language

27:50

and understanding around the very

27:53

universal experience of grief

27:55

has been so liberating. So I'm really excited

27:57

that we're able to devote a whole episode, and it looks

27:59

like it's going to be a longer episode to

28:02

this topic because some of the

28:05

weightiest emotional territory can be the

28:07

source of some of our most

28:09

painful isolation and sources of shame

28:11

and also sources of suffering, you know,

28:14

both inside of ourselves and also communally,

28:16

you know, as a culture. And so you

28:18

know, maybe now's a good time

28:20

to kind of dive into what we've learned,

28:23

right, and what might be helpful to share about

28:27

this experience of grief that we all

28:29

inevitably at some point will go through. Right.

28:32

Yeah, Well, what you just said

28:34

just about how isolating grief can

28:36

be, I think that is

28:39

so true for so

28:41

many people, especially when

28:44

the losses that we're experiencing, there

28:46

aren't words to describe our relationships. So

28:48

when you're talking about the loss of a parent, I think

28:50

people are more likely to understand

28:53

how profound that is.

28:54

That's our psychological foundation.

28:56

You know, a parent is our psychological

28:59

foundation, because that's where befom attachment, and

29:01

that's how we learn how safe the world

29:03

is and all of these things. And losing

29:06

a grandparent. So many people

29:08

have different relationships with grandparents, and

29:10

I know some people for whom that has been a loss

29:13

of a major relationship, and then some people

29:15

for whom that's less of a loss. But

29:18

I wanted to also talk about the

29:20

flip side of the coin, which is grief

29:23

as kind of a thing that

29:25

connects us to the

29:27

world more deeply.

29:29

Genny, you've experienced.

29:31

Living with grief recently, and

29:34

I know you've done a lot of research and thinking about

29:36

this. I'm curious

29:38

what you found that

29:40

either was it helpful or didn't

29:42

end up feeling truthful to your experience

29:45

or even truthful to many

29:47

folks experience in the process of grieving.

29:50

Yeah.

29:50

Yeah, yeah, So I feel

29:52

like, luckily, when I engaged with some

29:55

reading on the topic of grief so

29:57

that it would support me and help me kind

29:59

of name and language some things I might

30:01

be experiencing, what I found was

30:03

really helpful and clarifying. And so I think

30:05

where I encountered maybe some

30:08

you know, so to speak, myths, was like going

30:11

into my experience with grief as opposed

30:13

to when I went to like learn something

30:15

about it. And I also just want to pause

30:18

before I answer and say, like, I think

30:20

that grief can feel

30:23

and be a very individual

30:25

experience, even though it's a universal

30:28

human experience, right, So, like the loss of a

30:30

child can probably feel

30:32

very different than the loss of a parent,

30:35

or you know, the loss of a friend

30:37

probably feels very different than the loss of a spouse

30:39

or life partner. So I just

30:41

want to hold space for whatever

30:44

your listener, your experience

30:47

is, to really honor that and

30:50

to also name that we certainly won't

30:52

capture every nuance of grief

30:54

in this conversation, and that

30:57

that not be evidence that you're

30:59

somehow doing it wrong or that we're invalidating

31:02

types of grief just because we're not naming them.

31:04

I'm not able to speak to the loss of a child

31:07

because I've not experienced that, but

31:09

I honor that as like a really heavy

31:12

burden, and.

31:13

Even you just saying that Jenny

31:15

as a parent, just right.

31:17

Oh So I just want to kind of leave

31:19

a lot of room for everybody's

31:22

experience to be exactly as it

31:24

is and to be exactly okay in that way.

31:26

But there are some broad brush things that I

31:29

think are maybe myths that I

31:31

had about grief that have turned out to like

31:33

not only not be helpful, but not really be the case.

31:35

So the first is this idea

31:38

of the five stages of grief. So Elizabeth

31:41

Coopler Ross actually is

31:43

the one that came up with what originally

31:46

was intended to be the five stages of death,

31:49

not the five stages of grief. So it was

31:51

the five stages one might go through when

31:54

encountering and approaching one's own

31:56

death that got culturally

31:59

twisted in to the five stages

32:01

of grief or loss. And

32:04

I think we can see why in

32:07

hindsight, because you know, grief is

32:09

this very big, intimidating,

32:12

scary, unpleasant, overwhelming

32:15

kind of wall of awful weightiness.

32:17

And what better

32:20

to have than like a roadmap

32:23

and like a step by step Well,

32:25

get through step one, and then you're in step two, and get

32:27

through step two, and then you go to step three, and then at the

32:29

end of step five you are done and dusted

32:32

with grief. Right. Unfortunately,

32:34

that's just not really the

32:36

way it works. It's

32:38

not so linear, and it certainly

32:40

is not so finite. So I think

32:43

a more useful bereavement theory,

32:45

at least that I came across, was by

32:47

a man named Jay William Warden, and

32:50

he talks about not four steps,

32:53

but a bit of a framework around

32:56

maybe how we might move through

32:59

the time of when the loss occurs

33:01

to a more integrated

33:04

whole way of then moving

33:06

forward in life, which is, you

33:08

know, accepting the reality of the loss

33:10

because it's really hard to accept that right

33:13

at first oftentimes, and

33:15

then the process of working through

33:17

the pain of grief, right that that needs

33:20

to be felt, to be worked through

33:22

and to be metabolized for us to really

33:24

reap the actual gifts that that

33:26

can potentially yield for us,

33:29

and then to adjust to

33:31

an environment when the deceased is missing. So

33:34

how do I do life without my mom?

33:36

Right?

33:37

And that's a process. And then to

33:39

find an enduring connection with

33:41

the deceased while embarking on

33:43

a new life right. So this helps

33:45

us to move forward with attachment rather than

33:48

trying to find detachment from our lost

33:50

loved ones. So I really

33:52

felt like that, though not a linear process,

33:55

either might be maybe a more useful framework

33:57

to think about some experiences

34:00

we might have with relating to loss. But

34:02

I think the biggest myth that I have come to

34:04

personally realize is just

34:07

not the case. Is this idea that like there is

34:09

a place or a time in which we're going

34:11

to arrive at this like once and for all

34:14

peace, healing completion,

34:16

Like grief is a process. Like

34:19

I took the month of December off after my mom

34:21

died to sort of like check in and see, like,

34:23

Okay, what else is here that needs to come up?

34:25

Let's have you come up, Let's feel

34:27

you, let's heal with you, and then like let's

34:30

kind of move on, you know, and

34:33

what I discovered is like, that's just

34:36

not as it turns out, how it works, right. And

34:38

I say that with a smile on my face, because in hindsight

34:40

it's like, well, of course that's not how it works.

34:42

But like I'm learning here as I go, and

34:45

what I think is more true to my

34:47

experiences is like, we're going to

34:49

continue, right to encounter

34:52

grief and encounter this loss

34:54

for a long time, if not a lifetime, right,

34:57

it's a long and a winding road. And

35:00

that's not a sign that we're doing grief

35:02

wrong or that we didn't feel our feelings when

35:04

the loss happened. I mean, it's just the way

35:06

it is. Like I also will say

35:08

that I'll hear people say like you'll never get

35:10

over it, right, like you'll never get over

35:12

this loss, You'll always carry this grief

35:15

with you. And while I think there is absolute

35:17

truth in that, the way I

35:20

interpreted that was that I'll always feel

35:23

this way about this loss,

35:26

the grief will always feel this intense

35:28

or this heavy. And I think

35:30

what I'm experiencing and I've experienced

35:32

over the last you know, seven years, is that

35:35

the loss and the grief over the loss

35:37

is in me and with me. It just doesn't

35:39

always feel the same as it

35:41

does or at any point in time as it ever has,

35:44

you know, certainly not at it's worse. Like I've heard,

35:46

of course, time heals all

35:48

things, but I think it's more specifically like

35:51

time plus action heals.

35:54

So like time plus connecting

35:57

with others in a safe way, in a supported way

36:00

over this grief to be able to really process and

36:02

tell our stories, you know, time

36:04

plus learning how to be with the

36:06

difficult pain of grief so that we can feel

36:08

it without becoming completely overwhelmed

36:11

or traumatized by it, you know, in a way that feels

36:14

in a repeated way traumatic. And the last thing

36:16

I'll say here is like maybe a more helpful

36:18

way to think about like this you'll never get over

36:20

it kind of idea is because

36:23

I think it could be really overwhelming to think, like at

36:25

my most grief stricken, that

36:27

I'm always going to feel this way, Like to me, that

36:29

feels terrifying. And there's

36:32

this metaphor I came across called the ball in

36:34

the box, and I thought I was really helpful.

36:36

So like picture this is a box with a ball in

36:39

it and also a pain

36:41

button, right, so in the beginning of grief,

36:43

Like the ball is huge, Like you can't move

36:45

the box without the ball hitting

36:48

the pain button. Right, it rattles around

36:50

on its own and it just hits the button all over

36:52

and over and over, and you just you can't control it.

36:54

It just keeps hurting. And then over

36:56

time the ball slowly

36:59

gets smaller. Right, it hits the button less

37:01

and less, but when it does, it still hurts,

37:04

and you know it can hurt just as much. It's better

37:06

because though you can function day to day more

37:08

easily. Yeah, right, But like the downside

37:11

is the ball is going to randomly hit the pain

37:13

button and often when you least expect it.

37:15

Right, yeah, but the ball never really goes

37:17

away. It just might hit less and less

37:20

and you have more time to recover between hits,

37:22

unlike when the ball was still enormous.

37:24

That really resonates with me.

37:26

I think that the pain of grief can

37:28

be as poignant, and

37:30

it's for me personally less frequent.

37:33

It can surprise me and

37:36

come on in moments that I wouldn't

37:38

expect, and then I

37:41

also have a contact now for understanding

37:43

that that moment will pass and

37:45

that I'll be okay. The other thing

37:48

that I wanted to just name in regards

37:50

to this idea of what we're

37:52

told about grief or just myths around

37:54

grief, is that sometimes grief can

37:57

include positive experiences,

37:59

or at the very least, experiences

38:01

that aren't just about how much

38:04

we miss that person. I think that

38:06

a lot of people have complicated

38:08

relationships with others, and

38:10

sometimes there can be feelings

38:13

where we don't feel comfortable talking about

38:15

related to having

38:18

feelings of maybe relief, especially

38:20

if we've sat with someone who's been suffering

38:22

for a long time, or even

38:25

feelings of freedom that

38:27

that death process has kind of ended and

38:30

now we can begin to move into another

38:32

phase. And I think that

38:34

there's this myth that if we have any of those

38:36

feelings that we didn't really

38:38

love that person, we didn't really care about that person.

38:41

Yes, I'm so glad you named that. Yep

38:43

exactly. That we make our intensity

38:46

or frequency or experience of grief or lack thereof

38:48

mean something about our relationship

38:51

with them, Yeah, exactly. The

38:56

other thing that I struggle with is when people say

38:58

things to the person who's grieving, which is

39:00

like, you know, your loved one wouldn't want you to be sad,

39:03

right, Like as if somehow

39:05

you're letting them down by feeling

39:08

sad about the loss of them, and that the

39:10

way forward is to like put that behind

39:12

you and be happy. And I think it comes from a

39:14

person that probably just it's hard to see

39:17

someone you care about deeply

39:19

sad, right, But what I've

39:21

discovered in my experience is

39:23

that, oh absolutely

39:25

feel sad. The most maladaptive

39:28

thing we can do is to like avoid our

39:30

sadness. I mean, I think to enter into

39:32

our sadness with support

39:35

and some skill around it, like

39:37

is really helpful, and avoidance

39:40

is just going to make

39:43

the experience of grief more painful

39:45

and more protracted. That engagement

39:47

with like the acute pain of grief and

39:50

the struggle to emerge from it, Right, they're

39:52

necessary ingredients to be

39:54

positively changed by loss. If

39:56

you love greatly, you're going to grieve greatly.

40:00

Yeah, And I would say

40:02

that sometimes our bodies are quite intelligent,

40:04

and if that grief isn't available

40:07

for us moment to moment, if we're

40:09

not feeling the way that we

40:11

think grief is supposed to feel,

40:13

sometimes that's our bodi's way of protecting us

40:16

from something that we're not ready yet, especially

40:18

when it comes to issues of complicated

40:20

grief when maybe they are

40:23

extranuating circumstances that don't

40:25

make it easy to engage

40:27

to the depths of what our true experiences.

40:30

And I think that this is especially true

40:33

related to a lot of the losses

40:35

that people might have experienced with COVID,

40:38

especially in the context of

40:40

the fact that many folks weren't able to be

40:43

with our loved.

40:44

Ones during the time of death.

40:46

I actually lost three family members over

40:48

the course of COVID, and for

40:51

two of them there might have been actenuating

40:53

circumstances related to they'd had COVID

40:55

within the last month and then passed away.

40:58

And something that I I read was

41:01

that this experience of not being

41:03

present with the loved one and the death process,

41:05

and then not being able to

41:09

sometimes engage in some of those rituals

41:12

around death that can be so important for us,

41:15

actually makes it much harder for

41:17

our brains to understand that the loss

41:19

has even occurred. And so I

41:21

know for myself personally, I have some

41:23

numbness around some of those

41:25

deaths, like I wasn't able to be

41:28

in that process as I would have in normal times,

41:30

and so I just also want a name that

41:32

a lot of folks might be experiencing grief

41:34

differently, especially at this particular time

41:36

that we're in in history, and

41:39

I think that that's important too.

41:41

So important. Oh my gosh, I'm so glad

41:43

you mentioned that. Yeah,

41:46

I've found through the experience of losing my mom,

41:49

like I would put pressure on myself to feel

41:51

sad, and if I didn't feel sad, I was like,

41:53

what does this mean? Does this mean I didn't lover really

41:55

like I thought I did? Like, maybe I'm just so calloused

41:57

and hard that like I

42:00

could just detach from that experience of grief.

42:02

I just made it mean again that like I was doing

42:04

something Wronger it meant something like

42:07

was wrong.

42:07

Yeah, you're right.

42:08

I mean I think that goes back to just letting

42:10

the experience be whatever it's going to be. And if that's

42:13

pain and grief, allowing it to be, if

42:15

that's numbness, if that's a feeling

42:17

of disbelief, like allowing that to

42:19

be right, allowing things to be as

42:21

they are, Yeah, is sort of that path to healing.

42:24

Even if that feeling is relief,

42:26

even if that feeling is, you

42:28

know, some sense of freedom, whatever

42:31

the feeling is, that's just part

42:33

of this. I think what we're sort

42:35

of talking around is that grief is

42:37

so complex and that in a lot of ways,

42:41

it's tied into almost every emotion, including

42:43

love. So I think that that's

42:46

a way that we can talk about this.

42:48

It's a little bit of everything, right, It's.

42:50

A little bit of everything, yes, and sometimes

42:52

a lot of a lot of things. I mean, I will tell

42:54

you I'm so glad you mentioned relief. I mean when

42:57

my mom passed the moment she passed

42:59

in the morning after, the predominant

43:01

feeling I had was relief. And

43:04

I was so relieved that she wasn't

43:07

suffering anymore, and that I wasn't suffering

43:09

over her suffering anymore, and that all

43:11

the burden of caring for her, that

43:13

that was gone. It felt liberating.

43:16

And you're right to feel that, is

43:19

okay, and like to name

43:21

that right is okay. I'm really

43:23

grateful I was able to sort of allow myself

43:25

to do that in that morning after. It's like, yes,

43:27

it feels like freedom.

43:29

Yeah.

43:29

And you know, the sense that I

43:31

got when my grandma

43:34

passed away was I'm

43:36

still here. I think we were both profoundly

43:39

involved in the death process of another

43:41

person.

43:42

And there is this. It's actually called

43:44

something and I can't remember, like

43:46

a secondary death experience or something

43:48

like that.

43:49

I can't remember exactly the term,

43:51

but essentially it's the process

43:53

of sort of partnering with someone who

43:56

is going through something and having that level

43:58

of empathy and experience as you say, they

44:00

are walking alone. That's one thing that

44:02

death made was made very clear to

44:05

me through the process, is that this is something

44:07

she had to go through on her own.

44:08

And you named that. But when you walked

44:11

so closely with someone, it

44:13

feels like your world. And then

44:16

when that experience does

44:19

come to a close, I

44:21

was sort of left with this sort

44:23

of gasp like, oh my god, I'm still here. Yes,

44:26

I'm alive, you know, like feeling

44:28

my body like I'm alive. And

44:31

then it kind of began this.

44:33

This is going to sound a little bit strange, but like a

44:35

second life experience for me, you

44:37

know, Richard Rohre talks about the following upward experience.

44:40

It felt like my second half of life started. And

44:43

I see that as a profound gift that

44:46

she left with me.

44:47

I share that experience. I'm so

44:50

happy you name that. I too,

44:52

Like I usually said a word as an intention for

44:54

the year instead of resolutions, and this

44:57

year it's live. That's

45:00

my word because of what occurred to me is like, oh,

45:02

it's not over for me yet. Oh

45:05

my gosh, I don't know how much time I have left, but

45:07

like I want to push past my fears

45:09

and be brave and not you

45:12

know, regret things that I didn't do because

45:14

I let fear keep me small. Like I just had

45:16

this sense of like the Okay, let's

45:18

push ourselves to live life and

45:20

not passively take it for granted.

45:23

Right.

45:24

Yeah. And you know the other interesting

45:26

thing I experienced what you're making me think of now, is I

45:29

had this feeling when my mom was gone was

45:31

like, all of a sudden, it was like, you know how

45:33

like when you're a kid. I did a

45:35

lot of sneaking out when I was a teenager, like

45:37

so much sneaking.

45:38

Out too, and your jan

45:40

I don't know how I'm alive today, Like how I

45:42

how did I not?

45:44

Oh good?

45:45

So much sneaking out. But it was that thrill of like

45:47

your parents don't know, like your parents don't know where

45:50

to be found and you're

45:52

free. They're not around, And I had

45:54

this also brilliant expect experience of

45:56

like, oh my gosh, she's not

45:58

on this earth anymore, have anything to say

46:01

about anything I do, Like, there's

46:03

a real freedom there. I just

46:06

was caught off guard by that.

46:07

Yeah. Yeah, Actually there's a quote

46:09

that I'd love to share with you.

46:10

And I'm feeling or wondering

46:13

if maybe this is leading

46:15

us into a second episode where maybe

46:17

in our second episode we talk about

46:19

some of the things that are really helpful for us

46:22

in regards to this grieving process

46:24

and some of the strategies

46:26

and the tools that have really supported

46:28

us to be where we are, And I think

46:30

this could be a great lead into

46:33

that conversation. So

46:35

this is a quote from Mirabi Star in

46:37

the book God of Love, and

46:40

Mirabi is a spiritual teacher.

46:42

She's actually a teacher.

46:43

Who identifies as interspiritual, and

46:45

so basically what that means is that she

46:48

feels a deep reverence

46:50

for all spiritual traditions and

46:54

feels a draw and

46:56

a calling to engage within each

46:59

of those faith traditions. And

47:01

so her spirituality encompasses

47:04

kind of a variety of different

47:07

faith experiences, you know, including Buddhism,

47:09

including Judaism, Muslim

47:12

faith tradition, and a variety of others, but it's

47:14

the practices.

47:16

That she feels really drawn toward.

47:18

And she has some very rich teachings

47:20

about grief because she experienced

47:23

that absolutely devastating grief

47:25

of a loss of a child that we've a few

47:28

times just alluded to in

47:30

this podcast. And I just want to say

47:32

to any of our listeners who have

47:34

experienced that poignant grief that

47:36

I really can't imagine moving through

47:38

it. I think it's just one of the hardest that

47:41

folks can possibly experience because

47:43

it feels like a tragedy. It's

47:45

something that no parent should ever go

47:48

through. And so Mirabi lost

47:50

her daughter at age sixteen in

47:53

an accident, and she

47:55

writes about grief in this really just profound

47:57

way, and I just want to read this

48:00

passage from her. She says, your

48:03

senses become heightened. Everything

48:06

becomes almost unbearably

48:08

beautiful, the rain on

48:10

the tin roof a

48:12

columbine, pushing through the crack

48:15

in the walkway, a

48:17

slice of buttered toast. Your

48:21

world has come undone,

48:24

and you have never felt so alive. You

48:28

do not dare to speak this madness to anyone.

48:32

They have not yet discovered what you

48:34

have. That grief is

48:36

proportionate to love and

48:38

exponentially enlarges the

48:41

capacity of our souls, making

48:44

enough room for it.

48:45

All. You

48:47

did not ask for this gift.

48:50

Who would choose to walk around without

48:53

skin on her heart permeable

48:56

to the suffering of every passing

48:58

creature, Yet,

49:00

if pressed, you would have

49:03

to admit that it's worth it. As

49:08

a sensitive person.

49:09

This gets to the root of something that

49:11

is the most true

49:13

about grief for me, which

49:16

is that life being

49:19

a human is about where

49:21

these two things meet. It is about

49:23

where love, this capacity

49:26

to feel so much

49:29

connection and presence with the people

49:31

around us and meets this knowledge

49:34

that this is all impermanent. And

49:38

Buddhists describe this as anietzsche

49:40

right, the arising and passing away,

49:43

and that arising and passing.

49:45

Away can do two things.

49:46

It can either make us numb

49:48

out because it is too much

49:51

to know, or it

49:53

can bring us to this point of a liveness

49:56

that is just profound because it

49:59

enlarges our capacity to be present

50:01

with the experience of love, while

50:03

also holding this sense

50:06

that this is not going to last forever,

50:09

that this love that we feel is going to at some

50:11

point cause us unbearable pain. And I think that

50:13

that truth is what grief

50:16

allows us to touch into you

50:18

if we can really be with it.

50:20

So beautifully said Absolutely,

50:23

amen. I

50:26

think that's a wonderful place to

50:28

pause. And let's call this part one

50:31

of our Grief Conversation, and in

50:33

part two, we're going to dive into

50:36

some of the important truths we've discovered

50:38

about grief, some of the really useful,

50:42

helpful ways we've learned to sort

50:44

of navigate this terrain for ourselves, and

50:47

the things that have come in research that

50:49

we've found helpful and supportive. So I

50:51

hope you'll come back listeners for

50:54

part two, and thank you so

50:56

much for being with us

50:58

in this heartfelt point conversation.

51:01

Thank you listeners for being

51:04

in this space with us. I know my

51:06

heart right now is just burning with

51:09

just that sense of connection that

51:11

we feel when we open our hearts to

51:14

the space of where loss and love meet

51:16

one another. And if

51:18

folks in this community right now are

51:20

experiencing grief, I just like to take

51:22

a moment to recognize

51:24

that you're not alone in the process. Right

51:27

now, I'm holding my hand over my heart and

51:29

I hope that you can feel that sense of being

51:32

connected to another person who's

51:34

also experienced loss.

51:36

Both Jenny and I are holding

51:38

that space.

51:39

All right till next time.

51:40

Thanks everyone, Bye, bye.

51:52

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52:16

Until next time,