In Part 2 of our conversation with grief coach, author, and podcaster Shelby Forsythia, we dive deeper into her brand-new book, Of Course I'm Here Right Now.
Most of us want to help when someone we love is grieving. The problem is that we've never been taught how. Instead, we fall back on clichés, platitudes, and well-meaning advice that often leaves grieving people feeling even more isolated.
Shelby argues that what grieving people need most isn't fixing, solving, or explaining. They need presence.
In this episode, we explore why grief makes people uncomfortable, how our culture's lack of grief literacy creates secondary losses, and the surprisingly simple phrases that can help someone feel seen and supported during life's hardest moments.
Whether you've experienced profound loss yourself or want to be a better support for someone who has, this conversation offers practical wisdom, compassion, and a fresh way of understanding grief.
In This Episode
- Why grief isn't a problem to solve
- The hidden ways people become isolated after loss
- What NOT to say to someone who is grieving
- Why "at least..." statements often do more harm than good
- The difference between helping and fixing
- How grief changes friendships and relationships
- The role of presence versus advice
- The importance of grief literacy in modern culture
- Practical phrases anyone can use to support a grieving friend
- What inspired Shelby to write Of Course I'm Here Right Now
- Why grief can become one of life's greatest teachers
About Shelby Forsythia
Shelby Forsythia is a grief coach, author, podcast host, and founder of Life After Loss Academy. After losing her mother at a young age, she became what she calls a "student of grief," dedicating her work to helping people navigate life after devastating loss. She is the author of Permission to Grieve, Your Grief, Your Way, and her newest book, Of Course I'm Here Right Now: Three Actually Helpful Things to Say to Someone Grieving.
Connect with Shelby
- Website: Shelby Forsythia Official Website
- Book: Of Course I'm Here Right Now
- Podcast: Coming Back Podcast Archive
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00:00 --> 00:12 [SPEAKER_00]: I drifted, for as much as I love words, I drifted around in the first few years after my mom's death not knowing how to wrap language around it, and dozens of the clients and students that I work with say that grief for them has been a worthless experience.
00:12 --> 00:20 [SPEAKER_00]: It is something that is felt first and then defined second, which is not normal for most of our everyday lives as defined by society.
00:20 --> 00:29 [SPEAKER_00]: We live in a society that loves certainty and loves definitions and loves language and loves us knowing ourselves, and grief is very much a season and an experience where it's like,
00:29 --> 00:30 [SPEAKER_00]: You don't know yourself.
00:30 --> 00:31 [SPEAKER_00]: You don't know what's coming.
00:31 --> 00:32 [SPEAKER_00]: You don't.
00:32 --> 00:33 [SPEAKER_00]: We may not even know what you lost completely.
00:33 --> 00:36 [SPEAKER_00]: You'll find out later.
00:36 --> 00:38 [SPEAKER_00]: And you don't even know how to wrap words around it.
00:38 --> 00:43 [SPEAKER_00]: So for a comfort or to say, of course you're struggling with XYZ.
00:44 --> 00:45 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't have the words to define it either.
00:46 --> 00:49 [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, oh, so we are sitting in the uncertainty together.
00:57 --> 00:59 [SPEAKER_01]: Welcome back to the Deac Instructionist podcast.
00:59 --> 01:12 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm your host John Williamson and this is part two of our conversation with Shelby for Sithia about her new book on grief healing and identity and the often messy reality of what it means to move forward after loss.
01:13 --> 01:19 [SPEAKER_01]: So if you miss part one, definitely encourage you to go back and check that out first because we did lay a lot of groundwork there.
01:20 --> 01:33 [SPEAKER_01]: Talking about the mist surrounding grief, the pressure to quote get over it, and why so many people feel isolated in their pain, because quite frankly our culture tends to treat grief like a problem to solve instead of an experience to move through.
01:34 --> 01:48 [SPEAKER_01]: So, in this part of the conversation we go even deeper, we talk about the ways grief can reshape relationships, how lost can challenge long-held beliefs about ourselves in the world, and why healing often looks far less linear and far more human than we expected to.
01:49 --> 02:00 [SPEAKER_01]: And honestly, one of the reasons I appreciated this conversation so much is because Shelby doesn't just approach these topics from a place of performance or easy certainty, there is a groundedness to it.
02:01 --> 02:11 [SPEAKER_01]: A willingness to sit in complexity without rushing to tie everything up in a neat little inspirational bow, which as you probably know by now is very much in the wheelhouse of this podcast.
02:12 --> 02:19 [SPEAKER_01]: Also quick reminder before we jump in, our newly relaunch Patreon is now live, and we've added a bunch of new content and perks.
02:20 --> 02:33 [SPEAKER_01]: In addition to full ad-free episodes and bonus material, I'm now uploading video versions of interviews because apparently people enjoy watching long-form conversations between exhausted podcasters and thoughtful guests over grainy wed camps.
02:34 --> 02:35 [SPEAKER_01]: Not grainy, it's 4k.
02:36 --> 02:40 [SPEAKER_01]: But anyway, which honestly says something encouraging about humanity, so there you are.
02:41 --> 02:49 [SPEAKER_01]: We're also adding exclusive educational content, deeper dives into topics we cover on the show, and more community features moving forward.
02:49 --> 02:58 [SPEAKER_01]: So if you like to support independent content and help us continue doing these conversations, you can find all of that over on Patreon, and the link is in the show notes.
02:59 --> 03:01 [SPEAKER_01]: All right, let's get to it.
03:02 --> 03:07 [SPEAKER_01]: Here's part two of my conversation with Shelby Freakin for Scipia.
03:12 --> 03:16 [SPEAKER_02]: If God has a face, His face must look
03:17 --> 03:18 [SPEAKER_01]: a million percent.
03:18 --> 03:29 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I think at least at least in my experience, I've seen it was interesting to see how the different generations sort of approached me in my grief.
03:30 --> 03:39 [SPEAKER_01]: Because I had not, I've been a fortunate person where, you know, 40 some ideas, I had not really experienced any significant grief in my personal life.
03:39 --> 03:40 [SPEAKER_01]: Very, very lucky.
03:40 --> 03:41 [SPEAKER_01]: I know that's not the
03:44 --> 03:46 [SPEAKER_01]: But that was the first one that really was close to home.
03:46 --> 03:52 [SPEAKER_01]: I lost my grandparents when I was really little, so I have a vague memory, but, you know, a parent is a big one.
03:52 --> 03:57 [SPEAKER_01]: And it was interesting to see how the different generations sort of react differently.
03:57 --> 04:02 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, the older generations tend to be the empty platitudes generation, you know, like you're referring to.
04:03 --> 04:05 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, like, you know, now she's in God's hands.
04:05 --> 04:06 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, that's not helpful, man.
04:06 --> 04:07 [SPEAKER_01]: Shut up.
04:07 --> 04:08 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, you know.
04:08 --> 04:10 [SPEAKER_00]: Like, what are God's hands going to do with her?
04:11 --> 04:13 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like, what's, I mean, he's got plenty of people.
04:13 --> 04:15 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, what, it was, you need my mom for, you know?
04:15 --> 04:15 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
04:16 --> 04:28 [SPEAKER_01]: But like, the younger generations, I think, who are sort of sort of untangling this mess that we're handed as it pertains to mental health, I think are a little bit better or at least getting better.
04:28 --> 04:40 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, I think what you just mentioned, I sort of saw a little bit of both where, you know, they're realizing the empty platitudes aren't helpful, but they still don't quite know to do to the even younger generations who are just like,
04:41 --> 04:54 [SPEAKER_01]: just walk up and give you a hug, you know, so I think you're starting to see the slow gradual melting of the iceberg, you know, as it were, in the right direction, but yeah, there's still a lot of that, I don't know, sort of misnomerous out there.
04:54 --> 04:56 [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, it is very, very interesting.
04:56 --> 04:58 [SPEAKER_01]: Talk about the three stories framework.
04:59 --> 05:03 [SPEAKER_01]: You talk about the three stories that grieving people often tell themselves about their loss.
05:04 --> 05:06 [SPEAKER_01]: What are those stories and how do they shape how
05:08 --> 05:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, absolutely.
05:10 --> 05:18 [SPEAKER_00]: I came up on these stories for the first time when I was working with a client named Marie and she was grieving her baby who died.
05:19 --> 05:26 [SPEAKER_00]: And this baby's death was like the world's worst grief cherry on top of years of back-to-back miscarriages.
05:26 --> 05:34 [SPEAKER_00]: And so she was struggling over and over again to get pregnant and all she wanted was a baby and in the specific section or session together.
05:35 --> 05:44 [SPEAKER_00]: She was talking about a friend who had recently announced her pregnancy on Instagram and she just could not be happy for her.
05:44 --> 05:46 [SPEAKER_00]: She was like, I can't congratulate her.
05:46 --> 05:48 [SPEAKER_00]: I can't believe I'm still so angry about this.
05:48 --> 05:51 [SPEAKER_00]: I can't believe I'm still so upset.
05:51 --> 05:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Something must be wrong with me and just the story she was telling herself in her head was I'm crazy.
05:55 --> 05:56 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm crazy for grieving.
05:57 --> 05:57 [SPEAKER_00]: I am not okay.
05:57 --> 05:58 [SPEAKER_00]: This is not normal.
05:58 --> 05:59 [SPEAKER_00]: No one else seals this way.
06:00 --> 06:02 [SPEAKER_00]: And I should be able to do X, Y, and Z.
06:02 --> 06:04 [SPEAKER_00]: She was shooting all over herself as a lot of people would say.
06:05 --> 06:12 [SPEAKER_00]: And I heard her spiraling into the stratosphere, like building a case against herself, for not being able to be happy for this woman.
06:13 --> 06:14 [SPEAKER_00]: And then a case against her grief.
06:14 --> 06:17 [SPEAKER_00]: And so the result was like a load, a load of shame.
06:17 --> 06:20 [SPEAKER_00]: And she paused for a second.
06:20 --> 06:26 [SPEAKER_00]: And I said, of course, you would be upset that someone in your front circle is pregnant.
06:27 --> 06:30 [SPEAKER_00]: After you have lost so much, and she was like,
06:32 --> 06:36 [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't think that that was allowed.
06:37 --> 06:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Like I didn't think that it was okay to feel this way.
06:39 --> 06:41 [SPEAKER_00]: She's like, so wait a minute, I'm not being ridiculous.
06:42 --> 06:44 [SPEAKER_00]: And I said, no, that sounds really normal to me.
06:45 --> 06:57 [SPEAKER_00]: I think what she expected was for me to pile on to the judge jury attorney in her head that was declaring her crazy for feeling how she was feeling after all this loss she had been through.
06:57 --> 07:01 [SPEAKER_00]: And so to interrupt her story of I'm crazy,
07:01 --> 07:06 [SPEAKER_00]: with the validation of, of course, which is an alternate time crazy.
07:06 --> 07:13 [SPEAKER_00]: That stopped the kind of like the mind spinning in this whirling and that was when I first that single moment kind of another lightning bolt moment of my life.
07:13 --> 07:20 [SPEAKER_00]: I was like, whoa, words all by themselves with no casseroles, no flowers, no other door dash gifts certificates all by themselves.
07:21 --> 07:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Words can
07:23 --> 07:28 [SPEAKER_00]: Bring grieving people out of a place of suffering and into.
07:28 --> 07:30 [SPEAKER_00]: It's okay that you're grieving.
07:31 --> 07:31 [SPEAKER_00]: I've got you.
07:32 --> 07:33 [SPEAKER_00]: This is right now.
07:33 --> 07:34 [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
07:34 --> 07:35 [SPEAKER_00]: It's painful.
07:35 --> 07:35 [SPEAKER_00]: It's not all there is.
07:36 --> 07:37 [SPEAKER_00]: Just like with a few words.
07:38 --> 07:40 [SPEAKER_00]: So that's the first story I'm covered as I'm crazy.
07:41 --> 07:57 [SPEAKER_00]: The second story that is like the highest ranked story or the most common story grieving people tell themselves is I'm alone and this can come out in a lot of different directions a lot of people a lot of supporters will say things like I'm literally living with them like what am I chopped liver and I always say there's a lot of different ways to be alone.
07:57 --> 08:06 [SPEAKER_00]: You can be physically alone, so like during COVID, many of us were physically separated from each other or like when a spouse dies and you don't have any other people living in your house, that can be incredibly lonely.
08:07 --> 08:11 [SPEAKER_00]: But there is also emotional loneliness, like no one understands how I feel.
08:11 --> 08:15 [SPEAKER_00]: There is mental loneliness of like no one's thinking the exact same way I am.
08:15 --> 08:20 [SPEAKER_00]: And then there's spiritual loneliness, which is I have been forsaken by God or the universe.
08:20 --> 08:23 [SPEAKER_00]: I have been left alone here to figure out how to be alive on earth.
08:23 --> 08:25 [SPEAKER_00]: So there's a lot of different flavors of loneliness.
08:26 --> 08:39 [SPEAKER_00]: The antidote to, I'm alone, is I'm here, which is a little tricky because it is a statement that must be issued over and over and over again for graving people to Turn down the volume of the I'm alone story.
08:39 --> 08:42 [SPEAKER_00]: So you can't just write after the funeral and say, I'm here for you.
08:42 --> 08:44 [SPEAKER_00]: Let me know if there's anything you need and then never talk to them again.
08:45 --> 08:46 [SPEAKER_00]: You say, I'm here at the funeral.
08:47 --> 08:50 [SPEAKER_00]: You check in a month later, say, hey, just checking in on you to respond, I'm here for you.
08:50 --> 09:00 [SPEAKER_00]: You check in on the death anniversary, you check in any time they cross your mind with different iterations of I'm here and that consistency reminds them that they do not carry their grief by themselves.
09:00 --> 09:02 [SPEAKER_00]: They do not remember their grief by themselves.
09:02 --> 09:06 [SPEAKER_00]: You have not forgotten that they were grieving and that is an antidote to I'm alone.
09:07 --> 09:10 [SPEAKER_00]: And the last story is, my life will be like this forever.
09:10 --> 09:27 [SPEAKER_00]: And this is when I think a lot of grieving people don't recognize that they're telling right away, but they will say things like, I can't see a way out of the pain, or I will never find love again, or I will always be suffering over this loss, or my life will never be good again, or I'll never find joy.
09:27 --> 09:32 [SPEAKER_00]: There are a lot of always endeavors that come in these statements of my life will never be good again, or it will be like this forever.
09:32 --> 09:34 [SPEAKER_00]: And the phrase right now is probably
09:41 --> 09:48 [SPEAKER_00]: allows for a grieving person's pain and suffering and heartache and reality of the moment, and also frames it as temporary, whether they know it or not.
09:49 --> 09:55 [SPEAKER_00]: And so, to have someone say to me like a grieving friend who's gone through a breakup, say, I'll never find love again.
09:56 --> 09:59 [SPEAKER_00]: And for me to say right now, I can totally see.
10:00 --> 10:02 [SPEAKER_00]: how you feel like you could never find love again.
10:02 --> 10:04 [SPEAKER_00]: This has been really hard on you.
10:04 --> 10:05 [SPEAKER_00]: I just leave it at that.
10:06 --> 10:15 [SPEAKER_00]: It's a validating statement, but also sneakily like through the back door adds right now in this moment, in this season for the time being in this chapter, for the foreseeable future.
10:15 --> 10:23 [SPEAKER_00]: Whatever prepositional phrase you want to tack onto this, it frames it as a moment in time as opposed to a life that they are doomed to live.
10:24 --> 10:28 [SPEAKER_00]: So the three stories are, I'm crazy, I'm alone, my life will be like this forever.
10:28 --> 10:31 [SPEAKER_00]: These are the three records grading people tend to have on repeat.
10:31 --> 10:38 [SPEAKER_00]: And then the phrases that come alongside them as supporters that we can offer through any loss, no matter how long it's been, are, of course.
10:39 --> 10:43 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm here and right now, and they pair up together.
10:43 --> 11:01 [SPEAKER_00]: So once you figure out what story you're grieving person is telling themselves, or even if you don't know, these phrases are universally helpful, and the thing I love about them, especially during COVID, I'll bring this up again, is that they can be said in person, they can be said on the phone over FaceTime on social media, text message, zoom call,
11:05 --> 11:20 [SPEAKER_00]: and they are free, and they are portable, and they are immediate, and it is like words truly are the most transformative grief support tool that we have for addressing these three stories that so many grieving people find themselves caught in after a loss.
11:22 --> 11:36 [SPEAKER_01]: Man, and I love that so much because it is something that you can use not just, and you mentioned this at the top, too, where it's not just about the traditional type of grief, you know, the death of a loved one.
11:36 --> 11:39 [SPEAKER_01]: But like, as you said, there's many different types of grief.
11:39 --> 11:42 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, there's the death of a relationship, you know?
11:44 --> 11:45 [SPEAKER_01]: Have you ever read Dr. Pauline
11:50 --> 12:02 [SPEAKER_01]: It was just incredible, you know, we covered her book and interviewed her some years back, but that was eye-opening for me because it opened my S2 type of grief that I hadn't really considered before.
12:02 --> 12:06 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, and she talks obviously a lot about, like, you know, you have a loved one with Alzheimer's.
12:06 --> 12:15 [SPEAKER_01]: You no longer remembers, you know, the loved ones around them, or somebody who's a prisoner of war and things that aren't necessarily a physical death, but are still grief nonetheless.
12:16 --> 12:17 [SPEAKER_01]: And things that we don't really,
12:22 --> 12:29 [SPEAKER_01]: It's a little different, it's tricky, and so like the practical steps you just laid out are things that you could use for any type of grief.
12:29 --> 12:35 [SPEAKER_01]: It's just like the natural next progression of, you know, sort of the work that she started and so I love that.
12:37 --> 12:38 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm obsessed with it actually.
12:38 --> 12:39 [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's new one.
12:39 --> 12:40 [SPEAKER_00]: I think words are so cool.
12:40 --> 12:55 [SPEAKER_00]: I think, and I talk about this in the book of Fairbit, too, but words can take us out of the knees, or they can make us feel so seen and so supported and so loved and so cared for, even if you're supporting a grieving person in a professional capacity.
12:55 --> 13:01 [SPEAKER_00]: But like friends and family members will say things, like some professor told me two months after my mom died, we can't be sad forever.
13:02 --> 13:10 [SPEAKER_00]: And what a difference it would have made for her to say, of course, this lecture on political funerals and how they've changed the course of politics.
13:11 --> 13:20 [SPEAKER_00]: And okay, JFK, people being assassinated, political funerals, kings and queens dying all this stuff, would be activating for you two months after your mother's death to the day.
13:21 --> 13:25 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm here for you as you continue to grief her, right now I'm sure everything seems really hard.
13:26 --> 13:41 [SPEAKER_00]: What a grief statement, instead of you can't be sad forever, like the experience I would have had with her as a teacher, as a mentor, as someone who I was certain was there for me, would have entirely changed, and a lot of people with sticks and stones and break my bones and words can never hurt me.
13:42 --> 13:49 [SPEAKER_00]: But like, what we said, and this is never more true in 2020 than in a 2026, but like the words we say make worlds.
13:51 --> 14:08 [SPEAKER_00]: and how we talk about people and our lives in the future on the news, on podcasts, in books, in media, on television, in TV dramas, in movies, like how we speak about ourselves, and how we speak about loss, like you are literally changing the world that you are living in.
14:08 --> 14:13 [SPEAKER_00]: And so you can use one type of words that erases grief, diminishes pain,
14:15 --> 14:19 [SPEAKER_00]: or you can honor loss, make space for it in every room that you're in.
14:19 --> 14:33 [SPEAKER_00]: You can tell people that they're not crazy, they're not alone, that it won't be like this forever in so many words, maybe not with those, but with, of course, I'm here right now, but like you've literally altered the trajectory of like how healing happens, and like truly worth it, powerful.
14:33 --> 14:33 [SPEAKER_00]: I'll stand by that.
14:34 --> 14:35 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
14:35 --> 14:35 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh my gosh.
14:36 --> 14:36 [SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
14:37 --> 14:40 [SPEAKER_01]: Um, one of the work terms that I love that you use throughout the book is Comforter.
14:41 --> 14:43 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, that we play.
14:43 --> 14:43 [SPEAKER_01]: No.
14:44 --> 14:50 [SPEAKER_01]: So how can a Comforter recognize which story a grieving person is living inside of at a given moment?
14:51 --> 14:56 [SPEAKER_01]: Like how do they, how do they kind of make sense of that and understand what type of Comforter to be?
14:57 --> 14:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, how do you tell?
14:59 --> 15:04 [SPEAKER_00]: So in the book, yeah, I distinguish between gravers and comforters, so gravers the person who's experienced loss and a comforter.
15:04 --> 15:10 [SPEAKER_00]: You could also say supporter if you don't like the word comforter is the person coming alongside them or attempting to offer support.
15:11 --> 15:14 [SPEAKER_00]: And in the first section of the book, I have a section called Suss Out The Story.
15:15 --> 15:22 [SPEAKER_00]: And there are essentially like little criteria, like little checklists because everyone loves a list of how to figure out what story you're greeting person is tying.
15:22 --> 15:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Because for the most part, sometimes they will
15:26 --> 15:27 [SPEAKER_00]: are pretty good at telling the truth.
15:27 --> 15:33 [SPEAKER_00]: Allowedly, sometimes they'll say, I feel crazy, or I feel so alone, or I feel like this is going to last forever.
15:33 --> 15:37 [SPEAKER_00]: So if you're lucky, they'll be very direct with you, and especially if you're someone in their close circle.
15:37 --> 15:49 [SPEAKER_00]: But if you are maybe a coworker or someone on the outer edges, or maybe your greener is an introvert or is not really especially fond of talking about their grief, because they don't know who is safe, and you have not necessarily proven yourself to be safe for them yet.
15:49 --> 15:52 [SPEAKER_00]: A great way to tell is like other things that they're saying.
15:53 --> 15:57 [SPEAKER_00]: So someone who tells the story I might compare themselves to other grieving people.
15:57 --> 16:02 [SPEAKER_00]: So like for instance, my sister seems to be moving on so much faster and I don't understand why I'm still so sad.
16:02 --> 16:04 [SPEAKER_00]: That's a great way to say, oh, she thinks she's crazy.
16:04 --> 16:06 [SPEAKER_00]: She thinks she's not grieving right.
16:06 --> 16:09 [SPEAKER_00]: She thinks that maybe something's wrong with her.
16:09 --> 16:10 [SPEAKER_00]: or something.
16:10 --> 16:19 [SPEAKER_00]: So that would be, I'm crazy, or no one greets this way, or I feel like everything's turned upside down, or I'm trying to think of other ways from crazy.
16:19 --> 16:23 [SPEAKER_00]: There's a whole section in the book of like, here's some other phrases that I might say instead.
16:23 --> 16:24 [SPEAKER_00]: But things that are akin to,
16:26 --> 16:30 [SPEAKER_00]: This doesn't feel normal or this doesn't feel right or I am not normal or I am not right.
16:30 --> 16:31 [SPEAKER_00]: I feel so broken.
16:31 --> 16:32 [SPEAKER_00]: I feel so damaged.
16:32 --> 16:34 [SPEAKER_00]: Like those are all signs that point too.
16:34 --> 16:37 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm crazy or like any sort of self judgment or self shame.
16:37 --> 16:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Stories that point too, I'm alone.
16:39 --> 16:41 [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of loneliness comes out in.
16:41 --> 16:45 [SPEAKER_00]: People saying things like, even in a crowded room.
16:45 --> 16:46 [SPEAKER_00]: I feel like no one gets my grief.
16:47 --> 16:49 [SPEAKER_00]: is one that I hear quite a lot from grieving people.
16:49 --> 16:50 [SPEAKER_00]: No one understands me.
16:50 --> 16:52 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't feel like I can talk to my family or friends.
16:53 --> 16:56 [SPEAKER_00]: I feel like I don't have a place to go, or no one gets how hard.
16:56 --> 16:59 [SPEAKER_00]: This is for me, or I just don't feel safe anywhere.
16:59 --> 17:00 [SPEAKER_00]: Our great indicators of I'm alone.
17:01 --> 17:04 [SPEAKER_00]: And then, once for, it's going to be like this forever, or like, I can't see a way out.
17:05 --> 17:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Or I feel like this pain will never end, or I feel like this task will never end, especially in what my friend Shirley Lambs called the sad men of grief, the sad administrative work of paperwork and blah blah blah.
17:14 --> 17:17 [SPEAKER_00]: After a loss is like, I feel like this mountain of paperwork will never end.
17:18 --> 17:19 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's another way of staying.
17:19 --> 17:20 [SPEAKER_00]: It's going to feel like this forever.
17:20 --> 17:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Or I feel like it's going to feel like this forever.
17:22 --> 17:28 [SPEAKER_00]: Other ways of saying that our, I guess this is just my life now, or I'm stuck, or it is hopeless, or it is pointless.
17:28 --> 17:33 [SPEAKER_00]: Those are all other ways of saying, I can't see a way out of this, or it's going to be this way forever.
17:33 --> 17:59 [SPEAKER_00]: I will say someone else on a different podcast asked me so many of these phrases that I teach are in response to a grieving person telling us something like we have to wait for them to speak in order to offer one of these three phrases and something that I want to encourage that all the comforters of the world to do is to be the first to reach out and you can use of course I'm here right now as conversation starters in and of themselves before you even know what a grieving person story is.
18:00 --> 18:00 [SPEAKER_00]: So if you find out
18:01 --> 18:03 [SPEAKER_00]: for instance, my co-workers aunt just died.
18:03 --> 18:10 [SPEAKER_00]: So to say something like another way of saying, of course, is it makes sense to me, or I can see how hard this is for you.
18:10 --> 18:12 [SPEAKER_00]: They're all emotionally validating statements.
18:12 --> 18:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Any flavor of emotional validation is an of course statement.
18:15 --> 18:18 [SPEAKER_00]: And so to say, I'm so sorry to hear your aunt just died.
18:19 --> 18:23 [SPEAKER_00]: I imagine your brain will be both here and with her, because she died in another state.
18:24 --> 18:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Or I can see how hard it is for you to manage all these family
18:29 --> 18:33 [SPEAKER_00]: That's a way of coursing someone without even knowing what story he's telling himself.
18:33 --> 18:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Or to say, right now, something I can, one of my favorite interactions I saw.
18:38 --> 18:40 [SPEAKER_00]: I think it was on Twitter.
18:40 --> 18:41 [SPEAKER_00]: Back when Twitter was good.
18:41 --> 18:42 [SPEAKER_00]: It was two men supporting each other.
18:42 --> 18:44 [SPEAKER_00]: One of their sons died.
18:44 --> 18:47 [SPEAKER_00]: And you talk about men not necessarily knowing what to say to each other in grief.
18:47 --> 18:49 [SPEAKER_00]: And it was the morning of the funeral for this man's son.
18:50 --> 18:55 [SPEAKER_00]: And his best friend, Texan, and says, I just need to know that right now this sucks.
18:55 --> 18:57 [SPEAKER_00]: And it's okay that this sucks.
18:58 --> 19:03 [SPEAKER_00]: Right now, this sucks, and then it's okay, or I can see how this sucks, or I feel yeah, it sucks.
19:04 --> 19:04 [SPEAKER_00]: I believe you.
19:04 --> 19:05 [SPEAKER_00]: It sucks.
19:05 --> 19:06 [SPEAKER_00]: All of those are way of saying, of course.
19:06 --> 19:10 [SPEAKER_00]: So, right now, and, of course, all in one tiny text message, this day's going to suck.
19:10 --> 19:13 [SPEAKER_00]: And I can see how hard you're trying to get through it, but it's going to suck.
19:13 --> 19:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Right now, it's going to suck.
19:15 --> 19:23 [SPEAKER_00]: And offering that, even without being invited, are tremendous ways to use the three stories, even if you don't know what your griver story is.
19:24 --> 19:47 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, one of the things that I want to ask you about sort of on the flip side of what we just talked about is and I learned this firsthand is knowing when to set boundaries as the griever and what I mean by that I think is sometimes there are people around you who are as you said not safe to to in your grief and I learned that very quickly and I don't think he's listening so it's fine.
19:48 --> 19:58 [SPEAKER_01]: My dad was not the best person to go to, which is ironic because he went back to school after being a pastor for many, many decades and became a grief counselor, ironically.
19:58 --> 19:59 [SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
19:59 --> 20:03 [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, and we had a conversation at a high volume.
20:03 --> 20:15 [SPEAKER_01]: I will say, and he said something very helpful and very quite frankly, very hurtful when I was trying to relate to him that, you know, I'm still grieving and I'm not in a place where I'm ready for the news that you're telling me.
20:17 --> 20:39 [SPEAKER_01]: And so like I had to take a step back because I realized oh my feelings aren't going to be considered and so for me I had to set up personal boundary where I'm like this is going to be all the more worse for me If I continue to grieve around you or in your presence so how does one as the griever identify that is it okay to set boundaries in those moments
20:40 --> 20:41 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, a million percent.
20:41 --> 20:44 [SPEAKER_00]: This is actually something I teach inside my community.
20:44 --> 20:45 [SPEAKER_00]: It's called life after loss.
20:45 --> 20:51 [SPEAKER_00]: It had to me, but we have a whole module about four fifths of the way through the community through the course.
20:51 --> 20:58 [SPEAKER_00]: They're like a little on demand lessons and then we come together once a week and answer questions and companion each other through through grief after months and years.
20:58 --> 21:02 [SPEAKER_00]: And it's an entire module devoted to how do we do grief with others?
21:02 --> 21:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Because grief never happens in a vacuum and we are surrounded by friends, family, co-workers, neighbors, strangers who will
21:09 --> 21:12 [SPEAKER_00]: be impacted by our grief, or we'll have an impact on our grief at some point.
21:13 --> 21:17 [SPEAKER_00]: And I have a framework that I've talked about on other podcasts called the 11 talks at grief tropes.
21:18 --> 21:21 [SPEAKER_00]: And they fall into categories, I've named them so away because it's such a painful thing.
21:21 --> 21:22 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, what if we make it funny?
21:23 --> 21:27 [SPEAKER_00]: So there's the rose-colored reframor who always wants you to see the bright side of things.
21:27 --> 21:29 [SPEAKER_00]: They're like, at least they didn't suffer or look at
21:29 --> 21:30 [SPEAKER_00]: the bright side, but blah, blah, blah.
21:31 --> 21:34 [SPEAKER_00]: There's the judgmental jerk who was like, aren't you over it yet?
21:34 --> 21:36 [SPEAKER_00]: It's been like six months already.
21:36 --> 21:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, you're gonna cry instead of like, bottle it up.
21:38 --> 21:40 [SPEAKER_00]: I can't believe you're so emotional.
21:40 --> 21:41 [SPEAKER_00]: So there are people that say things like that.
21:42 --> 21:46 [SPEAKER_00]: There are people who are obnoxious one uppers, which are like, you think you're a great spad.
21:46 --> 21:49 [SPEAKER_00]: I had to grieve uphill in the snow both ways during the war.
21:49 --> 21:53 [SPEAKER_00]: And they try to like tell their own grief story, but somehow it feels like a competition.
21:54 --> 21:59 [SPEAKER_00]: There's the emotional expressions who like, they, you start telling your grief story and then they start crying.
21:59 --> 22:03 [SPEAKER_00]: And so then you have to comfort them instead of like you being allowed to be comforted in that moment.
22:04 --> 22:06 [SPEAKER_00]: The most common one sadly is called the Disappointing Disappearer.
22:07 --> 22:12 [SPEAKER_00]: And as you can imagine by the name, it's like people who may show up once or twice and then banish into the ether never to be seen again.
22:13 --> 22:18 [SPEAKER_00]: And so they become for gravers, another relationship to grief on top of what they already have already lost.
22:18 --> 22:31 [SPEAKER_00]: So I, I, I am explicit about believing that graver's deserve to set and have and hold boundaries, and in this section of life after loss academy, we talk about what specific way is this person hurting you?
22:31 --> 22:33 [SPEAKER_00]: Are they invalidating your feelings?
22:33 --> 22:34 [SPEAKER_00]: Are they talking over you?
22:34 --> 22:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Are they dumping their emotions on top of you?
22:36 --> 22:37 [SPEAKER_00]: And then expecting to be comforted?
22:38 --> 22:40 [SPEAKER_00]: Are they trying to prescribe you like care you of your grief?
22:40 --> 22:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Like, what is this specific thing they're doing?
22:42 --> 22:43 [SPEAKER_00]: So we name that first.
22:44 --> 22:46 [SPEAKER_00]: And then there's a whole little script set up.
22:46 --> 22:47 [SPEAKER_00]: I love words, I love scripts.
22:47 --> 22:53 [SPEAKER_00]: So we have a little set up of like how to set a boundary with someone who has shown you that they are not a safe place for your grief.
22:53 --> 22:57 [SPEAKER_00]: And usually it involves some sort of hi insert name here.
22:57 --> 23:01 [SPEAKER_00]: The last time we talked when you said this hurtful thing, it made me feel this.
23:02 --> 23:08 [SPEAKER_00]: In the future, I would love it if we could offer alternative behavior or alternative phrase or alternative whatever.
23:08 --> 23:15 [SPEAKER_00]: And then I really value our relationship and know that grief changes things, but I don't want to lose you.
23:15 --> 23:17 [SPEAKER_00]: I hope to hear from you soon or something like that.
23:17 --> 23:21 [SPEAKER_00]: And so it kind of has this, you know, people in corporate talk about like a compliment sandwich.
23:21 --> 23:25 [SPEAKER_00]: It's like it's almost this way of like a very specific naming situation.
23:25 --> 23:27 [SPEAKER_00]: How it made me feel all for an alternative behavior.
23:27 --> 23:33 [SPEAKER_00]: and then express hope for repair, because we don't generally want to lose more people in addition to our loss.
23:34 --> 23:40 [SPEAKER_00]: And then, before we send the message, I always tell grieving people to make a plan of the three different ways they can respond.
23:40 --> 23:41 [SPEAKER_00]: What to do if they respond well?
23:42 --> 23:45 [SPEAKER_00]: What to do if they respond poorly and what to do if they don't respond at all.
23:46 --> 23:47 [SPEAKER_00]: And this is different for every grieving person.
23:47 --> 23:50 [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of people are like, if they respond well, you say, thanks, great.
23:50 --> 23:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Let's try it next time we're together, or let's tell stories of whatever looks planned for coffee later.
23:54 --> 24:05 [SPEAKER_00]: If they respond poorly, maybe you say, okay, so I'm going to stop talking about our mom, or my mom, in your presence, until you're ready to do things differently, that could be a boundary you set with them.
24:05 --> 24:09 [SPEAKER_00]: And then if they don't respond at all, I usually recommend, like, maybe follow up in 24 hours.
24:09 --> 24:10 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe follow up in a week.
24:10 --> 24:12 [SPEAKER_00]: Text messages are weird sometimes.
24:12 --> 24:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe people don't see your things.
24:13 --> 24:15 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe they got stuff going on in their own life.
24:17 --> 24:31 [SPEAKER_00]: But it is truly one of the great passions of my life to help bring people re-negotiate their relationships again after loss because yes grief doesn't happen in a vacuum, but and grief changes the rules of engagement.
24:32 --> 24:34 [SPEAKER_00]: with everyone in our lives.
24:34 --> 24:39 [SPEAKER_00]: I, after my mother's death, I became no longer a morning person at all.
24:40 --> 24:44 [SPEAKER_00]: I was sleeping constantly and so I was just bailing on things left and right, which is really not who I am.
24:44 --> 24:46 [SPEAKER_00]: I was like, if I said I'm going to come, I'm going to be there.
24:46 --> 24:47 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm like very reliable.
24:47 --> 24:49 [SPEAKER_00]: And so that changed my terms of engagement with people.
24:50 --> 24:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Small talk was hard.
24:51 --> 24:54 [SPEAKER_00]: I struggled with people talking about their moms or complaining about their moms in front of me.
24:54 --> 24:57 [SPEAKER_00]: Especially as 20 year olds when you're fighting with your mom a lot.
24:57 --> 25:00 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, I can't do it if you guys are going to bitch about your mom's minds dead.
25:00 --> 25:04 [SPEAKER_00]: So like, I'm, I'm really bummed out right now and I just got to leave the room.
25:04 --> 25:14 [SPEAKER_00]: If this is going to be the conversation, but I, I relate to in quite a few ways of like, sadly, sometimes our greatest grief support is not found in the people who are grieving the same person we are.
25:15 --> 25:18 [SPEAKER_00]: and that's a devastating reality of grief for a lot of people.
25:18 --> 25:34 [SPEAKER_00]: There's so much propaganda and like movies and television sometimes of like the whole family grieves together and then we all honored her loss and did the ceremonial thing but I got to tell you, my biggest and most surprising grief supports in my mom died were like a different college professor than the one who told me it can't grieve forever.
25:34 --> 25:35 [SPEAKER_00]: A totally different person.
25:35 --> 25:36 [SPEAKER_00]: One of my aunts.
25:36 --> 25:56 [SPEAKER_00]: And then I talk about this in the book but like a rakey practitioner who just like popped up a booth at a food festival in Chicago all three of these people ended up being my biggest supporters after my mother's death and it has been surprising in the years following like who's actually been there and who said they're going to be there or had intentions of be there and does not and then who I expected to be there and then just never was from the get go.
25:57 --> 26:00 [SPEAKER_00]: So yes, big boundaries person have a whole separate tool before it.
26:00 --> 26:04 [SPEAKER_00]: I might write that as a book later because people love the toxic grief, folks they love talking about them.
26:04 --> 26:16 [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I feel as much autonomy and power as we can give back to grievers or allow them to have and not just force our platitudes or our crap or our prescriptions for dealing with grief on top of them, let them have it.
26:16 --> 26:17 [SPEAKER_00]: They have it already.
26:17 --> 26:19 [SPEAKER_00]: I can just letting them step into that.
26:20 --> 26:21 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, absolutely.
26:21 --> 26:27 [SPEAKER_01]: That's, that's a big one for me because as you said, I think when shit hits the proverbial fan, it's true.
26:27 --> 26:31 [SPEAKER_01]: You really do find out how the people around you really react to that sort of thing.
26:31 --> 26:34 [SPEAKER_01]: And as you said, some react positively, some react poorly.
26:34 --> 26:38 [SPEAKER_01]: But it's, it's really sort of an eye-opening moment in that space.
26:38 --> 26:44 [SPEAKER_01]: One of the things you, you talk about is you encourage confers to admit when they don't know what to say, which is such a big thing.
26:45 --> 26:49 [SPEAKER_01]: Why can't acknowledging our limitations actually deep and trust with someone who is grieving?
26:50 --> 26:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think, at the very base, it's like, because greeners themselves don't always know it to say.
26:55 --> 27:08 [SPEAKER_00]: I drifted, first much as I love words, I drifted around in the first few years after my mom's stuff not knowing how to wrap language around it, and dozens of the clients and students that I work with say that grief for them has been a wordless experience.
27:08 --> 27:16 [SPEAKER_00]: It is something that is felt first and then defined second, which is not normal for most of our everyday lives as defined by society.
27:16 --> 27:20 [SPEAKER_00]: We live in a society that loves certainty and loves definitions and loves language and loves
27:21 --> 27:31 [SPEAKER_00]: us knowing ourselves, and grief is very much a season and an experience where it's like, you don't know yourself, you don't know what's coming, you don't, you may not even know what you lost completely, you'll find out later.
27:32 --> 27:42 [SPEAKER_00]: And you don't even know how to wrap words around it, so for a comfort or to say, of course you're struggling with x, y, z. I don't have the words to define it either.
27:43 --> 27:47 [SPEAKER_00]: is like, oh, so we are sitting in the uncertainty together.
27:47 --> 28:00 [SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of like, um, I did a podcast interview with Rob Bell back in 2019 and I called grief the great level later, but it's like it puts everybody on the same playing field and it erases this hierarchy of like, I am the comforter from on-high swooping into save you from your grief.
28:01 --> 28:06 [SPEAKER_00]: and you are the the morose long-suffering griever looking to be rescued and brought into the light.
28:06 --> 28:10 [SPEAKER_00]: Like it takes you out of these dynamics of someone who's suffering and someone who's saving.
28:11 --> 28:17 [SPEAKER_00]: And it puts you on this level playing field of like, yep, we're both sitting here in the dark, like bumps on a log, being like, fuck, it's dark in here.
28:18 --> 28:19 [SPEAKER_00]: Where's the lab?
28:19 --> 28:19 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
28:20 --> 28:20 [SPEAKER_00]: There's a ladder in here.
28:20 --> 28:21 [SPEAKER_00]: Is there a trap door?
28:21 --> 28:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Where do we go?
28:22 --> 28:22 [SPEAKER_00]: I have no idea.
28:23 --> 28:27 [SPEAKER_00]: But to say, I don't know how to explain this either, or I don't know where to go from here either.
28:27 --> 28:28 [SPEAKER_00]: I also do not have answers.
28:29 --> 28:33 [SPEAKER_00]: It's so, so affirming to be like, oh, even in the uncertainty, I am not alone.
28:34 --> 28:38 [SPEAKER_00]: It feels insulting almost when comforters or supporters rush into a
28:40 --> 28:43 [SPEAKER_00]: How dare you know more about my loss about my grief than I do?
28:44 --> 28:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Instead, sit with me in the unknowingness and be with me and use what little language we have together as I figure out where to go from here or where this goes or how to get out of the dark.
28:56 --> 29:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it's something that can be co-built as opposed to rescued from.
29:02 --> 29:05 [SPEAKER_01]: That was some definite Peter Rollins just there.
29:05 --> 29:06 [SPEAKER_03]: I love it.
29:07 --> 29:12 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, where we unite over our common lack versus the things that we have in common.
29:13 --> 29:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's beautifully said.
29:14 --> 29:22 [SPEAKER_00]: I love to unite over our common lack, because yeah, in the face of grief, there's a line in my book, I say, in the face of grief, we are all at a loss for words.
29:23 --> 29:23 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
29:23 --> 29:33 [SPEAKER_00]: This is a book about words and also, there are a few experiences in life that render us as speechless as in the face of grief.
29:34 --> 29:36 [SPEAKER_00]: for supporters and greeners both.
29:36 --> 29:41 [SPEAKER_00]: And so to say, I have some words, but I'll have all of them, or I know what's true today, but I can't tell you it's true tomorrow.
29:42 --> 29:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Or I can tell you what I see in you now, but I can't tell you what you're going to become.
29:47 --> 29:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Later, like gosh, that's a really cool, yeah, I love how you phrase that.
29:53 --> 29:54 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's that's all Pete.
29:54 --> 29:56 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, he talks about it.
29:56 --> 29:59 [SPEAKER_01]: And I've been absolutely fascinated with that concept too.
29:59 --> 30:00 [SPEAKER_01]: He talks about it.
30:00 --> 30:10 [SPEAKER_01]: And I love this because I, you know, briefly mentioned sort of the environment that we currently find ourselves in and where there's just division and hatred.
30:11 --> 30:13 [SPEAKER_01]: And so he talks about it from the perspective of.
30:14 --> 30:22 [SPEAKER_01]: Community and sort of the dangers of community because often community is is this common bond around shared ideas or ideology or whatever.
30:23 --> 30:28 [SPEAKER_01]: And with that also comes and outside group, people who are not part of that in group.
30:28 --> 30:33 [SPEAKER_01]: And so he refers to it as gathering over our shared lack and calls it communion.
30:34 --> 30:35 [SPEAKER_01]: versus community.
30:35 --> 30:44 [SPEAKER_01]: And he's like, we need to form communions with people and gather over our shared black, you know, where we're all, as you said, on that level playing field.
30:45 --> 30:47 [SPEAKER_03]: I love it.
30:47 --> 30:50 [SPEAKER_01]: What love that guy?
30:50 --> 30:56 [SPEAKER_01]: So talk about what is working with grieving people taught you about what humans actually need from one another.
30:58 --> 30:59 [SPEAKER_03]: Beautiful question.
31:06 --> 31:10 [SPEAKER_00]: We need so much more mission.
31:12 --> 31:20 [SPEAKER_00]: to everything, to feel, to change, to express ourselves out in the world, and I'll actually refer back to the first book I ever wrote with self-published.
31:20 --> 31:22 [SPEAKER_00]: It's called permission to grieve, and it's based on that.
31:23 --> 31:28 [SPEAKER_00]: Someone stole my wallet, and I screamed on my bedroom floor moment, and the voice said, you just gave yourself permission to grieve.
31:28 --> 31:32 [SPEAKER_00]: And I broke it down through there are three types of permissions.
31:32 --> 31:33 [SPEAKER_00]: There's permission to feel.
31:34 --> 31:35 [SPEAKER_00]: There's permission to be for
31:38 --> 31:45 [SPEAKER_00]: and then there's permission to do, which is to take your grief out into the world and have rituals or traditions or memories or ways of honoring.
31:45 --> 31:56 [SPEAKER_00]: And so much of the world we live in is boxed, like we just exist in systems and structures and definitions and certainty.
31:57 --> 31:59 [SPEAKER_00]: And I think a lot of what grief challenges us to do.
32:00 --> 32:04 [SPEAKER_01]: Here's spirituality meets the YouTube generation, but the sacred work of unboxing.
32:04 --> 32:11 [SPEAKER_00]: So so much of what grieving people want is permission and validation that their feelings are okay.
32:12 --> 32:23 [SPEAKER_00]: permission and space to experiment with how grief has changed their identity, to more than what was lost and not know what's coming yet, to exist in a current state of I don't know.
32:25 --> 32:36 [SPEAKER_00]: And then permission to express themselves without being judged or criticized as weird, or not moving on, or stuck in the past, or ill, or unhealthy, or whatever the case may be, in terms of
32:37 --> 32:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Bring people with us.
32:38 --> 32:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Let us get the memorial tattoos.
32:39 --> 32:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Let us not change the bedroom that our child died and let us keep going to the bar that we went to with our husband before we got divorced.
32:46 --> 32:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Let us name every dog the same because that first dog was the best dog and so every dog will be James from here on out.
32:52 --> 32:52 [SPEAKER_00]: I just...
32:53 --> 33:10 [SPEAKER_00]: If it's not, if it's not harming other people and it's not harming yourself, I'm like it is a normal and valid expression of grief and so many grieving people just want the permission and the space and the room created for them without having to ask for it a lot of times for grief to exist in rooms that it's already in.
33:11 --> 33:15 [SPEAKER_01]: So does this mean we have to share the tattoo that we got and honor of our, of our mother?
33:16 --> 33:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, if you want to, yeah, absolutely.
33:17 --> 33:18 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't have one for my mom.
33:18 --> 33:20 [SPEAKER_00]: I have one for my best friend to die from COVID.
33:21 --> 33:26 [SPEAKER_00]: It's a little symbol on my middle finger, but I have quite a few grief tattoos, but most of them are tiny little finger ones.
33:27 --> 33:28 [SPEAKER_01]: I love yours.
33:28 --> 33:32 [SPEAKER_01]: This was able to, I know, it's kind of upside down.
33:32 --> 33:33 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm reading it upside down.
33:33 --> 33:35 [SPEAKER_01]: My mom, it's so it's her heart rhythm.
33:35 --> 33:37 [SPEAKER_01]: That's the hospital gave us.
33:37 --> 33:48 [SPEAKER_01]: And then I had the tattoo artist take samples of her handwriting and replicate her cursive handwriting because she was infamous for saying, it's fine, it's fine, everything's fine, it's fine.
33:49 --> 33:55 [SPEAKER_01]: And down to the end, where I think she definitely low played the severity of her situation, she's like,
33:55 --> 33:58 [SPEAKER_01]: She made it seem like now big deal like it'll be fine.
33:58 --> 34:08 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, meanwhile, Mike, I think my dad may have known the truth and was Visible shaken, but my mom just was like so she kind of instilled this calm and us initially because we're just like, yeah, mom's gonna handle it.
34:08 --> 34:09 [SPEAKER_01]: It'll be fine.
34:09 --> 34:12 [SPEAKER_01]: And so, you know, so now it's on my rest.
34:12 --> 34:13 [SPEAKER_01]: It says love mom.
34:13 --> 34:14 [SPEAKER_01]: It's fine, love mom.
34:14 --> 34:16 [SPEAKER_01]: As a reminder, you know, that like
34:17 --> 34:21 [SPEAKER_01]: And each time I think things are bad, I'm like, it's going to be all right, you know, it's fine.
34:21 --> 34:22 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I love it.
34:23 --> 34:23 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
34:23 --> 34:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Your mom's like cancer Schmanzer.
34:25 --> 34:25 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
34:26 --> 34:26 [SPEAKER_00]: It's going to be fine.
34:26 --> 34:27 [SPEAKER_01]: It's like okay.
34:29 --> 34:30 [SPEAKER_00]: That's kind of such a mom thing to do.
34:30 --> 34:31 [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, don't worry about me.
34:31 --> 34:32 [SPEAKER_00]: I got it.
34:32 --> 34:32 [SPEAKER_00]: I know I got it.
34:33 --> 34:34 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's the way she was.
34:34 --> 34:40 [SPEAKER_01]: She was very much like, you know, like the last person to sit down, you know, at the dinner table and stuff.
34:40 --> 34:43 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, she had four boys and well, five, including my dad.
34:44 --> 34:47 [SPEAKER_01]: But like, was just a superhero.
34:47 --> 34:51 [SPEAKER_01]: And so, yeah, of course, that was her, that was her common phrase.
34:51 --> 34:52 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's fine.
34:52 --> 34:55 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, because nothing really faced her, you know?
34:56 --> 35:01 [SPEAKER_01]: So, but yeah, I think tattoos in honor of loved ones is totally cool.
35:02 --> 35:04 [SPEAKER_00]: It's one of my favorite grief icebreakers.
35:04 --> 35:09 [SPEAKER_00]: If you're ever looking to kill time in an airport or something like that, just start looking around and see who has a memorial tattoo.
35:09 --> 35:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Hi, it wasn't trying to kill time, but I went and dropped off a jumpsuit recently to be dry cleaned.
35:14 --> 35:18 [SPEAKER_00]: And my dry cleaners is called, I can express this, but it's called Minerva's.
35:19 --> 35:22 [SPEAKER_00]: But the gentleman who owned it, I said, can you tell me who Minerva is?
35:22 --> 35:24 [SPEAKER_00]: And he pointed to Attua, it is armies like it's my mother.
35:24 --> 35:34 [SPEAKER_00]: And she died, you know, however many years ago, back in Mexico and he told the whole story of learning to clean and so and men from her is a kid and then always wanting to open like a dry cleaners of his own in the States.
35:34 --> 35:38 [SPEAKER_00]: And so he learned from all these prolific dry cleaners here in Chicago and then finally opened up his own business.
35:38 --> 35:45 [SPEAKER_00]: And he's like when I had came to choose the name, I didn't just want to be like number one dry cleaners or Chicago's best cleaners or whatever the
35:46 --> 35:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Like, would rank high on SEO.
35:47 --> 35:49 [SPEAKER_00]: He was like, I wanted it to have some meaning.
35:49 --> 35:50 [SPEAKER_00]: He's like, so I chose my mom's name.
35:50 --> 35:57 [SPEAKER_00]: And so now every time he's calling people on the phone or sending an invoice or doing something over email, he sees his mom's name every single day.
35:57 --> 35:59 [SPEAKER_00]: And she has just been woven into his business.
35:59 --> 36:00 [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, that's permission to do.
36:00 --> 36:04 [SPEAKER_00]: That's permission to take grief forward and out into the world with you.
36:05 --> 36:09 [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, grief tattoos are great, great, great conversation starter, like a dinner party or something like that.
36:10 --> 36:12 [SPEAKER_01]: What a beautiful way to honor his mother, too.
36:13 --> 36:29 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, she lives on through the strike cleaner and, wow, as a final question, because I know we're on low and time here, if someone listening is grieving right now and feels completely alone, because as you mentioned in the book, isolation is definitely a part of it, what would you want them to hear today?
36:34 --> 36:43 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to call back to your point and Pete Rollins' point of communion and something that I talk about in the book and also in Life After Loss Academy.
36:43 --> 36:46 [SPEAKER_00]: So this is a heartbeat through all of my work, but something that...
36:48 --> 36:54 [SPEAKER_00]: helped me feel less alone after my mom died, was imagining what I now call like the great constellation of greeners.
36:55 --> 37:05 [SPEAKER_00]: It's like everyone who has ever grieved is out there somewhere and they might be in your neighborhood, they might be in your apartment complex, they might be in your lineage and your family line.
37:05 --> 37:09 [SPEAKER_00]: I'll never forget working with a client who had another client who had miscarried over and over and over again.
37:09 --> 37:10 [SPEAKER_00]: She found out.
37:11 --> 37:25 [SPEAKER_00]: By grieving her babies, that her mom had also miscarried and her grandmother had also miscarried her great grandmother had always miscarried and so there's this lineage of I have grieved the same thing you have grieved and even if she never met them, there is this knowing that gets passed down of what it is to experience a loss like this.
37:26 --> 37:39 [SPEAKER_00]: And looking for celebrities who have similar losses, authors who have similar losses, podcasters who have similar losses, like just noticing where else the grief lives in the world through the lens of your grief glasses, like look there it is, even fictional characters.
37:39 --> 37:50 [SPEAKER_00]: I got a lot of grief and spoke from the Golden Girls after my mom died, and how they cope with life's hardships, but feeling alone in grief is not necessarily
37:50 --> 38:12 [SPEAKER_00]: a bad thing or something that needs fixing and I'm not going to tell you just need to find a grief support group or you just need to find community or you just need to tell your family what you need and set your boundaries and whatever it just the first step in the action of feeling less alone if that's a goal that you have is just looking up a little bit beyond your vision and seeing where else in the world do grieving people exist because I am already among them.
38:13 --> 38:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Like it's one of those few clubs in life that you don't need like a membership or a qualification to join other than you have experienced a loss and John and I can be in your grief club to even just by sheer nature of you here listening is that we are already in the grief club with you and where else in your life do grief club members already exist whether they have a great deal in common with you or not but noticing the constellation and seeing yourself in it and envisioning all these planets and stars and
38:39 --> 38:53 [SPEAKER_00]: Meteor sort of orbiting around each other and then it just keeps getting bigger like I don't know about you But I find a great amount of comfort and just Invisiting that and knowing that the people I pass on the street are definitely grieving something even if no I'm talking about it.
38:53 --> 38:57 [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, oh, we're all carrying Something that feels a little like this
38:58 --> 38:59 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, absolutely.
39:00 --> 39:01 [SPEAKER_01]: That was absolutely beautiful.
39:01 --> 39:04 [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for coming on today for folks listening.
39:05 --> 39:10 [SPEAKER_01]: I will as always have links in the show notes, but the book is called, of course, I'm here right now.
39:10 --> 39:13 [SPEAKER_01]: Three actually helpful things to say to someone grieving.
39:13 --> 39:17 [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you again so much for coming on and sharing the wisdom from your book.
39:17 --> 39:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much.
39:18 --> 39:19 [SPEAKER_00]: This was really beautiful.
39:19 --> 39:20 [SPEAKER_00]: I really appreciate it.
39:26 --> 39:43 [SPEAKER_02]: Because he has a body or even a name, if he does, does he know that I'm alive, is God.
39:47 --> 40:09 [SPEAKER_02]: But she carried it all down to she carried out the fear Something tells me God, we'll survive So take a breath, breathe in The mystery
40:18 --> 40:35 [SPEAKER_03]: As we don't know you, I think a true face If God has a face, His face must look like yours
40:45 --> 40:49 [SPEAKER_02]: Did God kill his kid?
40:50 --> 40:55 [SPEAKER_02]: Did he have to have blood before he would forget?
40:56 --> 40:57 [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe we
41:12 --> 41:24 [SPEAKER_02]: Is the aching my soldiers confined to my brain, even so does that mean it's not real?
41:24 --> 41:30 [SPEAKER_02]: So take a breath of breathing, the mystery that...
41:42 --> 41:48 [SPEAKER_03]: If God has a face, her face must look like this.
42:10 --> 42:15 [SPEAKER_02]: Your face like a teenager, and I'm at a milled red.
42:16 --> 42:21 [SPEAKER_02]: A rock sent his husband, got sent their children.
42:21 --> 42:32 [SPEAKER_02]: Vays like a Kim, a TED or Tyrone, a Lucy born with an extra croissant.
42:32 --> 42:53 [SPEAKER_02]: Powerful with legs, he can't move by himself A girl born and a Daniel, who now is then now A pillaging Eve, and white guy's name died If you have a heartbeat, you are the...
43:01 --> 43:27 [SPEAKER_03]: To take a breath, breathing, a mystery that is there.
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