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