We've been very naive about how complicated grief isn't general and how long grief lasts in general
So to put these stamps and labels on grief is sometimes helpful and then sometimes it's you know
We're just finally catching up in some ways to what grief really just is
What we need to do is make a little more space for different versions of grief different time periods for grief different
Formulas for grief. There really isn't a quick fix for it or a one size fits all
So have you ever lost someone so close to you that it felt like a piece of your soul was ripped away like the pain would never end or
Maybe it wasn't a person but rather a pet or a chosen family level friend or
Even a job or a community grief. It turns out is not just about death. It's about loss and we all experience it
No one gets out without it
When we experience profound loss it can turn our world completely upside down
Many of us would give anything to avoid living through such anguish
But my guest today Claire Bidwell Smith
argues that hidden within grief is an incredible opportunity for growth and meaning and she also dives into why
No one in the early part of that journey can or should even be thinking that way but over time
It can become something very different
Transformative even
Claire is a licensed therapist and author of the new book conscious grieving a transformative approach to healing from loss
Recognized as one of today's foremost experts on grief
She strives to provide support for all kinds of people
Experiencing all kinds of loss if you'll buy her own experience
Losing both parents at a very young age in our conversation Claire shares how fully engaging with your grief and leaning into pain
Rather than avoiding it can lead to deep personal transformation
She explains the five different types of grief that we all face
Which I'd actually never heard of before and it gave me a powerful reframe
From the expected loss of a loved one to the unexpected grief that comes from a major life change or more
ambiguous or complicated losses that you feel deeply but others can't see she offers insights into how to
Healthily process complicated grief when relationships are less than perfect and we also discuss the importance of grief rituals and finding
Community as well as carrying your lost loved ones with you through embodying their legacy if you've experienced loss
Or are worried about how you might handle it in the future this conversation will give you a profoundly new perspective on a
Rear so excited to share this conversation with you hung on at the fields and this is good life project
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It's interesting. We're living in a time where I feel like the word grief has taken on different contexts and different meanings
And I think an interesting starting point would really just be
To ask the question. What are we actually talking about when we're talking about grief?
Hmm. That is such a good question. What we are talking about when we're talking about grief
I really think is a series of emotions that come with change
I think we're talking about change a lot when we're talking about loss
And that is something we are often resistant to and there are so many feelings that come when things change and when things fall away
When our identities shift because of change externally and internally
And so I really think it's the series of emotions that come up around that sometimes it's fear
sometimes it's
Relief sometimes it's
Exquisite anguish
Sometimes it's just like a dull sorrow, you know
There's so many different kinds of emotions that can come but I really think that the entry point is change
For a long time grief has been relegated to the loss of a person
Which is what we mostly think about when we think about grief and when that happens when we lose someone
We love someone we're close to it's not wanted. It's not something we invited or sought and so in that way
I think that there is a huge shift that comes that's quite painful and unexpected sometimes even if the death itself was
Expected what comes with it is really is really difficult
But we do grief for all kinds of other things even when there's a positive change, you know
If we're moving across the country or we take a new job and we're leaving a beloved old job
Even if we know that this is positive change there is still some grief around letting go of things
Yeah, I mean no doubt you know
It's interesting thing that came to mind as you're just sharing that in the last year we had a kid who graduated college
Who had like a fantastic time in her final year especially and
So exciting or so proud and so like opening up a chapter and there's so much possibility ahead of you and at the same time
It was like I had this immediate transfer and it's back to me leaving college you like decades earlier and
Remembering the feelings of a sense of wonder and possibility, but also
Just like I may never see a lot of these people again. I may never be back in this place for years if not ever
Yeah, and it is interesting how I feel like often
We have the sense of loss that simultaneously coexist with a sense of possibility
Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Yeah, I think that that's a really great example
You know, it's very bittersweet in a lot of ways and it's the end of an era
You know your art you're excited to see your child go off, but you're also gonna
mourn and that we went through that ourselves too
Yeah, it occurs to me also we're having this conversation on God willing the back end of a really brutal four years and like the history of the world
And while a lot of people lost individuals
There was a bigger loss than I think so many of us had which is this sense of
This is the way that the world is and that we can kind of count on the fact that we can wake up tomorrow
And it's gonna look relatively the same
Mm-hmm, and the blink of an eye that was God does that in your mind? Is that a form of grief also?
Yes 100% I think we've finally really started to recognize that kind of grief
We've been talking about it more and more
I think we began to talk about grief in new ways during the pandemic
But as we hit this four-year anniversary of it
I think that there's vestiges of it that we're not even recognizing still that remain
But what's interesting to me is that the way you kind of phrase that about like kind of life as we knew it
You know disappeared
But that happens to when we lose someone we love
And what's interesting to me is I see a lot of anxiety occur within within the grief process
And I've been writing about that for years
I was 18 when my mother died. I was just started college and
It was a similar experience to the pandemic life as I knew it was suddenly gone
You know the person who held our family together the person who was my go-to for everything was suddenly gone
And I didn't really know what the landscape of my life looked like anymore with her not in it
And I think we experienced similar things in the pandemic that feeling of just
Total uncertainty about the future. You know, what does it look like now?
And who are we now and and what is to come and everything that you had thought was going to happen or look like is gone
And so I think that that's a really interesting thing that I saw happen
You worldwide for so many people
Yeah, you brought up the connection between grief and anxiety and your last book actually was like largely dove into that
Take me into that more because I think it's a really interesting relationship because I feel like
Even before the pandemic the prevalence of generalized anxiety
Have been slowly creeping its way up and up and up and up and becoming much and much more pervasive and then something like this hits
Talk to me more about the relationship between grief and anxiety
It's a really interesting relationship. I think it's really multifaceted
There's a lot of reasons that we can develop anxiety after a big loss or
Have our anxiety go up in levels after a big loss
Some of it is due to these changes that occur some people when they go through a big loss
They will have to change jobs or their finances will change or they lose child care partners or you know everything physically even changes
Not just the emotional landscape and that in it of itself can cause anxiety
But then there's also the reckoning with our mortality
I mean many of us who go through a big loss maybe we've never been through one before maybe we thought we
Had acknowledged that death was down the road at some point but we hadn't really felt it or experienced it
And so suddenly you're looking at at life through a new lens
Safety and certainty can go out the window a lot of times with the big loss and that causes anxiety
Some kinds of trauma that come with loss, you know seeing someone through a traumatic death or a long illness
can be really difficult and give you a really different sense of
um the fragility of life and of yourself and other loved ones
um
Couple that with just kind of our our culture at the moment all the technology all the social media everything else that's causing anxiety
Politics warn the environment. There's so much going on and so it's all kind of ripe for
So much extra anxiety that comes on
Yeah, that makes so much sense, you know as you're describing that part of what's going through the mind also is that
When you use the phrase safety and security and when that goes away or when it's you know like
When they're when it's seriously dented, which I think it has been for almost everybody in some way shape or form
I feel like different people respond really differently
Some people look at that and they're like wow like life is fragile life is I you were made no promises
I need to actually be the person I want to be do the things I want to do and like show up the way that I need to show up
That I've always been afraid to and others for the exact opposite direction. Mm-hmm in your experience
Is there a more common sort of default to that or is it really just all over the place depending on who you are and what your history is?
I think it's all over the place and I think you can inhabit both realms
You know, I think it can be incredibly liberating to go through
A loss that kind of pairs everything down to its essence. You know what matters to you?
What do you care about what do you want to do with your life now that you kind of have this new understanding of it?
It can be terrifying and also incredibly freeing to go through and so I really see some people and have it both
They'll become more anxious yet also more liberated in terms of who they want to be
And then you're right and then so there's the two sides of it as well some people really go into some very anxious spaces
And I think for those people there's also a part of themselves. They begin to explore
That has to do with finding a new framework for which to understand themselves life meaning if they're not willing to
Ask some of those really big questions. They're gonna stay in that state of anxiety
The way you're describing it finding a new framework is interesting
Not too long go ahead the chances it now with Dr. Keltler is one of the leading researchers on awe
And one of the way he describes the experience of awe is like you have a model of the world
And the experience of awe in some way shatters it
Hmm, and you're left to essentially you know put together the pieces
To form a new model because the old one just doesn't exist anymore
So it's interesting that the way he's describing awe
Sounds also really similar to the way that we're describing elements of grief
Absolutely, I think it really does shatter your understanding of the world
And it it changes your belief system whether you want it to or not and whether you resist it or not
It really begins to I have seen people
Lose someone really close to them and and it seems almost impossible for them at some point not to wonder where are they?
Can they see me what happens when we die these really big existential philosophical questions that they may have never asked themselves before
And I think that that is a part of the grief process as well. It's a really interesting part
But I think it's difficult for so many people who don't have any kind of pre-existing framework or have stepped away from a framework that maybe they had growing up
Which is interesting too because for a lot of folks the framework that they had growing up
Was in some way shape or form
Spirituality or religion faith and that kind of said this is the way that the world is here the rules by which we live
And at the same time when someone passes on
Here are the ways here are the steps for grief you like you like if you're Jewish you sit shiva
It's like there's a process that tends to accompany those and
And as more and more people leave organized religion and faith
I wonder if you're seeing that have any impact on
People's ability to access some sort of you know like historical context for how do I do this thing?
No, I really am seeing that a lot
I think that people are lacking ritual. They're lacking community within their grief
They're lacking kind of role models and historical evidence that they would have otherwise been able to kind of lean into
And I think we're seeing it so much more in our younger generations, which might explain some of their anxiety as well
And so
There's been this really big proliferation of grief books and writing and work lately
And I think it's because you know we're becoming more non-secular
Now that makes so much sense to me
You know his book you make this distinction you sort of create these categories
I know you didn't create them, but you sort of you map them
These five different types of grief
Intisimatory complicated ambiguous disenfranchised collective
Walk me through each of these a little bit because I've never seen it sort of broken out this way. I thought it was really fascinating
Yeah, I think it's helpful to really be able to understand grief in different ways
Antisimatory grief is the grief that we feel when we know a loss is coming
So maybe thinking about empty nesting or you have a family member with dementia
Uh, or you know, you're you know, you're gonna leave a job or maybe you yourself have an illness that you're facing
Um, there's an anticipatory grief that comes with knowing how much losses is ahead and
That kind of anticipatory grief is is complicated, you know
It brings a lot of anxiety because there is that uncertainty and there's not a definite date sometimes with some of these things
And so you're often swimming in the sea of what ifs and
Maybe's and thinking about things that haven't quite happened yet and big US grief and disenfranchised grief
Those are really for grief and loss that are not as recognized, you know pet loss divorce
Illness racial disparity, you know, so many different places that aren't necessarily being recognized by our culture
And so those are hard ones to carry too. I think that grief is already pretty lonely and isolating and then when you're carrying some of those
When no one else can recognize them and see what you're carrying that can feel
Sometimes confusing you may feel shame and doubt around some of those
Yeah, as you're describing those also like one of the things to kind of remind me I'm curious about is
loss of ability, you know like like most of us at some point as we get further into life like like if we're fortunate to
We will lose some ability and some of that may be visible
But oftentimes it's invisible or we may be struggling with some sort of chronic dysfunction or illness or disease or pain or suffering
Some way that others aren't aware of unless we actually proactively make them aware of
And yet like internally we're dealing with that loss all day every day is with that sort of
Fall under these umbrellas of ambiguous or disenfranchised grief in your mind. Yeah, absolutely
I think any kind of grief that isn't
Recognized by those around us is that ambiguous into some franchised grief
I do really feel that it helps to find communities in which we can talk about our grief and loss and feel seen by others who
Understand it or going through something similar again. It is really lonely
I think so many of the people that I work with they have a lot of questions and confusion around their grief process
And they often think that they're doing it wrong and they want to know, you know
What am I doing wrong and how do I do this? What's the answer is there are formula and there isn't a quick fix to grief
It's frustrating that grief can look so different and feel so different in so many different losses
But it's also true, you know each loss and each kind of grief that you experience is going to be different from the last
You know if you lose both parents the grief that you feel for each one is might feel really different
Depending on the relationship depending on the age you are depending on where you are in life
All of those kinds of things and so finding ways to
Just be able to recognize and talk about that grief with other people who understand
But when you carry something all day every day by yourself
You show up at work or you show up in your family and no one's really seeing this grief that you're holding
You begin to doubt it for yourself and you try to push it away
And when we do that it always kind of backfires. Yeah, I can't imagine that's got to be a good thing
Um complicated grief
Mm-hmm
You know we've been talking a lot about
complicated grief in the kind of psychological realms lately
We've been talking a lot about extended grief and there are so many versions of grief that become complicated or extended
I think when we
Have a loss that is complicated
Maybe you were not close to the person for a period of time or maybe there were things that were unresolved and
Maybe you were in a relationship with someone who was somewhat abusive or very abusive and yet you lose them
There's a complicated grief that goes with that and I think that
That kind of grief takes more work because there's so many layers to peel up
There's so many things that you kind of have to work on before you can even get to the pure raw grief
You have to sort through the relationships sort through the manner in which things played out
sort through guilt or regret and
And
That extends the grief process in a big way
But I also think that we've been very naive about how complicated grief isn't general and how long grief lasts in general
So to put these stamps and labels on grief is sometimes helpful and then sometimes it's you know
We're just finally catching up in some ways to what grief really just is
Yeah, I think in some ways, you know
Everybody has heard you know the five stages of grief which I know are now hotly debated about whether it's accurate or not
Acquired useful or harmful a lot of different opinions and
But what it seems like a lot of folks are coming around to know is this notion like you're describing and is that like
There are going to be commonalities
And we can create these broader buckets anticipatory complicated ambiguous disenfranchised collective
But those are you know, it's like looking at a study and saying you know like
Most people experience this but most people isn't they're not you
Right, right, you know, and it's like we're getting back to the fact that well actually the way I may need to do this
Maybe entirely unique to me and that that's actually okay
I don't need to look for the steps and then make sure that I'm checking the boxes of those steps
Yeah, I think that that is what
Made the five stages of grief a little bit challenging right?
I think that one of the things that people love about Elizabeth Kibbley Ross's five stages denial anger bargaining depression
Acceptance is that they're formulating and people really often want this quick fix for their grief right?
They're in so much pain or anguish or their lives have been so disrupted that they're like great
There's five things I just need to go through and I'm going to tick these boxes and then they quickly find that those don't really work
In that order necessarily or for them necessarily and so we've stuck with them for so long
But I understand the appeal of them
But I think that what we need to do is make a little more space for
Different versions of grief different time periods for grief different formulas for grief
There really isn't a quick fix for it or a one-size-fits-all which I think can be disappointing to a lot of people
And we've had so many displays on television and movies about what grief is supposed to look like you know
We have these depictions of
The dark room and the sorrow and maybe the anger, but that's not always what grief is like for everybody
It's interesting right because if somebody gives you like here's the formula like there are these five stages
First you do one they do the next the next and then I could see this scenario where somebody's like okay
So I'm in one it's awful. I mean two. It's a little bit better. I mean now. I'm in four
I'm so close to the end right and then they wake up the next day and they're like I'm feeling everything that's in one
I know which is like
Then you're layering on not just grief, but what's wrong with me like then it's shame like no
I know that's what I see all the time so much shame so many people are coming to me and they's just say I'm doing this wrong
Something's wrong. It's not like it looks on TV or it doesn't fit into these stages. I must be doing it wrong
ma
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We've talked a bit about what grief is where do we get it wrong?
I mean is there an experience where people are like on grieving or I'm in grief
But it's there's really something else going on that's sort of like a common misconception
I think where we get it wrong is trying to rush through it
I think we get it wrong that it should be tidied up within a few months or even a year
Sometimes grief lasts much longer than that you lose a child
You're not just one in done with grief after a year
You know, that's a grief. You're going to carry with you for your lifetime
I think we get it wrong in terms of not having enough rituals around it not having enough community around it
I see a lot of healing occur when people do find
rituals to rely upon
Communities to engage with and talk about their grief with
But what it looks like today most of the time is you lose somebody and everybody shows up in the first few weeks
You have a few rituals the memorial or shiva and the fierce few weeks and then it's kind of over and you're back to work
And you're supposed to just kind of be getting back to your regular life and back to normal when in reality a lot of people
Their grief doesn't even set in for the first six months
You know, they're still processing that this has happened their experiencing life changes or having to deal with tasks and administrative duties
And then the real grief begins to set in at the same time that everybody's expecting them to be back to normal
So then they start expecting themselves to be back to normal
And that's when they start pushing the grief away and when we push the grief away
We're bottling it all up. We're not really sitting with the stuff that needs to be processed and explored
Yeah, I know this is one of the things that you're right about in the movie
This is the notion of engaging with the grief
And I want to dive into some of the ideas around like how we might engage in in a way that actually is helpful
But you know, it also brings up the question of
Is the ability to engage with grief in a healthy and constructive way
Privilege that some people just don't have or if you're working three jobs
You know and just trying to get by and supporting a family and a partner passes
You can't stop working and you may not have the resources to sort of like so I guess part of the question is
Is the ability to navigate grief in a way that is
holistic and healthy and constructive as much as it can be
Is that the domain of certain people but not others or does everybody have access to this?
I do believe everyone has access to it
I think that there is a privileged level of course where there are people who can afford to take time off and go to
Expensive therapists or you know do all kinds of self-care for themselves and grief and take
Time to just be with themselves during that kind of process. That is a very privileged place from which to deal with your grief
However, I think there's a lot of ways we can engage with it
I think that even if you're working a lot of jobs even if you have a busy family that you're taking care of a lot of
obligations
There's still time to
Meditate for five minutes right in a journal for five minutes seek out an online community at no or low cost
That can help you during a lunch hour, you know get through some things
I think the main thing to engage with about grief is just to make space for it
Making space for it is talking about it acknowledging it trying not to just carry it without ever talking about it
You know that's that's when things really go awry if you can even make you know
I tell my clients you can schedule your grief sometimes if you need to
Set aside some time on a Sunday morning or a Saturday afternoon when you don't have as many obligations and sit down and
Open up the grief, you know open it up by looking at photos by playing music by talking about your person and
And bring the grief on cry, you know rage do whatever you need to do
It really does help you go back into your life and take care of the regular day-to-day things when you've made a little space for it
But I do a lot of group work in the grief work. I do I do retreats and groups and online groups and seeing people come together
Even just for an hour on a zoom and talk about
What is going on with them for their grief?
Then they can go back to their job as a teacher or go back to whatever it was that they were doing
Prior to jumping on a zoom in their car for 45 minutes. It really helps it really helps them kind of
Be able to hold it in a different way as they do get through their days. I mean you just shared two ideas
Which I think I just I want to make sure that they land, you know
Like they're one is the idea of scheduling
Like here's a window which I think is really powerful and then the idea is like you don't do this alone
Like find some sort of community where you can share this experience on the scheduling one
I'm curious also because I've also heard this for anxiety
Sort of like you know like if you're in a spin cycle
You basically like set aside 15 minutes a day and just let it out and journal on it and speak it and cry and do all this stuff
like process it
In that context, you know
It often can be helpful for people from what I understand it doesn't mean that it entirely goes away
You won't have it in other moments, but I feel like there's almost like a a tipping point and it helps lower
The water in that well a little bit so you know
It takes a little bit more to get you back to that point
With grief as you're describing this at this flashback a number of years ago
In conversation with Liz Gilbert who lost had recently lost her partner
And she described to me, you know like being months down from it and she thought she was kind of okay
Walking down the street in East Village in New York and she described what she called a carve out moment
She was like literally she's walking down the street her knees would buckle and she would be sobbing and
So I'm curious about the notion of okay, so scheduling grief
The take a half an hour or whatever it is every day and just
Be in it completely immerse her in it
But there still doesn't negate these random moments where it's just gonna completely hit you doesn't no
It definitely doesn't I think it does help like you said that tipping point it lowers the water a little bit when you are
Because if you're not making any space for it those tip-over moments are gonna be much bigger
Your knees are gonna really buckle
But it you're right it doesn't take away from that entirely
There's always going to be triggers that arise you might see somebody who looks like your person or you might hear a song when you're at the store
You know there's something might
Happen that just kind of brings you to your knees and really brings all of that grief
But if you're already in a place where you are making space for it regularly you're getting more comfortable with it, right?
I think that's the thing I have so many people tell me they're afraid
To start crying because they fear they'll never stop they're afraid to open the door to their grief
But I think if you're keeping the door open on a regular basis
You're not as afraid of it and so when those big waves of grief come on you kind of know how to ride them a little better
Does that make sense? Yeah, I mean, I think it does it's sort of like it's
It's like grief exposure therapy to a certain extent
Yeah, not willfully, but it is what it is and so like the more and I'm curious from your place from a therapeutic standpoint
Is it the type of thing that you've seen where?
The more you allow it the more you just completely feel it and then realize that
I don't want to say you get through it or there's another side to it, but that you can find a way
To sort of like come back to a place where you're whole enough and you're you're okay enough to step back into
Your life to a certain extent that the more that you do that the more that your brain search will learn
Oh, I can do this and that that's a helpful part of the process too
Yeah, exactly. It's about learning how to carry grief, you know how to carry it for a long time perhaps and so
The more used to it that you become of writing those waves of it of letting it in
You do start to realize oh, I can completely break down and sob and how like an animal on the floor for 45 minutes
And then I can actually get up and make dinner and I did that last week
So maybe I can do it again this week, you know
But the first few times that that happens it can be so frightening
So overwhelming. This is another one of those places where anxiety sets in because
Sometimes you don't even know yourself in grief anymore
Can you trust yourself to go to work and not have one of those breakdowns?
Can you trust yourself to get in a car or you know be in your marriage or take care of your kids and
You know, you don't know when you're gonna have one of those kind of breakdowns or who you are all the time anymore
And that can be really anxiety provoking
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, it's an it impact your identity
I'm in no smell and I actually want to deepen into that but before we get there because
I want to close this loop of sort of like letting it flow at the moments that you need to let it flow
That's gonna hit you in random context like you described
It's gonna hit you at work when you're home with your kids or your partner out with friends or if the gym whatever it may be
How do you approach
advising somebody to sort of prepare those around them to understand what's happening and
Be with them in a way where you feel like you you can feel what you need to feel and express what you need to express
And they feel like they understand how to just
Be there with you and they understand what's going on. It's a good question
You can only prepare people so much there are some people who really can't stand to see others in pain or they really want to tidy up your grief
where they want to try to fix it and there's not really gonna come a place where they can hold that space for you
I see this all the time and hear about it all the time from the people I work with that you know even family members
Can't they just can't allow them to sit in that pain. They're constantly trying to fix it or trying to offer them some positive ideas
And you know, well at least this or think about that and you'd be grateful for this
So you're always going to have those kinds of people in your life
And I think again this this goes back to the idea of community finding people who can allow for that space for you
Who can see you who can just let you be where you are and your grief is really important
Sometimes those are family members and close friends. Sometimes they're new people sometimes they're strangers
You meet in a grief group or you know at work even when you share about going through a loss
There's a saying about in grief
Strangers become friends and friends become strangers because there are people that really have a hard time with other people grieving
And it's one of the secondary losses that I think comes with other big losses. You start to really kind of
Shift everyone that you're connected to
um
Who can show up for you and who can't that said to answer your question properly
I do think that you can tell people you could send a text message or an email or tell someone to their face like hey
I'm really going through this with my grief. I feel like I'm doing okay with it
But there are definitely moments where I'm struggling and this is what it might look like and this is how you can show up for me
You know either just hold space for me when I'm crying or come over and hang out with me or distract me or help me talk about my person
Share memories with me that you have there are ways we can definitely do that
And I think there are people who will show up and especially if you can tell them a couple of things that they can do for you
Please come empty my trash every Tuesday
You know whatever it is
People like to try to help and if you give them some idea of like hey, this is what's going on kind of it's almost like expect it
Mm-hmm, and then hear a couple things that like would be okay to do or even welcome
To do in these scenarios so that because I think so many people probably back away
Not because they don't want to support somebody who's in grief, but because
A, they're probably reminds them of their own potential for loss and B
They just don't know what to do and they're kind of terrified of saying or doing the wrong thing and actually making things worse
Mm-hmm. It's true
They're always afraid to say the wrong thing and there really isn't a perfect thing to say you know
I think you can say I'm here. I'm so sorry. I'm here anything you need. I'm right here
I'm just to be with somebody in their grief. I think it's important
But a lot of times people won't say anything at all and I think that that hurts a lot more
They're so afraid of saying the wrong thing or often they'll say that they're afraid to bring up the death
Because they don't want to make the person sad and then I hear all the people who are grieving say what do you mean?
I'm already thinking about it all the time
You think you bringing it up is gonna remind me it's already with me every moment
I would imagine also that there's probably a difference
Between people who have experienced profound grief in their lives and those who haven't yet
Mm-hmm. We all will at some point. It's just it's it's coming and the way they respond
It's almost like if you've been through it and you understand at least how it affected you that you might show up differently
I'm curious whether you see that I do
It's a terrible club that nobody wants to be part of but once you're part of it
You really do understand how it works and and um
I have sat in rooms full of people who have gone through profound loss and I have felt more understood in those rooms
Then you know with close friends of mine and I think that
I think it's really hard to understand it. I don't fault the people who don't
I think it's just really really difficult to understand it until you've been through it
Now that makes a lot of sense
You use the phrase secondary loss and this is in fact one of the things that you write about
So take me into this a little bit more because it's really interesting sort of like quote
Additional context for for grief. It's almost like piling on
Yeah, I mean, I think about a group of widows that I work with and all the secondary losses that they've occurred
You know their social lives have changed their they don't want to go out as much with all the couples anymore
Their finances have changed their grandparenting lives have changed. There's so many secondary losses that come with the loss of their spouse
That other people don't always think about they recognize. Okay. Yes, this person lost their spouse
But they're not thinking about all the ways their lives changed as well
And all the kind of tiny losses that they're facing on a daily basis
When it comes to those things
If you lose somebody and maybe that that person was a major contributor to your financial stability
Yeah, you know it happens all the time. Okay, wait a minute
So now all of a sudden it's not just this person there where there's a vacuum
Now I'm both grieving that and then I'm grieving what I thought would be my secure staple
You know like everything's gonna be okay. Yeah financial life
And especially if you have people who are looking to you to continue to present sort of like you know like that
That we're gonna be okay thing like if you're a parent and you have kids
That's gotta be just brutally hard. It's really hard
Or even physical touch when you lose a spouse, you know
I was talking to a young widow the other day and she was talking about just physical touch
She hasn't been you know, she doesn't really have any like you know
Her friends hug her here and there family, but it's like she hasn't even just gotten like a really good close intimate hugs since her since her husband died
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One of the things that you mentioned earlier also as a category, but you kind of dive into it a bit more as this notion of
um complex a complicated grief and
Not all loss if we're talking about loss of a person. I would imagine that that complicated
grief can also extend to beyond people their
paradigms and context you probably feel pretty mixed about you know you could be
leaving a
Hardly toxic job that feel terrible about it and it's like you can't wait to get away from it at the same time
You're leaving behind maybe ten years of you know like credibility and like building the resume and
It's you know like building social currency and then stepping into the best, but especially in the context of
losing somebody where the relationship with an individual was really complicated
It seems like that is something that is
More common than maybe I realized and really adds
Not just complexity to the relationship that was but complexity to the way that you grieve that loss
Absolutely
I have a lot of clients who have lost a parent with him. They had a complicated relationship with a mother or a father
Maybe they were estranged from them to a certain extent. Maybe it just was always complicated
And there's a lot that's left unresolved when you go through that kind of loss
They also feel some of that disenfranchised grief in some ways
Because they feel like their grief is supposed to look like everyone else's and people who don't really know them on the outside
will say I'm so sorry about your mom
And it's complicated and they and they just have to say thanks
You know without wanting to go into it necessarily about well
You know I hadn't talked to her in ten years or whatever the case is
But there's a lot of just kind of layers to sift through you're also grieving the relationship you never got to have
You're grieving the kind of hope that you were maybe holding out on that the relationship could change at some point down the road
And so all of those layers are things that you really kind of have to process and and think about ways to work through
They're really different than
Then losing someone who maybe you are really close with and how to healthy relationship with yeah
In this context of a more complicated relationship with the person that you've lost
But are there any sort of like general things that common things that you might think about like or reframes or
Or they you know when you're trying to figure out how do I process?
It's almost a how do I grieve and simultaneously process the relationship that I had with this person that was really complex and maybe not good
Where I can even get to a place where I feel okay grieving
Now that makes sense
I think first there has to be this processing of the relationship because when someone dies it really has come to an end in many ways
I'm not every way. I do think that we have extended relationships with the people that we lose even after death
There's internal versions of them. There's spiritual aspects of those relationships that can continue
But we are really having to look at this kind of
Finality of this was the relationship, you know that started here and ended here and
Only when that really happens you may have gone to therapy for years and processed this complicated relationship
But when the person dies there's a new there's a new layer to it and what you're really looking at the whole of the relationship
um the middle the beginning the end
And so there's a processing of it that I think has to occur and then there's a grief that comes as well
And sometimes you can't even get to that grief
Until you've processed some of the relationship and then even with the grief
I think there's lots of different areas of the grief that you can work through so there's you can grieve
The relationship you didn't have you can grieve the good parts if there were good parts of the relationship
You know you can grieve some of the complicated aspects the harder aspects of it
You can tease them apart you can grieve them as a whole
There's all kinds of things you can do with it. It's almost taking compartmentalized elements of it
Process and I think you have to with a complicated one, you know
I think we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to decide when we're another
Oh, I can't grieve this person because you know, it was a complicated relationship or my you know
My dad was was abusive to me and I can't feel grief for him
You can still feel grief, you know
You can tease these things apart. It doesn't have to be so black and white
You can miss them and love them and hate them and resent them and you can have all of these complicated emotions all in one bucket
You know, it's interesting because as you're describing that I don't think no I said but yep
But you can never resolve it with them anymore like that opportunity is left
But for so many people there really wasn't an opportunity to resolve it with them while they were alive because there's so much
A strain was just okay and nobody's both people aren't willing to actually sit down and say let's do the work together
So it's something that is really on us to resolve
Like now in in their death, but also
It was probably lorzy on us to resolve even like during that person's life because it would never be processed by just
Having two people sit down and say we're both ready
Let's do this like I would imagine that's pretty unusual
Rarely happens so you have to find these other pathways to do it
And yet like a lot of what you're describing is I think the experience of somebody feeling like I was wronged by this person
You like call it a parent or regarding whoever it may be
And we never got to resolve that
What of the experience of somebody where you feel like I was actually the person who caused harm
And I never made amends and I never saw forgiveness
I never did the like these things
And that person
Left with me never actually being able to sort of like unburden myself
I think we see that one a lot to you
I think that there's a lot of things that
Elizabeth Kubler Ross had a had a quote that said guilt is perhaps grief's most painful companion
And I see people carry a lot of guilt and regret and remorse
Whether it was their fault that it was a complicated relationship or they feel they made some kind of mistake or error
You know at some point or towards the end
You see a lot of caregivers go through a lot of regret over you know
Ways that they handled things or didn't because of the amounts of stress on them
I wasn't there the night my mom died. I was 18. I was at college. I knew she was dying
My dad had called me to tell me that she was dying and that I could come to the hospital
And I stopped that night to see a boy
And my mom died while I was there that night at the boys house and for years
I wanted to tear my skin off with the amount of guilt I had and regret
Over not being there and I finally sat down and I began to write her letters all the time
And I really needed to say a lot there was so much that was just constantly inside of me burning up to say to her
and not having an outlet
Was just making things even more painful and so when I started to write to her it was really helpful
I was able to say all of the things that I really wanted to say
I don't know if she could hear them
You know it wasn't about that. It was just that I needed to actually take them out of me
I needed to say them to her
So I think there are ways that we can work through some of that. I also had to do a lot of
Self-compassion and forgiveness work around that and I also had to grow up and realize that I was 18
And I made a stupid choice, you know, and that we're human and it's really hard to say goodbye to people
We love and it's really hard to do everything exactly right and so one of the choices that we make especially at that age
You know
They're seemingly inconsequential in the moment and it's only after the fact that it becomes some of the most
Consequential choices that we've ever made in our lives right, but it's only hindsight
It's it's the circumstance that unfolded after that made it so we could have never you like really
Yeah, it's um
Here to describe in the letter writing process
um, Dan Thomas Hulow's positive psychologist describes this process that he calls you know
Marty Sullivan kind of like the gratitude visit a really popular thing
You like think about somebody in your past who you know has really made a difference in your life
You would never express it and then sit down and hit right a full letter
You know explaining how much they meant and then send it to them or actually read it to them call them up if you need it
And then Dan said but what if they're not there anymore?
Um, and he had a theater background in addition to positive psych and so he created this version that he would that he called the virtual gratitude
Visit whereas like basically you sit in a chair and then set it a blank chair across from you
And then imagine that person is there and and write the same letter to them and read it to them
And then you sit in their chair as if you're the one who's had to let her read to
You know, he did this in the context of gratitude
You know for a person who either you know, I have access to or who is passed his
You know no longer with you
But I wonder if if like something like that also
Do you feel like would be an effective thing to do in order to do what you were describing like like basically
There's all this angst that you're carrying and create almost like this virtual scenario
Yeah, you'd be able to express it. I have clients do things like that all the time
Whether it's in session and I asked them to imagine that their person is sitting here
And what would they say to them or have them go home and write a letter and come back and talk about the experience of it
The letter writing is really really powerful
It's different from talking about it or talking out loud to your person or saying it in your head
When you really sit down especially handwriting and write those letters to your mom
You know, there's something that you really feel in that and it's okay that they're not here
You really kind of can feel that you're saying that to them. I love that. That's right in line with what I do and believe
You said a couple things along the way also
That without using the word identity really spoke to the way that grief can change us on an identity level
And in fact you use the word transform a lot um you like when you speak when you write and often offer
grief up as this process that yes can be brutally hard
but also that holds this potential for
Transformation a number of different ways so take me into that a bit more
I do use the word transform and transformation a lot and I believe in it
You know, I think for a long time we've looked at grief as this horrible thing and this affliction that we need to kind of
Get through and get over
But I think that there is a lot of really beautiful things to find within grief
I think it teaches us a lot about ourselves. I think it asks a lot of us
It asks us to think about things we've never thought about before
That philosophical things existential things just what matters to us who we want in our lives
Again, there's some liberating aspects of it, you know, it can really help us kind of discard
Ways of being in the world or things we we no longer care about in the in light of this kind of loss
It's a really hard thing to hear about when you're in the beginning of a big loss. It's really hard
You don't want to hear about transforming at all
You just want your person back you want to be out of this pain and agony you want yourself back
You want your life to go back to the way it was you don't care about transforming
You really don't it's something that comes in time and it comes in so many little bits and pieces that
It's almost upon you before you've realized, you know after a while all these little bits and pieces have occurred
To really shift your identity and to change your view of the world
I think there's a real kind of letting go of ourselves and the and the person we once were
When we lose someone else and when we get to the other side of that through a lot of pain and fire and anguish
Through knees buckling on sidewalks, you know through you know losing finances and having to make all kinds of changes
All these secondary losses
There is a place we can get to
Down the road that really does we look back and we reflect and we think wow I have grown so much and I have changed so much
And there's a grief in that too. I mean, you know, you think oh my god my person never saw me become
Who I am now and there are pieces of me now that are better than before
But again, that's really hard to hear in the beginning and I'm always aware of that and conscious of that and want to
Always kind of call that out
It's like another part of that club that you don't want to be part of the people who've been in it for a long time
Know that there's
There's some light at the end of the tunnel, but the people who are just arriving to the club
You know, we don't talk about it right away
That makes sense. Yeah, I know for you you mentioned your mom
You lost your mom when you were 18 and if I recall correctly you lost your dad when you were around 25 as well
So you were young for both of them like super young
When you think about how that experience eventually
Landed in transformation for you. Um, what did that look like?
It was hard. They both got cancer at the same time when I was 14
And I'm an only child and my mom died at 18 and then my father
seven years later
I was his caregiver in hospice and my mother had this very medicalized death that none of us faced my father
Which has a really different approach and I wanted to be very
Present to his death and he asked me to be as well
And so he had a very beautiful death that I'm grateful for having been there for and having him kind of walk
me into it
It's kind of his last great gift as a parent
But then I was 25 and very very alone in the world and at a time when all of my peers were in a really different place
So I struggled for a good many years and that
Pairing down began to happen. I was working as a writer my 20s. I really wanted to
To write books which I I have and I do
But I was working as like a travel and a food writer and suddenly I just couldn't do it
I didn't care about these things all these things that were
You know seemingly really fun you get to go stay in nice hotels and go to restaurants and review them
And I was like I don't care about any of this anymore
And I started to make shifts in terms of the work I did
I worked for nonprofits for a while and then I decided to go back and get my masters and my first job out of that was in hospice
Because I just kept seeking
Experiences that mattered and so while I was still in a lot of pain and a lot of grief and sometimes feeling very alone
I was really finding things that mattered to me and I was finding things that were meaningful and
There was so much beauty in that and that was where the transformation really started to occur
Yeah, I mean it sounds like in no small way it led you into your vacation
You know this became a central devotion for you and remain self or you like your life
It did I love this work people ask me all the time isn't it sad isn't it heavy
And yeah, of course it is of course there are moments when it's it's so sad and the stories that I hear every day are really really sad or scary
But also it's so beautiful. It's all about relationships and love and I'm sitting with people every day in some of their like
truest moments of humanity
You know, they're just at their most raw
Version of themselves and that's an incredible experience and there's so much beauty and seeing how connected we are to each other
How much we love each other
It's really profound isn't that so much of what we yearn for on a day-to-day basis just to be
Actually seen for who we are and do you know to see others for who they are without like all the shields and all the facades and just
To be raw and real. I mean you get to experience that on a regular basis granted in a context that is also laden
With a whole lot of other like deep emotion and loss and and hardness
Do you ever wonder whether there's a way for us to access that level of connectedness a regular basis
Without having to be so brought to our knees. I would like to say yes, and I hope it it happens
I know that everyone that I know in the in the end of life space and the grief space
People who do this work and they usually come from it from a personal place like I have
We all have some of the most vibrant lives. I know of and we don't take things for granted and we
Those moments of connection that we have with each other even if we're just getting coffee
Can become so meaningful because we walk in these valleys all the time with other people
But I I don't know I like to I would like to think that we can
You know the end of the day so much of this work is also about
How do we tell a story of meaning in our lives and in the lives of those who we care deeply about and then when they're no longer there
How do we recreate meaning when so much of it was defined in relationship to people who no longer are with us
And that kind of brings us back to something you reference a few times also, which is this notion of
They're physically not here with us anymore
But does that mean that they're actually they they we have to sort of like just
Cut ties and assume like they are actually in in no way really accessible to us anymore
And whether you have metaphysical beliefs or spiritual beliefs that believe in the afterlife or not
Even more broadly, you know like are there ways to carry
Carry them with us where yes, we have to tell a different meaning story
But they can still be a part of it. I think it's actually so important in the grief process to find new ways to
Continue that relationship and carry them with us and I I think that we make a mistake a lot in thinking that the relationship is completely over
I think there's a period of time in the beginning when we have to kind of adjust to the physical severance of that relationship
They are no longer physically here. They're not going to walk through the door again
We're not going to be able to pick up the phone and call them
However, when we have had somebody in our lives that we were close to there's an internal version of them that we keep
It doesn't have to be spiritual you don't have to believe in anything in particular to access that internal version of them
You know, I had my mom for 18 years and I was so close with her
Even to this day. It's been 27 years since she died. I can still think of like
What would my mom think of my outfit today? And and I know what she would say like you're wearing too much black
Claire
And I can hear her voice and I can see the way she would say it and that we have access to it all the time
You know and we can go to them and and we can still lean on them ask them things listen for the answer
There's that version of being able to connect with them and then there's the making meaning
Ways that we can as well. I met with a rabbi. I'm not Jewish
But I met with a rabbi for a year at one point when I was working on a book about kind of exploring different
versions of the afterlife and how that impacts the grief process
And he explained to me that in Judaism
There's not a big emphasis on the afterlife being this place that we go
It's more about what have you left behind? What's the legacy you've left behind?
You know what were the good deeds you did here? What were the things that you can pass on to your children and your grandchildren?
You know, what can you embody of the people that you loved and lost?
How can you pass on those traits and those those qualities?
And I think that that is the most beautiful version of the afterlife I can think of
You know, I think of my father's generosity and his
His storytelling abilities and just bringing those things into the lives of my children who never met him
Is his afterlife, you know, how beautiful is that?
Yeah, very much so and I know
You know the notion of an ethical will I know is in a part of the Jewish tradition
I'm guessing there are probably versions of it in other traditions as well, which is I'd never heard of that
I heard from Rev. I um, Steve later also
Kind of walks through this process of like okay, so
Even if you're not feeling like the end is near you know like at a certain point if you've got people like you want to sort of like
Here's what I feel about these things that really matter to me behind
I think it's such a beautiful thing to be thinking about you know
At different seasons of life as well, and that's kind of what you're describing
Yeah, it feels a good place for us to come full circle in our conversation as well
So in this container of good life project if I offer up the phrase to live a good life what comes up?
To live a good life means to appreciate that at one point it comes to an end
My father said on his deathbed he said to me that life wouldn't be so sweet if it had no ending
It was one of the last things he said to me and it has always stayed with me
Not because it was the last thing he said partly, but also just the realization that if it just if it never had an ending
We really I don't think we'd evaluate everything that we get to to find meaning in
Hmm. Thank you. Thank you Jonathan
Hey before you leave if you love this episode safe bet you'll also love the conversation
We had with Megan Devine about feeling not okay after loss
You'll find a link to Megan's episode in the show notes
This episode of Good Life project was produced by executive producers Lindsey Fox and me Jonathan Fields
Editing help by Alejandro Ramirez Christopher Carter crafted our theme music and special thanks to Shelley Del for her research on this episode
And of course if you haven't already done so please go ahead and follow Good Life project in your favorite listening app
And if you found this conversation interesting or inspiring or valuable and chances are you did since you're still listening here
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