Speaker 1: I get a tam it's a bloody you prob jacked.
Speaker 1: It's Monday. It's no Undy Monday. So happy to be here.
Speaker 1: Do you know what no Undy Monday is, Tiff, Probably
Speaker 1: not a term you're familiar with.
Speaker 2: Do you similar to pants off Friday?
Speaker 1: No? No, it's the netty girls that I used to
Speaker 1: work with at the end of the season that have
Speaker 1: no Undy Monday. You know how they have Mad Monday,
Speaker 1: the boys have Mad Monday after the footy. So the
Speaker 1: girls coined this no Undy Monday, which I will say
Speaker 1: is just a name there, not that I checked, but
Speaker 1: I'm sure. I'm sure that they were covered as they
Speaker 1: should be. But it just caught on and that just
Speaker 1: now that's a thing, and it's been for a couple
Speaker 1: of decades now. I think no Undy Monday is like
Speaker 1: the lady equivalent for the girls in the netty anyway, anyway,
Speaker 1: probably Rachel Pipe didn't need to know any of that,
Speaker 1: high rage. Is it no Honday Monday for you? Or
Speaker 1: are you well and truly equipped? Well and truly equipped good?
Speaker 1: Just just checking tip hour? Is your weekend?
Speaker 2: Very good? Thanks? Big Cold, I'm ready for summer.
Speaker 1: Come on, are you bloody cold? In the thriving metropolis
Speaker 1: of hamp Dough. I just walked down the street to
Speaker 1: the old soupye to get myself a couple of supplies
Speaker 1: fucking freeze in Jim. I didn't wear a jacket. I'm like,
Speaker 1: what am I a fucking wilderness man? I got one
Speaker 1: hundred meters from the house. I'm like, I don't know
Speaker 1: if I can make it.
Speaker 3: Jump in the ocean this morning?
Speaker 1: Come on, Yeah, that's ridiculous. Whereabouts to jump in the ocean? Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's like twenty degrees or thirty degrees? How, what's
Speaker 1: what's the tamp of the ocean up there?
Speaker 3: It's still cold? Yeah? What's twenty? I would say below twenty?
Speaker 1: It's it's five degrees in Melbourne in the morning, below
Speaker 1: twenty hacking below twenty? Oh you poor thing.
Speaker 3: You get in once you're in fine?
Speaker 1: Hmmm, Rach, How it's been quite a while have you been?
Speaker 1: Have you been busy and good?
Speaker 3: I have been busy and good, parenting, running my business,
Speaker 3: doing all those things. Have two young adults now, wow,
Speaker 3: so not nineteen and seventeen, just you know, spreading their
Speaker 3: wings out into the world.
Speaker 1: So it's yeah, is it weird when you don't have
Speaker 1: children anymore. They're not really adult or did you say
Speaker 1: one's nineteen.
Speaker 3: University an adult?
Speaker 1: She's straight up adult. But yeah, but it's like you've
Speaker 1: got them. They're you know, they're kind of adult ish
Speaker 1: but not fully fledged adults with all the burden and
Speaker 1: weight of being a forty year old with a mortgage.
Speaker 1: But they're not children. What's that been? Like?
Speaker 3: I was exacting, everyone give me young children, babies anytime.
Speaker 3: As far as worry and anxiety and all the stress
Speaker 3: that's going. I think because we know so much more
Speaker 3: now we can did buy phones, it probably adds to it.
Speaker 3: I was having the chat with my mum the other day.
Speaker 3: I was like, how I was tearing around Southeast Queensland
Speaker 3: in Cessna's at seventeen. How on earth did you cope
Speaker 3: not with our phones, like knowing when I'm landed, when
Speaker 3: I you know, and my son's driving and you know
Speaker 3: he's got his car and just eighteenth, the year of
Speaker 3: eighteenth and things like that. Yes, yes, aliety is through
Speaker 3: the roof, you know, she said. I used to pace
Speaker 3: the floor. That's all we could do was paste the ploor.
Speaker 3: And it's just that next next season of parenting, you know,
Speaker 3: so not knowing where they are, what they're doing.
Speaker 1: It's kind of I think it's every parent's you know, challenge,
Speaker 1: isn't it. But you it's hard because of course you're
Speaker 1: going to care, of course you're going to worry. Of
Speaker 1: course there's going to be anxiety. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: none of that really helps. It doesn't help the kid,
Speaker 1: it doesn't help you. It's like it's it's completely understandable,
Speaker 1: but also not a great investment of energy or time.
Speaker 1: But I guess it's not something that we can turn off.
Speaker 1: But I forgot you were a pilot. You were flying,
Speaker 1: You were flying when you were like seven a eighteen?
Speaker 1: Did you say like you were?
Speaker 3: I my private pilot's license before I could drive. So
Speaker 3: I used to catch train and two buses to get
Speaker 3: out to Archfield in Brisbane by seven am at seventeen
Speaker 3: and yeah, I had a hell of a time. It
Speaker 3: was so much fun. So I maintained my private license
Speaker 3: for six years. I think about the age of twenty five.
Speaker 3: I had my instrument rating and night rating and had
Speaker 3: done all my airline transport exams and a Bachelor of
Speaker 3: Science major Aviation at Griffith university.
Speaker 1: Wow, you like straight up bloody naval aviator And we're back.
Speaker 1: We just had an interlude because Tiff wanted to yell
Speaker 1: at me yet again for my mic technique. You know,
Speaker 1: I when I'm going to take I'm going to throw
Speaker 1: these headphones away because that gives me a false because
Speaker 1: what you here. We probably I need to do this
Speaker 1: on the podcast. But yeah, no, let's have a staff
Speaker 1: meeting right now. Raging at comfy sit in the typ
Speaker 1: bean bag. It's over there by the typ pinball machine,
Speaker 1: next to the typ diet coke and the fridge that
Speaker 1: tip drinks. But in my ears, it sounds good like
Speaker 1: it sounds like the right distance. But this is this
Speaker 1: is the deception of headphones. For this, It's like, for you,
Speaker 1: I sound too close and too loud sometimes.
Speaker 2: Right Yep, next time I'm in Hampton, I'm going to
Speaker 2: come and do a sound check because you definitely I'm
Speaker 2: not saying I don't believe you, but I don't let.
Speaker 1: People in my house. I don't let people in my house.
Speaker 2: Well, you're going to have sound for the rest of
Speaker 2: the type. Everybody helped me out here.
Speaker 1: Oh no, somebody already did that this morning and You're like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, fucking told him? Oh God, no, don't everyone
Speaker 1: uh back to you? Rage? Sure way? Is this is
Speaker 1: this where I am? Now, Tiff? Is that good?
Speaker 2: That's fabulous?
Speaker 1: Is that fabulous? Yep? Now I'm about three ft off.
Speaker 1: I'm going to stand on top of the house and
Speaker 1: I'll just broadcast through a fucking megaphone instead. God send
Speaker 1: a carrier pigeon out to all our listeners and butcher
Speaker 1: paper rach. Now, it's been quite a while now without
Speaker 1: without doing a monologue of what's already been done. But
Speaker 1: just for those people who either didn't hear the first
Speaker 1: episode or our first chat or your story, who are
Speaker 1: unfamiliar with your story, which maybe they didn't hear it
Speaker 1: first time around, but also we've got a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of new listeners since then. Can you give us however
Speaker 1: long you want, doesn't matter if it's short or long,
Speaker 1: just your background, so when we start talking about what
Speaker 1: we're talking about, people have context.
Speaker 3: Sure, Thank Graig. So. I grew up the youngest of
Speaker 3: three older brothers, and my eldest brother was a paraplegic.
Speaker 3: He was born with a neuro blastile on his attached
Speaker 3: to his spine, that filled his whole chest cavity as
Speaker 3: a baby, and it wasn't discovered until he was on
Speaker 3: an infant later and series of operations in and out
Speaker 3: of hospital for many many years. So I was one
Speaker 3: at the time when he was born. Nine years older.
Speaker 3: An operation at ten paralyzed him from the waist down
Speaker 3: and so he could walk with calipers and different therapies
Speaker 3: up until then at the age of ten he was
Speaker 3: wheelchair bound. Wow, So that don't put a little perspective
Speaker 3: on my upbringing with incredible parents who gave him the
Speaker 3: most amazing, adventurous life breaking down those barriers around disability.
Speaker 3: So my brother Brett competed in games, he played table tennis, basketball, swim,
Speaker 3: lived in America, just did all the things and was very,
Speaker 3: very independent. And I put that down to my parents.
Speaker 3: I can remember my mum talking about other people saying
Speaker 3: to her, why are you having all these other children
Speaker 3: and you've got a child with disability. And I feel that.
Speaker 3: You know, if you meet somebody who has had a
Speaker 3: sibling with a disability, or whether that be physical or
Speaker 3: a mental disability, they kind of got a different perspective
Speaker 3: from the get go. Growing upright as kids had things
Speaker 3: to do with Bratt. My mum was up you know,
Speaker 3: a few times a night, and always his care and
Speaker 3: in hospital. One stage he was in hospital for a
Speaker 3: whole year in Melbourne and full halo traction. He's been
Speaker 3: in full body plaster on a trolley on the ground.
Speaker 3: This is in the sixties and seventies. Amazing man, and
Speaker 3: I write about him in my book as well. Sadly,
Speaker 3: he passed away in a car accident at the age
Speaker 3: of thirty three. I was twenty wow, eight years prior
Speaker 3: to that when you lost my dad, so I was
Speaker 3: seventeen flying, had just stepped out into the world, graduate
Speaker 3: in high school. What's meant to be the most exciting
Speaker 3: time of your life? I had been flying. I had
Speaker 3: been accepted into the Royal Queensland Era Club and a
Speaker 3: bachelor program at Griffith, and I had always wanted to
Speaker 3: be a pilot. I had since about the age of twelve.
Speaker 3: No one else in my family. Flew was very musical
Speaker 3: as well, and so much too, I think my parents
Speaker 3: investing so much money into music tuition. I auditioned for
Speaker 3: the Conservatorium, all the things, but I wanted to fly,
Speaker 3: and I got accepted and they were proud as punch,
Speaker 3: and so we had to start our flight training before
Speaker 3: YUNI started in the February. So right from just after
Speaker 3: Christmas January, I've got my private pilot's license. I was
Speaker 3: clocking up the hours, doing all the doing all the things.
Speaker 3: It was only I think four of us females out
Speaker 3: of about one hundred guys doing the program. All the
Speaker 3: instructors were men. So that alone, you know, I learned
Speaker 3: a lot looking back on that time. Yeah, but there's
Speaker 3: a whole lot of stories around that, and females and
Speaker 3: flying in Australia is still about six percent the percentage
Speaker 3: at the moment, so that came with its own difficulties.
Speaker 3: But three months after I started my flying, my dad
Speaker 3: was diagnosed with aggressive bowel cancer and he was basically
Speaker 3: sent home, no treatment, had an operation, basically sent home
Speaker 3: and he passed six weeks later. So it was very fast. Wow,
Speaker 3: and at seventeen, you are not equipped. I'm not how
Speaker 3: to deal with that. My dad was my king, you know,
Speaker 3: being the youngest and only girl. I was princess with
Speaker 3: a very tight close family because of Brett as well,
Speaker 3: and he was forty seven and young, super young, So
Speaker 3: the only way I knew how to deal with that
Speaker 3: at the time, and I just remember a stream of
Speaker 3: people coming in and out of the house. His parents
Speaker 3: were still I came over from New Zealand, they're in
Speaker 3: their eighties to see him, and a stream of people
Speaker 3: coming in and out of house to see him, say
Speaker 3: he's goodbyes. I would get up in the morning, I'd
Speaker 3: play him a piece on the piano. I'd get into
Speaker 3: my uniform and I would go out and I would fly,
Speaker 3: and I just, you know, I just I don't know.
Speaker 3: I do not know how I did that. I really
Speaker 3: really do not know. Head down, bum up. And then
Speaker 3: on the weekends I would go out and get trashed
Speaker 3: and drunk with all my UNI mats, because that's what
Speaker 3: you do when he's seventeen and eighteen in uniculture. And
Speaker 3: they didn't know how to support me. They didn't know one.
Speaker 3: They hadn't known anybody to pass maybe a grandparent. And
Speaker 3: I just thought, I have to keep going. I have
Speaker 3: to make my day proud. I just have to keep
Speaker 3: going with this degree. I have to keep flying, keep
Speaker 3: and I was passing. I was, you know, I did
Speaker 3: defer some of the UNI component because I was a
Speaker 3: bit overwhelmed and I just head down, bump up, and
Speaker 3: just kept going. So it was very much to put
Speaker 3: it all under the carpet, don't talk about it. My
Speaker 3: friends are there for me when I had to cry,
Speaker 3: and that was it. So then eight years later we
Speaker 3: lost Bratt in that car accident, and just to bring
Speaker 3: my grief story and what were the topic we're talking
Speaker 3: on today full circle. I gave up flying when my
Speaker 3: brother passed. That was a huge perspective moment for me
Speaker 3: on life. Career is what I really wanted to do.
Speaker 3: I looked on that conveyor belt of airline pilots. I
Speaker 3: had met my husband by then, and I thought, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm not too sure that's the lifestyle I want as
Speaker 3: a mum and wife. So that took a lot to
Speaker 3: walk away from. And I ended up in early learning
Speaker 3: and bought a franchise after I had we got married,
Speaker 3: we had our kids, and I fell in love with
Speaker 3: early learning and neurological development and kids. I wanted to
Speaker 3: learn about my kids and their development, So we bought
Speaker 3: a Gimbiree franchise for me. It was going to be
Speaker 3: an amazing, you know business for me, something that I love,
Speaker 3: something I could take my kids with they started school,
Speaker 3: we bought the franchise, and two weeks after we signed
Speaker 3: that paper and bought that business, a small business, my
Speaker 3: husband was diagnosed with the same cancer at the same
Speaker 3: age as.
Speaker 1: My dad, so tragically weird and like if it was like,
Speaker 1: you know, if your dad was well, I mean, if
Speaker 1: it was blood you go, oh, that kind of makes sense.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't make sense, does it. Like there's no correlation.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not like, oh, well, yeah, that makes
Speaker 1: sense because they were blood relatives or whatever. But because
Speaker 1: when you first said that, I went, oh, that kind
Speaker 1: I mean, oh no, it doesn't make sense at all. Okay,
Speaker 1: So so you find that out they're the same age,
Speaker 1: and what was the prognosis ray your husband? Yes, what
Speaker 1: was his prognosis at that time?
Speaker 3: Well, of course immediately for me from my previous experience,
Speaker 3: so I was you're going to be dead in six
Speaker 3: weeks because that was my prior experience. Obviously, a lot
Speaker 3: more twenty years on, a lot more treatments, a lot
Speaker 3: more options available. We went down many roads, as you
Speaker 3: do when you're caring with somebody with cancer, and every
Speaker 3: information that's thrown at you. Now we did lots of things,
Speaker 3: and we had sixty months of him at home with
Speaker 3: the kids and he was amazing and handled you couldn't
Speaker 3: even actually tell he was He did a different series
Speaker 3: of chemo and things like that, He never lost his hair,
Speaker 3: was still riding his bike taking kids to school. Apart
Speaker 3: from you know, those downtimes in between and the week
Speaker 3: to look at he was a very fit, healthy. Mountain
Speaker 3: biking was his his outlet and he loved it. And yeah,
Speaker 3: so right up until the very end. And then we
Speaker 3: spent a month in Sydney with a surgeon down there
Speaker 3: that was willing to operate on his liver because it's
Speaker 3: spread to his liver. When we were told that that
Speaker 3: wasn't going to happen because they found some more cancer
Speaker 3: up in the back of his neck. When he was
Speaker 3: told that, I think I saw the light kind of
Speaker 3: disappeared then, because he basically told, you know, we'll just
Speaker 3: do more treatment, prolonged quality of life, and that wasn't
Speaker 3: for him. So we came home and he passed away
Speaker 3: two weeks later.
Speaker 2: MM.
Speaker 3: The kids were four and six.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so many things. But when we chatted before
Speaker 1: we pressed the go button today, you said something like
Speaker 1: you had to listen to our first chat, which you liked.
Speaker 1: I loved it too, and it was we got such
Speaker 1: good feedback. And if you haven't heard that, everyone have listens.
Speaker 1: Really it's really I was going to say, it's notice.
Speaker 1: It is nice. It's like it's sad, it's trade, but
Speaker 1: it's nice and it's for a lot of people going
Speaker 1: to be very very relevant and very what's the word,
Speaker 1: very inspiring and very revealing, because I feel like, you know,
Speaker 1: we're not great at grief. I mean, you're the expert.
Speaker 1: I'm not the expert. But my second mom who is
Speaker 1: that's a weird thing. But my mum's best friend, who
Speaker 1: basically was my second mom, you know, growing up. She
Speaker 1: died a couple of days after Christmas. And you might
Speaker 1: have heard me talk about this, but I sat with her,
Speaker 1: and she had about forty eight hours to live, and
Speaker 1: I sat in the hospital with her, just me and her,
Speaker 1: and I can remember nearly everything we said. And it
Speaker 1: was an hour and a half and it was profound
Speaker 1: and like I felt selfish, but I think she knew
Speaker 1: that I needed to be there to talk to her.
Speaker 1: She probably didn't need I mean, she wanted to talk
Speaker 1: to me, but you know, it was self indulgent, but
Speaker 1: just spending that time with her and excuse me, saying
Speaker 1: all the things I needed to say or I wanted
Speaker 1: to say and vice versa was incredibly therapeutic. But I
Speaker 1: still think, you know, coming out of that and we've
Speaker 1: had even tiff. Have you thought about this? Sorry, Rach,
Speaker 1: we'll get back on, but we're still talking in the
Speaker 1: same space people that have been on this podcast, because
Speaker 1: it's episode two thousand. In a few days, you know,
Speaker 1: Johnny Raffo, we had the beautiful Johnny Ruffo passed away,
Speaker 1: Danny Frawley, the amazing Danny Frawley, AFL player, AFL coach,
Speaker 1: a guy called Simon Hammond who was great. He written
Speaker 1: a couple of books. He was in marketing and branding.
Speaker 1: Simon and I were friends, and of course my friend Nima,
Speaker 1: who were very good friends. He passed away, and I
Speaker 1: feel like there might be one more person. I'm just
Speaker 1: doing this Kerwin Ray of course of Kerwin, and I think, wow,
Speaker 1: it's like and that since we started this show, that's
Speaker 1: five people who sat here just like us, three now
Speaker 1: talking just like us three now, and they're gone, you know,
Speaker 1: they're gone. And I guess that's the thing is that
Speaker 1: there's no we've said this perform but there's no formula,
Speaker 1: there's no three step plan. But back to you, Rate,
Speaker 1: you said that you've kind of like in the space
Speaker 1: of understanding grief and talking about grief and your awareness
Speaker 1: around it and how to help others, Like that's really
Speaker 1: developed and evolved in the last few years. Like what
Speaker 1: do you know now? What are you sharing now that
Speaker 1: you weren't a few years ago?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So you know what led me on that journey
Speaker 3: was when I went looking for resources as a young widow.
Speaker 3: There was a lot out there for over sixties, yes,
Speaker 3: in community, online, all these things, and I couldn't find
Speaker 3: anything that really spoke to me as a young widow.
Speaker 3: But what I also found was all this grief came
Speaker 3: bubbling up from my dad and my brother, and I realized,
Speaker 3: I really haven't processed that, and I'm feeling all this again,
Speaker 3: and what is this? What is what is this? What's
Speaker 3: this grief all about? What's my future look like? So researching, reading,
Speaker 3: trying to find stuff online, googling, and coming across all
Speaker 3: these five stages. And that's something that I want to
Speaker 3: touch on because we touched on in the first episode.
Speaker 3: I've learned so much more since then, and you know,
Speaker 3: different therapies that I'd had over the years that just
Speaker 3: really didn't work for me because of that lack of
Speaker 3: maybe empathy or lived experience on the other side of
Speaker 3: the table and textbook stuff and really wasn't talking about
Speaker 3: what I was actually feeling. So I started writing, started
Speaker 3: journaling and went to your retreat with Melissa, and my
Speaker 3: book was born and wrote that. Then after that, I thought,
Speaker 3: you know, how else can I help people? And I
Speaker 3: need to do more. So I studied a bit more
Speaker 3: with the Grief Recovery Institute WA with amazing psychologists named
Speaker 3: Amanda Ambros and she taught me about action steps and
Speaker 3: the Grief Recovery method and this evidence based program that
Speaker 3: actually gives people tools to process any kind of unresolved grief.
Speaker 3: And I was like unresolved grief and also debunking that
Speaker 3: myth around the five stages, so if I can enlighten
Speaker 3: because I know I didn't in the first episode. Those
Speaker 3: five stages of grief were written by Elizabeth Koobler Ross
Speaker 3: in her book on Death and Dying in the sixties,
Speaker 3: and what a lot of people don't know is that
Speaker 3: those stages were written at The paper was written for
Speaker 3: somebody with a terminal diagnosis who was faced with a
Speaker 3: terminal diagnosis on death and dying, someone who knows that
Speaker 3: they're going to pass away. And so she studied and
Speaker 3: wrote about these common emotions that these people would move
Speaker 3: through in her amazing work in Prospice and things like that,
Speaker 3: so you can understand that denial, anger, acceptance if you
Speaker 3: know you're going to pass. And what happened after that
Speaker 3: is that these stages within misused, spread in different books
Speaker 3: and therapies as just the stages of grief, not the
Speaker 3: stages of someone who has been given a terminal diagnosis.
Speaker 3: And yes we do experience some of those things, but
Speaker 3: it's not a linear train. It's not something that you know,
Speaker 3: we can experience as a griever. And we'll talk about
Speaker 3: all different types of griefs as well that we you know,
Speaker 3: go on. Because I can remember being told that and
Speaker 3: I'm like, well, it says depression is coming up next.
Speaker 3: I don't want to. I don't want to depression station.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm a positive person. I have had gratitude
Speaker 3: with the perspective growing up with my brother Bred and
Speaker 3: having experienced those things and my resilience from just from flying,
Speaker 3: that teaches you so much as al you have to
Speaker 3: learn so much resilience. And I didn't want that to
Speaker 3: be told that. I'm like, no, I'm not going through
Speaker 3: these stages. Yes I feel angry sometimes, Yes I feel
Speaker 3: this sometimes, but that could all be in one day.
Speaker 3: And so when I learned this, it was just like, Wow,
Speaker 3: what a light bulb. And how often people are told that,
Speaker 3: and how often then it can cause this mistreatment or
Speaker 3: also misunderstanding, And then they can withdraw, they can isolate
Speaker 3: because they're reading these things around grief and what their
Speaker 3: people are putting on them expected to be experiencing.
Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, I think it's really it's precarious when you're
Speaker 1: talking about the mind and the way that the mind
Speaker 1: and emotions and more broadly humans respond to all kinds
Speaker 1: of good and bad stuff in their life. Right, and
Speaker 1: we go, oh, you know, grief, this is how grief works. Nah,
Speaker 1: it's just like saying. It's just saying, oh, Rachel's got
Speaker 1: this condition, Craig's got the same condition. Therefore they both
Speaker 1: need the same pill or the same potion, and they
Speaker 1: need the same dose and they need it at the
Speaker 1: same time every day, and well, we know that's done
Speaker 1: because we know that that doesn't work. But also, you know,
Speaker 1: with medicine for the mind for want of a better term,
Speaker 1: or healing for the mind, or healing for the soul
Speaker 1: or emotions or all three, or the body, it's like, well,
Speaker 1: even what you said there where you explained that the
Speaker 1: five stages of grief in inverted commas were she was
Speaker 1: actually talking about the person who was sick, not the
Speaker 1: people around the person who was sick or dying. Well,
Speaker 1: that's an insight, that's a revelation there. But I think
Speaker 1: there's I think therapists and psychologists and psychiatrists and doctors
Speaker 1: in general, and I put not that I'm in that space,
Speaker 1: but even me who talks about this all the time,
Speaker 1: we need to be really careful what we say, because
Speaker 1: when you plan to seed in somebody's mind and they
Speaker 1: respect you and listen to you and look up to you,
Speaker 1: and you go, all right, well you know, Rachel, this
Speaker 1: is what's coming. Well how about we just let Rachel
Speaker 1: be Rachel and see what evolves. And as she goes
Speaker 1: through the different things support her, love or encourage her
Speaker 1: rather than saying, well, you're at step two and step
Speaker 1: three is coming. I feel like that is the opposite
Speaker 1: of helpful and the opposite of aware. I feel like
Speaker 1: that could actually do more damage than good. And you
Speaker 1: think about plus ebos and no cebos, you know, where
Speaker 1: we tell someone oh, you're actually this is going to
Speaker 1: make your lean, or this is going to make you
Speaker 1: less nauseous, or this is going to and then people
Speaker 1: take it and they believe it and it happens, you know.
Speaker 1: And then on the opposite of that, people tell you
Speaker 1: something negative and it isn't going to happen and it
Speaker 1: isn't real, but it's something you create this experience yourself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's it's precarious.
Speaker 3: I love having these conversations. Lifting the lead on this
Speaker 3: with you, Craig is because of your teachings around fitness
Speaker 3: and health. And you will say that you will never
Speaker 3: give the same exercise, diet, nutrition plan to people standing
Speaker 3: side by side who could be physically look, you know,
Speaker 3: exactly the same or whatever, but want different, have different goals,
Speaker 3: have different body composition, makeup and everything and what you eat,
Speaker 3: and a day you will never go and say you
Speaker 3: need to eat what I eat in a day, and
Speaker 3: you'll get the same results and grief all relationships. You know.
Speaker 3: In my work, I will empowering women to move beyond
Speaker 3: grief and loss. I will never tell a widow I
Speaker 3: know how you feel, because even though we've experienced the
Speaker 3: same eventship with my husband completely different to her relationship
Speaker 3: with her husband, her relationship with her in laws, her
Speaker 3: relationship with his brother, her relationship with their children. Whether
Speaker 3: they're being together or somebody who's widowed and they're being divorced,
Speaker 3: it's another whole grief scenario. He's still the father to
Speaker 3: their children, but she's grieving their loss. So I will
Speaker 3: never tell another wind I know how you feel, because
Speaker 3: at best I know how I felt when the same
Speaker 3: event happened to me.
Speaker 1: It's such a good differentiation, so clever, so clever, and
Speaker 1: nobody I've never heard anybody say that, like that differentiation
Speaker 1: between like it feels like the right thing to say
Speaker 1: if you've been in a similar or same situation and
Speaker 1: if you and I look, I know how you feel
Speaker 1: because dah da da da, I'm like, yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: you do, and then you're like, you actually don't know,
Speaker 1: you know how that's so clever recovery.
Speaker 3: My set of recovery components and small action tips that
Speaker 3: I need to take will be different to somebody else
Speaker 3: because of their relationship graft, because of what they've been through.
Speaker 3: And just to put it really in a simple example,
Speaker 3: someone who loses somebody and the last conversation they had
Speaker 3: with them was an argument, you can imagine that their
Speaker 3: recovery and their set of tools that they need are
Speaker 3: going to be completely different to someone like you who
Speaker 3: sat bedside and had an amazing conversation with somebody that
Speaker 3: you remember and was really profound. A child who loses
Speaker 3: a pet, if they were the one that left the
Speaker 3: gate open and that pet got out and was killed
Speaker 3: in that in a car accident, do you think that
Speaker 3: child is going to grieve differently to the sibling who
Speaker 3: didn't do that, because that child is going to have
Speaker 3: a whole set of other unresolved grief. And that's the
Speaker 3: power in you know, the work that I do with
Speaker 3: helping people is understanding where resolved grief lies. And for
Speaker 3: the most part, when fond memories turn painful, there's usually
Speaker 3: some kind of unresolved grief there. And unresolved grief is
Speaker 3: almost always about things that we wish we could have
Speaker 3: said or done differently, or things we wish somebody else
Speaker 3: could have it or done differently. And so you know,
Speaker 3: with the strange relationships and abuse and all that, the
Speaker 3: grief which we can touch on intangible losses, loss, loss
Speaker 3: of safety, loss of faith, loss of control, they're all
Speaker 3: grief experiences. But yeah, just going back to that uniqueness
Speaker 3: and that no two people are saying it's therefore we
Speaker 3: cannot put grief in a box and give somebody a
Speaker 3: set of stages and say this is this is grief,
Speaker 3: and this is what and if you don't you know,
Speaker 3: if you don't move through these stages and both six months,
Speaker 3: one year, you're not feeling better. You haven't you moved on.
Speaker 3: It's been two years, it's been three years, it's been
Speaker 3: ten years, it's been twenty years. Whatever I'm frame is
Speaker 3: for that person, if they you know, if they're feeling
Speaker 3: that way, then then that's whether isolation comes in, that
Speaker 3: withdrawal or maybe lead down to some you know, elements
Speaker 3: of depression because they think something's wrong with them.
Speaker 1: It's so interesting, like you're talking about context, like the
Speaker 1: kid who left the gate open, versus the kid who
Speaker 1: didn't leave the gate open, but they both both lost
Speaker 1: their dog, and one is going to feel obviously horrendous
Speaker 1: and grieved differently. But then then on top of that,
Speaker 1: I think then there's personality, like the way people are wired,
Speaker 1: you know, for want of better for one of a
Speaker 1: more scientifically accurate term, like some people will go through
Speaker 1: the exact same or what appears to be a very
Speaker 1: similar experience, putting aside all of the other variables and
Speaker 1: one and they'll both react completely differently. I wonder when
Speaker 1: you think about grief as an outcome of an event,
Speaker 1: someone passing away or somebody having you know, somebody finding
Speaker 1: out they're dying, or finding out they've just lost all
Speaker 1: their dough or as Tiff had to a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago, lose precious coaching, which how was coached like
Speaker 1: only four or five, six, six, And that totally out
Speaker 1: of the blue, like totally healthy. Fine, and we won't
Speaker 1: replay that, but you know, just and I remember talking
Speaker 1: to her just after it happened, and I'm like, I'm
Speaker 1: pretty good at this shit. I'm like, I don't even
Speaker 1: know what to say. I mean, you know, you say
Speaker 1: what you're going to say, but nothing can undo it,
Speaker 1: of course, and nothing can fix it, you know. I
Speaker 1: just think that, like, there are so many variables around
Speaker 1: the grief, around the way people grieve and for how
Speaker 1: long and what that looks like from the outside that
Speaker 1: you know. I think I told you a friend of
Speaker 1: mine was grieving. I think I said this last time
Speaker 1: we were here. Maybe not, but anyway, his dad passed
Speaker 1: away and he was the oldest and the dude, like
Speaker 1: the oldest son, like five kids, and he was very
Speaker 1: stoic and like six months later and he was devastated,
Speaker 1: but just fucking coped, you know, just fucking batting down
Speaker 1: the hatches and suck it up. And Andy, six months later,
Speaker 1: still hadn't cried. And some of his family are like,
Speaker 1: what the fuck is wrong with you? What is wrong
Speaker 1: with you? Why are you not grieving properly? You know,
Speaker 1: why you're not grieving like us? And he spoke to
Speaker 1: me about that, and yeah, I was just I'm like, dude,
Speaker 1: it's like, you're going to grieve how you're going to grieve.
Speaker 1: You loved your dad, you miss your dad, You're sad
Speaker 1: as fuck, but you just you know, you can't get
Speaker 1: it wrong like this is not a test, you know,
Speaker 1: so I guess there's So how do you then know
Speaker 1: as a counselor or coach or advisor or you know whatever,
Speaker 1: you just when you're connecting, how do you know where
Speaker 1: to go in the conversation, where to go with advice
Speaker 1: or support?
Speaker 3: Firstly, I think that point you brought up in the
Speaker 3: beginning about different personalities, and then couple that with what
Speaker 3: was their relationship with the griefs and with the situation
Speaker 3: the person they lost, what was their relationship like, and
Speaker 3: then look at other relationships around them, what was modeled
Speaker 3: to them? You know, that personality thing comes from you know,
Speaker 3: our upbringing as well and our environment. Watch which generation
Speaker 3: was it of pushing stuff under the carpet, showing no emotions,
Speaker 3: never talking and having these conversations if that was modeled
Speaker 3: to us as well too. And I'll bust some myths
Speaker 3: around here as well with grief and what we're taught
Speaker 3: and what we're modeled the be strong, grieve alone, you know,
Speaker 3: don't don't be sad, don't be sad as a kid,
Speaker 3: don't be sad. Come and have a cookie, you know,
Speaker 3: replace the lost or something that might feel make you
Speaker 3: feel good. In an instant, you hurt yourself or your bullied,
Speaker 3: or you know, don't feel sad, come and have some
Speaker 3: ice cream. Let's just just push that down with a
Speaker 3: bit of a sweet treat and we won't talk about
Speaker 3: the cause or why are you're feeling that way. Keep
Speaker 3: is another one, but you know, busting that myth, you've
Speaker 3: got to just keep.
Speaker 1: Busy to find yourself a purpose. Do you think though
Speaker 1: that Sorry to interrupt, I'm just curious about this, and
Speaker 1: I think you'll have something to say on it. Like
Speaker 1: in a lot of cases or some cases, we've got
Speaker 1: broken people trying to support other broken people and they
Speaker 1: can't even fucking get their own stuff together, which is
Speaker 1: completely understandable, you know, but like I imagine for you
Speaker 1: when Ray passed away, you're trying, you're trying to just survive.
Speaker 1: And then, by the way, also you're a mum. Also
Speaker 1: you've got a business or whatever. You know. Also you've
Speaker 1: got to feed them, clothe them, and you can't walk
Speaker 1: around crying twenty four to seven, Like what about that?
Speaker 1: Broken people trying to support other broken people. That's got
Speaker 1: to be almost impossible.
Speaker 3: It is, And it comes back to the I think
Speaker 3: projecting how would I feel in this situation. So I'm
Speaker 3: going to give you that because that's how I would feel.
Speaker 3: So and this is what I do when I'm having
Speaker 3: a hard time, is I just keep busy. You got
Speaker 3: to keep the kids busy. Or this is me saying
Speaker 3: what other people are saying, and or replace the loss
Speaker 3: is another one. So I got there. At least you're young,
Speaker 3: you can remarry. And women in mind, it's around with
Speaker 3: pregnancy loss and child losses, you know, such a taboo topic,
Speaker 3: and those women feel so isolated in society because it's
Speaker 3: not talked about. Who wants to see a photo of
Speaker 3: a ultrasound on a mantlepiece for their memory, you know,
Speaker 3: and have these conversations, and so they get told that
Speaker 3: you know, at least you can try again, at least
Speaker 3: you know you can feel pregnant, at least you can
Speaker 3: have another child. Of all that, I educate people on
Speaker 3: that one in particular. If there's anything that can come
Speaker 3: away from today and people not knowing what to say,
Speaker 3: is just never ever start something with at least.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, lived a good.
Speaker 3: Life for elderly grandparents. At least you got to say goodbye.
Speaker 3: At least it was under and quick. At least it
Speaker 3: wasn't painful. All these at least none of it is helpful.
Speaker 3: So back to the myths and what we're taught, what
Speaker 3: we're modeled as growing up. We could be taught that
Speaker 3: modeled that emotional eating, you know, when something's bad, and
Speaker 3: that's portrayed all over our media and things and movies
Speaker 3: and what happens when there's a breakup on Netflix. They
Speaker 3: go and grab a tub of ice cream, and that's
Speaker 3: how we deal with it. Or we go and get
Speaker 3: drunk alcohol or substance abuse, or we go shopping. It's
Speaker 3: called you know, it's called retail therapy. There's all these replacements,
Speaker 3: these short term energy relieving behaviors that we're modeled to.
Speaker 3: This is what happens when you feel bad, So we've
Speaker 3: got to push it down. We can't be sad. We
Speaker 3: definitely can't be sad in public. And then because we
Speaker 3: have this kettle of emotions and grief and things bubbling
Speaker 3: up inside of us, we don't know what to deal
Speaker 3: with it. We substitute it with something else, and it's
Speaker 3: just so common. We all do it when we're feeling
Speaker 3: bad or feeling sad, or feeling guilty or feeling whatever
Speaker 3: it is. And so the key here is with me
Speaker 3: back to your question of how do you recognize where
Speaker 3: there's unresolved grief different personalities or where to start or
Speaker 3: how to help a grieving person is to see how
Speaker 3: they're actually emotionally regulating. Are they are they? Are they
Speaker 3: allowing their emotions to flow. It's okay to be sad.
Speaker 3: You do not have to be strong. You have to
Speaker 3: be human, And you're right for me as a young widow,
Speaker 3: you know, a share and a sandwich was a good day,
Speaker 3: and I just knew I had no choice. I had
Speaker 3: to get up the books together my children and I
Speaker 3: write about my book. They saved my life dozens of
Speaker 3: times over literally under the cover of darkness, on my
Speaker 3: knees beside their bed, just I don't want I'm out
Speaker 3: like I was in survival mode and not surviving, not thriving.
Speaker 3: And it was one of those nights that I wrote
Speaker 3: rak line in the sand here. I can't continue this way.
Speaker 3: I had my b strong mask on for three years
Speaker 3: and I sold my business and I knew that that was,
Speaker 3: you know, the first step to me regaining myself and
Speaker 3: my identity back. And what that looked like for me,
Speaker 3: and because I was jumping in front of all these
Speaker 3: parents and kids, running back to back classes, singing on
Speaker 3: the top of my lungs the Hello song, and then
Speaker 3: running out of the back at lunchtime and you know,
Speaker 3: bailing eyes out, putting it all back together, coming back
Speaker 3: in being that happy. Be strong. You do not have
Speaker 3: to be strong. And as women especially were taught that
Speaker 3: you just got to be strong for your kids. You've
Speaker 3: got to be this that, keep busy, do all these things.
Speaker 3: It's not helpful. And what happens if we do all
Speaker 3: this when as the years pass and we haven't taken
Speaker 3: any others of action, small action steps towards grief recovery
Speaker 3: and processing those emotions, looking at where there's forgiveness needed
Speaker 3: or apologies in those relationship graphs around what was my relationship? Like,
Speaker 3: is there guilt there the kid with the gate or
Speaker 3: the argument that you had with somebody who dies suddenly,
Speaker 3: and you need to write that down, You need to
Speaker 3: process that because you're in control of that forgiveness. It's
Speaker 3: something you need to take action for yourself. And the
Speaker 3: reason for that is because what do we all want
Speaker 3: in life? We want more joy? We want more happiness,
Speaker 3: We want to invite joy into our life. We want
Speaker 3: to experience wholehearted living. And if we have so much
Speaker 3: with this unresolved grief, carrying it around in our bodies
Speaker 3: physically as well as emotionally, then we're blocking that capacity
Speaker 3: for more joy. And then that was me for many years,
Speaker 3: with that victim mentality and attaching myself to widow pen
Speaker 3: and living that life of I can't see it. I
Speaker 3: can't you know, how am I going to experience joy again?
Speaker 3: I did not know what that would look like?
Speaker 1: How do you move beyond that? Almost like my identity
Speaker 1: is I'm Rachel, I'm a widow. Do you know what
Speaker 1: I mean? It's almost like for some powder I mean
Speaker 1: for you personally, but or I'm a widower or my
Speaker 1: you know, and I understand that. I'm just saying that.
Speaker 1: That's almost like for some people that becomes their identity.
Speaker 3: Is absolutely And tell me about that Academy award behavior,
Speaker 3: you know, it was that was my way of stopping
Speaker 3: myself and reaching my full potential because I had that
Speaker 3: to fall back on. It was this awakening of I
Speaker 3: would not meet somebody or in a situation or a
Speaker 3: business they'd ask about this, what is oh, well, you know,
Speaker 3: and I was widowed young and I would start with that.
Speaker 3: I would that that was my way of like, oh,
Speaker 3: by the way, so if I if I short for myself,
Speaker 3: my you know, and what you teach, and if I
Speaker 3: am not reaching my full potential and giving myself the
Speaker 3: best opportunity, Yeah, was this kind of crutch for me
Speaker 3: and so and you know when you meet people who
Speaker 3: are in so much pain, and I'm in groups and
Speaker 3: those groups have widow groups, and that's where I started
Speaker 3: was looking and finding and some of them were just
Speaker 3: I can't stay here because I can't see any progression.
Speaker 3: I can't see any I see a safe spaced event,
Speaker 3: and that's needed. And I'm not taking away from these
Speaker 3: amazing you know, Facebook groups and things I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: Is there a point where, like there's been a few
Speaker 1: revelations recently or are a few schools have thought recently
Speaker 1: in the space of therapy, right, and you know, turning
Speaker 1: up to Whoever's every Tuesday at three o'clock for therapy
Speaker 1: for two years or two months or two weeks or whatever.
Speaker 1: For some ping well is really effective and productive. But
Speaker 1: we know that it isn't for everybody. In fact, we
Speaker 1: know that for some people, talk therapy is not it's
Speaker 1: not actually a positive. It's like they just re open
Speaker 1: the wound every Tuesday at two thirty and then they
Speaker 1: feel shitit for four days, then they start to feel good.
Speaker 1: Then they come back and they reopen the wound next Tuesday.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying it's good or bad. I'm saying that's
Speaker 1: how some people respond to it. One of my mates
Speaker 1: did it for six months and swears that it's just
Speaker 1: made him worse right now. I don't think that's the
Speaker 1: fault of the therapist. I think that's just his personal interaction.
Speaker 1: Do you feel like you need to be around be
Speaker 1: around people who drag you up? Not that that's their
Speaker 1: job to elevate you, but you know, there's a point
Speaker 1: where talking about your stuff becomes destructive not productive. Whether
Speaker 1: or not that scree for whether or not that's the
Speaker 1: business that you lost, or whether or not that's your body,
Speaker 1: or like, how often are you going to talk about
Speaker 1: you know, your body, Brian, just fucking get in the
Speaker 1: gym and train, Like we've had a million conversations about
Speaker 1: your food in your like literally some of my friends go.
Speaker 1: Don't ask me any more things about your body, you diet,
Speaker 1: your health, your fitness, you're training, because you don't do anything.
Speaker 1: I love you, but just start, you know, like, when
Speaker 1: does that talking become redundant?
Speaker 3: Yeah? And that was my very next step when I
Speaker 3: realized that I couldn't stay in these spaces that were
Speaker 3: just yeah, for months and months and months, I miss him.
Speaker 3: I don't want to leave it. So he's never coming back.
Speaker 3: And you know, and I know that, you know, you
Speaker 3: don't have to tell it. I understand that, and I
Speaker 3: know that. But what next? And I found I stumbled
Speaker 3: across a lady in the States, one fit with her
Speaker 3: name was Michelle. Oh god, she's got a double barrel
Speaker 3: name that's hard to pronounce. And I found her and
Speaker 3: she was just five years down the road from me,
Speaker 3: and she was a positive person, but she was also
Speaker 3: very raw and talking about blended family and this and
Speaker 3: the struggles were real and all of this, but she
Speaker 3: had turned her pain into purpose and was encouraging and
Speaker 3: had this amazing community, and I just it was just like,
Speaker 3: oh wow. And she was a similar age and I
Speaker 3: could just see, you know, when you see someone that's
Speaker 3: just that little bit further down the road from you
Speaker 3: on the same path, and that gives you hope. And
Speaker 3: that's all I needed to switch that light was just
Speaker 3: hope that okay, she's doing okay. She looks like she's
Speaker 3: doing okay, her kids look like they're doing okay. And
Speaker 3: it was just that five years further down that I
Speaker 3: and all of a sudden, I thought, Okay, you know
Speaker 3: that's positive. That's something I can hold on to. I
Speaker 3: can check into that space and it can give me
Speaker 3: a bit of hope, and she can give me some ideas.
Speaker 3: And she'd written a book, so I ordered her book.
Speaker 3: And so surrounding yourself with people that drag you up, obviously, yes,
Speaker 3: that's a positive for everyone. Similar to when you touched
Speaker 3: on about having that same conversation with people you have
Speaker 3: to want to. I call it the emotional jail. You know,
Speaker 3: we can hold ourselves. I know I've been there in
Speaker 3: fitness as well, where they give you all the tools,
Speaker 3: they give you all the things. It's the programs, they're
Speaker 3: just do it. Here's the nutrition. But what I've found
Speaker 3: a lot too with pts is they don't address the emotional.
Speaker 3: They don't address that have that lived experience. They don't
Speaker 3: address why you're falling off the wagon every weekend, like
Speaker 3: everybody says, you know, and they're like, well, I've given
Speaker 3: you this, it's easy, just do it. Just given it
Speaker 3: to you one hundred times. But they never ever have
Speaker 3: the skills to address the emotional reason why, which is
Speaker 3: often unresolved grief and where they're not feeling that and
Speaker 3: they're storing it. They're feeling safe. They could be an
Speaker 3: abusive relationship, that could be you know, have just lost
Speaker 3: all these things. They are an emotional eating or not
Speaker 3: even doing that. They're doing all the nutrition things, but
Speaker 3: their nervous system is so wired for protection literally will
Speaker 3: not release from their body and then well in menopause,
Speaker 3: which is, you know, something else I've had to learn
Speaker 3: all about in the last you know, a couple of years.
Speaker 3: I turned fifty last year, and so stored grief in
Speaker 3: the body is a physical thing. Grief attacks. I've had
Speaker 3: several where I've ended up in hospital with severe pain
Speaker 3: in my side. I thought I had appendicitis. Three months
Speaker 3: after they passed and I ended up in hospital and
Speaker 3: I'd had some I can't remember the medical term. Literally
Speaker 3: my stomach was in knots like nerve things, omnial infarcation
Speaker 3: or something. It's the apron of your tummy and it
Speaker 3: presented as a pendicitis and in the corner of that
Speaker 3: muscle group there was my stomach was literally not physically
Speaker 3: and there was no treatment other than it wasn't an
Speaker 3: infection or anything. It was just to let it itself
Speaker 3: and some I don't know, pain relief. I was in
Speaker 3: there for a couple of days, so you know that
Speaker 3: was a grief attack and my body was just like
Speaker 3: three months in. This is impossible. And so unless we
Speaker 3: address all these emotional issues around everything in life, in
Speaker 3: our why we're stuck in business, why we're stuck in health,
Speaker 3: why we can't lose the weight, it's often an emotional response, right,
Speaker 3: or something that.
Speaker 1: Needs I feel like in that space of you know,
Speaker 1: whether or not it's with your body, or whether or
Speaker 1: not it's with your bank account, or whether or not
Speaker 1: it's with your business or your career, there's yeah relationships,
Speaker 1: there's always going to be a psychological and emotional component.
Speaker 1: And like I've been shouting from the rooftop since I
Speaker 1: wrote my first book, which is all about the psychology
Speaker 1: and the emotion of getting in shape. Even though I'm
Speaker 1: an excise scientist, I go, hey, I can tell you
Speaker 1: how to lift and how to run, and how to stretch,
Speaker 1: and how to eat and how to adapt your muscles
Speaker 1: to progressive overload night and talk about biomechanics, anatomy and physiology,
Speaker 1: and I know all that shit, right, But what we
Speaker 1: really need to figure out is why you keep eating
Speaker 1: shit food why. What we really need to figure out
Speaker 1: is how come you keep joining gyms and not following through.
Speaker 1: We need to think about your relationship with your body.
Speaker 1: We need to think about your relationship between your body
Speaker 1: and your mind and your emotions and your habits and
Speaker 1: behaviors over time. We need to figure out why you
Speaker 1: eat food that you don't need and you know you
Speaker 1: don't need it, while simultaneously wanting to be leaner or
Speaker 1: healthy or fitter like it's trying to understand all the
Speaker 1: psychology and emotion that underlies the behaviors that fuck us
Speaker 1: up and.
Speaker 3: All that.
Speaker 1: But pursuant to your your comments about you know, go
Speaker 1: on and trainers go, here's your program, here's the gym,
Speaker 1: here's the resources. But they don't address the other stuff.
Speaker 1: They don't know how. They don't know how they know
Speaker 1: how muscles work. Look some of them do, but also
Speaker 1: it's not really their job in inverted commas. But I
Speaker 1: think this is a huge elephant in the fitness room
Speaker 1: and the health room, as we kind of know, Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you've got to manage your mind. But no, I actually
Speaker 1: think your mind and all the byproducts of your mind,
Speaker 1: which is actions and behaviors and rules and habits and
Speaker 1: rituals and good shit and bad shit, like, all of
Speaker 1: those behaviors are byproducts of your thinking and your choices.
Speaker 1: And the consequence is, oh, now I'm out of shape,
Speaker 1: Oh now I've got disease on now I'm living in
Speaker 1: a body that doesn't work. Well, they're the consequences, right,
Speaker 1: They're the symptoms of the underlying shit. We don't deal
Speaker 1: with the underlying shit. We deal with the obvious consequences
Speaker 1: rather than going, oh, you need to eat more or
Speaker 1: eat less or run more. Well, maybe, but maybe we
Speaker 1: need to figure out why the fuck you keep self
Speaker 1: sabotaging and killing yourself. Let's figure that out. So I
Speaker 1: think that's that intersection of all of that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and back to grief and Amanda Lambros. You know
Speaker 3: why she brought Grief Recovery Method program from the States.
Speaker 3: It's one of the only evidence based programs in the
Speaker 3: world around grief and giving action tools and things rather
Speaker 3: this therapy it's not counseling. Was because in her practice
Speaker 3: she found, for the most part of people coming in,
Speaker 3: no matter what they were talking about the problems in
Speaker 3: their life, the most common underlying cause or you know,
Speaker 3: way that they were feeling that way or not moving
Speaker 3: forward was unresolved grief. And I just want to touch
Speaker 3: on you know, if I was to ask you, what
Speaker 3: do you think of the top five grief events in
Speaker 3: someone's life? You know, what would you say they are? Like,
Speaker 3: give five common things when somebody says I'm grieving or
Speaker 3: its grief, what I think that would be?
Speaker 1: I mean, off the top of my head, I would say,
Speaker 1: without trying to be too tricky in figure it out
Speaker 1: and get it right, I would have said, you know,
Speaker 1: loss of a loved one, illness or loss of a
Speaker 1: you know something, you know, a limb, or you know,
Speaker 1: like getting cancer or whatever, losing a job. Perhaps if
Speaker 1: it's you know, what's that three? I don't know what
Speaker 1: would you add to that list? I'm sure you've got
Speaker 1: something profound on.
Speaker 3: Top of the pets.
Speaker 1: Definitely lost, definitely, Well, that's loss of a love bun.
Speaker 2: I guess I would lean into maybe the idea of
Speaker 2: some of the stuff we go through as in childhood
Speaker 2: maybe and the and the grief of a lot of
Speaker 2: that time.
Speaker 3: Yep, absolutely, yeah. And Craig bringing up that loss of
Speaker 3: a limb or things like that's not that's actually because
Speaker 3: of your background that a lot of people and your
Speaker 3: best mate and people that you've you've helped a lot
Speaker 3: of people don't see that is a grief event. You know,
Speaker 3: straight up. They might see somebody with that or a
Speaker 3: physical loss, or somebody who loses the ability to do
Speaker 3: something they love because you know, maybe they're a dancer
Speaker 3: or something they had an injury or a sports person.
Speaker 3: I had an injury and they can no longer do
Speaker 3: that activity. But yeah, that's all in there. And the
Speaker 3: top five divorces is oneviously there in the top five
Speaker 3: loss of a loved one, But there are over forty
Speaker 3: three other losses that we address, and some of them
Speaker 3: are tangible like that still death, divorce, pet loss, moving,
Speaker 3: moving state, moving house. Wow, And consider a kid growing
Speaker 3: up who moves twenty times because of their dads in
Speaker 3: the military or something, or they move house twenty times,
Speaker 3: and that child is told every time, don't be sad.
Speaker 3: New friends. It's all logical and true. But he's grieving
Speaker 3: the old friends. He's grieving. She grieving, or child grieving
Speaker 3: the bedroom or that favorite house that they love, safe,
Speaker 3: the neighborhood. And then all of a sudden, I got
Speaker 3: to pick up and start again, new school again, make
Speaker 3: new friends again, experience whatever there is around that. Or
Speaker 3: you know, as an adult, moving and moving away from
Speaker 3: your support network and you don't have family and friends
Speaker 3: around you. Empty nest is another one, right one, Oh
Speaker 3: yeah about face. And my son's going to travel overseas
Speaker 3: next year, and and my daughter's already moved out of home.
Speaker 3: And it's just that role. It's that that that grieving,
Speaker 3: that role as a mother, as a parent, that you're
Speaker 3: the caregiver, you're cooking for them, you're doing things, and
Speaker 3: then suddenly you're sitting there you're not And for a
Speaker 3: couple of couples, I'm doing it solo. But for couples,
Speaker 3: they're all of a sudden, they're sat there looking at
Speaker 3: each other. What do we do now we don't have
Speaker 3: all these kids to run around and look after and
Speaker 3: drive and all of that. And then the intangible ones
Speaker 3: that Tiff just touched on, which I think is really important.
Speaker 3: Loss of safety, loss of trust when it comes to
Speaker 3: abuse or childhood abuse, things like that, loss of control
Speaker 3: of their situation. Somebody who's in and out of foster
Speaker 3: homes or whatever has experienced sexual abuse as a child,
Speaker 3: or parental abuse, things like that, or just even in
Speaker 3: unhealthy upbringing relationships, domestic violent situations. Loss of fertility is
Speaker 3: another intangible one. Somebody who can't have children and they
Speaker 3: find that out. Pregnancy loss is a big one people
Speaker 3: don't talk about. So there's so many things that as
Speaker 3: a society we don't see as a grief event. And
Speaker 3: also in the last year I've become an ambassador for
Speaker 3: Griefine Australia and one of their major programs is brief
Speaker 3: literacy in the workplace and supporting workplaces because we're not
Speaker 3: taught how to support a colleague and we might not recognize,
Speaker 3: you know, they lost they lost a baby in early
Speaker 3: stages or something, and they're like, oh, you know, that's
Speaker 3: I feel sad for them, but it's that may not
Speaker 3: be you know, what I'd consider a grief event, will
Speaker 3: give them a day off work. You know they need
Speaker 3: to recover physactly, but to that person. But you know,
Speaker 3: imagine what's behind that scenario. And so in the workplaces,
Speaker 3: you know, we're given one day off for a funeral
Speaker 3: and then we're told to come back and pretend nothink's
Speaker 3: happened and able to have those conversations supporting each other.
Speaker 3: So there's this whole, you know, list of grief and
Speaker 3: loss events that we experience all throughout our life. Put
Speaker 3: that into compounded loss like I, you know, I had
Speaker 3: compounded loss in anticipatory grief where you may be caring
Speaker 3: for a parent with dementia Alzheimer's and that goes on
Speaker 3: for years and years and years, and you're grieving the
Speaker 3: loss of what the person that they were to you beforehand,
Speaker 3: that you know that's a vibrant your mum or your dad,
Speaker 3: and all of a sudden they're not that person anymore.
Speaker 3: And there's also anticipatory loss of illness caring for somebody
Speaker 3: where you know that that's imminent and you have to
Speaker 3: grieve pre grief the event, knowing that it's going to
Speaker 3: happen and how to deal with that. So it's so
Speaker 3: complicated and so layd and I guess for the most
Speaker 3: important thing is to recognize other events in our life.
Speaker 3: For us. When I do my workshops, I get people
Speaker 3: to write down. They might come into my workshop because
Speaker 3: they just lost their mum and they think to address
Speaker 3: this or whatever. And then when we say, well, let's
Speaker 3: look at some other losses here up on the board,
Speaker 3: and let's has anyone experienced any of these, and they're yes,
Speaker 3: oh yeah, and oh yeah, I forgot about that as
Speaker 3: a child, because often we push all that stuff away
Speaker 3: from our memories. And so when they experience a new
Speaker 3: grief event like a death, which is what everyone recognizes
Speaker 3: is grief, they wonder why there's all this other underlying
Speaker 3: stuff bubbling up. And it's often because we haven't. It's
Speaker 3: stuff from childhood. And almost everyone who comes to me
Speaker 3: as a client with a recent loss, they will ninety
Speaker 3: nine point nine percent end up working on something else. Yeah, los,
Speaker 3: something else.
Speaker 1: You know what's interesting when you're talking about you know,
Speaker 1: you have a day off work and then it's like,
Speaker 1: all right, You've had your day, come back to work,
Speaker 1: and you know, people not I don't. I think some
Speaker 1: people are just sociopaths and don't get it right. We
Speaker 1: know that that's a fact, like a percentage of the
Speaker 1: population don't really have empathy, they don't care. But I
Speaker 1: also think they are a percentage of the population who
Speaker 1: don't get it like we think. And I've said, I've
Speaker 1: spoken about this had nause in but you know, there's
Speaker 1: this idea or this construct in psychology called the false
Speaker 1: consensus effect, and it just means that we think that
Speaker 1: other people think like us, or they should think like us, right,
Speaker 1: And I might go through something that I go through
Speaker 1: a thing and it devastates me for a week or two,
Speaker 1: and somebody else looks at me and the thing that
Speaker 1: I went through and they're like, I understand that you're sad,
Speaker 1: but that's just way disproportionate, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: It's like looking through their eyes or their window of
Speaker 1: what is they wouldn't or they tell themselves, they would
Speaker 1: not respond like I do, which are not good or bad.
Speaker 1: It's just different. And I think that, like you know,
Speaker 1: the human experience is that we are always looking at
Speaker 1: other people and their experiences and their situation and the
Speaker 1: context of what they're going through and their behavior and
Speaker 1: their response. But we're always looking through our window, you know.
Speaker 1: I'm always looking through the Craig window at what Rachel's doing.
Speaker 1: So it's very much in my interest and your interests,
Speaker 1: especially with your job and TIFF's job, to try to
Speaker 1: understand others, not necessarily to judge them or to agree
Speaker 1: with them, but just trying to understand how do they think,
Speaker 1: what is this moment like now for them? Not how
Speaker 1: would I respond? Wtter give fuck out? You would respond,
Speaker 1: it's not about you for the moment, like how are
Speaker 1: they feeling?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: What is this for them?
Speaker 3: Not?
Speaker 1: What do I think it should be for them? Not
Speaker 1: how would I be if you know, Because there's a
Speaker 1: whole lot of that that goes on. And then I think,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure I've done it too. I'm sure I've
Speaker 1: unknowingly and unintentionally judged people on their response to something
Speaker 1: because I thought it was disproportionate to the actual event.
Speaker 1: And so I'm sitting there on my fucking high horse
Speaker 1: at Craig Central, going well, I think that's a little bit,
Speaker 1: you know, over the crop, But I think that that
Speaker 1: kind of situacial and emotional intelligence and awareness that I
Speaker 1: talk about quite a lot, and probably because it was
Speaker 1: something I needed to get and still need to get
Speaker 1: better at. But there's not a lot of that going
Speaker 1: on sometimes, no.
Speaker 3: And to put that into contexts that contacts with grief,
Speaker 3: and it's such a great point to make, and I
Speaker 3: often teach people if you don't know what to say,
Speaker 3: at least say that I don't know what to say, yes,
Speaker 3: and I'm here for you, because sometimes we don't know
Speaker 3: what to say. And to put that into, you know,
Speaker 3: a picture of people's mind. Two people side by side
Speaker 3: have lost their grandparents, their grandmother. One person has met
Speaker 3: their grandmother twice in their life because they live in
Speaker 3: Italy and they come over twice on a holiday and
Speaker 3: they met them and they've just lost their grandmother. And
Speaker 3: the other person, the grandmother has lived in their house
Speaker 3: their whole life. Yes, and so immediately we think, you
Speaker 3: know of that, Oh you lost your grandma. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: did two last year, you know. And those two situations
Speaker 3: chalk and cheese completely at the different ends of the
Speaker 3: spectrum when it comes down to relationships. And it's all
Speaker 3: about relationships. So let's ask some more situational where questions,
Speaker 3: what sort of relationship did you have with your grandma,
Speaker 3: like you know, did you see her lots or what
Speaker 3: was her name or and let's just get some context
Speaker 3: before then we jump in with that. Yeah that idea,
Speaker 3: like you said, in your mind, well, okay, that's your
Speaker 3: she lived a good life and whatever. I lost my
Speaker 3: grandma last year too, and whatever. And so being situationally aware,
Speaker 3: how is how where does this sit in their life?
Speaker 3: Like you said, be present, be listening and listening about
Speaker 3: how they're feeling about this situation before we could judge
Speaker 3: the scale of what we would think it would be
Speaker 3: for us. Exactly right. And yeah, if we don't know
Speaker 3: what to say or we don't know how to help
Speaker 3: because we have been experienced, I don't know what to say.
Speaker 3: I say that when people share with me about pet
Speaker 3: and and you know, the loss that tip had is
Speaker 3: that because I've never experienced that I had a pet,
Speaker 3: you know, one dog when I was little girl. I
Speaker 3: had a pet since. So I do not understand the complexities.
Speaker 3: I can, at my best imagine and be in people's
Speaker 3: lives to understand how much that pet is a part
Speaker 3: of their family. So I will never say to somebody,
Speaker 3: you know, oh, gosh, I know how you feel with that,
Speaker 3: you know, I lost this life because and so it's
Speaker 3: just gosh, I don't know what to say, you know,
Speaker 3: but what can I do? And maybe we can touch
Speaker 3: on those things. So having those conversations around what can
Speaker 3: we do to support colleagues, what can we do to
Speaker 3: support family members when they're going through something like that
Speaker 3: of any one of those losses, and to not open
Speaker 3: our minds as to it's not just death, it's not
Speaker 3: just divorce that people are experiencing grief and loss in
Speaker 3: a number of ways. Is to acknowledge, just acknowledge it
Speaker 3: first of all, to not ignore it as something or
Speaker 3: dismiss it or compare like you said, because comparing Rob's
Speaker 3: dignity of a person's loss, and to not jump in
Speaker 3: so I acknowledge it, you know, listen, look for cues
Speaker 3: as to how they're coping with the situation, where are
Speaker 3: they at, and then being present for them, and just
Speaker 3: to keep showing up and saying, I don't know what
Speaker 3: to say, but I'm here for you, you know. Is
Speaker 3: there something on your list that I can do for
Speaker 3: you in these coming weeks? Is there something I can
Speaker 3: take care or for you depending what your relationship is
Speaker 3: with this person, and then we need to educate in workplaces,
Speaker 3: we need to have those people in place. We need
Speaker 3: to have somebody that is a kind of a grief
Speaker 3: gatekeeper for that person. That's experience that can be for
Speaker 3: the workplace because they can buy all buy them flowers
Speaker 3: or whatever on one day and then the next day,
Speaker 3: but that gatekeeper can then maybe check in with that person,
Speaker 3: and that's part of their role in the workplace and
Speaker 3: in an office or whatever to go, I'm just going
Speaker 3: to go and check in on this person and maybe
Speaker 3: they're not doing so well. They can recognize that, and
Speaker 3: then then they can because that person also doesn't want
Speaker 3: to come into work. They're trying to, you know, get
Speaker 3: back to normal, they're trying to put on a smile,
Speaker 3: they're trying to do all these things. So they don't
Speaker 3: want to have these conversations in a workplace scenario because
Speaker 3: they know it's not a you know, it might not
Speaker 3: be appropriate. But if there's that gatekeeper, then they can
Speaker 3: say actually, and then that person then can go talk
Speaker 3: to people. And so we need to put some more
Speaker 3: things in place. Maybe they need a half day, maybe
Speaker 3: they need to be able to just leave whenever they
Speaker 3: want to have some time, or they might need a
Speaker 3: support phone call with somebody. So yeah, it's just about
Speaker 3: having those conversations and being, like you said, situationally aware.
Speaker 1: Do you feel like we've been chatting for an hour? Rah?
Speaker 3: Probably? You know, ask sweek a chat for so.
Speaker 1: Much more it is. It's good though, we have to
Speaker 1: get you back more than once to read two years.
Speaker 1: Let's stop every we need to get your back more
Speaker 1: than once every two years. Tell people, so, Gifts from
Speaker 1: Grief is the book. What else do you want to
Speaker 1: share with people? Where can they find you? Connect with you? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Let us know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks Greig. Gifts from Grief on all the socials, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn,
Speaker 3: Gifts from Grief Rachel Pope and yeah, my book Gifts
Speaker 3: from Grief Journey Back Home available on all of those.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Buttercup.
Speaker 3: Having me and lifting the lead on these conversations.
Speaker 1: Oh, you're very welcome. I realized one thing, Tiff and
Speaker 1: Rach and listeners. There's I've been I've been going to
Speaker 1: get a dog, and my dog is I'm going to
Speaker 1: get my dog when my PhD is finished, which is looming,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to get a dog, so I don't
Speaker 1: panic everyone. Not that anyone's panicking, but I think Tiff
Speaker 1: and Melissa a little bit hurry the fuck up. But
Speaker 1: I realized there's an underlying apprehension. Now I love dogs
Speaker 1: and too. If somebody brings it, I'll go over. I'm
Speaker 1: on the grass with the dog. I'm fucking the dog's
Speaker 1: loving me. I'm looking the dog, the dog's looking me.
Speaker 1: It's all going on. There's fucking dopamine central, right, And
Speaker 1: then I'm like, what is my apprehension? And I realized it.
Speaker 1: I don't want to lose the dog. Like before I
Speaker 1: get the dog, I'm worried about losing the dog. I'm
Speaker 1: already going I don't want to be sad. I don't
Speaker 1: want to go through grief. I'm not going to love
Speaker 1: that dog. Fuck that dog. That dog's not coming because
Speaker 1: I know how much I'm going to love the dog.
Speaker 1: And then from day three, all I'm going to it's
Speaker 1: not but you know, like it kind of it is
Speaker 1: a bit it. As we were going through this, I
Speaker 1: was thinking, when, especially when we spoke about Tiff losing coach,
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh God, anyway, on that uplifting note, we'll
Speaker 1: say goodbye our fair but Tiff, Rach thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Appreciate you both and we'll catch up again soon.
Speaker 2: Rach.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks Craig, thanks Tiff, thank you