Grief and Loss: Guidance from a Therapist and Parent

Hey everyone. This is Laura, producer and editor of

Roadmap to Joy here with the content notice for this episode,

in this episode, we talk about grief, which includes

discussions of sensitive subject matter, including suicide, and

infant loss. We believe it's crucial to talk about these

subjects with empathy and compassion. But we also want you

to prioritize your emotional well being. If you feel that

these subjects may be triggering or cause discomfort, please

prioritize your mental and emotional health. If you decide

to listen, we'll provide resources in the show notes for

anyone who may need support. Please take care of yourself and

reach out to trusted individuals or professional services if you

require assistance. We appreciate your understanding.

And as always, thanks for listening to Roadmap to Joy.

Welcome to Roadmap to Joy My name is

Michaela Gilbreath I'm an LMS w here at Embark we're here to

talk about grief and my co host with me, Jamie Mauer.

Hi. I'm Jamie Mauer. I'm an admissions

counselor here at Embark Behavioral Health. I was also a

behavioral health technician for years. I'm also on the board of

directors for a nonprofit called our love you forever. We build

boxes for moms who lose babies in the hospital. And I actually

received a box when we when I lost my son 10 years ago. So

yeah, we're here to talk about grief.

Thank you for sharing that. Yeah. And I

think it's important to talk about kind of our own losses

because we are professionals in the mental health field. But to

recognize that this is a very personal experience a very

personal sort of passion for for us and for the people probably

listening here. In addition to being a an LMS W I also am in

the middle of my grief certification. I interned and

volunteered at the new song center for grieving children.

And I had my own traumatic loss experience. My mom completed

suicide five years ago. So again, this is I really

appreciate you being here and being vulnerable. Being open

salutely I think it's it's imperative and

incredibly important that we hold space for people who are

grieving and, and that yeah, we just were in this together, we

got this devastating degree who we never asked for.

Absolutely. It's the worst club to be in it

is and we're in it.

Yeah. And we don't want anyone else to join.

But they do. Yeah, we gotta we gotta put out

some information on kind of what do we do with this? What is it

right? So how would you define grief? What is grief mean to

you?

I think, to me, honestly, like grief is, I guess

the best way I heard it described was when I read a book

by CS Lewis. And he said that, why does grief feel so much like

fear? And I think for me, like, Grief is a loss, right? And

where there is great grief, where there is great pain, there

was great love. And so I think in my years of experience with

grief, it's it really has felt like love with nowhere to go.

Yeah, there's a great Marvel show

where a line says something like what is grief, but love

persevering? And that feels so it resonates so strongly, right?

Absolutely. But wanted to talk a little bit about some, like, I

word this here, some sort of common ways that we grieve,

right? So we have maturational losses, where we go through one

stage of life, or our children go through stages of life. And

as they develop or as we develop, we gain something and

lose something else, right? So we know that we can have grief

for things like our kid or going to school for the first time,

right? We might grieve that sense of oh, I had a baby and I

have a child a kiddo. Right? And those are normal sort of, we can

grieve those things. And it's kind of a normal developmental

process, right? But what we're talking about here, it's it's

grief, right? It's the loss of a person. Can you tell me anything

about complicated grief for traumatic grief?

So I think for me, you know what I've learned about

complicated or traumatic grief. It's very layered. Okay, so

it's, you know, there are I don't know, like, so my sponsor

said once, like, Okay, you can't compare your pain with someone

else's. Like, this isn't the trauma Olympics? Like gosh,

yeah, no one's getting a medal here

or everyone's getting a medal.

Yeah, I mean anything either. Right. Exactly.

And so you know, I think in terms of like, well,

this is you know, harder or this is more difficult like for me

like I had, you know, a nine week miscarriage. And then a

year later, I had To 20 weeks stillborn baby named Edwin. And,

you know, people have said kind of things like, Oh, well wasn't

losing Edwin harder that must have been I can't imagine, you

know, going through that that must have been harder. And for

me it was like, it wasn't harder. It was just different.

And I think, you know, that difference from you know, having

a miscarriage and then having, you know, giving birth to a

stillborn baby was the the visceral trauma of the

experience of 36 hours of labor and having this baby that never

opened his eyes, you know, that was like a physical, visceral,

traumatic kind of thing. And so I think, you know, with with

traumatic grief, there is an element of, like, it's

complicated, it's not, it's not that like, you know, my grandma

lived 90 years, you know, the, the natural life process cycle

kind of played out, which doesn't mean that losing your 90

year old grandma has any easier or harder, it's just different.

And so I think for me with, with losing Edwin, it was, I mean,

there was PTSD, absolutely involved. And that took a lot of

years to, and a lot of trauma, therapy, EMDR, and all the

things to really work through because it was almost like, I

couldn't even start grieving, until I had worked through the

trauma of the loss, you know, and like, so what do you feel

like for you, that has kind of looked like with with traumatic

and complicated grief.

So just like you been in the behavioral

health field, the mental health field, and I've experienced

this, so it's kind of this two sides of the same coin, right.

So when we think about PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,

we commonly associate that with like veterans, right? So the

idea of we're having nightmares or where we think the world is

incredibly unsafe, we stopped eating and sleeping or

hypervigilant, all of those things are happening and

traumatic grief. And we have lost someone, right? So it's

incredibly difficult to entangle. With my own mom, and I

think when we talk about traumatic grief, we have to

think about kind of that criteria, right? So anytime a

parent loses their child, it's traumatic. I mean, that's just

the nature of it, right? Anytime there's an unexpected violent

death or loss is traumatic. Suicide is always traumatic. I

mean, those things are the things that can make us feel

unsafe. And on top of that, we've lost someone. So for me, I

think you were exactly right, it is layered, right? Because you

have those those nightmares, and those, how did this happen and

all of these things. And while we can recognize that our 90

year old grandmother who passed peacefully in her sleep,

surrounded by loved ones, we can still grieve that there's

definitely a deeper component or a more complex component when

it's when it's traumatic like that, right? Yeah. I'm wondering

if we, as you were kind of going through your process, you had

any, like, anticipatory grief of like, what could happen, I'm

grieving this before I even get into it. Do you think that that

happens for people who go through loss?

Absolutely. I mean, in my own experience, I

remember, you know, for 20 weeks that I was pregnant with Edwin,

like, we knew he was sick at eight weeks, so my first

appointment, you know, they were like, you've got this super rare

blood thing where your immune system is going to attack his

red blood cells, and hopefully, he makes it. But I mean, that,

that fear of knowing every day that like, I could lose this

baby, you know, and that was absolutely something that that I

went through, and that even, you know, and I worked with hospice

patients for a little while to and you know, even like, knowing

that it's happening or knowing the like, it's gonna, it's

coming. Like, nothing prepares

you for you can know up here and not know,

yeah,

18 inches is a long way. And so, you know, I

think that is a whole other, you know, concept and that's a whole

other thing to untangle and, you know, I think, and when you say

like, anticipate anticipatory grief. That's not the same thing

as like, grieving something that could have been or

sort of when we think of anticipatory grief,

the way that I always kind of think about it is someone who is

let's say, a caregiver, you know, and they know that there

that the person they're caring for is terminal or they know

something is wrong and we are starting to grieve before it

happens, but we know it's going to right.

Yeah, that just Just you saying that just really

kind of hits my heart because I think, you know, a lot of times

and, you know, speaking to families whose whose kids are

struggling with, with suicidal ideations and suicide attempts,

and their mental health is really in jeopardy, you know, I

can just imagine them feeling that, that it's like, you're

almost grieving someone or something that's could happen,

you know, and so that, that layer of like, my child, you

know, like, I never dreamed this kind of life that my kid would

be living like, you know, I guarantee when parents have a

kiddo and their baby, you know, the last thing that they're

thinking is going to happen is that their child's going to be

struggling with mental health and with illness, suicidal

ideations and suicide attempts, and so, like, kind of grieving

that dream that they had for their kid. And like, like,

really going through the process of this is where my kids at now.

So

that's so enlightening and so insightful.

I think. I want to talk a little bit then about kind of that idea

of grieving things that aren't humans, right. We've talked

about maturational, losses and grief, you know, when we retire,

we lose that sense of, of productivity, for example, which

is a normal normal process, but when we have losses that are

intense losses, but they're not people, there are possibilities

or opportunities, right? Does that feel similar to grief and

loss? And other ways? Do

you think? I mean, in my own experience, and like

pulling from what I've been through, you know, when, before

losing Edwin, you know, I had a beautiful marriage and a life

and like a farmhouse with like a literal white picket fence.

Right. The American Dream? Yes. Yeah. Like we actually had a

white picket fence. You know, and, and after, after losing

Edwin, that battle really fell apart. And, you know, my husband

ended up leaving and, you know, I think that dream that like I

had for what felt like a split second, was no longer you know,

and 10 years later, you know, single as a Pringle. But like,

learning to love that life, too. I mean, that's, like, you know,

grieving what could have been or what, what I used to say, should

have been, I'm learning to rephrase that, because, you

know, I am, I am where I'm supposed to be now. But I am

definitely not where I thought I'd be at. They're at 36 years

old. salutely No. And so, you know, loot kind of grieving that

dream of, you know, having that family and the kids and, and,

you know, all of those things is

a total real thing. And it's normal, right? Yes, it

totally normal.

Like if you're at a place in your life, that

you're like, wow, okay, this is not anything like I thought my

life would look like, at this age, or at this time. I mean,

that is completely normal to have a grief experience with

what could have been are those dreams that you know, you

thought you would have? I mean, yeah, and even with Edwin too,

it was like you don't I talk to moms all the time, who lose

babies, and it's like, you know, a lot of us have been told

things like, at least you didn't know them, you know, or at least

they weren't older.

They at least are just so almost

unhelpful.

Yes. So I wrote a whole blog that like there is no

at least in grief. Okay. But you know, you don't you're not just

losing a baby or losing a toddler, you're losing a high

school or you're losing, you know, a college graduate, you're

losing seeing them get married. I mean, you're losing all of

those things that could have been and that is a whole other

layer.

It is grief. It is yeah. I want to spend a

little time talking about the process of grief, right? I'm

gonna get on my soapbox for a minute, please. I'll build you

one thing. I don't even need you to build me one. I can just I

can just get right up there. Yes. The sort of grief theory

that a lot of Americans know or that is kind of the general

theory is Dr. Kubler Ross is model of the five stages, right?

And that's the one that we know, right? Five stage five stages.

So those stages start with denial and with acceptance. What

a lot of people don't recognize or don't realize is that Dr.

Kubler Ross an excellent An excellent doctor studied death,

dying, grieving, open doors like immense amount of work that she

did to to get grief, to be a serious place of research, right

and to study it and to learn how to deal with it. So this is not

out of disrespect, yes. But we took this idea of grief that we

have denial and anger and bargaining and sadness and

acceptance, and we go through these stages. And then we're

just done and we're fine.

Always. That's the way it works, right.

But who she studied was people who had

gotten terminal cancer diagnoses, and it was there

grieving the loss of their own life or that process of

accepting their eventual death, right. But we took this idea and

we sort of just ran with it, right? Part of that is because

of it helps us to feel like there's some sense of control

like, oh, well, if I'm, if I'm sad, that means I won't get

angry anymore. Right? Yeah. Is that your your experience with

grief? Does that fit into that mold? Absolutely.

So that was kind of, you know, what I had always

heard, right. Yeah. And like, that's what you hear growing up,

are you? You know, people are like, Oh, well, you'll go

through this stages, right? And then like, then you'll be fine.

And then, like, when I wasn't fine, I was like, What is wrong

with me?

That is, the biggest issue is that if you

don't fit in this mold, that isn't meant for grieving people

who have survived a loss, and it doesn't necessarily fit with

cancer diagnosis, right? We see those feelings that come up. But

there's no stages No, where

there's like, squirrels running around little

tracks, you know, of like, coming back to this and coming

back to that, and like, it's just it is, and I think too, you

know, I, I've heard so many people say, really dumb things,

which is fine. Because people see someone that they love in

pain. And like, as a human, you you want to have like an

antidote, right? You want to have something to alleviate the

pain, you see this loved one going and you want some

certainty, right? Yes. And I think too, like grief is it is

not meant to be understood. It is not meant to be put in a box

and like, and formulated and controlled. But I think as

humans, we want to have a sense of control over it, because that

makes us feel safe. And so like, other people's grief makes us

uncomfortable. And so when someone else's grief makes you

uncomfortable. It's like you as a human being, and this is just

our nature, we want to put a formula or like steps or a

construct around it. So let me fix this more. Yes, yes. So we

have a sense of contractional fixing grief, grief, grief is

does not mean we are broken, it means we are human. And it is

not something that needs to be fixed. Right? And so, you know,

yeah, I those stages are, there's just I mean, you can't

you can go through them at some, you know, certain ones, but

like, I, I always thought of grief as like something that was

inside of me, right? Something that I needed to, you know, kind

of work around and figure out and like and fix so that I can

be okay again, but like what I've learned is it's grief is

outside of you. And it's inside of Yeah, both, both. And it's

like, it is this thing that almost has a mind of its own,

and it morphs and it changes, but it's like, everyone wants

you to move on. And I just remember being asked, like, when

are you going to move on Jamie? Like, why do you still talk

about your dead son? And I just every time that was told to me,

it was like, Well, if I move on, I'm leaving him behind. That's

not an option. No, it's not. And so what I've learned more and

more through the years is that it's it's like you're on this

journey. And you come across a you know, a rock of pain of loss

and like, you put that in your backpack and you carry it with

you on this journey. And like yeah, you get stronger the

longer that you carry it. But you never move on from it and

it's not something we're supposed to move on from its

past or past. It's something that we carry with us on this

journey.

And that I think is so interesting because

when we look at treating grief, right, we can pathologize it we

can say you know No, I'm gonna get a little bit on my high

horse again. In the previous DSM, the diagnostic manual, it

said that if you grieved longer than two weeks, you were like

eligible for depression diagnosis, right? Yes. Sorry,

two weeks. Right?

Yeah, a certain amount of time. Fine.

You're supposed to be fine, right? I think we have to think

of the culture that we live in as well. There's lots of

cultures oftentimes related to religion that give us

opportunities to grieve or don't, right? The Amish

community, still, they still do funerals in a barn or in a home

and the whole community comes to visit, right? They are not a

death phobic culture, right? I think in America, we have some

death phobia. And a lot of that comes from the idea that death

was dirty. We had bores and you know, and, and so we would have

all of these bodies World War One World War Two, right. And we

have all these bodies, and it's death is unclean. But if we can

medicalize it, if we can put it in white sheets and sterilize

it, we don't have to look at it anymore. And somehow we are past

it, or we are immune to it. Right. And so I want to ask some

kind of advice. I guess we'll do advice on what not to do. What

don't you say to someone who's grieving?

There's so many, lots of there's a lot,

many of them. But for you personally,

what wasn't helpful to hear and why wasn't it helpful?

So my favorite one? I mean, not favorite, your

least favorite, least favorite? I think, you know, over the

years has been ever everything happens for a reason?

Yeah, let's, let's unpack that. Okay. What

reason? Right? What reason, right?

And so I mean, that for me, that, that what I

heard through, you know, my grief lens. Was that like, this

was done to you. And this is on purpose, you know. So, you know,

instead of saying that, what I've learned to reframe in my

mind is okay, this person wants to give me an antidote to fix me

right now and make me feel better and Silver Line this,

which we just cannot do. And so, instead of that, like, instead

of everything happens for a reason, I'm like, there will be

purpose given to this pain someday. And I can cling to

that. And there also is, like, I have permission to allow joy and

sorrow to coexist. They're sisters. Yes. Like, they get to

mingle. There's just things that it's like, it's okay. To laugh

about things to, to have joy and to, to laugh through tears, or,

you know, all of that allowing that to coexist and mingle. I

think one of the other things that you know that specifically,

as a baby, last mom, who has been well, at least you can have

the least thing, right, at least Yeah. Anytime it starts with

that least I'm like, Just scratch it off. Like stop

talking. No, that's enough, just not listening. But at least you

can have another one, you know, and what

does that say that says that your son was

replaceable? And he was not?

No, and like, he's a puppy and I can just go to

the, you know, like, No. And also, I don't know if I can, so

that's probably maybe not enough, you know, an option that

happens not helpful in tutoring. Yeah, totally. You know, and I

think also that, you know, the, oh, God needed an angel. And I'm

like, how think he needs anything from us. Like, it's

just that that whole like, trying to trying to make it

better, right, which is not what Grievers need, like, as a grief

bearer, which is kind of what I coined, I guess, for myself and

love Lord of the Rings, you know? And, you know, Frodo and

Sam wise, we're carrying this burden Yes. to Mordor. And they

were called ring bearers, you know, and there was a moment

where Frodo could not he couldn't carry it anymore. He

couldn't walk anymore. And so, so carried him. So Sam White

says, I can't carry this for you. But I can carry you. And so

like, it's

one of my favorite scenes of any movies.

So I'm so happy that you brought it up. It's such a beautiful

metaphor for being with people that are grieving. Yeah. And the

idea that I can't your grief is not my grief. Right? But I can

help support you in this way. Yeah, I can be available and I

can I can hold space. Yeah. The thing I always think about when

I'm working with people who have grief or in my own personal

experiences is you just kind of have to leave lean into that

discomfort, right? It's gonna feel counterintuitive, I think.

But the idea of leaning into something that doesn't feel good

and we want to avoid, we want to push back on. The only way out

is through, right? It's something that I think if we can

learn, as a community as a state as a country to lean in a little

bit, and that we don't need fixing, right, I just need you

to hear I need you to listen, I need to see me. And I need you

to see your son, I need you to see my mom. And that is really

what it's about. There's no fixing, there is just

witnessing. Tell me a little bit about what you think is helpful

to someone who's in acute grief. Let's say they just found out

they lost someone. Or they're in the first few weeks. Do you have

any ideas on what people can? Do? We have this grief. Now

what? I'm grieving, I'm caring for a grieving child or a

grieving spouse or a grieving parent, a neighbor? What are

your ideas?

You know, I think, you know, in polling from my own

experience, or what we've done, you know, with our, our

nonprofit with moms who lose babies, it's, I think, first the

first thing is is acknowledgement. Right. So like,

it, it almost feels like people are, are so uncomfortable and

afraid of other people's grief that you almost feel like it's

like contagious. Right? Don't catch it. Yeah. Right. And so

they just almost like I remember the people that said nothing.

That are way more than the people who said the wrong thing.

Absolutely. You know what I mean? Because

the people saying the wrong thing are you

can recognize they're attempting? Yeah, they're

reaching out, and they're doing the best that maybe they've got,

right. Yeah. So I think that first thing is to

step into that discomfort to like, not be afraid of someone

else's pain enough to just be with them. Right. And like,

calling, I mean, you know, calling texting not, you know,

not like avoiding this thing that you're thinking is

contagious or makes you uncomfortable, but even just

practical things like people showed up to my house, and

cleaned my entire house. And I didn't even like that, like, and

here's the thing, too, like, people say, like, Okay, well let

me know if you need anything. And it's like, I don't know what

I need. I don't know what I need right now. And so, I mean, just

showing up, like, like, bringing meals, not like asking for the

Griever to to let you know if they need anything because they

don't know what they need nourishment. And so I think, you

know, just and like, talk talking about their loved ones

saying their name. Like I think that was one of my like, biggest

fears was that that I wouldn't be the only person saying Edwin.

And how many people say Edwin to this day

long. And that's so healing that's so it's, it's a

vulnerable space to put yourself in, but it feels so good to know

that people are remembering.

Yeah. And that is so important. And I kind of like

make them. Like, you're gonna say it, you're one of those

people that's like, I'm gonna keep talking about him, whether

it makes people uncomfortable or not. Because I also want other

Grievers to know that like to, like, have that permission,

almost, or if they want to that, like you can grieve on purpose

and out loud too. And you might need to Yeah, and if like,

everyone grieves, different and if you need that, like, more,

you know, quiet space, like cool, but I think so many people

feel afraid to grieve out loud, or to grieve on purpose. And

you could put grief out loud on a shirt.

And I mean, it's a beautiful way of putting it, it's just so

sank.

Yeah. And it's just like, you can if you need

to do this, if you need to post pictures if you need you know if

that if that helps your process, process, learning journey, like

do it and who cares who it makes uncomfortable, because this is a

stigma we have to break. Absolutely, because people are

grieving in silence and feeling alone. And like I'm not about to

let people do that.

So and we can talk about sort of that,

that silent grief, right? That idea that we call it

disenfranchised grief when you're not allowed to grieve

because of the context that you're in your situation.

Oftentimes we see this with nurses who are caring for people

and maybe a patient passes and they still have a shift to do

right. Oh, we ourselves can be disenfranchised in some way,

because maybe our culture, our religion, our family, says we

don't talk about it. It's too painful. And it causes shame

when we have those feelings, right. And that is so

detrimental to the whole healing process. I want to pull back

just a little bit, I want to talk about kind of that acute

grief when it first happens, I'm gonna get a little medical here

a little bit, a little bit of biology, Grief is a stress

response, right? Yeah, we get epinephrine and we get all of

those hormones, flooding and cortisol flowing through our

bodies, our immune system takes a hit, we are more susceptible

to cardiac issues, inflammatory disorders and diseases. I mean,

it really is truly a stressful situation. And biologically,

physiologically, it is a it is a stress response. And that acute

grief is one of the most I mean, I think it's like number two on

the list of like, most stressful situations is like the death of

a spouse or a parent, right. And so I really want anyone who's

listening to remember that if we have grief, it is very likely

you're going to get sick, you're going to feel rundown,

emotionally, you're not going to feel great, we know that but

physically, you're not going to be running 10 K's probably,

right. I mean, we have to really think about taking care of our

bodies. As we move through grief, we talked about what you

wouldn't say I want to know what you would say to someone who's

grieving or someone who is in a in a moment that they they need

that support.

I think honestly, the things that I would say or

you know, do is not try to fill the silence or like that, that

uncomfortable. Space, right. But like, honestly, simply saying,

like, I love you, and I am so sorry. And say like saying their

name, right? Or, you know, even just asking, you know, what was

your favorite part of, you know, this time with, and then their

name or you know, you know, can talking about, you know, that

person and allowing the Griever that space to talk about them as

well, I would say, you know, things like I am here for the

long haul, right? Because like, you can almost put a date on the

calendar of when everybody moves on. Right, so everyone else, you

know, there's this rush of support, and like everyone's

coming in, and everyone's talking about it, and there's

posts all over social media. And then everyone else kind of moves

on with their lives, and you're like, still in shock. And so,

you know, I think it's really important. And I've learned to

kind of be a long hauler with people of like, hey, in a month,

in a couple of months, like, I'm still going to be checking on

you. And I'm still going to be like, coming over and like

watching your kids or, you know, folding your laundry, you know,

like, I'm still going to talk about your child or your, you

know, your spouse, or your parents or your friend like,

like, I'm not afraid of your grief, and I'm not afraid of

your pain. And I want to just kind of sit here with you. And

so I think just just allowing the Griever you know, that space

to talk about it if they want to, to not talk about it if they

don't, but to just be there. You know, what would you say? I

think and it's, I was gonna go with

something you already said. So my answer, sorry. I was I feel

like what's what's really important for people is again,

to share their person. And so for me, it's tell me a story.

And I think we also struggle as a culture to we sort of put our

beloved dead on a pedestal, they never did any wrong. We can't

speak ill of them, they kind of never made us angry or sad or

anything, because now they're gone. And so it can only talk

about good things. And so for me, I think it's important to

talk about some of the struggles I had with my mom or to have my

clients or the people I'm working with talk about the good

and the bad, the silly and the disgusting. And, yeah, the

beautiful and the not so beautiful, right? I mean, I

think we do a disservice to I call them our beloved dead,

right? Our beloved dead, that we have to just look at them as

their one single facet. Right? And so for me, it's always

telling me a story, or what was this like, and watching people

be able to and this is to your point, we can cry, and we can

still, we can still move, right? They're crying and they're

telling me a story or they're crying and they're laughing or

they're crying and they're healing. And we can cry and do

anything, right I can I can cry and do yard work, ya know? And

sometimes in grief, you do that, right? You cry and you do all

this stuff. And so, for me, that's what I think is really

important is that remembrance piece. And that brings me to the

topic of kind of rituals. So we know that we have in our

culture, we do funerals, memorial services. And we have

certain things that we do. I mean Jewish culture, for

example, Orthodox, they they do sitting Shiva, they give time to

be away between the death and the funeral for you don't have

responsibilities just take care of this, this process, right.

But as an American culture, I want us to think about the fact

that we don't have a ton of rituals, right? We have kind of

the funeral or the memorial service. And then we just are

hands off, right, like three days. Yeah. God wouldn't be nice

if we were done with it in three days. Yeah. No, no. So how, what

are rituals that you feel like people can do? Or what are

moments that you think we could put in rituals to help people

remember and grieve?

You know, I think one of the things that, like, my

family has always done every year, whether it's, you know, on

his birthday, and due dates, that kind of thing is like, we

do balloon release, right? And, you know, or write letters and

send them off on on balloons. You know, I think one thing too

for, like, Baby loss awareness, or infant and pregnancy

awareness loss. There's like a day where we all it's called a

wave of light, and we all light a candle at the same time. And,

and having things I mean, like, I have a tattoo on my foot of my

son's name and his teeny footprints. He's always walking

with me, you know, things like that, like getting Remember,

it's tattoos or, you know, having that special thing that

is like theirs. You know, so for Edwin, it's butterflies, you

know, and, and just, I think, I just think it's really important

to, you know, and I've had people for his fifth birthday, I

think I had 40 people show up. Yeah, and we had like a cake and

a balloon release, we did LED light, like the LED balloons at

night. And it was amazing. And I just remember looking around

thinking.

Like, there are 40 people here, for a birthday party of a little

boy they've never met. And just like that level of support, and,

like, just acknowledgement was like such an honor. And so I

just think, like, not being afraid to say their name, or you

know, to have this special, I mean, people have sent me, you

know, butterfly earrings, or, you know, like things that are

just like I noticed is his thing. And like this made me

think of you and just like that importance is just incredible.

Like honoring, right. And so there's ways that you can, you

can honor your loved one and then also like, acknowledging

and honoring other people's right.

I always say that if you have never

experienced a loss, it's because you were the first to go. I

mean, it's a universal experience. Yes, we lose people.

I mean, it happens. It's a fact of life. It's something that we

can wrestle with all the time. But being able to be with people

as they go through the things that we went through. And it's

it feels horrible. Yeah, it's beautiful, and it's awful. Um,

another piece of, as we've sort of talked about this, some

advice I wanted to think about is the idea that we pour in dump

out, right. Are you familiar with the concept? Yeah,

a little bit. But school me.

So the idea, I'm gonna give an example your

neighbor passes, you're very close to your neighbor, you're

probably not going to go to your neighbor, spouse and talk about

how difficult it is for you. Because the spouse was almost

definitely much closer, maybe to the neighbors slightly, probably

right. There's always exceptions to a rule. But the idea being

that when we are grieving someone, we don't want to dump

on the people closest to that Griever. Right. Or to the to the

person that passed, yes, we want to dump on the people who, who

are further away, right? In the example of a neighbor, you might

go to your spouse, you know, who was not close to the neighbor

and say, I'm really struggling here. Can you walk me through

this versus going to their spouse? And talking about this

is so hard for me, no one will understand and I'm sure that

you've gotten those comments of how hard this is for Yeah,

or I know how you feel. My dog died. No, I'm like,

okay. Yeah, it's different, right. Not the drama Olympics.

But like, okay, yeah, so yeah, so as

we think about supporting people in

grief, we can think about pour in support towards the center,

the center being the person who passed, right, that spouses or

or partners, that is children, that is parents, and then as we

kind of go outward, we can dump out, you know, just to provide

that sort of community support that wraparound because I think

that oftentimes we don't think about Got that, right? We think

about everyone's hurting, I'm hurting and who do I talk to? We

don't always know who to talk to her to go with, right? And I

think it's it's so important to recognize that we do have

someone, but it can't be the person closest, right? They need

the most support. How do you feel like you have tried other

words to say here? How do you feel like you, you sit with your

feelings when they've come up? Because it's been years? And yet

you still have grief symptoms? Oh, yeah. So how do we sit with

that? How do we say to ourselves, Well, it's been X

amount of years, I should be over it because we, we do say

those things to ourselves, you know,

or people say them to you, or people say, yeah,

in our media, in our like, in our

movies and TV shows, we see someone die, and we get one

scene where someone's crying, one single tear. And then they

get a speech about how life goes on and they heroically show up,

and everything's better and fine, right? So I think there's

a lot of shame about grief. So being someone who has had grief

for a long time, how do we sit with those feelings when we know

they're gonna crop up? And when they do?

Yeah, that's a heavy one. It is interesting to

look back on, you know, 10 years, a decade of grief, you

know, and it's like, that's where, like, my grief journey

started was, was losing Edwin, you know, after that I lost my

marriage. You know, shortly after that, I lost one of my

best friends, Matt in a car accident. After that, I lost,

you know, guy, I was dating to COVID. And I was there with them

in the room, and when he passed away, and so it's just like,

there has been kind of like grief upon grief upon grief. And

so, it's like, every every one has been different, right?

There's just, there's different elements. I feel like like,

there's different rooms of your heart that get opened. And, you

know, I think what I've learned how to sit in the discomfort or

sit in those feelings has been to not, you know, because in the

past, you know, I've tried to run and numb and, you know, do

everything I could to escape these feelings, because it was

like, This is too much this pain is way too much. I can't go into

overwhelming yes. Like, honestly felt there were times where I'm

like, this is going to kill me, like I am going to die. I

can't get past this. There's no way right.

And

so I think one of the biggest tools that I've been

able to, you know, pull out is, is like, breathing, like,

honestly, like 478 Thanks, mom, you know, like, is, is really

sitting and breathing and like, music has been a huge, huge, I

guess tool and, and a way that I've been able to process

through things where it's like, I have no words right now. But

like, this song that this person wrote, is the words you know,

where I write music to, you know, processing through that

like, talking to somebody who gets it. You know, my my good

friend, Shayla, who started this nonprofit, I love you forever.

When she lost her twins. I would call her still do you know, at

three in the morning, like, I can't do this, I'm going on

going forward. And I'm like, I'm in it. Yes. Like, I'm in it with

you, you know, having those safe people that have, you know,

given you space to be to be where you're at? You know, and

honestly, you know, having a really good therapist and doing

trauma therapy. And I think it's just there's so many facets, but

I think the biggest one is just it's just knowing that, like,

every baby shower announcement or every pregnancy announcement,

or I do a lot of maternity photos or you know, newborn

photos and they've gotten easier to do. But there's still always

this like little sting. Right? That like this might not ever

happen for me someday and like, that's okay. But I volunteer

with foster kids, with teenagers in the foster care system with

hope and a future and that those kids had been like probably the

most healing. They like hurt and heal my heart in this same

moment. Because they're like, I call them shadow kids. So

they'll kind of like, they're, you know, at that age where it's

like, oh my gosh, Edwin would be this age, you know, and I'm

or like, you know, how they act, which is, you know, kind of off

the wall sometimes, you know, but like, these kiddos are in

foster care. And as much as like my mother heart feels like it's

got all this love with nowhere to go, like, their heart for a

mother's love is like, bigger. And so like, pouring into these

kids has been one of the most healing things for me. And so I

think, yeah, I mean, that's, that has been one of the

probably the most healing things is pouring into others who are

hurting. And, you know, these moms that that leaves babies

that we get to make boxes for, I think it's just, you know,

giving purpose to your pain, and turning tragedy to joy. Because,

you know, like, Joy really grows out of this soil of suffering.

Right? And so, yeah, just like looking for opportunities of how

I can be a vessel of, of hope and a vessel of, of joy in the

midst of and because of tragedy, yes, and loss. So

I want to talk a little bit about

something you said, and that was that connection, is the healing

piece of that, right? grief comes from where there is a

framework through attachment theory. That's John Bowlby, he

had his whole child attachment. This is how parents and children

attach, right. And it's because of that attachment system that

we have that we grieve, if we were not attached to anyone in

our lives, we would not grieve them. And so it really is,

again, physiologically and biologically and psychologically

mixed, that we would have attachment and grief together.

And that the only way to heal, I won't even say all of it, but

most of it right is through connection. And that connection

piece is the most important piece, I think when we think

about that healing process. Let's talk a little bit just as

we kind of wrap this up about parents with children who are

grieving, what might you say to a parent? Or do you have some

clients of ideas, but I'm wondering, you, you are spending

so much time supporting these mothers? How might you help them

with their children who might also be craving or who has lost

a sibling? What might you say? Or what might you do?

I mean, you know, and through with all of you

forever, we do a lot of these, you know, a lot of these moms

whose babies have kids, they have you know, six 710 year old

kids who are like, what you know, and like they've lost a

sibling or you know, you know, our kids who've lost

grandparents, you know, I think, honestly, like any, any, like,

nugget I could give would just be to, to allow that kid to have

space to talk about, you know, their feelings. And, you know,

if they, if they want to, you know, cry if they want to be

angry if they want to, you know, throw a pillow or you know,

whatever, like just giving them that space to grieve how they

need to,

but Jamie their kids, they're not supposed

to know death, they're not supposed to grieve? What do we

say to that?

I say that that's not true.

I have that idea. Right? If if someone

passes, they go to the neighbor's, they go to grandma's

or something. We don't include our children in the grieving

process. Right. Right. And I think it's so important to

recognize that our our children will have grief feelings, too.

Yes. And it's gonna like, like shielding them

from that. It's gonna affect them down the road, you know,

and I mean, some people have thought it's crazy, but we've

had moms where the, you know, they've had a stillborn baby and

the siblings come meet, they're sick. They're, you know, a

little brother or sister. Yeah. And what that does, is it it

normalizes, right, this thing, and it D stigmatizes, but it

also allows these kids to have a grasp on the reality of death.

Like, when it's like, as adults, I feel like this might be a huge

reason why we don't know what to do with it is because like, it

was taught No, and it was like we weren't exposed to it and

like we've, you know, even with, you know, back in the day, 30

years ago, if a mom had a stillborn baby, they took the

baby and the mom never hurt to hold that baby never saw the

baby. Yeah, and it's like, that doesn't make it any better.

Like now you're just having an ambiguous

loss of like, I never even saw this person that died. I never

saw that. Right. And

so I think, you know, for kids, I think it's so,

I mean, when my grandma died when I was 10, you know, people

told my mom, she was crazy, but like, we, my mom had us, me and

my sister come in that room, you know, with hospice and, and we

got to say goodbye. And we got to have that tangible experience

with the reality of death. And like, I fully believe that that

experience carried through into my adulthood to where I am like

a advocate for if like, like, let's get real, and like, let's

talk about this, because just shoving it down and trying to

numb it, it's, it's not doing it, you can't start healing from

anything when you do that. And so I just think as much as you

know, you can just allowing your kiddos to feel their big

feelings and not tell them they shouldn't feel a certain way,

you know, because it makes you uncomfortable. But

it doesn't work with adults, it's probably

not gonna work with children, we have to be able to feel those

feelings,

yes, and just giving them space to

we know developmentally that some

children have a different view of death than others, right.

With littles, I always say five to seven, we have to get really

concrete about what death is because they know that death is

less alive, but don't quite understand. Is it permanent? You

know, and so I think we have to look at things developmentally.

And it's okay to give kids that idea that it's a concrete thing,

right, that we're going to have a chance to say goodbye, we're

going to be able to talk about it after and during and before,

right? I think the best time in my experience to prep a child

for a loss is before the loss happens. You know, we can use

media, we can use books and TV shows and movies that when a

death happens, and a child has a question, we can answer those

questions, honestly, right? We don't have to say, Oh, it's just

a movie, and then they never really know. And I think using

those opportunities to be a supportive family, you know, to

have that whole family system come together and grieve

together is so important. Because oftentimes, as we know,

we feel so isolated. Oh, yeah. And that connection is kind of

the most healing part of the whole thing. Is there anything

else you would like to add, as we kind of wrap up this episode,

any extra advice, anything you want to share?

I mean, I think, you know, just just to kind of

wrap it up on my end is, is that I fully believe, and I've seen

evidence of, and I just, I feel like I am on this quest, to, to

share about my own story. And like, even the icky chapters

that make people uncomfortable, because my, my heart's cry is

that anyone who is hurting, knows that they're not alone.

And so, like, for me that I, I will, I will do that till the

day I die, like I will continue to talk about the things that

make others uncomfortable, because I want to see change in

this world. And I want people who are suffering who are

hurting, to know that a there's hope, and that they're not

alone. And that they they belong. So yeah,

I think just to wrap up, from my end, I just

want to kind of summarize what we've all talked about, and that

is that grief is normal. Grief is universal. If you've never

experienced it, because you were the first one gone, right?

Everyone's gonna have it. It's it makes it so different than

depression or anxiety or, because not everyone has those

experiences, like clinical depression, but everyone's gonna

experience a loss, right? So it's, it's normal, it's

universal. It's not going to look the same for everyone. And

I think it's okay to take the time to isolate a little bit and

like, find your feelings and sit there and it's okay to go out

and to be with people. It's okay to laugh. It's okay to cry. It's

okay to scream. You might do all of those in one day, and you're

still normal, you know, you're still okay. And I want to just

emphasize again, that we can integrate grief, we can walk

with grief, we can integrate it. So it's not something that is

debilitating every moment of our lives. And we don't set it down.

It's still with us. And that is that's how we how we do it how

we live right. And so I think that's what I want people to

leave with today is that we will walk with it and it might feel a

little lighter, but that's not because of lighter. It's because

we get a little stronger.

That's right. And yeah, grief does not make us

broken. It makes us human. Yes. All right.

It was beautiful talking to you, too.

Thank you very much. Thank you. This has been Roadmap to Joy If

you enjoyed this episode you can like or subscribe and thanks for