Cancer, Death/Dying, Grief Stories, Grieving Voices Guest, Grieving Voices Podcast, Parent Loss |
Dr. Chris Kerr | Death Is But a Dream: End-of-Life Experiences
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
This episode is a must-listen for anyone who is facing terminal illness right now.
Whether you are a caregiver or a patient, Dr. Chris Kerr’s wisdom may help you feel empowered in how you address the end-of-life experience.
Dr. Kerr’s work has focused on affirming that end-of-life experiences are real and how the medicalization of the end-of-life process hinders one’s ability to have “a good death” and also impacts the family who will be left behind.
Dr. Kerr’s message is impactful because the extensive research he’s conducted over the past 10+ years has created a positive impact in the lives of many.
How society approaches end-of-life needs to change and, it starts with education. Please listen and share this episode. Then, watch his documentary when it releases or read his book, and consider how end-of-life can be a beautiful, integrative experience. And, in the instance of terminal illness, it’s not one that has to be feared.
RESOURCES:
CONNECT WITH DR. CHRIS KERR:
Victoria Volk 00:00
Thank you for tuning in to this episode of grieving voices. Today my special guest is very special. It’s kind of feels like a big deal to me is Christopher Kerr, Dr. Christopher Kerr. He is the chief medical officer and CEO for the center of hospice and palliative care in Buffalo, New York. To date, his him and his research team at hospice buffalo have published multiple studies on the topic of end-of-life experience, over 1500 end of life events have been documented. And so that’s what we were talking about today is end of life experience, but also his grave story as well. So, thank you so much for your time today.
Dr. Chris Kerr 00:42
Thank you for having me. Thank you for doing this, this is important.
Victoria Volk 00:47
So, can we start where your work is rooted?
Dr. Chris Kerr 00:55
Sure. Wait, how it began, in terms of medical sense, or more personally?
Victoria Volk 01:00
More personal.
Dr. Chris Kerr 01:03
Yeah, I, I lost my father, when I was 12 years old. And the last time I saw him, and actually, he was certainly in a different place. interplanar place, and he thought that he was reenacting or re-experiencing what we did every year, which was go fishing. So, he was trying to get me ready, grabbing my shirt and such, saying we had to catch a plane because we’re going north. But he was smiling. And that’s the last time I saw him. So, I actually experienced what he ended up studying as a child. But when you lose a parent of 12, it’s, you know, its obviously life changing and traumatic in ways that are hard to describe. It’s not something that I openly talked about adults with at all, actually. What happened was, I inadvertently ended up doing hospice, which was the last place I was actually here trained to be a cardiologist in Buffalo. And I needed to moonlight more. And so long story, but because I had to carry a pager from cardiology, I couldn’t work in an ER anymore. So, I was doing home visits for hospice, I saw an ad in the paper, actually, and started doing it. And it was really the thing that I, you know, there’s this intense painful memory of my life earlier. Now I’m seeing at the end of life, as I’m caring for people who are dying, because no more sterilized medical environment. You know, there’s a big barrier between you and the bedside. And you’re you’re knee deep and demonic in bureaucracy. And when there isn’t a lot of dude do to the patient, you’re less involved as a physician in today’s world, but what I actually had to attend to them and be present, I’m seeing that this whole thing again. And, and, and I really never talked about what happened to me, as a child, I, as a young boy, where I lost my father, I had a very brisk and pronounced response. I. And I didn’t mention his name alone, that experience. Now what happened was, I was given a TED talk. And by this time, I had already had all this research, and it was getting all this notice and whatever. And I was bothering me because it was just so dishonest, because I wasn’t tying my piece of the story, right. And so I took a friend of mine who I trust out for lunch, and it’s like, I got to taste them again. Here’s the real truth. You know, I, this is how I came into it. Because these things kind of aren’t random. And so then I just want I want to give a TED talk. I just told my piece of the story. So that was actually the first time I went out there with it but yeah.
Victoria Volk 04:07
I love the TED Talk, by the way, and I will put the link in the show notes. And so, the research that you’ve done, how many years First of all, how long did this take you?
Dr. Chris Kerr 04:20
It’s actually a funny story. I guess it’s been over a decade.
Victoria Volk 04:25
Oh, wow.
Dr. Chris Kerr 04:26
So, what was I did it because I was really pissed off. I had nothing to do with getting this kind of attention at all. I was trying to, I teach medical students and residents, and they’re required to do rotations through hospice for a few weeks. And I was challenging, you know, that, you know, there’s a sigh of die and you see this objective piece, but then there’s the experience of dying. And what’s it what actually the patient has experience. Sing and dine is unique in that it’s changing your vantage point. And it makes sense of your perspectives, and your perceptions change dramatically. And this is just universal. It’s been described throughout time that they people are having these very, very intense inner experiences. And you know, we live in this evidence-based time. And doctors are ever more discomforted by things they can’t measure see biopsy image. And so, they might, the students will always say, you know what, there’s no evidence for that. And I said, well, yeah, it’s been talked about forever, but not evidence in the way they like to see it. So, I did the studies formally, and we went through a university process and an IRB approved study, people had to consent with a witness. They were screened every day. In participations, we’d approach patients every day until death, about these experiences, we had to rule out that they weren’t confused. And that sort of thing. And we filmed actually, interestingly, only because we were trying, we knew that you had to see it to believe it. And people would make assumptions about these patients that they were feeble minded or confused. And it made them look like you and I. And in the film, ironically, it was meant for a medical audience is now part of this full-length documentary. So, it’s funny how it turns out. So anyways, so I did that for a medical community. And, you know, now we’ve published probably eight papers, and they always get published, but you don’t hear a lot of noise, but, and then what happened was really, really weird. and ended up seeping out to the nonmedical community. Starting six, seven years ago, and honestly, we have never been able to keep up with it. Ended up on the front section, the science section, The New York Times, Washington Post, the Atlantic Huffington Post, two or three times, Scientific American Psychology Today, but then ended up going around the world. It was Indian China, Germany, and it just, it never seemed to stop Korea. So, it’s, the point is, and it’s a sad point is that what didn’t resonate with the medical community, the people providing the care resonates enormously with the people receiving the care. And it’s the best part. But the TED Talk isn’t the TED Talk. It’s the comments. And because the comments, people have never had this stuff, really properly validated for them, and allows them to share their stories. And they’re really there. The I think the comments section is more interesting. But so, it’s been very interesting. There’s been a framework for this discussion. And it resonates with people, and it doesn’t seem to stop. So yeah, that’s, that’s how it all happened. Yeah, I can do one thing, and this thing just kind of went out of control.
Victoria Volk 08:08
Do you get a sense that people I mean, obviously, people are just kind of thirsty for this?
Dr. Chris Kerr 08:13
They are, they are. And what we did that was really, really different was it was very, very important. As everybody who has done this historically, has used it as a keyhole into the afterlife. And then that gets you into a camp that’s paranormal, religious afterlife, or whatever. And we didn’t do any of that. All we wanted to do was capture what the patients were telling us in the dining experiences, what they were experiencing, without extrapolating or editorializing or assuming and we just left it at what it is. And we knew that would have more appeal. Because you’re preaching to the choir in the paranormal world, right? And we just didn’t want to do that we the idea is that dying is a mystery unto itself, period, without having to go into reincarnation, or, you know, I have no idea. So, we just kept it on point.
Victoria Volk 09:06
What comes to my mind is that, and there’s a part in your book to where you say and speak. I didn’t mention the book, but you have a book, it’s called Death is about a dream, finding hope and meaning at life’s and, and you mentioned a TED talk. You mentioned the documentary, you know, the surviving death, but then this is going to be a documentary of its own.
Dr. Chris Kerr 09:30
It is a documentary. It’s been released next week.
Victoria Volk 09:34
All by itself? Yeah, the title, and it’s titled death is about a dream based on our book, correct?
Dr. Chris Kerr 09:39
Yeah. And then, and then it’s in the rest of the country in April.
Victoria Volk 09:44
Can’t wait for that. So, there is a part though, in your book where I have a note here and it’s dying from loneliness to a life affirming connection. So, It’s this dyeing process that takes you. It’s like this life affirming experience. And you say it’s for the dying as much as it is for the bereaved, can you speak to that a little bit?
Dr. Chris Kerr 10:12
So, that we see dying as a physical state and suffering lessening of the person. But what’s missing that is that there’s powerful processes going on from the patient’s perspective. And they’re remarkably comforting in a remarkably life affirming. And so, what we did in our studies was ask them what they were experiencing, we even looked at dying as post traumatic growth. And this idea that you can be within a negative experience of going to war, but there were gains. And what we found was really remarkable, right up until the last day, people who are having these experiences are gaining insight and understanding and adapting. So, there’s this paradox where you are physically declining, but spiritually, psychologically, you’re actually growing. And the direction actually affirms the life you lead, because the end-of-life experiences focus on very, very specific things, which most notably is the powerful relationship she cured and unconditionally are full of love. So that you end up feeling better and in process and kind of lessen the fear of dying. The breed pieces is interesting, we have studied, surveyed and interviewed 750 people. And it’s just this old adage, what’s good for the patient is good for the loved one. And as as, as a brief person, you can view death as decline towards nothingness, and emptiness, and, and loss. And what you find is actually, there’s, there’s lots of this connectivity between what the person’s experiencing and what how they relate to the breed. So, an example for is, you know, to parents or to to a couple who have been together for 16 years. And they lost a baby 55 years ago, by the end of their lives, you know, she’s re experiencing the child, you know, holding a child or what have you. And now the spouse is looking at his partner, and that completely inverts dying as a as something more than empty, but actually rich with love, and and how we see a person die. I mean, when you’re walking at the bed, at the bedside of someone who love your concern beyond their physical comfort is where were they and how are they? Are they Okay, when their eyes are closed? And what the data shows is they are, and they’re not alone. And we’ve actually looked at, we’ve taken grief tools and measured grief processing. And this absolutely does help them in the green in the briefing piece. You know, knowing that the person you love is reacquainted with their lost mother. It just pulls it all together in a way that that it’s provide source.
Victoria Volk 13:21
Now I can say from experience when my dad was dying of colon cancer. I was eight. Well, actually, he was sick for two years prior to that. But that experience wasn’t mine or ours, because it wasn’t something that was talked about in the late 80s. Obviously, how has this work, helped you heal from your own loss?
Dr. Chris Kerr 13:46
We were in a similar era as children losing parents, and I not so sure it was done well, we, we still do treat dying as a as a medical problem to address resolve when it’s really about a closing of a life. It’s not about a failing body part that’s over, you know, when someone is past treatment and everything like that. People don’t die in parts. They die in totality. And totality of life is defined mostly by the relationships. So, medicine takes something what is ultimately a very human experience, and they sterilize it into something that isn’t and you know, working in hospitals for 2122 years is, is interesting because families still will come in here, their loved ones weeks before died. And they’re talking about test results for imaging. And you know, it’s absurd. It’s almost a distraction to the experience of end of life, which should bring people together dying as lonely as it is when we medicalize it like this, and particularly what probably your eye experiences were not actually brought closer to the person inadvertently were brought farther. And I think that complicates bereavement terribly. Actually, no, it does.
Victoria Volk 15:12
There is a note I have here to medicalizing the process of the dying. Can you go a little bit more into depth on that?
Dr. Chris Kerr 15:20
Yeah, I mean, it’s a complicated story, but we have a healthcare system. It Well, first of all, the economy of healthcare is completely based on doing things to people. You get world class interventional care, as long as you’re considered treatable, and then you fall off a cliff literally, when you There’s nothing more due to you, we have actually over medicalized that, and deprived it of its humaneness. And we’ve inadvertently made it more lonely. And then we’re shocked we we did we I think we we do we complicate bereavement terribly, because we talk about somebody who’s on an obvious dying trajectory. So there’s always something you can do to them. Just one more thing, then we’ll take another picture next week, when really, there’s a lot of data on this, particularly at tertiary so high end, medical centers actually have less don’t add to mortality they, they take from it because this idea of medical futility doesn’t seem to matter. So, they take people who have clear terminal trajectories, but they keep it going. It’s hard to put into words, but basically, I’ve been doing this work for a long time, third of our patients are in hospice for seven days. And that’s a national number. And the hospice benefits for six months. The reason why most of those patients are in for seven days, is because the doctor talking to them hasn’t had an honest conversation. And there’s this enormous discrepancy between what the physician knows and what they actually share. And the more doctors that are involved in the case, the less they actually know. So nobody’s surprised. Like if you’re a physician, you find out your patient with advanced cancers died, you’re you hear about it, you’re not surprised, you probably didn’t tell the patient family when so there’s not a lot of information shared, I always tell tell the story, we live in a by a major Cancer Center. And I can tell you, the people who come into our hospice facility here know where to park their how much it costs to get a coffee there, but they don’t know when or how they’re going to die. And it’s actually not that difficult to prognosticate. But people just don’t have the discussion. So we’re left traumatized because it’s treated dying in a medical environment is treated like an acute. of that. The only thing that’s acute is the sudden awareness, and ability to finally tell somebody, a lot of our patients, this is sad, end up making their own call to come out into hospice out of desperation. And imagine the courage that takes when the doctor could have helped them in the transition. So nearly, you know, almost a half dying people visit an ER and in the last one to three months of life, because that’s the only place they’re recognized. But it’s um, yeah, it’s an absurd, absurd, we’d become evermore death denied.
Victoria Volk 18:33
I would agree with that in the work that I do with grief recovery.
Dr. Chris Kerr 18:37
Well, what you what you see on the bereavement side, which is a whole other topic, which I we’re doing some work on here, you’d be very interested in is this notion of medical harm. I have a theory that we complicate bereavement, because we we we don’t help well enough loved ones come to the understanding that this is where their loved one is at. And we don’t have honest conversations about what the dying process is going to look like, what their loved one is going to need in their care. And so what we do is, there’s a void filled by Nolan’s and the family tends to assume the worst. They’re just crippled with fear, for pain and all these symptoms that are really 99% of time easy to manage. But we don’t have those discussions. So, there’s a lot of data on prognostication, but in general, doctors get it wrong, and they over prognosticate by a factor of two to three. And what that does, is yes, interesting. You should look it up. How accurate are doctors’ prognostic? And because there’s huge implications for braven because it, losses enormously. It’s one of the biggest challenges you’ll face in your life is the loss of somebody you love. So, So you can either be brought into that openly and honestly, and process and adapt, and address and all those things. Or you can be all the sudden faced with this brutal reality and an injured, and it complicates how you recover. So, doctors inadvertently do a lot of harm by not being honest. And we’re constantly pulling out people from the hospital who are, you know, there’s no chance in hell they’re living, but they’re still in this process of acute medicine under the illusion that they’re going to do well. And as I said, the iria, as you go to the highest medical centers of the world, they actually live less law for all the processes. So, it’s actually the inversion.
Victoria Volk 20:51
And what’s the quality of that life that’s left. And that’s the thing.
Dr. Chris Kerr 20:57
The data until recently is very interesting, which is the vast majority, 70% of Americans want to die at home. 70% of Americans don’t. And that’s really interesting. The, that’s changed, particularly with COVID. Because people are fearful of going into hospitals and facilities.
Victoria Volk 21:16
And my dad passed away in the nursing home, living in a rural area where we do, there isn’t actually access to hospice. My mom cared for him as long as she could. She just felt like he needed more than what she could give him medically, right? Because there was always this hope, of something working or something helping or, you know, take his pain away, or anything like that. And I haven’t thought I thought of a question. It might be really deep. I don’t know. But do you think that there is like when I think about your work and the work that you’ve done, and I think about how, you know, some people want to just die suddenly, like, they don’t want to know what hit them. I think there’s a beautiful gift in having the gift of time, that knowing that you have this diagnosis, you know that there’s a book and you don’t know when, but that you have some control over how you live the rest of your days. I think there’s a gift in that. I’m curious what your thoughts are on how people have, like people that have been in your care? Do they regret the suffering that they’ve had to go through to have these experiences? Or? And I don’t imagine they do, but I don’t know, maybe I don’t even know how I’m asking this but.
Dr. Chris Kerr 22:49No, I haven’t met the person. I haven’t met the person that didn’t want control of their own life, even in the face of death, that didn’t want to be informed. They didn’t want to be protected or denied in their own realities by somebody. I’ve never met the person. You know, it’s funny, because people think, oh, you know, they don’t want to know, they actually all want to know, it’s their bodies, their life, it’s not working the same, they can stand up anymore, you know, there’s an inch, there’s intuition, just, they’re, they’re in that body. So, the denial actually is harmful. So yeah, they want to know, and they need, they need to close their life, there’s things they want to say this people they want to connect to. And there’s beauty in a lot of it, because it reduces our relationships to what matters. So, you’re stopped worrying about your tax bill, but boy, you want to hold that grandchild, like there’s richness in it. It’s part of an understandable process is less about, again, the organs not working here and there, it’s really about, you know, dimming the light on your life and reflecting and validating who you are, knowing what you’ve lived for. And generally, what happens is fascinating. So, when when we don’t have a perspective on this, because trying to understand the dying person’s perspective is too big of a reach. But I can tell you a few things happen is that at the time of diagnosis, there’s obviously all that trauma. And it’s very self focused, you know, as it should be. What happens when people realize they’re dying, their concerns, go to others. And that’s a very, very important part of dying. It’s all these gestures and love given and things that the people they care about, and they should never be denied that opportunity. It’s really, really important part of this kind of letting go idea. Is that they can reconnect with people they love. It’s, again, it’s this idea of almost being put back together before the end. And it really matters. And sometimes it’s just to be forgiven or to forgive. Sometimes it’s just express love or to remember. But it’s reconnecting and reuniting. It’s less of a dismantling process dying than it is putting back together process. And it’s it’s all of that is good stuff that affirms life, and it doesn’t deny life. So dying is interesting, because, you know, we try to protect the dine from their own experience in a way, when really, we should be engaging with them in it. You know, I, we used to do this more naturally. But we’ve again, we’ve taken the medicalization of it, to the point that we focus on a medical paradigm of medical paradigm, rather than a human one and they’re very different.
Victoria Volk 26:06
I interviewed a woman who has had metastatic breast cancer for 17 years. And, you know, she said, well, I’m considered an outlier. And there’s another woman in her group that she’s a part of who’s lived with metastatic breast cancer for 25 years. And, of course, it wouldn’t be from, you know, it’s Western medicine is obviously a huge contribution to their extended time. There’s also hope. And so, do you feel like in the work that you’ve been doing is it because they come to you, it’s usually closer to the end, like they’ve not given up hope that they, maybe it’s been transformed for them, like, you see, in the work that you do?
Dr. Chris Kerr 26:54
Yeah, I don’t see people. Hope doesn’t ever go away. And what you hope for changes. And so, when you’re in the struggle with your disease, the attitude should be always hoped for the very best, like, you know, an unusual recovery or protracted life, but also prepare for the worst. That that duality of approach is really the most graceful way through these kinds of illnesses, is you don’t deny the fact that, you know, this could go the other direction, but boy, I hope and fight like hell, that you know, you’re going to live and live well. The people that I take care of their hope, actually, I think in some ways is stronger. But they’re hoping for something else, they’re hoping for a peaceful end, they’re hoping for dignity. They’re hoping for autonomy, they’re hoping to reconnect with people they love, they hope to have the opportunities to say what they want to say to who they need to say it to, it becomes much more of a giving gesture than it is worried about, you know, if you’re unloaded, if you’re unloaded, have that whole stress and weight of survival or not. And you’ve already kind of crossed over how it changes people’s paradigms thought is really fascinating. But hope is still there. It’s just hoping for something else. I love that. That’s why people you know, I’ll tell you, it’s interesting. He was I talked about this in the end of the book, but one of the more interesting things, when we first started writing the university or pill university to the states were denied. Because, you know, we want to sterilize the dying and put them on a shelf and don’t interfere with them kind of thing. You know, which is actually the worst thing because they’re dying is lonely, and they were locked into a white ceiling. And so what’s fascinating is that everybody in that book is who they are. And in the film, and not one person who was approached and denied to participate. That’s a hell of a lot of people between the film and the book. And, and they’re telling the real stories of their lives, like the hard stuff. And you’ve got to ask yourself, okay, well, there’s no secondary gain. Some of the people who are participate are literally days or a week from dying. And so why are they doing this? Why is spending their precious time and energy and, and it’s because they’re still human. And that means they still want to have meaning they still want to be heard. Still on have relevancy, they still want to connect. And that never goes, even though they’re going to be dead. Like they know there’s banality, but it’s, it’s part of our human condition that we it’s defined by our ability to, to relate to others to discuss and to talk and to be heard and to hear back and that never goes away. So that there’s hope in that as well. Hope that you matter and it’s up It’s really a subplot within that book.
Victoria Volk 30:02
Do you find or have you been contacted about from different places around the country? Because like I said, you know, hospice care is very difficult to come by, in a lot of places. Do you see that starting to change? auspices? Just the access to hospice care?
Dr. Chris Kerr 30:22
It’s unfortunately, since I started, there were very few for profits. And like in New York, it’s a it’s, it’s, it’s licensed by the state, and there’s only one in every county, there’s 5500, or something hospices in the United States. Yeah, and one of the pros, one of the initiatives is to improve the access to rural areas. And I actually think it’s going to happen more, we’re seeing more of it because of telehealth, ability to meet people remotely, because there’s just the practicality of having on call systems and access to people who are distant, but we’re getting better. And there’s a lot of incentivize, you know, grants and dollars on the table to do that, you know, the Paris systems now ask him, you know, how you’re going to get to our members over here. And that’s exactly what they should be saying.
Victoria Volk 31:19
Well, that gives me hope. Um, so the patients that have come to you for end-of-life care, the significance, I imagine you kind of spoke to this for the bereaved. And that’s kind of where I’d like to take this conversation. Next is those who are left behind? Has it really shifted? Or have you seen shifts in people’s perspectives about what they then want for themselves?
Dr. Chris Kerr 31:49
It’s a great question. Yeah, not measurably, but certainly, anecdotally. Yeah, it’s interesting, this is in the film, there’s a number of people who speak very clearly about us. And more, what it does is it informs them of what, from the experience, they learn that their fear of death is last definitely. And I think that matters a lot, because of all the symptoms of dying, fears actually probably come close to the top of the list. And they they end up more with a faith that the story is not as bad as feared, you know. And that, that, that again, that really comes out in in the in the film really, really well. I actually think the family members are as movie as the patient’s, not more so in some ways. It there’s a lady in a film, for example, who, whose mother has very advanced dementia, and she’s in a, Michelle Sony. And the weeks prior to her death, she’s trying to escape all the time. But she’s happy as can be. And what was happening was, the daughter would go and see her every day. And she was having these rich, meaningful dreams about her deceased husband. And they had this kind of fairy tale, marriage of love. And so what’s happening, the dreams are so real during vivid that she’s acting on. And she’s trying to leave the building, because she’s always think she’s going to go past to get to the church, whether she’s to meet her husband to get married. And this happened right up until like, the last days of life. So here she is. And this is the paradox, if at all, is that she’s losing her life, but she’s actually reliving the best day of her life. And it was in that mindset that she she died, that she was getting, she was euphoric. This notion of living again, with her the one she loved. So, what that does to the daughter is completely changes her perception of loss.
Victoria Volk 34:08
It gives them an opportunity to open up that conversation I imagined because otherwise, would that have happened, you know?
Dr. Chris Kerr 34:15
Right, because people tend to need permission to have these sort of conversations. And you’re right. Yeah, it does wouldn’t happen. Yeah. You don’t know or would you just be medicated? Which actually happens a lot? Yeah. Good point.
Victoria Volk 34:33
So, what would you tell somebody who is watching their loved one suffer and they’re not sure what to do? They What do you advise people?
Dr. Chris Kerr 34:46
You don’t have to do this alone. First of all, most of America you can get help. And it’s specialized help, which is hospice help. I worried that people in the caregiving Fascinating, and that people will describe it as the best harvesting you’ve ever done. So, there’s great human value in stopping your life and becoming the character. But it shouldn’t be done as though you don’t, you’re alone with it. And so getting help, like hospice, which was designed for the home, is really, really, really advisable. And again, most people in the nation have it, you know, in terms of this kind of work, it’s really giving people permission, you’ve got to almost give them a framework, the idea that this happens, you know, the people nearing the end of life are their sleep cycle changes, the architecture of sleep changes, their level of alertness changes, dying is progressive sleep, nobody dies awake, and it you know, it’s really two things, you eat less, and you sleep more. And in that state of sleep, a lot of people have these very intense experiences, and don’t be afraid of them. That doesn’t mean it’s drugs or that their diseases God with their brain, and ask questions and allow it to occur, give it the space to occur, because it provides comfort and meaning, you know, nearly 90% of our patients, if you follow them daily report at least one event. But it’s not it’s with has value.
Victoria Volk 36:24
As a teenager, I worked in a nursing home. So obviously, a lot of people pass away and things and they never really talked about or explained or you don’t really get educated on the process of the dime, you just kind of learn on the job. And one of the things that really stuck out to me, and I still remember and I saw it too. And when I did home health, because there was a few, I had some, some clients that were on hospice at home. And they do this thing they call it picking now, I don’t know, maybe you can clarify for me, but what is actually happening when someone is, you know, reaching into the air?
Dr. Chris Kerr 37:02
So, it’s a great question. It’s a whole area of interest in my so there’s, it was actually, those actions were actually named by hip hop Hippocrates. So, it’s always been known. And basically, what happens if you take somebody who goes into delirium confusional states, it’s often because their sleep cycle is is complete disarranged. And it for example, if you went to bed tonight, and I woke you up, every two hours, with three or four days, your dreams would become very intense, and certainly become virtual. So, in a nursing home, it’s universal, you’ll see it particularly sundowning hours, because as to do with our day night cycle, you’ll see people either looking right through you, or grabbing for things, or playing with their sheets, or wind to get up. And because they’re in their dream, their participants in their dream. So they think that things in front of them. The dreams are normally you don’t normally dream, you’re just lying still, you’re doing something. So they’ll say they’ve got to get up. And that’s why a lot of elderly people fall in the night. I’ve seen people that legs not forget, they don’t have legs, because they’re dreaming of something when they were younger, then they get up. So those are the those are very, very common things that happen in delirium, or confusional states.
Victoria Volk 38:36
So, it’s not part of the dying process?
Dr. Chris Kerr 38:39
No, no, although a lot of people who are dying, become delirious, but typically towards the end. And oftentimes, because there’s unmanly symptoms, and it could be something just like constipation or nausea. When you imagine you when you have the flu, the one common denominator of all illness is this poll to go to bed and to sleep. You know, you don’t go climb a mountain, you go, I just want to crawl under the covers, and I want to sleep. And then something interferes with that sleep. Anything that sets the stage for confusional states. So let’s say you got the flu. You ever had the flu? And you want to go to bed and alarm clock goes up every hours. Have you had a child? Have you ever been postpartum and you’re gone days without sleep and you’re hearing the noises and the baby cry, whatever, and you’re pretty close. Now you imagine you’re at and you have that level of sleep disruption, then then they get confused. It’s why it’s used as a form of torture and more. Just keep waking somebody. They’ll everybody will get confused. And one of the pieces of confusion. As that dreams become your in your dream, and the themes become horrific, the worse it is, just like your mood becomes worse with one night’s missing one night’s sleep. Now you’re, you know, four and five, and then you know, you think there’s a fire somebody is robbing you, you’re paranoid of the person giving your care. So that whole dissolute dissolving of the mind is very, very tied to sleep. And they’re basically dreaming with their eyes open when they’re doing those things. It’s why very nice people can become combative in a nursing home. And tragically, they often need to be taught tied up, why you try keep elderly people out of the hospital, you keep them in their home, that they can live a lot longer. As soon as you put them in the hospital and you start waking them up in the night, then they can’t go they end up confused.
Victoria Volk 40:56
That’s fascinating. I never really thought of that. Yeah, I never really thought about that. But yeah,
Dr. Chris Kerr 41:02
yeah, you take you take an elderly person who can put themselves in context, because everything’s familiar. They know where the nightstand is. And then they go to a hospital. And then they have somebody wakes them up to give them until they wake up and they’re disoriented, and they’re not sure. Where’s my nightstand? And so that, that’s untain them. And I’m caring for my mother. No, no, they’re Ontario. And she’s 88. And you have to be very careful waking her up, because it takes a lot for her to put herself back together. And she’ll ask questions, why are these people in the room have done it? I know, 10 minutes later, she’s funny. But sleep is a is really the fifth vital sign for elderly people. And if you don’t protect it, well, you can confuse them off.
Victoria Volk 41:50
Interesting. Thank you for sharing that. Its very helpful. I think for many listeners, who are the caregivers, and their loved ones right now.
Dr. Chris Kerr 42:00
Yeah, our alarm goes off about sleep more than anything else. Because as soon as you have an elderly person who’s starting to have fragmented sleep, you’re, you’re they’re there, it’s going to be very hard to keep their mind together.
Victoria Volk 42:17
So where does this? I mean, it’s been a long time that you’ve since you’ve started this research. And is it starting to morph into another area of interest for you?
Dr. Chris Kerr 42:28
Yeah, you know, we didn’t want this to go away about five years ago, but that the momentum for it keeps going. So, we keep doing the work. You know, we and we’ve extended this right, we’ve looked at children who are having these experiences, and there’s a child, there’s a chapter in the book about that. We’ve done a lot of work, obviously, with the bereaved, and looking at how that’s changed them. The next thing we’re working on that I’m personally interested in is this caregiving idea. Because if you do what we do, you’re just It’s so inspiring to see. There’s a really great story about what people how people rise up, and the strength and the courage to care for their loved one and really focus their life back to that pivotal relationship to how that influences bereavement in a good way, if they’ve been allowed to have the time to, to reconnect with that person. So that’s the story we’re trying to uncover.
Victoria Volk 43:33
And the first thing that comes to my mind is support, like the caregivers need that support. And I think that’s lacking with a lot of corporate jobs, you know, the supporting the cattaneo person that is employed that supporting a caregiver, with time off or you know, things like that, I just think that that’s something that’s not really addressed quite yet. I don’t think we’re quite there and caregiver support yet.
Dr. Chris Kerr 44:00
And within the developed world, we offer as a country, far less than half any other nation in terms of assistance in the home. So, helping the caregiver be a caregiver. So again, world class care in a hospital, very little care at home, where you’re actually going to live with your illness.
Victoria Volk 44:22
Right, and it’s very expensive. I you know, the organization that I worked for, I’m not even sure what it costs for people for to have me come into the home, but I’ve heard things that it’s very expensive, and it’s out of pocket. And that’s why people end up in the nursing home and things like that, because you just you can’t afford home. Oh, no help. And so then either to as a caregiver as a as a child of a parent who’s ill and sick and things like that you have to choose then, between your job, your livelihood, your family, Family and things like that. And that’s why you see a lot of parents moving in, you know, a lot of these combined families now the parent moving in with the child and their family and yeah, yeah. And that dynamic too, there isn’t a lot of support there. No, I would love to see your research expand into that.
Dr. Chris Kerr 45:22
Yeah. And we’re, we’re starting to film the people, as well as we’re going along, because it just seemed to work coincide well with the first book. So, where we had the research, we had the film, and we had the book, and it all kind of came together in a big way.
Victoria Volk 45:40
And there’s a lot of grief to that. Is there with when there isn’t support, as well?
Dr. Chris Kerr 45:47
Yeah, the other thing we’re looking at, and we’re doing some studies on again, is this idea of the care before death, care of the family before death, how that affects grief. So back to our earlier conversation, if you were included in the process, if you were informed accurately, if you were given time, real time, not denied. And reassured? What does that do as opposed to being there in the hospital for a month, and then the guy says, all of a sudden, this is the end. And this idea of health versus harm, pre death, and how that affects bereavement. Because I see people who are homeless have PTSD, after these losses, after an extended stay in a hospital, they really didn’t know. And they’re still hopeful until the last 24 hours. And you know, there’s a lot there. So how well are we caring for the loved ones of the dying patient? And you know, it’s very interesting, because if you ask the patient, that’s what their concern is, their loved ones. And particularly, you know, during COVID is obviously different, but people are so disconnected. People are saying goodbye over technology.
Victoria Volk 47:06
Yeah, I’ve, I’ve heard some really tragic stories about that, or it just feels so incomplete. I just want to read a little part here that ties into what you just said, it’s in your book on page, inspiring the chapter on to those left behind, when the dying patient becomes absorbed in and then comforted by their end of life experiences, it changes the context of dying from loneliness to a life affirming connection. And this is a significant, this is as significant for the bereaved as it is for the dying. That was kind of that point that I brought up earlier. And I highlighted that because I think it is such a poignant light to make and that it is as much for the bereaved, like you said, as it is for the dying, and I’ve just reflected on my loss and my father and what he went through, and how he was denied that, you know, he was denied a good death, I would say, you know, I would call it a good death. I don’t know, it just kind of makes me feel like, you know that the trade off is the suffering and maybe the pain, but like you said, That’s manageable. And so where do you draw the line? And how do you assess that when someone to manage what they’re experiencing, but yet ensuring that they can still have a lucid experience?
Dr. Chris Kerr 48:35
Yeah. I mean, it is a fine line. And the patient should direct it. And oftentimes, what is more a is they’re tired, and no, no, I need to sleep kind of thing. But you just have to be a trade off between pain management and wakefulness. It’s almost like a Hollywood notion of pain that you’re going to need this huge dose of morphine and you’re not going to be awake more. If you’ve managed pain properly all along, you’ve gained tolerance to those side effects of the drugs, typically people who are extraordinary lucid on huge doses of medicine for pain. But but but they didn’t take it all, once one day, they took it slowly, and they got used to it like you with alcohol. So I don’t think the two things are necessarily incompatible at all. It gives me hope to the people who hold off pain medicine, for because they want to preserve their cognition, their ability to be alert and think, actually do the opposite. Because nothing takes away your ability to think clearly and have a good mood than pain and not sleeping.
Victoria Volk 49:44
That’s a good point.
Dr. Chris Kerr 49:45
So, if you were to weigh this, if you were to ask me this way, this done this for decades, the side effects of any medicine versus the consequences of unmanaged pain or nausea. There’s no question. So, the interesting thing is people who decline that sort of treatment for pain medicine, you know, I don’t want until the very end, they fulfill their own prophecy. They don’t want to be confused. They want to be in control, and they become less able to do both. Because if you have unremitting nausea, and every penny, you don’t sleep. And if you don’t sleep well in the setting of sickness, you’re miserable. And you start, stop, you start withdrawing from conversations and meaningful participation. It’s harder to smile, or laugh or enjoying by or anything.
Victoria Volk 50:37
And you get delirious.
Dr. Chris Kerr 50:38
You get delirious. Yeah.
Victoria Volk 50:41
Yeah, that’s a very good point, too. I absolutely love this paragraph. End of Life makes visible the kind of light that signifies introspection and reflection. And that goes on shining in darkness, even after grief is turned from a single event into a lifelong journey. It is a light that radiates far and wide and is felt when all language fails us. That’s beautiful. I love that. That’s beautiful. I particularly love to the story of Sierra, in your book, you just want to briefly share a little bit about that story on my audience?
Dr. Chris Kerr 51:18
Yeah, she’s actually on film. That’s all captured on film in the documentary. So very quickly, she was in her 20s and had a child. And she had undiagnosed colon cancer for too long a period of time, and was in our impatient of dying, but had was not accepting that she was dying at all. And just ask her when she’s going to get better, so she can get back to the hospital, we get more more treatment. And we were frustrated, because we’re concerned for the family who doesn’t understand a child who wasn’t getting the care he needed. And the doctor in the room is finally says, you know, see, are you having any dreams? And she scrolls grandpa. And meanwhile, she’d been dreaming of her grandfather. The Darcis was he say goes, because I’ve done a good job, you know, but but I need to stop fighting. And then I’m going to be okay. And that broke everything. And of course, there’s this link between the mother that’s her father has been referred to. And this idea that she wasn’t wasn’t alone in this process, and that she was comforting. And then, then there were more honest conversations about being actually at end of life, and all the offers, but the answers didn’t come from us. It came from within her. Yeah, and that’s on film. It’s amazing.
Victoria Volk 52:54
I just yeah, thank you for sharing that. I just thought it tied into beautifully with that paragraphs that so thank you for sharing that. Is there anything else you would like to share?
Dr. Chris Kerr 53:04
No, it’s been great. Good questions.
Victoria Volk 53:08
Thank you. Thank you so much for being here. If people would like to reach out to you, where can they find you?
Dr. Chris Kerr 53:13
Oh, it’s drchristopherkerr.com
Victoria Volk 53:20
Perfect, and I’ll put everything in the show notes as well.
Dr. Chris Kerr 53:23
And it’s good because there there’s links to videos of patients and family so it’s really good to see.
Victoria Volk 53:28
Awesome, and don’t forget the book, death is but a dream. I will also link to that.
Dr. Chris Kerr 53:34
Thank you.
Victoria Volk 53:35
Thank you again for your time today. And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.
Grief Stories, Grieving Voices Guest, Grieving Voices Podcast |
Shandra Schultz | Who Am I?
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
What would it be like to get into an accident and walk away not knowing who you are?
Shandra shares her experience of what it is like to see her daughter and loved ones and not know them. She found herself living a “half-life” as she called it.
However, this accident and memory loss occurred following many other loss experiences. She shares that, while in high school, she found herself down the path of experimenting with drugs and alcohol. When she was 21, her father passed away from cancer. Fortunately, she found a way to eliminate the crutches and addiction to drugs and alcohol in her life.
With every loss she experienced after that time of friends and pets, she ultimately realized she had lost a part of herself, too. This set her on the path of self-discovery and introspection. During this time, she sought out many modalities to help heal her memory loss, grief, and trauma. She shares what those modalities were.
It is through her life experience, she has found herself working as a healer today.
Shandra shares that grief taught her to live and that the meaning of life is to live it. Listen to Shandra’s story of hope and how she found her way back home to herself.
Connect with Shandra:
- Website
- Instagram
- Facebook
- Shandra is offering a special promo for my listeners: Use the promo code “LIGHTANDLOVE” to receive 50% off your first Soul Birth Session
Victoria Volk 00:08
Thank you for tuning in to another episode of grieving voices. Although if this is your first time listening, welcome. I have my guest today is Shandra Schultz from healings of Light and Love by Shandra. Welcome Shandra. Thank you so much for being here.
Shandra Shultz 01:14
Thank you, Victoria. It’s my pleasure to be here with you.
Victoria Volk 01:19
And today, we kind of connected just a little bit before we came on. And it seems like I people that are kind of drawn to be on my podcast, there’s always something I can connect with on a personal level. And, like right out of the gate, we just started talking about how both of our dads were actually Vietnam vets, and were exposed to Agent Orange. And both of our dads both passed away cancer, different cancers. But I’m sorry for your loss, and that we have that thing in common. But there’s more to your story than just the loss of your father. And so let’s start there. What initially, what brought you to wanting to come to the podcast was you had a traumatic brain injury in 2014. Correct?
Shandra Shultz 02:13
Yes. Yep.
Victoria Volk 02:14
Tell us about that.
Shandra Shultz 02:16
So, I was driving and a car decided to make a left turn in front of me without seeing me because there was another car blocking it and ended up in a traumatic car accident. I was knocked unconscious. And when I came to, I was very disoriented. I didn’t quite know what was going on. And when I looked at myself in the mirror, I was like, hmm, I don’t really recognize this person who am I. And it wasn’t until the person that I hit was right by my run by my car, I had like a call I had called will actually step back, I first looked at my phone at something in me said, hey, I think I need to call somebody just a knowing that I needed to call somebody. So, I picked up my phone and I scroll through it and nothing was familiar, except the word mom. It stuck out to me. And I said, Okay, I guess I’ll call mom. So, I called mom. And I was very, very, like, the tone of my voice was very monotone. I was like, hey, I’ve been in a car accident. Can you come get me? I wasn’t in any way. Warm or had no, no actual like emotion to my to my voice. It was just very flat. And I remember my mom’s asking me if I was okay. And I said I think so. But I don’t know. And when they when the ambulance showed up. They looked at me and they told me I was fine. So I was like, oh, okay, I’m fine. I don’t know who I am. But I’m fine. Okay, so I was standing on the side of the road waiting for my mom to show up. And she came and I looked at myself in the mirror. And that was the only way it was really kind of able to recognize her as that she looked like me. We both had short brown hair. We were had similar facial features. She just looked like me as like, oh, okay, this must be mom. And she came up to me and said, you know, asked about how I was and from behind her ran this little nine year old child, my daughter and just grabbed me and screamed mommy, and I just kind of shook because in that moment, I was like, what? Like, who am I and I have a child like and I can’t remember this. Like, who am I to not be able to remember this child like why don’t I remember this child? And it wasn’t until I went home with them and started realizing like really letting it sink in. I didn’t know them. I didn’t remember them. I had pictures of them all around the house they took me to but I didn’t know who They were like, I couldn’t remember them. And it was like, Is this really? Is this really happening to me like what’s going on? But I couldn’t tell anybody. Because they were, they were just happy I was alive. And I didn’t feel like I didn’t want to rain on their parade that I didn’t know who they were. I pretended for probably about a couple of months. I never let them know what was going on. It wasn’t till after I met my husband, three weeks after the accident that I felt comfortable enough with somebody to tell them. I don’t know who these people are.
Victoria Volk 05:37
Well, what was that conversation like, when you finally told them?
Shandra Shultz 05:45
So, I actually didn’t tell my daughter until probably two years ago. So, the accident was in 2014, I told them in 2019, so that it was already five years because I didn’t, I didn’t know how to tell my daughter that I didn’t know them. It was challenging in the process, because I remember telling my mom, when I did tell my mom, hey, I’m dealing with this, she didn’t believe me. At first. It was after I’d met my husband, it was at his prompting that he was like, you need to let them know what’s going on. Like you can’t keep this secret from them. And I remember having to tell my mom and her just kind of looking at me like you’re lying. And I remember I was going to see a chiropractor at the time post accident. And when I told him that I couldn’t remember, he attributed it to the drug abuse that I had been sober for two years at that point, but he attributed that I’ve relapsed, and that I was just trying to get out of being with my family. So my mom got led to believe the same thing. And I left and I was like, this is not what’s happening. I don’t even know what you’re talking about. I didn’t remember drug abuse. I didn’t remember any of that was like, Okay, I think what you want, but this is my truth. And it was very, it was it was challenging, because to constantly have my mom, say, don’t you remember? Don’t you remember? Like, No, I told you, I don’t remember like, are you thinking you’re gonna catch me in a lie? Like, no, I don’t remember. Um, and it was so challenging, especially with my daughter, because trying to like, keep up this front of, I know who you are. And yet, I don’t remember these things that you’re talking about. And so, between my mom and my daughter, they would constantly ask me, you know, do you remember this? Do you remember that? You remember this? Remember that? And so for almost two years, that’s how life was constantly trying to say, don’t you remember? It was like, no, and it’s not that I don’t want to remember. I just can’t. The brain works in mysterious ways.
Victoria Volk 08:06
You hadn’t told them that you didn’t remember? But yet, all these conversations they had with you, they didn’t connect it to that accident?
Shandra Shultz 08:15
No. And my daughter was nine at the time. So, I, I understand that. Like, it’s like, well, why doesn’t mommy remember, like this? And this and this. And my mom, like, when I finally told her, Hey, I don’t remember. She didn’t believe me. She thought it was me line. Because I was in this relationship. Now with the healthiest relationship I’ve ever been in my life, mind you, with my husband. He was like actually a really decent guy who was treating me well taking care of my mom and my daughter while I wasn’t able to. And yet, because of that. I also was lost in him. I kind of lost myself as a lot of couples do in the beginning. I lost myself in him and I felt safe. And so, I was like, I’ll just stick to him. This This feels comfortable, that feels uncomfortable. So, I gravitated away from my mom and my daughter. And they both told me that it actually was like they had truly experienced the loss of me, even though I was there.
Victoria Volk 09:18
That make sense. You mentioned the drug abuse, did was that before the car accident, or?
Shandra Shultz 09:25
Yeah, I had, um, from the time I was 17 until the time I was 29. So, for 12 years, I was I was very heavily addicted. i It started when I found when I was in high school, and I had some abuse happened to me. And then it just then my dad got sick, and it was like the easiest way to resist and numb out. So that’s what I did for 12 years. I was a very functioning addict, mind you, because I learned that in order to make sure people didn’t know what was going on. had to hide that part of myself. So I became very good at compartmentalizing things. But I didn’t find that out again until I fully remembered everything started in 2000, late 2015 into 2019 is when I really spent focused a lot of time trying to learn who I was. And what had happened. Why had it happened. I was just trying to understand the past, but it wasn’t living in the present.
Victoria Volk 10:29
So, I can relate to that like many people probably can. So how old were you and your dad passed?
Shandra Shultz 10:36
I was 21, 10 years before my accident my dad passed. And I was the last one to see him alive. The night that he worked, the Nike passed, I actually, he was in hospice. And I had been partying and I got this like, voice inside my head, that’s really small voice that said, you need to go see your dad now. He had been on. He had been in hospice for seven days. And he was they had kept him comfortable, I guess is the best way to describe it. He had said, you know, he had a DNR he did not want to be resuscitated, he didn’t want any of that he didn’t want any life saving measures whatsoever. So he was literally on saline. And that was it for seven days. And I remember now looking back on it, when that I had this voice say you need to go see him and just let him know that you love him and get it out. And so at three o’clock in the morning, I drove from the party I was at to the hospice, which was like 10 minutes away. And I went in to see him and I sat down. And I literally just lost it all, like I just I said everything that I’d ever needed to say in 21 years to him. Knowing that he was not going to hear me specifically like he, his spirit would be there. But he wouldn’t actually be able to respond to me. And I remember letting myself feel okay about that. Because it was like, I’m finally going to get the last word. Like, my dad was one of those people, you could never get the last word with him. And I had so much as I’m sure you know, growing up with a parent who is a cool, while I mean, you were younger, but even still in that that those first eight years, I’m sure you might have experienced the PTSD. And that is really tough for a child to live with to see their parent going through something and they don’t understand why. And it’s just it is it’s, it’s, it’s challenging. And so my dad and I did not have a great relationship. And we argued and fought a lot. And he loved me fiercely, but he was also very critical of me. And so that night, I just sat there and I told him how I felt. And I let it all out and I cried and I screamed at him and told him I hated him for leaving me. And then I told him that I loved him, and that it was okay and that he could go. And I left and I went to a party and I got a call two hours later, my mom said that he had passed. And I was like, oh, he was waiting for me.
Victoria Volk 13:39
I imagine that was very healing for you.
Shandra Shultz 13:43
It was um, and yet it was kind of surface level. Like I didn’t really allow myself to feel it because I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to have to deal with it. It was like I just wanted to keep going and move on and be like, Okay, it’s gone. It’s over with my, my mom had grieved, but not visibly in any way that I knew how to see like, like a healthy adult grieving. So, she kept it she’s she always kept everything in. And it was like, I’m going to put it away in this file cabinet. And I’m done. So that’s what I learned to do. I was like, Okay, I felt it. Now it’s gone. I’m just ignore it. It’s never going to come up again. I’ve learned that’s not true. It will come up. You can’t just file something away and expect it to be done and come back.
Victoria Volk 14:37
Eventually
Shandra Shultz 14:38
Eventually, yeah. And sometimes usually in the worst possible time in moments. So, if you’re like, Oh, well, darn. That’s there.
Victoria Volk 14:49
And quite often after we’ve experienced another loss, and everything floods everything else comes back up to the surface.
Shandra Shultz 14:58
Yes. And that is what kept me as using that is what kept me abusing drugs and alcohol because my dad died when I was 21. And then, after I had my daughter at 22, I found myself in a really abusive relationship. And I had a really close friend who was like my reason for like getting out of that relationship. He died right after my birthday when I was 23. In a very traumatic way. And then again, I didn’t deal with it at all, like I just tamped it down started using, I’m not gonna, I’m not going to do it. And then when I was 25, my other best friend, both like brothers died in another traumatic way, it all rushed back to me. And I said, Nope, not dealing with it, tamped it down again. And it just kept going like that, when I would have traumatic things, the loss of animals, the loss of people in my life, then when I lost myself, that was when I finally had to start actually looking at it and start feeling it and dealing with it. And it’s funny. Because this Pat, like two weeks ago, I had had been originally scheduled to be with you. And I ended up losing my cat the day before he ended up dying of kidney failure. And it was one of those things where it was like, it smacked me in the face so hard. Because I was no longer, I’ve been sober for nine years now. And I wasn’t going to misuse or abuse anything. So, I was like, Okay, I’ve got to feel this. And every single solitary grief that I had, for 38 years hit me in the face. And it was like, Whoa, that’s a lot of grief. So, hey, thank you, I appreciate that. It was it, I kind of look at it as like an empowering lesson, because it allowed me to finally feel it all. Apologies. It allowed me to finally feel it all. Something that I’ve been hiding from for years. So, every traumatic event, every grief that I ever felt, it was like, I had to feel it finally, and I had to do it in a productive manner. I couldn’t let myself you know, hide it anymore. And it’s so funny, because it was at that moment that I realized how much healing I’ve actually done. Because I looked at my husband and I said, you know, I know that. In society, they teach us they show us on TV, they write it in books, that if you have a traumatic experience, and you’re in a relationship, go have sex. But that’s a bandaid. And not to discredit the feeling better, or the being intimate and actually like connecting with someone say, Oh, I’m happy, I’m alive. However, it’s that we don’t allow ourselves to fully feel that grief. And we shove it, we shove it away, we mask it, we do something with it. And in this moment, I looked at him and said, we can’t do that we have to feel this pain was like a child to us, we have to feel this pain.
Victoria Volk 18:11
Well, and what do we do when we’re doing that? We it’s this fear of connecting with ourselves. I think so many of us when we’re deep in grief, we almost detach ourselves from our hearts and our emotional selves, or it’s, we can’t even we aren’t even comfortable in our own skin in our own bodies. And like you you just alluded to, like, every, almost every conversation I have with people on this podcast, it’s like all of my guests get it, you really get it, you really get that these things that you’ve learned growing up have not been helpful on how we are taught to process and treat grief that we have in our lives and loss experiences. Because we’re not we’re taught how to acquire things, but we’re not taught what to do when we lose them.
Shandra Shultz 19:06
Yeah, definitely. That’s so true.
Victoria Volk 19:08
Yeah, that’s why I’m so passionate about Grief Recovery and in the work that I do, and that’s why I started this podcast for the educational piece that you bring home for people that you’re not a pile of mess on your floor and when you are that’s okay. But then you’re honest about it. Like Be honest with yourself about that. And what you need and congratulations on staying sober nine years. That’s incredible. So what did it look like for you these past two weeks? What have you been doing?
Shandra Shultz 19:46
Well, the first thing that I’ve noticed is that there is a part of me that doesn’t want to let me have feel it like there’s still this part of me that’s like no, I don’t want to go there. It’s unsafe. Don’t feel that like don’t know and I’ve So I found myself like having this like internal battle with I’ve come to know, as my adolescent, because it’s my, it’s the adolescent or the ego self. That is like, no, no, I’m just gonna, we’re gonna skim over that we’re just gonna go and do whatever, let’s, let’s scroll on our Facebook, let’s do this and, and I’ve had to, like, really just hold space for that part of myself and say it’s okay to have these, this, this fear of feeling. But it’s, it’s feeling that’s going to allow you to not have to have fear anymore. Because once you allow yourself to feel the feelings, it’s gone. Yeah, it might come up again, when it gets triggered. And the more you work on it, the less it it hurts. That is true. And I truly believe they say time heals all wounds. Yeah, as long as you’re actually willing to acknowledge that that wound is there, and you’re willing to shine some light on it. Because if you don’t, then it’s just going to kind of sit in the shadows. And eventually, it’s like a tea kettle, it will tell you, it’s there.
Victoria Volk 20:58
I’m gonna piggyback that, because that’s actually one of the myths of grief is Time heals all wounds. Time does nothing but pass. So, but you alluded to, it’s the action you take within time. Yes, is what heals action at time itself. But the action, so yes, thank you for bringing that up.
Shandra Shultz 21:19
Yes, of course. Yeah. And that’s, and that’s so true. Because, you know, they say just like, I think about my mom, and she’s been single now for 17 years. And to this day, I love my mother immensely, she is one of my biggest heroes. But to this day, she still says that she’s married to my dad, she’s she’ll say, I’m married to a dead man. And like, that’s because you haven’t allowed yourself to actually feel the grief of what it is that lost, you got stuck back then. And there’s no judgment for me on that. It’s just the truth. It’s what she did. And I’m like, how, you know, living a half life. To me, the way that I’ve seen is like, she’s happy, but there’s still a sadness there. Because she’s never fully allowed herself to feel the sadness of that loss. And I’m sure that there’s much loss compared to more than just that. That’s just the most recent. And then of course, there’s what I went through, you know, in how she felt like, she lost me. So it’s, it’s interesting, because, yeah, time hasn’t healed that wound for her, because she’s not done anything with it. She’s just kind of, okay, it’s there. I’m gonna go, I’m gonna leave it there. And that little filing cabinet locked up.
Victoria Volk 22:44
And I ask how the communication has been between your mom and us. And during all these years of, you know, but you kind of were struggling yourself. But yet, you know, the, the ripple effect of that impacted her life, of course. So how was the the communication then around that?
Shandra Shultz 23:05
Yeah, so interestingly enough, there, there really was not ever a lot of communication around the loss of my dad. I didn’t even actually know much besides the fact that he had cancer, and he was dying. That’s all I knew. They never told me it was like, protect her, keep her safe. She doesn’t need to know this. But that in and of itself actually led me to rebel. Because it’s like, at 18 years old when you find out your parents sick, and they don’t want to tell you anything. And they say, oh, no, no, we’re gonna be fine. And then you’re seeing especially as someone who’s so empathic, like myself, I’m literally watching my dad and seeing him waist away. I’m like, No, he’s not fine. But why won’t you tell me. So, there was a lot of a lot of disconnect there. And we and when he did pass, we just kind of left it. Like, occasionally we would talk about him on a holiday, or something came up. But for the most part, we never really brought him up until last few years. last few years, I’ve talked a lot more about him. I’ve talked a lot more about my own grief. I’ve allowed my mom to know how I was feeling around things. And that has been probably one of the most healing things I feel that we’ve gone through because when I went through my accident, and she didn’t have the daughter that she’d grown up, no, you know, grown to know and all of these things. It really caused a rift in our relationship. And it took me to speak to the ripple effect. It took me actually going and doing the work on myself. And the more I showed up differently than she started showing up differently. And so now she’s a lot more open and the communication between us is amazing. And we don’t talk as much we used to talk every day like ours. However, when we Do talk, it’s meaningful. And we do spend time and though I do know that it’s challenging for her, because even to the point of like, when I told her I was changing my name, it was like, Oh, so you’re not that you you once were. And it took her probably about a year and a half to actually start not screwing up. Like she would call me by the name. She called me by for years. And then I’m like, Mom, this is my name. And then I let her I let it go for a while. And she would screw up and I’m like, Mom, this is my name. And finally, it was like, okay, and I and I told her, I said, Look, I’m legally changing it like, but it has, I’m honoring the me that I once was by using my first name that I was born with as my middle name. So it’s still part I’m still here. It’s just I’m different. I’m healthier, actually. Like, I look at the mean, before the accident, I’m like, Man, I was really unhealthy. And I was on, I was actually probably on the road to relapse. So, the accident really saved my life.
Victoria Volk 26:12
You know, in the last, I think it’s only been the last two weeks add has been years as the second story of name change that I’ve heard. Oh, wow. Yeah. And that was on another podcast, I had a guest by the name of Victoria Shaw, on my podcast. And on her podcast, she had a gal that does numerology readings. And she had changed her name. And had spoken about that and talked about the significance of, of our name of our birth, birth given name, and the self identity that we kind of have either a good way or a negative way. Yeah, imagine with life experience things. You know, we can change how we feel about our name. I happen to I actually changed my name to I didn’t change it, but I go by a different name. I was always Vicki growing up. Everyone always called me Vicki. Except when I upset my mother would be Victoria. When you know, the first middle. Yep, stay the whole name when you’re in there mad? Yeah, I go by Victoria now. And it just feels it feels more fitting for me. So I resonate with that idea of, you know, it’s almost like a coat we put on. So, can you share a little bit more about that?
Shandra Shultz 27:41
Yeah. So, it’s actually funny that you mentioned that like, how growing up you changed it from Vicki to Victoria, because growing up, I was Nikki. And then in high school, I was like, Nope, it’s Nicole. And then after that, I actually went by another name when I was partying. So like, I had two names. And then I went back to being a coal before the accident, and after the accident, I actually shortened it to an a nickname for Nicole Coley. Because it was like Nicole didn’t feel right. It just didn’t roll off my tongue and feel like who I was. So I was like, Okay, I’ll go to Cali. It’s really interesting. But then it just sort of shifted into Shaundra. And that’s when I took on Chandra Nicole. And it was interesting, because for me, it was a very, it was a very smooth transition it always throughout it, because now that I do remember why I would go by different names throughout time. It was just a very smooth transition. Like, even as a child, I never felt comfortable with Nicole, or Nikki, or any of that I hopped around spellings, all of that. So it just never sat with me. It was like, okay, and it’s funny, because my mom actually told me like, they were thinking about a completely different name before I actually showed up. Like, they planned out all these other names. And Nicole was not even one of the names. It was supposed to be Katrina. I’m like, well, I could have resonated with Katrina more than I could, Nicole, but okay. And it was but it was interesting, because when I when I my husband picked up really easily on calling me Shaundra um, and it was it was even, you know, even my friends, a lot of them have really just been, there’s some that still try to call me by the name that I was and I’m like, No, that’s not my name. Like I would appreciate it if you call it me this and it’s also funny because like, I get a lot of people calling me Shandra and I’m like, No, it’s not Shandra ich Andhra. But I knew like Nicole would have been a lot easier, right? Yes, exactly. It really was it was like um, and it’s interesting though, because at the beginning when when there were certain people in my life that I was not opposed to them calling me my former name or by misc. Missed that saying the name I use now. And then as time moved on, and I was really feeling more and more in my identity of Shaundra, it was like, No, I’m not going to accept anybody not saying that, right. So like, I’m going to, I’m going to correct you in a kind way, but I’m going to correct you and no, this is the name. And I also have reversed it. And I will always ask anyone that I’m speaking to, what would you like to be called? Because I can understand, like, not being called what you want to be called. It’s it to that effect. Actually, I recently just saw a post I made about two years ago about transgender individuals and their, their dead name versus the name they choose their choose. And I was like, why is it that we have such a problem calling people the name that they asked to be called? Like, why? Why do we have such a, and it is it’s about identity as we get to know someone as they are. And we just expect them to continue being that person. So whether they change their name, they, they just they realize that they are in the wrong body and are finally fully expressing themselves in the in the way that they want to be seen. Whatever it is. We struggle as a culture as a society with accepting the people knowing that they know who they are over who we think they are.
Victoria Volk 31:15
Yeah, a lot of projection.
Shandra Shultz 31:17
Oh, yes. And it’s so interesting, because I myself, I am a Celtic, pagan. And I look back on my ancestors, my Nordic ancestors and the Vikings and a lot of the the older tribes type. They didn’t choose names for their kids, they actually waited a couple of years to let their kids personality start to show up and then found a name for them. So, they would just call them cute nicknames. And then the kids got to choose themselves.
Victoria Volk 31:47
I think you also did.
Shandra Shultz 31:49
Yeah, I did. I did. Yep. That’s exactly what I did.
Victoria Volk 31:54
It’s almost as if, like, it’s this. You lived you. You experienced the life into your name.
Shandra Shultz 32:03
Yeah. And it came to me in a meditation. So it felt right. I was like, oh, okay, cool.
Victoria Volk 32:10
I love that intuition is, our intuition is Oh, is speaking to us.
Shandra Shultz 32:15
Yes, it is.
Victoria Volk 32:18
So, there’s another last, though, that you haven’t touched on yet that I know that you put in the information you sent to me? It is with your husband?
Shandra Shultz 32:32
Yeah. Yeah. So, he was in the military as well. And about four months into our relationship, he suffered a pretty big brain injury. He was playing for the military lacrosse team and took a 75 mile an hour bowl to the face. Now he had his helmet on, but it broke his helmet and still hit him and knocked him down. And it changed him. And he was no longer the man that I first met. And over the course of the last few years, it his personality has completely shifted as well. So he’s very much there’s there’s things that I’ve looked at him like, Oh, there he is. And then I look at and I’m like, but it doesn’t, it’s kind of like, it’s, it’s, it mirrors in a lot of ways my journey of how I came to be me, with him coming to be him, because we, we was probably five months difference between when I experienced my brain injury, and then he experienced his. So it was like, we were kind of on concurrent paths of healing. But we were healing in different ways. And it was, it was very challenging, because a lot of a lot of his trauma that he had not known about started to show up. And it really he he ended up going, I went from being his wife to being his caregiver. And I had to put wife on the back burner. Because he wasn’t the man that I mean, it didn’t feel good in any way to be in the role of wife with him when he himself was still very childlike. And thankfully, he’s recovered to a point that he’s not as childlike. There’s still times when he needs me to remind him because he can’t remember things he doesn’t know, you know, medication or me handling like doctors and things like that. But he has done a lot of healing, thankfully, to a point where we can actually start to be partners again. That was really I was I was afraid I was never going to get that. I was afraid that I had lost him forever. And that was just going to be one more grief that I’d have to experience and accept and continue to survive through.
Victoria Volk 35:01
But it’s still grief. Right? Because it’s not it. You know, in Grief Recovery Institute, we the definition of grief is the loss of hopes, dreams and expectations and anything we wish that would have been different, better or more so. Yeah. I mean, I’m very happy to hear that he seems to be healing. You know, it’s coming along, at the same time. Don’t minimize that. There’s still that, you know, you don’t want to minimize that. There’s still that grief there that. Yeah. What could be your what? You know, we don’t want to start we don’t know, stay stuck there either, right?
Shandra Shultz 35:39
Yeah, I totally get that. And I actually did for a while because I’m in the process of him having this personality shift. One of the things that shifted was he realized that he was polyamorous, and that he desired. While having a stable and loving marriage with me, he desired having other partners, not just sexual, but like emotional partners. And when he came out to me with that, it was literally, it like rocked my world, because I’m sitting here going, we had planned our life a certain way. And not only had I lost a lot of that, because of his brain injury and how he changed. But now I’m like, Is this even what I want? Do I even want to be with someone who wants to be with more than just me? Like, like, all I literally, I’ve said, I said to him so many times. You can’t tell me that. One of the things he used we used to say when we first met is that while we may have had firsts, we were each other’s last. And then after the brain injury, and he started to shift, one of the things he was like he actually I remember him saying this to me sometime last year after he came out to me about being polyamorous is he said to me, as long as I’m coming home to you, at the end of the night, that’s all that matters. I may experience my last call somebody else. But if I come home to you, and you’re the person that I end up, you know, passing next to your still, that’s me, and I’m like, okay, but no, because we said we were going to be each other’s last. We said we were going to do XYZ, we said we were going to do all these things. How can we do that now? It felt like I was losing us. And in a lot of ways I had because of circumstance. And so this last, and then of course with COVID, and everything, it was kind of like it was kind of a little miracle, because it was like, Okay, now you can’t do that right now. So, we got to figure this stuff out between us, and then get to a good place. And thankfully, I’ve used COVID for that for sure. To really help us like heal and get on a good path to where I’m like, You know what, I don’t feel a lot of the grief that I felt what I realized is he was so much like my dad and I was kind of looking at him to like fill the role of what I missed growing up. And he filled it and then all of a sudden it was gone again. So retriggered all of that like traumatic. There one day gone the next. And so it really took me on this journey of having to dive really deep inside myself and find out. Okay, what’s showing up for me? Where’s this coming from? How can I? How can I heal this so that it’s not affecting me daily, day in and day out? And I can actually have the life that I desire living.
Victoria Volk 38:23
So how have you done that?
Shandra Shultz 38:26
Oh, so a lot of parts work a lot of inner child work. A lot of energy healing, too. As I’m sure you’re familiar with being a Reiki Master it energies, me everything and realizing that there was so much stuck, like I had so much and actually in 2020 is when I fully remembered all of my life. Like it was it was just like in an instant click. And it was like, Okay, it’s like and I know that it wasn’t an instant. I know it was it was all the the six years of healing that I had gone through all the energy work all the inner child work, everything. But it was just like in a moment. It’s just like one day it just poof, it made sense. And I was like, Oh, okay. I’m here now. And I remember now that I remember I can actually like, it felt like coming home to myself. It’s really like the best way to describe it. And it was like, Oh, now I understand. Now I have context. It’s so funny because it felt for the first. The first six years it felt very much like being a child. Because I couldn’t remember I like I would have things come up and I was like, I don’t have any context about this, what the heck. And then I’d have to go in and do some healing around it. And then I’d find the context. I was like, oh, okay, and that was like, kind of like updating old computer programs. It’s like, hey, now I understand why that’s happening. Let’s let’s update this. This is really what’s going on in the year 2020 Or the year 2021. So, it’s been a lot of that.
Victoria Volk 40:04
It’s like you have this loose thread in a blanket, and you just keep pulling and pulling and pulling and pulling until everything, you know, and, or likewise, it’s like you keep creating over and over just evolving yourself and recreating yourself. And yes, its path to self discovery is really what it is. And I say it all the time. But grief is cumulative. And it’s cumulatively negative but but healing. Healing is cumulatively positive.
Shandra Shultz 40:39
Oh, yes
Victoria Volk 40:40
Every step you take everything, you’re doing all the modalities, you stack them up, you bring them together. And yeah, like very much like you like it’s this. I’ve had stuff come up that I didn’t even know through doing Reiki work. It’s in a phenomenal addition to my life. I it found me I had no idea what the heck it was. Even had a session and I went and got certified Reiki what level wanted to and then I went from my master, and then I added on Corona. And it’s been, yeah, it’s been a phenomenal addition to my life, as I see in yours as well.
Shandra Shultz 41:28
And to that part, it’s so funny because what I realized in my mom, when I went and got Reiki certified, I did the full, one two and master teacher in a six-month, timespan, probably less than that because you need the 21 days, I literally only let myself do the 21 days in between. And then I went and got the next one. And one of the things is my mom actually said to me, she’s like, well, you realize as a child, you used to do this, you’d go and you put your hands on people and tell him you’re sending them love and light. And I was like I did. So I was a healer as a little kid. Except back then I didn’t understand that. It wasn’t my energy because I was always depleted. I was sick so much in my childhood. And I never understood because they would get these random weird things happening. It’s like, what is she? What? How is she getting so sick? Her body is completely fine. And all of a sudden, she shows up sick. So it’s taking on other people’s stuff. I didn’t realize it. So, when I became attuned, I was like, that was like, Oh, I can let it all go. It’s not mine. It’s source coming through me. Okay, that’s cool. So, it really it started me to allow me to start letting things go that weren’t even mine that I’ve been holding on to for decades.
Victoria Volk 42:37
Same, same, same, same. As a kid I needed so much sleep I cuz i There are so many pictures of me I don’t have a lot of pictures but like three fourths of the pictures I do have which fitness ziploc sandwich bag or me sleeping. And there’s actually one of my most favorite pictures of me and my dad, he was already sick or had been diagnosed already. Because he it’s he was staged for when they found it. But there’s a picture of me in my like Doctor garb I have a blue mid my Garfield long pajama gown and I got my blue cab and my got rubber gloves on. And I’m like, on my dad’s back, and I’m like, like playing Doctor trying to fix them. You know? So your your share there. Really, that sparked that memory in me. So thank you for that. But so in looking in what you do, like so I’m imagine like myself, everything you’ve experienced has been just like the stepping stone. It’s like the next natural progression to the work that you’re doing. Yeah, I would say the work that I do as well. So, tell me more about the work that you do.
Shandra Shultz 43:50
So recently, I’ve actually been trying to find a way to like, meld it all together. Because it feels like it’s like I spread it out too much and like and of course that’s the that’s my finger brain going you need to have specifics. Everybody’s got to know exactly what it is you’re doing. And then I think about like my intuitive self and like now you don’t you don’t they don’t need to they you can describe it as best you can and then let them experience it and then it goes from there. So I’ve recently started shifting what I what I was originally calling my coaching sessions are now I called Soul birth sessions. And so what I consider myself is to be like a spiritual midwife to help women transform their selves into the life that they truly desire, like the life that they really want rather than the life that they were told that they were supposed to have. Like I remember growing up, you’re going to grow up you’re going to go to school, you’re going to meet someone you’re going to get it and you know get a job meet someone get married, have kids and die. That’s it. It was like that doesn’t sound very fun. That’s like not a very fun existence. Like what? So, in uncovering what I truly wanted to do for myself and be of service to others and really find my truth and my authenticity, I was able to start seeing that I actually am really good at guiding others to do that, too. So that’s, that’s what I’ve been working on, I’ve been working on creating this soul based business where I actually guide others to do the same type of stuff that I’ve done for myself.
Victoria Volk 45:25
I love that. So, what is giving you the most joy other than the work that you’re doing now, what is giving you the most joy and hope for your future?
Shandra Shultz 45:38
So, for sure, I have to say my daughter, even though it’s been challenging, because they themselves came out to me as non binary, and as a lesbian in the last couple of years. So, shifting and like realizing that this is what my mom went through with me is like what I’m going through now with my daughter, and yet having such joy and such happiness around the fact that this, you know, teenage kid feels good to be able to be themselves. Like, that gives me so much joy that I loved them enough that they felt comfortable to truly be themselves. Like I, as much as my mom loved me, I didn’t feel comfortable being myself growing up, I had to hide who I was. And to know that I have this kiddo that I’ve actually done a really great job raising, and that they feel good about being themselves enough to the point that they chose me to be the one that came out to first. And they’ve always been just like, amazing. And so that really brings me a lot of joy to know that I’ve done a really good job as a parent. And then being able to be creative. My family is just part of that joy, of course, but then being able to be a creative individual. I’m very artistic. And I love to express that art in whatever ways show up for me. So that’s, I’ve been really focusing on a lot of that creative finding that creative joy again, so that I can actually live from that place. Because I for a very long time. I didn’t live there. In fact, I just kind of shut it down.
Victoria Volk 47:21
I love that that’s something which to get back to more of his just this creative play. Just following the curiosity, right, I talk about that with a lot of friends I have is just follow the curiosity wherever it leads you. And I love that you brought up about your child and how Yeah, I mean, to create that space for someone else to really be themselves. And obviously, your wonderful example of that of living your, your truth. And we really want to be in this world what you want to what you want to give to others. What were what is one tip that you would give someone who’s hurting today?
Shandra Shultz 48:13
One tip, I feel like the the biggest thing is, don’t judge yourself. Allow yourself to feel the grief, like in however it shows up. But also, don’t live in that like find a way to move through it like it’s okay to me personally, whenever I have a loss, specifically one word, someone who’s passed on, I tried to focus remembering all the good times that I had with them, because it’s those good times. They don’t want us to mourn them, they want us to remember them. Like that’s what I feel is like being able to bring the joy that they brought to you to continue to hold that and focus on that focus on the joy of having the of what it was such a joy to have them in your life. Like I think about my cat like, yeah, it was sudden, and I hated it happening. But then I think about all the joy that He gave me. And he wouldn’t want me to sit there and spend hours and hours and weeks and months and years ruminating on the loss of him. He want me to live life for him. And to that and that’s actually something that my husband and I promised each other when we got married is that instead of how so many people would say I’ll die for you. Live for Me. So we promised that we would live for each other. So if anything ever happened, we wouldn’t stop living we would continue on in their honor. And so that’s how I that’s that’s the advice I would give is honor that. Honor and honor the relationship you had with that person by remembering all the joy.
Victoria Volk 50:02
Can I follow that up with the relationship you had with your father then if he if it was kind of a challenging relationship? How did you do that, then?
Shandra Shultz 50:14
Oh, well, it took me a while I had to I it’s funny that I look back on it now and go, Oh, I was living the stages of grief over like many, many years, because I was angry for a really long time. And then, after the anger, I started realizing, like, how am I living my life to honor him? Like he wouldn’t? What was it that he wanted me to do in life to achieve in life. And so I started living it from that point of view. And then once I started doing the work of the spiritual work, and really working with meditation and things like that, I went in, and I actually called on his spirit, and I, and I had conversations with him, and how proud he was of me, and how, you know, just how I’m living life from this joyous place. And that’s all he ever wanted. That was able to allow me to see that everything that happened in our human existence, when we when we pass and we go into the spirit world, that it’s gone, it that we leave that like we leave it at the door just is like, Okay, I’m gonna check that here. I don’t need it anymore. I’m in spirit form, everything is good. You know, so it’s like, I was able to go in in the neck and talk to him and really have those connections and, and find out how much he truly loved me and really feel it in my, in my everyday life of like, seeing little signs from him that, you know, I look and I see Oh, my mom. And I used to say when, after my dad passed, we saw crows everywhere. So seeing a crow, I’m like, Oh, my dad’s thinking of me today, smelling his cologne, which I how I remember the scent of his cologne. 17 years later, I have no clue. I haven’t smelled it in 17 years. But if I’m in my room, and all of a sudden they smell it and like, Oh, my dad’s here. He’s watching over me. He’s making sure that I’m okay.
Victoria Volk 52:14
You make me think of I just got turned on to this Netflix Docu series called Surviving death. Have you heard of it? Haven’t? You are speaking the language of what that’s all about? Wow. It’s a six part Docu series, I think you’d be interested in watching that. But there’s yeah, there’s one that’s actually called Signs. But I almost wonder sometimes this is just my own inner thought pondering that if we had like a very conflicted life, in our human form. Is that somewhat still resonant in our soul form, or spirit form? And that’s one thing that you made me think of, too, is I heard you talking like, and I don’t know, this is, like I said, this is just me, my inner dialogue is that he’s I think that’s why sometimes spirits, because I do totally, absolutely believe in ghosts. And that sometimes they just have to make their presence known, or they just they cannot move on in that they got something unfinished, you know?
Shandra Shultz 53:33
I totally agree with you on that. Ever since I was a little kid, I was always very sensitive to the spirit to the spirit world. And there are definitely times when if it is a, like a highly traumatic situation that they passed in. Or even if it’s something where they feel a lot of grief, because they were leaving their family, and they didn’t want to or whatever, I find that it’s those highly emotional, whether it’s the, quote, good or bad emotion, but it’s the highly emotional times. That’s when sometimes the spirits will get stuck. And I feel like those that have been able to what’s the word I’m looking for? Like, they don’t have any unfinished business, like when they talk about it on movies and things like that, like, oh, he has unfinished business. Yeah, like sometimes we do. Like we, if we if we, like my best friend who felt you know, full 40 stories to his death, like he had a lot of unfinished business. Like, I’m pretty sure he was not ready to go. And so I’ve, you know, I’m sure that there’s times when people feel like, Oh, hey, like, I can actually feel His presence and it’s more of like, not not in a way of which I’ve like I’ve moved on, but more of like, I’m kind of still here. Like, I’m like, there’s something that’s unfinished for me. And I feel like as someone who I consider myself a medium, I know that if you can, sometimes those people those spirits just need to let happen. If someone has a beard goal is to be their voice and let them know. I’m okay. I loved you. I meant to tell you this, I never got to and then the moment you that’s done, then they can peacefully go on to their next existence. I truly believe that to be the case.
Victoria Volk 55:15
Yeah, I think this is a like, veered into a topic that we could probably talk for hours on probably. Yeah, it’s really deep. But I love deep conversation. Yeah. So what would you say overall, that your grief has taught you?
Shandra Shultz 55:35
To live
Victoria Volk 55:36
That’s good.
Shandra Shultz 55:39
Thank you, I truly feel as if I was given a second chance. And so many of us don’t get that chance, at least not in a, like we have an accident. And then well, we don’t get that chance anymore. So I’ve really taken this as, what do I want to do? How do I want to live my life now so that I don’t worry, you know, when I get to that point, and finally being old, because I know I’m going to live to a very right, right old age, I don’t want to get to that age and be like, Man, what did I do with my life? When I look back on on the me that I was before the accident, and I realized I had kind of come to that place, I was very, because I was so traumatized with all that I had gone through because of everything, I had just come to a place where I was like, You know what life isn’t good. I’m not really ever going to have what I want. It was just a very depressing, very down dark place. And I didn’t think it could ever change. And it did. And I’m grateful for that. Because what it did was it woke me up to realize that I was so stuck in all of the grief and the loss and that I didn’t focus on what I actually have right in front of me, which was this amazing life that I could literally choose to do anything with. So long as I allowed myself to, to do so. And part of that in order to do that is I had to heal all those all that was keeping me stuck in that in the darkness. And now that I’m like, Oh, I see that. I choose to say I want to live a different life, I want to be happy, I want to, to experience everything that I’ve set out to experience and it doesn’t know it, you know, I just I want to live. And then fine. It’s kind of funny, because that actually goes to the point that I used to make to a lot of people I said the meaning of life is to live it. Like everyone wonders what the meaning of life is. It’s to live it to experience it to to enjoy it. That’s the meaning of life. That’s what I’m choosing to do.
Victoria Volk 57:45
Amen. Can I asked one more question? And I don’t know that we completely answered it. And I want to share anything good that you have to share around the topic. And it goes back to your addiction. And what was the was there a defining moment? Or what was the one thing like? I guess 12 years is a long time. So what was the one thing or was there one thing that got you out of that?
Shandra Shultz 58:21
So, it’s funny because during those 12 years, I did try to get sober numerous occasions, and I even stayed sober for you know, six months to a year sometimes. But then I’d always have something come back and smack me in the face. And what it was at the very end, I remember this it was I had gone to a I’ve been sober for a year almost. And then I met some friends and my mom ended up I was I was away on a cruise that I had been wanting to go on my entire life. I was a huge Backstreet Boys, man, I will not deny it. I’m I will own it. And I got to go on the cruise. The last day of the cruise, my mom slipped and fell and broke her knee. And I my daughter had been with her and when my mom when my mom called me and said to me, are you sitting down when I was in the airport and told me like the first thought was I thought something happened to my daughter. And she was like, No, she’s fine. And then it was like, okay, and she’s like, it’s actually me, and it triggered back everything. All of that great for my dad or being like my mom or like almost lost my mom all these things and I was like, I’m going to be alone. And so I lost the sobriety that I’d had up to that point. I started drinking and doing drugs again with some friends. And I went out on New Year’s Eve, and I woke up probably 12 to 13 hours into the new year. And I didn’t know where I was I didn’t know the persons that I was in. I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything. I later came to find out that they had actually went joy riding with my car, like all of these different things. And I was like, I sat up and I was like, What the hell are you doing with your life like you? We’re you’re sabotaging yourself, you’re like you’re creating more of this existence that you say you don’t want because you’re afraid of dealing with the truth. And the truth is you’re unhappy. It was like, Oh, okay. Well, if I’m unhappy, what do I knew need to do in order to get happy, and I got really quiet. And I heard myself say, you need to get sober. I heard this voice and it sounded like my dad, honestly, saying, you’ve got to grow up. You can’t be a kitten. You can’t continue to live in this victim, this victimhood that you’ve created for yourself. You need to be there for your daughter. And it was in that moment when I realized like, what am I I did to my daughter, inadvertently by being an addict what my dad had done to me by being a long haul truck driver, he left me alone for seven years, or over seven years. I rarely ever someone that was doing the same thing to my daughter that my dad had done to me. And it was in that moment that I realized, what am I doing? My creating another generation that’s going to go through what I went through, is that what I really want to be doing, I realized how unhealthy I was, and that I couldn’t keep doing what I was doing. Like it wasn’t healthy, I wasn’t healthy. And if I wanted to actually be there for my daughter, and and make 30, I had to get sober and like actually get sober and completely walk away from everything that allowed me to continue to be there. And so I did I actually picked up I had not I have not touched a single thing since that day. And I walked away. And I said, Okay, let’s, let’s figure out how we’re going to heal. Let’s, let’s head straight into the darkness now. But let’s do this in a constructive manner. So that’s what I did.
Victoria Volk 1:02:24
Thank you for sharing that and congratulations again.
Shandra Shultz 1:02:30
Thank you. And I think the thing that’s most important if I can, if I can is to say that I look at myself now. And I look at the the girl who wasn’t sober. And I forgave her. And in fact, I told her, I was proud of her. Because I kept myself alive. For 12 years, when I when there was a part of me that just wanted to give up and die. I found a way to survive until I could learn to thrive. And that is so important is it’s okay to not it. It’s okay to feel like you can’t go on but find one thing that can help you to get to the point and just keep following those little, those little breadcrumbs and you’ll get there, but have grace with yourself. Like I had to have grace with myself and be like, You know what, I look at all of these things as they helped create who I am. And I’m happy to be the woman that I am today. And I wouldn’t change any of it no matter how traumatic or how, you know, lost, I might have felt it got me to where I am now. And I’m grateful for that.
Victoria Volk 1:03:41
I just really appreciate all that you’ve shared because I think it really just comes back to there’s one common theme. There’s one theme that I’ve kind of picked up on among all conversations that I’ve had, especially when it comes to addiction, and I don’t care what the vices is shame. Shame really keeps us in the dark.
Shandra Shultz 1:04:11
Oh, definitely. And the thing of it is what I also what I didn’t realize is that that shame is what led me to gain all the weight that I gained multiple times because I was afraid of feeling. So I felt shame in that I was feeling all these things. So how do you do it? You just shove the shame down. So I’m just gonna push you down. And that that was the thing is addiction if like you said it doesn’t matter what the addiction is because you can be a workaholic, you can be an you know, a drug or alcohol abuser. You could be an emotional or any other type of disordered eating. Like there’s so many different gambling all of these things. They all have the same root is that we don’t feel worthy of something and that’s where that shame comes in. I feel ashamed of I’m not worthy but we’re all worthy.
Victoria Volk 1:05:02
But what happened? Right? What happened? what’s at the root? What happens? Trauma is what happens, Grief is what’s left.
Shandra Shultz 1:05:06
Yes, exactly. And it’s getting to the core of those roots. And saying, okay, you know what, I’m not going to, I’m not going to get down on you for feeling that way, I’m going to acknowledge this, this is what it is you feel this. And let’s honor that. And then let’s move on. And let’s, let’s find a way to heal the root. Because if we don’t heal the root, we can, it’s like putting a bandaid. And that’s what I did. I went from, I went from, you know, from drugs and alcohol, to sex, to eating, to gambling, to working to all these different things, because I was afraid of getting to the root of what was what was really pushing me. And then once I got to the root, it was like, Oh, well, that’s not so bad.
Victoria Volk 1:05:55
What we resist persists. And where our focuses is, where we are, and what have been some of the modalities other than energy work that you’ve that have helped you. And I really think you said, you think, I think you said meditation as well, which I’m a huge proponent of too. Anything else?
Shandra Shultz 1:06:18
So, I’m I, I’m a big fan of parts work, and specifically the modality that I that really kind of brought that around to me because I had a background in psychology and just forgotten some of it. And so it’s called the adult chair, I’m actually being certified as a coach in this modality. And what it is, is she basically broke down where things sit, whether it’s in the inner child, the adolescent or the adults well, and for the adult, it’s really the healthiest version of myself and the healthiest adult I can be versus a unhealthy adult. Because when we’re unhealthy adults, we’re really sitting in like adolescent and inner child stuff, just showing up with these masks. So being able to learn that I had these parts of myself that I needed to heal and going in and being able to, like update it like an old program and update the programming was really a beneficial modality for me. I also became trained in Akashic Records work. And then I have used other types of modalities that I’m not trained in, but that I’ve gone in and sought out like cranial sacral therapy, which was absolutely pivotal for really getting to be able to release some of the blocks. In my in my brain specifically, they use cranial sacral therapy a lot for head injuries, because it’s just, it’s a great modality to be able to really release some of the stuckness that happens. And the and the imbalance that can actually happen internally. I used the Emotion Code. So I’ve done some Emotion Code sessions, which I found were really empowering the Reiki energy, I think those were the main things that I did just a lot of the healing modalities and even Chinese medicine like finding holistic doctors so that I could heal my, what was showing up is like, actual physical things and find is it actually my body having something happen? Or is it emotion connected to the body? And it’s showing up that way?
Victoria Volk 1:08:38
Yes, and I don’t know, I’m sure I see this all the time in my Reiki sessions, where it’s grief manifests, and it manifests in what we do, how we behave, and how our bodies show up for us. Yeah, we almost feel like sometimes that we’re at battle with our bodies. Really, it’s upstairs, in our minds. Its where the battle really is.
Shandra Shultz 1:09:08
And that is so true. And that’s one of the biggest things that that I’ve learned is that if we ignore the emotion, it will, it’s like a little kid, it’s gonna keep poking at you and it will find a way to get your attention and a lot of times because emotions can get stuck in the body, it’ll show up it’ll manifest itself in the way of like pain or you know, so a lot of people who have for example, fibromyalgia, they if they go and do or which is I forgot, I’ve done tapping, EFT Emotional Freedom Technique. And so if you go and you do that type of work, where you’re actually allowing the, the you’re speaking it but also letting the body move it. Then a lot of times they find Oh, I don’t have that pain anymore. Or that thing that was bothering me if I haven’t been speaking my voice and I all of a sudden have, you know, thyroid issues. And I start speaking my voice and doing healing and then suddenly the fibroid issues gone. That’s what happened with me was like, okay, you know, so that’s it. It does, it shows up in our body in weird ways. And we were like, oh, okay, cool.
Victoria Volk 1:10:19
All connected.
Shandra Shultz 1:10:20
It is and I think as as I’m sure you knows a Reiki practitioner This is one of the first books that I found was Louise Hay is the the body heals itself. And she talks about that and that that connection of the body, it’s showing up physically, when it’s an emotion, or a feeling.
Victoria Volk 1:10:37
Yeah, she actually healed herself of cancer of a female, like believe uterine, one of the female organs. Yeah, that was actually one of the first books early on, I think, like in 2014, that I had come across my healing started, when I really started to dig into my own healing. And it creates ripples as, as, you know, our healing of ourselves creates ripples in our lives, as I know.
Shandra Shultz 1:11:08
It does, not only in our lives like or in our current everyday, even going back in generation ancestral, like, I’ve done some ancestral work with different modalities of ancestral, like, I think there’s like generational healing is one of the ones I did. And, like, when you heal yourself, you are literally healing up to seven generations back and seven generations forward. So, it’s like, okay, there’s there’s the incentive right there to heal yourself. You don’t just heal you, but you heal your family.
Victoria Volk 1:11:40
Yeah, yeah, that’s the thought I wanted, I think of, to come back to was when you take the time to invest in yourself and in your own healing, you break the cycle? Yes. Right, that cycle of that generational generational learning, which we talk about Grief Recovery, too. It’s all generational. Because we resort to what we know. And when we understand ourselves better, and we’re living in integrity with ourselves. changes everything.
Shandra Shultz 1:12:15
Yeah.
Victoria Volk 1:12:16
Is there anything else you’d like to share?
Shandra Shultz 1:12:18
No, I think that’s it. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate you taking the time on me on.
Victoria Volk 1:12:24
Absolutely. I love this conversation, I think. Yeah, there’s, we could talk for hours, I’m sure of it. I’m going to link to everything that was mentioned in the show notes, the different healing modalities where can people find you if they will reach out to you?
Shandra Shultz 1:12:43
So, I have a website called Igotthewoo.com
Victoria Volk 1:12:49
Clever, clever.
Shandra Shultz 1:12:53
It came about in after my my certification program, like we were on our way back. And she actually like I happen to say I got the wool in my friends. Like that’s you that is so you, that’s what you need to use. And I’ve just ran with it. So, um, and then I am on Instagram at Celtic healer Shandra. And I’m on Facebook is healings of light and love. So, we need to the backslash healings of light and love. And that’s my business page.
Victoria Volk 1:13:31
Perfect. And I will link to those as well. Thank you again, for being here for sharing your stories of many stories of loss. This is a beautiful example of all the different types of loss that we can experience in. I mean, you probably feel like you’ve lived like three lifetimes.
Shandra Shultz 1:13:56
Or more. Yeah. Yep. I say like I’m like a cat. I’ve got the nine lives and how many do I have to have?
Victoria Volk 1:14:04
Yeah, and to I just want to bring up to the just acknowledge the loss of your cat because hat loss and miscarriage are two of the most minimized losses. And, you know, regardless of the relationship of who it is, or what it is, there was a relationship there, and it deserves to be honored. And so that’s, thank you for bringing that up, as well as one of your losses to talk.
Shandra Shultz 1:14:34
Yeah, I’ve had a lot of pet loss so I’ve kind of learned to move through it but it’s also one of the things like I I’ve come to realize that I would not want to miss out on any of that. It’s just like every every moment that I have with all the different people like I would never want to miss out by not having that experience. And so it’s like in the moment it’s really sad to lose them. But that’s why I think back on all like the night with my cat I had them too. Nine years like I have nine years I can be by my side and just loving me and all that. I focus on that rather than focus on the loss. And that allows me to say, You know what, I’m not going to stop myself from letting another animal come into my life in the future just because I’m afraid of the loss because with animals of course, you know, we don’t get as much time as we get with humans, usually.
Victoria Volk 1:15:23
Thank you so much, again, for being here. And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.
Grief Stories, Grieving Voices Podcast, Takeaways and Reflections |
Takeaways & Reflections | The Evolution & Ripples of Hope & Grief
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
In this episode, I dig more into the topic of faith and spirituality that Lizzy and I touched on in her episode. Communication and support were a huge influence on her grief, whereas, I share how my experienced differed, despite both of us having the exact same losses which occurred in the same order, too.
From Margo’s episode, I talk about how hope greatly influences our outlook. Also, because it hasn’t been talked about a whole lot yet on the podcast, I wanted to talk more about grief in the workplace that Margo and I discussed in her episode. With Covid-19, there is plenty of grief in the workplace. I describe various reasons why our personal grief impacts the workplace as well – plus more!
Resources:
Thank you for joining me today on another episode of grieving voices. Today is Episode 36 takeaways and reflections from Episode 34, with Lizzy Flavin and Episode 35, with Margot folks. And Lizzy’s episode was about the loss of her father, and how that shaped her life and her faith. Maybe even deep interfaith, I can’t speak for her. But that’s the takeaway of mine that I got. She had also lost her uncle and her grandmother. And we had a very similar experience in that way. losing our grandmothers than our fathers, and then an uncle. And so she reminded me a lot of myself, actually, you know, in that it wasn’t? Well, it was quite a long time ago that I was in my early 20s. In some ways it feels like just yesterday, but another as it’s like that was three lifetimes away or ago, three lifetimes ago.
But yes, Lizzie is 22ish. And she lost her dad when she was 12. Also to colon cancer, as I lost my father, when I was eight. And so we talked a lot about what that experience gave her in terms of. So we talked a lot about faith in her episode. Faith was a huge part of her life growing up and a big thing that her father instilled was as an important thing in their family. And she felt like she needed to continue his legacy and has found her own path and is still walking that path, of course. But it’s led her to seek answers for herself. And one of the ways that she has been diving into faith is how different we can experience faith, how many different experiences there are of faith and the separateness that exists in the world when it comes to faith. It just made me think of as I was hearing her talk during her episode, it’s this thought of even when I was a kid and all my life, I would just say can’t we all just get along? Like can’t we all just look at one another as human beings, because that’s what we are. It doesn’t matter where we’re from, the languages we speak, who our God is, who we believe our God is, what the color of our skin. You know, we’re human, we’re just all human. And if we all felt the exact same way about everything, there would be no use for humanity. We might as well all be robots. And so it’s in this difference. I feel that there is an opportunity to see inclusion. there is opportunity to see difference with respect. And no, Lizzy’s exploring why those differences in faith in particular exist. She’s actually going to school for religious studies. So I’m very interested to see where that path takes or over the years.
Independence Versus Dependence
Another thought that came to my mind, in talking with her and after and after, when I edited her episode was this idea of independence versus dependence. And, you know, when we’re children, we rely heavily on others, for our security and for safety, and the essentials of life, really, food, clothing, shelter. But there’s also those needs that often go unmet, that aren’t really considered. And I mean, kids don’t come with a baniel. Oh, if they did, but they don’t. So there’s emotional and spiritual needs as well. And we come into this world and into a home where there are certain beliefs about everything. And I can have an identical twin, and we can be separated at birth. And we can, although we come from the same womb, it is the home in which we are raised that will determine because we, there is a possibility.
And I do believe this wholeheartedly, that our past does not have to determine our future, although in so many cases it does. So with that being said, you can have two identical siblings who grow up into different homes and experience lives that are completely different. And it’s based on the beliefs that helped shape them in the homes in which they are raised. I’ve even said that to my one of my kids not long ago. You know, even though even the political party in which most people say they are a part of is that because you were raised in a home that believed those things? Or is it because you’ve found your way on your own, and challenge those beliefs that you were raised with and forged your own path, and your own thoughts and your own beliefs and your own feelings? Because so often, I think we just accept what has been taught to us, whether it’s grief, or whether it’s how we deal with grief, or whether it’s about religion, or political views, or our views of wealthy people, that’s a perfect example to have, you know, we can grow up in a home, where it’s, there’s a lot of lack, and, or there’s a lack mindset. You can even have a family that’s I mean by, by all accounts on paper, should be doing pretty well but are up to their eyeballs in debt and might even have gambling issues, or you know, these other aspects of life, or grief, that infiltrate every other area of their lives, like addiction does or like grief does. And that has a direct relationship to your money, probably how much you have, how you view it, how you spend it, how you save it, and who you give it to? And how you hold on to it as well, of course.
And so what grief recovery has done for me personally has helped me to see what thoughts and beliefs were mine and which ones weren’t. Which ones were those that were passed on to me that I learned no longer served me. This has been greatly true in the case of money. You know, people might say money doesn’t grow on trees or which it doesn’t, I assume that’s not a lie. But you know, wealthy people are just arrogant and evil people, you know, and money is evil. And money is the root of all evil, which is a very common belief that’s often passed down. And so people that really take that on, as their belief, live that out in their lives. And if they believe that money is the root of all evil, they likely have a problem holding on to it. This is the perfect analogy for grief, because what we believe about grief, and our faith is directly mirrored back to us and reflected in our lives. And how we process grief, or our faith, and how we look to our faith, whether we have it at all, whether we have group, whether we have faith at all. And I didn’t for many years, unlike Lizzy, I didn’t have that.
A Conversation of Faith & Spirituality
There wasn’t the conversation, first of all, you know, we stopped going to church. And I had to go to get confirmed. That was pretty much the only reason why I went to confirmation class, although I never went to church, I went to confirmation class, so I could get confirmed, because that’s what you did. But I wasn’t a practicing church goer. And to be honest, I wasn’t living in integrity with myself, because I blamed God for my life circumstances, and what happened when you know the loss of my father. And that was the last place I wanted to be. And so every time I had to go to confirmation class, and I had to listen to these things that I didn’t really fully believe. That was living up in out of integrity with myself. And it took me probably it took me another eight years, before I would kind of come back or before I’d come back around to the idea of faith and religion, or anything of the sort. But I came back around because I, I really desired to understand, I desired to understand where that disbelief came from. I just I really needed to go within and figure that out for myself. And then discover what was true for me, what I resonated with, and how I wanted that to be a part of my life moving forward. And so unlike Lizzie, I had I did, I did that on my own. But she had, thankfully for her.
And if you’re listening, I hope for you to a support system that has open conversation about issues like this, that has open communication about faith. But the interesting thing that I shared with Lizzy and we got to talking about was spirituality, and how I view spirituality a little differently than I do faith. And spirituality to me is this deeper connection that takes your faith even further. It embodies the sin without believing. And yeah, I think just makes the whole experience of faith and more deeper in our process. And spirituality means different things to different people. I do feel like spirit. Like the spirit within me is in the likeness of God. I feel like we all are a spark of the Divine. And because I do believe that we are all made in his likeness of pure love and light And it is grief, my friends that easily easily dims that light. And we tend to. Yeah. I think the darkness and the gray kind of overpowers the light until we reach out until we put our hand out and we cry out for help. Whether that be spiritually, whether that be faithfully whether that be emotionally or mentally to someone who can support us, and to guide us, and to reflect back to us what we can’t see from with inside the jar. Right?
So one of the greatest lessons, I think, in the conversation from what Lizzy and I talked about is, is that you follow the follow the nuggets of interest in faith and spirituality wherever they lead you. Ask deeper questions. Don’t be afraid of being wrong, either. I think we just are so conditioned to find the right answer, do the right thing. And who makes those rules? what’s right. And I think the only truth about that it’s what’s right for you at the time, and that will evolve and that will grow and that will change over time with your grief with your faith with your spirituality. We are an evolutionary process. So I hope you check out Lizzy’s episode, Episode 34 never a fatherless daughter. It was a wonderful conversation. I love to bring lots of different perspectives of loss. I believe she was the first younger guests that I’ve had. So I really enjoyed our conversation and I hope you check it out.
Losing a Son to Brain Cancer
The next episode I like to share in this takeaways and reflections episode it was with Margo folks who in her episode lessons from my beloved son Jimmy, she had lost her son in 2014 to brain cancer after his battle. After he battled it for eight years. I feel like we covered so many good topics around grief, you know, as a loss, as a parent, but also in her work that she does as a consultant for corporations and companies to bring more grief education and awareness to the workplace. And we talked a lot about that she has a website called find your harbor. And it’s also salt waters, the name and she got the name from a quote that reads the cure for anything is saltwater, sweat, tears or the sea. And I just think that’s so beautiful. And that’s true. We can go out in nature by the water and and feel this connection to the earth and I don’t know there’s a rhythm to the ocean, you know, it goes in and comes out. The tie goes in and goes out and if fell in love with the beach when my husband and I went to Hawaii, which feels like forever ago. But I fell in love with the with the ocean when we were there. But I absolutely love going to lakes and just sitting by the lake. You know, having a cabin out in the woods and being by water is just soothing tears actually have a chemical within them. That is it releases a chemical that is good for us. It is cathartic and sweat. Of course when we move our bodies and we sweat releases endorphins, it releases these feel good chemicals that help us to feel better.
And so yeah, the cure for anything is saltwater, right sweat tears or the sea. I just can’t imagine what that loss is like, and I don’t pretend to know, and I will hopefully never know. But I can’t imagine the grief that her son may have felt too, even though she said how hopeful he always was. And it was his hope that helped them hold on to their hope. And that was such a gift that he gave them when we’re younger. We have this spirit about us. Maybe that isn’t a kind of fades over time as we go through life. It’s that young, spirited thing. It’s this energy that we have in our youth that kind of often fades with life’s challenges and life struggles and if your life was otherwise wonderful experience up until a diagnosis of something like this lady that her son had had perhaps that’s why he had the hope he had. But obviously that’s what kept him alive for so long to his hope and the determination of his loving parents.
And just speaking with Margo. She talked a lot about the research and the investigating that she did on our own time to in support of the doctors in Jimmy’s health care team to make sure that he had the best possible chance of something that may work. I just really enjoyed my conversation with Margo. What I also found interesting too, around Margo’s loss was that and she really described this well was the fact that she really hadn’t experienced a loss even remotely close to a young person in her life, much less obviously, as close as her son, but you know, everyone in her life was living up to or into their hundreds. And so I think when you’re you, when you’re blessed with that sort of experience of grief of this, this long life that you have to look forward to, that you think is, this is just how it is like, this is how my experience will be, you know, I imagine it was felt like a train that hit her, when she realized this would not be the case for her son. How traumatic that thought alone, I’m sure was just.
Workplace Grief & Communication in Workplace
So much wisdom in Margot’s episode. And in talking about workplace grief kind of comes back to the conversation I brought up with Lizzy and that our beliefs shape, how we view grief and our experiences. And we carry all kinds of beliefs. As I mentioned, you know even about money, but beliefs about our nation or state or community, our workplaces or lifestyles, faith and faith leaders, political systems, economy, healthcare systems, and even about the goodness of humankind, beliefs about COVID-19 and the government response. And like I mentioned wealthy people, and you know that we have to work hard for money and you know, versus money as a neutral resource. It’s neither good nor bad. And all of these have been challenged, obviously, to through COVID-19, and even beliefs about other ethnicities. It’s, you know, the social bias. And it is all these beliefs that we have that shape our lives. And it’s on the job, it’s in the community, it’s on the news, and it’s at home. You know, there’s something called to the sandwich generation, you know, it’s the people that are homeschooling and working and caring for an aging parent. There’s the boomerang generation that’s makes up 29%. of third 25 to 34 year old live with their parents in a 2012 article, that was only in 2012. Now imagine with COVID, that numbers probably much, much higher. So it there’s a lot of grief out there, and a lot of workplace grief because we bring our grief and our lives to the workplace.
And so your co workers grief is your grief because it impacts you to. Our grief creates ripples in our lives. Every area it touches in our lives. I know this to be true. I believe it with 100% of every fiber of my being. Your grief is impacting every area and facet of your life. You don’t connect the dots. But it’s the truth. How your body reacts to it, how it manifests in your body, how it manifests in your life. If you are shopping, gambling, going to the bar every other night, you know picking up a guy or a chick or just really feel unsettled and who you are. It’s this restlessness, this irritability, maybe even anger this low grade anger. We can’t function at 100% of who we are at our core, we much less knowing who we are at our core when we have all this emotional stuff weighing us down. A 2002 grief index study that was conducted by the grief recovery Institute Educational Foundation measured sources of emotional pain ranging from miscarriages to pet loss and economic impact. And what was found was that hidden grief causes US companies more than $75 billion annually that’s billion with a B as in boy. And current update is reflecting more than 100 billion in productivity increased errors and accidents due to reduced concentration and focus and of which death of a loved one $37.6 billion that is costing our, that costs US companies. Pet loss alone is 2.4 billion death of an acquaintance. 7 billion financial trouble 4.6 billion family crisis 9 billion divorce or marital woes 11 billion Americans mourn the death of 2.4 million loved ones every year. And counselors interviewed more than 25,000 grieving people and almost all said that their job performance was affected. I’d actually given a presentation of grief in the workplace during 2020. Yeah, during 2020 for COVID.
And it just blows my mind how companies are dropping the ball when it comes to grief in the workplace. Think about where you work. If you had a loss of a loved one recently, during COVID, or otherwise, did your manager ensure that someone reached out to you? Does your manager even know who you would feel comfortable being that who you would feel comfortable hearing from? Because here’s the thing, too, we may not feel comfortable with everybody reaching out to us because maybe that relationship doesn’t, isn’t in the place of that emotional exchange, right? This is where communication is so important in the workplace. You know, if you’re close to someone, you have had emotional exchanges of you know, share details of your personal lives, the mere, perhaps the one to reach out to that person and check on them. But sometimes, that person doesn’t want to hear from everybody. And that’s okay. But not saying anything isn’t the right answer either. And that’s where the managers really need to understand their people, they need to have this open conversation and dialogue to understand, you know, as a leader, who is under their wing, as a company, as a team, things like that. I think that’s where a lot of companies are dropping the ball, you know, someone experiences a death, you’re expected to maybe take a week off at the most and then come back and be at your best self like you were before.
Some Of The Things You Can Do To A Griever
And people expect you to behave as you did before, right? And because people are so uncomfortable with grief in general, because we’re all taught these myths that I have an episode on the myths of grief, go back, it’s an earlier episode. We are all taught these things, we are uncomfortable with other people’s grief. So that’s why we don’t bring it up, especially in the workplace. You feel like it’s not appropriate, it’s not your place. But here’s the thing. If no one’s reaching out, think how you would feel and you don’t have to approach them. You can send a card, you can send a thoughtful service, like hello fresh, you know, send them a subscription to so they don’t have to worry, you think about food for the next week. Don’t send flowers, send something practical. Is that a mom? Do they have kids? Because they need help with carpool? Is there? You know, do you have a resource? Do you can you clean their house, I mean, there’s so many things we can do to help those people in our lives that we see every single day. But yet, we’re just afraid, we find ourselves afraid. And again, it comes back to communication among the manager and the team members and ensuring that we’re watching out for one another. Maybe you haven’t taken stock of what your company or your agency provides you as far as support.
But understand that recovery comes by learning to make a series small positive changes and in our attitudes, and then our behaviors. It means getting better not getting healed. It’s an ongoing process. And it comes sooner with positive actions and it comes sooner. Also with appropriate support some ideas for workplace grief is to validate and acknowledge the grief and avoid the myths statements and validate with I can’t imagine that’s what you can say I can’t imagine and identify and name the loss, whether it’s tangible or intangible, and you help name the feelings. They’ll tell you the story, but they want you to hear how it feels. So give them a voice and be a heart with yours. help them make different choices. Now again, if you have that sort of relationship, you know, we don’t want to come in like we’re the expert when we haven’t processed and did any of our own work but let the griever take the lead. But also don’t not say something, you know, because it’s almost the unsaid word that hurts just as much and If you’re the griever, and you find yourself in a situation like this, how is this situation changing your life? specifically? What are the elements of change at hand? Because grief makes us feel like we don’t have a choice to. So identifying where those changes are taking place.
Take 1% Reponsibility
And then what challenges do these changes present? Are there certain areas where you need support? Are you having these feelings of guilt, which so many of us have that we need to wash that phrase from our vocabulary? Because guilt is an intent to do harm. But what are your choices you can feel powerless, but you don’t have to, you can’t change the big picture. But you can take 1% responsibility for how you respond. So look for and brainstorm choices, get creative, evaluate your boundaries, that boundaries are huge when it comes to grief when making even small choices helps you to get some of your power back. And especially in the workplace. They got to ask for what you need. And I have to mention the grief recovery method because it works. We learn in three ways seeing hearing and doing in grief recovery involves storytelling. It’s this meaning making, that so many of us are looking for as Grievers. It gives voice to undelivered communications. It’s systematic, it helps organize our thoughts and our feelings. It’s based on health education theory.
And that’s an action based program. It’s the show me how, you know, people tell you, you know, you should be over your grief by now. But they don’t tell you how, how do you get over it. And then there’s so many people to that will challenge that idea of that you can get over it. And it’s not about getting over. It’s about recovering from the emotional feelings of being incomplete. So that you can create new positive memories without being drugged back into the past. And that doesn’t matter if the person has died. Or if you’re working on a relationship with someone living because many times it is the relationships with the living that also causes the most grief.
P.S. So I hope you check into this evidence based program that I talked so much about, it changed my life in March of 2019. And it’s continued to change my life ever since in a way that I really can’t even articulate. It’s just opened so many doors for me, because it’s helped me come back home to myself. It’s helped me to drop the backpack of rocks that I had been carrying for so many years, but in all the years in between. It affected every area of my life. And I know it’s affecting yours, that your grief is affecting yours. Even if you don’t want to admit it challenge that belief that your grief is not impacting your life today in all areas. Thank you so much! And journal on that. And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.
Cancer, Child Loss, Grief Stories, Grieving Voices Guest, Grieving Voices Podcast |
Margo Fowkes | Lessons From My Beloved Son, Jimmy
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
In this conversation, Margo shares the lessons she learned from her son, Jimmy, as he battled brain cancer for eight long years.
His cancer took his life at the young age of 21. What is a little different about Margo’s share is that, prior to her son’s death, loved ones close to her who had passed had all lived long lives; close to or in their 100s.
Her own father had passed away, also peacefully, in his home. The loss of her son jolted her beliefs around death and also taught her the importance of having hope to the very end.
Margo also shares some practical things that others did that helped her family get through the years of treatments Jimmy went through and after he died.
We also chat about the importance of grief communication in the workplace, and how, through Covid, it’s even more important to acknowledge the struggles of those with whom we work. Also, to recognize that even happy workplace situations can cause grief, such as promotions.
- This episode is for you if you’re not sure how to support someone you know who is going through a challenging time.
- This episode is for you if you want to hear wonderful insight into how, as parents, they communicated and updated Jimmy’s progress with friends/family.
- This episode is for you if you or your company could use some insight into the topic of grief in your company.
Mentions:
Connect with Margo:
Victoria Volk 00:00
Thank you for tuning in to grieving voices. Today, my guest is Margo Fowkes. And she is the president of on target consulting, where it’s an organization that helps leaders create a more compassionate culture by speaking openly about grief and loss in the workplace. Also, after the death of her son, Jimmy in 2014, Margo created saltwater, a blog, an online community that provides a safe harbor for those who are grieving the death of someone dear to them. Thank you for being here. Margo. We’ve connected online socially, prior to today. And and so I’m meeting for the first time virtually.
Margo Fowkes 00:43
Yeah, well, thank you so much for having me. As I shared with you offline, I so enjoyed listening to my friend, David Bartley, get into his conversation with you. And so it was, it was thrilling when you said that you wanted me to come on the show like this?
Victoria Volk 00:59
Absolutely. He recommended you and a friend of David’s is a friend of mine. So happy to have you. So, let’s begin, then, what brought you to doing the consulting work on target consulting, in the work that you do, which I absolutely love, by the way, because I actually gave a presentation to my employer. It’s a international company that I work for corporate, and you know, it was just about grief, because actually COVID and all of this, you know, everything that everyone’s experiencing, and it got good feedback. So I really love that you provide this service for for leaders and places of employment. So how did you tell me the story of how you found out how that work found you, I suppose.
Margo Fowkes 01:52
So, I actually started my consulting back in the 90s, right after my son Jimmy was born. And I did it because I didn’t want to go back to work full time. And I wanted the flexibility of being able to work from home, my husband runs sales organizations, or run sales for organizations. And so he travels a ton. And I wanted something where it was flexible and local. So, I started off consulting to government, because I had come out of government. Right when I had Jimmy, and I didn’t like it, I just found that I was doing these projects. And it was hard to get the person who would hire me sometimes to move on the work that I was doing, it was a lot of marketing and business development kind of work. And so I took some time off when my daughter was born in 1997. And I was really struggling with what to do. And a friend of mine said, you know, you really love the consulting part of it. It’s the clients, you need to switch what you’re like the content of what you’re providing, and who you’re providing it to. She said what you really love doing. And what you’re really focused on is creating a positive environment in a workplace. And she said, So, work on that, consult on that speak on that. So, I started with one topic, which was how to be more positive in the workplace. And then over time, clients would ask me to do other things. So I started doing strategic planning, I started working with boards of directors, I started doing some executive coaching and it just kind of expanded as I went. And one piece of my practice has always been around working with companies who’ve done layoffs and helping them rebuild the team after the layoff because before I went, went into government work, I had worked for unisys Corporation, which was a big mainframe company at the time. And I had been through three layoffs with them. And the first one took our little office of 75 people in Sacramento, down to 50 in one day, and it was incredibly traumatic. And of course, it was far worse for the 25 people who’d lost their jobs. But what I learned through that was that it’s really traumatic for the people who stay to because you feel guilty that you still have a job these people are gone you’re picking up extra work and and the company at the time wasn’t very good at providing any sort of support around that it was like okay, well you have jobs now there’s extra work let’s all get back to work and and the idea was you sort of like you know, you’re supposed to pick up your spirits and, and go on. And so when I started doing the consulting work, I got hired to come in and work with teams who were in the situation that I had been in, and I didn’t use the language of grief and loss at the time, because I hadn’t been through my own losses yet. But I found that when I went back to the consulting after my son passed away, that I really saw that connection that this was a perfect Found lost even though someone hadn’t died. And then once COVID hit all of a sudden now there was much more talk about that in the workplace. And so employers and CEOs and senior leaders were much more open to looking at it through that lens, which is a big shift. But an important one, because as you mentioned, you know, with doing your presentation, there’s so much loss in the workplace that happens, even when it’s when it’s happy things like your manager that you love gets promoted and gets a great new job. But all of a sudden, now you have a new manager. And even if you like that person, you’re still missing the person who’s been promoted. And so, there’s just there’s all those Now granted, that’s not something where you need someone to come in, necessarily and coach you through that you work through it on your own. But I just have found that there’s so much intersection between those two worlds in a way that I never saw until after in until after my son died.
Victoria Volk 06:00
Well, I think that’s where the communication piece is huge. And organizations, you know, as far as well, this is what’s happening, you know, to make it a community experience, where you can talk openly about it right and share openly about it like, you can not like the person that’s maybe taking that position, or you can like them, it doesn’t matter either way, like you said, there’ll be grief about you know, especially if you love that previous manager. So, I love that that work. found its way to you and like how it evolved over time. And I just think there’s so much need for it, so much need.
Margo Fowkes 06:45
Oh yeah, absolutely. It’s I was at my college reunion a couple years ago, and I was connected with someone that I had grown up with and then gone to college with and he was sharing that his sister had passed away of an overdose. And he said, you know, everyone in my work environment, new people sent cards, you know, people reached out, they’re very supportive. But he said, I went back to work, and nobody said anything to me about it. And I have found that that’s actually not uncommon that people and it isn’t through bad intentions, people think, Okay, well, Victoria is back, and I send a card, and she knows that I care and that I’m really sad. But I don’t want to bring it up at work, you know, because maybe she’s not thinking about it right now. And I don’t want to throw her off, or what if she cries and we’re in a meeting and I don’t know how to handle that. And so it there’s this kind of cone of silence that goes around people who are grieving at work and and they need that opportunity, oftentimes to talk to, to talk about it and have it acknowledged, and it may not be with everyone, they absolutely not, but they need at least one person that they can go to when they’re having a hard time and talk about it. And I think a lot of times again, it’s you know, managers and leaders don’t always understand that it is in fact that in one way, that’s simple. And so, the tendency is to just is to stay out of it to just feel like you know, it’s just a landmine, I’m just not going to bring it up. And I might say to her occasionally, you know, are you okay? Victoria, like Is everything all right? But I’m not really going to go there because it’s just too It’s too scary. And I don’t want to do the wrong thing.
Victoria Volk 08:27
Right? It’s a personal problem where like you said, they’re afraid to say the wrong thing. Or, you know, what I find too, is that so often people, you know, you’re given this timeline of time off, when you, someone close to you, it’s like, four days a week, at the most. It’s like, okay, you’re back to work, let’s let’s start cracking, you know, get back to the way it was, you know, and so that’s where that culture, I think of not saying anything, when people come back to work after a loss. You know, because that person, that’s how society has trained us to be so then you presume there must be okay, I’m not going to bring it up. Yeah, it just creates the just the lack of communication and this indifference to it really just feeds into all the myths that we talk about in grief recovery, you know, grieve alone is a big one. And that’s what many people do. I just I love that you do bring this education piece to the to the workplace. Like I said, I think it’s so needed, especially COVID, like during COVID. Now, how has that changed for employers who maybe have an employee that has lost someone like for me personally, like I work remotely. My whole department actually works remotely. We always have. And so you know, I had a colleague lose a loved one recently, it was her mother. You I sent a card and but it’s it’s, it’s really hard now during COVID, when you’re quarantined when so many companies have moved to remote, you know, operating their business remotely? How do you create? Can I ask this, that you have a recommendation for this? Like how managers can handle that, like how they can bring more community to someone who’s maybe have a loss, when we’re all over zoom? Right?
Margo Fowkes 10:30
Right. Exactly. Oh, it’s so much more complicated, because you can’t check in in that same sort of informal way, right? You can’t, like wander by and stick your head in and say, hey, Victoria, you know, how are you doing today? And, and or, or you can’t see somebody in a hallway and think she looks sure eyes are red. I wonder if she’s doing all right, maybe I am. And get that prompting, right, we’re on zoom, we have our little boxes, you know, particularly if it’s a team meeting, and there’s 30 of us, you know, all on the call, it’s hard to tell if I look down, am I taking a note? Am I checking my phone and actually not really paying attention? Or am I upset by something, and it’s really difficult to tell. And I think you said the magic word earlier, which is it’s about communication. It’s about checking in more. And I think in this case, if you’re talking about someone who’s had a had a death, that it’s finding the person in the organization that grieving person is closest to or most comfortable with, and having that person check in along with the manager more frequently. Because one of the things I’ve heard is that sort of the flip side of the knot checking in not asking how people are not offering to adjust a workload or help out in some way. The flip side that people have said is, you know, you meaning me, need to temper what you say about the checking in because I might not want Joe to check in, I might not like him that much. And so it really has taught me to say it needs to be people that that other that the person who’s grieving wants to connect with, it’s not a blanket, let’s have everybody check in and make sure that this person is okay. You might send a note you know, or an email, which is fine, or send a card, whatever. But when it comes to a like a, you know, a face to face or a phone call, it needs to be somebody who really knows that person, well, where the person is comfortable saying, Yeah, I’m really struggling. And I need some, maybe I need some help, you know, they might actually need to maybe see someone to talk about it. But they also might need to really have their workload adjusted, right, like being on the phone might be really difficult. And they don’t know how to tell their manager, look, I can’t make sales calls right now. Because then the fear is, of course that the manager is going to say, well, then you’re not really doing your job, where they probably wouldn’t, they would probably say, Okay, well, let’s have you work on the proposals. And we’ll ask someone else to pick up the workload on the phone calls for a while until you’re able to get back on the phone. So I think it’s just about checking in much more frequently, and probably in multiple ways. So that it’s it’s not always the phone call. Because you can’t have that informal checking in it’s it might be texting and emailing as well. And again, it’s the manager and the and then this this additional point person who should just do it pretty regularly right now, because it is more isolating. I think we’re all struggling more in general. And for someone who’s also had a death COVID has just made everything so much more painful and so much more difficult because of how isolated we all are.
Victoria Volk 13:47
And I want to highlight too one thing is that the relationship, that I like that you brought that up that it can’t just be anybody and don’t make it like a blanket check in because it should be someone that probably has an understanding of that relationship as well. Because one thing that we take for granted sometimes or we make the assumption that, well, if you know, she, this person lost their mother, well, they must be really close, it must have been a really loving relationship, which is not always the case. It could have been a very tumultuous relationship. They may not have spoken in five years. We don’t know that right? Usually, we don’t know that. So the importance of it being someone close to that person who maybe unders has an understanding of the relationship is one thing too that I just want to bring up that should probably be taken into consideration as well. I think we say the wrong thing.
Margo Fowkes 14:45
Exactly. And as you just brought up and know really well his context is so important, because you also get those losses where it’s, you know, an ex-husband, for example, or an ex wife, and people think well, they’re divorced. Right. I mean, I’m sure they’re sad, but it’s not that big a deal. But it’s there can be so much more to that relationship. It’s it, whether whether it was completely contentious, and they were both very happy, you know, or it was the right choice for them to split up, or whether they’re, you know, one party didn’t want the divorce, and the other one did, or whether they just couldn’t really live together, but they remain close friends, there’s so much nuance there. And, again, I’ve just learned so much over the years about the fact that context is all important. It did it really you cannot make a judgement based on the late the box that the loss fits in, you need to know a lot more, because it can be a devastating loss that on paper looks like it wouldn’t be a cousin, for example, passes away and we think oh, distant cousin, like, I’m sure they’re sad. But how close could they be? In my case, my one of my cousins is like the sisters that I didn’t have. And so, you know, it really does vary.
Victoria Volk 16:01
Exactly. And that’s what we talk about in grief recovery, because every relationship is unique, because we’re all individuals, right? So exactly the same loss in one family, everyone’s experience is going to be different, everyone’s perception of the relationship is different, therefore, how they perceive that loss will be different as well. So exactly why we kind of hash that all out and brought that hot highlighted that because in the workplace, it’s huge right now. So, thank you for your contribution to humanity in that way. So, you did speak of that you got into this work, before you even had any losses, and then kind of COVID. And you mentioned the loss of your cousin. What? Take us back to the beginning, like what what have been your losses, this is the whole premise of you being my guest is that you share your grieving voice. So, what is your grieving story?
Margo Fowkes 16:57
So, my first significant loss was actually my cousin Seymour, who was like a second father to me. And his wife, Barbara is my father’s niece. So, my parents and Barbara and Seymour were best friends. And Seymour died in 2002 at the age of 82. And so again, this is where context is everything right? You look at that from the outside, and you think, well, at two, he had a long, full life. But at the time, my father was 101. And so it was devastating to me to lose see more because he was healthy and vibrant. And he developed what we think with some kind of like an occult cancer, they were never able to diagnose it. But he declined fairly quickly over a short period of time. And so, it was a loss that we didn’t really see coming, given the context of my family. And so it was devastating to lose him for me. But again, there’s that you know, what you get when you lose someone that age is you get a lot of, well, they had a long full life and so I did I you know, my son was really devastated because he really loved Seymour a lot. And so I tried to do the whole stiff upper lip thing, right? And and nobody better and it was like, okay, but you know, we had a long, full life, Jimmy would say, Yeah, but Papa is 101. And so he got the fact that this was, you know, we were hoping for a lot longer for his birth, this received more. But at the same time, there was the kind of like, intellectual part of me that just kept saying to myself, that this is what happens. He’s older, you know, you need to just like Buck up and be sad, but kind of, you know, move through it. And then the following year, my dad passed at the age of 102 and a half, as sad as I was, in that case, it’s hard to I, you know, I don’t even know if argue is the right word, but kind of argue for more time. I don’t know who you’d argue with, but the universe, I guess, because he lived this amazing life. He was 60 when I was born, so I to have him for that long to have him see me get married to know both of my children. It was it was just, it was hard to argue with in a way. And so, I was sad. But at the same time, I was so incredibly grateful to have had him for so many years. And so that, you know, that was my early experience to loss and it really in a way, unintentionally sort of set me up, which is the idea that you live to this kind of ripe old age. And then like in my dad’s case, he passed away at home, barely peacefully. And and I thought well, okay, well so that’s how it works, right? It’s like, I just was incredibly naive when I look back on it because I had not had experience with out of order loss Bay. Basically, at that point, and then three years after my dad died, my oldest son, Jimmy was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2006. And at the time, he his prognosis was good, we thought we would be able to just have the tumor removed, he would go through radiation and chemotherapy for a year, and then everything would be fine. And, unfortunately, that was not the case, because the cancer came back. And he eventually did pass away. And that was the that was the loss that really threw me into that whole world of grief, because of course, it was my son, it was so out of order. He was 21. And, you know, I don’t it’s not to say that you can be prepared for this, as you know, it’s like the loss knocks you sideways no matter what. But I think in my case, because of my prior experience with loss, I was more naive than most about the way loss can affect people. And I’ve since learned from doing this work, of course, that it’s so much more prevalent than I realized in so many unfair ways. But at the time, when Jimmy was diagnosed, I just had no idea.
Victoria Volk 21:14
My mama heart goes out to you, I have not experienced a loss of a child, I cannot even fathom what that does to my mother’s heart, other’s heart. So how did that change the work that you did? Or that you were doing at the time? And how much time did you get off? You know, like, I suppose you’re working for yourself, though, too?
Margo Fowkes 21:38
I was. And it was, it was interesting to watch kind of the dance, if you will, that my husband and I did relative to work, we were blessed to find out that we work well, we always thought we worked pretty well as a couple, both as parents and just in general as a good team. But it was really amazing to sort of stand outside and watch how well we work together with respect to Jimmy’s diagnosis and his eight-year cancer journey. So, when he was first diagnosed, I was we were both working. And my husband decided that he was in between jobs, he works for startups. So it’s not uncommon for him to leave one when it’s either sold or goes public. And then he’ll usually take a few months off, and then he’ll start the next gig. So, he was just about to take a new job when Jimmy was diagnosed with cancer. So he turned that job down and just said, You know, I don’t want to go back to work right now. Because my work involves travel. And I do not want to be gone, I want to be able to be home so that if he doesn’t feel well at school, he can call him call me I can go pick him up, you know, so he decided he took, I think he took the full year off that Jimmy was in treatment, and I continued to work. And then we had one year of 92 scans every three months where we thought Jimmy was cured and was going to be fine. And so he went back to work, I continued to work. And then in 2008, when Jimmy’s cancer came back, we decided that Dan would continue to work and that I would step away from my consulting practice, because the thing with Jimmy’s kind of brain cancer is there are 300 Kids diagnosed with it every year. And of those kids, I’m not sure the exact number that statistically they expect to survive it. But it’s it’s somewhere between 60 and 80%, depending on whether the cancer has metastasized or not. So, you can think about how small the numbers are for the kids whose cancer come back. So, the treatment options are much more experimental in the sense of they don’t have huge populations to try out these different protocols. And so, there’s the doctors do their very best to stay up on all this stuff. But it is an overwhelming task to kind of figure out what’s happening all over the country, even all over the world in research and clinical trials when you’re dealing with such a small population. And so, I started working with Jimmy’s doctor who we adore, doing extra research and reaching out to doctors and bringing him information sometimes because of the if it was a smaller trial, he might, you know, not necessarily either have the bandwidth to contact the lead doctor on it or even sometimes know about it just because there was so much information available. And so, I did that during the time that the next six years as Jimmy was dealing with his recurrences. And then after he passed away in 2014, coming back from his celebration of life, my mom got sick and over the next year, her health declined and then she died the year. After Jimmy did, so I wound up again staying not working during that year that she was sick. And I don’t know that I could have any way. I mean, I wasn’t really in much condition to try to put my consulting face on and, you know, go do work. I can’t imagine that I would have worked anyway. But then after mom died, I was the trustee for her estate. And so that took about a year and a half to resolve, you know, to go through just a lifetime of stuff. I mean, she she passed away in the house I grew up in also. So, I mean, my parents had everything from the time they first got married. And so it was an enormous amount of stuff and paper to go through, too. And it wasn’t until I emerged from that, that I thought, Okay, I think I might be ready to start working again. And it was around the time I launched salt water. And I went, and I relaunched my consulting practice around the same time, basically.
Victoria Volk 26:02
When you could finally breathe, right?
Margo Fowkes 26:06
Yeah, exactly.
Victoria Volk 26:07
I’m curious how you helped your son navigate the grief he had around his diagnosis. I mean, eight years, that’s a long time to have like this. Yeah, to deal with this diagnosis. How? How does parent even help a child navigate that? The grief that they have? Did he you know, I’m just really curious about that.
Margo Fowkes 26:33
You know, Jimmy had this amazing, hopeful attitude, where he just always went into things thinking, well, tomorrow will be better. And so like, I remember asking him once on a long walk, because we used to walk a lot just to get an exercise. And also, because it was a, there was something like, it reminded me of when parents talk about being in the car with their child, and all of a sudden, the child will start talking about something, I’m sure you’ve had this experience, as if somehow being contained in those walls of the car, it’s safe to tell mom about whatever the thing is. And so, we would take long walks together. And I asked him once about his scans, and whether or not he worried about his quarterly MRIs. And he said, no, he said, I don’t think about it until I’m doing the scan. And he said, and then I think about it a little bit until we meet with Dr. Nicholson later that day or the next day. But he said, even if the news is bad, he said, I know that you and Dr. Nicholson and dad will figure out what the next best thing to do is, and then we start that, and then I don’t think about it again until the next one comes up. And that’s just basically how he navigated those years. And I know that I spent nights thinking about the things that were lost in terms of his balance and his and his hearing and his cognitive abilities, he slowed down because of all the treatment more towards the end, because of all, you know, of all the radiation and chemotherapy it had, he had this beautiful ability to focus on what was left and, and really find joy in that. And if he spent periods of time mourning what was last, he didn’t really share that. And it wasn’t until the very, very end where he started talking to a social worker, where he expressed any interest in really wanting to see someone to kind of work through what he was going through. So he I mean, I it sounds crazy in one way that this you know, 1315 1820 year old kid carried us but, you know, we’ve we fed off of his hope as much as he fed off of ours. So, he is yeah, it was amazing to watch him navigate it.
Victoria Volk 28:51
I think even just in grief in general, grief, terminal diagnosis, if we don’t have hope, what do we have? So that is the greatest lesson to that. I think young people, they’re more able to live in the present moment than us adults. You know, we’re all up in our heads all the time. But a beautiful gift that he gave you.
Margo Fowkes 29:14
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.
Victoria Volk 29:18
So, in the loss of your mother then happened. So, during that time, what are some things that you found helpful to you? Because I actually I don’t know that I’ve had anyone on the podcast yet who has been through a similar situation of a, you know, long diagnosis like that of a loved one. What are some things that you found helpful to you during that time, or unhelpful that people would say to you?
Margo Fowkes 29:48
So helpful first, the biggest thing was meals. And I got really good advice from a dear friend of mine, who’s a very long-term survivor of metastatic Breast cancer. It when Jimmy was first came home from the hospital, and we were facing six weeks of daily radiation, and then nine rounds of chemotherapy. She said to me, I know you and I know that people are going to offer to help. And you’re going to say, No, I’m good. I’ve got this. And she said, You need to just shut up and say thank you. And she said, you’re going to want you’re going to want the help. And sure enough, my closest friend in Portland, where we lived, Kristen, Kristen said, look, I’m going to organize meals for you. And my initial instinct was to say, No, we’re fine, we’ll go to radiation, we’ll come home, I’ll make dinner. Oh, my gosh, what a blessing she organized meals for us starting it started every day, and people were bringing us food as if we were a family of 12 instead of a family of four. And so we switched it up to every other day. And it was just a godsend, because we’d get home around five or 530, from radiation after Jimmy Bennett school all day. And there would be food waiting on the front porch for us. And it was so incredibly helpful. And so yeah, one big piece of advice that I always give people who are who are dealing with, you know, a cancer diagnosis cancer treatment situation, or even after a loss is it food is just a godsend, so that you don’t have to spend time in the kitchen, preparing it, whether it’s just for your family, or for people who are coming to the house to either be with you and the person who’s in treatment or after a loss. It’s incredibly helpful. I would say that was the biggest thing. And then the other thing that was incredibly helpful was with our daughter, Molly, who’s four and a half years younger than Jimmy, our goal was always to keep her life as normal as we possibly could. And so she was aware, of course of what was happening at an kind of an age appropriate level. But we wanted to be sure she could still go to soccer practice and softball practice and spend time with her friends. And so having someone help with carpool was really helpful. And and having places like my friend, Kristen’s daughter on Elisa is my daughter’s best friend. And, you know, knowing that I could call Kristen at a time and say, can you have Molly over? Jimmy’s really not feeling well, you know, can we get her out of the house? That kind of help is also invaluable? Because this it’s so difficult to, to think in advance about the siblings when you’re in the middle of this. And it’s it was like, you know, Kristen is like Molly’s second mother. And so it was such a beautiful partnership in a way that know that there was this other dear friend who loved my daughter, like I do, who just would would pick up the slack would get her places would have her in the house. Molly was like, you know, her fourth child. So that was really helpful as well.
Victoria Volk 32:55
And that is the gift of friendship, right?
Margo Fowkes 32:57
Absolutely.
Victoria Volk 32:59
You know, friends are there, thick and thin. And that just brings tears to my eyes, because it’s what a gift, you know, people in our lives that, you know, you don’t realize until you need them. Right?
Margo Fowkes 33:14
Exactly, exactly. Well, and that’s with something that when people ask me about it, you know, when we meaning people who want to support someone who’s grieving, I always say go back to the simplest things. It’s food. It’s carpooling. If you’re close enough, and the person feels comfortable trusting your child, you know, with you. I remember right after No, I’m sorry, Jimmy was dying. And we had people coming through the house. And after some relatives left, they left us with this with our counter just covered with dishes and newspapers and my friend and came over to walk our dog, which again, another thing that was hugely helpful, because he’s cooped up in the house all day with us. And so, she would drive over and get him and take him for a long walk. And she walked in the house, and she looked the kitchen counter, and she knew we had more people coming in that afternoon to stay with us. And she said, I’m gonna clean your counter. And I said, no, no, the dog really needs a walk it, please, that’s more important. I’d love you for offering but you know, I’ll get to it later. And she said, Okay, so I heard her leave with the dog. And I went back into Jimmy’s room where he was with my husband. And I came out like an hour and a half later, and the dog was back in and had cleaned the counter. And I have never forgotten that because it was that the beauty of like seeing what needed to be done. And knowing that sure, I could do it, but that would be 30 minutes away from my son. And so she just cleaned it for me. And it’s just it was amazing. And so that’s why it’s like people I think sometimes are looking for like the more complicated answer to how I can be supportive and it’s that it’s cleaner counters, walk the dog mobile Wanna make a meal? And just do it just just show up and do it? Because if you’d asked me well, even then and did say, I’ll do this for you, and I said, No, it’s fine, I got it. Right. And that’s and is actually the same friend who told me when Jimmy was first diagnosed to just take the meals, except the help, and don’t try to do at all.
Victoria Volk 35:21
And that it’s just the logistics, right of being a mom, the logistics, like everyday stuff that, you know, the to do list never ends, there’s always going to be something on the to do list. And so someone can lift that burden of the to do list. It is your right, it’s the simplest thing. Exactly. take the initiative and remove those duties, so you can actually be present with your loved one. Right? Right. What was the best piece of advice you ever received, then after? after he passed and with your mom, and you know, after you could kind of breathe and reflect like, what are? What were some of your greatest takeaways?
Margo Fowkes 36:08
So, I have a couple answers to that, I think the best piece of advice that I got was to keep writing. Because when Jimmy was diagnosed, I didn’t set up a caringbridge page for him, like a lot of people do, I would send out email updates. And I would I tried to have the email updates match Jimmy’s outlook. So in other words, I would convey the truth of what was happening at any given time. But they were always hopeful, there was always you know, even as we got closer and closer to the end, there was always you know, another treatment to try another option, more life left to be lived kind of thing. And I don’t mean that in a sort of Pollyanna way. Like it wasn’t that, but it was it was just Jimmy’s outlook. And that’s what I was trying to capture. And so, I did a fair amount of writing through those. And there were several people who said, don’t stop writing. And I did for a while because it was just too hard. But then I picked it back up again. And so, when a friend of mine suggested that I start writing about child loss, that’s how saltwater came to be as because she said, you know, we The world needs your voice basically, to write about this. And, and that’s I think, because I had done that writing and I had had people say to me, even though I hadn’t actually taken the advice to keep writing during those first couple years, it was always in the back of my head so that when that friend said, you need to start writing again, you need to start writing about child loss that I was I was ready, if you will, to do it. And so it was it was really good, because I don’t know that I would have had the ability to see the impact of what I was writing if people hadn’t told me about it. And so, I don’t know that I would have had the idea to to create saltwater had somebody not said that.
Victoria Volk 38:07
Wonderful. That’s the ripples, the ripples.
Margo Fowkes 38:11
Exactly. And then your other question about kind of what I would tell other people, one would be to write because I do think that whether you write to share it or you write on your own, I do think it’s really, really powerful for people. But I also know that not everyone, you know, not everyone likes to write. And for some people, it just it isn’t appealing to them, it feels more like homework or, you know, something that they just don’t want to do. But the other the other piece of advice that I have, if you will, is that I think in when Jimmy first died, what I wanted most was to connect with other parents who’ve lost children. Because I was so devastated and so guilty as a parent for not protecting my child, even though intellectually Of course, I knew I couldn’t stop Jimmy’s brain cancer. But there’s this like, feeling and so I think as parents, that we should protect our children no matter what. And so, I had guilt. I mean, I had I was, you know, I had moments of anger where you know, the whole Why, why did this happen to us. And the thing that was the most comforting was to connect with other parents. And initially What I wanted was parents who were kind of in the same state that I was in, you know, where the loss was fairly recent, and they were fairly raw. But what I learned was that it was so helpful to connect with people that were farther down the path than I was, because even though I didn’t really want hope or think that I wanted hope. At the beginning, it was so helpful to talk to somebody who who was 10 years past the death of their child and realize that that I could find a way to keep living and to make a life in the aftermath of Jimmy’s death. So, I think it’s really important to have not just the people that are walking with you on that grief journey, and they’re in kind of the same place, but to have people that are up ahead of you, to you who are shining a light and saying, Yeah, you will climb out of this pit, that you will find a way forward even without your son.
Victoria Volk 40:18
And that’s the hope, right? Hope bringers in our lives.
Margo Fowkes 40:22
Exactly, exactly. Yeah, I was just gonna say, and frankly, I mean, who else are you going to believe than somebody who’s actually done it? Right? I mean, people around you will say, it will get better, you know, that kind of thing. And it’s hard to believe them, you need somebody who’s actually who’s has found a way to do that.
Victoria Volk 40:43
And that’s with any loss. That’s with any loss that we experience in life. But I want to just highlight to when you talked about finding someone that’s maybe maybe further out from their loss, and they’ve, presumably have turned a leaf in their grief, I suppose. I just want to bring up that sometimes, you know, the support groups, and we talked about this prior to recording, but we talked about, like support groups in general, you know, we look for that similar loss, where we can sometimes then to get stuck in our story. And so, if we’re in a group of people who are all stuck in their story, there’s no progress, there’s no action, there’s no, where’s the hope then, right? If one is just coming week, after week, after week, and sharing the story, because we often don’t want to talk about how we feel. And that’s where I want to bring up when you talked about writing, many people don’t want to get into writing. And just because they might not be a big writer, but for many people. What happens when we free flow, right? We get a little bit deeper than just our thoughts, we get out of our thoughts, and we get into our heart. For many people. That’s why writing feels icky. Right? You don’t want to do it, because that’s painful to tap into our hearts and but it’s also therapeutic.
Margo Fowkes 42:08
Right, exactly. Well, and I think that I mean, I think that’s really true. And I think about like my mom, for example, she and I had I don’t know exactly what the right word is because contentious is too strong, way too strong. But we bickered more than we do ever had in the final couple of years of her life. And she had a rare blood disorder called poly cytopenia, which led to her her different kinds of blood counts, or platelets, or red blood cells and or white blood cells spiking. And so for years, it was controlled first, by just drawing a drawing blood periodically to just lower her counts that way, then she was on a very, very low dose of chemotherapy. But over time, what happens with polysafe emia is eventually the body just can’t process all this extra blood. And it goes into the spleen, and I think into other organs. And eventually that’s, you know, that’s what took her life. But what I didn’t realize at the time, and I don’t know if she did either, was that I think when you think about those counts going up, well, of course, it would have effect on your mood, right? It would affect your brain. And it was the first period of time in our relationship where she was just more cranky about things. And my reaction was not to think well I wonder what’s going on with her because of course, I was dealing with the grief of the death of my son was and and Jimmy’s final years, and then his death. So my my reaction was just to get cranky back. And I carried a ton of guilt about that. The fact that we, you know, had that kind of back and forth. And it wasn’t like we weren’t in contact or we weren’t close. But it would sometimes mar the visits that we’d have, you know, some kind of an argument about something stupid, they weren’t even about big issues that we would be arguing about. And so it took me a long time to start writing better to your point. Because to write in a real sort of way, I had to go into those feelings of guilt and regret. And I’m still working my way through that because I do feel really sadly about sad about that. And part of me knows standing outside of it, I was doing the best I could. And there’s another part of me that just thinks God if you had chest stopped to like, ask a question or drawn that extra breath are counted to 10 you know, could you had less little, you know, kerfuffles about things, but I do, but to your point. So I think that’s both the end and the Yang of the writing, right? It’s on the one hand, it’s what keeps you from doing it sometimes. But it also it does help you kind of work your way through it and see that, you know, you’re human, and you know, we’re humans doing the best we can in any given moment.
Victoria Volk 44:57
And often the hardest thing to do is to forgive ourselves.
Margo Fowkes 45:00
Absolutely. Absolutely, yeah, exactly. If you told me the story, I would be incredibly sympathetic and say, Well, of course, you didn’t have the bandwidth to ask her why she was crying. It’s but it’s much harder for me to say that to myself.
Victoria Volk 45:14
Well, and you were deep in your own grief, like you said. And so, we don’t. I mean, grieve alone, it impacts us our capacity to concentrate to focus to process information. And so, if we’re emotionally, I can get into the talk about energy, and the energy behind thoughts and feelings, and all of that, which I love to talk about energy. But, you know, you probably had a lot of blocked energy, whatever, relate, you know, because regardless of the relationship, we have things that are incomplete for us, within context of relationships, emotionally incomplete, you know, and what is grief, it’s, it’s a change of, or, you know, in a familiar pattern of behavior and loss of hopes, dreams, expectations, and anything we wish would have been different, better or more. So, if you think about that, that is a definition of grief. Like that’s a lot. You can think of a lot you can fill pages of feelings around those things. So yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s really hard to forgive ourselves often.
Margo Fowkes 46:20
Yeah, well, there’s another piece to that too, which is the myth of time. Because in the case of my mom, my mom was 92, her mother lived to be 102, and a half, my father lived to be 102 and a half. And my mother, who’s 20 years older than my father thought, well, she was going to live to be the same age, and so did I. And so as we were having these disagreements, which weren’t normal for us to be bickering in that way, I know that there, my thought was, okay, this is just what’s happening right now. And I knew that I wasn’t as patient as normal, because I was, you know, because I was dealing with with the loss of Jimmy, but I had the idea of like, I get through this period, I’d start to feel a little bit better. I’d get more patient, we get through this right. And then she passed with, and that’s just life, but it’s, but we do often. Do you hear that a lot. People think well, I thought I had more time.
Victoria Volk 47:20
And that’s a myth for sure. Yes, after someone passes, too, it’s like, oh, in time, you’ll get better. You’ll feel better. Okay, well, time just passes, right? So, thank you so much. Is there anything else that you would love to share?
Margo Fowkes 47:39
I don’t think so. I feel your questions were so good. And I feel like we we really covered a lot of ground in a short period of time. So no, I really enjoyed our conversation.
Victoria Volk 47:50
I did too. I did have another thought. But it had escaped me. So, shucks, maybe if I think I’ll, I’ll ask you in an email, and then you can respond, and I can put it in the show notes. But absolutely. I feel like, yeah, you know, I have a note here, I’m just gonna say this, because you know, this misconception of is in your in your form that you filled out prior to recording, you talked about how there’s no greater gift than someone asking you to tell them about Jimmy and sharing a memory of him, especially if you hadn’t heard it before, or saying his name. So that made me think of this misconception that we tend to have too is that well don’t mention the deceased loved one. Because, you know, it’ll make the griever upset, it’ll make them upset, or, like you said, like, context matters. And so instead, maybe ask the griever about their loved one, their favorite memory, like you said, or a lesson you learn from them, and saying their name. So, it’s just opening up the lines of communication. But you can do it in a way that’s loving and caring and helps you to reflect as a griever. And think of a happy moment, a loving moment that you had with your loved one. Do you have anything to add on that? Because that was that was something that you mentioned. And I just thought that’s kind of important. I would just want to mention that at the end here.
Margo Fowkes 49:18
Yeah, I guess a couple of thoughts on that. One is I think that as Grievers, we can really help ourselves by letting the people around us know how much we want to hear our loved one’s name, and here are the stories. And part of that is us talking about that person bringing up their name and maybe talking about a fond memory that we have of when we were together with that other person that we’re talking to because I think sometimes people need permission if you will, to bring up something like that. But the other thing I learned too, was that you don’t have to know the person who’s died to bring up their name and the best way I can illustrate that is with a quick story. So my daughter played softball in college. And we traveled with the team, not with the team, but we traveled to watch her play. And I got to know one of the one of the moms of an older player on the team, the mom’s name is Carrie. And we were we would spend time together; we’d sit together at the Games oftentimes and watch. And then one time we were in the airport together and Molly’s bio mentioned, Jimmy, and I knew that people on the team probably knew that he that she’d had an older brother who died of cancer. But Carrie, and I had never really I don’t think talked about Jimmy. And we were sitting in the airport this one time by ourselves. And she was telling me a little bit about her about one of her children who had some health challenges. And then she said to me, I, I’d really love to know about Jimmy about who he was and what he liked, what he was like as and she said, but I don’t know if it’s okay to ask about that. I started to cry, it makes me cry. Now I started to cry. And then the poor thing is thinking, oh, no, like, I’ve done something really horrible. And I said, no, Carrie, I said, I just I’m so overcome, I cannot tell you what a gift it is to have you asked me that. And I realized, like you were saying that there’s always a way in. So that you can ask, even if you don’t know the person who’s passed away, to still give the other the person who’s grieving an invitation to talk about them, that you don’t have to know anything about them. And so it was really lovely, I had an opportunity to tell her what my son was like, and to have her feel free that she could ask questions about, you know, what made him laugh or what he was interested in, or what he loved to do. And it was I’ve just never forgotten it. Because it was such a gift not just in the moment, but also it really taught me the power of doing that with someone else. And saying, tell me about your loved one.
Victoria Volk 51:56
I’m not going to I’m going to kind of put you on the spot. How about you tell us about Jim?
Margo Fowkes 52:02
So, Jimmy, oh my gosh, Jimmy was just an amazing kid. He was. He was so quick to laugh. He had a great sense of humor. And he came out like this, this little Buddha like character, in that he was just so mellow from the time that he was born, he was the kid at parent toddler, when we would separate from the kids for like 40 minutes for a little bit of parent education. And the kids would go out on the playground with, like, with four of the moms and the other. I don’t know, 10 of us who were in the class got, you know, 40 minutes of time with the teacher away from our kids, as all the other kids are sobbing and clinging to their parent their mother’s leg. My kid was the one who was like, okay, mom, Thea, and he would just head out to the playground. And he that that was him. I mean, he was just he was this little Independent Spirit. He had a great sense of humor, he loved to laugh, and I and I still oftentimes I can hear that laugh as he was, you know, be sitting in the living room, watching an Adam Sandler movie, or The Big Lebowski or something that he thought was funny. He just was really present, wherever he was. And so he he was, if he was talking to somebody, you had his full attention, which was just such a gift, whether it was you know, his mom or or someone that he’d met, he used to say, which is one of my favorite expressions, he used to say that he was a Type B in a type a family. Mom and Dad, we are all very type A and Jimmy was far more mellow than, than the rest of us. But the funny thing is, is that what that type B personality often hid, was that that kid was so stubborn. And so he when he didn’t want to do something, it was so hard to get him to do the thing, whether it was homework, or it was, you know, exercise. If he didn’t want to do it, it was practically impossible sometimes to convince him to do it. Which is funny because I think people who, who didn’t have to parent him oftentimes were surprised that I would say that because they wouldn’t see that stubbornness in him.
Victoria Volk 54:27
Thank you for sharing that.
Margo Fowkes 54:29
Yeah, well, thank you for asking.
Victoria Volk 54:31
Anything else you’d like to add? Thanks so much for sharing today for being able for sharing your wisdom around the work that you do with consulting and just a lot of practical things that we covered today, too. So, thank you for that information for my listeners. If people want to connect with you, where can they find you?
Margo Fowkes 54:54
The easiest way to find me is to go to findyourharbor.com Which is salt waters website and the links to my social media are on there. And if they want to know more about the work that I do on grief and loss in the workplace through my consulting practice, it’s on target consulting.net. And there’s a page on there on grief in the workplace.
Victoria Volk 55:19
Can you share a little bit about the name came to be?
Margo Fowkes 55:23
Absolutely. So, the name comes from an Isaac Dennison quote, the cure for anything is salt, water, sweat, tears, or the sea. And a friend of mine, when she saw that suggested that I call the website salt water, and that I organized the blog posts into those three categories. And the minute she said it, I thought, Yeah, that’s it. That’s it. And we also came up with the tagline of find your harbor or find your safe harbor at the same time. So, it was one of those magical moments where you think Okay, that’s it, you just sort of No, this is this is the right thing to call it and the right way to organize it.
Victoria Volk 55:59
Love that. I think intuitive friends is amazing, right?
Margo Fowkes 56:03
Yes. Back to us with exactly. Yeah, exactly.
Victoria Volk 56:08
I’m all about intuition. Yes. Thank you so much. I look forward to seeing where saltwater takes you, and insulting and the work that you’re doing. And so just thank you again, for being here.
Margo Fowkes 56:23
Oh, thank you so much. And thank you for weaving in the consulting too. Because I think, you know, just like your experience in the workplace. I think when I first relaunched on target and started salt water, I thought of them as being very, very separate. And part of that is because salt water is is free from any sort of solicitation. I don’t I don’t ask for money, you know, there’s no, there are no ads on the site. And so part of it was I wanted to keep them separate that way. But it was actually really lovely to watch saltwater, my work with saltwater inform my consulting. And to see that the connection between the two because I hadn’t since I didn’t have to go back to work after Jimmy died. And my husband took some time off as well. I didn’t think as much about the way grief and loss shows up in the workplace. And so I think it’s really important to talk about I think COVID has actually one of the silver linings, if you will, of COVID is that it has broken US Open more to understanding why we have to talk about grief and loss in the workplace. But we still have a long ways to go. And I think, yeah, and I and I think it’s really important to talk about because so many clients that I talked to, when we’re working on something like this, they they so badly want to be supportive, and they have no idea because there’s no training out there for this. They’re just they’re going on Raw instinct and like you talked about with the myths, right? There’s the myth of like, you don’t mention the person’s name, you don’t upset the person maybe you know, it’s been six months, maybe they’re over it or healed or you know, whatever other terminology people use. So, I think it’s a lot of it is about empowering people to just know that it’s okay to bring it up. Even if you don’t know what to do that you just to talk about it and figure out the best way to be supportive.
Victoria Volk 58:08
Well, and as a leader in an organization, it’s about informing yourself. It’s about seeking new knowledge and new otherwise, we resort to what we’ve been taught. And as children, we’re often taught to grieve alone to replace the loss all these different myths of grief that we talked about grief recovery. So yeah, it is very important to change that narrative so that with education, that’s when the tides really turn, right?
Margo Fowkes 58:33
Right. Right, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So, I appreciate you bringing that up because they, I think they are woven together. And sometimes people don’t always see that weaving.
Victoria Volk 58:43
Well, thank you again.
Margo Fowkes 58:45
Yeah, thank you. It was lovely to talk to you.
Victoria Volk 58:48
And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.
Childhood Grief, Grief Stories, Grieving Voices Guest, Grieving Voices Podcast, Parent Loss |
Lizzy Flavin | Never Fatherless
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
Lizzy and I share a similar loss experience. So much so, we both experienced the death of a grandmother, father, then uncle – in the same order.
We have a conversation about how those losses have shaped and shown up in her life, from her perspective of being in her early 20’s. Also, being only ten years past the death of her father, she shares what’s helped her throughout her youth.
The conversation also turns to spirituality and faith. Lizzy shares grief that she feels around the separateness that exists within faith communities. And, she shares how she’s working to study and contribute to a greater conversation around the topic.
If you’re a teen, into your 20s, or a parent of a teen/youth, I encourage you to listen to Lizzy’s perspective of the loss of her father when she was 12, as well as the other losses she experienced before that and since that loss as well.
Mentions:
Connect with Lizzy:
Need help?
Suicide Prevention Lifeline to chat or call the Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or reach out to Victoria
Victoria Volk 00:00
Welcome to another episode of grieving voices. Today, my guest is Lizzy. And she reached out to me to be on the podcast, and we kind of have a similar story of loss. It was my grandmother, and my father and the uncle as well. And Lizzy shares that experience as well. So, she’s going to speak to it from her perspective as a 20 something, right? Correct. We’ll also dive into her faith and how that’s been shaped by those losses. Thank you for being here.
Lizzy Flavin 00:39
Yes, thank you, Victoria, for having me here. Lizzy, I’m 21 years old, and I grew up in Arizona. Yeah. And I’m really excited to be here today and get to talk with you.
Victoria Volk 00:48
When we spoke briefly, before we started to record you had mentioned that you lost your grandmother when you’re seven. Was that your first significant loss?
Lizzy Flavin 00:57
Yes, it was. I think at that point in my life, I think maybe I’d lost a pet or something. I maybe been to a funeral for someone I didn’t know. But it was the first time I really experienced someone that I knew and cared about being gone. And it was hard because I hadn’t had a very close relationship with her. She lived far away to another state, but I didn’t get to see her much while she I don’t think I ever got to visit her actually while she was sick. And so that was really hard for me not really getting to say goodbye even though I was so young and didn’t fully understand or have like the depth of relationship that I would have if she stayed alive later into my life. It was definitely hard to find out that she was gone without really having gotten to see her and say goodbye.
Victoria Volk 01:49
And then your your father was he, was, I know he passed away of cancer. Was it colon cancer?
Lizzy Flavin 01:57
Yes.
Victoria Volk 01:58
Same cancer as my dad had. I’m curious. How long had he known? Like when was he diagnosed?
Lizzy Flavin 02:05
Yeah, so my dad was diagnosed with colon cancer when I was 11. And he was sick for about 10 months. And at the beginning, at least from my perspective, it seemed like it was going to be a pretty quick surgery and then he was going to be done with it. It’s kind of how my parents had explained it to me. And I think even then, that was their understanding, but there just continued to be complications. And he continued to, you know, get better and worse over time, and then yeah, it was about 10 months later that he passed away.
Victoria Volk 02:38
First of all, my heart goes out to you I know what that loss is like I don’t know what it was like for you. So during that time, because I was a little bit younger my dad it was he was it was two years he had stage four when he was diagnosed and there was really nothing they could do but he lived for two more years and he passed away when I was eight so much of my childhood he was sick. What did you do you recall I mean and that’s still quite a little bit fresh for you because again, you’re 21 I’m much further out from my loss? What has that reef I hate to say the word journey because it’s so overused but what has that been like for you?
Lizzy Flavin 03:20
Um, It’s definitely been a long it’s just changed so much over the years I think initially when my dad passed away it was very hard and intense but I also think I been in my family talks about this a lot that we and I think it’s common with cancer that people kind of start grieving before the person’s even died and so like that process of kind of started maybe a few weeks before for me when I found out there wasn’t really anything what the doctors could do my dad was already in a pretty bad state where he couldn’t really communicate with us much and so that Yeah, there was a season where everything’s kind of blurry looking back honestly, but I do remember times even in that where I was confused about how okay I wasn’t certain moments and I didn’t know if that was right it felt like I should just always be upset but I think maybe the way we’ve been designed in some ways is to have that relief and have a little bit of being able to continue with life even when some time there’s a lot of back and forth with that of like times that I was upset that I didn’t think I should be in timezone I felt calmer than I thought I should be and especially as a child like I didn’t fully know how to process that but my family definitely helped a lot. And then like as I’ve grown past that, obviously like it gets better but it never really goes away and so there’s still times when it really hits me hard, and they don’t know necessarily how to communicate that to other people. But I do spend a lot of time in prayer in those times when it just feels like, you know, I’m not necessarily dealing with the death itself anymore in the same way that I was. But just the fact that I’ve spent my entire teenage years any part of my adult years that I’ve been without a father, and sometimes that really doesn’t feel fair. So, I think those are the moments that it hits me is when I see, oh, that’s a moment when my dad would have been there, and he’s not. And kind of, that’s something I still have to work through from time to time. And I think it gets less and less frequent as time goes on but it still happens.
Victoria Volk 05:45
Yeah, and it will continue. It’s not that I hate to say that, but it just it changes, it just changes over time. You know, you get married, you won’t be there. My family got me a beautiful little locket with my dad’s picture in it. And that’s what I wore for my jewelry. When I got married. It was incredibly special to me. So yeah, it just changes over time. You have kids, grandpa’s not there. The seats always gone at the table. Right? It sounds like to me that communication is actually a really important tool used actually used in your family to navigate that loss and share how you were feeling. What is that? Correct? mean? That’s the kind of sense I get that communication was really utilized during that?
Lizzy Flavin 06:34
Yeah, yes, I definitely agree with that. I think there were times, again, like, it’s always a mixture of like, there were times when I didn’t really feel like our family could communicate well and like be open with each other, just because of the different ways that we were all handling it. But there were also times when I was able to sit down with my mom or with my siblings, and just, yeah, share what we were feeling and know that other people were in the same boat. Even recently, like we’ve been able to have conversations, we try to celebrate or spend time together on certain anniversaries for my dad, like his birthday, the anniversary of the day he died, we’ll just get together and remember him and spend time together and sometimes talk about like where we’re at with it. And I think we probably talk less and less about I don’t know, it’s different every year. And the way it impacts all of us. It’s like continues to grow and change. But I think being able to grieve together and deal with that loss together has been really helpful and really a blessing that I know not everyone has.
Victoria Volk 07:43
Like I didn’t. So yeah, that is wonderful. Because I think when we’re able to communicate with how we’re feeling honestly and openly that brings healing, and then you’re healing as a unit as a family during that time to worry, even before your dad got sick. And even maybe when your grandmother passed, as your family always been very strong in faith.
Lizzy Flavin 08:07
Yes. So yeah, my we’ve always gone to church together as a family. I mean, we did growing up, of course now, I’m the youngest of four. So, all my siblings are adults, and they all kind of are still involved in different churches. But yeah, it’s always been an important part of our lives. It was definitely something that we talked about around like my grandmother’s death. And then something that, yeah, it’s really important to my parents, and they always taught us to like read our Bibles and brought God into important conversations. And that was really impactful to me, especially like thinking of my dad’s legacy, like continuing to walk in the faith that he helps me to establish
Victoria Volk 08:48
After he passed, how did that change? If at all?
Lizzy Flavin 08:51
It’s interesting, I guess, to me, like, trying to think through that, because I think when my dad was sick, there was a lot of conversations among my family, and especially with our friends about like, prayer for healing, which was definitely, yeah, it just brought up a lot of questions for me, when, you know, he wasn’t healed. And a lot of people we knew had, like so much confidence that he would be, but I remember, you know, my parents said, like, we trust God, or my mother actually talks about a conversation she had where someone asked her like, why don’t you or I think she was telling us about someone else actually, now that I think about it, but someone had said, like, why aren’t you trusting God to heal this person? And she’s a non trusting guide, whether he heals this person or not, and I think like that was her attitude toward my dad’s illness. And I’ve tried to take on that attitude to and it’s definitely a challenge sometimes even looking back like I said, and sometimes I just asked God like, Why Why can’t I have a dad in my life anymore? Like, this is really hard, but I do really believe Believe that he’s worked through that. And they think like, after losing my dad, that was something specifically that I had to work through. But I also, I knew that I really needed God, and that I wasn’t going to be able to deal with such a huge loss without my faith and without a relationship with God. Continuing and yeah, I really came to rely on God even more through my dad’s illness. And then after he passed away, and just looking to God, like I said, I look to him for emotional support, as I’m dealing with grief. And I look to him for, you know, with my questions and with Yeah, sometimes things that I would have looked to my dad for, because he was such an important source of like, someone I could ask questions to, and someone I could turn to you and I got anxious, and, you know, as you know, feel protected by in different situations. And so I’ve transferred A lot of it over to God. And it’s definitely different. Because God’s not like a physical person in my life. But it he’s also, yeah, I’ve just learned that, like God is ever present with me. And that’s something my dad never could have promised. And I think that’s really special. And it’s really helped grow my faith, even though it’s been difficult.
Victoria Volk 11:18
I’m interested in hearing your side or your perspective, because when I was a kid, I believe in granted, I was eight, no, even less than 12, you probably maybe know differently. But when I was eight, my dad passed away, went to the funeral is in the ground. And I thought, that’s what happens. When you die, you just go into the ground. And we did go to church, but granted those aids and big concepts, you can’t really grass, necessarily at that age. But I guess how did that when I’m thinking about my experience, and how that loss really took us out of the church, like, I blamed God, right? Like, as you’re taught, like, like you just said, and my mom had this firm belief, like, omega, he’ll be fine. They’ll do what they can. And when she realized that that’s not the case that he will die. She was devastated and crushed, and really didn’t know how to cope with that. So we fell out of the church. And that was the case for me until I was in my cell, I was probably till I was like, 23, my life was kind of a did a nosedive. Until back to, to life on faith again. So I can speak to that side of it, when you don’t have when you lose face. When you come back to it. I love that growing up that was still a part of your grieving process that that was something that was made valuable and important, and a part of healing. Because I know for a lot of people, when someone they love dies, they want someone to blame, right? You want and who is the easiest of ln is God, you know, because you’re supposed to heal people, you know. And so yeah, I struggled with a lot of those emotions, but I didn’t have the language, I didn’t have open communication like you did. And so I was a wonderful blessing that I just want to reflect back to you. Because I really think that whether you realize it now or not, that does and has an impact on the decisions that you make in your life and the choices you make. So, for anyone listening, it’s it’s there is no like linear path to losing your faith and finding your way back to it again. But often it’s, you know, it’s going to be take pen and scribble and doodle. And it’s that’s that’s what it looks like. It’s not a straight A to B point A to point B. So as you’ve been navigating this loss of your father, as it’s changed over time, and as you’ve gotten older, I know you had mentioned to that your uncle had passed away the same way. Is that correct?
Lizzy Flavin 14:09
Yeah, it was very similar. He actually he had a different form of cancer, but it was, yeah, it was very much felt like going back into losing my father in so many ways. Because he was my dad’s brother. He was definitely someone from my dad’s family had stayed very close to her family. After losing my dad. He was an important part of my grief process and had been, you know, really there for our immediate family when that happened, and of course, was also a big loss for him. And then he actually had cancer for about six years, and then passed away in 2019. And so going to visit him and seeing him in hospice care like my dad had been, he was in so my uncle was in home and my father had been enough hospice facility, me passed away. Yeah, just seen him in such a similar state was really kind of brought me back to that earlier loss. And then I think having lost my father and really knowing deeply what that meant, and saying goodbye to him for the last time, was really impactful and really challenging knowing that, like, it was only a matter of time. But I think also, again, having had that loss before and the blessing of a family who I’ve helped me continue our relationship, the Lord and leaning into I, I felt more prepared for another loss like that. And really, and also knowing, I think, even clear as an adult, like where, and just believing that my uncle would be in heaven with God and with my, with my father, because they knew, you know, they’re freaking God, that that’s what Jesus would do for them. And that was really encouraging to me in a really deep wave. And when it hurt that, yeah, that they weren’t just going into the ground. They had a continuation of life, it’s just I didn’t get to be a part of it for a while. Yeah, so I think definitely a challenge, but also something that I was prepared for. And I think in some ways, it’s like seeing someone suffer through illness can be so hard. But I think I’ve been very blessed, in some ways, by the fact that I’ve, you know, none, none of the people in my family that I’ve lost have been sudden, like, I’ve gotten to kind of prepare myself and say goodbye, and yeah, and then know where they’re going afterwards is really, really encouraging to me and has made such a big difference.
Victoria Volk 16:55
It’s really just kind of bizarre how similar stories are, yeah, it’s just really strange. My uncle wasn’t in my life. After my dad passed, he was his brother as well. But when I found out he had brain cancer, I went in, I knocked on his hospital door, not knowing if he would want to even see me or recognize me even because it had been almost 30 years to the day that my dad had passed. And it turned out to be one of the most healing experiences for me to revisit that relationship, to open up my heart to Him again, and when he had been absent. And yeah, I felt a connection to my dad that I had not felt in the 30 years prior. So I’m interested in learning what your experience has been, you know, there’s faith, and then there’s spirituality. I don’t necessarily view them exactly the same. I feel like for me, spirituality is almost more, there’s almost a deeper knowing a deeper connection or a deeper feeling is what it’s evolved for me. So, what role does spirituality play for you? And for your experience?
Lizzy Flavin 18:18
Yeah, that’s interesting. I don’t know.
Victoria Volk 18:20
Like, do you feel you know, when we talk about faith, we talk about God, right? spirituality is, it’s no our guardian angels. It’s like the people that like our guides, like people that are ever present. And all around us, you know, kind of watching over you, your guardian angels, things like that. I guess I it took me a long time to get to that probably only in the last five, six years, to be honest. It’s like faith came first. And then my spirituality came, I guess, where are you sit with that?
Lizzy Flavin 18:58
Yeah, that’s interesting. Um, I got a lot of conversations throughout my journey with loss about Yeah, like people sharing things like, oh, like your dad can see what’s happening or like, like, they’re still with you, in a way. I mean, I think I’m still at a point where that’s kind of confusing to me, like, I don’t know, and even thinking about guardian angels, like, I don’t know, like, you know, whether that’s a person who you’ve lost or someone different that God sent to help you like, I definitely think that’s possible that that’s a way that that exists, but it’s not necessarily something that I’ve, I haven’t quite gotten to the point you’re at. It sounds like because i think i think in some ways, I’m just afraid of being wrong that I’m going to like comfort myself with some idea and then find out later like, no, that’s just something that was in your head or like something sweet that people told you. Yeah, I guess. I don’t know yet. Like whether yeah, it’s just I guess, not something that I’ve really chosen to lean into yet. really focused on for myself.
Victoria Volk 20:02
You might be interested in listening to I’m trying to think what episode number it is. But it’s with Victoria Shaw. And she is my podcast. And she was on recently actually, the episode just went live, I think three or four episodes back, but she is a medium. And she’s also a licensed clinical therapist. But she’s a medium. And we talk a lot about like, just this, really tapping into our, our intuition and our inner knowing. And, but how it’s, it’s, it’s deeper than that it’s this spiritual guidance. So you might be interested in that episode. Again, like I said, like this is not something that I really leaned into myself until maybe five or six years ago. And it really wasn’t until that experience with my uncle, that just really had a profound experience in it for me when it comes to feeling a connection. Feeling that connection to my dad that I had not ever felt, you know. And it was almost like, there’s a thing to like, when I found out he had brain cancer, I could have easily just been like, isn’t been in my life for 30 years, why would I go see him? Why would I want to talk to him, right? But I felt a pull. Like I felt like I had to go see him. Like it was something I had to do. Call it synchronicity, call it serendipity call it spiritual guidance. But when I went there within 10 minutes, my cousin who I hadn’t even remembered meeting before, from Massachusetts, walked through the door. And so did his daughter, who I had not seen either since I was a kid. And so it was like this almost immediate reunion. And it was amazing. It was an amazing experience. So anyway, it’s something to maybe just open your heart to and see where where you’re led.
Lizzy Flavin 21:57
Yeah, if I can add something that came to mind as you were sharing?
Victoria Volk 22:01
Yeah
Lizzy Flavin 22:02
I do think well, like the right time to say, I think the closest I’ve come to that, that sort of experience and those things you’re describing it I would describe my experience with Yeah, sense of like some spiritual guidance and some presence with me would be, I would describe it as like the Holy Spirit’s work, being a Christian and like believing that God is like three persons and one of them is with us as especially like with believers as this spirit inside of us. And I think I’ve definitely received some comfort through that. And some guidance. I think the Holy Spirit has helped me come to like some of the conclusions I have in the piece that I have in regards to death guards to like people I love. And so yeah, I know, that’s not quite the same as what you’re describing. But I think there is some some, like spiritual guidance and some like spiritual presence. It’s so something so beyond the physical that’s really present with me. And again, even that is something that I want to be I don’t feel like I lean on the Holy Spirit, or, like, I want to grow in that even Yeah, so that’s, that’s what came to mind anyway.
Victoria Volk 23:20
No, I and I totally, I, I resonate with that, too. I do. I think for me, it was like, I think to like our while grief for me like, but he pretty much put a veil over my inner knowing, like I I don’t know, I’m asking, I’m actually interested in learning to from you. Do you feel like you’ve grown in a better understanding of who you are and of yourself through this? Or do you feel like you’ve you’re almost like moving further away from yourself, if that makes sense?
Lizzy Flavin 23:55
Yeah, that does make sense. I think the I think there’s probably some of each, there’s definitely been times and I feel kind of detached. And because i think i think grief impacts us so heavily that there’s times when we don’t feel like ourselves. And so that’s been a part of it. But I also i do think overall I have really gotten to know myself better through this and part of it is a certain level of independence that comes when you lose someone that integral to your life. You know, since my dad passed away, I can’t just go to him with my questions and assume that he’s right anymore. I have two processes myself, and I definitely like my mom helps me work through things and other people in my life. But I I think I’ve become a little more independent in the way that I think and the way that I make decisions through not having that person who in my life was really probably my main source of guidance and stability even in some ways and so I’ve really learned more what I think and what I believe and also grow And like, Okay, how do I take care of myself and like, walk through like these difficult seasons? And like walk through not having these people in my life? I think, yeah, it’s all been a journey of getting to know myself and getting to kind of work with myself in ways that I haven’t had to before with each loss that’s come,
Victoria Volk 25:22
Has anything else helped you along the way? Other like, has it just been your faith that you’ve leaned on? I don’t want to say just your faith, because that’s, I mean, it’s huge. But aside from faith, in your prayer life in your family, did you go to counseling? Or were you offered counseling or, you know, any other healing modalities that you’ve found helpful? Or that were a priority? in your life?
Lizzy Flavin 25:51
Initially, after my dad passed away, counseling or like support groups weren’t really, I think, on my family’s radar. So, we did have a lot of family that supported us, but it was definitely Yeah, it was, you know, they weren’t, we didn’t have like professionals really helping us work through it until I think about a year or two after my dad died, we joined a grief support group through Hospice of the valley. So me and my mom and sister, were part of that. And that was so helpful to me to just go to a group once a week and talk with people who had had similar losses, my sister and I were in like a team group. And so it was a lot of people our age who had lost parents, or other family members, close friends. And it was just so helpful to talk with people who understood and who had similar experiences and hear about bears and talk about ours. And just know like, even if we weren’t directly talking about our grief, like these are people who understood and didn’t feel like they had to walk on eggshells around us, but also didn’t, you know, weren’t going to be insensitive to our grief either. And then also our leaders who helped us walk through exercises to kind of process I agree, I think about different ways to heal and still remember to that was really helpful. And then later on, think I was about 14, when I started going to counseling, not specifically for grief, I was dealing with a lot of anxiety at the time and some different issues. And so, I walked into that my first experience with counseling was kind of difficult, I didn’t feel like I felt like it was just a lot of like work. And I didn’t know if it was really helping me. And then my next counselor was really helpful in processing, the other things I was dealing with, but also the loss of my father and how that was impacting me. Yeah, so those are some different tools that I really, really impacted me, I think finding a counselor or therapist who can really help you is so such a blessing and so incredible and helpful.
Victoria Volk 27:56
What did grief look like? on you, as a teenager? Like if someone would have looked at you could they have seen that you were a griever? Like, what, what how did it manifest in your life at that age?
Lizzy Flavin 28:09
As a teenager, there was yeah, I don’t know, how many people knew I started blogging at some point in my teen years, actually, about like grief and living without a father. And that was something that helped me kind of express what I was feeling and kind of worked as, like a public journal. For me, it wasn’t something a lot of people read. But it definitely was a way that I expressed my grief and, you know, post on social media, I think Or another way that I kind of express my grief and just let people know, because I think one of the hardest things for me, especially as a teen was like having to tell people because I was always nervous about their reactions, whether like it would just make them uncomfortable, or whether they’d be overly sympathetic or not sympathetic enough. And so I think like getting it out on social media and being like, like, no, this I don’t have to tell you in person, but also getting to share like what he had meant to me. I don’t really know if someone you know, could have looked at me and seen like grief, just in everyday life. But I think there were situations coming up to like all the time where we I know where the question would come up, or where yeah, just different things. What impacted me in a unique way because of my grief. And there’s always this question of like, do I invite people into this with me and like, share this or do I let people have very experienced and try to kind of hold back and deal with this on my own and so sometimes I would, I turn to my family with that and sometimes it was literally just me kind of taking some time aside to be like, Okay, this, you know, whether it’s Father’s Day or a conversation I have with a roommate about their father or their experience with loss, something that kind of brings back something that’s like So much bigger than where the conversation already was. And I have to either bring that up and face whatever reaction people might have. Or either like bottle that in or step aside and process it on my own.
Victoria Volk 30:15
I’ve learned there are two types of people in life, either internal processors or external processors, nexternal processors, they need to talk it out, they need to talk, talk, talk. And that’s where talk therapy can really help someone who’s an external processor, it’s like they have their awareness and their insights, as they’re talking. They need to talk in order to get those, feel those and have that awareness. But then there’s internal processors, and I’m guessing that you’re an internal processor like me, where we kind of need to go inside ourselves and be alone with our thoughts, the process and just the fact that you started with a blog, I’d actually journaled that’s when I really got into journaling is when I was like, when I was a kid. And I’ve been journaling ever since. But I grew up in the age of dial up internet. We didn’t have there wasn’t social media, there wasn’t really blogs. I didn’t even have internet at home. So you know, it was like at school, very different time that I grew up in. And so I think that’s a huge benefit to someone growing up today, children that name who’s a parent today actually have this huge broad network available to them, which can be good. And it can be bad, because in my line of work as a group recovery specialist, I want to share this with you too, because you said you know, you don’t know who necessarily to share it with is we don’t want to share with just anybody, right? Because they can say hurtful and harmful things that actually make us pull back and isolate even more, because we don’t feel safe to share. And so, we want to look for someone who really doesn’t have any skin in our game. No, I know your family’s a huge connection for you. And that’s, that’s great. But sometimes the relationship is no, not sometimes always. You can have like you and your siblings, your mom, you all experienced the same loss. But your experiences very differently. Your experience is very different, because your relationship is very different. And that was my experience, too. I was the youngest, my siblings were five and nine years older. So, our experiences were very different. So, you can have the same loss and very different experiences within a family unit. So, they might not be necessarily the best people to share with because they are perspective of that person might be very different from yours, because their experience was different. And so that comes to friends and everything, like someone that doesn’t have any skin in your game who you feel safe sharing, and someone who is safe, who has a heart with yours, like we say in grief recovery is someone who’s not going to criticize, analyze, or judge. And so someone who really can just your heart with yours, just listen. Because that’s all people really need to do. Just listen. And your story matters, your experience matters. And that’s why I started this podcast because whether you’re 21 or 41, you’ve had the same type of loss, our experiences are very different. And your perspective that you bring to my listeners matters. Because there might be some 21-year-old, 20 year old, a 15 year old who’s listening to you and hearing your story. And they resonate more with you because you’re closer to their age, I very much remember what 21 felt like I was lost, I was absolutely lost. My grief had me lost for decades. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We all but we all find our way. In our own time. Now, I’m to a place of a goddess. But then we might have another loss that just opens up that can of worms again. You know and for your uncle. That’s what that’s what that loss did my uncle, same thing. It’s like that’s when I realized I wasn’t okay. Like I still haven’t processed a lot. From all those other losses I had before I still had a lot of work to do. And that’s what that loss made me realize I’m not okay. And that’s what led me to grief recovery. And so, it’s an ongoing process. You’re going to have more losses in your life, that’s a guaranteed and because grief is cumulative, and it’s cumulatively negative. It just all stacks up, but so does the healing. The things that we participate in that help us to heal those wounds. Not to, and aid them not to like, to sugarcoat what’s going on. It’s being honest with ourselves. So we’re really feeling. I think that’s, I think we’re out of integrity the most when people ask, you know, how are you feeling, I’m fine, and you’re not fine. And you know, you’re not fine. Like you’re out of integrity with yourself. When you’re out of integrity with yourself, that doesn’t feel good. And so it’s this ongoing suffering that we caused ourselves just by not being honest with how we really feel. And it’s not being apologetic about it, like you don’t have to be sorry that you feel bad. Like, if a situation is too much, it’s walking away gracefully. And saying, I need this time for myself, I need to, we have, you’ll have instances that the rest of your life like that, with age comes wisdom. That’s all I can tell you. Things change, life changes, reach changes. Grief is grief, it just looks different over time, as time just passes, it doesn’t do it. Time doesn’t heal, it just passes. So, what is grief taught you so far?
Lizzy Flavin 36:06
I think we’ve kind of already touched on a lot of the things I was thinking about with what it’s taught me. But I think it’s this interesting mix of like independence and dependence that I’ve kind of learned through the process of like, I had a conversation with someone a few years ago, who had been through a similar loss. And I he said, like, I think everything that you missed from someone you’ve lost is something you have to especially like with losing a parent is something you have to like learn to do yourself and like be more independent. And I think in some ways, that’s true. But also, I think we really do need other people and other support to help us with those things. And times, because yeah, I just don’t think I could continue, or at least like be in the place I’m in, which is, I’m really blessed to be in without the support I’ve had from others, whether it’s, you know, my mom still being one, like stable parent figure in my life, or my brothers kind of stepping in and providing some of that, like sense of safety in certain situations, or helping me seven people throughout my family helping me financially, and to be able to go to college and have the resources I need to be the student that I want to be I really, like I’ve learned that there’s a lot that I can do on my own. And that i i do have the strength to walk through so much grief. And that’s but that’s all with some level of support. Like I can guess I guess, yeah, it’s taught me that, that I need people and also that I am strong as an individual. But then I like, I don’t know, if that makes sense.
Victoria Volk 37:55
Because yeah, it’s like you’re strong as an end of it. You don’t have to be strong for everybody and yourself, you can still like it’s not weak to ask for help. And that’s what I’m glad you brought that up, because that’s a good point to bring across, and how, if someone were to give advice or counsel like that, who has not really dug into their own grief, that’s where they can say something that could really send someone else into deep isolation. Because if you were to take that to heart, right, like, you’re just gonna have to do this on your own, like, you’re gonna have to learn all this stuff on your own, and you really internalize that you would have a really difficult time asking for help you think, well, I guess I’m just on my own. I guess this is how life is, this is what it’s like. Because that person is going to give you advice and their perspective based on their personal experience, right. So, if they have not had the support in their life, if they had not felt like they ask for the support in their life, that’s the perspective they’re bringing to your conversation in what you share. And that’s why I say it’s really important to choose wisely, who you communicate with your grief about. So, thank you for bringing that up. And what has led because you have a podcast, it’s called loving diversity podcast, and I was kind of I was poking around a little bit and it’s about inclusivity that word, inclusiveness? I think so. inclusiveness of, of faith has these experiences of grief and loss is that what shaped you into this mission or this passion for starting this podcast? And tell me a little bit about it?
Lizzy Flavin 39:42
Yeah, so I was actually inspired to well, I guess, going back even farther, and I think for a long time, I’ve been very aware of kind of and just like curious about honestly, the differences, just how the church seems to be kind of divided up into, you know, we have like, and it’s not, it’s not that anyone’s necessarily labeling themselves this way or doing this intentionally necessarily, but we tend to have kind of like, you know, churches that are, for a certain are tend to be filled with a certain demographic, racially or culturally or like economic status wise. And they that’s kind of how we get even as Christians within Christianity, we tend to gather based on other things that we have in common. And as I’ve read scripture and studied church history, I’ve noticed like that’s not how the church started, like the church churches, and like, the house churches that started in the first century, really broke a lot of the barriers that the rest of culture had around socio economic status, and race, and gender, and age and all those things. Like the church was a place that broke that in a unique way, early on, and now I feel like there’s so much division in the church, whether it’s based on different doctrines, or especially Yeah, like socioeconomic status, or race, or just preferences in worship, because that’s something that’s like been on my mind for a long time. And there’s some grief in that of like, why is the church to say like, why can’t we all be one like, group of Christians like God seems to have intended us to be and then in March of last year, with all the dots when I really became aware of issues with racism in America, and really allowed myself to start to process that and see like, Okay, how can like, first of all starting to understand the reality of the situation and grieve the losses that were happening in that time just for this if people you know, not people I knew, and then think about, you know, what’s my part in this? And how can I help to address this and like, help people respect one another and build a better culture, I really started thinking about the church again, quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. Where he said, essentially, that the church is one of them that are the most segregated are 11 o’clock on a Sunday morning, I think is what he said was the most segregated time in America. And that had really struck me hard. And anyway, as I was processing, I was thinking, Okay, how can I address this, like the church’s issues with division, and I started thinking about a podcast because I was like, I want to have conversations with other people. I don’t want to just talk about from my perspective, because that’s not the point. And I don’t even know that much. But what if I could welcome other people in to share their stories into to speak to their own experience, and to speak to what they’ve learned and share their experiences, feeling included from certain are included or excluded from certain church communities? And how could leadership or people around them have avoided that decision and help them feel like a part of something and like they were welcome, just as a part of God’s family rather than having to fit a certain pick fit into a certain category in order to be part of that community?
Victoria Volk 43:23
I love that. I love that idea. What are you studying in college?
Lizzy Flavin 43:27
Biblical studies
Victoria Volk 43:29
Awesome. Okay, well, that, yeah, that follow that passion, wherever it takes you that interest, that curiosity, curiosity is a big thing in life. And I think we don’t ever lose that. That’s something that we kind of just tend to put on the back burner is what makes me curious. Follow that. Follow it. I love that idea. If people want to reach out to you, and they want to learn more, how can they find you?
Lizzy Flavin 43:58
So, I’m on Instagram, you can find me at loving diversity podcast. I also, I don’t use this account as frequently as I used to. But my blog from my grief experience that I was using in high school is never fatherless. And I also have an Instagram account for that. So, if you’re interested in seeing some resources, it may become more active again. But if you want to read more about my story that’s there. And you can feel free to message me through either of those accounts.
Victoria Volk 44:29
Thank you so much for sharing your story, which deeply resonates with me, and I will stay connected with thank you for being here.
Lizzy Flavin 44:37
Thank you. Thank you for having me. It’s been great having this conversation.
Victoria Volk 44:41
Thank you for listening. And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.
Addiction, Grief Stories, Grieving Voices Guest, Grieving Voices Podcast, Mental Health, Sexual Trauma |
Sandi Derby | Child Satanic Sexual Abuse, Meth Addiction, and Miracles
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
Sandi Derby, a fellow Advanced Grief Recovery Specialist, and Life Coach, shares her life’s traumatic story that led her to do the work she does today.
As a child, Sandi was sexually abused by her father, followed by sexual, satanic/ritualistic abuse at her uncle’s hands (a pastor) and his friend (also a pastor).
In adulthood, she became a functioning meth addict (by outside appearances) for 3 1/2 years until a pivotal, life-changing moment woke her up, and her transformational journey began.
Sandi didn’t say this, but I think if you listen to her story, you may agree that how she’s been able to turn her life around is a miracle. And, what she did say, was that she heard God speaking to her.
Growing up in an anti-God home to finding faith, God, and a spiritual connection has been the miracle in Sandi’s life.
Life is mysterious, and so is this greater force, whatever you choose to call it: God, Universe, Spirit, etc., that work through us and with us. We are the co-creators of our lives, and Sandi shares what that journey has been like for her.
“Your past is your present until it’s healed.”
Resources:
Connect with Sandi:
Victoria Volk 00:00
Welcome to another episode of grieving voices. I’m so excited for today’s guest Sandi Derby. She has played a big role in my life in my grief recovery, healing, and has been my heart with yours many times. And so I’m very pleased to bring her to the podcast and give her a chance to share her story because as grief recovery specialists, I think every single one of us, our work is based on our story to like we come to this because of our story. And Sandy is an advanced grief recovery specialist and trainer and professional development coach. She’s actually one of the most amazing people at the grief recovery Institute. And I’m so happy you’re here, Sandi, welcome.
Sandi Derby 00:53
Thank you so much. Well, it’s an honor to be here. I mean, I feel like I’ve gotten to see you on your journey. And then here you are bringing this to so many people that need to hear it, and you have an amazing story. So, it’s an honor. Thank you.
Victoria Volk 01:07
Thank you. Thank you. So, what brought you to grief recovery?
Sandi Derby 01:12
Initially, what brought me to grief recovery is you know, had grown up in this home. With a lot of abuse. My story has a lot of abuses. It was physical, verbal, and sexual abuse for the majority of my childhood. And you know, the other ingredient in my home was denial, there was a lot of bad things happening. But then all the adults around me were acting as if everything was fine and kind of keeping up this image. And I had taken that and really gone into my life, put the blinders on and just heaped on a lot more a lot more pain, a lot more brokenness. There was alcohol, there was drugs, I was a meth addict for three and a half years. And then I walked away, you know, I walked away from meth, I wasn’t using meth anymore, but my heart was still broken. And to be quite honest, I would have never thought that I would have been someone that needed grief recovery, because I associated the word grief with death. And so it was because somebody who heard my story said, Oh, my gosh, you need to do grief recovery. And I thought, no grief recovery isn’t going to help me. But they kept insisting that I do it. And so what I did is I went and I got the book, and I was just going to kind of go through it on my own. And they said, either you get in the group, or I’m going to make the call for you, you need to do this. And it was kind of that gentle, assertive push. And so, I did, I went thinking one, I’m too broken for grief recovery, you know, because even though I wasn’t using meth anymore, my life was definitely not present or full, you know, I was anxious, I was depressed, I had a hard time getting up out of bed in the morning, there was just so much pain still inside my heart. And I had by that time I’d been in therapy at for maybe two, two and a half years. And it had been very helpful. But it had not addressed the deep pain that I carried. And I didn’t realize that the things that had happened to me as a child, were actually losses to be grieved, you know, I had lost my innocence. I had lost safety and trust and purity, I’d lost identity and love and connection, all of the building blocks that a child really, really needs at the hands of people that should have protected me and should have, you know, watched over me. And so when I did grief recovery, the whole way through, I kept thinking, no, this isn’t gonna help. I mean, I did it, I did the work, I engaged with the process, but I really didn’t think it would be effective. And it wasn’t until I got to the final exercise toward the end, that it literally felt like boulders just lifted off my shoulders. And I remember looking at the specialist who was leading at the time, and I said, oh my gosh, it worked. And she was like, well, of course it worked. And I was like, you don’t understand. I didn’t think this was going to help me. You know and so Truthfully, I engage I kept engaging with the tools and I went from someone who was very out of the moment I used to describe myself as I watched my life on a movie screen. That’s That’s how you know unpleasant I was. As I continued to use the tools, I became very present very emotionally aware for the first time in my life. So it was really people that understood grief recovery that kind of brought me there but the losses were you know, I mean I it’s not like I haven’t lost people along the way I have had death experiences, but the major losses for me were the abuses and the neglect of my childhood.
Victoria Volk 04:43
It’s just for a backstory for those listening. Sandy was my heart with yours at my certification and who I shared my who helped me lift my boulders and and when I heard Your story when you shared with me because we were partners, I, oh, I, I cried with you. And I just that moment was so powerful for me to be there with you and to have that experience and just like you said, was going in there, like, it’s not going to help me it’s this isn’t like, skeptical, right? I went in skeptical. Yeah. And it is it’s like this, I just I too felt like this instant relief that I’d never experienced. And similarly, when you mentioned watching your life, like on a movie screen, do you feel like with abuse, particularly with child abuse and childhood, there’s almost like this dis association with our bodies, that happens, and that we kind of just like, that creates that movie screen type feeling of our lives?
Sandi Derby 05:52
Absolutely. I think that you know, as a child were so ill equipped, you know, to begin to understand abuse, and the pain and the fear, and the terror, that go with abuse are often such an overload. For a child’s system, heart, mind, soul and body, that the only way to really cope with it is to leave the body, you know, I can’t, I can’t say that I had those thoughts. As a child, I’m going to leave my body. But I it definitely happened, because it was really the only way to survive. You know, and in my story, there were abuses that happened very young. And then there was, you know, rape, like at the hands of my father. But then I had religious abuses happen at the hands of an uncle and a pastor. So I had, you know, it was this over and over and over again, all these different types of abuses that had happened, and there was no one to help me to navigate any of the things that were happening. And so leaving my body was the only way to survive, because leaving my body also meant that I had didn’t have to be connected to the pain and the terror, it also meant I didn’t have to be connected to the memories. But what that produced in my life was that I wasn’t connected to my life. I was never in my skin, because I stayed disassociated. Even the therapy that I did, which again, it was helpful, I’m really big on any of the healing modalities, what it did not address with the emotional pain, the unresolved grief that I was carrying inside, because of everything that was lost. And I think if I had not discovered grief recovery, I would be in a very different place. Because grieving those experiences helped them to not just be this trauma that happened to me, but it helped it to be something that I could actually walk through emotionally and get on the other side and get in my body. You know, and that was I mean, that was a miracle for me. I never imagined that I could experience life present and in my body. But yeah, to your point that dissociation is very key, especially for children.
Victoria Volk 08:08
I think it’s just miraculous that you are sitting where you’re sitting, that we’re having this conversation. I mean, I I one thing I ponder and I think about often is how so many terrible things can happen to some people, and one person may come out of it. And another it just completely puts them in the ground. Like physically, like actually puts them in the ground like they they just can’t take it right. So how did you get from being the meth addict? Then? to like, what was there a defining moment for you that got you to therapy that led to because I think everything in life kind of leads to the next thing? What was the thing that changed for you? At that time?
Sandi Derby 08:55
Yeah, for me, it was, there was a I think a couple of things. I mean, I lived a lot of my life not being aware of what had happened to me, you know, I had taken on this idea, this denial idea. I have a nice family, everything was fine. My dad was just a little bit hard on me. That’s my life. You know, I loved it very much at the surface. But of course, in order to keep all of that pain, and all of those things at bay, and all of the dark thoughts and all the things that would come, it was I really engaged in a lot of risky behaviors, and then that led into to meth and things like that. But a couple of things happened. One is I came into awareness of what had happened to me, I actually, my defining moment was I had an ex-ex boyfriend that tried to kill me. And it was it happened in Hollywood; it was this big thing. And I mean, there were hell helicopters like police, helicopters and police and it was this huge, huge thing. And by then I was already a meth addict. And there became this moment When I asked a question, and I was asking myself this question, like, wait a minute, I’m on drugs, I chose a man who tried to kill me. And I don’t remember a lot of my childhood, something’s wrong. So, there was a defining moment there, like something is wrong. And that that attack Actually, my ex attacking me a few months later, is when I started to connect with some of the memory from my childhood, which I found out later was textbook a lot of times it takes a traumatic event to start to bring those memories to the surface. And that’s what happened. And when it did surface, it wasn’t like this huge shock. It was kind of like, oh, yeah, I’ve always known that. I just haven’t wanted to look at that memory. The other defining moment for me is when I had Child Protective Services called, I had Child Protective Services called on my father, because I was trying to protect my niece. And that was another big moment, it was kind of like that family secret that I had been carrying all that time was out in the open, and I had the help of a therapist, by the way, I was still on meth, when I made that call, and when that happened, and then the investigation ensued. So, once it was out, and once I wasn’t carrying the family secret anymore, that is when I was able to get off of meth. And my story’s a little bit different. I think a lot of people you know, would need to go to rehab and things like that. For me, it was you know, I kind of had a moment with with God and then after that, I was going to bed one night, and you know, I’d given money to my my friend who was my friend who was my drug dealer, and I had given him money, and he hadn’t returned with my drugs and it was like a couple days later, and I got angry and I called and I left a message for him and said, Give me my money back. You know, most drug dealers don’t return money, but that’s I was mad. And that night when I was going to bed, I just had this thought and the thought was, you know what, if he gives me my money back, it’s time to quit. And the next thought was, if he brings me drugs, I’m going to keep going it was not a big epiphany. It was like a little glimmer and the next morning when I woke up, I went down and went down the hallway and there was this envelope under the door and when I opened it, it was cashed so he gave me my money back and so that was the last time I used but the catalyst really for me not using anymore was that I the secret was out I wasn’t carrying it anymore. And so I walked away from meth and and that was a huge moment that was in October of 2005 you know, and when people see me today, they never look at me and think oh, a meth addict you know, I don’t look like I used meth but I was actually a hardcore I was an everyday user for three and a half years. So and that was a big moment and a huge and miraculous It was also a grieving experience because math was how I got through the day math was how I kept the pain at bay. And then you know, my appearance had altered drastically from that, so it was like trying to come out of all of that. In all honesty, though, if I had stopped there, if my journey had stopped there with, I’m not using anymore, I still wouldn’t be here. Because there was so much pain still in my heart. It was a miracle that I wasn’t using, but the use was more symptomatic of the things that were buried inside of me. And so dealing with the things buried inside was the bigger piece. And I will say the for me and I find this with people is that you know we’re taught you know the toy, we’re taught these things in our culture, we’re taught a couple of things we’re taught you’ve gone through a lot of pain. And once once that’s happened, you’re just always going to live this kind of less than life. You’re all you know you’re aware of it and you’re always going to just be in this place of living this life that is subpar. Or the other the other thing is don’t look at that just that’s in the past go be happy because the pain will be too much so just go be happy. And quite honestly, both of those lies because they are lies in our culture are what stopped people from living the life they can live the truth of the matter is is that what makes the difference for somebody coming out of something like that or not, is realizing that you can walk through the pain if you have the right tools if you have the right people if you can you know you have you know that you can find safe community. Like you can walk through the pain you can and once you walk through the pain, there is another side I don’t wake up anxious every day I don’t wake up depressed every day. I’m a normal person I have my you know, I have my ups and downs and you know life experiences like anyone else, but I don’t live a subpar life. I don’t live a life that would look like I have been severely abused because I have been very, very severely abused. As a child. I have seen things that no child should ever see. And I have experienced things that no A child should ever experienced. But that’s really the difference. It’s like when people can step out of those lies, and realize that there is another side, they can do it, they can walk through it, that that makes the difference.
Victoria Volk 15:12
Thank you for sharing all of that. There’s so much hope in this conversation. What are your thoughts on people who might say, I don’t need to dig up the past? It’s not necessary to dig up the past to relive the trauma to relive the experience in our minds or whatever to move on from it. What are your thoughts? When when you hear that because I hear that a lot.
Sandi Derby 15:40
Yeah, so there’s this sign, it’s in my in my lobby, and it says your past is your present until it’s healed. See, the truth of the matter is, is that the things that are unhealed from the past, it’s it’s it becomes pervasive it, it filters into every area of our lives, it affects our relationship with people. It affects our romantic relationships, our friendships, it affects our vocation, it affects our ability to make money. For people that are believers, it deeply affects their relationship with God, it affects your ability to step into purpose and live your purpose. It affects everything. There’s no getting around that. And so what I tell people when they because I hear that a lot, too, what was the point of digging up the past, and it’s like, well, because it’s affecting you every single day, you don’t have to dig it up. Even though I wasn’t looking at my past. It was with me every moment. It was filtering into everything that I did. I couldn’t like you can’t run from yourself. Wherever you go, there you are. We can’t run from who we are, we can’t run run from ourselves. And we’re really not digging anything up. Because it’s really not truly buried. It’s there. And so that’s what I that’s what I share with people, because I find when people get that and they go, right. And then they actually deal with it, it’s like, then it actually becomes the past. You know, I look at my past. And again, it’s it’s very intense. But I can look at my past, I can talk about it freely and openly. And I’m not on the floor. But I will tell you, I still look at my past. And yes, I’m sad for the little girl that went through that. I am not one of those people that looks at my past and goes, Oh, that made me who I am today. I look at it, like no child should ever go through the things that I went through. And I believe that for me and for anybody that sits in front of me. But it truly is the past. For me, it truly is something that doesn’t come into every area of my life. I’m here, I’m present, I’m living on purpose, I’m excited, I’m passionate, I have a lot of joy. I have a lot of amazing things in my life. Because I do believe that recovery is totally possible. Now, it doesn’t mean that I forgotten those things. It doesn’t mean that those things were okay. And it doesn’t mean that there aren’t consequences for the people that did those things. It just means I don’t have to carry those boulders with me anymore. If that makes sense.
Victoria Volk 18:17
I love that. I love that phrase that quote. When you spoke about how religion was used against you, and faith and things. How did you find your way? back to that then? Was it with that awareness of you know, this was put on me? It’s not like how did you come to be curious about that again, and allow it into your life?
Sandi Derby 18:44
Yeah, well, I love that you’re asking that I’m going to answer it from my perspective. And then from some of the people that I’ve worked with, so for me, the the actual home that I was raised in my nuclear family, there wasn’t religion, as a matter of fact, there was it was anti it was, you know, we don’t, we don’t believe in that. We don’t believe in God. Well, I don’t even know if that was even spoken. But I definitely didn’t have that. Now unfortunately for me, my very religious experience was the uncle that abused me. And so this uncle was a pastor, and also had a good friend who was a pastor, they were at the same church, and both of them abused me. And you know it, I don’t mind talking about it, but it went to the satanic level. So, it was a tannic ritual abuse, which was, you know, a step beyond just being sexually abused, which is horrific enough in and of itself, but there were rituals done in the name of God. So, I had, I had a real double-edged sword in the sense that my experience of God and religion was done at the hands of what were supposed to be men of God, who were actually working for Satan and doing horrible, horrible things. So, I had this idea of God number one that he was extremely punitive. And mean and cruel, and not something that I would ever want to be a part of. And so what happened for me is that much later in my meth addiction, I actually had a vision like that came from God, that God gave me a vision. And that vision just helped me to understand that he was that there was a God and that he was real. And that’s what kind of opened the door for me was just this kind of supernatural experience that I had. And then I ended up, I ended up on a plane next to to two pastors in an airplane. And that’s what led me to start going to church. And so, the faith community, for me was extremely beneficial, because it was a lot of love. It was a lot of, you know, happy to see you a lot of like, being this person who was lonely, and not really in a family, because in my story, when I spoke up about the abuse, I was pretty much ostracized by my family, they were like, didn’t happen, we don’t believe you, you know, and so I kind of was really on this lonely, lonely journey. And so having a faith community of people that not only were happy to see me and kind of wrap their arms around me, but believed me and held belief space, for me, was really, really huge. And that started to repair some of the things about God that, you know, obviously, I held in my heart. But the other thing is that I also did, did some work around belief systems and realizing that a lot of my experiences growing up experientially had taught me things, not just about God, but about myself and about others, about my worth, and all of the foundational pieces that should have been so much different, right, I should have been taught this foundation of worse than and, and specialists. And instead, I felt like I was worthless, and garbage and all these kinds of things. And so I actually did work around that to believe something different. All of those things helped me, as well as just having some of my own supernatural experiences, you know, with Jesus and realizing that the abuse that was done to me, like the whole goal of the abuse was to separate me, you know, from from God, it was to separate me from Jesus. And unfortunately, kind of to your point, I work with a lot of people who have, you know, had these types of experiences. There are people they might not have the abuses that I had, maybe they weren’t mechanically ritually abused by somebody claiming to be a Christian, but maybe they were I mean, I’ve definitely worked with that. Or they may be brought been brought up in these very staunch legalistic, hardcore religious systems where the Bible was weaponized against them, you know, the God being punitive was weaponized against them. And those are abuses too. And so, for those people, it’s the same thing, when we can grieve those experiences, and grieve what was lost it a lot of times can open our hearts to the things that will actually help us. And so I find that with the people that I work with, also, and I don’t ever approach anybody that I work with, with this idea of, Okay, we’re gonna go through this so that you can be a faith, you know, so that you can go this route. It’s like, no, no, no, I just want to hear your heart. I just want to be with you and what happened, and I just want to reflect back to you, kind of like, you know, what you and I got to do for each other, and the training and what we get to do for the people we work with, I want to reflect back to you the pain in my eyes. Because I’m, I’m hearing what it is that you experienced. And that’s what I want to do with you. And wherever that person goes with that is up to them. But what I do find is that, religiously, the heart is one of the most neglected and assaulted components of our being. It is assaulted, it is neglected, it is seen as a deceitful thing it is seen as your emotion shouldn’t lead you don’t be emotional, we’re black and white. And people grow up sometimes under so much religious pressure and pain. And then that pain is compounded because they’re taught to just be grateful, and you’re not supposed to feel those things, and you’re not being spiritual, and you’re not believing if you believe those things. And if you have depression, that’s because there’s something wrong with you. And you’re not you’re not seeing God, right? And they’re like under rocks and boulders of all of this stuff. And what I find is, is that when the heart is actually met, and seen and heard, and validated, and gets the opportunity to grieve, that actually a lot of times for people helps them to see that maybe the God that they’ve been taught isn’t really who God is. I have a good friend and one of the things that she talks about is that when she did grief recovery, she said I said saw this other side of God’s heart that wasn’t judgmental, that wasn’t angry, that was compassionate, that had boundless measures of compassion and love. And now you and I both know victory that when we walk people through grief recovery, there’s no religious aspect of grief recovery, we’re not, you know, what we always say to people is we’re not here to impose faith, and we’re not here to interrupt faith, it will do neither. There’s nothing in the process that will interrupt anyone space. And there’s nothing in the process that will impose faith. But what is really beautiful about it, and I’ve never seen anything like it is it brings this soft, understanding, compassionate place to a person’s heart. And because the heart is in religious circles, I’ve seen it as one of the most assaulted places within a person, it’s a really, really beautiful thing when somebody’s heart actually gets heard. And they actually get to realize that the heart is a beautiful thing. And our emotions are beautiful thing. And the pain that we’ve experienced, is that it’s pain, it’s going to be with us until it’s grief. And when they get all of those pieces, that’s what’s helpful. And that’s what was helpful for me too. And that’s what opened my eyes to see that, okay, what happened to me was because people did really evil things, you know, and when I can grieve that I can actually be in my heart and be connected to my heart. And I actually hear God, way more than I ever have. Just because I’m so hard connected. It’s the opposite. Oh, that makes sense.
Victoria Volk 26:37
100% 100% agree, I, I do feel like just doing the work on myself and tapping into my heart and working through all the gunk in there that it’s helped me to really have honestly, like, a spiritual connection to God like more of a wholehearted connection, rather than it being based on any one any religion or faith or whatever it may be. I’m curious what you would say to this question, because I’ve heard this too. You know, sometimes people just aren’t, they’re not ready to go there with grief recovery, or they feel like or they have a very strong faith that can you know, you have a very strong faith. I feel like I’m very connected with God. I don’t need this. Because I have God. I pray. And that’s all I need. Have you have you encountered? What would you say to that?
Sandi Derby 27:40
I mean, I, I hear that often. Yeah, I’ve encountered that many, many times. And, again, I think if somebody has a strong faith, and they’re praying, I think that’s a beautiful thing. I think that’s awesome. I agree. Praying is not grieving. They’re two different things. And so, what I do say to that person is a couple of things. Number one, in the Scriptures, it talks about poor laboring, and it’s this idea that we co labor with Christ, that there’s a part in our sanctification process that we do. And there’s a part that Jesus does. Grief recovery is about helping us it’s about giving us the tools for our side of the street. It’s, it helps us to engage in the coal labor process. It doesn’t take Jesus’s role. He has his role. But we do have a role, our role with God with Jesus, it’s a relational role we are in relationship. We’re co laboring together, we’re being hands and feet. And in our inner process, which is a sanctification process of becoming more like Jesus. There are things that we do, it isn’t that he comes and just takes it off. There are certain things that we do, and grief recovery helps us with our side of the street. Another way to look at it is we were created to grieve, by the way, like we were made by God to be able to grieve we’re born being able to grieve. We’re born grieving. You look at little kids, they’re in the moment it is up and out, and then they’re on to the next thing. They are emotional processing plants. We learn to be emotional storage units, we learn to store things inside and by the way, what people do need to understand is emoting meaning like, well, you know what, Sandy, but that’s not true. Because you know what, there’s times when I’m by myself and I’m praying, and I do cry, or there’s times when I go in my room and I do cry, Oh, there’s times when I’m driving in my car and I do get angry and I do feel feelings and all that kind of stuff. That’s great. But emoting and grieving are two different things. We unlearn grieving. And so another way to look at it is imagine you’re born and you got a little backpack and it’s empty. And then things happen. You might get stolen, you move, a parent dies, or parents get divorced or grandparent dies or you get abused or things happen and guess what, when we’re little we look to the people around us because they’re the ones that They’re supposed to teach us how to grieve. But by then the adults around us have learned to stuff and compartmentalize and not grieve. So what happens for us is that every time one of those things happen, either a rock, a pebble or a boulder goes in our back. You know, john James says, We’re taught how to acquire things, we’re not taught what to do when we lose them. And so over time, we end up with a pretty heavy backpack. It’s full of rocks, and pebbles and boulders. Grief recovery method is the tool so that we can relearn how to get rocks, pebbles, and boulders out of our back, none of the religious practices will get rocks, pebbles, and boulders out of the backpack, because we were created by God to already grieve. And we were created to do that in community, with people grieving has to be done with people, at least one other person. And so because we live in a society where we don’t come together and grieve, we are isolated, and alone in our pain. And in our experiences, we don’t have the communal tools to be able to walk through the grieving process. And remember, grief can happen for multitudes and multitudes of things. And so grief recovery recovery method is specific to getting rocks out of the background. And I will tell you, I’ve, I’ve done lots and lots of trainings, I’ve trained lots of grief recovery specialists, and you know how to training not long ago, and there were people in the training that were, you know, very much believers and Christians, and, you know, prayerful and all those things. And that’s awesome. I mean, great. And they had all the same questions that you were just talking about. And I kept going back to the rocks in the backpack, and there’s a little diagram that I that I draw, her name is Sally, and she’s got dots inside. Don’t make me draw Sally again. And I kept going back to Sally, but I will tell you, because in the training, they walked through the grief recovery method, by the time they were through the method, every single one of them was in shock. I can’t believe how much later I feel. And I can’t believe how much different everybody in this room looks because they look lighter. Because the tools to get the rocks out of the backpack are found in grief recovery method, that’s just the reality are there probably other tools out there, there may be I just haven’t seen any of them yet. And so for somebody who is someone who is prayerful and all those kinds of things, like I said, I, I am too. I am a big prayer person, I believe in all of that stuff. And there’s an inner healing even that Jesus has brought, to me that has been deeply profound. But when it comes to grieving, those things will not get those rocks out. And we have to remember, we’re co laboring, we’re not just sitting back and Jesus or God is just going to do it all. We have to engage in the process. And this process will give you the tools that you need for your side of the street. And like we talked about, when you get that right that gunk out of the heart, what happens is, is that your heart opens up. And now there’s this deeper connection. You know, for people that are below that there’s this deeper connection. And so I find that for a lot of people that’s what happens and they don’t realize, oh wow, with these tools, I actually go deeper in my faith, my prayer life changes and it gets deeper and more profound. So that question I think comes up a lot. I think it’s a valid question to be honest, I think you know, when we’re taught these certain things about about prayer, of course prayer is is amazing and of course it does it moves mountains roof recovery doesn’t interrupt that at all. It’s just it’s a different lane. And if you don’t address that lane, then guess what that lane filters into all the other lanes grief has an unresolved grief has a way of impacting every area including the spiritual area.
Victoria Volk 34:05
Yeah, I’m reminded of a quote I’m not sure how it goes exactly. Maybe this is it but pray and move your feet. Pray and move your feet so it’s about taking action to not just sitting back praying but sitting back and waiting waiting for something to change within you waiting for someone else to you know waiting for him God whatever you believe in to take those boulders and pebbles and rocks out of your backpack for you. No one will do it for you, right?
Sandi Derby 34:40
No, it’s like there’s this one scripture and it says you know, and again you talking about action. It is an action scripture cuz it’s like, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength. It’s a quick one people know it off the top of their head. But when you think of that first part Love the Lord your God with all your heart. How Do that. And how do you love with all your heart when your heart is all stopped up with pebbles and rocks and boulders? How do you do that? Bingo, that scripture is calling you to action. It’s not saying God is going to come in and he’s going to, he’s going to get all that stuff out. So and then, you know, move you into loving, it’s no, this is an action that we take, how do you live that out? Well, you need the right tools in order to be able to love wholeheartedly. There’s another scripture that says, hope deferred makes the heart sick. But a longing fulfilled is the tree of life. And it’s just this idea that, you know, when we have deferred hope, when our hearts are all stopped up with stuff, our hearts are sick, well, if your heart is sick, if your heart is holding all of these things, you’ve got to take action. In order to get better, it’s no different than if I have a gash on my arm, I’m going to the doctor, if I break a leg, I’m going to the hospital, I need to take some kind of action, it’s the same with the heart, it’s, I think, for a lot of people a little bit less tangible, because I can see a broken leg or you know, blood gushing out of my arm. Sometimes a broken heart is a little bit harder to see visibly. But when you can think of the analogy of all those rocks and pebbles and boulders in your backpack, that that becomes a bit more tangible. And you go Okay, so I’m carrying this, it’s really heavy. And these tools will lighten the load. And I can actually engage in something that will lighten the load, and it works every time.
Victoria Volk 36:31
You know, speaking to grief that begins in childhood childhood trauma and things like that. Yesterday, I had this awareness that came to me I never really understood why when people say this, it makes just makes my skin crawl, it just irritates me. But when people say that children are resilient, it just always, just as always gotten to me and I could never really articulate why it bothered me so much. Until yesterday, I came across a post for someone talked about being self reliant, and how self reliance like if you want help go look to the end of your own arm. You you know you have you have the power in your own, at the end of your arms in your own hands, to help yourself, right. And it’s about being self reliant. Like self reliance helps us to see that in a self reliant. So, what I thought back to was my childhood and how I, unlike probably you as well, if you have you, you grow up having to be self reliant, you have to be your own hero. And I think that’s different than resiliency, but yet very much the same. And I think someone people would say, well, children, when people say that their children are resilient, they’ll bounce back. It just occurred to me yesterday that the people who are saying this, like is it people who are on able to look at what that child has experienced, or look at that child’s pain, without being able to really empathize. Because I think if you’re looking at a child and what they’re going through, regardless of what it is, that might be hard for them, it’s easy to think, well, you’re resilient, you’ll bounce back, you’re not going to address what it is that child is experiencing, you’re not going to be able to put yourself in that child’s shoes, because you’re seeing it from the lens as an adult, in your experience. And if you have not addressed anything in your own heart, your grief, trauma, anything. How can you see that in the child? How can you empathize with them? You’re going to say, children are resilient, and they bounce back. And it just occurred to me yesterday, why that irritates me so much. Because it’s not about being resilient. It’s about not being given the choice of having to be self reliant. I didn’t have a choice. Yeah, I did not choose that. So the resilience comes from a lot of pain and suffering and having to be self reliant. And I think that’s why they’re so intertwined. And that’s why it just really just grinds my gears. What are your thoughts on that?
Sandi Derby 39:27
Yeah, I couldn’t agree with you more. I think that when people say that, because I work with the adults that have been through the things as a child, number one, I looked like a resilient child. I did, you wouldn’t have known the things that were happening to me I learned to function in spite of all of it. That’s not resiliency that’s coping. And I’ll tell you what, it comes out later. Children will meld into their environments and do what they have to do in order to try to get any little scrap of love that they can get because they’re so dependent on the adults and caregivers. is around them. But it will come out later. number one. Number two, when you teach a child, like you’re saying that idea of resiliency and self reliance, and and I love what you said about you know you didn’t have a choice, you got to figure it out, you’re teaching them to stuff mountains of pain that let me tell you it will affect them in relationships, it’ll affect their health, it’ll affect their well being and their career and all of those different things. And now they have no tools even as an adult, right? Because what we learned as a child is what we carry into adulthood, to be able to connect with people and actually get the things that we need in order to get better, because like I mentioned with grief, you can’t do grief in self reliance, you have to actually be with people who are with you in your heart. And we have all these people that have learned to be self reliant. And guess what, nobody’s healing. You nobody’s healing. And yes, maybe you’re living a life and maybe you’ve gotten your career really far. But guess what, everything else is falling apart. Because all you’ve been able to focus on is your career. Because that’s how you’ve coped. We have so many people walking around today that are in coping, and they’re coping and not living. Being self reliant. That’s what it teaches us to do. It teaches us to cope instead of live. Think about how you and I are on this call right now. And we’re so connected in our hearts are connected. And, you know, we could probably talk for hours, right? Because we’re being with each other. And because we’ve done this work, and we have this heart connection, and it’s really beautiful. And it’s this amazing experience. But how many people go through life and they don’t get to have this. They don’t get to live and be present and connect. They’re coping. And to your point, that’s what we teach children. We teach them to cope, when they’re born knowing how to grieve, and they’re born knowing how to get things out. We teach them to live in coping, and that’s what that does, I was a great cover, I was really great at it. But that did not mean that I was living in that I was present. And that’s for so many people that I know, even if their life looks really good on the outside. We want to be living present people, we need other people, by the way to do that. We need other people in our breathing experience. And I’ll say this, I know we’re almost out of time. But that’s why grief recovery method works a lot. Because it’s not just that you’re getting the tools. It’s that you’re either walking through it with one other person, or we’re in a group setting, breaking into smaller groups. And you’re getting that community validating, compassionate experience that lets your heart come out to heal. Because your heart won’t heal unless it feel safe. And when you teach people to be with and say that kids are resilient and the whole self reliant thing, it’s not healthy. It’s not healthy. It’s not actually how we’re created to live.
Victoria Volk 42:53
Yeah, and I have a whole podcast blog post social post, I’m going all over the place with that message, because it came to me so clear yesterday and hit me like a thunderbolt. And yeah, it’s something I really want to speak to for children. Because hurting children become hurting adults. There’s a lot of hurting inner children out there right now. Especially with COVID, everything mounting up.
Sandi Derby 43:22
And then what they teach other children is also how to be cope.
Victoria Volk 43:28
Yep, that generational learning continue, the loop continues.
Sandi Derby 43:32
Yes, yes, definitely.
Victoria Volk 43:36
I wished we had more time. We do part two, at some day. I would love that.
Sandi Derby 43:46
Yes, absolutely. That’d be great.
Victoria Volk 43:47
To speak to another aspect of grief. I think. I would love that. Where can people find you?
Sandi Derby 43:55
You can go to sandiderby.com, and there’s contact info. Um, there’s all kinds of stuff.
Victoria Volk 44:08
All of Sandi’s amazingness right there for you. Sandi, you hold a special place in my heart, you always will. I’m so glad our paths connected in March 2019. It’s a remarkable journey for me, and I’m so glad to have been able to share it with you. So, thank you for being on this podcast today, and for sharing your story. And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.
