Speaker 1: Pushkin hey Slight change listeners. It's Maya. We'll be back
Speaker 1: with a new season on June fifth, but before then,
Speaker 1: I wanted to share some of my favorite conversations with
Speaker 1: scientists about mental health. Since May is Mental Health Awareness Month,
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoy this conversation with grief therapist Julia Samuel.
Speaker 1: It's full of wisdom. I still think about, like how
Speaker 1: it's important to grieve the loss of identity that often
Speaker 1: accompanies major life changes. I'd love to hear your thoughts
Speaker 1: on this episode. You can find me on Instagram at
Speaker 1: doctor Maya Shunker.
Speaker 2: When you kind of in trauma, everything it's like your
Speaker 2: body is on far and you're drowning at the same time,
Speaker 2: so that everything is heywhaw. But by having small, bite sized,
Speaker 2: very manageable structures and rituals, they just bring you down
Speaker 2: a little bit to that sense of safety, and feeling
Speaker 2: safe in your body and your mind and in your
Speaker 2: home gives you a kind of robustness to deal with
Speaker 2: the onslaught of the feelings of your trauma and the loss.
Speaker 1: Julia Samuel has worked for thirty years as a grief
Speaker 1: counselor in the UK and as an expert on trauma
Speaker 1: and loss. She's also the author of two best selling books,
Speaker 1: Grief Works and This Too Shall Pass. Julia has counseled
Speaker 1: thousands of people through their grief and has identified strategies
Speaker 1: that can help all of us navigate the loss of
Speaker 1: a loved one.
Speaker 2: You know, people say time is a great healer, and
Speaker 2: the pain of grief does change over time, but if
Speaker 2: we aren't active in the process of grieving, it doesn't
Speaker 2: change so much. It just gets shut down. So the
Speaker 2: things you do to block your pain are, in the
Speaker 2: end the things that harm you over time.
Speaker 1: On today's episode, Lessons from a Grief Therapist, I'm Maya Shunker,
Speaker 1: and this is a slight change of plans, a show
Speaker 1: about who we are and who we become in the
Speaker 1: face of a big change. You know, Julia, you refer
Speaker 1: to death as the great last taboo that we resist.
Speaker 1: We resist using the word death. We prefer euphemisms like
Speaker 1: loss and passed away. And we can be so scared
Speaker 1: of death that sometimes we engage in magical thinking right
Speaker 1: where we believe that maybe if we don't talk about it,
Speaker 1: it won't have to us. And so, given this very
Speaker 1: natural desire to resist talking or thinking about death. I'm
Speaker 1: curious to know what led you initially to run directly
Speaker 1: into the fire, directly into that emotional fire, and become
Speaker 1: a grief therapist.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't think I recognized what I was doing.
Speaker 2: I think like most of us probably don't realize until
Speaker 2: after the fact and you look back and you go, oh,
Speaker 2: that's what it was. You know. My parents are brought
Speaker 2: up by parents who had survived the worst kind of
Speaker 2: war in history, where everybody was grieving someone they loved,
Speaker 2: a father, a son, a brother, a husband, and they
Speaker 2: had no choices but to get on and multiply, and
Speaker 2: no one was able to kind of take on anyone
Speaker 2: else's grief. And then they had to do the same
Speaker 2: after the Second World War. But both of my parents
Speaker 2: had very signific, vocant and traumatic bereavement. So my mum,
Speaker 2: by the time she was twenty five, her father, her mother,
Speaker 2: her sister, and her brother had all died, so she
Speaker 2: was an orphan. And my father, his father, and his
Speaker 2: brother had also died by the time he was a
Speaker 2: young man, so they had experienced really devastating death and
Speaker 2: they literally never talked about it. It was like everything
Speaker 2: that was painful and difficult, wasn't talked about and wasn't voiced,
Speaker 2: and everything that really didn't matter and was inconsequential was
Speaker 2: what we talked about. And I as a child, I
Speaker 2: was one of five children, five of us born in
Speaker 2: four years because I'm a twin and I have twin sisters,
Speaker 2: and so I was quite quiet and un observer, and
Speaker 2: I was always trying to work out what was going on,
Speaker 2: and I could never really quite make sense of what
Speaker 2: was going on. And so I think unconsciously that led me,
Speaker 2: you know. And I was still quite young in my
Speaker 2: late twenties to go into the area of bereavement. But
Speaker 2: it wasn't because I knew it was because of my childhood.
Speaker 2: It was just because what I was drawn to and
Speaker 2: somehow fascinated by. But as I've had like thirty years
Speaker 2: of therapy since I kind of that doesn't take much
Speaker 2: to put the pieces of the jigsaw together.
Speaker 1: You mentioned that growing up, no one spoke about it,
Speaker 1: no one spoke about any of the deaths. And why
Speaker 1: do you think we don't like talking about our feelings.
Speaker 1: I mean, it just it feels so tragic and unfortunate
Speaker 1: that we resist doing the very thing that can help
Speaker 1: us in the face of a death.
Speaker 2: I think that's a really good question. The sort of
Speaker 2: paradox of by allowing us to feel the aspects of
Speaker 2: ourselves that we most kind of fear, we do in
Speaker 2: the end heal.
Speaker 1: And I.
Speaker 2: Think a lot of it is probably to do with
Speaker 2: control and shame that somehow maybe you'd know the reasons
Speaker 2: to do with evolutionary drives that in order to kind
Speaker 2: of be out in the world and you know, thrive,
Speaker 2: we have to show that we're strong and that we
Speaker 2: can fend for ourselves and that we're not vulnerable. But also,
Speaker 2: I mean, I think from the control perspective, it's that
Speaker 2: what we feel is invisible. You know, most of grief
Speaker 2: and emotions. You know, you can read some things on
Speaker 2: someone's face, but they're all underground. So it's messy, it's chaotic,
Speaker 2: and I think a lot of people when they talk
Speaker 2: to me about grieving, they want to sort of maricondo
Speaker 2: their feelings into kind of tidy sock draws, color coordinated
Speaker 2: because you feel so powerless when you're grieving, that this
Speaker 2: thing has happened to you and blown you off your center.
Speaker 2: I think if you can kind of control your feelings,
Speaker 2: then you feel like I can okay, I can survive this.
Speaker 2: But when feelings hit you completely out of the blue,
Speaker 2: then you feel in some way threatened, so you automatically
Speaker 2: put on shields of defense. Of busyness. I think is
Speaker 2: the most common, actually getting super busy, scrolling, running, because
Speaker 2: then you feel like I'm in control, I've got this.
Speaker 1: Is it correct for me to say then, that as
Speaker 1: we're going about our normal lives, we experience the illusion
Speaker 1: anyway that we are managing and controlling our feelings, and
Speaker 1: then when something like a profound loss happens, a death
Speaker 1: of someone who is so important to us, that illusion
Speaker 1: evaporates because suddenly we're confronted with the enormity of the feelings.
Speaker 1: And as you mentioned, they're messy and complicated and confusing
Speaker 1: and overwhelming, and I guess we're taken by storm. And
Speaker 1: that might be why we don't want to engage. We
Speaker 1: don't want to take the lid off, because if we
Speaker 1: see what's underneath there, it's just it all feels too
Speaker 1: intimidating and overwhelming. Is that right?
Speaker 2: I think that's absolutely right. And there's this sort of
Speaker 2: blissful ignorance that when something terrible hasn't happened to us,
Speaker 2: that we have control, that good things happen to good people,
Speaker 2: that life has a kind of order that your parents
Speaker 2: die first and you know you'll go next, and then
Speaker 2: your children, and then having a devastating experience throws that
Speaker 2: order completely off kilter. And also you have the feelings
Speaker 2: that you do not want to have. You become a
Speaker 2: version of yourself that you don't want to meet, where
Speaker 2: you feel furious for seeing someone talk to their father
Speaker 2: because your father's died, or they can't bear to see
Speaker 2: other people or people laughing, which then you feel like
Speaker 2: you're this joyless kind of ogre and you want to
Speaker 2: be the old you that what light was in there
Speaker 2: laughing with them. And that's what you're confronted with is
Speaker 2: lots of aspects of yourself which when you're not suffering,
Speaker 2: kind of go quiet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, our most natural instinct is humans, is to avoid suffering.
Speaker 1: But you do say that contrary to all of our instincts,
Speaker 1: we have to allow ourselves to feel the pain in
Speaker 1: order to make progress. Right, Your mantra is pain is
Speaker 1: the agent of change. And to start, I'd love to
Speaker 1: know what's led you to that.
Speaker 2: Conclusion, emotions are transmitters of information, so that they are
Speaker 2: informing us that something is up, and that our emotions
Speaker 2: and our cognitions are reciprocal feeds, so that when we
Speaker 2: have an experience of a feeling, it connects with our
Speaker 2: thinking and we're saying to ourselves, I feel frightened, I
Speaker 2: feel scared, I feel distressed. And then in the process
Speaker 2: of that thinking, you then think, what's happened? Why am
Speaker 2: I distressed? And you begin to develop a narrative that
Speaker 2: is telling you the reason you're distress. And as you
Speaker 2: do that, and as you express the feeling and say
Speaker 2: the words, incrementally you adjust a little bit more to
Speaker 2: this new reality that you didn't want and you didn't choose,
Speaker 2: because your first response, or most people's first response to
Speaker 2: grief is shock and numbness, and that it's surreal and
Speaker 2: we can only feel the pain of it in very
Speaker 2: tiny increments. If we felt it all at once in
Speaker 2: that moment, I think it would kind of blow our
Speaker 2: kind of brain circuits. And so the pain is slowly
Speaker 2: forcing you to face this new reality, and as you
Speaker 2: face it, you adapt, and as you adapt, it gives
Speaker 2: space to kind of think about well, who am I now?
Speaker 2: And how am I going to live now? And what
Speaker 2: does this mean now? And what do I need? And
Speaker 2: so then you can get your needs met. If you
Speaker 2: shut all that down like my parents did, you function,
Speaker 2: but your capacity to feel gets foreshortened so that you
Speaker 2: wouldn't know what you were feeling, so you couldn't get
Speaker 2: your needs met. So you may feel distressed, but then
Speaker 2: you would use behaviors or other kind of mechanisms to
Speaker 2: self medicate.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, I think it's so helpful to think about
Speaker 1: it in terms of processing, because when we think about it,
Speaker 1: it's just, at least for me on a personal level,
Speaker 1: like Julia's prescription to me is to marinate in the pain.
Speaker 1: I'm like, Okay, basically, you are prescribing hell on earth
Speaker 1: to me. I don't want to do that, right but
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, and I don't know if I'm the
Speaker 1: only one who finds comfort in this When I see
Speaker 1: it as a dynamic process where my mind is engaged
Speaker 1: and I am in communication with my feelings, that feels
Speaker 1: more manageable for me. So I'm feeling terror, I'm feeling panic,
Speaker 1: I'm feeling distress. But there's a conversation happening where I'm
Speaker 1: picking apart some of these emotions and trying to unpack them,
Speaker 1: and then in the process maybe they lose some of
Speaker 1: their power over me. You know.
Speaker 2: I mean that is right. But the piece that you
Speaker 2: haven't added, which I hope I say with equal force,
Speaker 2: is that it's the love and connection to others that
Speaker 2: enables us to survive when we feel the pain. I
Speaker 2: really profoundly believe we can't do this alone and that
Speaker 2: when love dies, it's the love of others we need most.
Speaker 2: So that you need find ways of both supporting yourself personally.
Speaker 2: And you know, one of the kind of cruel paradoxes
Speaker 2: of grief is that often people turn against themselves and
Speaker 2: have you know what I call a shitty committee where
Speaker 2: they're attacking themselves. I'm an idiot, I'm a fool, all
Speaker 2: that guilt of if only, what if? Why didn't I
Speaker 2: And often don't seek support because there's this sense of
Speaker 2: shame that I can't ask for help. But you need
Speaker 2: both to be compassionate to yourself and to get the
Speaker 2: support of other people so that that processing isn't chilly
Speaker 2: and isolating and but is connected and that you can
Speaker 2: feel the warmth and the heart of another person with you.
Speaker 1: For the person who's listening who says, okay, Julie, I
Speaker 1: totally understand that I need love to heal, but I
Speaker 1: currently don't have those resources in my life. Where can
Speaker 1: they begin? I mean, is there are there ways to
Speaker 1: find that compassion in love? I mean, we do live
Speaker 1: in a digital world where maybe it's possible to forge
Speaker 1: connections that you might not have been able to. But
Speaker 1: I just I want to give hope to the person
Speaker 1: who says, okay. You know, the privileged among us might
Speaker 1: have lots of love in our support networks, but I don't.
Speaker 2: So I think the first place to turn is to yourself,
Speaker 2: is to be self compassionate. And then you know, there
Speaker 2: really are groups, a lot of support groups for people
Speaker 2: that are grieving, and it's often the groups around the
Speaker 2: relationship with the person that died, so you know, partners
Speaker 2: that have died, or parents that have died, or children
Speaker 2: that have died, so that you can find, you know,
Speaker 2: this club that nobody wants to be a member of,
Speaker 2: but you can join. And I think if you don't
Speaker 2: want to do it through grief, you can do it
Speaker 2: through volunteering or pastimes, you know, joining organizations, gardening clubs.
Speaker 2: Are you interested in art? Are you interested in music?
Speaker 2: Are you interested in nature? Do you like cycling? And
Speaker 2: so I think for someone who's grieving, what's difficult is
Speaker 2: taking themselves that one step out of their comfort zone
Speaker 2: to kind of say I need more help than I'm
Speaker 2: getting myself, because you can get into this incredibly negative
Speaker 2: cycle that nobody cares, nobody loves me, and nothing's going
Speaker 2: to make any difference. And the more you say that
Speaker 2: to yourself, the harder it is to take that first
Speaker 2: step and find a network that would meet you. But
Speaker 2: anyone listening, I would say, please just small for what
Speaker 2: you know, do small things. Don't set yourself to bigger task.
Speaker 2: Send the first email, do the first Google search, and
Speaker 2: then every day do a little step. You don't have
Speaker 2: to be in the group, like find out think about
Speaker 2: what you're interested in that can be your task day.
Speaker 2: Do a Google about what there is locally that can
Speaker 2: be a task another day. You know, so that you
Speaker 2: do incremental steps towards finding support for yourself.
Speaker 1: I love what you say about loneliness because the vag Morphy,
Speaker 1: who is the Surgeon General, he was going on a
Speaker 1: medical expedition, initially to different parts of the country, trying
Speaker 1: to understand these different health conditions like addiction and ABSI
Speaker 1: obesity exactly and ultimately found that loneliness was at its root.
Speaker 1: So I love the recommendations that you make around how
Speaker 1: any of us can try try and seek that out.
Speaker 1: I know the way that we grieve can be very idiosyncratic,
Speaker 1: based on so many factors, like our psychological wiring, our circumstances,
Speaker 1: what have you. But I know you have identified at
Speaker 1: least some common patterns across the people that you've worked with,
Speaker 1: especially in the aftermath of loss. Like I was just
Speaker 1: I was talking with a friend of mine, Quinn, who
Speaker 1: lost her nineteen year old sister, and I remember at
Speaker 1: the memorial service, she was saying, a part of me
Speaker 1: feels she's still coming home. You know, my rational brain
Speaker 1: fully registers that she's gone. But how could it be.
Speaker 1: How could it be that Dixie, who had the most
Speaker 1: promising future one can imagine, is gone, Like her brain
Speaker 1: wasn't able to make that connection. And so yeah, I
Speaker 1: would just love for you to unpack these two distinct
Speaker 1: frames of mind. And I like that you talk about
Speaker 1: it in terms of movement between the two.
Speaker 2: The adjustment to like your friend's sister dying suddenly and
Speaker 2: at nineteen, which is you know, a death out of time,
Speaker 2: that kind of out of the clear blue sky shock.
Speaker 2: The process of accommodation learning to live with it is
Speaker 2: a movement between facing the reality and feeling the pain
Speaker 2: where her head knew it but her heart didn't feel it.
Speaker 2: The pain kind of allows some connection between the two
Speaker 2: where the head and the heart are feeling it at
Speaker 2: the same time, like, ah, you know, I'm buying a
Speaker 2: set of yogurts for four and we're used to be
Speaker 2: four people are now we're only three. And in that
Speaker 2: moment you know it. And then in that moment, as
Speaker 2: you know, you kind of adjust and accommodate, and then
Speaker 2: it frees you to have a little breather and be restorative,
Speaker 2: like go home, make some supper, do something that soothes
Speaker 2: you that is intentionally calming, And it's the movement between
Speaker 2: the two. Allowing yourself to have times to remember to
Speaker 2: be sad, to talk to a friend, to grieve, and
Speaker 2: time to give yourself a break from grief, to give
Speaker 2: yourself permission to have moments of joy or moments of
Speaker 2: calm or kind of feel within yourself a sort of
Speaker 2: sense of peace that it isn't so raw. I think
Speaker 2: we can choose times that we focus on our loss,
Speaker 2: through having a memory box or different ways that we
Speaker 2: can decide to kind of focus on them, because I
Speaker 2: think one of the aspects that is also not kind
Speaker 2: of recognized is there's a dual process of facing the
Speaker 2: reality that this person is no longer physically present, but
Speaker 2: what we feel for them, our love for them, never dies.
Speaker 2: The love continues, and so it isn't about forgetting and
Speaker 2: moving on, It's about remembering and connecting.
Speaker 1: When we're back from the break, Julia will give us
Speaker 1: advice on how to process our grief. Julia Samuel has
Speaker 1: been a grief therapist for more than thirty years, much
Speaker 1: of that time working with the UK's National Health Service
Speaker 1: or NHS. Through her experiences, Julia has identified some things
Speaker 1: we can do to help us through the grieving process.
Speaker 1: She calls them pillars of strength, and we did a
Speaker 1: deep dive on a few of them in our conversation.
Speaker 2: So I came up with the pillars not as a
Speaker 2: kind of ten rules, but from a perspective of when
Speaker 2: we're in the throes of this tumultuous experience. When we
Speaker 2: feel like we have this hole in the center of
Speaker 2: our being. We need attitudes, ways of being, and behaviors
Speaker 2: that can hold us up when we feel kind of
Speaker 2: tipped and off kilter.
Speaker 1: And survival kit.
Speaker 2: It's your survival kit.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I think the thing that helps people a lot
Speaker 2: is the relationship to the person that's died. So I've
Speaker 2: often people will once I talk to them about, you know,
Speaker 2: grieving and feeling the pain of their death, but also
Speaker 2: in continuing the relationship. People are amazingly creative in what
Speaker 2: they do. So one person her husband died and she
Speaker 2: got his pajamas and made them into a patchwork quilt
Speaker 2: that she put on their children's beds, so that they
Speaker 2: had all these little squares of their dad on their beds,
Speaker 2: so when they went sleep when they really missed him,
Speaker 2: they had some of their dad. And someone else had
Speaker 2: a son that died in a terrible car crash, and
Speaker 2: they didn't want other people to see their mementoes. But
Speaker 2: in their main kind of sitting room where they lived
Speaker 2: all the time, they had a trunk and inside the
Speaker 2: trunk was his trainers were his some of his school books,
Speaker 2: the wristband that he had when he died, a lot
Speaker 2: of his things that and some of them sort of
Speaker 2: still felt to them like they smelt of him, and
Speaker 2: so that he was there other people couldn't see, and
Speaker 2: when they wanted, they could open the trunk and she
Speaker 2: could put his T shirt, you know, into her nose
Speaker 2: and feel connected to him, and that would meet an
Speaker 2: expression of needing to love him, because it's that people
Speaker 2: miss the hugs, the telling them I love you, and
Speaker 2: they feel like they've failed, and so having something concrete
Speaker 2: that you can go to really helps. I think one
Speaker 2: of the other pillars that really helps is moving your body,
Speaker 2: you know, taking exercise, getting your heart rate up, because
Speaker 2: it reduces the cortisol. It brings your whole mind body
Speaker 2: connection down to kind of first gear where then you
Speaker 2: can get support, You can think more clearly, you can
Speaker 2: choose to do things that are kind of kind to
Speaker 2: you rather than out of desperation and fear. So I
Speaker 2: mean I say to people, one of the first things
Speaker 2: I say to any clients I said it this week
Speaker 2: is get outside, you know, even if it's going for
Speaker 2: a walk around the block, you know, on a pavement
Speaker 2: with tons of noise and cars ten minutes outside. You
Speaker 2: will always feel better if you can go into nature,
Speaker 2: if you can go into a park, that is even better.
Speaker 2: Because what you want is to choose things that help
Speaker 2: calibrate your over alert system, to help, you know, bring
Speaker 2: your system down, because then you then you can connect
Speaker 2: with other people and connect with yourself in a way
Speaker 2: that you can't and you're kind of really stressed, really
Speaker 2: kind of full of fear.
Speaker 1: One thing I read in your book about our relationship
Speaker 1: with ourselves that I just had never really thought about
Speaker 1: was the way in which the death of someone that
Speaker 1: we love can affect our self structure, our self identity,
Speaker 1: the way it can affect our self esteem and our
Speaker 1: confidence because of our inability to in those moments feel
Speaker 1: like we can fully be ourselves. And I resonated with
Speaker 1: that so much. I mean, as you know, and many
Speaker 1: of my listeners know because I shared this story on
Speaker 1: the show. You know, my husband Jimmy, and I lost
Speaker 1: identical twin girls to a miscarriage bias, and I don't
Speaker 1: think at the time I appreciated the loss of identity,
Speaker 1: and I think learning about that from you is really
Speaker 1: helpful to me, which is again it was a short
Speaker 1: lived period where I felt like I was a mom,
Speaker 1: or as you guys would say, a mom. And you know,
Speaker 1: from that first blue line on the pregnancy test, suddenly
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm a mother. And so when the
Speaker 1: loss happens, you're grieving, certainly the loss of that pregnancy,
Speaker 1: but you're also grieving the loss of an identity that
Speaker 1: you were aspiring to have.
Speaker 2: And when you saw that blue line, you pictured yourself
Speaker 2: as a mom holding a baby who would be a
Speaker 2: parent for the rest of her life. So you kind
Speaker 2: of grieving the dream as a mom, and that's incredibly painful.
Speaker 1: Yes, are there any other pillars of strength you'd like
Speaker 1: to share?
Speaker 2: I think the other ones that are really helpful are
Speaker 2: to do with limits, so that our capacity to manage
Speaker 2: ourselves to engage in the world of what we can do.
Speaker 2: Our boundaries change when am I grieving, and people often
Speaker 2: push us to come and do something or want us
Speaker 2: to be okay because they want us to kind of
Speaker 2: be okay, and so kind of recognizing how important your
Speaker 2: boundaries are when you're so out of control, and that
Speaker 2: having a good no means that when you say yes,
Speaker 2: it's a really good yes, and that can be very
Speaker 2: positive and confident building. So it's not saying no to
Speaker 2: the world, but really assessing of, well, how much energy
Speaker 2: do I have? Will this be? Can I cope with this?
Speaker 2: Do I dare go out of my comfort zone? Maybe
Speaker 2: it's good a little bit, you know, all of those
Speaker 2: things and deciding rather than kind of pushing through, which
Speaker 2: I think people often want to do.
Speaker 1: I think one that I one of the pillars that
Speaker 1: I have relied on during what's been just incredibly hard
Speaker 1: period of time for the entire world has been I
Speaker 1: think you would catch this under your structure pillar. But
Speaker 1: having extremely small rituals in my day to day life
Speaker 1: that without fail I try and do and for me, look,
Speaker 1: I know you're a tea lover, Julius, so you're going
Speaker 1: to find resonance in this one. But it is making
Speaker 1: myself a cup of Indian style tea. So I get
Speaker 1: out the fresh ginger CARDIVM boil milk. All you Indian
Speaker 1: people out there know what I'm talking about. It's the
Speaker 1: most delightful, wonderful part of my day. And every morning
Speaker 1: I start off with at least two cups, and you know,
Speaker 1: I sometimes do it begrudgingly because when there is trauma
Speaker 1: and grief, it doesn't feel like it fits. It feels
Speaker 1: jarring to have that kind of indulgence against the backdrop
Speaker 1: of pain. But just the mere fact I'm engaging in
Speaker 1: what I would call a normal behavior is therapeutic in
Speaker 1: its own way. It signals to the subconscious part of
Speaker 1: my brain that there are some parts of life that
Speaker 1: are still okay.
Speaker 2: I think that's so beautiful. And in some ways it's
Speaker 2: simple but complex what you're saying, in the sense that
Speaker 2: kind of that's a structure that is really a ritual,
Speaker 2: isn't it. That is a self soothing, calming, safe place,
Speaker 2: ritual that takes you back to your roots and your family,
Speaker 2: you know, to all that you understand and where you
Speaker 2: feel safe. And as you say, when you're kind of
Speaker 2: in trauma, everything is like your body is on far
Speaker 2: and you're drowning at the same time, so that everything
Speaker 2: is heywhire. But by having small, bite sized, very manageable
Speaker 2: structures and rituals again, they just bring you down a
Speaker 2: little bit to that sense of safety, and feeling safe
Speaker 2: in your body and your mind and in your home
Speaker 2: gives you a kind of robustness to deal with the
Speaker 2: onslaught of the feelings of your trauma and the loss.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we've talked a bit about how we can
Speaker 1: help ourselves in the throes of grief, and I'm wondering
Speaker 1: what we should keep in mind when a person we
Speaker 1: love has lost someone and we're so eager to help,
Speaker 1: and naturally the answers don't feel clear to us.
Speaker 2: I mean, what did you need from others?
Speaker 1: It's a great question. I think what I needed from
Speaker 1: people was helping me understand what I needed. I didn't
Speaker 1: know what I needed, and I was so perplexed and
Speaker 1: I was so confused. I remember texting my brother because
Speaker 1: he was like, I don't know what you need right now,
Speaker 1: and I want to be there for you and I
Speaker 1: want to support you. And I said, I don't know
Speaker 1: what I need right now, and I'm sorry that I
Speaker 1: don't have that clarity. And I'm not trying to be
Speaker 1: flip or anything. I just I don't know. And I
Speaker 1: think actually calling upon the people you love to help
Speaker 1: you figure that out, to actually bring them in on
Speaker 1: the journey with you, to test things out, and almost
Speaker 1: view it as an experimental process that you're in together.
Speaker 1: I think that's maybe what's helpful to me in these moments.
Speaker 2: I mean, that sounds so rare and so unique that
Speaker 2: you had open and trust in communication like Kim saying
Speaker 2: I don't know what you need. I just want you
Speaker 2: to know that I love you and that I'm here,
Speaker 2: and that you were able to say back, I really
Speaker 2: don't know what I need either, that you were completely
Speaker 2: transparent with each other. Often in families, people say I'm fine,
Speaker 2: how are you?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: It becomes and the walls of protection, which are meant
Speaker 2: to protect the other person from suffering, are often walls
Speaker 2: that creates gaps of connection where people then suffer in
Speaker 2: isolation and more.
Speaker 1: I'm just remembering too, that one breakthrough I had with
Speaker 1: my brother was telling him in part why I was
Speaker 1: pushing him away, and that was because I was jealous
Speaker 1: of him. He has three beautiful daughters, my nieces, who
Speaker 1: I love more than anything, and in that moment, I
Speaker 1: resented that that wasn't my life. I resented that he
Speaker 1: hadn't gone through this path like all things you hate
Speaker 1: admitting but are just true. And I felt like easy
Speaker 1: for you to say, easy for you to say with
Speaker 1: your perfect family, that's the instinct and of course that's
Speaker 1: such a disservice to his life too, which is of
Speaker 1: course not you know, no one's life is the picture
Speaker 1: perfect thing. But in that moment, I think I was.
Speaker 1: I was filled with that kind of frustration and resentment,
Speaker 1: and just telling him, admitting to that was it helped
Speaker 1: to bridge an important gap that I was feeling. So
Speaker 1: I don't know if that helps anyone listening that, Like,
Speaker 1: sometimes just.
Speaker 2: Admit to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, to say it to the person, it's okay, you know.
Speaker 2: But it actually takes insight to know that it was
Speaker 2: the jealousy of him with his three daughters that was
Speaker 2: blocking you, because sometimes it's hard to kind of recognize
Speaker 2: you with your perfect exactly.
Speaker 1: And like, why was it that my child free friends
Speaker 1: were able to bring me more comfort in those days?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 1: Duh, right? Why was I not pushing them away? Why
Speaker 1: was I more willing to want to talk to them?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: Yes, but you have a lot of self knowledge, and
Speaker 2: naming what's difficult often bridges the gap, doesn't it. Yeah, No,
Speaker 2: I doubt justifying it, not explaining it, just saying and he'll.
Speaker 1: Get that, yeah, yeah he did. You know, Julia, you
Speaker 1: spent thirty years in this space, and you've had the
Speaker 1: rare experience of counseling so many people through the worst
Speaker 1: moments of their lives. I'm sure your patients have taught
Speaker 1: you countless lessons. You say as much in your book,
Speaker 1: But I'm wondering if there was any particular patient or
Speaker 1: story that changed you in a significant way, you.
Speaker 2: Know, working in the NHS where children died, you know,
Speaker 2: completely out of the blue or with a terrible diagnosis,
Speaker 2: or all the different ways it's done. Two things. One
Speaker 2: is I have more fear for my own children and
Speaker 2: grandchildren because I really know in a way that I
Speaker 2: can't not know that they can die. So when they
Speaker 2: have a headache, I think they have a brain humor,
Speaker 2: when they're late, I think they've been run over. It
Speaker 2: drives them nuts. My son now when he says call me,
Speaker 2: he always puts brackets, not bad news.
Speaker 1: That's so sweet.
Speaker 2: At the other end of that is just enormous or
Speaker 2: at the preciousness of life and what people like you
Speaker 2: can survive and still live and love again and dare
Speaker 2: to and the extraordinariness of human beings and the people
Speaker 2: I've worked with, and you know, just knowing you and
Speaker 2: seeing you that we can do that, and that feels
Speaker 2: so extraordinary, and so I feel very grateful every day
Speaker 2: that I'm live. So, you know, every night I don't
Speaker 2: really believe in God per se, but I thank God
Speaker 2: and I say all my children's names, I say my
Speaker 2: husband's name and my grandchildren's names that they're alive. And
Speaker 2: that gratitude really works for me.
Speaker 1: What's your advice to us when it comes to what
Speaker 1: we should do more of in life to manage our
Speaker 1: grief better when it does happen, when it inevitably happens.
Speaker 2: I think important conversations with the people that you love
Speaker 2: about death and dying, your own and theirs can really
Speaker 2: help you when it happens, because you have some recognition
Speaker 2: that we're all mortal, and I think that is very supportive.
Speaker 2: And I think the big thing is to really learn
Speaker 2: to kind of support ourselves with you know, we don't
Speaker 2: always have to face grief from death to have difficult things,
Speaker 2: but by finding our own toolkit within ourselves of how
Speaker 2: we manage difficulty and that we can then access that
Speaker 2: when the difficulty gets worse, will really help us. Don't
Speaker 2: go close your eyes. Bad things aren't going to happen
Speaker 2: to me, bad things aren't going to happen to me,
Speaker 2: because then when it happens, you are really left with
Speaker 2: so little inside yourself that can support you. So develop
Speaker 2: good support systems, both as much as possible with your
Speaker 2: friendships and your family, but also internally.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, all right. I'll end on a beautiful quote
Speaker 1: of yours, which you've already alluded to, that you say,
Speaker 1: when there is death, love is the only way forward.
Speaker 1: Do you mind just sharing what that means to you
Speaker 1: on a personal level.
Speaker 2: I think in the end, the anything that really matters
Speaker 2: is love. When we look back at our lives, it's
Speaker 2: the love we've felt for others and that they felt
Speaker 2: for us that gives us meaning. And that's that's the
Speaker 2: thing that matters most.
Speaker 1: A Slight Change of Plans is created, written, and executive
Speaker 1: produced by me Maya Schunker. The Slight Change family includes
Speaker 1: Tyler Green, our senior producer, Emily Rosstek, our producer and
Speaker 1: fact checker, Jen Guera, our senior editor, Ben Holliday, our
Speaker 1: sound engineer, and Neil LaBelle, our executive producer. Louis Scara
Speaker 1: wrote our theme song, and Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals.
Speaker 1: A Slight Change of Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries,
Speaker 1: so big thanks to everyone there, including Nicole Morano, Maggie Taylor,
Speaker 1: Eric Sandler, Heather Fame and Carly mcgliori, and of course
Speaker 1: a very special thanks to Jimmy Lee. You can follow
Speaker 1: a slight change of Plans on Instagram at doctor Maiah Schunker.
Speaker 1: See you next week.