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Speaker 1: a very special episode to share with you today, and
Speaker 1: it's part of a series we're releasing called something to Normalize.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons I've always loved the Wolf Parable
Speaker 1: is because it normalizes being human and having difficult emotions.
Speaker 1: These podcast episodes feature my partner Ginny, talking with her
Speaker 1: friend and previous guest of the show, Brandy Lust. In
Speaker 1: these unguarded conversations, they'll be sharing their lives and perspectives
Speaker 1: as women, alongside insights from experts, researchers, and writers on
Speaker 1: topics that are hard to talk about. We tend to
Speaker 1: keep these things to ourselves, though, and when we do,
Speaker 1: it can breed a sense of being the only one,
Speaker 1: feelings of shame, or evidence we're somehow doing life wrong.
Speaker 1: Brandy and Ginny hope that by giving voice to experiences, feelings,
Speaker 1: and thoughts we often keep to ourselves, we can create
Speaker 1: a community with less shame and a deeper sense of belonging.
Speaker 1: I am so happy to share their voices with you.
Speaker 1: I think you'll find these episodes a wonderfully nourishing and
Speaker 1: supportive addition to the regularly scheduled one you Feed podcast
Speaker 1: episodes you are used to hearing here, and now I'm
Speaker 1: proud to present to you something to normalize.
Speaker 2: All right, Welcome everybody, and hello Brandy, Hello, good morning,
Speaker 2: good morning. We are picking up with part two of
Speaker 2: our episode talking about and normalizing the experiences related to grief.
Speaker 2: So if you have not listened to part one, the
Speaker 2: previous episode, we really hope you'll go back and do so,
Speaker 2: because this episode Part two doesn't necessarily stand alone. It's
Speaker 2: really connected to what we shared in the previous episode
Speaker 2: in part one. But I get ahead of us. I
Speaker 2: get ahead of myself and us here. Let's just real
Speaker 2: quick go back and say who we are. So I'm
Speaker 2: Jinny Gay. I'm a certified mindfulness and meditation teacher who
Speaker 2: helps people become more aware of and work skillfully with
Speaker 2: their thoughts, their emotions and experiences so they feel less
Speaker 2: stressed and struggle and more freedom, more joy, and more ease.
Speaker 3: And I am Brandy Lust and I must be grand
Speaker 3: consultant to help organizations create safe spaces for people to
Speaker 3: share their truth so that they can create change. And
Speaker 3: welcome everyone. Hello podcast friends.
Speaker 2: Yes, hello podcast friends. So we left off last time
Speaker 2: exploring the realm of like some of the myths we've
Speaker 2: encountered about grief and things that we've maybe heard that
Speaker 2: our personal experiences didn't necessarily align with or fit or
Speaker 2: match up with. And so we thought we would start
Speaker 2: part two this episode with what some of the important
Speaker 2: truths are that we've discovered in our research in our
Speaker 2: reading about grief. You want to start off Brandy.
Speaker 4: I'd love to.
Speaker 3: And I'm actually going to return to an article that
Speaker 3: I referenced in the last episode by Mary Francis O'Connor,
Speaker 3: and she wrote the book The Grieving Brain, and so
Speaker 3: in an interview with NPR, she talks about how grief
Speaker 3: is not just about the person that we've lost. It's
Speaker 3: also about how our identity is tied in with that person.
Speaker 3: And so when we are losing someone, we are also
Speaker 3: losing our identity that is connected to them, whether we're
Speaker 3: a brother or a mother, or a sister, or a
Speaker 3: friend or a caretaker, a life partner. So that loss
Speaker 3: that we're experiencing is a loss of the person, and
Speaker 3: it's a loss of who we are to some extent,
Speaker 3: and that's part of the grieving process. So I'm just
Speaker 3: going to pause and see how that lands for you.
Speaker 2: Jinny. Yeah, I've never heard it said exactly that way,
Speaker 2: and it really lands for me because as a reflect
Speaker 2: on the loss of my mother, it's so helpful to
Speaker 2: also name the loss of being her daughter. Because what
Speaker 2: I've found in my experience is and when I started
Speaker 2: thinking about this and naming this within myself, I almost
Speaker 2: felt like shy about saying it. But I don't think
Speaker 2: there's anything to be shy about here, which is like,
Speaker 2: I miss the love that my mother gave to me
Speaker 2: as her daughter. I missed the way she loved me.
Speaker 2: I missed having an adoring mother who was interested in
Speaker 2: everything you did. And I missed the way she loved me.
Speaker 2: I missed that sort of deep and unconditional love that
Speaker 2: I was so fortunate to have with her. And so yeah,
Speaker 2: I think I was grieving the loss of her, the
Speaker 2: loss of our relationship, and also the loss of being
Speaker 2: the daughter of my mother. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. How
Speaker 2: did that impact you when you read it?
Speaker 3: Well, it impacted me in two ways. One, I resonate
Speaker 3: with your description of this, because my grandma saw me
Speaker 3: in this light that I don't think anyone else ever
Speaker 3: has in my life.
Speaker 4: I'll just tell a quick story.
Speaker 3: I was in college and I had planned to meet
Speaker 3: her at a real estate office to have a meeting.
Speaker 3: But the night before I had gone out on campus
Speaker 3: and spent the night at a party and came to
Speaker 3: the meeting wearing this huge, oversized, like purple T shirt
Speaker 3: that had this like weird graphic design on it that
Speaker 3: was from this house that I'd stayed in and I
Speaker 3: was wearing like windbreaker pants and hadn't showered, And her
Speaker 3: response to me showing up to this meeting like this
Speaker 3: was even in whatever you're wearing, you are so dignified.
Speaker 2: Love it.
Speaker 4: And I think that.
Speaker 3: For whatever reason, she just saw so much beauty and
Speaker 3: light and strengthened my presence that I've never really felt
Speaker 3: in another way since. So that resonates with me really strongly.
Speaker 3: But I also had this experience of the inverse of this,
Speaker 3: which is that when someone dies, we also occupy a
Speaker 3: new identity, and that was really important to my own
Speaker 3: grief story. And I'd like to share another quote with you.
Speaker 3: So there's a beautiful book called When Death Becomes Air
Speaker 3: by Paul Kalaneathi. The book is about a surgeon who
Speaker 3: finds out that he has I believe it's like an
Speaker 3: inoperable tumor, and he's going to die.
Speaker 4: And so the main.
Speaker 3: Thrust of this is he has a certain amount of
Speaker 3: time that he knows that he has in this world,
Speaker 3: and with that time, he writes this book, this memoir
Speaker 3: that becomes When Breath Becomes Air, And.
Speaker 4: It's a beautiful memoir.
Speaker 3: But what I have always held in my quote book
Speaker 3: in my journal where I keep all of my quotes
Speaker 3: that I love so much from books. Is actually not
Speaker 3: something that he wrote in the book. It's something that
Speaker 3: his widow wrote in the epilogue to talk about her
Speaker 3: experience of losing him, and she said, I expect it
Speaker 3: to feel only empty, heartbroken after died. It never occurred
Speaker 3: to me that you could love someone the same way
Speaker 3: after he was gone, that I would continue to feel
Speaker 3: such love and gratitude alongside terrible sorrow. The grief is
Speaker 3: so heavy that at times I shiver and moan under
Speaker 3: the weight of it. Paul is gone, and I miss
Speaker 3: him dearly every moment, but I somehow feel I am
Speaker 3: still taking part in the life we created together. For me,
Speaker 3: this quote is about the shifting identity of moving from
Speaker 3: having a life partner who is in this world to
Speaker 3: still living in the space of loving that person and
Speaker 3: embodying the identity of In our culture, we would say
Speaker 3: a widow a person who has lost that partner, and
Speaker 3: in that new role, the loss informs who you become.
Speaker 3: There's a new identity that emerges out of that. I
Speaker 3: have my own story of this and why that feels
Speaker 3: really important to me. Yeah, but I'd also like to
Speaker 3: hear how you feel about that.
Speaker 2: I'm just having all these like light bulb moments connecting
Speaker 2: some of the research I've done, which is first with
Speaker 2: my own experience of losing my mom and really having
Speaker 2: a deep sense that the relationship with her still exists.
Speaker 2: It's just inside of me now as opposed to like
Speaker 2: outside of me and with her, because the relationship I'm
Speaker 2: having is with her memory, the memory of who she
Speaker 2: is right there's a relational experience that we have with memory.
Speaker 2: There's a social worker named Michael White who in his
Speaker 2: work believed that his clients needed, as he says, opportunities
Speaker 2: to develop new relationships with their deceased loved ones. In
Speaker 2: other words, I love this. This connects with something you
Speaker 2: said just a minute ago, which is this is a
Speaker 2: quote again about his work. He began by asking gentle
Speaker 2: questions of these clients to help them transform their past
Speaker 2: relationships with the deceased into new relationships in the present.
Speaker 2: Questions like if you were seeing yourself through your loved
Speaker 2: one's eyes right now, what would they appreciate about you?
Speaker 2: Which makes me think about what you said about your
Speaker 2: grandmother and how she just saw in you such like
Speaker 2: dig byby right, Like, there's a way to call that
Speaker 2: into the present moment with reflections and questions like that.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I know, And he says, so memory is
Speaker 2: something we can actually bring forward, and then we're bringing
Speaker 2: the person forward. We're not saying goodbye, we're actually saying
Speaker 2: hello again in the context of a different kind of experience.
Speaker 2: And so there is that deep grief, right that great
Speaker 2: love or extraordinary love creates extraordinary grief over that loss
Speaker 2: that in a very real way exists alongside this ability
Speaker 2: to shift into a different way of being with them
Speaker 2: and their memory which is very alive. And I just
Speaker 2: love that idea me too.
Speaker 3: You can probably tell from all of my noises that
Speaker 3: I'm making, So I am doing.
Speaker 4: The thing I do when something is like resonating.
Speaker 3: Literally, I'm like sort of rocking a little bit, like
Speaker 3: holding my heart because it just lands, like it just
Speaker 3: lands in this place where I'm thinking about this moment
Speaker 3: in my life. And I have wanted to reach out
Speaker 3: to her so many times and felt frustrated by the
Speaker 3: lack of her presence. And when you said the question
Speaker 3: was something around what would your loved one see an
Speaker 3: admire about you right now, and you brought up that
Speaker 3: human dignity idea. I felt that strength, I felt that
Speaker 3: sense of like, yes, that is what she would see
Speaker 3: in me. Yes, and it allowed me to receive that
Speaker 3: love from her. So I had a moment with what
Speaker 3: you just said.
Speaker 2: It was so helpful for me too. His language is
Speaker 2: so good. He talks about integrating their lost relationships into
Speaker 2: their current lives, or turning someone's absence into a new
Speaker 2: kind of presence right linquishing ties to people who have passed,
Speaker 2: finding new ways to stay connected.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I want to say that that idea of finding
Speaker 3: new ways to stay connected, but also like continuing to
Speaker 3: walk alongside a lost loved one in your life, feels very,
Speaker 3: very pertinent to my grief experience with my grandma in
Speaker 3: two ways. One is the longing to still feel her
Speaker 3: physical presence, and the other is when I do and
Speaker 3: how much that informs my life. I want to share
Speaker 3: that everything that I have done since she has passed
Speaker 3: away has felt connected deeply to be the legacy that
Speaker 3: I inherited from her, This legacy that is really about
Speaker 3: having a voice, having a sense of our own human
Speaker 3: dignity and beauty are the things that really come to
Speaker 3: mind for me. When she passed away. At the celebration
Speaker 3: of life, which is what she wanted us to call it,
Speaker 3: someone in the group of folks who attended came up
Speaker 3: to me and said, your grandma was one of the
Speaker 3: most self assertive women I've ever met in my life.
Speaker 2: Really, Oh, I love that.
Speaker 3: Yes, And so there's this legacy of truth telling.
Speaker 4: There's this legacy of which is you?
Speaker 2: I mean, that is you. She is alive in you
Speaker 2: in that way.
Speaker 3: It's interesting though, because how she framed it and how
Speaker 3: I thought of it for so long was about love.
Speaker 3: Her language was around and it's deeply embedded in her
Speaker 3: spiritual journey and her belief in the divine. And there
Speaker 3: was a moment in her death process when she said
Speaker 3: to me, I feel at peace. And that was a
Speaker 3: struggle for her. Had she done what she needed to
Speaker 3: do in this world to know it was okay to go?
Speaker 3: And she said, I feel at peace because I realized
Speaker 3: that my purpose here in the world was to let
Speaker 3: God's love shine through me. And that gave her a
Speaker 3: sense of I've done what I need to do. If
Speaker 3: I'm doing that, I've done what I need to do,
Speaker 3: and it was an ongoing action, and I think that's
Speaker 3: so much of what brought that piece for her. I've
Speaker 3: been in a transition where I felt that sense that
Speaker 3: like Gloe Lovey sense disappearing. What I'm realizing literally in
Speaker 3: this conversation is that what's left that connects me to
Speaker 3: her is the human dignity and the compassionate action that
Speaker 3: comes from that place of respecting that we, all of us,
Speaker 3: every single person, regardless of the body that we occupy,
Speaker 3: deserve to.
Speaker 4: Have a space that is just for us.
Speaker 3: And that that's the transition that I'm in right now.
Speaker 3: All of this to say, our identities shift and change.
Speaker 3: If we keep a relationship to that person and allow
Speaker 3: them to inform our lives, they have a legacy for
Speaker 3: us that we can continue to follow.
Speaker 4: And that is.
Speaker 3: Incredibly powerful for me, because yes, there is a loss
Speaker 3: of identity, and there is a new identity that can
Speaker 3: be born from that. And there are some ways that
Speaker 3: I want to talk about that. Researchers specifically related to
Speaker 3: the psychology and the practice of grieving have identified that
Speaker 3: we can use certain tools to help to initiate that
Speaker 3: process of moving through the experience of honoring what we've lost,
Speaker 3: and then you know, also acknowledging the transformation that we're
Speaker 3: in and who we're becoming in the midst.
Speaker 4: Of that loss.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Can I say something real quick
Speaker 2: about what you're talking about this exact point. One of
Speaker 2: the books that I read that really helped me was
Speaker 2: called The After Grief by Hope Edelman, and one of
Speaker 2: the things she says in the book about this idea
Speaker 2: is that the details of the loss might be fixed, right,
Speaker 2: but what those facts have meant to me, she says,
Speaker 2: at different moments in my life, that part is constantly evolving.
Speaker 2: So like the fact that we are continuing to grow
Speaker 2: and change and evolve. Therefore, our relationship to that person
Speaker 2: and what that person has meant to us over the
Speaker 2: arc of their life, and the relationship we've had that's
Speaker 2: continuing to evolve, right even though they might have passed.
Speaker 2: And I just hear you saying like that, there's a
Speaker 2: very real living thing inside of us with the way
Speaker 2: we are in relationship to that person and the loss
Speaker 2: of that person, because we continue to live and grow
Speaker 2: and mature.
Speaker 3: Yeah, two things I want to say. One, I love
Speaker 3: this idea of after grief because it reminds me of
Speaker 3: the word after birth, which is, oh yeah, that it's
Speaker 3: what comes out of right a woman's body after you
Speaker 3: have a baby. I believe they call that an after birth.
Speaker 3: And for me, the death experience of my grandma because
Speaker 3: I was so present in that, it felt like a birth.
Speaker 3: That's the closest thing I can describe it to you,
Speaker 3: because I've both had a child and been with someone
Speaker 3: in the death process and it felt the same. There
Speaker 3: was a laboring that leads up to that final moment,
Speaker 3: and so that is really a beautiful, like I think,
Speaker 3: life giving image for me. And the other thing that
Speaker 3: I wanted to ask you, Ginny, is how does this
Speaker 3: all land for you personally?
Speaker 4: Because you are much earlier.
Speaker 3: In the grief process than I am, and so this journey,
Speaker 3: I have more inflection points, and I'm speaking from pretty
Speaker 3: far down the road, Like, what is this like for
Speaker 3: you in this moment so much sooner after the death
Speaker 3: of your.
Speaker 2: Mom in the way that I am in relationship to
Speaker 2: her inside of me? Is that what you mean? I'm
Speaker 2: just gonna sit with that for a second. I think
Speaker 2: a couple of things. I read a quote that really
Speaker 2: hit for me, which the quote is from someone in
Speaker 2: Merit molloy, and the quote is love doesn't die. People do.
Speaker 2: And I'm starting to see that the love that was
Speaker 2: the thing that connected me and my mom is still
Speaker 2: alive inside of me and in my heart, and she's
Speaker 2: still my reference point for so many things in life.
Speaker 2: It's just that that is now something I reference inside
Speaker 2: of me right versus a person outside of me. I
Speaker 2: think that for me, what I'm really in the midst
Speaker 2: of right now is in living in such a way
Speaker 2: that I'm able to maybe carry forward some of the
Speaker 2: progress she made in her life in some important ways.
Speaker 2: In the ways that we're alike, right, You know, we
Speaker 2: had a lot of things in common, but we also
Speaker 2: struggled with a lot of things that kept us from
Speaker 2: connecting in a lot of ways. But for example, like
Speaker 2: she was very well spoken, and she was very articulate
Speaker 2: and very wise, and she would use that gift in
Speaker 2: a one on one, very small setting, but she was
Speaker 2: very shy about doing that in any kind of larger setting.
Speaker 2: And I feel like there was so much value in
Speaker 2: what she would offer people that it would have been
Speaker 2: incredible if she would have sort of let herself be
Speaker 2: bold and speak out in a larger way. And so
Speaker 2: I feel like that connection that she and I have
Speaker 2: in I guess those strengths about, you know, just verbal
Speaker 2: communication and the ability to speak some truth. I'm encouraging
Speaker 2: myself to sort of move past my fear, my insecurities,
Speaker 2: my sense of being small and sort of diminutive, and
Speaker 2: allowing myself to speak up in a larger way. It
Speaker 2: just feels like a generational continuation, and I feel very
Speaker 2: connected to her in moments when I do that.
Speaker 4: I think it's so interesting.
Speaker 3: This is from trauma research, but we actually carry I
Speaker 3: think it's something like two generations past us in our bodies,
Speaker 3: so our mother's and there is something about even when
Speaker 3: that person is gone, we are still doing the work
Speaker 3: that that person left us with. And for so many women,
Speaker 3: I think that what we're saying is similar For a
Speaker 3: lot of women, this is the work right. One of
Speaker 3: the things that my grandma grappled with when she was
Speaker 3: passing away was the fact that she stayed the last
Speaker 3: seventeen years of her life in a relationship with someone
Speaker 3: who engaged in constant infidelity. And she was really mad,
Speaker 3: not at him, but at herself because she didn't honor
Speaker 3: her sense of what she deserved, and in so many
Speaker 3: ways she was so self a sort of incredibly strong,
Speaker 3: had a powerful voice, and in her closest relationships, particularly
Speaker 3: with romantic partners, that was a place that she really struggled,
Speaker 3: you know. And so in my own life, I think
Speaker 3: that patterns of intimate relationships and partnerships, that's an area
Speaker 3: where I've struggled, and we continue to carry those journeys
Speaker 3: with us wherever we are, which is why I think
Speaker 3: it's so detrimental that we do not have more tools
Speaker 3: in regards to moving through the grief process. And I
Speaker 3: think so much of that is because we're such a
Speaker 3: self I don't know if that was a fordiancelip I
Speaker 3: was gonna.
Speaker 4: Say, self denying.
Speaker 3: We are such a death denying culture that we just
Speaker 3: want to get past it. I became really fascinated with
Speaker 3: the role of ritual in my life during the grieving process,
Speaker 3: and I wrote a lot about it at that time,
Speaker 3: and there are some rituals that I can talk about.
Speaker 4: But I also.
Speaker 3: Found this really incredible article called Ritual and Theory be
Speaker 3: for Prolonged Grief in the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry and
Speaker 3: what was great about this. I love literature reviews, and
Speaker 3: I know this is the nerdiest thing to say, but
Speaker 3: literature reviews are this great place where people take everything
Speaker 3: that's been learned up to that point they tried to
Speaker 3: and they try to condense like all of that research
Speaker 3: into one place, and so there are these really rich
Speaker 3: pockets of information where you can just gain so much
Speaker 3: so quickly.
Speaker 4: And so this is a literature.
Speaker 3: Review of like the study of prolonged grief in therapy,
Speaker 3: but it's not just about that. When I read it,
Speaker 3: I was like, this is just grief, Like grief does
Speaker 3: not have to be prolonged, which in psychiatry, you know,
Speaker 3: they consider prolonged grief to be grief that is not
Speaker 3: being processed quote unquote correctly, And I think that, first
Speaker 3: of all, that's a misnomer. Any way we're grieving is fine.
Speaker 3: But second of all, even in quote unquote normal grief,
Speaker 3: we still need tools because we have been using tools
Speaker 3: since the beginning of time, and one of the major
Speaker 3: tools that we've used is ritual. So I was going
Speaker 3: to talk a little bit about what they say ritual is,
Speaker 3: and they say, for the sake of clarity in this study.
Speaker 3: We define rituals in therapeutic interventions as sensory, attentive, and
Speaker 3: intentional acts that are performed in a structured, imaginative, or
Speaker 3: esthetic way and make use of symbols, symbolic language and
Speaker 3: symbolic action. That is a freaking mouthful first of all.
Speaker 3: So how I understand this is that rituals engage our
Speaker 3: senses and our attention and they are intentional. So they
Speaker 3: engage our senses, our attention, and they're intentional. So that
Speaker 3: intentionality part is about we have a frame for the
Speaker 3: experience before we go in.
Speaker 4: We have a purpose for.
Speaker 3: Engaging in this particular experience that we're having. And when
Speaker 3: I hear these words of like structure, aesthetic, imaginative, I
Speaker 3: conceptualize that is, we have a container for our experiences
Speaker 3: and we pay attention to that container. And so examples
Speaker 3: of this might be, you know, burning incense in churches
Speaker 3: and having that aesthetic sense of that quality, or lighting
Speaker 3: a candle. They're visible, they're tangible, they are imaginative, and
Speaker 3: that they go beyond what we're seeing to represent something else,
Speaker 3: which goes into this last part. They aren't literal, but
Speaker 3: they are real to the person that is enacting them.
Speaker 3: They are real to the person that is enacting them.
Speaker 3: And I have a lot more that I can say
Speaker 3: about this idea. Yea, I want to pause and see
Speaker 3: how that lands for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I came upon some really useful information about ritual
Speaker 2: too and again, and this comes from Hope Edelman's book
Speaker 2: The After Grief. But she says, well, first of all,
Speaker 2: she quotes a woman named Suki Miller by saying, ritual
Speaker 2: is the antidote to helplessness. And I think in the
Speaker 2: face of loss often that's a feeling that can come up.
Speaker 2: And so ritual kind of helps us regain some agency
Speaker 2: and connection and healing I think therefore, or strength. But anyway,
Speaker 2: Hope says, ritual serves to honor the contents of our hearts,
Speaker 2: both the love and pain. They serve the function of
Speaker 2: connection maintenance, helping us feel closer to our loved one
Speaker 2: who has died. Emotional expression revives a sense of control,
Speaker 2: helps us feel meaning, and underpins communical structures. Sorry, underpins
Speaker 2: that's about. Yeah, I was gonna say structure.
Speaker 4: I'm like, what's that.
Speaker 2: Meaning underpins communal structures within which we are better able
Speaker 2: to cope with our losses. So you know, it really tracks.
Speaker 2: I mean, she even talks about something called micro rituals,
Speaker 2: which are purposeful means of evoking our beloved ones presence
Speaker 2: in our day to day lives. So I recently did
Speaker 2: this because my birthday was not too long ago, and
Speaker 2: my mom had this ritual she did to reconnect to
Speaker 2: the memory of her parents or their love that they
Speaker 2: had for her. Every year on her birthday, she would
Speaker 2: buy herself a birthday present from them. It would be
Speaker 2: something that she knew that they would love to have
Speaker 2: given her. There was just a tiny bit of money
Speaker 2: that they left her the only child, and so like
Speaker 2: she kind of reserved that over the course of her
Speaker 2: lifetime for like this purpose. So she would do that
Speaker 2: with those funds. And so this was my first birthday
Speaker 2: after my mom passed, and so I went to a
Speaker 2: jewelry store in Atlanta that we both loved and that
Speaker 2: she bought me a few special pieces from. And I
Speaker 2: bought a pair of earrings. Actually the ones I'm wearing
Speaker 2: right now. I don't know if you can see them,
Speaker 2: but they're just these sweet little earrings that the minute
Speaker 2: I put them on, I was like she would have
Speaker 2: looked at me and been like, those are gorgeous and
Speaker 2: they look great on you, and she would have loved it,
Speaker 2: and I loved them, and it was such a connection
Speaker 2: point to her. So I bought them for myself from her,
Speaker 2: and wearing them feels like that kind of connection back
Speaker 2: to that love, but in a present moment way. I'll
Speaker 2: wrap up that whole thing by saying, rituals can be
Speaker 2: group oriented, communal ways of processing this kind of grief
Speaker 2: and connecting with this love and finding healing, and I
Speaker 2: think they can also be very personal ways to connect
Speaker 2: with our loved ones in a small way day to
Speaker 2: day or to mark events. You know, Yeah, what about you.
Speaker 3: I think that's beautiful what you just shared. First of all,
Speaker 3: because when you told the story, I imagined your mom
Speaker 3: with you.
Speaker 4: Oh that's how I saw it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it felt like that. I felt like
Speaker 2: she was with me. It really does. Yes.
Speaker 3: I mean I had a number of them, especially right
Speaker 3: after she passed away. They became really really important to me.
Speaker 3: One of the things is that, like I said, she
Speaker 3: left me with a love for beauty. And one of
Speaker 3: the things she would do when we were out driving
Speaker 3: around like the countryside, is she would stop the car
Speaker 3: and we would get out and we would pick flowers.
Speaker 3: And she had this beautiful garden at home as well.
Speaker 3: You know, she had a four seasons room and it
Speaker 3: was surrounded by this garden. So in her daily life
Speaker 3: she would go out, pick flowers, create these little arrangements,
Speaker 3: and then set them on the table in this four
Speaker 3: seasons room. And she was one of those people who
Speaker 3: took a lot of joy in those simple tasks, the
Speaker 3: curation of things that felt special. This is random, but
Speaker 3: I'm just thinking about it. She also used cloth napkins,
Speaker 3: and like I have cloth napkins, and you know, those
Speaker 3: sorts of things. And so, especially right after she died,
Speaker 3: when I would have family events or have people over,
Speaker 3: or you know, just when I wanted to do something
Speaker 3: for myself, I would go out in my garden and
Speaker 3: trim flowers and spend a lot of time, you know,
Speaker 3: just pulling off the leaves that would be in the
Speaker 3: water so that they would last longer, and trimming them
Speaker 3: to a certain length and making these beautiful vases of flowers.
Speaker 3: And there was one particular time that I really remember
Speaker 3: where my whole family was coming over for dinner and
Speaker 3: my mom had arrived early and she and my son
Speaker 3: and I went out and all picked flowers together and
Speaker 3: made this vase that was at the center of our
Speaker 3: family table for that event. So that's one of the
Speaker 3: things that comes to mind, which I did that with intentionality,
Speaker 3: which is one of the things that they talk about
Speaker 3: with ritual, of course, is having that intention. But there
Speaker 3: have also been times in my life when I really
Speaker 3: set aside like a chunk of time and dedicated that
Speaker 3: specifically to a ritual that was dedicated to her in
Speaker 3: that grief process. And so in the rituals where I
Speaker 3: sat aside a chunk of time specifically dedicated to moving
Speaker 3: through the process of going from a person who had
Speaker 3: lost someone to the new identity of a person who
Speaker 3: was internalizing that experience with them and bringing it with me.
Speaker 3: I did this project with a friend where we bought
Speaker 3: sky lanterns, and if you've never seen a sky lantern,
Speaker 3: they're like these huge paper I say huge, they're like
Speaker 3: three to four feet they're big, and you light a
Speaker 3: little candle and the heat from the candle actually inflates
Speaker 3: these balloons.
Speaker 4: That are made out of paper and they float into
Speaker 4: the air.
Speaker 3: And in that process we did one that was for
Speaker 3: letting go of things that we needed to release, and
Speaker 3: another that was for welcoming in what we wanted to
Speaker 3: bring with us. And this goes into this article again
Speaker 3: the Literature Review, they interviewed ten psychotherapists about the use
Speaker 3: of ritual to help in prolonged grief and the therapeutic process,
Speaker 3: and there are three different purposes that they give to these,
Speaker 3: and one are rituals to honor the deceased love one
Speaker 3: and keep that symbolic bond which you and I both
Speaker 3: talked about some of those that we have. And second
Speaker 3: as a ritual to let go of traumatic experience and
Speaker 3: so that process of creating the balloon to let go
Speaker 3: of the things that we need to let go of
Speaker 3: to be able to heal. And then the third are
Speaker 3: rituals of self transformation, and so that's that process of
Speaker 3: who am I now as I hold this grief and
Speaker 3: this truth? And so I think with that process of
Speaker 3: releasing those sky lanterns, there was both the letting go
Speaker 3: of the experiences that need to be let go of,
Speaker 3: but then there was also this self transformation who am
Speaker 3: I becoming? What am I taking with me from the
Speaker 3: experience of not just having this person, but also the
Speaker 3: experience of losing this person. What has that done to
Speaker 3: change who I am?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think something you said there just continue to
Speaker 2: come back to, which is like, we don't just get
Speaker 2: over loss and then we move on independent of the loss.
Speaker 2: That it's like something in our past that we are
Speaker 2: past and not still connected to. Right, it's not in
Speaker 2: the rear view mirror, and we're not doing it wrong.
Speaker 2: We're not doing grief wrong if it still feels very
Speaker 2: integrated and alive inside of us. I think what you're
Speaker 2: touching on is this idea of marking a transition in
Speaker 2: the way we relate to that loss and that person.
Speaker 2: And for me, it was just so powerful to realize
Speaker 2: that the name of the book the after Grief, I mean,
Speaker 2: she kind of talks about this thing is like, you know,
Speaker 2: there's loss, and then grief is something that happens after loss,
Speaker 2: and then there's this long arc of grief. And she
Speaker 2: also named that there's a difference between sort of like
Speaker 2: traumatic grief that's resulting from traumatic loss of someone we love,
Speaker 2: like a terrible car crash and one minute they're here
Speaker 2: and the next minute they're unexpectedly gone, right, versus what
Speaker 2: I experienced with my mom, which was she was ill
Speaker 2: and declining for for seven years. So the grief can
Speaker 2: feel very different and is very different in those two things.
Speaker 2: But maybe I'm rambling, but that was just something that
Speaker 2: I feel like just not something we get over and
Speaker 2: move on. It's not something that if we are grieving
Speaker 2: well or being healthy, that that's how it's happened for us, right,
Speaker 2: And we're not clinging unhelpfully to our loved ones by
Speaker 2: holding them close inside of us in a very alive way.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I had a professor when I was in seminary which
Speaker 3: I was in for a year, and he talked about
Speaker 3: the death of his mother in such a beautiful way.
Speaker 3: I remember his face when he said this because the
Speaker 3: word that I want to use is like beatific.
Speaker 4: Is that a word?
Speaker 3: It's like he had this like glowing look to him
Speaker 3: that was just it was joy. And he was talking
Speaker 3: about how he couldn't believe how present his mother felt
Speaker 3: since her death.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And I also want to pause and just say that
Speaker 3: is not the experience with every death that I have
Speaker 3: had in my life.
Speaker 5: It's not.
Speaker 3: And so if someone's listening to us and they're like,
Speaker 3: this does not resonate with me. I do not feel
Speaker 3: the presence of this person. They feel entirely absent. I
Speaker 3: think it's really important to recognize the spaces that people
Speaker 3: might be in. Sometimes someone dies and we're talking about grief,
Speaker 3: which is loss that is stemming from love, but there's
Speaker 3: also experiences of people dying and that is not part
Speaker 3: of the experience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's really good to name exactly. I'm so glad
Speaker 2: you brought that up. Kind of goes back to the
Speaker 2: point we touched on in the previous episode, which was
Speaker 2: we're speaking from our experiences and the research we've done
Speaker 2: and we've been able to glean and we can in
Speaker 2: no way speak to everyone's experience and every kind of
Speaker 2: loss and the impact that all of that can have,
Speaker 2: and that whatever your experience is for that that it's okay.
Speaker 2: It is your experience to inhabit and to explore and
Speaker 2: to navigate through, whether that's feeling a real connection or
Speaker 2: feeling a real disconnection.
Speaker 3: Right. Yeah, And I think too, we are framing this
Speaker 3: conversation for both of us around what I would describe
Speaker 3: as like landmark losses in our lives, like these are
Speaker 3: the people who were our closest people. Yeah, and so
Speaker 3: it is specifically that type of grief that we're really
Speaker 3: naming here and how landmark losses can shape us in
Speaker 3: ways that are not just sad. But to use the
Speaker 3: language of this article, I've been referring to self transforming.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I want to just sort of pivot
Speaker 2: a little bit. But if this is connected, which is
Speaker 2: you know, I think one of the ways we find
Speaker 2: some healing and also meaning and for motion in our
Speaker 2: lives again after a loss is through storytelling about that loss.
Speaker 2: So storytelling can simply mean maybe you're journaling about it,
Speaker 2: maybe you're sort of reflecting on it, maybe you're talking
Speaker 2: to someone about your experience, maybe you're talking to a
Speaker 2: group of people. It doesn't have to take one form,
Speaker 2: but it's about the meaning we make related to things
Speaker 2: that have happened or the way we're relating to them
Speaker 2: in the current moment. Right. So I found this specifically
Speaker 2: helpful even while my mom was still alive, but as
Speaker 2: she was losing different functions that she had once had,
Speaker 2: and it was just so sad to me to see.
Speaker 2: For example, so she at the end of her life
Speaker 2: needed everything done for her, like she could not do anything.
Speaker 2: She was basically sort of just a body that needed
Speaker 2: to be cared for. She had no she could not
Speaker 2: feed herself, she could not you know, bathe herself, she
Speaker 2: could not toilet herself, she could not walk around roll
Speaker 2: over in the bed so that she didn't get bedsores like.
Speaker 2: She needed absolutely everything done for her. And so for
Speaker 2: a really long time, seeing that and reflecting on that
Speaker 2: was a source of only heartbreak for me, like only sadness,
Speaker 2: with no redemptive qualities to it. It was just heartache.
Speaker 2: And not to say that that's wrong or bad, but
Speaker 2: what that evolved to be in me. And I don't
Speaker 2: even know exactly where this came from, but it just
Speaker 2: occurred to me one day that so my mom was
Speaker 2: a person who, throughout her life did everything for everybody
Speaker 2: else except herself, right, maybe to a fault, like probably
Speaker 2: definitely to a fault, but she was a helper and
Speaker 2: she was incredible when it comes to doing for other people.
Speaker 2: And I realized at this moment that I could be
Speaker 2: the exact same circumstances from the lens of that she
Speaker 2: was now being paid back in spades for the seeds
Speaker 2: she had planted her whole life, right like all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, she was getting all of that care back.
Speaker 2: The people were now doing everything for her after she
Speaker 2: has been a life doing everything for other people. So
Speaker 2: the facts in that story were the same, but the
Speaker 2: meaning was different in so many ways, and so therefore
Speaker 2: the impact it had on me was really different. So
Speaker 2: I think we have an opportunity, and the meaning we
Speaker 2: make and the stories we tell both critical parts to
Speaker 2: processing and metabolizing loss. We have an opportunity to look
Speaker 2: at what has happened in the meaning we make and
Speaker 2: not only say like is that true, because like who knows, right,
Speaker 2: who knows what's true or not? But is it useful?
Speaker 2: Might be a more helpful question. Is it useful towards
Speaker 2: whatever I'm orienting around in my life? Am I orienting
Speaker 2: around healing and strength? Am I orienting around really sitting
Speaker 2: in the loss and the pain of that? You know,
Speaker 2: whatever that is? Does it make sense? Is it useful? Right?
Speaker 2: And I think that's really empowering at least to me?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: What I'm hearing there and other language that I've heard
Speaker 3: described is the concept of cognitive reframing. And so cognitive
Speaker 3: reframing is really just the idea that we can view
Speaker 3: the same experience in multiple lenses, and it's actually a
Speaker 3: tool that's really helpful in transforming something that could be
Speaker 3: post traumatic stress into post traumatic growth exactly. In that process,
Speaker 3: it is really important as well to not bypasses the
Speaker 3: experience itself or try to push ourselves or someone else
Speaker 3: into that space too quickly, because part of grief is
Speaker 3: the loss. And so I love how you said, whatever
Speaker 3: we're doing, we might be sitting really intentionally just with
Speaker 3: that experience of loss, and that may not be the
Speaker 3: time that we're going to cognitively reframe this experience, and
Speaker 3: it can can be part of the healing process when
Speaker 3: we are ready to look at how we want to
Speaker 3: shift the narrative for ourselves to something new. So it's
Speaker 3: a beautiful yes, and I think with.
Speaker 2: That tool, yeah, yeah, absolutely, that is a really important
Speaker 2: point I want to sort of double click on for
Speaker 2: a second, which is with grief, you know, and we
Speaker 2: can probably broaden this to sort of all emotions and
Speaker 2: specifically and pleasant or painful emotions that there is no
Speaker 2: way around, right, The only way is through. Now, how
Speaker 2: we move through it can look lots of ways and
Speaker 2: can take on various types of like needing and having
Speaker 2: support with you as you go through going through one
Speaker 2: baby step at a time. I mean, it's not to
Speaker 2: just forge through solo and traumatize ourselves again through those experiences.
Speaker 2: But you're right, I mean to sit and stay in
Speaker 2: the pain of grief is essential for our ability to heal, pabilize,
Speaker 2: integrate in a way that supports our life over the long,
Speaker 2: hopefully long arc of it. Right. So, I think this
Speaker 2: is where my mindfulness practice. I was so grateful for
Speaker 2: my practice in this way, which is I had been
Speaker 2: practicing for years, in big and small ways, practicing feeling
Speaker 2: staying with in a healing way really difficult and painful emotions,
Speaker 2: and so I began to know how to do that
Speaker 2: and also began to trust that I could do that,
Speaker 2: because the more we practice and become skillful with staying
Speaker 2: with emotions that we think may overcome us, the more
Speaker 2: we trust our ability to fully inhabit them. Yes, I'll
Speaker 2: say one last thing about that, which I think is
Speaker 2: really important for me is specifically with my mom and
Speaker 2: the memory of her. Is that at this point in
Speaker 2: the process, I very often to connect with the love
Speaker 2: of her and the love I feel from her and
Speaker 2: have always felt from her. I have to go through
Speaker 2: the pain of missing her, so I have to be
Speaker 2: able to be brave enough to re engage with her memory,
Speaker 2: which is going to conjure up feelings of pain and
Speaker 2: loss in order to connect to healing and love within
Speaker 2: for my mom. If that makes any sense.
Speaker 4: To me, it makes perfect sense.
Speaker 3: I think you and I share a passion for the
Speaker 3: really important work of being with difficult feelings. The nuance
Speaker 3: I would add to this process that's been really helpful
Speaker 3: for me in all difficult feelings to kind of broadenss
Speaker 3: out a little bit, is the skill of self compassion
Speaker 3: while sitting with difficult emotions. That has been really a
Speaker 3: profound shift in my own mindfulness practice.
Speaker 4: I found that.
Speaker 3: There is a part of me that can be in
Speaker 3: really deep emotional pain, or have a lot of fear,
Speaker 3: or you know, even shame in all of these other
Speaker 3: difficult to experience feelings, and there can be another part
Speaker 3: that actually arises right along side that and can offer
Speaker 3: compassion to the part that is struggling. This gets into
Speaker 3: something in regards to this place that we're in of
Speaker 3: looking at different tools that we can use to help
Speaker 3: ourselves in the grief process. And you know, I think
Speaker 3: what we've been talking about are some of these transitional
Speaker 3: practices that engage our senses in different ways. And now
Speaker 3: we've brought in this piece of mindfulness, which for me
Speaker 3: brings up the concept of the imaginal. And the concept
Speaker 3: of the imaginal is that we have within us this
Speaker 3: space through which our inner world can be as rich
Speaker 3: as our outer world. And my reason for bringing this
Speaker 3: up is because I think that, you know, in addition
Speaker 3: to having, for example, a ritual that we're engaging in
Speaker 3: the world or using mindfulness practice specifically with that difficult emotion,
Speaker 3: we can also engage like the imaginal of our inner
Speaker 3: world and use that to facilitate a therapeutic inner experience
Speaker 3: where we conjure that person, where we conjure their love,
Speaker 3: we conjure their presence, we conjure the things that we
Speaker 3: admire most about them, so that we can be in
Speaker 3: that space where we're still cultivating that relationship. And for me,
Speaker 3: that has been one of the more important parts of
Speaker 3: my journey with grief. You know, before my grandma passed away.
Speaker 3: I don't know, I think I talked about this in
Speaker 3: the last episode, but I'll just bring this back just
Speaker 3: in case. My grandma was new age and she had
Speaker 3: lots of ideas about the spiritual world, and she was
Speaker 3: very very open to talking with me about those ideas,
Speaker 3: which I'm grateful for now. And we had differences in
Speaker 3: this way, we had similarities in this way, but now
Speaker 3: I'm just incredibly grateful that she brought alive the spiritual
Speaker 3: sense of the world to me. So in this context, again,
Speaker 3: we were out on a drive in the country and
Speaker 3: she knew she was dying, and very matter of factly,
Speaker 3: she just said to me, but don't worry, I'm going
Speaker 3: to come and visit you in your dreams. And she
Speaker 3: said this to me because her grandma had said it
Speaker 3: to her when she died. So my grandma, when she
Speaker 3: was being raised by her parents, experienced a disconnect with
Speaker 3: them as parents, but felt profoundly connected to her grandma,
Speaker 3: and she lost her at a really young age. And
Speaker 3: when she experienced that loss, she felt really alone with it.
Speaker 3: And what happened in her inner world is that that
Speaker 3: representation of her grandma continued to just be really alive.
Speaker 4: And it was a.
Speaker 3: Very private experience for her. But her saying this to
Speaker 3: me was her way of saying like I'm not going
Speaker 3: to be there in some abstract way like I will
Speaker 3: be there. And so I've experienced that in my dreams.
Speaker 3: I have experienced that in mindfulness practices, where her presence
Speaker 3: becomes just so strong that it's transformative. I have no
Speaker 3: idea how things work in the world, what happens after
Speaker 3: you die, I have no idea about any of that.
Speaker 3: I am agnostic about all of that. I can say
Speaker 3: with an assuredness that I have felt her, a very
Speaker 3: distinct sense of her presence inside of my being, inside
Speaker 3: of my body. For whatever that is worth.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's worth so much, It's worth so much. I'm
Speaker 2: so glad you're saying all this. It made me think
Speaker 2: of a conversation I have with my mom not long
Speaker 2: after she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, So her cognition was
Speaker 2: severely compromised at that point, but she was still able
Speaker 2: to connect converse. You know, whole conversation makes sense that
Speaker 2: kind of thing. We were sitting down, we were talking
Speaker 2: about her death, which this only happened like once or twice.
Speaker 2: This is not a common thing. So the fact that
Speaker 2: we were talking about it was something that marked this
Speaker 2: moment in time for me. But what she said was,
Speaker 2: she said, no, when I die, don't go looking for me.
Speaker 2: And like seances and like mediums, She's like, I'm not
Speaker 2: out there, you know, I did that with my parents,
Speaker 2: and like, just that's not where I'll be, so don't
Speaker 2: even go look there. She goes, You'll find me in
Speaker 2: moments of kindness. She said, you'll find me like and
Speaker 2: this was kind of a random example to give, but
Speaker 2: she was like, if you see, you know, a little
Speaker 2: boy lose his kickball and like the playground and someone
Speaker 2: goes and gets it and brings it back to him
Speaker 2: in a kind way, Like, that's where I am. I'm
Speaker 2: in that kindness. And it was such a profound moment
Speaker 2: from a woman who had profound cognitive decline. I was like, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm taking this in right now. I'm not sure fully
Speaker 2: what it means long term for me, but like, I
Speaker 2: know that there's meaning here. And I think what my
Speaker 2: mom was saying is that, like again, love is how
Speaker 2: we were connected in life, and love is how we
Speaker 2: will continue to be connected afterwards, and that a tendency
Speaker 2: to avoid the pain of grief cuts me off from
Speaker 2: the connection of love with her, that it is only
Speaker 2: by feeling my pain that I can find access to
Speaker 2: that love that we had. I don't know. I just
Speaker 2: wanted to share that it brought up for me that
Speaker 2: important point. And I will say that this whole conversation
Speaker 2: is actually really healing for me because of the way
Speaker 2: we're able to like share our stories. So this idea
Speaker 2: of we grieve through story, but even more so through
Speaker 2: story expressed right. So I'm just really grateful to be
Speaker 2: able to even talk about it on this level with you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I am going to be very honest right now
Speaker 3: and say that I am a little bit freaked out
Speaker 3: that I'm saying some of the things that I'm saying publicly.
Speaker 3: I have never really shared those experiences of how strongly
Speaker 3: I felt my grandma, and I'm nervous about how that's
Speaker 3: going to be received. I think there's a lot of
Speaker 3: different ideas in the world about what reality is, and
Speaker 3: a lot of influence of materialism and sort of like
Speaker 3: what you see is what you get, and I know
Speaker 3: that in saying these things, I'm stepping out of that,
Speaker 3: and I have nervousness, and so I want to name
Speaker 3: that because bringing those things alive in this conversation I
Speaker 3: hope normalizes those experiences for other people who have them.
Speaker 3: I don't think that my experiences are the only experiences
Speaker 3: there are. I know that they're not, and for folks
Speaker 3: who can relate to some of that, I hope it's
Speaker 3: helpful to hear that given voice. And also, podcast friends,
Speaker 3: I'm asking you to hold this tenderly for me, because
Speaker 3: it's not easy always to bring some of the inner
Speaker 3: world stuff into the outer world. That's how I'm feeling
Speaker 3: at the end of this conversation.
Speaker 2: I feel some of that too, because these experiences, these feelings,
Speaker 2: and the ways we connect with it's the people that
Speaker 2: have passed that we love. It all feels very sacred
Speaker 2: for me. It all feels very tender because where there's pain,
Speaker 2: it's sort of a tender place. It's also, for me,
Speaker 2: pretty new, and it's a risk to express your story,
Speaker 2: to share your story with the big wide world, because
Speaker 2: I also think there's that genuine hope and desire and
Speaker 2: intention that you and I share, which is that by
Speaker 2: sharing our experience and researching things to name experiences in
Speaker 2: a greater sense, that we are able to sort of
Speaker 2: create space for everybody to have their own experience, and
Speaker 2: I just hope the sharing of mind does it come
Speaker 2: across as limiting, that it comes across as encouragement and
Speaker 2: permission for everyone to have theirs and to be able
Speaker 2: to speak it wherever they want to, and yes, to
Speaker 2: ask for grace if I have spoken in a way
Speaker 2: that's at all creating isolation or at all speaking out
Speaker 2: of a blind spot of my own.
Speaker 3: Yes, I love that you're saying this, and I actually
Speaker 3: I would love to invite the two of us to
Speaker 3: something here together that I have had.
Speaker 4: Done for me.
Speaker 3: At the end of every silent retreat that I have attended,
Speaker 3: all of these retreats, the teachers come together at the
Speaker 3: end and they say to us, in a very sincere way,
Speaker 3: I apologize for any missed mark, for any harm that
Speaker 3: has been done unintentionally through these teachings, through this experience,
Speaker 3: and in all genuineness, I want to apologize for any missteps,
Speaker 3: any blind spots, anything that we're missing in this conversation
Speaker 3: of this incredibly unifying experience of grief that all of
Speaker 3: us have.
Speaker 4: But it's so deeply personal.
Speaker 3: I think us naming that we're touching into our own fear,
Speaker 3: we're touching into our own insecurities, our own pain, our
Speaker 3: own greed. If other folks might have been touching into
Speaker 3: that too, and maybe something didn't land, And so I
Speaker 3: want to apologize for that if that is the case,
Speaker 3: and know that my intention is from that heartfelt space.
Speaker 2: Oh I love it, Yes, absolutely. I also apologize for
Speaker 2: any injury that has been caused, even anything that I
Speaker 2: could have named that I missed. Yeah, that would have
Speaker 2: helped someone else's experience feel scene. So yeah, yeah, I'm
Speaker 2: so glad you said that.
Speaker 3: I was just going to say, I think that the
Speaker 3: world would be better if we just walked around with
Speaker 3: that intention, Like, you know, I don't want to do harm,
Speaker 3: and I know I will.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know I don't.
Speaker 3: I want to say all the right things and I
Speaker 3: know I won't. And so I think in this like
Speaker 3: the tender space of grief, it feels supportive for me
Speaker 3: to name that for our community, for our podcast friends
Speaker 3: who are just getting to know us and learning along.
Speaker 2: With Well, I love that. And in lieu of our
Speaker 2: typical closing question which we were going to ask at
Speaker 2: the end of each episode, which is what is a
Speaker 2: live for you right now? I was actually hoping we
Speaker 2: could orient around like a slightly different or a very
Speaker 2: different closing question right now if you're up for it, yep,
Speaker 2: which is what do you miss most about your grandmother today?
Speaker 2: What about her do you miss most today?
Speaker 3: What I miss most about her today is her laughter.
Speaker 3: She also carried herself with just a sense of human
Speaker 3: dignity and strength, and there were these moments where she
Speaker 3: took a lot of pleasure at the human indignities. So
Speaker 3: she was always farting, and she never apologized, and she
Speaker 3: was always.
Speaker 4: Laughing about it. Hilario.
Speaker 3: In this moment when you asked me that question, that's
Speaker 3: what came up for me.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 3: So how about you, what are you missing most about
Speaker 3: your mom today?
Speaker 2: Oh? Okay, So if I sit with that question, what
Speaker 2: I miss most is like being able to just sort
Speaker 2: of collapse into the soft cushion of her love. Yeah,
Speaker 2: just her love for me, That's what I miss. I
Speaker 2: miss being able to connect with that, to go to that.
Speaker 2: She had so much love in her heart and she
Speaker 2: loved her daughters more than anything. So yeah, I'm missing that.
Speaker 2: I'm missing her love, and I'm missing her wisdom. She
Speaker 2: was so wise. There's a little context. So my dad
Speaker 2: has a construction company, and my mom worked that construction
Speaker 2: company with my dad. So there's a guy there that
Speaker 2: is in like the leadership of the company that my
Speaker 2: mom had a real connection with. He was much younger
Speaker 2: than her, and so it was almost like she was
Speaker 2: kind of a mother and he was kind of a
Speaker 2: son type dynamic there, and so she was off a
Speaker 2: like giving advice and things. He told me recently that
Speaker 2: he has a drawer full of notes that either my
Speaker 2: mom wrote him or like things she said that he
Speaker 2: wanted to remember that he wrote down. And he's like,
Speaker 2: I just have a whole drawer of it, and like
Speaker 2: I pull those things out still, you know, to connect
Speaker 2: with her wisdom. He's like I told her once, like
Speaker 2: the things you say are either like life changing wisdom
Speaker 2: or they were like the craziest thing I've ever heard
Speaker 2: in my life.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I think that your mom and my
Speaker 3: grandma might have been soul sisters because that resonates for me.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, yes, yes, so I missed that.
Speaker 6: I miss that. Oh well, my friend and our friends,
Speaker 6: this has been such a wonderful, wonderful hour together.
Speaker 2: Thank you for your generous attention and your presence.
Speaker 3: Thank you, friends, We hope to see you again soon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll see you next time.
Speaker 5: All right, Bye, bye.
Speaker 1: B.
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Speaker 3: Until next time.