Cancer, Child Loss, Grieving Voices Guest, Grieving Voices Podcast, Podcast |
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
Grief is a teacher, a harsh one, but it comes bearing profound lessons.
In today’s heart-touching episode of Grieving Voices, I sit down with Dave Roberts, whose personal odyssey through loss is nothing short of inspiring. He shares his intimate experiences following the passing of his daughter to a rare cancer.
From grappling with unimaginable pain to discovering a spiritual connection and wisdom beyond the veil – this episode isn’t just about coping; it’s about transcending grief and embracing life in its entirety.
Key points covered in this episode:
- Dave reflects on three significant dates that changed his life.
- He discusses the rarity and severity of alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma, which ultimately led to his daughter’s passing just ten months after her diagnosis.
- The profound impact on Dave’s life post-loss, including how none of his professional training prepared him for grieving as a father.
- His involvement with bereavement support groups helped him feel less alone but also prompted deeper reflection on what more he needed for healing.
- He discusses a chance encounter that opened up new spiritual pathways that transformed Dave’s approach to grief, leading him to coauthor a book.
- The importance of continuing bonds with loved ones who have passed away is highlighted as an integrative process for moving forward while still honoring those we’ve lost.
Dave doesn’t hesitate to discuss raw emotions or societal expectations around male vulnerability. He dives deep into these topics, offering solace and understanding to anyone struggling silently.
Let Dave’s words guide you through the darkness toward the light—because sometimes it takes hearing someone else’s story to begin rewriting our own.
Transformative Grief: David Roberts’ Journey from Loss to Spiritual Connection and Empowerment
In the quiet moments of reflection, we often find our deepest insights. Today on Grieving Voices, David Roberts shared a story that echoes in the hearts of anyone who’s ever loved and lost.
David faced every parent’s nightmare when his daughter Janine was diagnosed with a rare cancer just after giving birth—a time that should have been filled with joy instead became overshadowed by impending loss. His journey through grief led him to support groups, spiritual guidance, and eventually to teaching others about navigating the treacherous waters of bereavement.
His story isn’t just about loss; it’s about transformation. From the ashes of profound sorrow rose an understanding that grief is not linear—it’s a complex dance between joy and pain. David learned to live with his daughter’s memory woven into the fabric of his life, turning anguish into a source of strength.
As he shares these lessons with students at Utica University, he fosters an environment where mutual growth sprouts from shared experiences. He reminds us that while supporters may come and go as we evolve through our grief, change remains our constant companion—ushering us towards new beginnings even as we honor what we’ve left behind.
David’s message resonates beyond personal tragedy; it speaks to men grappling with societal expectations around emotional expression. It challenges couples to navigate their unique paths through mourning together yet apart in their individual processes.
Above all else, David teaches us that embracing new perspectives can illuminate pathways out of darkness—not by leaving our losses behind but by integrating them into who we are becoming.
For those yearning for more wisdom or seeking solace in similar stories—you’re not alone. Reach out to David at davidrobertsmsw.com or tune into his podcast Teaching Journeys for further exploration on consciousness and healing beyond death’s door.
Remember: In acknowledging vulnerability lies great strength; in sharing your narrative resides immense power—to heal oneself and inspire many.
Episode Transcription:
Victoria Volk: Hey, hey, hey, thank you for tuning in to grieving voices. Today, you’re joining me and my guest David Roberts a licensed master social worker who became a parent who experienced the death of a child when his daughter, Janine, died of cancer on March first two thousand three at the age of eighteen. He is a retired addiction professional and is an adjunct professor in the psychology department at Utica University in Utica, New York. Dave has presented brief workshops at National Conferences of the Compassionate friends, as well as for the bereaved parents of the USA. He has been a past Huffington Post contributor and has authored several articles on Grief for a variety of Internet publications. He co authored a book with Reverend Patti Ferino titled when the Psychology Professor met the Minister which was self published on Amazon on March first twenty twenty one, which also happens to be or was eighteenth anniversary of your daughter’s death, which I imagine was not a coincidence.
Dave Roberts: It was that, Victoria.
Victoria Volk: So let’s start there. And actually rewind the clock to when your daughter became ill because she passed up a very rare form of soft tissue cancer called alveolar Rhabdomyocarcoma.
Dave Roberts: Mhmm.
Victoria Volk: Which is rarely – it was more common in children under the age of ten, and can have a genetic disposition of it. So when did you when did she when did you as a family find you know, when did she receive that diagnosis? And
Dave Roberts: Well, at
Victoria Volk: that time.
Dave Roberts: I would have taken back to three significant dates. You know, to to set up the timeline for this. First and foremost, Janine became pregnant in September, I believe, of two thousand and one. And on May second two thousand and two, she delivered a healthy baby girl. Her name is Brianna, and she’s Brianna is now twenty two years old. And during her pregnancy, she had a freak injury to her right foot. And her foot became progressively swollen throughout her pregnancy. And we had Victoria attributed the swelling of her foot to just the normal complications of pregnancy. Adema, And, you know, we just figured it wasn’t anything. It was we figured it was gonna go away once she was once she had delivered her child. However, her foot became progressively worse. Any type of treatment that they used to treat her foot such as a walking boot or rest or elevation did not stem the swelling. So her orthopedic surgeon wanted to do an MRI in April of two thousand and two, but she needed to have said, absolutely not. I wanna wait until my baby’s born. So Brianna again was born on May second two thousand and two. She Jadine had the MRI done in the hospital and they found an undefined eight centimeter mass at the bottom of her foot. About a week or so later, they biopsied it. The biopsy came back as highly suggestive of cancer. On May twenty six, he was officially diagnosed with the Veiliar Rhabdomyosarcoma. Again, a very rare inactive muscle tissue cancer. In the week prior to her official diagnosis, I had just received confirmation that I met the requirements for my master’s in social work degree from Suni Abenei. So on May second, I became I experienced the immense joy of being a grandparent. On May nineteenth, a satisfaction of a twenty five year journey of getting my master’s degree. And on May twenty six, I found myself now the parent of a terminally ill child. In June, we went to Dana Farber Research Institute in Boston, which is one of the best, if not, the best pediatric research and treatment centers for sarcomas in the United States. Because in our area, and I’m from upstate New York, a little town called Lloydsboro, New York. We don’t deal with sarcomas. That’s not the specialty of the oncologist here. So they sent us some place that would be more probably, more in a position to to to treat it more effectively. But when we got there, we had a five minute consult with one of their one of their oncologists. Janina had stage four cancer which meant it totally metastasized and metastasized her bone marrow to her lymph nodes to her bones. They told us that there was absolutely no cure for cancer. The only hope that they were going to have for any type of gove cure was to put her cancer into remission, keep it in remission until they can find a cure. So when my daughter and I firmly heard, and what my wife heard and what Janine’s significant other heard is that. Janine is gonna die. Unless there’s some type of a miracle. So I went from this joy of accomplishment, the joy of being a grandparent to all of a sudden looking at the possibility that I was good to good possibility. I was gonna be walking a path and no parent as ever ever wants to walk. And I did my own research. I found a good rabbit on myosarcoma site. And you had mentioned in the introduction that this is a cancer that is typical to children that are tenant under. Janine got a childhood cancer at eighteen. And that was one of the mortality indicators. Is that of her chances to to have some quality of life would have been better hit she had gotten us when she was younger? But the fact that she got it when she was older, plus her tumor size, plus bone marrow and footnote involvement, increased her chances that she was going to die as I call it now transitioned to a new existence. The five year survival rate for her type of cancer, Victoria, depending on what research you were looking at was ten to fifteen percent, which meant there was gonna be an eighty five to ninety percent chance that she was gonna die within five years. And she didn’t even make it a year within ten months from from diagnosis. From her diagnosis, she transitioned at home on March first two thousand and three with hospice services. And that led me on a path that I never thought I in my life, I would ever I would ever be walking. I was a I was an addiction counselor at the time. I started teaching at Utica University at the time. It was first, it was Utica College, now it’s Utica University. And none of my education, none of my training, none of my background as a therapist or my my work with individuals who had all kinds of trauma due to addiction or not due to addiction. None of that prepared me for for what I needed to do to move forward. So at age forty seven when this happened, my version of the midlife crisis wasn’t buying a sports car. Getting a to pay, getting a headpiece, trying to reclaim my youth, and I was trying to figure out what type of a person I was gonna be in the kind of world that I was going to choose to live in. And I am paraphrasing thatthat term from a gentleman by the name of Neil Peirk, the late Craig Drummer for the Canadian Rock Band Rush who had his own series of tragedies. And he talked about needing to get to determine the type of world he wanted to live in and the type of person he wanted to be after those tragedies. And his conceptualization of his path really, really kinda mirrored mine. And really, I couldn’t have said any better than he did. So that is the background story. That’s how I’ve gotten That’s how I got to this point in my life where now every everything that I stood for, my values, my beliefs, my priorities everything was on the table now. Everything was up for discussion.
Victoria Volk: And how did that change? The David before your daughter passed versus the David after she passed?
Dave Roberts: Well, First of all, if you asked me to to to type of person I was at forty seven years old, Victoria, I couldn’t begin to tell you. That couldn’t begin to find him. He did a search priority to find him. So that person is no longer a part of me. It’s just it’s just it’s just a distant memory. What got me to this point, and it it went in steps and went in steps for me. First was fighting really adequate support, which is necessary to get through any type of any type of grief journey. I found a really good with the help of my wife Sherry, a really good bereavement support group for parents that was sponsored by a local funeral home. Because one of the things is that I really felt alone. You know, I really felt like, jeez, I’m the only person going through this because my world was so shattered and my world was so broken. I didn’t even know where I fit in with this. I didn’t even know did that did anybody else have that has anybody else ever gone through this? Now, intellectually, I figured people had but that wasn’t, you know, but it wasn’t registering anywhere else with me. I just couldn’t, you know, I just couldn’t conceptualized that anybody else was going through, what I was going through. But when I walked into that brewery parent support group for the first time, I saw eighteen other parents who were going through the do the same thing.
And then all of a sudden, I wasn’t alone. And their parents said they were longer a lot farther along in the journey than me, and it helped for me to kind of pick their brains and listen to what they did to help them get to the point that they got through, to begin to and to begin to reengage in life again. I began to do some reading and books of other found grief and other other parents who had experienced a transition of a child And then I began to get involved in doing some workshops for the compassion, friends, and later around thebury parents of the USA, two organizations and support families who have experienced a death of a child of any agent from any cause. And then in two thousand and ten, my whole and I also began to to start or help and organize grief conferences and do some other things in honor of my daughter. I was doing what I felt I needed to do at the time to try to re engage in life and to try to make sure that she was always gonna be remembered.
And then in two thousand and ten, everything changed where my perspective really got a total shot of a spiritual adrenaline?
Victoria Volk: In what way?
Victoria Volk: What do you say to people who maybe are attending such groups and are feeling like they’re not moving forward? Or, you know, because oftentimes, in the work that I do with Grievers and hearing from people that I’ve worked with about support groups and things like that is if they’re not moving you to action. If you’re coming to it’s a great place to connect with people like you said to not feel alone and to who share a similar story. But if you’re coming in and you’re sharing your story and you’re hearing other people’s stories, which can be really heartbreaking for the grieber. Right? You you do you feel better when you leave, you know, after you hear other people’s, you know, sad stories and things. If it’s not moving you forward. So what do you say to to that?
Dave Roberts: So, basically, one of the things I would do First of all, if they feel that they’re not moving forward, I would ask them to perhaps do some inventory. What do you think is preventing you from moving forward? Is it something that you’re missing within yourself? Is it something within the group? Has the group become you know, has the group that support group specifically not met your needs anymore because a support group that might be good for somebody who’s in the early phase of grief as an individual feels they’re progressing and they’re not, that support group may actually not be be be serving that purpose for them anymore.
So I would encourage them. I would ask them, what are some other things that you’ve been curious about exploring? Well, you know, both I’m looking about I’d like to explore maybe something like native. I’m thinking about it, the teachings of animals and nature. So I might refer them to the Native American teachings of Jamie Sams and Ted Andrews just to to look in to look to look at that and see how they can integrate at peace.
I would ask them, you know, have, you know, have they journaled, you know, maybe do some journaling to see exactly and you know, what they feel that their message is right about, you know, specific things that are going on and what may be triggering that and what they feel that. You know Dan’s also asking what specific culting skills do they think they need moving forward or what other perspectives. Because one of the things it’s it’s really easy to to to to feel like you’re not moving forward in grief even though you seem to be on the surface doing okay. And and that was that was for me. I think one of the things that two thousand and ten thathappened to me is that I felt that I was getting to a point where, you know, I feel like I’m doing this okay, but there’s something more than I’m missing. And the way thatmanifested is the day after the conference, I was taking three presenters up into the adiranax, up north because of the changes season up north around here in September, Victoria is really nice with the changing of the leaves and colors of the leaves. It kinda looks like just intensive water paint or oil painting. So I was they were having this intense conversation about spirituality. And I looked up at the sky and I said, I wanted to be where they are. Now, I wasn’t saying this to anybody in particular. Am I doing God or what it might have been the universe, could have been creative, could have been anybody. But I said I want to be where they are. And I’ve come to discover that intention is a powerful form is the most powerful form of prayer. So I would tell an individual, state your intention. What do you what have what do you do you see yourself now in the next phase of grief? What do you see yourself embracing? Where do you see yourself being? I said I wanted to be where they are. And I just basically wanted some some more information on spirituality so that it could give me some more tools to be able to move forward. The universe, however, conspired to give me more than I asked for and it gave me Patty. Patty gave me all different perspectives. And everything. And the work that we did together and the work that she exposed me to that helped me find peace with my daughter’s transition also helped me do some healing of the ancestral wounds over my father’s abandoned when I was five years old and my mother’s decision that to remarry and become overprotective. So all of the work that she helped me do with Janine translated to doing more work in my past to help me heal fifty five year old lives with my father and at least you know, with with my mother probably, yeah, probably about that, probably thirty five or forty years anyway. At least, well, she transitioned to nineteen ninety four, So you’re talking, yeah, probably about thirty year old ones with that. So, you know, it just opened up a world to me I never thought possible in terms of just widespread coming to peace and widespread ongoing healing. Other areas of my life that I hadn’t anticipated, all because of the work that Patty lovingly did with me for ten years to help me embrace a different perspective that would allow me to come to greater awareness of myself, my role in the world, and also to help me find peace with what had happened. Now in acceptance of the fact that I could still engage in a world where my daughter was not physically present, one of the things that I wanna mention and I wanna clarify for your listeners and for your viewers is that just because of peace doesn’t mean I still don’t grieve. I still grieve. There are days depending on what is going on in my life that I could experience the raw pain of grief And it doesn’t matter if it’s ten years later or twenty one years later. But now I look at it as an expected part of the journey I am going to be at or Beth, I’m gonna walk. Until I transition myself. And I’ve relearned to realize the joy of pain, yearning, sadness that can all call exist and we can learn from we can learn from it all. And as long as we accept the fact that, yeah, I mean, you know, we’re going going to experience those emotions that are associated with any type of loss because just because the physical body is is no longer here, doesn’t mean that the relationship doesn’t continue. The relationship goes on and love continues to endure. And with love, there’s also the pain that goes along with it because that person is not physically present. And that can that can still occur throughout throughout the life cycle of grief. Which is why I’ve always said I believe that grief is a circular in its journey and it’s not a linear journey. It doesn’t go on stages. It It’s very much can can resurface at any time depending on what’s going on at the present moment.
Victoria Volk: And for those listening who are paying attention to your timeline, of when you felt like you could that you were once moving forward. You know, it doesn’t have to take ten years. It doesn’t have to take thirty years like it did for me. Thirty plus years actually. But I think if we allow ourselves to be open to the people, to the teachings of others, to nature that truly is in higher power, whatever you wanna call it, that really is wants to nurture us. In our longing and in our sorrow. I think that we can accelerate that healing a little bit if we’re open to it. Right? If we
Dave Roberts: Or more work.
Victoria Volk: Listening more than we’re projecting, maybe, our pain.
Dave Roberts: Howard Bauchner: Yeah. And the other thing is that, yeah, as they were open to it. And the other thing is that to give ourselves permission to become empowered to say, okay, this perspective can be integrated into my core belief system. This one cannot. You don’t have to agree with everything. You don’t have to take in everything. You take what’s gonna work for you. The other piece of that is also being willing to listen to perspectives that are markedly different from yours and not to judge it is saying, well, you know, the you know, this is not the the appropriate way to grieve. It’s basically listening to it, bearing witness to it and saying, okay, what can I take away from this? What can I leave behind? Or can I take anything away from it? And it’s okay. The thing all we need to do is basically bear witness and try to understand where the other person is coming from, how they got to that perspective. With with my work with Patty, every time she would introduce me to something, my scientifically curious and I would say, okay, how can the spiritual perspective fit in with my existing core rational belief system? And then I would call her back and say, cheese paddy this work. Because I can see this. I can see where and and what happened for me is I got I got that assessed for life again because I was discovering new things that I that I never thought possible. And whenever we can discover perspectives that are novel, that work, then we think, boy, if we incorporate these this is gonna mean I’m gonna be moving forward as opposed to stagnating or moving backwards that it empowers us, it energizes us and I think it informs the service work that we do with others and makes it more rich because now we can share that. Anything that I learned learned about my own journey with with grief, I share that with my students at Utica University and my deaf dying and bereavement class. They know very much from day one, my history, including my history with Janine, and in losing a child. And anything that I learned, it’s just like I’m excited to share that with them. And then in turn, they will share perspectives with me that they teach me. So it’s just, you know, it’s just when you’re willing to be open and when you’re excited about what you have learned to communicate, it just opens up so many more doors doors. For connection, our support groups will evolve naturally, I think, based on where we’re at in our grief. People that were there for me in early grief aren’t there for me now, but that’s okay because a lot of that has been a choice that I’ve made to bring in different people in my support group who are going to be been are gonna be helpful to me now. So my support group has evolved. I have let’s see. It’s it’s it’s been fluid And that’s one of the other things I tell individuals expect that things are going to change. The early, early aftermath of a of a death, people that you thought were going to step up are No. Can’t be found anywhere because they don’t know how to deal with your grief. The people that you never thought were gonna step up do. And what is gonna be constant is change. But look at change is something that could be energizing as opposed to debilitating or as opposed to just being uncomfortable.
Victoria Volk: That’s where the growth is.
Dave Roberts: That’s where the exact
Victoria Volk: It’s getting uncomfortable.
Dave Roberts: That that’s you gotta be uncomfortable. I mean, you gotta be uncomfortable. And that is where the growth is. You know, we can’t grow without some type of uncomfortability.
Victoria Volk: And that is grief. That is the grief. And so it’s allowing ourselves to, I think, lead into into the pain first so we can really feel it. But also, like you said then, integrate it into our lives Mhmm. And follow our curiosity as to, you know, and I think too part of what you said is is asking ourselves deeper questions that grief often brings up for us that we’re afraid to ask because we are afraid of the answer. Because once we know the answer, we have a choice to make.
Dave Roberts: That’s right. And do we want to move forward? Do we want to stay stuck? And I think we do I think eventually once we we let the raw pain of grief and golfers, we do have a choice in terms of how we can move forward. I think if you look at Victoria, those individuals that I’m sure you’ve had on your podcast, those individuals in society who have transcended challenge. They did it because they made a choice to reengage in life again. They made a choice to say, okay. If this is the path that the universe or my higher power or God is going to to unfold for me. I am gonna make the best of that path for the remaining time that I have on the Earth. And other people can choose to make a choice not to do that. And there are consequences with every choice that we make. I used to tell my clients when I was an addiction’s professional. You choose the consequence of your actions. You can choose the consequences a sobriety, you can choose the consequences of of addiction. Okay? But the choice is gonna be yours. You’re gonna need to experience those consequences. I can’t do that for you. But it said, if you’re going to choose choose wisely. And if you’re going to choose consequences that are not going to have a negative or it’s not going to have a positive outcome, or could not have a positive outcome, put the accountability where the accountability needs to be, and that’s how you take responsibility for that.
Because once you take responsibility for your actions, you’re gonna jump back in a treatment sooner. Once we take responsibility for how we are going to transcend our grief we are able to move through grief. If I never use terms like closure or move on, when we move through grief, we integrate our grief, and we learn to accept we are living in a world where things are different because our loved ones are not physically present. And any loss, it doesn’t have to be the loss of a child, any loss drastically changes the landscape of our lives because we’re a person’s physical absence, physical absence, changes who we are and changes how we relate to the world. The loss of a pet as well too, depending on the nature of the relationship thatperson has with a pet, is gonna have those those same type of consequences. I’ll be at a different kind of grief. It’s still gonna have the same consequences. So
Victoria Volk: I’ve actually, some people have shared with me that losing their pet felt like they were losing a limb.
Dave Roberts: Absolutely.
Victoria Volk: Part of themselves. Gut wrenching. Like, these are the words that, you know, I’ve heard, and it is one of the most minimized losses too. Yeah. But I was thinking about as you were sharing your story about Janine and Brianna, I just I was envisioning this little girl Actually, I was envisioning Janine, like, as a mother myself, I it’s like, to hear that news and to know that this little girl you just gave birth to will not know you growing up. Like, I can’t even imagine being a new mother and having to go through all of those emotions. How did you support her? And how did she I mean, I suppose it was every day just a matter of survival and doing what she had to do to survive, while being a mother like that, I just I can’t even wrap my head around that.
Dave Roberts: What when when We had offered Branno was born. We had offered Janine and her significant other living in an apartment and their own. To come and live with us, you know, until she got she got better or until she was they were able to to and her significant other time was going to school, he was working. And he was taking full time. He was taking care of Janine. So he finally said to Janine, so we can’t do this. I said, I can’t do all of this myself. Let’s move in with your parents. So they moved in her significant other her significant other her name’s Steve. Jenny their cat moved in with our two cats, me, Sherry, and my two boys. So the joke was how many How many two leggings and four leggings could you get in two a single level ranch? And we ended up, I think ended up, I think, shattering that equation. After Janine transitioned, Janine had asked Steven, she goes, look, she didn’t say, well, she said, please stay here until Brianna’s ready for kindergarten. Stay with my parents. I don’t want her uprooted anymore than she already is. To his credit, he was nineteen when Janine became sick. To his credit, he stayed for four years. He stayed until she hit kindergarten. He stayed with us. He has since remarried. He has a disc you know, he’s he’s very happily married. He made sure that we saw a brand regularly after after he moved. And now brand is twenty two She has a little girl of her own now and she’s got another child out of the way. So I’ve I’ve become a great grandfather. And, you know, and it’s got a surreal holding Janine’s grandchildren as well too. So, you know, you take a look at all of us. And But it was for Janine, one of the things that she made sure to do is she recorded every moment that she had with Brianna. When Brianna walked, when Brianna started talking, when they did things together. And one of the more surreal experiences I had. I think it was last year of Victoria. I had the DVD of Janine’s last Christmas. And I sat down with Brianna, we watched that. So Brianna had a chance to see what kind of a mother Janine was to her for the time that she had with her and she was able to at least get an understanding of who her mother was. You wanna talk about surreal and emotional? That was that was something watching that with her. And but Janine documented everything because she knew she wasn’t gonna be around. In fact, she told me the Christmas before she transitioned and and it was just it was just after Christmas, who were sitting in the family room and we were by ourselves. And she goes, you know, Dan, I did a lot for everybody that I did for this Christmas, because I’m not sure I’m gonna be here next year. She knows she wasn’t gonna be here next year. She knew that. I think she she had a sense of that from the beginning. And I just didn’t say it to her. I just said, I understand, honey. And that’s all I said to her. She never asked me. Do you think I’m gonna die? She knew. She knew. And that’s why she did what she did. To give you an understanding of how resilient she was, When we got back from Dana Farber, and I tell the story, I had this old Jeep Cherokee, and she was in a lot of pain, you know, from her buying and everything from the tumors. And we were was a five hour drive from Boston, and I was sitting every bump in the road. She was screaming out in pain. And I tried going slow. I tried going fast. Nothing worked. So we got home. She sat out of the couch. I walked up to her all of a sudden, I start crying like a baby. I just buried my face in her lap. And I just said, honey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cause you so much pain. I looked up and she started having tears in her eyes. She looked at me. She goes, dad, I don’t worry. She goes, I’m peripheral. I’m that paraphrasing us a little bit, dad, don’t worry. I was just yelling because I wasn’t so much pain. You know what you said to me after that? She goes, if dad, if you can’t sleep, come and find me, we’ll talk. So I’m thinking to myself, this is a young lady who’s dying, and she’s worried about taking care of me. So I kind of figured, well, she could if she could look at it with that type of toughness, I could get through it. And I could get at least I could get through it. I could at least you know, get through what she is, get through the treatment and and and try to be strong for her through that because she was strong for me. When I was I was just a mess. And that’s the one moment that I’ll and thatwould tell you what she was probably was like as a mother. She made sure that the time that she had with Brianna was quality time. And in the summer, when her chemo was having a positive respect, they did a lot of things together. And she had that DVD so that at some point, Brandon, I can and my wife sure can look at that with her and say, here’s this is your mother. And that was a powerful, very emotional experience for me. And I think for Brann as well too.
Victoria Volk: Brings tears to my eyes, just hearing it.
Dave Roberts: Yeah. Yeah. It’s I get emotional telling that story. You know, I can I can tell when I get emotional because I start I start my voice starts breaking up a little bit? I can just feel it in here and it’s but that that’s a testament to the type of young lady she is.
And, you know, it was just the impact she had and and the type of mother she was and and it would have it it could have been and would have been had she had she’d been alive.
Victoria Volk: And to be so young, I think that’s the part that really just touches me is how young she was and just like, how quickly she had to grow up?
Dave Roberts: She had yeah. She had to be you know, it was interesting. She was talking about getting married to Steven in the backyard of her house. And any other side of the coin she was talking to wonder about whether she was gonna make it, you know, what you would also thatbut that’s that type of compartmentalization that you normally see with, you know, you’re one the one he had you thinking about, Bob, but I’m very the love of my wife and second hand, you’re thinking about chemo treatments, and you’re thinking I’m not gonna make it. But, you know, she Don, she told me right from the beginning, she was I’m not going down without a fight.
Victoria Volk: Did they end up getting married?
Dave Roberts: No. Okay. No. No. They didn’t. There was something that they she’s she had always wanted to get married in in her backyard. She already had the son to the she would she one day was she was fifteen. She goes, this is a sign we’re gonna dance to with my wedding. And she had a head that all figured out. What some
Victoria Volk: do you know?
Dave Roberts: I don’t remember. It was a country western song. It was a slow one. And I don’t remember. I never thought to ask her you know, for the type of for the science analytics. Because the time she was cancer free, I’m thinking, I got all kinds of time to figure that out. And then I think, you know, you think you got time and then all of a sudden there isn’t time. So so now I’ve learned to make sure now that when as I make sure I ask those questions, well, what sign is this now? Because not because what I’ve learned through this whole thing is that today isn’t given. Today, you know, today, you know, it’s here to go. I’m very grateful any day I get to wake up and do those. And I share that with God. The universe Thank you for giving me another day. Thank you for allowing me to get up and and, you know, make have this a day where I can make it a great day.
Victoria Volk: Maybe it’s a song about double rainbows.
Dave Roberts: Maybe. Maybe maybe, but
Victoria Volk: You’re gonna go to Google after this.
Dave Roberts: I’ve got a I’ve got a afternoon, Victoria. You got, like, you got a curiosity picked.
Victoria Volk: So who care so I imagine Steven then became her primary caregiver and, you know, and she’s Yep. After she passed and everything and
Dave Roberts: You know, Stephen, who was a state of my wife, and then my thirteen year old son, Matt, who was also involved. And that was his introduction to puberty having a terminally ill sister. And so thatwas I know he was difficult for him, but he just whenever my wife had to go to work, dad would take over. And when Steve came home, that was, you know, he would he would do the primary care duties. And he did it. I would say, nobley is probably an understatement, but he just did what he had to do because he he loved her unconditionally.
Victoria Volk: And to be nineteen too and to take that on as well and to not run away from it and face it and do what he had to do. That’s commendable as well.
Dave Roberts: And my daughter gave him an out. She goes, look, you don’t have to do this. And he looked at her. He says, where am I going? Because I got going anywhere.
And she tried to give him an out because I think she knew what was down the road for her. A body said, no. And I was a a testament to his love for her. And so it was kinda like if you look at it was kinda like a kind of our version of Romeo and Juliet.
Victoria Volk: What was the best piece of advice that you received while you were deep and grief? And I imagine maybe it was from your friends that you co authored the book with, but maybe not. Howard Bauchner:
Dave Roberts: There are two pieces of advice. I’m gonna break this down first in about probably early phase of grief, which is for me about two and a half to three years, and then nine years later, which I would consider to be kind of the beginning of later grief for me. Okay. I had mentioned earlier in our discussion that I was a member of a grievance support group. And it was sponsored by local funeral home. Their support group was facilitated by Franciscan nuns by the name of Sister Rose Trot. And she did a really, really great job. I mean, you could you could come into that group and say that you’re angry with God, angry with the universe she was she just would was not very nonjudge about it because she understood that. Mhmm. There was a time two and a half years two years into this where I said, I’m tired of being a bereaved parent. I don’t wanna do this anymore. So I stopped going to my support group. I caught myself up for meaningful support. I ended up being more miserable than ever. But I just didn’t wanna do it anymore. I wanted my wife back the way it was. I wanted my daughter back I said, I’m tired of going through this crap. And then it finally got to the point where I said, I need to talk to somebody. So I talked to Sister Rose. And I told her, I said, sister Rose, I am angry. That God. She looked at me. She goes, well, what if you put your shoe on the other foot. And it’s thought that maybe God is just as upset as you are because of what’s happened. And when I she she twisted that around a bit in which she looked at us. So, wait a minute. And I started thinking about I remember in the beginning, I told you I didn’t really I didn’t believe in science. I didn’t really But there are some really weird things that were happening to me shortly after Janine transitioned, I would have had a butterfly follow me around when I was walking my granddaughter I heard a song on the radio when I was thinking of Janine that we both had enjoyed. And I started thinking, see, something unusual is going on, but I couldn’t make sense. I couldn’t make sense of how to integrate it. But then one of the things I looked at, I said, well, Maybe if he’s just as upset as me, maybe that’s why he’s been kind of god’s been throwing out these signals that maybe she’s still around. So I was I was starting to think that maybe maybe those signals that it put the butterfly in everything were gonna be the start of something new. A new perspective. But at the time, I wasn’t ready to to see how that fit. But it it plan to save for that. So that shift in perspective. And then when I was talking with Patty about nine years couple years after I met her, the thing with cancer diagnosis is that. You I used to I remember I will remember the dates that she was diagnosed, the dates that she stopped treatment I’ll remember the date that she went into the act of phase of dying. I’ll remember the day that she took her last breath because I was there to witness that. She transitioned on March first of twelve thirty. I held her hand. I she took two swift breaths, and then she stopped breathing. And it always then always haunted me around when I came up to, like, the data for death every year that haunted me. So I told Patty that I said, you know, I can’t help but think that I was the last person to see my daughter alive, and that haunts me that I was there to witness her last prop. And Patty looked looked at me where she was around the function because what if you’re looking as you being the first person to usher into her new existence?
Is you were the person to transition her into eternal life. That was the message. And I said, wow. I never looked at it that way. And By then, I had begun to integrate the whole stuff with after deaf communication. I began to believe in the survival of consciousness. So that helped me shift my perspective and integrate spiritual practices and spiritual beliefs with science. And all of a sudden, well, I made thinking I am the last person to I sure earned to eternal life. That’s shifted to feelings that I had about her last moments of her physical existence at her. So those two or probably the best pieces of advice I gather the best suggestions or comments or seed seed planters that I that I got. Those that just planted seeds allowed me to think about things differently.
Victoria Volk: And I think it comes back to being open to be open to seeing things differently. In a nutshell. Right?
Dave Roberts: Yeah. Yeah. And and that whole experience with Patty and Long Island had helped me up. And plus, I had asked for that experience back and, you know, after the conference, I wanted to be where they are. My my intent, my prayer was answered.
And I believed everything that happened that weekend and we outlined it, you know, very, you know, very, very detailed in the book. I believed in everything that happened. I didn’t question it because I asked for.
Victoria Volk: What does your grief taught you?
Dave Roberts: Wow. Well, my grief taught me a lot of things. It taught me that life isn’t fair. That waiting a good life isn’t gonna push in you from tragedy, that the quality of our life is determined by not so much the fairness of life but it’s determined how well we transcend those challenges that are presented to us. And we can define Victoria tragedy in any way, shape, or form. But it’s how we transcend tragedy and what we do as a result of that. How do we find purpose? How do we find meaning? How can we serve others that are walking the same path? And how can we make sure that the and I think I’m paraphrase of an old Lakota saying how do we make sure that the tracks we we behind are going to to be impactful. And again, that’s a real that’s really paraphrasing that. But I think what the Dakota is saying is we will be forever known by the tracks we leave behind. And so let’s make sure the traps we leave are going to last long after we physically leave and serve.
Victoria Volk: That’s beautiful. What do you say to maybe men who are listening? Who like many men struggle talking about their emotions and their feelings. And more commonly, struggle with addiction, maybe even perhaps after devastating loss, who might say, I don’t need to rehash the past.
Dave Roberts: Well, yeah, I think one of the things I learned is that with any type of tragedy, the pass is gonna come back and look you right in the face. What I had to do. And I think Eric Ericsson had talked about integrity at the end of life where we take a look at the end of our life. We will take a do a life review and say, did we did we live a meaningful life? Well, that process started for me at age forty seven. Where I’d I mean, you you basically we have to look at the past. It’s required when I we’re taking a look at rebuilding our assumptions world. We have to take a look at those past beliefs that contributed to our understanding of the present prior to tragedy. So we have to look at the past. What I tell everybody is the past isn’t meant to be stared at. It isn’t meant to be judged. It is meant to be learned from. There is pro medicine saying in the Jamie Sam’s book medicine cards with Crow, matter the past as your teacher, out of the present, as your creation, and out of the future is your inspiration. We take a look at our past. We understand the decisions that we made in the present. We also can take a look at at and look at the tragedy we’ve experienced and say, okay. How can we learn through the past? How can and and what can we now do develop the president of our creation in the future of our inspiration based on what’s happened, what tools and what resources that we can use. So for first of all, I tell people you the pass is something that is if you don’t look at it, it’s gonna bite you right in the behind. Because you’re gonna it’s gonna come up and you need to look at it so that you can you can orchestrate the present and future of your own desires. It’s part of cocreating our own new reality with the universe after tragedy. The other thing with men and they get a bad rap for this is that, well, oh, men don’t talk about their feelings. If I had a nickel for every woman who came up to me and said, my guy doesn’t talk about his feelings. That’d be a rich man because men are equipped to emote directly. Mehta, we’re taught it early as you suck it up. You take care of those that you love. Feelings are are both make you vulnerable and make you weak. So essentially, with feelings, we learned to distract ourselves from our feelings by doing stuff. Okay? Do men feel just as intensely as women? Absolutely. We just deal with it differently. Women are more comfortable with sharing their feelings, with the molding, with with tears, where men, if they cry, they’re when they cry, they’re gonna cry privately. If they’re feeling out of sorts, they’re gonna go build something, they’re gonna go to try to solve a problem. And so I would tell men be gentle with yourself. If you wanna find out how a guy is failing, ask them what they’re thinking because we’re in our heads a lot. If you ask, Guy, what are you thinking? And this guy’s this guy says, boy, this really stinks. Well, how does that make you feel? Well, I feel angry. I feel disillusioned. I feel confused. You’ve gotten to your feelings through to his feelings through your thoughts. But if you’re asking him how he’s feeling directly, he may not go there with it. Because of how he’s been conditioned to deal with feelings. The other thing is that, I’m sure you’ve heard this word on you’ve heard probably other people telling you, well, my boyfriend gets upset when I cry over a tragedy. My husband gets upset when I cry after a tragedy. Here’s the other thing. Men of I believe have also been conditioned to take care of those that they love. And for me, when I saw my wife cry, when I saw my my boys in in emotional pain, it reminded me that I did not do my job as a father to protect my family from home. Mhmm. For two and a half years, I beat myself up because I thought I should have seen the signs of my daughter’s cancer sooner I thought I should have persuaded her to do one more clinical trial. I’ve my inadequacies as a father and a protector always brought up when my wife was crying because this reminded me of what I couldn’t do. And I realized now that I did the best that I could’ve given the situation I was dealt with, So, you know, it’s just this was just there was all of that. And I just tell you know, which I it gets we do feel. It’s just the the the the if a woman in our lives is crying, it’s not because of That’s not because of no cries because of what their peers represent. They represent a failure of us to provide our do our job as a protector for our family. And that’s and that’s why. If we can understand that, my wife has a totally different grading style than me. Once we began to understood how we agreed, we could begin to support ourselves with and give ourselves space with it and begin to understand it. And I think if I were doing couples counseling with a with a couple who was newly bereaved, I would tell them understand how each other’s grief for each other’s grief respect it and try to figure out how you can support each other within it without trying to change it without trying to change it.
Victoria Volk: Or or expecting the other person to carry the entire weight. Yes. Yep. Experience. Yeah.
Dave Roberts: Yeah. And that’s sad. You know, if you look at we’re talking about how to an orbit of relation shifts with the male and female. You know, seventy five percent of men are going to fit that type of gender ex role expectation of expressing emotions. I mean, twenty five percent won’t. So there may be some situations where you’ll see a woman who will suppress her emotions in a man who is gonna be more intuitive and can don’t come who’s a thing Thanatos well known Thanatos. Just talked about intuitive versus instrumental males. The instrumental males were the males that had through traditional male oriented expectations of expressing grief. The intuitive male were those that were more feelings oriented and were more automotive. It says understanding how do you grieve.
Just because you don’t cry doesn’t mean you’re not grieving.
Victoria Volk: Bingo.
Dave Roberts: You know, and that service everybody measures grieve by the amount of tears that they’re a pig when everybody cries. Brief is manifested very differently, and we need to understand that. When you are sad, When you’ve had previous tragedies, how has your grief come out? It may not be tears. It may be anger. It may be withdrawal. It may be being distracted. It may be your ability for a lot of individuals who suppress emotions. As you mentioned, addiction can be a real big issue. Especially for those individuals that don’t don’t have an outlet to suppress her feelings. And particularly if there’s been a family history, thatcoping mechanism of self medicating can be can be something that has gone to pretty ruddling. If there are no other alternatives for call from strategies presented.
Victoria Volk: And they don’t allow themselves to bring the support in.
Dave Roberts: That’s right. That’s right. And we have to the other thing is we have to believe that we are worthy of being nurtured. And a lot of times we may not accept help because there’s a stigma in terms of asking for help and accepting help, but we need to believe that when we can’t do it on our own, and we need to believe that we are worthy, we are lovable enough to accept that we we can be loved by others, and we can be taken care of by others. I think a teaching from the afterlife abilities finger saying, why do you believe you need to earn the right to be loved when you’ve been bored with that already? We’ve been born with that. Why should we believe that we’re not deemed worthy of being helped?
Victoria Volk: And how has this transformed your relationship with your with your wife? Like, did this bring you closer together? For a time, I imagine maybe it was very challenging like you alluded to earlier.
Dave Roberts: Oh, it was because we didn’t have the energy to deal with Chuck with with our own grief much less each others. And we were pretty much, I guess, were drawn from each other for a while. I think that was one of the net the natural consequences of grieving. But one of the things is gradually as we, you know, we we became coming together. We talked. We carved out some time for ourselves to listen to each other. And our relationship now is stronger as ever been. We’ve been married for forty two years. We have You know, I’ve got two great two great sons Dan and Matt. They’ve got four grandchildren and one great grandchild and another one on the way. So, you know, given everything that has happened, Victoria, to I feel like I’m a blessed man. And I couldn’t have said that twenty years ago. I could if I if I couldn’t envision myself saying that to you now. But one of the things that grief has taught me is is is another thing is to be grateful for what you have in your life. As opposed to what you don’t have in your life or what you can’t have in your life. There are days that I said I wish my daughter could be back here. I wish that I could have found another type of tragedy to to to find meaning from, and I have my family intact. But I learned whenever I started earring for that, I said, well, you know, I can’t continue to earring for something that I can’t have. So I immediately go back to the Okay. What am I grateful for today? And that gets me regrouted again. It gets me back to where I need to pay.
Victoria Volk: And then when you see those double rainbows
Dave Roberts: Oh, yeah?
Victoria Volk: That really crowns you.
Dave Roberts: Yeah. It does. It does. And and anytime I see a three one or here her name mentioned or I run it to somebody thatone time I made a call and I was going to a conference in Saint Savannah, Georgia. And I called to book a hotel reservation. Hey, you know, usually when you go through a Switchboard, it’s gonna be randomly get. So well, the operator picks up the phone and says, hello, this is Janine. Can I help you? Said, oh, this is gonna be an interesting conversation. And so I’d book the reservation. And all of a sudden, I got this nudge and saying, ask her how she spells her name because my daughter had a very unusual spelling for her name. It was j e a n n I n e. So I’ve stuck at a Janine, the operator on the phone. I said, Janine, I know it’s gonna sound like a weird question, but can you tell me how you spell your name? Guess how she spelled her name? Same way. So I’m thinking about, you can’t make this stuff up. So it’s that event. And the other thing that grief has taught me is there are no coincidences only serendipity. And the people that have come come into my life have come into my life at the times that they were supposed to come into my life.
Victoria Volk: I’d interviewed a minister not that long ago. Actually, David Chaka, it was one of my previous episodes, recent episodes, and he calls them divine appointments. Mhmm. And every day he asks for a divine appointment.
Dave Roberts: Well, I’ve had I’ve had I’ve had many of those in twenty one the twenty one years since my daughter is transitioned. So
Victoria Volk: You keep track of them?
Dave Roberts: Actually, I do. I don’t write them down as much as I used to anymore, but I know exactly when they’ve happened and I’ve got pictures of signs that I’ve gotten from her. I also have done I also have a slide presentation that I do in my death hunting breed and class. Right? Once this is section called Dewey survived death, and we get into after death communication. So I’ll give them some examples of signs that I’ve gotten signs that other students have shared with me. And so we have that discussion. And the whole theme of that discussion is the illusion of death. It’s death and illusion. Do we really die? Or do we just go on at a different form? And so we talk about that as well as the mainstream and the basics overview of death dying improvement. When we get into the spiritual aspects of it, with reincreditation studies, with near death experiences, with fast life regression, fast life experiences, everything. We get we get into all of it. And I tell them, Don’t confuse my passion for telling you, this is how you want to believe. This is how you need to believe. I’m giving you all this information because You may run into this with the clients on that. I wanna make sure you’re I’d rather have you over prepared than under prepared.
Victoria Volk: Or for yourself?
Dave Roberts: Or for yourself. And it’s amazing how it’s
Victoria Volk: guaranteed, probably.
Dave Roberts: Oh, oh, absolutely. I’ve had students afterwards literally. They’ve emailed me a You wouldn’t believe that they’ll they’ll email me with the sign that they got or something that they signed before we talked about class, and it gives them permission to open up about that.
Victoria Volk: Are you familiar with the work of Chris Kirk?
Dave Roberts: I’ve heard of Chris, but I’m not familiar with any of his does it a hearer shape? He he, I’m not familiar with that. I’m familiar with the name, but that does work. Howard Bauchner:
Victoria Volk: I don’t know if it’s still on Netflix, but there was a docu series called surviving death.
Dave Roberts: Yeah. Okay. Yes. That I that I am familiar with because I saw I didn’t realize Chris Curr was the mastermind behind it, but I saw that I saw the documentary. And I recommend that to my students a great overview of the non ordinary phenomenon that are part of the whole discussion of the field of fan oncology.
I think it’s it’s great.
Victoria Volk: He was on my podcast.
Dave Roberts: Really?
Victoria Volk: Yeah. So there’s an episode where he’s on my podcast. Yeah. And then Siri Burnson is psychic medium, and she’s also featured on that. And she was on my podcast as well.
So yeah. Interesting conversations. And and honestly too, like, my spirituality was greatly challenged for many years. And I think that that’s a component or a piece of healing that a lot of people maybe take the longest maybe to get to.
Dave Roberts: Yep.
Victoria Volk: In in terms of feeling like you’re finally moving forward. Because I think you with that shift in perspective and seeing things differently, seeing the death differently, I think that’s really one of the things that helped me personally?
Dave Roberts: Well, I think having placing an importance on spirituality is protective against so many different things, protective against mental illness. And I think it can improve physical and mental health care outcomes as well too. It can improve physical health. It can because that spirituality is there’s thatsense of greater awareness, that sense of connection to something greater than ourselves, and all of that, I think, can contribute to increased mental and physical health as well too? There’s no doubt in my mind.
Victoria Volk: Well, if we think about how we can even transcend our own consciousness through meditation or
Dave Roberts: Yoga.
Victoria Volk: Yoga. Adaptigens people using adaptogens to elevate their consciousness or Yep. Keep you an aspect of their consciousness that they wouldn’t see otherwise. We don’t need adaptogens to get there. We can meditate. Right? It can become a really strong meditator, but I think it’s then it’s fair to to reason that Well, who’s to say thatcan’t continue? That that consciousness? Like, what is what is the soul? You know, we are more than just our meat suits, you know?
Dave Roberts: That’s worse
Victoria Volk: than that.
Dave Roberts: Yeah. I mean, there’s another set of teaching the afterlife abilities fingers is that if we could look look into each other’s soul, it’d be one big will manifest. You know, we would look beyond the the implementation. We would look beyond the human contracts and conflicts that have kept people apart. If we could just look at each other’s souls, how we would see his love. And the world would be like one big love fest. But the human experience doesn’t allow for that to happen, and it’s not supposed to. Because any growth that occurs in any lifetime is for the greater revolution and the growth of our salt. And so we have to experience the pain and tragedies I think of the human experience in order for our souls to continue to evolve and grow.
Victoria Volk: We gotta go through the storms to see the rainbows.
Dave Roberts: Absolutely. You got it.
Victoria Volk: Anything else you would like to share that you don’t feel you got to?
Dave Roberts: Jeez, I think we we cover just about everything. I think I think we I think we covered a whole I think we covered a lot of ground.
Victoria Volk: I think so too. And where can people reach you and find you if they like to connect with you further?
Dave Roberts: Well, they could find me. They could go through my personal website. It’s david robertson s w dot com. They could go to myauthor website, which is psychology professor administrator dot com. If they’re interested in purchasing me and Patty’s book, It’s a one psychology method professor is on Kendall and paper back on Amazon. I’m also a podcaster. If they wanna take a look at the the the podcast, it’s a teaching journeys podcast, It’s on a a apple and Spotify. And they’ve they’ve had a lot of interest in guest, and Obviously, I went off I’ve talked about off camera and waiting you to be a guest out of podcast, so hopefully we can make that happen. And I’m just trying to those are, you know, email this booty and angel at gmail dot com if they wanna email me. And I’m all over the place on social media, I’m on Facebook, I’m on LinkedIn, I’m on Instagram, my son calls me the world’s oldest millennial, because I’m I’m not I’m not social media, so you could pretty much find me anywhere. And I’ll have a conversation with anybody that is grieving loss of a child, any any type of loss. I also believe in meeting people where their worst losses, their worst loss my worst loss doesn’t necessarily have to be their worst loss. I can tap into the pain of my own worst loss, know what that’s like, and meet somebody at their worst loss.
Victoria Volk: And so the David Roberts, LSW, does that have links to everything that you mentioned?
Dave Roberts: M s w dot dave roberts, m s w dot com. Does it have links to everything that I’ve but the other ones that I mentioned are separate.
Victoria Volk: Okay. And what was that again? The other website?
Dave Roberts: The other website, psychology professor and minister dot com. And then if if they reach us in purchasing the book, they can find out purchasing information through the author website or they can go directly on Amazon to find it.
Victoria Volk: Alright. I will put the link to those websites, your podcast, in the book, in the show notes
Dave Roberts: Mhmm.
Victoria Volk: And I thank you so much for sharing your time with me and helping us getting to know Janine and the remarkable young woman that she was in the short life that she was given and the story of your own transformation and of your grief and the work that you that it led you to do today. So thank you so much for your contribution.
Dave Roberts: My pleasure, Victoria. Thank you so much for having me on your podcast. I enjoyed our conversation tremendously today.
Victoria Volk: I did too. And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life, much love.
Grieving Voices Guest, Grieving Voices Podcast, Podcast, Widowhood |
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
In the quiet after-hours of our bustling lives, we often overlook the profound journeys that shape us. For today’s episode, I had the honor of speaking with Denise Dielwart on Grieving Voices—a woman who turned her deepest sorrow into a beacon of hope for thousands.
After the sudden death of her husband left her in despair, Denise discovered that traditional methods of dealing with grief weren’t effective. This realization led to the development of the Flow Grief Release Method – an innovative approach designed to expedite healing from years to months.
Denise’s method challenges conventional wisdom about grieving and recovery timeframes. Instead of following prescribed stages or waiting on time to heal wounds, she advocates for proactive steps towards reclaiming one’s life after loss. Her focus is not just coping but transforming lives and finding joy again.
During our conversation, Denise shares candidly about:
- The shock and turmoil following unexpected bereavement.
- The inadequacy she felt while engaging in talk therapy.
- How questioning “Who am I?” post-loss was pivotal in redefining herself beyond being a wife or mother.
- Why widowhood is often misunderstood as a form of grief – it involves adjusting to numerous small changes that significantly impact daily life.
- Practical advice on navigating finances and legal matters after losing a spouse.
- Feeling emotions deeply rather than suppressing them as part of the healing journey is essential.
Denise emphasizes taking action over merely talking through pain and introduces us to her FLOW acronym: Feel your emotions fully; let go of what holds you back; overcome obstacles by addressing underlying issues; become whole by embracing your new identity post-grief.
RESOURCES:
CONNECT:
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NEED HELP?
- National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
- Crisis Text Line provides free, 24/7 support via text message. Text HOME to 741741 to connect with a trained Crisis Counselor
If you are struggling with grief due to any of the 40+ losses, free resources are available HERE.
CONNECT WITH VICTORIA:
Healing from Grief: Denise Dealwart Shares Her Transformative Journey
In today’s episode of Grieving Voices, we had the privilege of hearing from Denise Dealwart about her heart-wrenching experience with loss and her powerful path to recovery. After losing her husband unexpectedly, Denise embarked on a journey that led her to create the Flow Grief Release Method – an approach designed to help individuals heal from grief more rapidly and holistically.
Denise shares candidly about the limitations she encountered with traditional therapy and how it propelled her towards self-healing and redefining herself post-loss. She dives into the complexities faced by those who are widowed, including managing finances, legal issues, and emotional revelations after losing a spouse.
The Flow Method is centered around feeling emotions deeply but also letting go of pain while retaining love for the person lost. It’s about taking action towards healing rather than staying stuck in coping mechanisms. This method has revolutionized how people move through grief by addressing underlying trauma and unresolved feelings.
Denise emphasizes that everyone’s grief is unique; there is no one-size-fits-all solution. The conversation challenges conventional models like Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief, highlighting its original context for terminal illness patients rather than bereaved individuals.
Through personal transformation stories, Denise illustrates how loss can lead to profound self-discovery as individuals navigate their new identities separate from their roles tied to loved ones passed away. Change may be daunting but embracing it can pave the way toward growth and rediscovery.
Episode Transcription:
Victoria Volk: Thank you for tuning in to grieving voices. Today, I’m happy to bring to you Denise DealWart. She has experienced a profound loss firsthand after the sudden passing of her husband. After trying many methods that were not working, Denise sought a path to healing that led to the creation of the flow grief release method, a transformative approach to moving through grief with grace and ease. Denise’s journey from the depths of despair to rediscovering joy inspired her to help others. With over fifteen years of experience, she has guided thousands to reclaim their lives from grief using her unique flow method that dramatically shortens the healing process from years to months. Denise’s groundbreaking approach challenges the traditional stages of grief, the waiting of for time, offering a lifeline for those to those who feel stuck and hopeless. Her flow method isn’t just about coping. It’s about transforming your life and rediscovering joy in a way that’s both profound and lasting. We are on the same mission, my friends. So thank you for being here.
Denise Dielwart: Thank you so much for inviting me onto your your podcast. It’s an absolute honor to be here today and to be able to share how we do move forward from grief.
Victoria Volk: Because it is possible, like we were talking just before we hit record. Yeah. But we will get to that topic. Where I wanna start though is really where this all started fifteen years ago?
Denise Dielwart: Well, fifteen years ago, as you know, I’m in I’m in Australia. So fifteen years ago, my husband basically went to work and didn’t come home. He yeah. I was fifty one. He was fifty five. We had just we were just settling him down into our new life because we got married young and the kids, the door moved out and they we were on eight acres that was out after ever home that we built, eight acres. So he had a motorbike track out the back for the boys because I had I’ve got nine grandsons. And yeah. And then he woke up one morning, said goodbye. It was Monday morning, goodbye to you, and he never came home. He died of a blood clot. So there was no there was no good bias. There was nothing. It was there was no time. It was he was healthy. And obviously, that sent me into a complete, as I said, la la land, complete sprint. And but what I found was is that after I sort of came around and you sort of come out of that fog and you start moving forward, I was I was seeing a therapist, I was seeing a psychologist who was just talking to me, just talking, tell me about it, tell me about it, tell me about it. And I wasn’t getting any better. I wasn’t feeling as I was moving forward. And I knew that he wouldn’t want to see me crying for the rest of my life. You know, sitting there going, oh my god, look what happened to me. I’m so sad. As I wouldn’t want it have wanted it for him either. And that’s when I sort of went okay. What do I do? What do I do? What do I do? And I kept asking that question. What do I do? How do I heal? Now bear in mind, this was fifteen years ago before Facebook and everything in the group’s, you know, was there. There wasn’t that support. And I knew though instinctively as well that I needed to heal me and I needed to heal. And that’s when my journey started. And I I I started looking within. I started healing myself. And, you know, the profound change with me changing my focus from not been at the moment that he died, but to who am I? Who am I now? That was my biggest question as a widow, you know. For women, we we so talk to do everything for everybody else. But when it comes to ourselves, We don’t we lose ourselves in our marriage or our partnership. We lose our identity. I got married at nineteen twenty. Turning twenty, had the kids young. I was a mother. I was a I was a wife that fell into that role. And then, of course, when that role gets taken away, it was like, well, who am I? I remember breaking down one night, and I’ve had breaking down with a with a this wine. I’m I will admit it. I had one one, and I had another one, and I had one one. And I sat there crying, and I felt Denise, who are you at fifty one? You don’t even know who you are.
Victoria Volk: I think a lot of people listening feel that way.
Denise Dielwart: Yeah. A lot
Victoria Volk: of people just don’t know who they are.
Denise Dielwart: And I
Victoria Volk: think in it often, this happens when our lives are flipped upside down and we start asking ourselves, we just don’t ask ourselves those deeper questions.
Denise Dielwart: No. We don’t. We don’t.
Victoria Volk: So we’re forced to usually. Yeah. Because
Denise Dielwart: when when when when life is is happening and, you know, I mean, no marriage, and I say this to all the women’s that I’ve worked with. And I mainly work with women’s. I work with everybody, but my my My passion is with us because as as a widow, regardless of age, we We don’t, we’re the most misunderstood, deaf out there. People don’t understand what it’s like to lose a husband. They’re very special. It’s a different loss. Each loss is different. So if you lose a child, it’s a different loss to losing asthma. Or a life partner. Losing a life partner is you lose you lose not just that person, but you lose your whole life. You have to start over. You have to start reimagining your new life because that’s what it is. It’s a new life. Your life doesn’t just carry on. You don’t just go, okay. Well, I’ve got you know, so many people say, well, think that you oh, you just get over it. You’d never get over it. You never get over it. You know, that’s such a cliche. Aren’t you over it yet? Over what?
Victoria Volk: Did your kids tell you that or say that to you?
Denise Dielwart: My kids never told me that, but a lot of friends would say to me, you know, gosh, Denise, it’s been so It’s been six months, aren’t you over a kid?
Victoria Volk: How long did how long were you going to therapy and how long from the time when you started to you were going to therapy to when you realized, okay, this isn’t working for me. I need to figure this out, obviously, on my own. How much time it passed?
Denise Dielwart: It was about six months. About six months.
Victoria Volk: That’s still pretty fresh and new.
Denise Dielwart: Yeah. Yeah. I was so determined for for Martin’s sake, not for my sake. But for Martin’s sake, my husband’s sake, to continue living. Because I knew that he wouldn’t want me to to die with him. So that was my drive is that I wanted to heal as quickly as possible. Heel myself. Not forget about him or forget about the life we had together, but to heal me. You know, plus I had to come out my adult kids and I had the grandchildren and and, you know, we wanna be strong. We wanna put on face, but I didn’t I wanted to genuinely find joy again. And I’ve just pretend and put the mask on, you know, that I’ve called my the happy mask you know, the army k mask. How are you? Oh, okay. You know, so it was when I actually I was sitting as my therapist, my my Psychologist. And then I said to her, I said, how long am I gonna be? Fillingknockers? And she looked at me shocked, and she sent me to niece. She said, you’ve lost your husband. It’s only been six months. You’re gonna be like this for the next five to seven years.
Victoria Volk: Not good advice. And I’m not very hopeful, but listen.
Denise Dielwart: It was in that moment, but it was credited to us not really thinking back now because it was in that moment on the way home. I used some choice four letter words to my steering wheel. About, I’m not gonna stay like this. There’s no way that I’m gonna stay like this. Who the hell does she think she is? Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, pleated pleated It didn’t insert, insert, insert. But that was my turning point when it was like, okay. She’s not gonna help me. Because what therapy is is talk therapy. And we can’t talk our way out of grief. We have to take action. Amen. Amen.
Victoria Volk: I facilitate. It’s a program called the grief recovery method, and it is all action. Action.
Denise Dielwart: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: Action. Yeah.
Denise Dielwart: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: So I do wanna mention one thing that you said, and then I will come back to the action piece but you had touched on it a little bit about the, you know, the grief of losing a child, which I cannot imagine. I I was narrowly close to losing my son. I mean, it was not that he almost died, but if the stars would have blind differently. He very well could have. Yeah. So I was faced with that, but and that’s not even to compare people who have lost a child. I just cannot imagine. But when you said about how different it is to losing a spouse, I’ve been married now. I’ve been with my husband for over twenty years and the differences with the child and the spouse is like you it’s the children grow up and they leave. Right? Like, you’re there you’re their caretaker for eighteen years, generally speaking, like most children leave go to college and want to get out of the house they don’t wanna listen to Monz Nagin anymore. Right? So but your spouse is very much still an integral part of your life on the daily once the kids are gone. Right? I just interviewed someone a gentleman who lost his wife of fifty one years.
Denise Dielwart: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: It’s sith. When you’re so you know, the two become one. Right? Well, you’ve just become so ingrained in each other’s daily lives. It’s almost like what do you do when that person’s no longer there? When if you took walks together, if you had morning coffee together, you know, so many of our behaviors are adjusted around who we’re with, who we’re spending our time with.
Denise Dielwart: Yeah. Yeah. And and it’s so it’s so spot on. And that’s why I specialized in widows, and so many people say to me, why not men? Well, I’m not a man.
I know what I I know what I went through. Men grieve differently. Yes, I can help you, but you know, it’s not it’s I have helped men. I have helped people that have lost a child. But for a widow, that’s my journey. So I can help you. I know what I went through and I know what it takes. And like you said, you know, you you said it’s the little things. It’s like, Martin used to bring me a cup of coffee in bed every morning. He’d get up, he’d make coffee. And suddenly, it wasn’t there. And you’re lying in bed and you’re going, oh, well, suppose I have to make my own coffee.
Victoria Volk: What I wouldn’t give for a cup of coffee.
Denise Dielwart: Yeah. Yeah. So it’s it’s not It’s not the big things, and this is why I say it’s the most misunderstood grief. It’s losing a spasm. Because it’s not the big things.
It’s the little things. I remember I was outside with the pool and I had to bend down and I had to get into the the basket to clean it all out. Now, that was the job. That was the pool was his job. I didn’t worry about that. And, of course, the basket got stuck and I couldn’t get it out. And I remember just yelling up at the sky and saying, I wonder if you die. Why did you do this to me? Now I’ve got to do what you did. And it’s not an anger that you’re angry with them. It’s frustration. You know, the the fast stages of grief you go through anger. No. You’re going through frustrated. You’re just to get I’ve got to do this now myself. So you gotta learn new skills. You gotta take on the mowing and stuff that that he used to do. Even taking out the garbage, looking things like it.
Victoria Volk: So many of the widows that I’ve spoken with too, didn’t weren’t involved with the finances. That’s huge. So when their spouse left, they had or passed away, or they had no clue. Yeah. And that’s very overwhelming, I imagine.
Denise Dielwart: Yeah. That is huge. A lot of my clients are always lucky in that I was in my previous life. I was a bookkeeper tax agent. Mhmm. So Martin and I had our own business for years and years and years and then he started working from home and I started working from home. So we were just, you know, floating along, getting on And the gift in that is that when he died, I just carried on with the finances because I handled all the finance
Victoria Volk: That’s a huge stressor that you yeah. That’s a huge stressor. But even still, you still have all the other the significant others or spouses accounts and retirement and social media and any advice for those types of things, like those logistical type things? Like, I mean, I just I mean, I don’t know. You just gotta do it, but
Denise Dielwart: First thing is to not get overwhelmed. You said, you know, when when when your spouse dies, Suddenly, the bank is on new. Okay. Well, we wanna freeze this and we wanna do this and you can’t do this and you can’t do that because they’re not there and and my husband Martin didn’t have a will because we were we were in the process of setting all of that up, so he died without a will. So for me, I took the path of least resistance. I told the least people possible until I moved friends and moved money and did stuff. Because I knew that the men and us that as that the bank got wind of it. They would have just freeze clothes and everything. You know, even even to his frequent flyer points, he’s on on his credit card, I knew that they would be taken away. So I started transferring them over to me. So it’s really thinking outside of the box when it’s not crumbling and it’s not getting overwhelmed. Because it’s just it’s just fun. And then I guess with my bookkeeping background, I knew how to think practically, okay, and logically, okay, what do I have to do here? What do I have to do there? A lot of my clients are help, a lot of my clients walk through that maze because it is a maze. And if you’ve never had to worry about finances before, if you’ve never had to or about paying up an electricity bill, for example, because that was all taken care of and to be suddenly thrust into this whole world of finances. It’s overwhelming. And that’s where a lot of willows get stuck.
Victoria Volk: It sounds like to me, like, there’s an opportunity there for you to create some sort of course for within your community. Yeah. You know? Maybe to put on your website or something to help people kind of, you know, you can’t the saying has been, like, on the forefront of my mind lately just because of a big project I’ve been working on, but you can’t eat an elephant in one bite. Right? Like, you just throw it little by little. And so I think you know Yeah. To have someone guiding you through. Okay? Just focus on just these two things today. Just get these two things done. Tomorrow’s another day, you know. Yeah.
Denise Dielwart: And then even if you can’t do those, it’s okay. Mhmm. It doesn’t have to be done today. Every often, you know, financial advisers, services, lawyers, they’re all trying to pressure us because they’re on their timeline. Mhmm. It creates your own timeline. Just if you can’t handle it because remember too, you’ve you’ve got widow’s folk. I didn’t know there was such a thing as widow’s folk. Was that, you know, until I actually went through it myself. My kids thought, yeah, I was I think my daughter said to me, mom, you’ve told us that already. You’ve said that. And I said when? She said about five minutes ago, she said she said to me, I think you’re getting Alzheimer’s. You’re losing your mind. I lost my car keys for about three months. Three months. I lost I was using my spare keys. I was still bookkeeping it. I was just after Martin passed away and I had to go and see a client and I would all dressed up and had my laptop and everything and now look to me It’s in our booth. We had a parrot, a pink and gray parrot, and I was like, oh, it’s gonna be a hot hot day in the ninety degree day today. I better leave some water for him. So I filled up his water bill, checked his food, second bite to him, and Well, my keys. You didn’t find my keys. My sunglasses and my keys. And I looked and I looked and I was getting later and later and later and I can’t find my keys. So I mentioned I’ve grabbed the spiky and I was like, I have to take the spiky and go. See this client? Okay, Becca. I wonder what happened to my kids. Anyway, I got this back. He didn’t think about it. In about three months later, I was watching the TV. And on top of the TV were my kids and my sunglasses.
Victoria Volk: And that’s what happens when But it’s normal.
Denise Dielwart: It is normal. It is normal. So for people to go, what? I’m losing my mind. No.
You’re not. It’s just your your body’s way of protecting you. And that’s why in the initial stages, there’s so much paperwork to be done especially in a widows case. There’s so much paperwork to be done. There’s the there’s the there’s the there will you know, there’s the kids that might be fighting about. Why didn’t this one leave me that? And that one leave me that. And and in blender, you know, I’ve had ladies and that I’ve got a blended family. So it could be the second marriage. So the kids from the first marriage don’t want her to have anything. I’ve had Widows and the client Widows clients that that that the kids have kicked her out of the house that she’s been in for twenty years. Wow. And that’s another brief and another layer in itself. Yeah. Then there’s the other the other scenarios where and it’s it’s I didn’t realize how common it was. Until I started this work, is that the the woman finds out after her husband dies, that he’s been having a face. So it’s the betrayal that they’ve got to deal with, but they’ve got nobody to yell and scream at and argue with about it because he’s gone.
Victoria Volk: What do you do with all of those emotions and feelings and Mhmm.
Denise Dielwart: Yeah? Yeah. So it it’s that’s that’s why I go back to it. It’s the most misunderstood because there’s a lot of a lot very often, there’s a lot of skeletons in in the cupboard because Nobody really wants to mention them. They find all the stuff out about their husband when he dies. They might find that that that he you know, it might not be an affair, but when they’re doing the the estate and winding everything up, all of a sudden, he’s got a loan here and he’s got a loan there and especially if they haven’t been involved in the finances. So it’s messy. It’s really messy. And if they don’t have the right support, and they’re just going to see a talk therapist, and they’re gonna just talk about how you’re feeling, Nothing’s gonna change. Howard
Victoria Volk: Bauchner: And that’s what I’ve found too in a lot of support groups, you know, women you know widows or parents who lost children or doesn’t matter the the context of the support group, but that’s what you’re doing. You’re going to the circle of people. Yes, you’re connecting with other people with similar losses, which is great. But at the same time, you’re going to listen to other people’s story again and again and again and you’re gonna be telling your story again and again and again and there’s no action taken and you leave feeling maybe a little better for an hour, but, you know, those people, you say goodbye and a couple days later, you’re back to where you were. Until the next meeting, you know? It’s it’s like the it’s a pacifier, really. It is tough to make an action.
Denise Dielwart: Yeah. Yeah. I’ve got a beautiful part of mine. Went to griefshare five times. And because she’s such a good client of mine, I eventually sit to her and says, what didn’t you understand the first time? And she laughed. She said to me, you know, looking back now. I thought that maybe, if I go this time, it could be different. I maybe I missed something. I said, you went five times because it doesn’t work.
Victoria Volk: Well, and think about your your state of mind when you’re going.
Denise Dielwart: You think you’re going crazy. Yeah.
Victoria Volk: And so maybe there’s a little bit of comfort that you’re feeling in being in circle with other people who also feel like they’re going a little crazy yet
Denise Dielwart: at the same time,
Victoria Volk: nobody’s progressing forward.
Denise Dielwart: No.
Victoria Volk: Not an environment conducive of healing, to me, in my opinion.
Denise Dielwart: Yeah. Then me too. In my opinion too, and that’s why, you know, I I became a life coach after Martin died. Now, I became a life coach because remember I was in the bookkeeping world. So I thought, well, I become a life coach to heal myself. I’ll get all the tools, and then I can become a business coach. That was my that was my dream, that was my path forward. Never in my water streams that I think I would be be working with Widows and Grief. That just was not a moderator until it was. It was like, okay. So many people says, you’ve gotta work with buddhist. And as you heal so quickly, you’ve gotta, you know, you’ve gotta you’ve gotta share. You’ve gotta do this work. And I I really rejected it. No. No. No. No. No. No. Until I eventually said, you know what? If I meant to work with Muuto, universe God, show me the way. And it all unfolded. And that’s that’s where I’m where I am today.
Victoria Volk: So what did that action look like for
Denise Dielwart: you? So the first thing I did was open up. There was a Facebook group. And just open up. Because, you know, I’m sitting here in Australia, and I’m thinking, I wanna work around the world. I don’t wanna just be working in one on one come to my office, and I’ll I’ll help you. And I remember sitting there at the front of my computer and I was early on before before any Facebook groups were what they are now. I thought, okay. I started Facebook group and it was me and another friend of mine in South Africa. It was two of us. She had just lost her who who husband, who was a school friend of my husband. So there was quite a tight knit bond there. And I was just heard me. In script and I thought, okay. So I just started posting in the group and the group started growing. And that’s how I started. I started my program. I re reversed engineered how I healed myself, and that’s in the flow method. And I created the flow method. And the flow method is an acronym for feel, let go, overcome, and become whole. Because we have to feel our emotions. And that was the the what what the coaching learning to become a a a coach, a life coach was was I learned how to feel. Those in deeper thin. And they added bonuses that I had I had people practicing on me and I was practicing on other people.
Victoria Volk: So what does that look like?
Denise Dielwart: So we used to have our triads. We used to have, you know, to share stories, but it was always that your story. Now let’s get to the what what’s beneath that? And that’s the key to to grief because grief is not I remember my my teacher or my instructor, Sharon, saying at the time, you cannot coach grief. And I I said, why don’t you coach grief? And now I have coaching grief for all these years. And now teaching it because I’ve got my academy as well, the academy of transformational grief coaching. Grief is a different way did you approach people to life coaching? As a life coach, people come to you or you see a life coach because you wanna improve your life. You’re really on that on that path. However, When somebody comes to you with in grief, all they wanna do is get better. They’re unaware nine times out of ten, not always, but nine times out of ten. The unaware of the patterns and the the programming and the beliefs on a subconscious level that’s actually keeping them stuck and keeping them from moving forward. So it’s only when we go beneath the surface. So it’s in layers. It’s like an onion. You’ve got to peel those those layers. Of what he’s keeping you stuck.
Victoria Volk: Well, I would actually challenge the idea too of life coaching because people who go to life coaching, right, they they think that the issue is, well, I’m not good with money or do I get better with money? Or Like, they they think the issue is more superficial. Yeah. And really, their issue is probably grief. On all these emotional communications that have had nowhere to go because we all crave something.
And
Denise Dielwart: Oh, wow.
Victoria Volk: Is cumulative and it’s cumulatively negative. And if you were a child and you had to move a lot, you didn’t have a lot of friends or your parents divorced when you were young, pets that died, trauma that happened, like, so much of the things that people are going to see a life coach for, they should probably actually be seen someone like you or me for. To be honest, spot on.
Denise Dielwart: Spot on. Because, you know, even a boyfriend break up,
Victoria Volk: Yes. It all stacks up.
Denise Dielwart: You know, this unresolved trauma beneath the surface and That’s why we’ve got to feel. We’ve got to feel. But humanity is we don’t want to feel because it’s too painful to feel. So we put on a mask. I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m fine. How was your day? And then people said, oh, you’re so strong? How are you coping? Because then we can let Ghana. I’ve had so many so many of my clients said, but I don’t wanna let go. I don’t wanna let go of of of anything. I wanna just hold on. But it’s not what we’re letting go of. We didn’t go of the pain. You didn’t go of those emotions. You’re not letting go of the person. You’re not letting go of the of of the love that you shared.
You didn’t go of that pain in the heartache.
Victoria Volk: So in your method, is it like a somatic? Experience or what does that look like?
Denise Dielwart: So to let go is where we start digging digging deeply. So the feeling part is this if you’re feeling your emotions. And it’s always You can’t We can’t feel those emotions on our own. The minute we start feeling any emotion, like I mentioned earlier, we shut down. We don’t want to go there. So coaching and digging deep and going beneath the surface, I’m feeling that is the feeling. What are you feeling? Really feeling. It’s not just crying. It’s not just sadness. But where is that emotion? What what’s coming up for you? Then the letting go is okay. Let’s start now, going deep. Let’s let go of what you’re feeling. But before we can let go is we I need to we need to go, where is that emotion? What is that? And can you mobilize because very often we can’t verbalize these emotions. As an example, they might say a client might say, Well, I’m feeling really lonely and isolated. And that’s normal. That is totally normal. Okay. But we don’t you know, as I said, well, that’s that’s normal. Do you feel it it’s a personal it’s okay. Where are you feeling lonely and isolated? And why and we start digging and going deep down. Until they can visualize that emotion and they can feel that emotion and they can say, this is what I’m now letting go. And that’s a process that we go through. So and then you can overcome because now you know what you’re letting go of. And that’s when you become whole. So that’s the whole. I mean, it sounds so simple and easy to do, but it’s not.
Victoria Volk: So how long does that process that you take people through?
Denise Dielwart: As long as it takes. Because sometimes because sometimes sometimes this delayed grief, sometimes there’s some very deep traumatic childhood memories that come up. Because that all plays into the letting go and and the moving forward. Because that sits on a subconscious level. That’s on a subconscious level that we’re not even aware of. And it’s only when we do that deep inner work, but we have somebody walking with us to do that. Because we can only let go of what we know what to let go of and we only know what we know. More than that, we don’t know. So when you work with somebody and what how I help my clients is let’s I take a helicopter view. And I see the blind spots that they don’t see.
And walk them through that.
Victoria Volk: So how would you describe yourself before May fourth two thousand nine. How you would describe yourself today?
Denise Dielwart: Before Martin passed away, I was I wanted to say a good little wife. That’s everywhere I can put it. I Martin and I had a business together, but it was his business. I worked in a and feel free because he was my husband, you know, after all, you’ve got a bill there for your husband. Never got paid for a bill. She used to lie lie about that because You’re my wife. Why would I pay you? You know, that that’s sort of that sort of bantha that we used to have. And I accepted that because it was our it was our business, but It wasn’t. It was his business that I worked in. I was a people pleaser. I wanted to keep the peace. I put myself last. I often often say, you know, for a lot of my my my my woodwork clients that have now become woodwork friends, over the years that we’ve worked together. There’s one lady in particular, and she said to me one day. She said, if Martin had to come through the door, what would you do? I said he’d run away. You wouldn’t wanna be with with the Denise issues now because I wouldn’t put up with the stuff that I put up with in my marriage. And I’m not saying that my marriage was bad. I was a different person than to what I am now. And so of so many of my clients as well because they’re reimagining their life. They’re reimagining who they are. They see the potential. They’re finding themselves. And that’s the key is we can’t stay that married with our. Because that’s a label. Mhmm. I’m a widow. And do you
Victoria Volk: do you feel too that a lot of women fine. They want to stay in that box because of the unknown of of changing. And then what’ll what’ll happen if I do reinvent myself
Denise Dielwart: Yes.
Victoria Volk: Or just change. Right? Like, we are so accustomed to avoiding change. We hate change. We avoid it like the plague because there’s so many unknowns that come with it. And so do you feel like in a lot of the work that you do with people, like women in particular widows? That they’re afraid to rock the boat of their lives. Like, because I have seen so many that once they decide to choose that from themselves and just surrender to whatever it is, that is wanting to come out of them as a result of loss they lose friendships, they lose connections with people, and that’s more loss.
Denise Dielwart: That’s right. And that’s why you need help. You need a process. You need something. Because the minute you start, on your own inner journey and you start rediscovering who you are. Your old life dies. It really does. And there’s the fear. Gotta let go of that imagined life that you were going to have. And in that life is all your friends. It’s all the friends that you had together. You’re together friends. And guess what happens? Is they disappear? They run away. I don’t know where they are, where they go, and they just disappear. And that’s the hardest thing for a widow to accept is the fact that What happened to Mary and John? We used to play Bridgette every Friday night and suddenly they’re not there anymore.
Victoria Volk: Or they’re not you know, the widow isn’t invited.
Denise Dielwart: I’m not invited. Oh, look, they’re all awake. They’re all awake to they’re all awake camping. And I wasn’t invited to go along. But we were just to go camping together.
Why wasn’t I invited? And that’s hurtful. But it’s normal. We have to have the tools to be able to deal with that. And that is that is mindset. That’s a different way of thinking, a different way of being. It’s reimagining. It’s reinventing. It really is reinventing a lot, and that takes work. It takes courage. Not everybody has the courage to do that,
Victoria Volk: but everybody can find it.
Denise Dielwart: Exactly exactly the visit of Oz. I mean, let’s let’s use the visit of Oz as an example. You know, you had the lion. I don’t know if Carrie, yes, she do. You’ve just got to say yes to yourself. You’ve just got to say yes, I can do this. I’m gonna reach out for help. I can do this. And and along the way, and so many of, you know, of my clients over the years have gone, oh, as soon as I’ve fallen down, I’ve fallen backwards. And, yes, you do because it’s never just a straight line up. So you start at the bottom and you start going up and then you might fall down a little bit, but you’re falling down not to the level that you were at. You’re falling down at a higher level, so it’s like waves. You’re going up and going up and going up and you never arrive there. You always grow as having a growth mindset being able to grow and go to the next level, in your own personal growth, your own personal development. Because the grief and your story is just that. It’s what brought you to this point in your life. Weighing you gonna what are you gonna do about that? What are you gonna do about it? Because we’ve got choices. We can stay where we are and we can feed the victim and I hate using the word victim, but it is. I was a victim for a while. Me, told me, my husband died. And so I’ll put my big girl panties on and said Denise, hang on. You got a whole life ahead of you. Do I miss him? I still miss him. It’s fifteen years later. I just get angry with him. I still get angry with him, and I have to do things. I was like, oh my God, you know? So much easier when you were here. But that’s not my life anymore.
Victoria Volk: I think the one of the things that community are being in community of people who are on the same mission, right, of growing. And evolving and reinventing themselves. One of the things that I think comes out of that too is you’re in community with other people who have different problems than you. And so it’s like, you know, if we think about our problems, it’s like and then we hear somebody else’s, it’s like, And I I’ve reminded myself of this so many times, and it’s helpful. At the end of the day, I would sure take my problems home before I want theirs. Because there’s always somebody who doesn’t it’s not to say they have it worse than you. But it’s like if you can think of yourself, put yourself in their shoes. Yeah. You’re healthy? Yes, you’re a widow. But if you’re healthy, and this other person now has a chronic illness. Maybe they even had cancer themselves and their spouse died. I bet you you would take your problems home with you instead of theirs.
Denise Dielwart: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Even financials, some of those are left with with nothing. Some of those are left with nothing. And it’s so hard. I have to I find it really hard. To to say to these ladies that it’s okay. It’s just money. You can regardless of your age, you can do something. You can create an income for yourself. So it really breaks my heart and I see this woman with so much potential. So much potential, and they just fold and say, well, I can’t do anything. I’m I’m gonna live on benefits for the rest of my life, and I and I and I’m living with my son in his basement. I’ve got a client that that started she was living in the basement of her daughter’s boyfriend. So her daughter was living as a boyfriend. She was living in the basement when she’s been when we started working together. And she’s now bought her own house. Because she put a big old panties on we worked together and and we worked through, What was keeping her stuck in the basement? And to not focus on the basement, but focus on getting a job, what can she do? We would employ her. And as it turns out, she loves crafts. She loves sewing. She loves all that. So she’s working at the local casino. In the uniform department and she laughs it. She’s doing all the sign repairs and the thought that she laughs it. But that enabled her to buy her own house, which she never saw living in a basement.
Victoria Volk: And on the flip side of that, you could have all the money in the world. Mhmm. And you could have four, five children, three children, or however many children, or b, have a blended family, and everybody’s fighting, and you have all of that stress and hurting. Yeah. And then your kids hate you because you didn’t give them what they wanted. They aren’t speaking to you anymore. I mean, this is a thing when I’m talking about other people’s problems. It’s like we would always take our own for the most part.
Denise Dielwart: Always always always Yeah. Always. And, you know, our story is unique to us. Your story, your grief journey is unique to you. There’s no cookie cutter way of doing it. You can’t say, well, just do this and, you know, you know, like the five stages of grief, goodness me. Go through the stage then and say, now you’re over here. No, grief is messy. It’s it’s it’s all over the place. You can’t just say, well, oh, okay.
You’re in the anger stage now?
Victoria Volk: There actually are no stages of grief. I know. I know.
Denise Dielwart: There are no stages of grief. That’s what I’m saying. Miss
Victoria Volk: I actually had Elizabeth Keebler Ross. Ross’ son, Ken Ross, on my podcast.
Denise Dielwart: Oh, really? Yes.
Victoria Volk: And we talked about that. And, you know, her work was about people who have been diagnosed with a terminal illness.
Denise Dielwart: Like, sure.
Victoria Volk: It was, you know, but it is in Paul culture, like
Denise Dielwart: It’s the golden I’m here. I am in Australia, and everybody it’s the golden standard for grievance. She wrote her dad book on on deaf and dying in the sixties. And everybody goes, oh, you bet, you know, it’s the five stages of treatment. I’ve even heard people refer to going through COVID. It’s like the five stages of grief. And I just oh my goodness. Oh, I I was on a podcast or something and somebody said, yeah, you know, briefly screaming in in in in in COVID and, you know, the blah blah blah. I forget what it was, but all I remember them saying is, It’s like we’re going through the five stages of Greece. You know, we’re getting angry and we’re getting Wow. Have misunderstood. That is because they’re you keep the they are no fast. They’re honest edges. I mean, if you Google the fast stages of grief. She can even come up with a seven stages of grief.
Victoria Volk: Yeah. If Like I said, it’s I think it’s it’s something that has really propelled her work, which is wonderful because her work was so much more than just the research that
Denise Dielwart: she has. Like,
Victoria Volk: her life, she led an incredible life, and I’m not discounting anything that she did and remarkable. I mean, I the stories of working with you know, in the child the work that she did with children, cancer patients. And she was a trendsetter. She was a trailblazer. And I think that’s what it is. I think she kinda blazes the trail of the deep emotional impact of big change
Denise Dielwart: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: Loss of health, cancer diagnosis. Right? Like and, yes, you’re gonna feel those things, but Yeah. And I think, you know, society, I think, is really just like, it gave them something to latch on to and run with, and I think that’s kind of what happened. And and they have trademarked it because, of course, it’s their business too.
Right? Like
Denise Dielwart: Yeah. It’s
Victoria Volk: she has an empire of her own and and a legacy that is kind of been built with the five stages of grief. I’ll actually link to Ken Ross’s episode in your
Denise Dielwart: Oh, that’d be great. Yeah. It’d be great. Because, you know, When she when she wrote the fast edges of grief, it was for people that were diagnosed with an illness. Mhmm. And, yes, you do go through all of that. The disbelief, the anger that eventually get to acceptance. But when you actually die when you when you’ve lost somebody, I don’t think you ever acceptance is a very strong word. You never accept the fact that they’re gone or that they’ve died. Don’t even learn to live with such. You heal yourself. You grow yourself. And you you have them been walking next to you all the time. They’re always there.
Victoria Volk: I think your point of perspective of it and your point of view and how you look at it changes. Totally. And that’s when you know that you’ve done some healing. When you can look at it differently.
Denise Dielwart: And you’re not crying when you think about them. You’re not crying when at birthdays. You’re not crying at the anniversaries. You’re actually laughing. You know that you’ve helped.
Mhmm. And you’re looking back with love and not with pain.
Victoria Volk: And it’s possible. Talking about before. We serve
Denise Dielwart: Absolutely. Possible. Yes. It is so possible.
Victoria Volk: It’s not like a cut, you know, that you just cover with a band aid and, you know, and it’s gonna it’s eventually, it’s gonna start oozing again, which it could. Right? Like, it’s a you know, that wound can be opened again. And again, because life is gonna continue to life.
Denise Dielwart: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: You’re always gonna have another heartache. Always. What’s your rebound? What’s your bounce back?
Denise Dielwart: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: No. It’s that’s what improves when you work on yourself.
Denise Dielwart: Yeah. It’s in a work. It is self it’s working on yourself. It’s it’s having and having a a growth mindset. And you know, oh, you got a growth mindset.
But a growth mindset, there’s two months that you can either have a fixed mindset or a growth mindset. When you’ve got a growth mindset, and I would say both you and I have got a growth mindset because it’s it’s not we don’t just go but that’s who I am and that’s what I do. That’s having a fixed mindset. It’s just what it is. I’m a widow.
I’ve lost my child, whatever whatever and and having that stuck identity. Now here’s the thing. When we identify as let’s take a widow, for example, I’m a widow. You’ve just boxed yourself into that into that identity. And why is it so easy to do after we lose our husbands is because we lose our identity. We’re not our wife anymore. Oh, but that’s right. I’m a widow now, so we put the widow head on. And with that comes a lot of I I call it the puppy dog look. When people go, oh, I’m so sorry and they get this puppy dog look. Oh, I didn’t realize you were, were you? I’m still getting it fifteen years later. Yeah. I’ve had a a I’ve built a house recently and I had a pool put in and all the rest of them. All the trades people, the tradesman, came. Yeah. The guys that came. We’d say, oh, you know, did you wanna run it by your husband first or, you know, I No. No. I don’t have a husband. Oh, you do most. No. My mother. Oh, I’m so sorry. Oh, I didn’t know. Well, of course, you didn’t know. You don’t you don’t know who I am. Mhmm. But even now, you get that because the word a widow has got these darker energies and connotations around it that you’re a widow and that you need to grieve for the rest of your life. It wasn’t long ago when women were wearing black. They had to wear black for, like, twelve months or something. Because they were in mourning. There’s only a widow. So it wasn’t the it was like what maybe a hundred years ago? Seventy five or a hundred years ago? If you lost your husband, you dressed in black. Black. Stockings are black. You were just in black as she wore in morning.
Victoria Volk: Who would love to go back in time and just see how because I I do think that the ancestors of the past knew how to grieve better than typically we do.
Denise Dielwart: Yeah. Yeah. They gave themselves permission to feel. They’re up to down as society and felt that they could have fought to do that. In today’s world, we can’t do that.
Victoria Volk: Yeah. To put the suit right back on after two weeks, get it there.
Denise Dielwart: March Older adults. Older adults. Older adults.
Victoria Volk: And you might get ten days of bereavement time? You just might.
Denise Dielwart: Yeah. If you’re lucky. If you’re lucky. And then it’s like, oh, why aren’t you coming into work today? Or because I’m No. No. Well, you’re we’re even times over. Mhmm. No. I’ve had I’ve had wood outside of head warnings after the ten days of bereavement time that they’re going to lose their job. And that’s it’s why a lot of them do the work because they know that they have to keep their work. They have to keep the income coming in. And that’s the main reason why why they they they wanna move forward. And then they realize that when we start really get and they get to all the other stuff that’s beneath that. And suddenly suddenly, they’re starting businesses and they’re doing other things that they never thought all grand. Doing? Yeah. We can
Victoria Volk: see what’s possible for ourselves when we are just continue to wear the veil of grief over our faces.
Denise Dielwart: Yeah. We can’t. We can’t. And it’s okay to wear that veil for a while. But don’t unpack and lovely. When we unpack and lift it, that we that we we take that identity on, we identify as that person.
Victoria Volk: So what is your grief taught you? It’s told me that this is
Denise Dielwart: a gift in grief, an absolute gift. And what is that gift? The gift is ourselves. It’s our own personal healing. It’s our own finding and rediscovering who we are. It’s also told me to be as a widow, talking as a widow, it’s taught me to be independent, but not that independent that I don’t ask for help. That is such a hard thing for for us woman to do is to ask somebody to help us because we say you say our husband’s doing stuff. That we didn’t have to ask for. So it’s taught me to actually put my hand up and say I need help. Or pay somebody to do it for you. Don’t try and do it on your own. So it’s taught me to not be that strong person that just salches on. And that was something that in my own healing journey, I It was a limiting belief that I didn’t even know that I had. It was a deep seated belief. I’m an only child, so I’ve got no siblings. I did ballet’s child and my mother and my father boss used to say, you know, practice makes perfect. So just keep practicing practice packs perfect. And then, of course, if I didn’t get it quite right or, you know, I did in a step foot or something and I didn’t get what I wanted to do, I then would set your soldier on. It’s okay. Remember practice max post perfect just soldier on? It sounds innocent, doesn’t it this mom encouraging me. But it was only when I went in deep within myself. Then I mean, why do I push myself so much? Why does everything have to be just right? And then I was like, my arm moment goes, oh my god. I’m still that little girl practicing to be perfect and soldiering on. That’s the deep inner work. And that’s what keeps us stuck in our grief. It keeps us stuck in our life because it’s not just the grief. The grief is grief is grief is grief is packed on on, you know, I lost my father.
I lost my mother. But those griefs, I didn’t even allow myself to grief. There’s losses. I was out
Victoria Volk: in the past.
Denise Dielwart: I was my father died a week before my eighteenth birthday. He was forty seven. Wow. He had a he had a massive stroke. So, grieved him a bit. Everybody was saying, oh, he’s so young and I’m going, what? He’s forty seven. He’s old. It’s sort of a bad one. I’m like, wow. He was so young. But so I lost lost my my father and then I lost my mother young as well. But I still had my family intact. I had Mark and I had the kids. Yes.
I miss them. Yes. They were my parents. But somehow, I just didn’t feel it until mark and god, and then that was the god. Wow. Because it’s a different loss.
Victoria Volk: Well, and that’s what happens with a a deep loss is that it brings up everything before it.
Denise Dielwart: I know. It’s I I always say it’s grief is like a magnifying glass. Just boom. This is your life. And if we don’t address what’s coming up for us, we manifest disease disease. We manifest illness. I had a beautiful client who found out after her husband passed away that that he had an affair, that he was having an affair. And that all the money that she thought she had, he had spent on this other woman. She had four thousand dollars and that was she was a school teacher she had four thousand dollars and that was from her salary. That was it. But her her drive to heal and to do it quickly, was that she had breast cancer that was in remission. And she knew that if she went down that rabbit hole of stress and the grief and everything that that that comes with it is a chance that your breast cancer will come back. Plus, she was so angry with him. She wanted to kill him, although he was already dead. I remember his name to me. He wasn’t dead. I would have killed him. I mean, laugh about that man, but you know, it it it’s it’s against that the betrayal and not being able to address that. She was, what, three months into her grief January when we started working. Now, four weeks, four weeks when we started working together. And that’s early. That’s really early.
Victoria Volk: But it’s never too soon and it’s
Denise Dielwart: It’s never too soon. And this is what, you know, I have some people to isn’t too soon? Never too soon. Never too soon
Victoria Volk: or too late. No. Yeah.
Denise Dielwart: On the other spectrum, I’ve got a head of beautiful lady. Those fifteen years. She had seen I think she had about four or five therapists, she even had a psychiatrist, She was getting sicker and sicker and sicker. And within the first week of us working together, she went, oh my goodness. I’m not crying anymore. She was still crying after fifteen years. And that’s because we get stuck into a kitten. We have to break those patterns and we can’t break those patterns on our own if we don’t know how. Because they said,
Victoria Volk: you did that through your life coaching certification, like, as you were going through life coaching, Erin, that’s what you would. Okay.
Denise Dielwart: Yeah. So I’m an NLP practitioner as well. So is there a lot of NLP which is neuro linguistic programming? So a lot of NLP work that I do, mhmm, is my clients as well because we’ve got a Brexit. We’ve got a we’ve got a get them to think differently.
Help to help these ladies to actually see themselves in a different way. We need to break the neural pathways. We’ve just scratched the record because it’s been me start going back and going back and going back over the same old thing. Oh, and that’s our talk therapy doesn’t work. Because when we repeat and repeat and repeat, we are building that neural pathway stronger and stronger and stronger and stronger. We have to break that neural pathway. Let’s let’s say electrical pathway in our brains. We have to bracket and we have to grow and start another one.
Victoria Volk: And it’s possible.
Denise Dielwart: It’s possible. It is new knowledge. Yeah. Yeah.
Victoria Volk: Nobody else. New app.
Denise Dielwart: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s just doing some it’s, you know, everybody that’s listening today, that’s here, and I know for you and for me, it’s one decision. We are ever only one decision away of a new life. Not a hundred decisions, not overwhelming decisions. It’s one decision.
Victoria Volk: Lay in decay or get up and reinvent yourself.
Denise Dielwart: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: Those are the choices.
Denise Dielwart: Yes? Yep. And it’s it’s a choice. You know, we have choices we choose. We choose what what Am I gonna get out of bed today? Am I gonna stay in bed? And if that’s your if that’s your one choice you do, what are you gonna choose?
Victoria Volk: And what’s the cost? What is it costing you not? Yep. So put yourself first in this way.
Denise Dielwart: Yep.
Victoria Volk: Better questions. We have to ask yourselves better questions.
Denise Dielwart: Better questions and and and what is it? You know, when I say to to when I start working, this this this is my latest assignment, What is it costing you? And I’m so glad you brought up the cost because that’s something that nobody thinks of. We only think of cost in a monetary sense, dollar sense, but there’s such a massive cost to your health, to your relationships, to your whole life, everything. If we’re not if you’re not functioning properly, what is the cost? What is the costing you? In your in in your relationship with your with your family, your friends and family. What’s the cost?
Victoria Volk: Next. Absolutely. We’re on the same mission, my friend.
Denise Dielwart: Yes. It’s so good. You see you all?
Victoria Volk: Yes. Where can people find you if they’d love to connect with you and learn more?
Denise Dielwart: So I have my website, which I think is the best place. It’s flow grief academy dot com. And that’s where, you know, they can book a call with me. There’s a link there if they wanna have a check to book a call with me. I offer a free Sometimes it’s sixty minutes, sometimes it’s forty five minutes, sometimes it’s five minutes depending all the way. But just a free breaks recall, grief breaks recall. Just to talk about where where you are in your journey right now. What’s what’s keeping you stuck? Yeah. And if I can help you, I can help you if I can’t. We spent a good forty five minutes and an hour together. And you’ll walk away with tools, on on in in an awareness of of where you are in your journey.
Victoria Volk: And you have the podcast?
Denise Dielwart: And I have my podcast. Brief Unlocked. Yes. I have my podcast. And, yeah, I’ve also got my group. I’ve got a a Facebook group as well. All the links are on my website. That’s why I said my website is about the best to sort of to land there and have a look and to have a feel around there and click and and and so on. And of course, there’s also the academy. So for those that that feel that they want to learn how to become a grief coach, I’ve now got the academy of transformational brief coaching. So that’s where you learn all the NLP techniques, you learn how to talk, you learn how, you learn the flow method.
Victoria Volk: Wonderful. And I will put a link to your website in the show notes and to the Can Ross episode that I mentioned. And to Facebook group too, I’ll put that in the show notes as well.
Denise Dielwart: That will be great. Yeah. Yeah.
Victoria Volk: Alright. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story, Denise, and for being my guest today. And for this wonderful conversation, I I’m always happy to have people on who are on the same mission as myself. To bring awareness to grief. And that’s not just about death, but all these other things that we experience in our lives too that, you know, through the different client examples that you shared. So thank you so much for your time today. Howard Bauchner:
Denise Dielwart: Yeah, you’re so welcome. And it’s it’s such a point that you said, it’s not about grief. It’s
Victoria Volk: about life.
Denise Dielwart: Life is going to life. And we’re still alive. So it’s about life. It’s about living
Victoria Volk: and learning tools to make it the best that we can speak and then in the time that we are given.
Denise Dielwart: Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. So thank you so much for having me on. It’s been absolutely kind of like to for the for the podcast to come out and and share it with my group as well. So because like you said, it’s the awareness of of We can heal and you can heal and move forward.
Victoria Volk: Absolutely. And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.
Child Loss, Grieving Voices Guest, Grieving Voices Podcast, Widowhood |
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
Embracing Grief with Grace: Angie Hanson’s Journey from Loss to Entrepreneurship
Grief is an unwelcome visitor that arrives at the doorsteps of our lives, often unannounced and always undesired. For some, like Angie Hanson, grief has knocked not once but multiple times, bringing along profound loss and heartache. Yet in the face of such adversity, Angie has managed to forge a path that not only honors her lost loved ones but also provides solace to others navigating their own journeys through mourning.
Angie’s story is one of remarkable resilience—a testament to the human spirit’s ability to endure and transform suffering into something meaningful. Her experiences have led her down a road less traveled: from working in banking and a taffy store learning about online business ventures, she now runs Butterflies and Halos—a greeting card company designed for those who are grieving—and co-hosts “From Loss to Light,” a podcast dedicated to sharing stories of hope after loss.
The Birth of Butterflies and Halos
The concept behind Butterflies and Halos was born from Angie’s realization that typical sympathy cards didn’t quite capture the ongoing support needed by those in mourning. After experiencing personal losses—the deaths of her toddler son, husband, brother Seth (who succumbed to a brain tumor), sister-in-law Brooke (who passed away due to alcoholism)—Angie recognized how vital it is for people in grief not just be acknowledged initially but supported throughout their entire grieving process.
Her greeting card venture offers messages that resonate more genuinely with what it means truly mourn—sometimes heartfelt; other times humorous because laughter can indeed be medicine even amidst sorrow. It challenges industry norms by advocating for acknowledgment beyond traditional timelines set by society.
From Banking To Empathy
Before tragedy reshaped her life trajectory, Angie had built a career within the banking sector—an industry known more for transactions than emotional connections. However, when faced with devastating losses consecutively—each leaving its unique scar on her heart—she pivoted towards endeavors imbued with deeper meaning centered around family values especially inspired by her daughter Gracie’s strength during tough times.
Gracie herself stands as an example of overcoming adversity; graduating college pursuing kinesiology aiming help others regain physical abilities reflects both mother-daughter duo’s dedication helping heal pain whether emotional or physical form.
Podcasting Through Pain
Together with Michelle another widow friend they started “From Loss Light” podcast explore rediscovery light after different kinds loss death divorce addiction among others becoming inspirational platform listeners find camaraderie shared experiences resilience against odds journey back towards hopefulness again book titled Chapters Resilient Heart encapsulates this narrative perfectly scheduled release May 2024 already available pre-order showcasing power storytelling healing process itself inspiration drawn trip Costa Rica current husband where realized strength lies opening up new chapters despite past closures inflicted upon us fate itself sometimes cruelly so yet never defining entirety our existence if we choose otherwise which exactly did choosing honor memories actions rather than succumbing despair alone powerful choice indeed one many could learn emulate difficult circumstances face daily basis across globe irrespective culture creed color socio-economic status universal language understood all – love remembrance perseverance face adversities life throws way time again without fail relentless pursuit happiness joy may seem elusive moments darkness eventually finds way back hearts willing open them wide enough let light shine through cracks created wounds old healed completely maybe never will entirely point isn’t forget move forward remember carry legacy forward too part ourselves forever changed encounter mortality close quarters intimately familiar contours shape absence leaves behind tangible void filled nothing else same measure value once held dear still holds true today tomorrow eternity long lasts memory alive us keeps going matter what comes next chapter waiting written pen hand ready ink flow freely page blank canvas awaits masterpiece creation patiently biding time until muse strikes chord resonates soul deeply felt core being essence captured words spoken aloud silence contemplation alike either case message clear loud unleash heart unleashing life itself fullest potential reached embraced grace given opportunity do so every single day blessed breathe air earth under feet sun sky above reminder precious gift given cherish treasure always end days come sooner later expected unexpected alike preparedness key unlocking doors future possibilities endless horizon stretches vast expanse imagination limit setting sail unknown adventures await discovery newfound purpose passion ignited flame rekindled ashes past experiences fuel fire burning bright beacon guiding ships night safe harbor refuge stormy seas tumultuous world live thrive survive testify beauty remains midst chaos confusion reign supreme ultimate victory claimed name lived well loved hard laughed often cried tears sadness turned drops wisdom gained perspective shifted priorities realigned accordance true calling found voice heard afar near touched souls kindred spirits bonded together common cause celebrate triumph over tragedy song sung chorus angels watching overhead smiling approvingly deeds done good earth reward heaven promised land dreams reality merge seamless tapestry woven threads golden silver intertwined perfection achieved mastery craft honed skill refined artistry displayed proudly gallery open viewing public private collectors aficionados connoisseurs taste discerning eye detail appreciate finer things offered sale purchase price tag attached worth measured monetary terms sentimental value priceless gem rare exquisite nature behold wonder awe inspire generations come leave lasting impression indelible mark history books annals recorded posterity sake remembering forgotten lest repeat mistakes learned lessons teach children grandchildren importance empathy compassion humanity whole greater sum parts individual contributions collective effort combined synergy effect multiplied exponentially reach far wide deep impact felt ripple waves emanating epicenter event occurred sending shockwaves reverberate echo chambers minds hearts souls awaken dormant senses alert presence moment mindful passage fleeting grasp tightly slip fingers sand hourglass counting seconds minutes hours days weeks months years decades centuries millennia eons epochs span lifetime blink cosmic scale grand scheme universe infinite expanding contracting breathing living entity conscious aware self identity separate distinct interconnected web interwoven strands fabric cosmos stitched seamlessly invisible thread binds together unity harmony balance order chaos juxtaposed side contrast highlight differences similarities paradoxical relationship exists duality dualistic approach understanding complex simplicity elegant design creator creation creature creatures inhabit dwell abide reside home planet third rock sun solar system galaxy Milky Way local group cluster supercluster Laniakea great attractor destination journey ends begins anew cycle rebirth renewal regeneration resurrection phoenix rises ashes anew stronger wiser enlightened 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Episode Transcription:
Victoria Volk: Thank you for tuning in to this week’s episode of grieving voices. Today my guest is Angie Hanson, and she shares her story of immense loss. Journey marked by the deaths of her one year old son, Garrett, her husband Jack, her brother, Seth, and her sister-in-law brook. In her own profound grief, Angie, Phones, and a mission to change the narrative around grief, to bring light into the darkest moments, and to offer genuine support to those walking the path of loss. She founded butterflies and halos in twenty twenty two a greeting card company that seeks to bridge the gap between sympathy and understanding, between condolence and companionship. Angie is also publishing her first book chapters of a resilient heart that will be published in May twenty twenty four, so it’s actually on preorder and coming out very soon as we’re recording this. And she also co hosts a podcast from Lost to Light touching on all aspects of losses and how people have found their light. Thank you so much for being here. And I love the podcast app title, and I love the book title as well. How did those come to be?
Angie Hanson: Well, honestly, for the podcast, I co-host it with a fellow widow friend of mine, Michelle, and When we started talking about doing the podcast together, we were just like, we wanted to focus on how people have found their light, you know, and through any losses because we know that losses are not just death. And we know that there’s losses from divorces, you know, drug addiction, abuse, anything, job losses, pet losses, And so we really wanted to touch on all those because and we wanted people to figure out and let us know and let our listeners know how did they find their light and it’s been so inspirational listening to how people have journeyed through their losses and they found their light and especially the people that have come through like the recovery of any drug addiction. Those are the ones that really just grab at my heart and I’m so amazed by them. So their resilience is amazing and so that kind of steps into my book title, chapters of a resilient heart. I kind of always love the name chapters. I’ve always wanted to own a bookstore named chapters. I’ve just loved that. And so I kinda had chapters of this, chapters of that. And nothing was just really settling with me. And then we actually were on a trip in Costa Rica, and we were sitting there talking about the title of the book and my husband that I’m married to now, the word resilient came up. And we were just like, well, that’s kind of everything that I embody is, you know, the resilience of my losses and what I’ve kinda you know, and what I’ve encompassed by doing what I’m doing now out there in the grief world is I’m leaning into that resilience of everybody. So there we are. My new book, chapters of a resilient heart.
Victoria Volk: I love it. What were you doing before?
Angie Hanson: Well, I actually was working in a Taffy store like saltwater Taffy. Okay. So there’s a little local store here. She’s actually an antique store and I kinda worked for her just part time doing some things, and she actually started this Taffy saltwater online Taffy company where she ships out monthly subscription boxes to people and you get Taffy, surprises every month. So I kinda learned a little bit of the online industry through her and through helping her and working for her. So that kind of just put me in motion to, you know, understand going forward with my, you know, with my business and all that. So Yeah. And then, you know, I just before my deaths, I actually worked in the banking industry. So I worked doing everything in a small bank here. So but then death happened and knocked at my front door, and I never turned back to that job.
Victoria Volk: As a way of doing that, doesn’t it?
Angie Hanson: It just Yes.
Victoria Volk: Then everything. And what were some of the questions, like, big questions you were asking yourself as you were I mean, because you’ve had a lot of loss and we’ll get to those. But, you know, what was coming up for you as you were going through this? And first of all, like, how did you even get out of bed?
Angie Hanson: You know, every day in the beginning after my I was working at the bank when my son had died. And The biggest obstacle for me was how, you know, moving forward in life and how do does that look like? And what does that look like? And it was it was very very hard, but my daughter was four at the time. And, you know, I just really leaned into wanting her to have a good life. And the life that she deserved and honoring her and, you know, just wanting her to be able to have happy fun times. And I had to figure out how that looked like and what that looked like. And so I just basically, every single day, it was, okay, you can get up today and today if you shower, perfect. Today if you just, you know, if you get to go outside and sit perfect. So the questions that I asked myself surrounding that, like, what what matters most now? Does does it working a nine to five in the banking world matter? Absolutely not. It didn’t matter to me anymore. You know, I didn’t I didn’t care. And my only kids were my family at the time.
Victoria Volk: Would you say in in some ways? I just in the conversations I’ve had over the last four years plus years of having my podcast too, it’s like, when you have other children that you have to get up for. They’re almost like you’re saving grace in a way I imagine. Is that Did you find that true for you too? Like, she was really your reason to get Yes.
Angie Hanson: Yes. And her name is Gracie. So she was she was my saving grace. And with, you know, I, you know, my husband and I, Jack, we definitely grieved differently. So he was more of a go out. We lived on an acreage. So he was more of a, let’s go outside and work work work, you know. Keep my mind occupied. Do that do that. And for me, I was just so lost. You know, I just I couldn’t think of how I could move forward. And but every morning when Gracie would come to me and I would see her, you know, I’m just like, this this is not fair for her. You know, she deserves to have this beautiful life, and so she she did. She saved me from going into a rabbit hole.
Victoria Volk: Was your son for those that, I mean, don’t know you or have never heard you speak or be on podcasts and things your son was one, Garrett was one. Was he sick? Much of that year, first year?
Angie Hanson: No. Garrett was the epitomy of health. He had just turned one, and he died six days after his first birthday. And he had just had his one year checkup on that Friday and he died on a Tuesday and he had a heart defect that went undetected. And it’s a very undetectable heart defect as well. It’s It’s got a really long name. It’s like ectopic origin of the right coronary artery. So basically his right coronary artery was kinked, And so you a person suffers sudden cardiac death in extreme arrest or extreme activity. And, you know, you’ve heard similar stories, maybe of athletes dying on a court or a football field, and that is similar to what Garrett had, and he was resting. He was sleeping. He was taking his afternoon nap when he died. And there really are no signs or symptoms, you know, because that was one of the things I had really asked our pediatrician was did I miss something? As a mom, I was just holding guilt. Did I miss something and nothing? I mean, he was He ate well. He was happy. I mean, joyful. I mean, his coloring. Everything was perfect. I mean, even the doctor was like, I don’t know how I could have missed that, you know. And we did talk to some lead cardiologists at our local children’s hospital when they said that there was nothing really that we could have we could have seen or noticed that would have show us that he was he had that.
Victoria Volk: You mentioned your your husband had he had also passed away. And so how far out was that was the loss of your husband from when you both lost your son.
Angie Hanson: Garrett died in June of two thousand six, and then about a year and a few months later in two thousand seven, my husband Jack was diagnosed with cancer. So he had melanoma when he was twenty one years old, and so he had a molt removed, you know, some invasive surgery on his arm, but it was nothing that had spread. And then, you know, we’re fifteen years later when our sun dies. And I honestly believe the stress of our sun dying, you know, ignited those cancer cells on his body again. You know? And he was trying to be the strongest for all of us and that’s who Jack was. So he was diagnosed, let’s see, fall of two thousand seven, so just a little over a year after her son had passed. And then Jack, he was diagnosed with ocular melanoma, so he had a large tumor in his eye. And it had spread through his to his liver and his brain and a spleen. So you know, at that moment, we were told, you know, Jack was diagnosed terminal. And, you know, we didn’t know how long he would have with us, but we weren’t going to not fight. So we fought and fought and fought. He did chemo radiation, all the things. And Jack battled for about sixteen months before losing his life to the cancer. So he died in February two thousand and nine, so just two and a half years after our son had died.
Victoria Volk: And your brother, Seth, and your sister-in-law like this. I know. I don’t even like, it’s not like it’s not nervous laughter, but it’s just like it’s it you can’t even wrap your head around it.
Angie Hanson: Yeah. Yeah. It’s unbelievable sometimes when, you know, own people here it for the first time it is it’s unbelievable. My brother Seth had actually been battling a brain tumor for about five years. And him and his wife, they lived on our acreage with us. So we had like a big house and a little house My brother Seth and Joey, his wife, they lived in the small house. And when Seth was first diagnosed with his brain tumor, five years prior, he I was kind of his caretaker a lot because he lived there and, you know, right there and my parents were divorced. And so, you know, they had both remarried and kinda had some younger families, but I had no problems doing that. And then once he re once he married to his wife, you know, she was able to take care of him a lot, but it was about a month after Jack had died. So in March of two thousand nine, my brother just started having some issues, some headaches, and things like that. So he had his third brain surgery on March thirteenth of two thousand and nine. And he had always bounced back from all his surgeries because he was extremely healthy. You know, he was an exercise guy and, you know, he didn’t drink nothing. And it just came back this third time with a vengeance. And two months after my husband died, my brother died, he died on April seventh two thousand nine. So, you know, just he just they removed that brain tumor that third time and they were going to end up doing some chemo and radiation once he healed from the surgery, but the tumor just came back with a vengeance. And he he just died. And it was, you know, I at that moment in my time, point in my life, I was just like, what in the hell is happening? And I was so lost because and I didn’t know who I was grieving. You know, I didn’t know if I was grieving my son or my husband or my brother. And it took a lot of hard work for me to, you know, decipher who I was grieving for and, you know, separating those griefs and you know, still raising my daughter, Gracie, and just doing all the things that I could to survive.
Victoria Volk: And how old was she at this point?
Angie Hanson: Gracie turned so she was six in February when her daddy died, and then she turned seven and March. So yeah. So, you know, in between all that, you know, she has this wonderful birthday, but Yeah. It was just I, you know, I just really, really just wanted her to have this happy life, you know. I didn’t want her to be the victim of all these deaths, you know. And I didn’t want it to define how we survived and lived our life. So I had to really work on figuring out how to maneuver that.
Victoria Volk: And what did that look like? Because for people listening, like, growing up, we had a lot of loss early in I had a lot of loss early in my life. My dad, my mom had lost her mom within the year. And so there was just it was a lot too in my growing up. But as a kid, you know, there wasn’t a lot of talk you know, and this was back, you know, late eighties, early, you know, late eighties. So what did that look like for Yeah. What did that look like with Gracie? And, like, how did you talk about it?
Angie Hanson: Yeah. You know, we I’ve always been the one to just talk about it. Let’s say their names constantly, you know, talk about them, who they were, you know, listen to stories if people would tell us just so she could know who these people were, and what kind of people they were and if we could mirror how they lived life and that would help us and it has and we we live big for these people in our lives that have died and you know, I we went to some group therapy, and it was a lot of it was four kids, her age, we went to a local organization here in Nebraska and it was called grief’s journey or Teddy Bear Hollow at the time. I guess they’ve changed her name, but And that was really helpful for Gracie because I really taught the kids how what death looked like, what what it all look like. I mean, from just the artwork that they would do to teaching them. So that was helpful. And then she did see a therapist a couple times. You know, and every time I go, the therapist honestly thought she was doing really well. And we just had a strong support system around us. And, you know, our family was hard with our family because everybody was had lost the same people.
Right? But and we are all grieving differently. And we are all grieving, you know, different people. But we were able to come together and honor all these people just the same way that we could greet them. So everybody really wrapped their arms around Gracie.
And, you know, I journaled a ton and that was my therapeutic way of dealing with some of it was journaling. And, you know, I just like I said, still every day I’d get up and I’d make sure, you know what? Gracie’s going to have a good day today. How does that look? And, you know, it’s it’s not easy. I don’t have a magic answer for people because I know people want that magic fix because but we know that grief cannot be fixed whatsoever. And It’s just, you know, time does help whether people believe it or not. Time does help. It’ll never make it go away, but it changes and it evolves. And But that’s not going to be the first year or the second year or the third year. And when you’re having compounded grief like we had, it’s, you know, it’s hard.
Victoria Volk: When did you feel like you could breathe again? Although, you did end up having another loss in the mix?
Angie Hanson: Yes. Yes. You know, I feel like after about a year, after my husband and my brother had died was when I kinda started feeling better. I was feeling more hope And I had more faith in me because I had lost a lot of my faith. And but I was I was feeling that. And I was I was seeing glimmers of light and, you know, there were things just within my life that was just feeling good, you know, and size like, okay. Okay. We’re we’re gonna be okay. This isn’t gonna be easy still, but and yeah. So that leads to my, you know, my sister-in-law, my first husband’s sister, Jack, Brooke, she died in two thousand eighteen, so nine years after her brother had died. And she died from alcoholism. You know, and so that’s our choices that we have. You know, and I talk about the choices a lot. And My sister-in-law broke was an amazing human. She loved life. She was smart. She was beautiful. She had amazing drive, but she couldn’t deal with the deaths. And she didn’t live in Nebraska. She lived in Colorado. So she was away from all of us when we were all grieving, and she was dealing with it by herself in Colorado. And she had lost her job And she turned alcohol because when she would drink, that’s when she felt the safest, and that’s when she felt the best. And, yeah, she ended up, you know, her choice was to drink. And She ended up dying from alcoholism in June of two thousand eighteen. So, you know, that that left her parents without any living children. You know? And so it’s heartbreaking. And but that’s I talk a lot about you know, my daughter, Gracie, you know, we have choices. You know, I chose to live and I chose to honor our people and brook didn’t know how to do that, you know. And it’s it’s not any shame to her. She thought she was doing what felt right because the alcohol made her feel right. She just got she just got stuck into that trap and, you know, it’s sad and unfortunate, but it doesn’t define who she was as a person at all. Because if she could have just known, she would have she would have gotten past it.
Victoria Volk: You know, if and if she would have been grieving maybe with the family and had that support system around her to to witness other people and who could hold her to Exactly. To support her.
Angie Hanson: Exactly. It’s yeah. It’s it’s it’s really really sad. And so it’s like I said, it’s it’s all our choices that we have, and we really honestly just have to decide every day, how we’re going to move forward each and every day, putting one foot in front of the other, and it’s not going to be easy. We’re gonna falter. You know, we’re gonna turned to maybe stuff that makes us feel better and but we have to continue to journey forward healthy and positive.
Victoria Volk: And how is a gracie how is gracie adjusted into young adulthood now?
Angie Hanson: Yes. She actually just graduated college. So, Gracie’s now twenty two, and she just graduated college. And she’s doing amazing and I feel like with her she honestly has such a good head on her shoulders. And, you know, I think she’s just learned by watching. You know, that’s You know, I just always kinda tell her, you know, you can you can do whatever you want. You you know, we can be whoever we want. We can strive to do amazing things, be good. And I think she’s really just kind of taken those and really just become an amazing young lady. And she’s she’s we still honor and we still talk about our people, you know, we we giggle, and we laugh, and we tell stories, you know, now all the time about them and we support everything that our family members met to us and what they brought to the table for us, you know, the all our our grief has turned into this big gigantic bubble of, I don’t know, purpose and love, I feel like
Victoria Volk: What did your daughter choose to go into?
Angie Hanson: She is she got her degree in Kinesiology. So it’s sports medicine, basically. And so she wants to do, like, medical device sales. She wants to give people abilities to walk again, you know, use their arms again, things like that, whatever that looks like,
Victoria Volk: to take action in their lives. Right?
Angie Hanson: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes, to move. So, yeah, she’s so she’s home with us.
It’s been a blessing because, you know, she was gone for four years. And now and she went out of state and she was fourteen hours away from us when she went. So she graduated high school in twenty twenty era, so she really didn’t have a normal graduation. And then she graduated just now four years later So now she’s back home and it’s so fun to have in our home.
Victoria Volk: So when did this greeting card company spark come up?
Angie Hanson: You know what, it was probably the end of twenty twenty one I am remarried now to my husband’s chance. And, you know, I would sit there and talk to him and just tell him, you know, the greeting cards you know, greeting cards are simple. They’re an inexpensive, simple gesture to support a friend. And I was just tired of seeing all the with deepest sympathy. I’m so sorry for your loss greeting cards. As well as intended as they are, they don’t hold any value in my in my eyes, you know. It’s it’s it’s an easy out for people. So I’m just like, why can’t we say something like this? So the very first card I had come up with was I don’t know what to say. Let’s go eat one of those damn casseroles. You know, so that’s what I would give to my friend who maybe had just lost her spouse. You know, I’m not going to give her with deepest sympathy card. And I just really wanted to figure out how we could change the narrative around grief and change the stigma that grief shows up in cards and, you know, at the stores, at the, you know, all the hallmarks. And I’m not bashing hallmark whatsoever. They have some wonderful cards, but they don’t have people that understand what griefers feel like. And so I came up with a list. I have about well, I have a hundred and sixty cards. And right now, and they are mostly all grief related. I do not call my cards sympathy cards because I feel like sympathy is something we give. The first few weeks after someone dies. And, you know, that’s the sympathy and understanding. And then moving forward, are we going to show up for our friends, weeks, months, years later, if we could send a card to our friend once a month. You know, just acknowledging their grief still and, you know, telling them that they are supported, I mean, That is what I wish I had. Would have had one I was going through the depths of the grief. If I was having a really crappy day, I’d walk out to my mailbox and if I had a card that just said, I’m thinking of you or some of the funny ones that I have, you know, I just wish that I would’ve had that. But I mean, that’s gonna change the whole day for your friend because they’re gonna be like, wow. Angie’s thinking of me again, and that means the world to me that I’m not alone in my grief, that people still are acknowledging this. And that’s my whole vision with this, you know. And like I said, it’s simple. It’s not going to fix them. Because like I said before, we can’t fix grief. It’s going to just support them and acknowledge it. And that’s all we want. We want to to still even years later. I still love hearing stories about my people. You know, if people will tell me in with writing this book, I’ve had people reach out to me that used to work with my late husband, Jack, and they’ve bought the book, and they’re just like, Angie, we are so proud of you, and they’ll tell me funny stories about Jack. And, you know, that’s fifty Jack’s spent on fifteen years, and I just think that’s absolutely amazing that people are doing that. And that’s what I want with my cards even.
Victoria Volk: Did you not feel supported?
Angie Hanson: I felt supported, yes, but I just think even back in two thousand six, when Garrett had died? People still didn’t talk about grief a lot. You know, I just feel like the whole movement of changing the narrative around grief has happened within the past couple years. Cool. Yeah. I you know, and I’m seeing this, you know, this brief community that, you know, where I even met you on, you know, on this socials, I just feel like, It’s evolving. And, you know, we are changing it. And I think, no, people I had support from my friends. Yes. But I just don’t think people knew. And they didn’t know if it was acceptable to still a month later or two months later or three months later, to send me a card. You know? I don’t think that they knew that or if it was acceptable.
Victoria Volk: And Or even to share the like, the dark humor
Angie Hanson: Exactly. Out
Victoria Volk: of, like, the visceral thing. Right? Yeah.
Angie Hanson: Yeah. And, you know, and then it It’s just and it’s okay, you know, and it’s I just want people to know that it’s okay to do that. But I just feel like even like you said, you know, when you had had your losses, you know, even back in the eighties, I mean, it was really taboo to really talk about stuff like that. You weren’t supposed to bring that up. You know, we honored and we kinda started our own after our son had died honoring him. But then, you know, here we are. Like I said, I think with the social media world that we’re living in, finding these grief communities where we are at and starting to change the narratives is so important. And I’ll give you an example of like, the sympathy versus the empathy, there’s a greeting card, and I this is nothing against anybody. I’ve kinda talked to them about it, but there’s a The Greeting Card Association, and they hold what is called the Louie Awards. And the Louis Awards is like the Oscars for greeting cards. So you submit, you pay per card to submit your cards. Well, so they only have they have so many different categories, but they have a sympathy category. And they don’t have an empathy category, but I submitted to the sympathy category. And so then I didn’t none of my cards won, which is fine. But then we received the feedback from the cards. And one of the comments that I received was very disturbing to me because they said, the cards are okay, but they make me feel uncomfortable.
Victoria Volk: So Then you’re uncomfortable with your grief, my friend? Yes.
Angie Hanson: And so that’s and then all of a sudden, I was just like, oh my gosh. You know what I so I actually made a real about it, like a funny real on Instagram. And that is my biggest it didn’t go viral, viral, but it went pretty close to being viral because people were astounded that this made this person feel uncomfortable, and it’s in a sympathy category. And that is why we need to change the narrative around this grief industry. You know, people need to know. This is why we can’t have people in a hallmark that have never had a loss writing or greeting cards, you know, and it’s it’s it starts. It starts right here, you know, and that’s that’s what I want to do.
Victoria Volk: You know you’re onto something special when you’re poking the bear and you’re giving a response like Right. Promise. Yeah. I actually designed a couple cards. And years ago, like, gosh, five years ago, and I put him on redbubble and, like, just randomly one day, I was like, where is this money from? So I bought the card. I was like, Yay.
Angie Hanson: That’s awesome.
Victoria Volk: I’m gonna be out there and I was, like, whatever, I’ll put it out there. Yeah. I’ve just been dabbling, but I’ve understood that too for years that people just don’t get it. And to bring some sarcasm in humor, into something that’s just so heavy. Everyone has that friend that will get it. Yes. You know what I mean? Like that it’s bringing some lightness to something that’s so heavy and you can’t even wrap your head around sometimes. Right?
Angie Hanson: Exactly. Yeah. Well, yeah. Because, like, one of them I have, you know, it’s the next person that tells me everything’s gonna happen for a reason. I’ll throw, punch him. You know, just I mean, you know, never would I do any physical harm to anybody, but you know what? My friend would she would appreciate that card, and she would, you know, she would understand it. So that’s definitely yeah. I I’m enjoying it. I enjoy the greeting cards.
Victoria Volk: Well, let me ask you this. So, I mean, you’ve shared a lot of, you know, backstory and how you were feeling and on supporting Gracie and all of that. But what overall has your grief taught you?
Angie Hanson: Really, you know, it goes it goes to resilience. It’s taught me that you know, we can have join happiness together that, you know, the grief and happiness can coexist. And honestly, I just it’s taught me to be obviously more empathetic. And I think through everything that I have been through, I am so amazed by the human body in our mind and what we can tell ourselves to journey through the grief, so that’s where the resilience comes in. And I don’t think somebody can be resilient if they keep on telling themselves that this is crappy. You know, it’s no fair. You know, why didn’t my person have to die? You know, if we tell ourselves negative feelings and thoughts, it’s going to be a negative journey. And you’re going to be stuck and fifteen years later, you’re still going to be stuck. But if we can tell ourselves that, you know, what we can be happy. You know, we deserve to be happy. You know, we have to have that faith and trust. And, you know what, that’s going to evolve throughout the years. And so then one year fifteen years and almost eighteen years out for my son dying, I can live an extremely happy life because that’s what I’m doing right now. And so I just think our resilience in our bodies and our mind is so powerful, powerful, and we just have to tell ourselves that we can.
Victoria Volk: When it comes to kids, when people say kids are resilient, when they’ve had losses, that’s always I’ll tell you this. It’s always rubbed me the wrong way because as kids, they don’t have a choice.
Angie Hanson: Exactly.
Victoria Volk: You know, it just I hate when people say that, oh, your kids are so resilient. They’ll bounce back.
Angie Hanson: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: And I can speak from my own experience, but you know, just knowing the grief that I’ve experienced. It has a child growing up as a grieber. It just changes over time and it’s it’s gonna show its face again and again and again and especially with loss in the future because we are human and you love and you lose. Right? And we’re taught how to acquire people and things, but not what to do when we lose them. And so you mentioned and you touched on your parents’ divorce, your son wasn’t your first loss. So you had other losses, I imagine, growing up and pet loss and probably maybe friends and moving and all of these other things. Can you speak to that a little bit and what you learned about grief growing up and maybe in hindsight what you took from those early experiences in your life.
Angie Hanson: Well, I did experience probably that my first traumatic loss was probably when I was about seven. My uncle was killed in an accident. And so I just remember that that feeling of wow, you know, and I would say, again, like, back in the day, we just didn’t talk about that. And so it was kind of hush-hush and different things. I mean, it was It was a very public accident. He was on the volunteer fire department and the rescue squad got hit by a train. And so three of the members had died and two had lived. And so it was a very public, you know, accident, but You know, we didn’t talk a lot about it. And then, you know, my grandparents died when I was younger, you know, and then my parents divorced when I the year after I graduated high school, And so through all that, I guess, I would say that I just really learned how to I guess, separate some of those losses and grief and just, like I said, I journal a lot and I read a lot and so I think separating grief and losses into what they are. So, you know, it’s okay. This is a bad accident. You know, I we can’t put blame on, you know, like, losses. I don’t like that. Like, people are like, well, why would God let this happened to your son. Why would god let this happen to your husband? Why would god let your uncle get hit by a train? You know, things like that, but God doesn’t allow that, you know. And I just he’s there for us when we when we go through these hardest things. And I guess, I just probably stuffed a lot of it sometimes when I was younger just because we were taught to do that. And so then as I grew and then as I come upon my first loss of my major loss that catapulted me into a losses that I never would ever, you know, turn back and be the same from. That’s when I really learned about what death was and how to journey through it. And I’ve learned now more so that talking about all those losses are probably the biggest thing that really helped, you know. And I just wish that we could have back in the day talked about those losses because I think it really could have changed because I’m certain that my parents divorce probably stemmed from a lot of the losses that they had endured. You know? My dad’s brother was the one that had died, so my dad didn’t deal with it. You know, they just didn’t talk about it. And so then, you know, my dad drank and then my parents got divorced and then, you know, it’s just it’s a cycle. And so how can we move forward in these losses in a healthy manner. And I guess that’s what I’ve learned to do is just do it with all our people in mind and keeping their memories alive.
Victoria Volk: Well, my next question is, one tip you would give other hurting hearts, and I would say that that’s a pretty good tip?
Angie Hanson: Yes. Yes. I would. Yeah. And I just I’ve always believed in the, you know, the choices. You know, the choices that we make. And If you’re if you’re hard if you’re really really hardening, you know, don’t don’t expect don’t expect change immediately. And I always, you know, say, you know, give grace because you’re going to have a great day one day. And then and the next day, you’re going to take a couple steps back and it’s going to take time for your heart to feel love again and normal again. And, you know, you can have it there. You know, I had love for my daughter the whole time, but I didn’t really care about the outside world as much. I didn’t care about the outside noise. And but it’s the choices that we have. So how do we choose to love and honor our people?
Victoria Volk: You had touched on a little bit about having lost your faith a little bit. And so the role of faith and spirituality through your grieving process. I know that was a huge aspect of my grief story. Can you share a little bit about what that looked like and how that changed over time?
Angie Hanson: Yeah. I talked it was really after my brother had died that I had lost all faith, you know. And I couldn’t understand how this was happening, why this was happening again and again, and you know, and you always hear the saying, why do all the good ones go? You you know? And I kind of just slowly journaled about it. I went to a group that was a Christian led group, and that is really what changed a lot for me. Is because I learned about death and how it is in the bible and God. And then I started putting my faith back into him. And I learned, like I said earlier, that you know, we are all built a certain way, you know. And so for my son to be born with a heart defect, you know, that was that’s just something that happened. And, you know, my husband and my brother are both with cancer. You know, they it’s just their genetic disposition. You know, they environmental things. We don’t know, but what I know is what I’ve where I’m at today is not because I am the strongest human in the world. It’s because I’ve been carried and something bigger than me is holding me through all this and they’re guiding me and I have to believe that and I have to believe that all my people are safe But for me, I just really leaned into reading a lot about it and just trying to understand what faith and death and god all meant.
Victoria Volk: What was the toll of grief on your health? Over the years. Do you recognize you did you have physical symptoms? Like, how did the grief manifest for you? Because in grief recovery, which is program I adore and love and change my life, but we talk about nerves, short term energy relieving behavior. So you were talking about alcohol and just how people use these outside things to cope. And so how did neither grateful manifest in physical symptoms or will turn to these things to help us to feel better for a short period of time. So what how did the grief manifest for you?
Angie Hanson: I would say that, you know, I you know, I after our son’s death, I really lost a lot of weight, you know. That was my kind of my health thing I just didn’t wanna eat, I didn’t care. After my husband had died and my brother died, you know, I just I didn’t really I didn’t turn to anything, you know, I didn’t drink a a lot more than I had normally. You know, I had drinks But my health wise, I just I just honestly like I said, I guess I just didn’t eat a lot, so I lost weight that way. But I was really just I think my mind was the biggest recovery thing that I needed to figure out how to be present, you know. And I had to be whole for Gracie. And I honestly didn’t turn to anything negative for myself. And I didn’t find I don’t have an addictive personality, so I don’t turn to, you know, that. But mine was mostly all my mind work. And how could I stay healthy? And the healthiest way I could be would be to work on my mind? And that was journaling and reading and, you know, I mean, traveling. Gracie and I traveled quite a bit. You know, we would go visit friends and just be in present. So, yeah, for me, I didn’t really turned to anything that hindered me from my process.
Victoria Volk: Well, even exercise can be a stirb. So it can be good things too.
Angie Hanson: Yes. Exactly. All of a sudden. Yeah. And, you know, I did not I did not turn to work. That was one thing I slacked on. You know, it’s just but yeah. Just I don’t know. Yeah. There’s not I don’t have anything. That’s that’s one of the things that I’ve kind of always been wondered about. You know, maybe I need a deep dive into that a little bit more, you know, to go back into those corners of my mind and really see about what I did. That’d probably be a good exercise for me.
Victoria Volk: Because there’s these myths of grief. Right? It’s keep busy, grief alone. You know, don’t feel bad. You know, there’s so many time heals all wounds, which you touched on time, but it’s not it’s not the time itself. It’s the action that you take within the time. You know, that Exactly. Matters. And it sounds like you were, you know, surviving but yet also doing what you knew to get more control or what have you of your thoughts and your thought process and it’s so easy to downward spiral, to allow your thoughts to downward spiral and Yeah. Take it You know, I just
Angie Hanson: I always you know, I had a friend of mine. She had lost her husband two years prior to me losing my first husband, Jack, and, you know, she was a she was a good resource for me, but when I would have bad days, you know, we would and we would do this with each other, we would just be like, okay. You’re allowed to have this one bad day. But tomorrow, you’re going to get up and you’re going to, you know, you’re going to change your thought process. And you’re gonna change, you know, your mind and everything. And, you know, just giving ourselves that permission to be because I feel like people, honestly, like, they want to do something to fix it. Even even ourselves as grievers, we want to we want to feel how we felt before. We want to feel the same way and, you know, we just can’t. But if we can allow ourselves that time to grieve or just to be or just to not do a single thing. Like I said, if if you wanna lay in bed all day for a day, lay in bed all day, there’s nothing wrong with that. And I feel that that is part of the whole healing aspect of grief is doing that. But you know what, then she’d say, she would check on me the next day. Okay, Angie. How are you today? Are you going to get up and shower and go? And yes, I would. And, you know, I, you know, just and also just yet, like you said, exercising and being outside with nature, but I just think giving ourselves permission to be and not rush. And don’t rush the grief process either. You know, you we it takes time. And I feel like a lot of people rush it.
Victoria Volk: Well, we are a you know, let’s just take a shot, let’s take a pill, let’s,
Angie Hanson: you know, let’s call Amazon, you know.
Victoria Volk: Herb side, like, we are such an impatient society. It is redontulous. Yes.
Angie Hanson: Yes. I agree a hundred percent.
Victoria Volk: How would you describe the ANGI before loss versus the ANGI after loss?
Angie Hanson: Well, that’s a good question. I would say that I was way more outgoing. I was way more friendly. And I and don’t get me wrong. I’m a very outgoing friendly person now, but it’s evolved and changed. I would it was easier for me to be friend. You know, now I feel like I don’t be be friend people easily and I think they don’t because I think I have this aura around me and people get scared of grief. So if they know about my story or any loss that I’ve had. They kinda run or turn their head or they just don’t wanna dive deep because I think they think it’s contagious, but it’s not but I’ve had a lot of strange situations with that. But I was I was very just more very laid back, more more easy going, and like I said, more friendly. And now I just I get a little bit more anxious. I, you know, I really deep dive in who’s going to be my friend and who’s going to be in my life. And that’s maybe something like of a protectant part of me, like, I don’t wanna lose anymore people. So if I if I don’t bring all these people in my life, maybe I won’t lose them. So, yeah, I would I would say I have a lot I have a lot more anxiety in that aspect and Yeah. I wish I had some of my oh, my my free thoughts that I used to have, you know, because now I don’t have those free thoughts as much. And I’ve just kind of adapted all my like I said, I’m I still have all those feelings. I’m still a nice person because I am, but they’ve all adapted differently than what I was before
Victoria Volk: I resonate with that a lot. I don’t know if it’s my resting bitch face or my aura, but probably my aura too, but I tend to I tend to poke the bear when I’m, you know, meeting people. And it’s it’s because It’s like you don’t have time for bullshit. Like, let’s cut the bullshit. Let’s cut the surface level talk. Like, tell me your deepest desires and your dreams. Like, what do you want what do you wanna do with your life? Like, like, those are the kind of the questions that I wanna talk about, and it’s like, it’s really hard to find those people, like the deep thinkers and the, you know, the thought provoking questions and the insightful you know, people, you know. And I think because we get so caught up in this, the mundane daily life, you know, the hamster wheel. We don’t even stop to think about the things that ignited us when we were kids. Right? Like, just actually one day just over Mother’s Day weekend. There was three little girls, and the semi truck just chewed its horn, and the girl’s just so kitty and just yeah, just like this. And it was so funny because I never shared that with anybody. And as I was sitting there, I was thinking, gosh. I was taken back. I was having some ice cream with my girls or seventeen and a half and six you know, fifteen already. Yeah. And I just was taking back in time in that instant to See, I saw them, like, you know, in doing that, my daughter does this still to this day when she gets excited. And Yeah. So it just took me back in time, but I don’t know where I was going with that.
Angie Hanson: Yeah. I just think it’s like, you know, the society the way society has grown and changed and evolved that, you know, we we are losing, like, you know, you the deep conversation with people. You know, it is hard to find those people that we can match up with and have those, you know, just sit there and talk about and walk away feeling just refreshed. You know, I leave a lot of conversations feeling icky. You know? And I don’t I haven’t pinpointed exactly why, but like I said, I just when people when I first kind of meet them in a situation and they ask me, oh, what do you do? And I’m like, well, I you know, I have this greeting card business. Oh, that’s awesome, you know, and they’re like, what kind of cart and I, you know, I tell them and they’re I’m like, well, they’re mostly grief cards and they’re would you do that? You know? And then I’m like, well, do you have a while? No. But, you know, so then I kinda explain And then I can see their whole demeanor change. And so then I just like and then I get sad sometimes because I’m like, There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m still I’m the same person but different, but I still want to have the deep cover stations, and it doesn’t have to evolve all around me. I wanna hear all about you, you know, and so that’s yeah. So I just I feel like in society and it’s it’s kinda like the fast and go of the world that we were talking about that people people don’t wanna take the time to learn and have those deep conversations anymore. And I feel like we have to get back to that.
Victoria Volk: Well, and I think they’re afraid. I think it’s fear. Imagine what people say to me. I work with Grievers. Like, I work with Grievers, and I do energy healing, and and all this weird stuff, you know. And she might, like, do some voodoo on me or she might, like, you know, get me to, like, confess and verb verb vomit, all of my grief. You know what I mean? Like,
Angie Hanson: explain my real feelings. Right? I mean, people they’re they’re scared of their real feelings.
Victoria Volk: I had someone actually just just word vomit just let it all out in a very public place. And I felt so you know, obviously empathy for this person. Right? But I was, like, a little bit, like, What’s the word? What is the best word to describe that feeling I had?
It was refreshing. It was refreshing. That’s probably
Angie Hanson: felt the same feeling. Probably.
Victoria Volk: It’s like it there is something about giving it a voice. And, you know, I think so many of us I’m gonna get into, like, some voodoo top voodoo voodoo talk. Like a throat wound. Right? I think many people have a throat wound, you know, especially if, you know, as females particularly or young girls that grew up and, you know, be seen and not heard and don’t use your voice and or or you’re too loud or you’re too much or you’re too much of this or too much of that. And so we just kinda minimize our voice and we don’t use it. And I guess that’s been the greatest gift for me and having my podcast. And maybe you can relate is that it’s helped me find my voice in what I experienced and in sharing stories with people and meeting people like you said just sharing in community with other other grievers
Angie Hanson: Yeah. A hundred percent. I yeah. I do. I feel like when I hear stories after people talk about their stories during the podcast and, you know, and then when I listen relistened to him and I, you know, I just I take back I take away so much.
You know, I take away from that initial conversation. And then when I re listen to it, I take away more and I hear more and I hear more of what they were saying because then I can listen to more tone. Their tone of their voice and different things like that. And then I have a whole different perspective of what they are feeling and going through. And it’s absolutely amazing. I mean, that’s why I just you know, we these platforms that we’re able to utilize such as the podcasts and, you know, writing our books, you know, and even our socials, it’s sharing our stories is so huge for everybody because it is bringing out so much for so many others that they’re maybe just sitting on the sidelines and they hear the podcast and then they they read about or if we’re talking about our books, they’re like, Well, I could maybe do that, you know, so it’s sparking stuff in people. And we are, like I said earlier, we’re changing this narrative, and I feel the evolution of this really taking place. And I’m really excited for what it’s gonna do for future grievers. Because I just feel like sharing our stories however that looks, you know, even if I’ve told people before, even if you write a full book and you never publish it, that’s okay because you shared your story. You know, you shared it and that’s you shared it within yourself and that’s okay too. You don’t have to publish a book to be great. You don’t have to have a podcast to, you know, you can just sit there, but you’re you’re growing by hearing stories.
Victoria Volk: And that is a form of giving it a voice too. Yeah. And journaling. You know, I journaled I journaled since I was fourteen.
Angie Hanson: That’s awesome.
Victoria Volk: I mean, quit, you know. It’s it was my outlet very early on too. So
Angie Hanson: Yeah. Yeah. It’s it’s it’s so methodic for people to be able to write down things. And I, you know, I just people are like, sometimes I’ve heard people say, well, I could never write a book. Well, no. You could write a book. Write it all out. I don’t care. Type it all out. However you want, but you don’t have to publish it. No. It’s you’re still doing the same thing I’m doing. I just excited to publish mine, and you didn’t. But we, at the end, we did the exact same thing.
Victoria Volk: That’s exactly true. Yeah. Like I said before when we started recording, it’s like, I think they people think to write a book, it’s this huge And it is a big project. Right?
Angie Hanson: And I’m
Victoria Volk: not gonna deny that or minimize that. It’s a project, but it’s not as scary as some people make it out to be. You don’t have to have a publisher, you can self publish, which there’s there’s so much free information out there I mean, actually, my tagline is Google that shit because I mean, I’ve learned so much by Googling and and I guess I’ve never been one that’s been afraid to, like, dive head first and let the rabbit hole, you know, swallow me all, but You know? I mean, that’s the fun of it. Right? Like, that’s and that reminds me of what I was telling with the story, with the little girls
Angie Hanson: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: A friend of mine I didn’t tell her about that, but she had the exact same story exact same story across two thousand miles away where she saw these two little girls and she saw them get so excited and hers she we’re in a in a box or group together and Yeah. We’ve known each other online now for, like, four plus years. But she’s one of those people, right, where we talk about stuff, like, we’re talking here, like, have deep conversations that she was, like, just never it was a reminder to me and she said to never lose that spark. Never lose that joy that you had as a little kid just seen, you know, having someone toot their horn and give you you know, and I told her my story, and it’s like, it’s like mind blowing, like, the synchronicity of that. It’s it was just a reminder again to me, you know, what brought you joy as a kid? How can you bring some more of that into your life as a grieber? In your adult life, you know. Yeah. It’s Yeah. I love that. Messages there for you. Yeah.
Angie Hanson: Yeah. I do. I absolutely love that because that’s the joy as a child is absolutely beautiful. And, yeah, we we need more of that in our adult life.
Victoria Volk: To play.
Angie Hanson: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Instead of just these schedules and these these deadlines and just the anxiety that life brings everybody if we could just let it go. And just be, that would be amazing.
Victoria Volk: So what would a day of play look like for you? Well,
Angie Hanson: you know, I’m actually gonna do it later on here. My daughter, since she’s back, we’re gonna go golfing. And so she wants to go she wants to pick up and learn golfing. And she wants us to learn how to play pick a ball. So it’s like, so, you know, it’s a beautiful day in Nebraska, finally today.I was like, you know what? Yeah. We’re gonna make time and we’re gonna go golf this afternoon. And so that’s what we’re gonna do. So today, and we’re just gonna have fun. And we’ll probably giggle because she will probably be I golf. So I do golf already, and I’m on a ladies league, but she doesn’t giggle. So we’ll probably giggle at the way she hits the ball and all that, and it’ll just be, you know, easy going. And like I said, having her home has brought so much life kind of back into our house that was missing, you know, not you know, my husband and I it’s just been the two of us and which has been great. And, you know, we’ve had an amazing four years, but having her here just brings a only different element of joy back into our house and laughter. And because she’s just you know, she’s a silly twenty two year old girl.
Victoria Volk: And the energy. Right? It’s a different energy
Angie Hanson: and Yes. Yes. And we’ve been taking she’s, you know, walks every day. So we’ve been going for walks every day and you know, it’s just it’s just been so amazing. And, you know, that’s just I’m learning to, I guess, slow down in a sense to, like, I don’t have to sit in front of my computer and do do do, you know, I guess I’ve built I’m going to build my career around my life, you know, and the way I want it to look like. So I’m able to do that right now, so that’s what we’re gonna do. And I’m celebrating that for you. Thank you.
Victoria Volk: You know? Yes. Is there anything else that you would like to share?
Angie Hanson: I really just want people to know that, you know, if you are if you are a griever and you’ve lost someone, you know, just really, just give yourself the grace that you that you deserve and do not rush your grief and your grief journey because it’s just it’s it’s yours. And you get to do it your way and you need to move through it and journey through it. So I just I really want people to honor those feelings that they’re doing as they’re grieving. And then if you’re not the griever, if you’re on the outside and you have your best buddy or anybody going through something tough. You know, meet them where they’re at and don’t try to rush ahead of them, you know, speak their people’s names, you know, just acknowledge them. Don’t try to fix them. And, you know, you will be the best support system that they need. And just always continue to reach out to them even if they tell you no twenty five times. You know, the twenty sixth time they’ll say, Thank you for reaching out to me. I needed to hear you today.
Victoria Volk: And just by twenty six of Angie’s cards and then Yeah. And then I’m like,
Angie Hanson: That will get you through two years.
Victoria Volk: Twenty six. Yeah. Yes. Definitely. So where can people find your cards and connect with you?
Angie Hanson: On socials, Facebook and Instagram. I’m at butterflies and halos, and then my website is butterflies and halos dot com. All my cards are there. I’m also if you’re an Etsy person and prefer that, I’m on Etsy as well, butterflies and halos. And you can order my cards there. I have some other stationery products as some stickers and notebooks. And my book will be on there for sale here probably within the next week or so. And, yeah, Everything’s butterflies and halos.
Victoria Volk: How does that mean?
Angie Hanson: Oh, the well, butterflies are assigned my sign that I’ve had since my son died. And so and then the butterfly is just the the symbolism of a butterfly and the trans formation that they make and the spiritual transformation that they make is something that I hold really dear. And then the halos are for all my people. So that have diets. And so I just I kinda meshed them together for butterflies and halos. Yeah. I love it. And then for anybody that is on here, if you use the code podcast fifteen, you can get fifteen percent off your first order.
Victoria Volk: Is it all caps, lower caps?
Angie Hanson: All caps podcast fifteen. Yep. And then that can be that’s accessible on Etsy or my website.
Victoria Volk: And I will add that to the show notes as well. Yeah. Yeah. How long is that good for?
Angie Hanson: It’s it’s never ending.
Victoria Volk: Okay.
Angie Hanson: Yep. Yep. So they can they can use it whenever.
Victoria Volk: Right. Thank you so much, Angie. For sure. You. For having this deep dive conversation with me for the work that you’re doing in this movement that you and I are both part of, I think, is is moving the needle.
Yeah. Moving the needle by little.
Angie Hanson: Yeah. Yeah. We’ll get there. But I appreciate everything you’re doing as well, and I appreciate being on here and sharing and just the beautiful conversation. And then, hopefully, we can have you on our podcast here in the next few months, and that would be amazing.
Victoria Volk: I would love that. Yeah. Thank you. Invitation. Yeah.
So thank you again for being
Angie Hanson: my guest. Yes. Thank you.
Victoria Volk: And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.
Grieving Voices Guest, Grieving Voices Podcast, LGBTQ+, Mental Health, Podcast, Suicide |
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
This week on Grieving Voices is a mental health discussion with Lisa Sugarman – a multifaceted advocate who has overcome personal tragedies to make an impact. As a suicide loss survivor and crisis counselor, her insights are invaluable during Mental Health Awareness Month.
Lisa’s journey is one marked by unexpected turns. From being a content creator in the parenting space to confronting the harsh realities of mental illness following revelations about her father’s death, she exemplifies resilience and strength. Her story highlights how secrets can shape our lives and the importance of community support in healing from grief.
Key Takeaways:
- The power of listening over advising when it comes to parenting teens.
- Balancing work-life as an entrepreneur involves recognizing limits and practicing self-care.
- The transformative experience gained through crisis counseling at The Trevor Project.
- The connection between unresolved pain and suicide.
- Community is a crucial element for those dealing with mental health issues or contemplating suicide.
Lisa reminds us that connection is vital and perhaps lifesaving for those struggling silently. This episode encourages open conversations around mental health while providing solace and understanding for those touched by suicide loss.
As a proud member of the LGBTQ+ community and as a crisis counselor with The Trevor Project, Lisa passionately advocates for providing hope to young people facing crises.
Through sharing her own experiences with vulnerability and resilience, she reminds us all that transparency can aid in coping with grief. Self-care strategies are vital for navigating these tough times effectively.
RESOURCES:
CONNECT:
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NEED HELP?
- National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
- Crisis Text Line provides free, 24/7 support via text message. Text HOME to 741741 to connect with a trained Crisis Counselor
If you are struggling with grief due to any of the 40+ losses, free resources are available HERE.
CONNECT WITH VICTORIA:
In today’s blog post, we’re going to explore the profound insights shared by Lisa Sugarman on this week’s episode of “Grieving Voices.” As part of Mental Health Awareness Month, it is crucial that we amplify voices like Lisa’s – voices that have turned personal tragedy into a beacon of hope for others.
The Unseen Battle
Lisa’s journey wasn’t always centered around mental health advocacy. Originally focusing her writing on parenting advice, she was thrust onto this path after experiencing suicide loss within her family. Losing her father at ten years old left a mark on Lisa; however, it wasn’t until 35 years later that she discovered his death was by suicide. This revelation not only brought clarity but also propelled her towards helping others navigate through similar pain.
Listening as an Act of Love
One key message from our conversation with Lisa resonates particularly strong: when raising teens—or dealing with anyone who might be struggling—it’s more important to listen than to lecture. Creating spaces where open dialogue can flourish without judgment is essential in fostering trust and understanding between parents and children or any two individuals for that matter.
Self-Care Isn’t Selfish
As someone who balances parenthood and professional life herself, Lisa underscores self-care as foundational to effective parenting and productivity. It isn’t selfish; rather it allows us to recharge so we can be present for those we care about most.
The Power of Secrets Revealed
The discovery about her father’s cause of death strengthened the bond between Lisa and her mother while highlighting how complex grief could become when shrouded in secrecy during times when mental health discussions were taboo.
Pain Shared Is Pain Divided
Lisa emphasizes that while each case is individualized, extreme pain seems to be a common thread leading people toward considering suicide. She advocates strongly for community support systems as critical safety nets for those battling suicidal thoughts—reminding us all that love alone may not always suffice in preventing such tragedies but connection can make a significant difference.
Addressing Suicide Directly
Discussing suicidal thoughts openly can prevent these dark considerations from growing unchecked in isolation. Asking someone directly if they’re contemplating self-harm opens up lines of communication which are often vital lifelines themselves.
For example, organizations like The Trevor Project provide crucial support networks specifically tailored towards LGBTQ youth—a group close to Lisa’s heart due both to personal losses tied to suicide within this community and identifying as LGBTQ+ herself.
Embracing Vulnerability Through Transparency
Throughout our talk with Lisa Sugarman, one thing became crystal clear—the power inherent in sharing your story transparently cannot be overstated. Not only does it serve therapeutic purposes for yourself but also helps guide others through their healing processes.
Moreover, resilience grows from vulnerability; allowing oneself time and space to heal fosters strength over time.
Lisa encourages everyone—to reach out proactively within their communities because sometimes those suffering wear no visible signs.
And finally—always prioritize maintaining your well-being so you remain capable enough to offer meaningful support where needed.
To conclude our discussion:
*Seek Therapy Early**: Don’t wait until you feel overwhelmed before seeking help.
*Offer Specific Help**: When supporting someone grieving or struggling mentally – specific offers tend better than vague ones.
*Remember Children Aren’t Therapists**: Parents should avoid burdening kids with roles beyond their emotional maturity level.
If you want further insight into navigating grief or wish simply connect with like-minded individuals advocating mental health awareness—you’ll find solace under the guidance offered by experts like [Lisa Sugarman](http://lisashugarman.com/). Her books provide practical wisdom while being laced throughout with heartfelt empathy born out experiences many will relate too intimately yet rarely discuss openly.
Thank you once again for tuning into “Grieving Voices” — together let us continue making conversations around grief less taboo so healing becomes accessible universally!
Episode Transcription:
Victoria: Thank you for tuning in to this week’s episode of grieving voices. Today, I am happy to address a very important topic for mental health awareness month. I have Lisa Sugarman with me. She is an author, a nationally syndicated columnist, a three-time survivor of suicide loss, a mental health advocate, and a crisis counselor with the Trevor Project. She’s also a storyteller with the national alliance of mental illness and the host of the suicide survivor series on YouTube. Lisa writes an opinion column. We are who we are and is the author of “How to Raise Perfectly Imperfect Kids and Be Okay With It,” “Untied: Parent Anxiety.” And “Life, It Is What It Is.” All all of their available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and everywhere books are sold. Her work has appeared on health line, parenthood, grown, and flown. Today parents Thrive Global, The Washington Post, little things, and more content now. Lives and writes just north of Boston, and you can visit her online at lisa sugar mint dot com, which I will put a link to the show notes to your website and your books and all of your things. Just poking around on your website, you do have a very extensive mental health resource hub. Mine is quite modest compared to yours, and it is. It really is. I mean, if you have a few moments to check it out, I highly recommend you you do so, and you also have a lot of just quick, like, kind of cheat sheets, if you will Mhmm. On there as well. And is this the work that you always thought you’d be doing?
Lisa: One thousand percent, no. Nope. I never imagined myself doing this kind of work in this space as an advocate, as a counselor. I mean, everything that I’m doing right now has has come as much of a surprise to me. As I think it has to everybody who is close to me kind of, you know, in my immediate world, but it was just the most natural transition for me.
To fall into this space in light of just my story that I know you and I’ll talk quite a bit about. But my story and some some pretty powerful revelations in my life that have come out in the last decade. And just, I guess, my need to do something to make an impact in the mental health space.
Victoria: Ten years before, you found yourself in this space. What were you doing?
Lisa: So I’ve always been a writer. That that hasn’t changed. I’ve always created content and I’ve been many different types of writers. I’ve been a newspaper journalist. I’ve written for magazines. I’ve written for publishing companies, done lots of marketing and PR, and and that sort of thing. I’ve been a columnist for many years. I’ve written books. And so I I did all of that in the parenting space predominantly. It’s just the place I found myself in.
You know, I I my husband and I have to they’re now grown daughters almost twenty four and almost twenty seven. So we’ve kind of cycled through that whole parenting stage of life with little kids and college kids. And that’s what I was writing about. I mean, that was the space I was in. It was what I was doing day to day. I was writing about the work life balance, and I was a working mom, and my husband traveled a ton, and and it was really just about that family dynamic, and that’s where everything’s centered. And it was really I think it was really almost kind of an overnight gift about ten years ago that kind of brought me into the space. But I’m in that.
Victoria: We’ll put a pin in that piece
Lisa: if it’s a pin.
Victoria: I we will. I wanna rewind just for a moment because Mhmm. I just wanna touch on what you were sharing about, writing about parenthood and that was the space you were in and you wrote books about that, you know, how to raise perfectly and perfect kids and be okay with it. Can you share a little bit just because and you mentioned balance. So I just for mental health awareness month, Can you share a little bit about mental health raising teens?
Number one. And today, particularly as in hindsight with what you know now. And then also, there’s a two part question. For entrepreneurs listening, who have kids who are doing all the things. What has balance been for you?
Is there such a thing?
Lisa: Too per question. I guess there’s balance, but there’s like a precarious balance as far as I’m concerned. So the first the first question. I think that the best advice I could give or the best comment that I could make about being a parent of a team or, you know, a young adult child is keep your mouth shut. Keep your mouth shut in large part, not always.
At the right times if you can, and take a step back and do at least as much listening to your kids as you’re doing talking to your kids. When I kind of arrived in that place of understanding that they had as much to share with me as I had to share with them. It was kind of a game changer for me, if that makes sense. Like, I you’d as parents were just kind of hardwired to wanna talk to them and teach them and guide them and advise them and do all the things and and at the end of the day, that is what we’re supposed to be doing. But we’re also supposed to be allowing them to kind of do the same thing.
Like, we’re figuring out how to be parents when our kids are figuring out how to be humans. So there’s a whole bunch of figuring of things out that we all have to be, I think, a little gracious to each other when we’re in that position. So that’s what I would say, you know, to to a parent of a child in in that space and time is just spend as much time as you can listening to your kids than creating space for them to have those conversations because they have an awful lot to say. We just don’t think they do. The second part of your question is a little more complicated for the balancing part.
So, look, it’s like trial by fire, you know. I think that when you keep your own self care as kind of an anchor in your life, recognizing that you’re absolutely useless to yourself, your family, your extended your immediate failure extended family, your friends, your job, your useless, if you’re not okay inside. If your mental health and your physical health aren’t good, there is no balance. There’s no such thing as balance. I don’t think or I haven’t found.
And it’s only when the there’s harmony with those things and you give yourself again giving yourself grace. To do what you need to do. Take the time you need to take, you know, focus on what you need as a human being. And then obviously, of course, what your kids need, what your partner needs, what your family needs. I think the rest, I think the balance part comes a lot easier when you do that or when I’ve done that for sure.
Victoria: And I think for myself personally, it’s like recognizing my limits Mhmm. What are what are my limits? And then where can I fill that gap? And where can I ask for help and support?
Lisa: Mhmm. Yeah. That’s big.
Victoria: Also found too, like, with because I’m I’m in the trenches of college and teen pre college years. And Well, what a what a tramp.
Lisa: Yeah. That’s an understatement.
Victoria: But I think one thing that I have found personally you know, we we have two ears and one mouth for a reason. Right? Like, to touch on what he shared, but I have phoned because I can go into teacher preacher mode. You know, I’ve been there. I’ve done that.
No. We always wanna share Yeah. So which way to them? Just Listen to me, you know, just I I wanna spare you. But I also recognize that the hard lessons are where growth is.
And so Mhmm. What I found personally that’s helped for me is when I feel like I I want to give advice or I want to, yeah, give advice. That may be unsolicited. Rather, I propose it as a question, get very inquisitive and curious. And so I pose it as a question.
Like, well, what do you think about this? For example, just for example, let’s say they’re, you know, dating relationships. Right? If they’re dating somebody, you know, are you talking at her or are you talking with her when I’m recognizing something that I’m hearing or seeing. Right?
And so it’s not telling him what to do, not telling my son what to do or how to communicate with his girlfriend, but being inquisitive about how he’s going about that.
Lisa: Mhmm. You
Victoria: know, and he’s his response. Fair, fair point. Like, yeah. Like, he got it. I didn’t have to lecture him for an hour about how to communicate with someone.
You know? So I think it’s just posing things as a as a curious question.
Lisa: Yeah. I, you know, I love that you do that because it allows your son or our kids to kind of retain agency over themselves and where the conversation’s going. And what advice they’re getting and and not getting and how they’re getting it. I’ll tell you something interesting, and I I know we’ll probably chat about it later, but it that just made me think of how much my capacity for holding space has changed our capacity, but I guess my skill set with holding space has changed since I became a crisis counselor with the Trevor project. Because the way that we are taught to hold space as crisis counselors involves basically completely removing ourselves from the conversation.
We’re part of the conversation but nothing is ever about me. Nothing I we don’t disclose our real name where we are in the world. Whether we’re gay, straight, or otherwise, whether we have families, what our opinions are, like absolutely nothing, no anecdotal, hey, that happened to me and I understand or I can relate or nothing. And that was a really, really big mind shift for me, but it was all focused on once I got it, and I understood that it was all about helping the person on the phone maintain that agency over the conversation and over themselves, it it completely, I guess, revolutionized the way that I have a conversation with someone and hold space and and the same applies. It’s very similar in nature, I think, to what you’re saying, about how you’re engaging with your kids because it’s a game changer too.
Victoria: I just connected the dot for myself. So thank you for sharing that. In that because people would ask me all the time. That’s one of the big questions I get because I I work with Grievers. Right?
I I hear and I talk with Grievers all the time on my podcast and, like,
Lisa: how can
Victoria: you listen to all that sadness and heavy stuff all the time? How can you work with brivers and deal with all that. And I always thought the answer was, oh, all this energy work that I’ve done personally on myself, but to be it just hit me. It’s like, I’ve done a lot of work on myself Yeah. To be able to hold space for other people.
Including my kids
Lisa: Mhmm. To remove
Victoria: my just exactly what you said. So I really I think it’s giving credit to I think the deep work that you’ve done for yourself to be able to be there for other people and also for myself. And I’ve, you know, and I’ve said it to other people, like, you can only sit with others in their pain to the capacity that you’ve worked through your own. You know, to the depth that you’ve worked through your own.
Lisa: Mhmm.
Victoria: But I never got it until you just shared that.
Lisa: So Well, it’s all perspective. Right? It’s that’s that’s what we’re here to do. We’re here to, you know, to make each other a little wiser.
Victoria: And I’ll let that be kind of this motivation for people, especially parents, to take the time to work on themselves because you do become a much better parent than your that your child needs you to be than what you think they need. You know,
Lisa: it’s true. It’s very true. And it’s necessary. And it’s part of that whole learning curve, that whole process. That’s, you know, where we’re supposed to get a little snappier every day, a little bit stronger every day.
Our skill set is supposed to deepen a little bit more as we as we go on.
Victoria: So what shifted ten years ago? I know it. I know it shifted.
Lisa: You know it shifted. Yeah. It
Victoria: What a way to change the topic.
Lisa: Yeah. Right. Right. So ten years ago, I learned Well, I’ll back up. Before I give the, I guess, what would be a pretty big reveal?
I’ll back up and say that I lost my father when I was ten years old. So I’m fifty five years old now. I lost my father forty five years ago. I’m an only child. My dad was everything in the world to me.
And he passed away very, very suddenly of what I was told was a massive heart attack. My dad was a really he was very active, very physically fit but he was also a very big smoker. And so that was not a hard that was not a hard narrative to digest because it was awful. And it was life changing, but it made sense. Like, he had a Mastercard attack.
He was a smoker. I connected those dots and there was no question. Fast forward thirty five years until I was forty five, which was ironically the same age that my father wasn’t passed away. I discovered very much by accident that my dad had taken his own life. And that was just that was a that was a time.
Yep. That was a time. For me that everything just imploded because it was nothing I ever suspected. It was nothing I ever even remotely considered. And I just, like, bumped into family member I hadn’t seen in years and we were talking.
And my husband and I was I was having lunch somewhere at an outdoor cafe. She sat down and we were catching up and she asked me about my kids and my girls were teens at the time. And she asked me if I got out of the blue picked for it, like, out of the blue asked me if my kids had any of the same depression and mental illness that my father had. And I did not know what in the hell she was talking about. And it but but that being said, I as puzzled as I was by the conversation.
I I didn’t ask her anything about it. I think I was too stunned in that moment. I didn’t know where it was coming from. I kind of let the conversation come and go and she left and I turned to my husband as what in the hell was that? I have no idea what that was.
My mom and I are extremely, extremely close. We talk multiple times a day he’s my best friend in the world. I didn’t run to her after that thinking, mom, what am I missing? Like, well, I didn’t do that. Surprisingly.
Kind of the next time she and I were together, which wasn’t too long after that, we were sitting or having lunch, and we were just doing like a normal reminiscing that we would always do. Nothing out of the ordinary. And very much in a in a spontaneous moment, I I asked her, my father had been depressed. And she said, yes. And before I knew it, was coming out of my mouth.
I had never thought about it. I had never asked myself the question. Certainly was not prepared to ask my mother the question. Never crossed my conscious mind. All of a sudden, I don’t know where I blurt it out.
Did dad take his life? And she said, yes. And she explained to me that he had taken his life and that in that moment when she was, you know, considering everything that was happening Now going forward, me and I was ten at the time and had no siblings and it was just the two of us, what would she do? How would I react? What would that do to me?
Losing him, what would that do to me? But then finding out it was a suicide, what would that do to me? And so she she made that decision in that moment to shield me from that truth and to tell me that he had died of a heart attack and never spoke about it with anyone anyone ever. Until he and I talked about it forty well, I was forty five. So that’s what that was that was the that’s my why for doing what I’m doing.
And it it unfortunately was not just my father dying by suicide. A cousin of mine took his life a year before my father. And that I didn’t know was a suicide at the time. That was my first experience kind of understanding even just in general terms what suicide was. And then three years ago, my husband and I had a very, very close childhood friend.
He took his life very unexpectedly. So we’ve kind of had that trifecta of suicide in our life. And I just I needed to do something with it. I needed I needed to kind of change it up and and take whatever I went through or whatever I learned from it. That lived experience and just pay it forward.
So here I am.
Victoria: Did it change your relationship with your mother?
Lisa: It made it even not that I ever thought that this was possible, it made it stronger. My mother is a force of nature. My mother is one of the most remarkable humans that I’ve ever known. She is incredibly resilient and so kind and generous and supportive in every way. And I knew instantly I mean, I was a mom.
I had already been a mom of teenage kids by the time I found out about dad. So I in that moment knew immediately didn’t need an explanation. I understood exactly why she kept it from me. And and to hear it from her, she would say, you know, then you were going off to, like, middle school and high school. And I didn’t wanna lay that on you.
And then you were going up to college and then you were getting married. So it was like there was all there were always these these, like, mile markers that these big you know, kind of inflection points in my life, and she didn’t wanna hit me with it when I was already dealing with, you know, a big transition in life. And so then she just kind of resigned. She never just say anything. Like, why did I need to know?
Victoria: Did she ever share with you what keeping that secret had done to her or what it was doing to her or how it affected her or impacted her?
Lisa: My mom, as I said, is one of the most resilient humans that you’ve ever met. She’s that this this amazing capacity. She’s just the most content person. And I think my my mom she says this all the time. She said this my entire life.
Is one of the most social and loving and outgoing people you’ve you’ve met. She’s also she also considers herself her own best friend. So she I I remember she would always say to me, you know, I’d be in the car and I’d be talking to myself than having a conversation and kind of working through things and, you know, or if I was off at school, she would do things like that. You know, she he just she never harbored any ill will toward my father at all. She said, I never since the day I learned that it was a suicide, which was, you know, the day he died, there was a note was found, so it was it was pretty clear.
He said I never have had a single moment of any dealings of anger. Or dad. I I’ve always understood. Okay. She knew the kind of pressure he was under.
It was really my father’s family. We don’t know what was going on under the surface. We know that my dad started seeing a psychiatrist maybe a month before he died. Because there was so much stress on his side of the family. My parents came from two very very different families.
My mom’s family is pure love, pure love and joy and kindness and support, and my dad’s family was I mean, I you know, I don’t I don’t even wanna say what my father’s family was was like, it was not an awful lot of love to be found. My dad’s side of the family. And that was it was obvious. I was a little kid, and I knew it. And it weighed on him.
He did everything he possibly could. To help his family. Nothing was ever enough and there was a lot of stress. And I don’t know what kind of mental illness he had, like, layered on top of that. But without knowing the actual why, which we don’t know.
I mean, the note that he left was more of just an apology. I just can’t I can’t go on anymore, and I love you both. And I’m sorry. But we have our suspicions about, you know, kind of what the family dynamic did to his mental health. So, yeah, my my mom, it only made me love and appreciate her that much more because I’m incredibly great sold to her.
I don’t know what I would have done at that point in time without the kind of resources that they have in place today for young kids who are are trying to navigate this kind of grief and loss because it’s it’s just a shit show when you’re trying to navigate a suicide law. Like any losses such a devastating thing to navigate. But when you compound that by a suicide, like, that’s a whole different animal. And for a little kid, to have been doing that in the 70s when nobody was talking about suicide. No one was talking about mental health.
No one was being open about going to therapy. Resources didn’t exist. I don’t know I don’t know if I’d still be here, to be honest with you. So
Victoria: You know, there’s two kinds of secrets. Right? The secrets to protect and the secrets that do harm and I wonder what do you feel about people who who chose that route, who chose that route, but I think do I mean, do you feel like there’s a connection between secrets and people who choose? Choose that? Or is it Is it purely mental illness?
Lisa: Meaning suicide, people use suicide? I mean, it’s no situational. I mean, I think it’s it’s so nuanced from person to person for sure. But there are obviously all these similarities attached to suicide that, you know, that kind of connects you know, connect suicides in general. I think that
Victoria: Maybe the better maybe the better question is, how much of it do you think is unresolved grief?
Lisa: Taking your life, I don’t know if I don’t know if it’s unresolved grief as much as unresolved pain. Not that there is too much of a distinction between the two, like grief is pain, but I think that when I talk about suicide in this context. I always say the same thing. The people who have taken their lives are not taking their lives to get away from you or to get away from me or to get away from their family or their community or their friends or their life. They’re taking their own life because they cannot emotionally go on anymore.
They they there is no way that they can exist and be joyful or exist and be productive. Like, they’re in pain. And it took me a really long time to arrive at that understanding. And once I did, it was like it was like ninety day instantaneous that the kind of mind shift that happened for me personally because I when my cousin passed away in nineteen seventy seven, and that was my as I said, it was my first experience with suicide. Not because anyone implanted this belief system in my head, but because I cultivated it all by myself, I just kind of silently quietly believed going forward in my life that suicide was a very selfish act, which is a very, very common response to suicide.
You’re like, well, why couldn’t they just speak up? Or Why couldn’t it work through it or why couldn’t they get help? Not that simple, but it wasn’t until I learned about my own father’s suicide. And really started studying mental illness and the impact of mental illness and depression and the fact that it’s just it’s an illness. It’s an illness that needs to be treated the way you would treat heart disease or cancer or, you know, the way that you would try to heal after an accident.
It’s no different. And it’s beyond your control, and that’s what people don’t understand. It’s so abstract. Like mental illness seems so abstract, but it’s an illness at the end of the day. And so it took me a long time to to recognize that it was really an issue of someone being so desperate to just stop hurting.
That’s why they take their life. It’s not selfish. It’s the only it’s the only choice they feel they’ve got, which is just unfortunate.
Victoria: I had a guest early on when my when I first started my podcast. In fact, it’s a two parter because we had quite an extensive conversation, but he was on the bridge, I believe, in San Francisco, and he was going to jump and take his own life. And
Lisa: Mhmm.
Victoria: You know, he had a brief second, but this thought that came over him and and stopped himself. And I and maybe there, perhaps, someone came on the bridge. That that might have been too. I mean, that’s been quite a while since I’ve recorded with him. But it’s one of my earlier episodes.
David is his first name. But he had shared with me and this is what I remember him sharing is that you know, the connection is the anecdote to having those suicidal thoughts. Like, connection is not the cure, but it is the the bridge to healing when you’re having those kinds of thoughts. What do you say to that?
Lisa: Oh, I absolutely agree with that. I think connection and community I’m I’m reading a book right now. By Francis Well, or I don’t know if you ever read it. It’s called the Wild Edge of sorrow. And He’s just just an absolutely brilliant man and he’s doing these, you know, grief and healing practices for years.
And he talked about that very specifically that he talked about the fact that at the end of the day, It’s community that helps us heal, it’s community that helps us grieve, it’s community that helps us navigate loss or tragedy or you know, some kind of misfortune. It’s by staying together as a unit and leaning on one another. Like, we’re not we’re not supposed to be here alone for a reason. We’re not We’re not all here by ourselves. We’re here to create these relationships.
And I think that community is is that linchpin that, you know, that can keep us rounded and, you know, and keep us kind of reinforced if that makes sense.
Victoria: What would you say to people who are listening and from your own personal experience Mhmm. Where they may feel guilt because their love their connection to the person just wasn’t enough.
Lisa: Mhmm. That’s a tough I mean, I’ve been I’ve been there. I’ve been in that position. I mean, granted I give myself a lot of leeway where that’s concerned because I was ten years old. So how can a ten year old really understand what a grown up is going through, especially like in the case of my father, he he didn’t he didn’t display like he was someone who was mentally ill, like he was hurting like nothing.
We knew absolutely nothing. But, I mean, as I’ve gotten older, you know, it’s impossible to avoid having those feelings of guilt. Like, if if I had asked him more questions or if I had stayed closer to him, it’s inevitable and it’s human nature. You know, we we blame ourselves because we just we feel so helpless and we feel like you know, what could we have said, what could we have done? I mean, I know all of us in our friend group who lost our friend a few years ago, kicked ourselves for a very long time.
What did we miss? What did we not see? How could we possibly not known this was so imminent. And you gotta release yourself from that. You really have to release yourself from that, especially when you’re in a situation where you would absolutely know what idea that the person is struggling.
Like that, you don’t you you can’t help but you don’t know, which is why it’s so incredibly important for the person who is hurting to reach out, reach out to a friend or a family member, a place where you feel safe or call a lifeline, or if you’re, you know, if you’re already connected with a therapist, like be, open, be honest because that’s the only way that people can ever help is when they know.
Victoria: People might be asking themselves then listening. Is the responsibility on the person struggling?
Lisa: I think two that’s a hard one. Two point maybe to a point in terms of vulnerability, sure. I think in as much as they have the capacity to reach out and just say, if it’s only a matter of saying, hey, I’m not okay. I need help. I mean, I think it’s it’s like anything.
It’s a shared responsibility. Like, when you’re talking about, you know, when you’re talking about community a minute ago, I think it’s everybody’s responsibility to be looking out for everybody and to care for each other and to check-in on each other. So I I think it’s all a shared responsibility to a point. I mean, I think that when a person is struggling and at that, like, on the brink and that close to making that kind of decision, thinking about suicide, it becomes challenging because I don’t, you know, you don’t know how much they have the capacity to reach out or to articulate. It can be really parallelizing that kind of depression that’s always attached to that level of pain that can really mess your head up.
It can really contaminate your thinking and and your, you know, it it can create a lot of irrational thought processes and I think, you know, it’s as much of their responsibility to try and articulate just that they’re not okay, and then it’s our response validate and meet them the other half of the way and say, what can I do? How can I help?
Victoria: In my training that I have received, but mental health and grief and all of that. One of the things that I think is a misconception for a lot of people is that if they come right out and ask, Do you have thoughts or have you had thoughts of harming yourself? You’re not gonna send that person down that spiral. Right? They’ve already had those thoughts if the answer is yes.
Lisa: But I
Victoria: think sometimes they’re just people who are struggling are just waiting for someone to ask. Yeah. It’s like the elephant in the room, you know.
Lisa: Yeah. Yeah. What that does? I’m glad you brought that up because it’s such an important piece of of this whole equation. It is a very big misconception that by suggesting that someone, you know, is that low that you’re gonna cause them to harm themselves.
The truth of it is, there have been so many studies that have supported that it’s actually the opposite. When you address that elephant in the room right away with that line very specific language to, like, are you thinking of killing yourself? I know it’s so off putting and jarring. Even GCU and I just talking about asking that question is like people get a visceral reaction to it because it’s so intense. But what it’s actually proven is that it validates the person’s feelings.
It gives them that that that doorway to help that, you know, that opening to say, I’m actually not, okay. And, you know, people I think a lot of people hesitate to ask the question because they’re really they’re scared to death about what the answer be in, like, how the hell do I handle it? If somebody says, well, yeah. Actually, I’m not okay. What what the hell do I do for now?
But it’s not your responsibility. And I’m saying, when I say it’s not your responsibility, I’m speaking now to whoever you are, who knows someone who is struggling. It’s not your responsibility to fix the problem. So take that out of the equation because that is not the responsibility that falls on you. What you can do is empower that person who’s struggling with someone who can help.
Empower them with if it’s nothing more, then, hey, I know you’re I know you’re struggling. I can hear it. Can you call nine eight eight? Call the lifeline? Or in my case, because I I work with the Trevor project, call the Trevor project hotline.
Or reach out to your therapist. And it’s about getting that person connected with the people who can help. That’s all that someone kind of needs to have in their back pocket. It’s just that the knowledge of those lifeline numbers or even that they exist and just and just make that suggestion.
Victoria: Can you share a little bit more about the Trevor project and how you’re halfway into this?
Lisa: Yeah. That was that it’s kind of an interesting little journey for me. So the Trevor Project for for people who are listening who don’t know is the country’s largest LGBTQ centric support lifeline, excuse me, more or LGBTQ youth ages thirteen to twenty four who are crisis. So we are nationwide. We also have an office in Mexico.
And we take calls twenty four hours a day, seven days a week from youth and crisis in the LGBTQ community who are struggling with everything that you could possibly imagine someone would call it like flying with, whether it be stressed about coming out or suicidal ideation or homicidal ideation or abuse or homelessness. Any reason why anyone would call a life flight. But in a way that I got on involved with it is that it’s a for me, it felt like the natural intersection of everything that’s really just important to me, my my top priorities in the world. Obviously, I lost my father and a friend and a cousin suicide. And crisis lifeline is one of their, you know, their biggest pillars.
And the other is, you know, the LGBTQ community and my oldest daughter who is going to be twenty seven came out when she was in college. And I came out as pansexual. I guess it’ll be three years ago this summer, this pride next month. And for me, it was a no brainer to be aligned with an organization that was, you know, both supporting the LGBTQ community and supporting people who are in crisis and who are struggling. So I they came on my radar probably when my daughter came out is when I became more aware of them.
And stayed on my radar for the longest time. And then about three years ago, I thought, you know, when I started getting very public about you know, the way my work was shifting and started telling my story more openly, I thought, you know what, this now is the time. So I got involved and I trained with them to be a crisis counselor on their, like, we have a text line and a traditional phone lifeline. So I’m one of the phone lifeline counselors. And I’m on the left line as often as I can be taking calls from people who are in crisis.
Victoria: When did it originate?
Lisa: Trevor celebrated, so we’re in our twenty sixth year. Wow. Yep. Yep. It’s has a really neat little origin story.
So twenty six years ago, there the three founding members were there was a film about a little boy named a high school boy named Trevor, and he was he was struggling with his sexuality. And the movie, the little short video, was up for an academy. And they played the video during the Academy Awards because I think it was like a twelve or fifteen minute video stage. I played the whole thing and they played in excerpts. But the producers of this video and and creators of this video said, you know what?
We’re playing this thing. We really have to have a kind of a work system. We’re playing it to encourage people to reach out when they need help. We really should have something in place for people who are watching this video now to reach out. So they started a lifeline.
And along with the video being played during the academies, they had they flashed its number up on the screen, and I think they got something like fifteen hundred calls that night, and the lifeline has been in place ever since.
Victoria: Wow.
Lisa: Yeah. Yeah. Twenty six years later.
Victoria: Like, what’s your latest book that you’ve written since you’ve made this transition in your work and your writing and all of that. I’m like, what the latest book? How is how is your writing shifted?
Lisa: It’s shifted dramatically. I mean, my voice and tone has always been the same no matter what I’m whether I’m writing about parenting or whether I’m writing about mental health and wellness. It’s it’s very conversational. I write like I talk. And I actually just signed a a book contract for my next book with my longtime publisher, Familias Publishing, to write a book about my my father’s story that because I’ve I’ve lost them twice in my life.
Mhmm. And I’m I’m really gonna be doing a lot of incorporating of a lot of the resources and the toolkits that you mentioned earlier that are on my website. I want there to be a huge resource section. For people to access who are struggling either with with suicide, with mental health in general, with grief and loss, And I have I’ve developed and curated an awful lot of tools. You’ve mentioned those as well.
People can download them, share them, access them. I wanna incorporate that into the book. So my story about my father will really kind of be the vehicle for having the the bigger more important conversations about surviving a suicide loss and and navigating that. So that’s what I’m working on now. And I believe the tentative publication date is twenty twenty five.
Twenty twenty five or twenty twenty six, but we’re we’re just in the beginning stages.
Victoria: What did your life look like after you found out how he died.
Lisa: If you were looking at me, if you were a friend of mine, like even a close friend. Most likely, you would not have known that there was anything going on under the surface. I I blew up I completely blew up inside. And for the better part of the first, I would say, three years, I would premise to sleep at night. My kids didn’t even know what was going on for the first three years because it was such a shock to me.
I I felt like I was dealing with my my own brand new grief. Like, I was starting day one all all over again and day one, minute one of losing my father all over again, but now under completely different circumstances. And I was trying to navigate that the best I could, which wasn’t very good. And I was trying to navigate helping my mom because remember for for thirty five years, my mother didn’t talk about this to a single bowl, and I wanted to be there for her. I wanted her to be able to somehow process things in a different way.
And so we were just very insular about it. It was just my husband Dave knew my mom and I knew. And I was very much one person to the outside world and very much a different person. Like, when the when the bedroom door closed at night, I was in pieces. And it wasn’t until I started I I started You never come to terms with anything like this fully.
You just learn how to deal with it and process it and live with it in different ways, in better ways, I suppose. Once I got to that point where I felt like I could start talking about it, I told the girls, and my husband and I said, we need to talk to them because they need to know what their DNA looks like now versus what it looked like before, because now they’ve got, you know, they’ve got some degree of mental illness in their DNA. That’s my father had some mental illness. It was a lot that came out that existed on my father’s side. And we all inherit that.
There’s, you know, that that generational trauma and that cocktail that’s you know, manifest in different ways and different people. And I felt that it was really important for them to understand kind of, you know, what was in my background and their background and and it’s ever at any point in their lives, they started having issues or struggling, which, you know, that they were of that age where that’s typically the time period where mental illness or challenges will start to emerge. And sure enough, my my oldest had a a lot of issues with anxiety and depression and ultimately went into therapy and found just incredible success in in going into therapy and going on medication changed her life. Absolutely changed her life and for the better. And once I told the girls that was it, I just immediately started sharing this the truth and never look back in sharing ever since.
Victoria: Was that the most healing that you found was in sharing?
Lisa: Yeah. I think initially that was incredibly cathartic for me just to know that I was I was embracing the truth. I was acknowledging the truth. I I was not I never felt really like it was a stigma. To me, I never felt like it.
I think I feel I feel like by the time I learned about my father, the world was already shifting in terms of the stigma around suicide. I think we went through a big awakening culturally where we’re talking about mental illness so much more and wellness and suicide and IDiation and self harm. And all of these things are so much more mainstream now than they ever were before. So I feel like that that was very helpful to me. In that way.
But writing about it has been, you know, and talking about it like this has been equally as cathartic for me. And I think one of the biggest things, every single time I go on shift, on a lifeline shift with Trevor Project, I think about my father. Every single time I pick up the phone and answer a call from someone who’s struggling every time I deescalate someone who may be higher imminent risk of suicide I feel an incredible sense of gratitude to be able to be in that position, to do that, and to be that person that can hold space for that moment in time for that person who’s struggling. So all those things combined have been healing for me.
Victoria: Thank you for that work that you are doing. By the way, welcome. You’re welcome. What has your grief taught you?
Lisa: That’s a big question. I don’t think anyone’s ever asked me. In all the conversations that I’ve had, I don’t think anyone’s ever asked me that. I think it’s taught me that I’m a lot more resilient than I ever believed myself to be. And then at the same exact time, I’m a lot more vulnerable.
And affected by it than I ever believed I could be. For me, I think I’ve learned that openness and transparency and sharing my story is It’s such a valuable tool. It’s taught me that I can be of service to other people, my lived experience while it may be very nuanced. Everybody’s is very nuanced. You don’t usually need people who have lost the same person twice in their life and grieve twice, so I have a little bit of a unique story in that way.
But I’ve had a lot of experience with grief and loss and I’ve learned that the more I talk about it, the more I heal, and the more it seems that other people benefit from it. So It’s taught me that putting it out there is one of the greatest gifts you can give to yourself.
Victoria: And maybe to someone you don’t even know.
Lisa: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean that. I mean that as well, for sure.
Yeah.
Victoria: What is one thing that you would share with people who are listening, who are struggling.
Lisa: Mhmm.
Victoria: And then also, what is one thing that you would share with people? Who are in support of or want to support someone, that may be something you haven’t shared already. Maybe that helped you or that in your training and things that you’ve learned along the way?
Lisa: So in terms of, you know, what I would share. If someone’s struggling, I would say just give yourself some grace. The way that you feel right now in this moment, this this heaviness, this this place of despair or hopelessness is not the way you will always feel. There is there is a change that happens. There is another side to these these feelings and this kind of desperation.
So I would say be patient with yourself. And gift yourself a little bit of time to be, you know, to to to allow yourself to be where you are at this moment. I I say it this way often meet yourself exactly where you are right now. Don’t try and get ahead because you’ve got to be where you are right now. You’ve got to sit in the feelings.
Even if they’re shitting feelings to sit in, even if they’re so painful and so difficult, it’s so important to allow those to penetrate because when we compartmentalize them and pursue them away, we try and negate them or avoid them, they’re gonna come back hard, and they’re gonna take you down when you don’t see it coming. So you know, it may not sound like great advice, but when you meet yourself where you are right now, it can be one of the greatest gifts you give yourself because you get to dictate the pace. You get to decide when you move forward and how you move forward. So that’s what I would say to that. And in terms of, I guess, coping strategies or things that that I would tell people to do, like, self care, self care, like, whatever that looks like to you, whether it’s giving yourself permission to say no, I don’t feel like socializing tonight.
Or I I think I need to spend time getting these feelings that I have in my head and my heart out. If you wanna talk to someone who is a safe person or maybe you wanna put them down in a journal or maybe you need to go in nature and go for hike or walk or maybe you need to go for a run or maybe you practice yoga and that is a place where you can kind of detach I would say, let yourself focus on on doing those kinds of things to kind of recharge, to help yourself you know, what do they say about a a radiator? You’ve got to bleed the radiator, so it doesn’t blow up. And we’ve got to do that with our emotions. So I would say whatever your thing is, that and everybody knows what their thing is so well.
Whatever your thing is, let yourself do that thing as a way of helping yourself to heal. That’s what I would say.
Victoria: I like the metaphor of using or analogy of using luggage. And so ever since we were children, we’ve been packing her luggage. Something happens. Like, I lost my dad. He would when I was eight, he was forty four years old, packed that suitcase.
My grandmother died a year before him. I packed that suitcase. Molested, packed a suitcase. You know, like, in by the time I was in my early twenties, like, I had a lot of luggage. I was dragging with me from the past.
Right?
Lisa: Yeah.
Victoria: And I think all of that luggage can just get so overwhelming to lug around. You don’t get to where you are. In your suffering and in your pain overnight. Yeah. Can’t expect that you’re going to get healed overnight.
So it’s just looking at that one suitcase. I’m gonna look at this one suitcase. What is what do I need to take from this suitcase. What can I remove one garment at a time? And that’s really I think I just started chipping away.
You know, because I felt I started with the postpartum. There were so many struggles that I had. I thought I was doomed for suffering and I just want to share with people. Just start with one suitcase. Yeah.
One thing. And a
Lisa: beautiful image. Yeah.
Victoria: Yeah. Bring some support in in doing that. Mhmm. Find the thing that you resonate with. Find the person that is safe for you.
Mhmm. Just baby steps. You don’t have you know, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Right.
Lisa: That’s right. Well, that’s right. That’s that’s why I say just you get to set the pace. Mhmm.
Victoria: You
Lisa: know, and it’s it’s very much a marathon. It’s not a sprint. So in in that context, you get to decide how you cover that ground. But every step that you take, it doesn’t matter what the pace is. Every step you take is forward motion.
That’s, you know, progress. If you wanna look at it that way. And while in the case of grief and loss, we never stop grieving for our people. Like, you know that? I know that most people who are listening to this know that.
You don’t stop. What we’re all doing here, what you and I are doing by having this conversation is giving people you know, the tools to learn how to navigate the trip a little easier. Maybe be a little lighter, maybe, you know, find hope a little sooner. That’s that’s the point because at the end of the day, for me, one of the things and this goes back to what you asked, what do I learn about grief? I’ve learned not to fear it.
I’ve learned not to try and push it away because to me, And I’ve I’ve lost, you know, we’re talking about the three people who I’ve lost, you know, father, cousin, and a friend, but I’ve that’s just a suicide. I’ve lost grandparents, aunts, uncles. I mean, I’ve lost friends. I I’ve been accompanied my grief my entire life. I don’t wanna stop grieving for those people because I love those people and those people are a part of the fabric of my life.
They’re part of that whole catastrophe of my life. So I wanna wrap myself in that quilt of them all the time. All of these people that I’ve lost So my grief while at the same time that it’s sad is also the thing that keeps me tethered to those people. So I think that was that was pretty transformative for me too when I finally kind of arrived in that place of understanding that. That it wasn’t something to push away.
It wasn’t something to barrier to fear. It was something to in a strange way in this Francis Sweller that I mentioned earlier, the author of the wild edge of sorrow writes that, you know, that’s how we keep our people alive. You know? And I think we all need to stay attached in whatever way is most meaningful to us.
Victoria: And we wouldn’t be who we are without those people in our lives.
Lisa: One hundred percent. Yep.
Victoria: Just like you listening the people in your life wouldn’t be who they are without you.
Lisa: Mhmm.
Victoria: Is there anything else that you would like to share that you feel like you didn’t get to. I mean, I think I could we could talk for hours. We could talk for hours.
Lisa: I mean, you’re all day. I love this is the kind of conversation that I feel so empowered to have. Like, I’m so grateful to be able to reach new people and, you know, in new communities. So I’m grateful to you from this opportunity. I mean, I think I would suggest to people that you take a minute and look around you at the people in your life.
There’ll be two cohorts of people. There’ll be the people who appear okay and grounded and settled and driven and joyful on the outside. And then you’ll be you can look at them and you can say, okay, I know that person is struggling. It’s because maybe they’re more vocal with it, maybe it’s their affect, maybe in a lot of different signs of signals. I would say, treat each one of those groups the same.
I would make it a point to check-in on your people. Make it a point whether it’s the people who seem great or if it’s the people who you know aren’t, back in with them. Ask them how they really are. Ask them if they’re okay. Ask them what they need.
Ask them how you can help because sometimes And this this applies especially to the people who don’t make their struggles very visible. When you open a door for someone, sometimes that’s all they’re looking for. That’s all they need. They just need to know it’s a safe ways to share what’s really going on. You know, people people like my father get very skilled at hiding what’s going on just under the surface.
And yeah, I know. I mean, it’s so common. I feel like way more people are fighting the truth of what’s going on than aren’t. And I think that we just need to be a little bit more sensitive of each other and make each other more of a responsibility. That’s how we get back to that, that have a whole sense of community, you know, back in the day when you know, my parents were young.
They lived with their grandparents and their extended families. And I my husband and I actually both grew up the same way, living with grandparents. But most of our friends did not. And, you know, nowadays these generations, you know, you you get married, you go off, you’re separated from your extended family. And people are living in these isolated little pockets.
And people aren’t there to check-in on each other and interact with each other and support each other in the ways that maybe people are used to a little bit more often. So when you get back to that, which circles right back to the beginning of our conversation about the importance of community and the importance of having support systems. So that’s what I think I would say to people. It’s just kind of be watching, be vigilant, and take your own pulse every once in a while too because you can’t help anybody, you can’t pour from an empty cup.
Victoria: Right? They bring up a good point, so you had talked about three years. You struggled, not necessarily in silence because your husband and your mother knew, so you had their support. But I’m curious if you’re daughters were, like, shocked. Once you’ve I mean, two counts.
I mean, eventually, once he said, oh, the past three years have been a living hell internally, and the people that knew you were like, whoa. Really? Like, I had no idea. And so how did you reconcile that? You know, knowing that the work you do now, you’re struggling in silence, would you have done things differently?
Lisa: Also good. You’re asking me all these really good questions that no one ever asked me before. I probably would have allowed myself to be more vulnerable earlier on. One thing that I would have done probably much sooner, much, much sooner, was start seeing a therapist again. So when I was when I was young, my first experience seeing a therapist, I was college age, and I had taken a gap year before gap years were even a thing.
And I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do with my life, and my friends were already kind of established in schools and in programs and majors, and I just felt like I didn’t know what I wanted to do. And I struggled with that. And so I started seeing a therapist to kind of navigate that, work through that, we only really very briefly at times touched on my father in terms of big life events that kind of shaped who I was. I didn’t know he was you know, he had taken his life, so I that was not a part of our conversation. And I was in therapy like that for a number of years, and then I kind of found my way and and got on my path and and didn’t see another therapist for three decades, three and a half decades.
And I finally got to the point about two years ago when I said, you know what, I need something for me. I mean, My husband’s amazing. He has held more space for me than anyone has probably ever held for anyone. And my mother the same, but it’s different when you have that impartial person who doesn’t know your history, who doesn’t know that the social dynamics and the damiliar hierarchy and those dynamics, and that’s something I would have done right from the jump, I think. If I could have gone back and done it again.
Maybe not done anything differently in terms of telling my children, I didn’t want to tell them prematurely. I wanted to make sure that they had kind of the capacity to deal with that. Like they were teenagers, and it was heavy. And what I was talking about was something incredibly intense that I wanted to make sure they could deal with. So I don’t I I don’t regret waiting for that.
But, yeah, I probably would have, you know, been a little bit more open about it. But to the rest of the family, and I I probably would have done therapy sooner.
Victoria: That’s a good answer. And the reason why I asked too is because you know, we can have these regrets. Right? And that’s grief. And you had spoken and touched on, like, at the point you didn’t know what to do with your life.
You weren’t sure and you were struggling, and that’s kind of what caused you to seek help and support. But how much of it do you think? Like, it’s just in hindsight now. It’s like, of course, your the loss of your father and your cousin had greatly impacted you, but I just see so many kids like today. Like, there’s divorce and there’s just the heaviness of the world and social media and kids are just mean.
Right? Kids are just mean. Yeah. It’s like Yeah. It’s it’s so can you just speak briefly to maybe the and I don’t know that a lot of young, young people are listening to this, but surely their parents or caregivers are can you speak to supporting someone who was like you?
Who didn’t know, like, who felt like a fish out of water, right, floundering and
Lisa: You know, I I really think in the same way that I was suggesting that people meet themselves where they are. I think that’s the advice that I would also give someone trying to help a friend is meet them, meet that friend exactly where they are, hold the space, in the way that the friend who’s struggling needs you to hold it. You know? I mean, like I said before in the context of being a crisis counselor, like, you’re not there to solve the problem. Especially if someone who’s grieving a loss, any kind of a loss, whether it’s the loss of a a human being who’s passed away or the loss of a a job or the loss of a relationship or, like, there’s so many.
Like you said, there’s so many different sets of losses in the world. I would say, be there to support them in whatever way they need to be supported, but don’t go into it at thinking you’ve got to fix it and solve it because in most cases it’s unsolvable. You know, in the case of someone losing someone and and someone who’s grieving, there is no turning back, back clock. You know, it’s more about just moving forward trying to maybe encourage that person to figure out what they need. That’s a big one because oftentimes when someone’s grieving, they don’t know what the hell they need.
They don’t know where to go, where to turn, who to who to ask for help, you know, ask someone to go for a walk, ask someone to go to a movie, ask someone if they need help finding a therapist, if they don’t have one, cook a meal, one of the things I learned is not to ask open ended questions. Like, what can I do to help you? You know, I’m I’m there. Just just whatever and I get caught on doing this all the time. We all we all did this kind of thing all the time.
Be deliberate. Be intentional. Can I cook you dinner? Can I take you to dinner? Can I do some errands for you?
Can I pick up your dry cleaning? Can I pick up your kids at school? Like, what whatever the case is? I think those are the ways that I know that when I’ve been grieving, when I’ve been in that situation that needed help, those were the things that were the most helpful to me.
Victoria: Is there anything else that you would like to share?
Lisa: You know, I would just say, even if you’re someone who is private and a lot of people are, I am very much very much so. I am private in spite of the fact that everything I do is so public. I write about everything I write about is, you know, out there for the world to see. A lot of people are not comfortable sharing what’s going on the inside. I would say give people around you the benefit of the doubt.
Give the people in your life, the benefit of the doubt that that they can help you. That they can somehow offer support, trust. You know who you can trust. We all know who we can trust the most.lean into that.lean into the people who are there who want to support you. In the ways that you need them because at the end of the day, we’re not meant to go through any of the stuff alone.
Victoria: And to piggyback that, I just had a thought. Your children are not your therapist.
Lisa: No. No. So if you are a parent
Victoria: who is struggling, your children are not your therapist,
Lisa: agreed.
Victoria: Yeah. Yeah. Played that role for a very long time.
Lisa: Yeah. That’s right. But it’s just made me who I
Victoria: am, I guess. Yeah. You know?
Lisa: That’s right. That’s right. And and that’s the thing. You know, I mean, you know, we all we all have things we wish we could, you know, we could redo. But at the end of the day, we’re all we’re where we are because of those things.
So do we really wanna change those things or do we wanna just, you know, use them as teachable moments and and you know, be better going forward.
Victoria: I love that. Yeah. Just give a hug. Yeah. You have your parent and you need a hug.
You know, your kid probably needs the hug too. Mhmm. My daughter gives the best hugs to seventeen and yeah. She just and she won’t let go. Like, she is like, she will not let you go.
Lisa: Oh, I love that. I love that. I probably bug both of my daughters about hugs a little too much. My so my oldest lives in Japan. So I have to ration.
Like, I have to I I can’t go in too hot when I get off the plane. I all I wanna do is hold her for, like, three days, and she’s like, look. I will give you all the hugs that you want. You gotta you gotta pace yourself a little bit, or we’ll never get out of the airport. So Yeah.
But my kids are good ones too.
Victoria: My daughter knows psychologically a minute. Needs to be at least a minute.
Lisa: Mhmm. Yeah. I like that. That’s that’s like that’s an, like, a that’s an adequate amount of time to really, like, embrace the hug.
Victoria: Gotta let those good feelings that those good feeling adorphins come up and she knows that. So
Lisa: Yeah. Yeah. That’s that’s that’s good insights. It’s it’s a it’s a child who comes from a good place.
Victoria: Yeah. Our kids teach us too. Share her. Forget that. Well, thank you so much for being a part of my podcast and the mission of my podcast, which is to make it less taboo to talk about grief, to talk about mental health and suicide and all the ways that we grieve and the experiences that shape us.
So thank you so much for sharing your story. For the work that you do. And I will put all the links to the show notes, but please share again where people can find you and connect with you.
Lisa: Sure. The best place I mean, I’m on all the socials. Lisa underscore Sugarman on Instagram. The Lisa Sugarman on Facebook, but the best place to to catch everything that I do is lisa sugarman dot com. And I know at the beginning of the show, you mentioned the resource of the mental health resources hub that I have on my website and the toolkit hub that I have.
And and that’s like a to me, that’s probably the crown jewel of the website for me. I’ve spent an awful lot of time and effort pulling together all these resources, betting all these resources, and they’re there for anyone who is struggling or if you know someone who’s struggling, please go on my website I’ve got about sixteen different categories. It’s a very inclusive website. Doesn’t matter who you are, what your background is. I hopefully have help that’s right for you, so take a peek.
Victoria: Thank you again. And remember, When you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.
Grief, Grieving Voices Guest, Healing, Spirituality, Suicide |
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
- On this episode of Grieving Voices, I welcomed David Chotka, founder and director of Spirit Equip Ministries. With four degrees and extensive experience as a pastor and conference speaker, David shares insights from his journey through grief personally and within his community.David discusses the challenges pastors face daily in dealing with grief within their congregations. He recounts his first funeral service—a daunting task for someone who had not yet experienced personal loss—and how that “baptism by fire” shaped his understanding of mourning.Our conversation turns to David opening up about a pivotal moment when he lost his brother to suicide. This tragedy occurred just as he was adopting a daughter, adding complex layers to an already emotional time. Despite having to maintain composure for important church services amidst this personal crisis, David candidly describes how the event left him grappling with questions about faith, forgiveness, life after death, and God’s mercy.
In a powerful account of healing in nature two years after his loss, David shares an epiphany that brought peace back into his soul regarding eternal destiny while walking through the Heartlake Conservation Area and reading Psalms 130.
The conversation also touches on navigating sudden losses like suicides within families—emphasizing compassion over judgment—and offers comfort to those wondering about loved ones’ fates after such actions.
Finally, David speaks on divine appointments—the idea that God orchestrates encounters where we can give or receive something significant—and gives listeners insight into finding meaning in seemingly random moments.
This heartfelt discussion provides solace for anyone grieving, highlighting the importance of spiritual guidance during one’s darkest hours.
RESOURCES:
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CONNECT WITH VICTORIA:
Finding Peace and Understanding in the Midst of Grief: The Journey of David Chaka
Grief can be a bewildering labyrinth, often leaving us grappling with profound questions about faith, life’s purpose, and our own resilience. In this heartfelt episode of *Grieving Voices*, we were graced by the presence of David Chaka—a man whose personal journey through loss and his role as a spiritual guide offers both solace and insight into navigating the murky waters of sorrow.
David is not just any guest; he brings with him an extensive background as the founder of Spirit Equip Ministries, an authorship that spans five books on spirituality, decades spent pastoring souls seeking comfort, and a voice that has echoed internationally across podiums dedicated to faith. His tenure as chair for the Christian Missionary Alliance’s prayer team in Canada has shaped countless lives—including his own.
Personal Encounters with Grief
When grief knocks on one’s door personally, it carries a different weight. For David Chaka, losing his brother to suicide was such an encounter—one that shook his beliefs to their core yet also led him down a path where he found deeper roots within his faith. He shares how these moments have been pivotal in understanding salvation—not as a checklist but as an intimate relationship with God—a concept offering great comfort to those mourning loved ones lost under tragic circumstances.
Unplanned Moments Leading To Life-Changing Outcomes
In what could have been seen merely as logistical frustration—the no-show moving van—David found friendship and vulnerability while stranded in Elizabeth’s empty apartment. This unexpected delay blossomed into marriage—a reminder that sometimes life’s detours are divine appointments in disguise.
His education under Dr. Gordon Fee further exemplifies this theme—unexpected influences shaping one’s spiritual perspective profoundly. And when called upon to pray for healing against all odds for a fellow student facing deathly illness? The result was nothing short of miraculous—an affirmation reinforcing David’s belief in being open to divine guidance despite personal doubts or hesitations.
Faith Amidst Everyday Life
The stories shared by David resonate deeply because they mirror everyday experiences where faith intersects ordinary moments—like Peter, James John catching fish beyond their wildest dreams at Jesus’ bidding or like ‘Bible-thumper Bob’, whose cancer recovery showed glimpses of heaven before its eventual return grounded us back to earthly realities.
These narratives aren’t just tales; they’re testaments reminding us about responsiveness towards God’s call—even when it seems illogical—and maintaining hope amidst uncertainties inherent in human existence.
Healing Pathways & The Presence Of God
In discussing pathways outlined alongside Maxie Dunham regarding healing prayers—from instantaneous miracles to enduring suffering—it becomes evident that encountering God isn’t limited by specific outcomes but rather defined by walking alongside Him through various journeys toward healing or closure.
David emphasizes experiencing God not only through words but also through non-verbal communication—the peace and joy brought forth even during tribulations signifying His ever-present Holy Spirit guiding our steps towards righteousness irrespective of surrounding chaos.
Extending Love In A Troubled World
As listeners absorb these powerful insights from *Grieving Voices*, it reinforces the notion that living out our calling involves extending love amidst imperfections—not allowing negative church experiences or disillusionment obstruct access to what lies beyond hurt: unconditional love from our Creator capable transforming pain into purposeful engagement within His kingdom here on earth.
For those inspired by this conversation who yearn for more depth within their spiritual walk—you’re invited over at spiritequip.com where you’ll find resources bridging denominational divides while nurturing your inner self for an enriched communion with divinity.
We leave you pondering 1 John 3:2—the promise transformation upon truly seeing God—as we await future content including audiobook chapters promising continued nourishment for your soul-searching quests.
Indeed embracing oneself leads towards fulfillment—but let us remember it is often intertwined intricately with embracing faith even when faced with life’s inevitable grieving voices.
Episode Transcription:
Victoria Volk: Thank you for tuning in to this episode of grieving voices. Today, my guest is David Chotka. He is the founder and director of Spirit Equip ministries, an organization devoted to developing training resources. Author of five books, a season pastor, and a conference speaker David has four earned degrees and travel has traveled and taught in countries to groups large and small. He has served as chair of alliance pray, the prayer equipping team of Christian missionary alliance in Canada for more than twenty years and is now committed to serving those who want to develop Their spiritual disciplines one small step at a time. David is married to Elizabeth and together they have two adult children and for fun he plays the piano. Thank you so much for being here.
David Chotka: Thank you, Victoria, for having me on your podcast. I it’s a delight to be here. And
Victoria Volk: I think you are the first pastor I’ve had on the podcast. I’m pretty sure.
David Chotka: Wow. On a topic like grieving, that’s really quite amazing.
Victoria Volk: I think so.
David Chotka: Well, because
Victoria Volk: meetings Two hundred episodes in.
David Chotka: So Wow. But listen, pastor, every day of the week, somebody’s grieving in their churches. Yeah. And they’re coming alongside people, you know, somebody’s died young, somebody’s died old, somebody’s died in between, and that grieving’s reality, left right and center for people like me.
Victoria Volk: I could be wrong. I’m approaching two hundred episodes, so that’s quite a few to go to remember up here and my memory isn’t as sharp as it used to be either. So just going off my memory, I think so. And I think, you know, initially, this podcast did start for grievers who are open to sharing their grief stories.
David Chotka: Mhmm.
Victoria Volk: And, of course, as a pastor and a minister, you have grief too.
David Chotka: I do. Yes.
Victoria Volk: And that’s really what is that what led you into the work that you were doing? Or What can
David Chotka: I What what led me into the work I’m doing was that’s there’s a remarkable call story that that didn’t actually I should tell you about my first experience of doing a funeral because I had had no losses? So my when I it was the call to the ministry was because I suddenly realized that that was what the Lord wanted me to do. And there’s a long and convoluted story attached to that that and some of that some of those details are just being written now into a little sample that I’m creating called the call. I wanted to put that out. But actually, I haven’t told this story in a podcast. So let me tell you about the first time I wind up doing a funeral. So the denomination I was in, you’re in the states, you’re American. Right? Okay. So it will be like being a night methods down the state. So I was and the in the trajectory there, we were sent to to churches that would have us over the summertime. We we go to school for eight months that we’d be under the tutelage of a pastor locally over the summer season. He’d take a little vacation. We’d spell him off. That kind of thing. But most of his time would be spent teaching in mentoring us. And so I got to my very first ever summer field. And the the pastor there had decided to take his vacation, and there was a methodist lay preacher from England in his congregation. And he said, look, if you’re in trouble, you can call up Ray over there. He’s he’s e stepping in for me all the time when there’s trouble. And so he said, but just in case, you need to walk down the street and there’s a lady there named Joyce. We haven’t had a funeral in this town. It’s a young town. We haven’t had a funeral list down in four years, but Joyce was the one who always does all the arrangements. And if something should happen, if there’s a car accident or something like this, You can always just call up Joyce and she’ll make sure everything’s good. So I went down the street, and I visited Joyce. And her and her husband were very cordial and very kind and nice to me. And we had a wonderful evening visit. And then then I I went to meet Ray, and I had a great chat with Ray. Ray took a one week vacation and enduring the one week vacation when the other passenger was on vacation, Joyce died. So I had to I had never had a loss. So my very first ever experience of doing a funeral was the lady who took care of doing funerals when both the pastor and the late preacher were weighed. So I wound up talking to one of the elders and there’s a lady in that church who was a leader in the congregation. And she worked like crazy to try and figure out what to do. And, you know, they call different pastors from all across the region. And in the end, you know, we figured this thing out and got it done. But, I mean, it was really hard for me because I’d never personally, at that point in the game, I’d never had to face death. It wasn’t until years later that I had a personal loss. But So it was a bit of a comedy of errors to get started like that. But that actually, there were four funerals in two weeks. Four funerals in two weeks. And they hadn’t had a funeral in that church in four years. And when the lead guy was away, the student minister got four funerals. So It was a crazy kind of a thing. Anyway, the day when the day was all said and done, I learned a lot from people who were on the other side of grieving, and that was, of course, my first experience. Of burying someone. I’d never done that before. And you can see the change in expression that there was a moment. And all four of those, and these are my no. Within two weeks, I watched this. Every time the body was lowered into the ground, that was the moment. Where the loss became real, just absolutely crystal clear clear real. And that for me was the moment when I realized that if you’re gonna extend care, that’s the time. You come along and you stand with somebody who’s in trouble when that when that casket goes down and they’re still there and they start to cry. Sometimes they want you there, sometimes they don’t want you there, sometimes you you touch their elbow gently. Sometimes you just hold off and wait until they want to say something. I agree. The way I describe it, you can is this an audio visual one or just visual is this just audio?
Victoria Volk: It’s both.
David Chotka: It’s both. Okay. So I’ll I’ll describe it for the audio people. It’s like you put your hand on their their waist and pull them close while you put your hand on their face and push them away. There’s this They don’t know if they want company or if they want to be alone. And sometimes in two seconds, their view changes. Right? Because grief is a weird animal life. I described it as a strange animal. Never know when it’s gonna purr where it’s gonna bite you. You’re just not sure. So that was that was my very first ever experience of dealing with death and my own my own personal loss came when my brother took his life. He was I I just adopted my daughter. We discovered that we could not my wife would be in danger if we had a second child. We had one born biologically.
And then it just became clear that it almost killed her. Just about killed him too, that both of them just about died. So I guess you could call that grief too because I realized we could not have another. And there was a long journey toward adopting that to happen in the middle of that. And, you know, and we actually vastly I’d be ready to adopt a she wouldn’t. And my wife would be ready to adopt and I wouldn’t. And it was this kind of up and down kinda crazy thing where we were navigating our own emotions, not quite sure what to do with this. And then in the course of time, We adopted her daughter. But just as we adopted her, my younger brother, who had been unsettled all of his days, we we were told in the adoption, what you have to do is you have to, you know, you know, how to say this. You close the doors to everybody except your nuclear family so that you can bond to the child for a good month, a month and a half. We adopted her when she was a year old and she had to rebound to us. And so we had there’s a whole bunch of adoption strategies that you do in order for that child not to feel abandoned by the foster family that they had, etcetera, etcetera. And we had to do that. And so we didn’t see anybody for a month. And then then the social worker told us that the best course of action after that is to introduce your new family member to your immediate family and my parents and my brother lived about an hour and a half away. So we got in the car, we drove down. And we had a beautiful magical, wonderful, glorious day with my brother who had been pretty troubled about lots of things. It was it looked like the the the page had turned and so on. And I was in a new church. I had been the pastor of that church from September right through to that time, which was March. It was the day before a good Friday. I don’t remember the number of day. I just remember the emotion of the event when my dad called and said that my brother had killed himself. Inside my parents home. Mhmm. And I had to get in the car and cancel my Thursday night service. It was gonna be my very first one in that congregation. I had to help my dad grieve while his dead body was in the house, and then they called the police. I had to call the police to make this thing happen. And I watched them take the body out of the home. And that oh, man. Then I had to do good Friday, then I had to do a resurrection Sunday because I didn’t have a capable associate to be able to handle those services, and then I hit the wall and just began to cry in. No pastor wanted to be a guest on Good Friday or you’re sending because they were all busy. Right? These are they’re all that’s the highlight of the church here. And I had to moner on through this kind of awful shock and did. I did what I had to do and thank the Lord. I had already prepared my messages and I simply had to work through whatever whatever was happened. I did tell my church, I just had been through this traumatic thing. If I get crazy here, if I do something odd, forgive me. I’m gonna molt I’m gonna get through these these two services. And then I’m gonna find somebody to take that service a week after, and I just need to stop. And to old man was it hard. It was just hard. But the the hard thing about that one was the suddenness. He was thirty nine. And he he played you know, I got a little son at that point, and he was picking up my son and wrestling with him and putting him in a tree and climbing a tree and walking along the fence tops. And We went to a baseball diamond and threw a ball back and forth with him while we were wheeling our new daughter up and down the the sidewalk as she was getting used to this beautiful spring day. It was a gorgeous lovely memory. Suddenly destroyed by this experience of somebody taking his life. And oh, and and then I and of course, in in the context that I’m in, I had no choice except to speak well and highly about, you know, about the the the the violation of Jesus on the cross and then the joy of the resurrection. While I’m in this anguish about what to do with my brother who’s who’s left a son behind and a wife and and he’s dead. And my parents who don’t know what to do. So that was my first significant loss. That was the first one that we I mean, I had friends who died and I had buddies who died and I had lots of parishioners who passed away and I had to bury a little two year old who died in a wounds tumor.
That was the first one that really hit my heart, but in terms of my personal life, that one. And, you know, it was like, I I I just and listen, I the last two funerals that I have done, and I’m a pastor and you do them every now and then, And the last two in a row were were her suicides. One of a guy, twenty nine years old, left his beautiful wife and son. And the the kid was, like, six months old. And the other was of this family that I knew from years ago, I was visiting Vancouver. And this funeral was gonna happen, and the widow asked if I do it because I had been significant in their lives back in the day. And both of them were, you know, it’s irrational when this kind of thing happens. It doesn’t make any kind of sense. So how do you navigate that? How do you how do you I’ll just tell you that with the with the suicide personally, it was like the sky was gray for the next two years.
Even if it was a beautiful warm, sunny, gorgeous day. And my home was about two blocks from a conservation area, it was kinda nice to be there. And I I started to do what I, you know, long walks and I started and I I don’t know what you do with with grief. For me, I have to speak. I can’t just sort of sit there and stuff it. I can stuff it for a week and then I explode with speech. That’s what happens to me. So I would go for these long walks and make sure that nobody was around that that I’d talk out loud while I was doing this walk in this conservation area. And for me, faith is is part of the answer, but it didn’t answer all my questions because, you know, I I said Is he gonna have it? Is he gonna have it? He took his life. That’ll shout not kill. Is that real? And what about it? Did he throw it away? Did, you know, did this is this is the stuff that goes through the brain with somebody who’s had a sudden loss like that. And, of course, if you’ve done two hundred podcasts, you know, people from all different stages and stages, whether they have faith or don’t have faith. They they wanna know what’s the destiny of the lost here. Is is there an afterlife? Is is it exists or is it just illusion? Is it real? Well, what about? Is there a god? What is this guy in the presence of that god? Or is there a devil?
You know? Why did this crazy guy do this crazy thing. And all those crazy thoughts, I’m sure you’ve heard them in two hundred podcasts. But I remember the moment, I was walking through the Heart Lake Conservation area, two blocks from my home. And I was reading the psalms, and I got to Psalm, I think it’s one hundred and thirty, and the the text of the psalm was this. Lord, if you should count sins, no one could stand. I thought to myself, absolutely right. You know, as I’m I’m walking and refreshed and and I’m trying to get two things. I’m trying to get my head cleared. I’m trying to get past my emotional fog.And the sky was still great even though it was a beautiful glorious day in early spring. And there was just traces of snow in in the parts of the of the woodland where the the leaves had covered the snow, that kind of thing. The day was brisk and sunny. And I remember I was reflecting on that verse from that song. And my foot broke a stick in the pathway, and it went snapped like that. And my brother died by hanging. And I know that he went snap like that too, and it was an instant death and that kind of crazy thought was going through my brain. And then suddenly as that thing went snap, I said, well, life is just like that. You don’t know if you’re gonna be living or dying. You could step in the street and get killed by a car accident in a second. You know, not even be aware this crazy things happen. And then that scripture popped back into my head. And I thought to myself, do you know? When my brother was an idiot. It would take me two weeks to forgive him. And so and and then but I know this about God. If you were in the middle of a crazy, ridiculous, and even awful action like aptic suicide and you realized that you were wrong as a help, in a second God hears. And then I realized, God’s hands were better than mine, much better than mine. And then I said, alright. I can commend his soul to you. And, like, you know, I was participating in his in his burial. I mean, I did the service with the pastor from my parents’ church. And I I mostly said, but I read the scripture and participated in that thing. And then I, you know, but I had not it would that that the issue wasn’t closed for me. It wasn’t done for me. Until the moment when that twigs snapped. Two years out, walking through a conservation area, I realized in my hard heart, that it’s the the rest of the verses this. If the Lord should count sins, who could stand? Nobody. But with you, there is mercy. That’s the next line. And I said, okay, Lord, I get this. He called himself a believer. He was a lousy believer, but he called us a believer. Right? And so and so listen. He believed in the same God I knew. I am I know this about you God. I know your nature. If in a second somebody says help and cries out, you do. You’re like a dog with a bone. If somebody cries out to you for mercy, your mercy gets sent in the next fraction of a second. That’s not true for me or for most humans. Most of us need time to forgive. Most of us need time to work through the reconciliation steps that are involved in that. Not so with the god I love. And so that was the moment when suddenly the peace turned back inside my soul. When I realized that I’m not God and I’m not the judge and he’s a whole lot better at it than I am. And now I will make a comment because I want people to hear me loud and clear about this suside thing and the thing that I just raised. People wonder if thou shalt not kill this violent and if that ruins somebody’s salvation of them. Let me say this as tenderly as I can. In the Christian faith, actually in Jewish faith too, I can’t speak for the other ones. I’ll just speak for the two that I know well. Your relationship with the God that you love is the basis of your salvation. Not whether you’ve been an idiot at the end of your life.
Alright? Now let me be as clear as I can. I think suicide is the wrong thing to do for lots and lots and lots of reasons. I have stood with families. I just I’m standing with two right now, who just did this. And the person who takes their life usually thinks they’re doing somebody in favor, It’s not true. The whole chaos just sort of explodes. All around the husband, the wife, the son, the daughter, the cousins, the uncles, the aunts, the parents, the friends, the workplace, everything. Just spins out of control for a very long time, varying degrees depending on how much you were attached to the person. But when the day is done, it is not the answer that you want to embrace. That being said, for all the listeners out there who have lost someone through their speech. It is not the fact that somebody makes a snap decision and chooses that or even if they make a plan when they’re in some sort of a weird state of mind. It is the relationship you have that you got, you serve. That determines your internal destiny. So I that for what it’s worth, I I put that in front of your audience because I know people who listen to this particular kind of podcast are trying to figure out how to make sense after a loss.
That’s what they’re doing. So
Victoria Volk: Very well said. Very well said.
David Chotka: Well, listen, I live through it. It’s it’s I live through it. If it’s yeah. So in the last two services that I did, where I did these two burials for and and actually because he was young, and because he was married, because he had a son. I could speak to that.
In fact, I just I had what I call a divine appointment yesterday. It’s funny because, you know, I have things to do, places to go people to see the world to win all that kind of thing. And I have done this general for this lady. Her name is Shentel. And she was a friend of a friend of a friend who called me to do a funeral because they thought it was the right thing to do. And I didn’t have proper contact information for her. And so I wanted to do a follow-up and I had not been able to because I couldn’t And so, actually, this is a crazy thing. On Friday, I said, God, I need to follow-up with this woman. Shentel needs pass through care after the after the thing. She I I’d be in touch with her.
How do I do that? Amen. And the next day, I went to a little free show that was being offered down at the event center down the street. And I walked in and I didn’t even wanna be there. My daughter wanted to go that thing. And I went because I had to go, you know, like I said, and I sit down and Shatjel sits down beside the high pastor, Dave. And that’s in a city of two hundred thousand. Wow. So I made the connection yesterday. One of the things I teach is I pray for a divided appointment today. I asked the Lord to shape my circumstances so that I walk into something that I could not and did not plan. Where God gets the glory or where something is needed that I can contribute to or where I need to receive what I cannot receive unless I have the divine point. Because I know this. God is at work everywhere, absolutely everywhere. And when we can see one or two things happening, God is doing millions. God. But if I could if I could see one thing that God is doing and enter Internet, I know that I’m on the right track. And so when COVID started, I I started to pray that, okay, God, I want one divine appointment a day, at least one. And sometimes I’ll get three and four. But I don’t feel the day is complete unless I’ve had one of those because I’ve prayed that prayer. So that was my divine appointment yesterday. That’s what happened yesterday.
Victoria Volk: I love that. I absolutely love that. You know what? And you might call it synchronicities or what have you. Right? We don’t we often have these things these moments like you said like you shared that happen throughout our lives and maybe in our days. And we maybe pass them off as insignificant or might think of but they’re not.
David Chotka: You know, just they’re not old. No. It’s true. It’s
Victoria Volk: Or you might not even give much thought in the moment, but then later, like, that’s really kinda cool if that happened, but we we don’t think about of it just being, like, this
David Chotka: Divine in nature. I’ll I’ll just say, yeah. Yeah. That’s right. That God did that. I’ll do that. That’s right. I can just say with you. Every significant thing I’ve done in life, every single significant thing that has happened was not my idea. And including the girl that I married. So here’s you’re gonna have with the girl I married. This this is the craziest thing. My heart was broke when the girl that I wanted to marry married somebody else. And I was in tremendous grief. That was another grief that happened there. And so I wound up saying, God, oh, God help me. I’m I’m in a mess here. And so So I wound up going to a a bible school called Regent College in Vancouver to you. It’s a graduate level of seminary. And it had a training component for people who were in careers that didn’t have theological education wanted to do a year out. And so, and I was a pastor and I had I had two degrees before this and I had my third degree there. Anyway, it looked like I was going to school because I wanted to improve my myself. But the real reason I was going there because it was a safe place to be a wreck. And as it turned out, when I was gonna move, I was living in Alberta, and the school was in British Columbia. And there was a good twelve hour drive from one place to the other.
And moving costs are expensive and students don’t have a lot of money, you know, that kind of thing. And I was a pastor and they didn’t pay much, you know, so it’ll just be blunt here. So I was looking for the cheap skateway to move that one of the things across the country. And there was a lady in my congregation who was also moving to the to a different school, but she was going to Vancouver. And she knew somebody in Edmonton that she was gonna be a roommate with because she was moving to Vancouver.
And we started asking about costs, you know? And how can we, you know, how can we pay this thing? And I I I did three or four quotes, and she got three or four quotes. And I said to this lady Ruth, why don’t you find out what it would cost if we put our two households together? I don’t have much. I could shove it in your garage. And it was the same price. And so that meant half price for both of us if we did this. And then she talked to the third person, and it was about ten percent more to move three than it was to move one. And so that’s a significant savings. Right? So I put all my stuff inside Ruth’s garage, and then Ruth had it moved down to Edmonton, and then we, you know, then we moved from Edmonton to. And I and I what I did. I got myself a tent and a sleeping bag. And, you know, and I I tented across British Columbia because it’s beautiful.
You know what? Then what that was it was a solo vacation, but it was great people. Oh, men’s. It’s a gorgeous province. Beautiful lakes and rivers and streams and mountains and trees and all gorgeous outside. So anyway, I get all the way to Vancouver. And the plan was I would show up on the day of the move at ten o’clock in the morning, and I would help the movers get stuff into their their their share department. And then I would direct the driver across town to help move in my stuff. And We save a lot of money and praise the Lord. You know? So I show up. Ruth isn’t there because she has to finish her her teaching issues you teach her up in that position. And she had to finish out this thing. She had a summer school course, she was teaching. But Elizabeth and her cousin were there cleaning the apartment out, getting her ready for the move.
And I show up, and I walk in, and we shoot the breeze, and we wait all day, and the moving van doesn’t come. And we’re hanging together. And, you know, in those days, there were no cell phones. Right? And they had in Vancouver, they didn’t have closed in phone booths. They had little round things that you put change in. And if you wanna do a long distance call, that was a lot of nickels and dimes and quarters. So so she calls from that phone. It gets her dad and said, dad, did you call the company? And he said, okay.
And they said they had he had a breakdown. He’d be there the next day at ten in the morning. And, okay. You forget one day. You know, and they’re gonna pay her hotel cost, and I have a room to stay in with my cafe stuff, so I’m fine. Come back the next day. There’s no moving van. Third day, no moving van. Fourth day. No moving. Yeah. Now we’re in the better business bureau after these guys, you know, trying to track down where this truck is. And so then her Elizabeth’s cousin had to go back to work. I mean, she had she had four days off and she took the four days. And I’m sitting in an empty apartment without so much as a tea bag. We’re saying, you know, there’s we’re there’s nothing to sit on. There’s a stairway in what we took turns sitting on that. I had a camper chair that I brought in. And I’d sit in the camper chair or on the step and we’d alternate this. And we spent all day a single man and a single lady inside this part. And my heart was broke because the girl I wanted to marry married somebody else, you know what? And after about three days of this, of course, we don’t know each other with strangers. And I said to her, look, just for the record, I’m a pastor. No, by the way, anything with a high voice and discouraged. I am not interested at all. I am no desire. My heart is broke. I just don’t wanna do this. And she heaped a big sigh of relief, and she said, well, for the record, I had an old boyfriend and he stalked me. And it was terrible. We had to get the police after him. I said, oh, brother. Well, look, I have two brothers. I had two brothers. That I no. I’m really my stolen. I have two brothers. And I don’t and my mom comes from a very conservative traditional Ukrainian household. She wears a head covering and walks behind my dad. Canadian girls aren’t interested in that. Neither American girls and most girls on Earth aren’t anyway. And so she said, I said, look, I don’t understand females at all. And she said, look, I have two sisters and my dad’s quiet. My mom ran the house and, you know, I don’t understand males at all. I said, look, I need a sister.
And she said, well, I need a brother. Thank you very much. And so we decided to become friends because we’re stuck in this apartment. We were there for ten consecutive days, ten days in that empty apartment. And finally, the guy showed up. And as it turned out, he had decided he was a casual driver who was hired by the moving company, and he put his son in the in the van to go through the BC interior. And he said, this is beautiful. I’m going fishing, and he took his son fishing for ten consecutive days with our stuff in the back of his And so I wound up meeting this lady and getting to know her. And, of course, by the time you get to day four or five, you start sharing deep things. See?
We have no choice. We’re stuck in that room. So in the course of time, I married the girl. But it’s that that’s how it started. It wasn’t even a planned thing. And every and listen, that’s the most important decision in life you can make who’s gonna be your life partner. And I I wasn’t my idea to be stuck in an empty apartment for ten days, you know, waiting for a moving bed. Being forced to have a conference when I was not I was still tender and broken over my own thing, you know, this this whole thing with this girl with married somebody else. And she was in the same as it turned out, this this whole thing turned into. First of all, who are you? To, oh, I guess we’re gonna be friends. Oh, let’s let’s get each other’s back while we’re in the middle of this. I actually prayed with the girl about girls I could take out when my heart started to saw. And then the course of time, she got mad when I gave him one of those names, and she picked dandelions out of the front yard for four hours while she realized she loved me. Then she told me, and then we got married and so on. But regardless of this, it was this it that and, actually, even the school that I wanted to go to, I didn’t so I wanted to go going there. And I had this desire to study your particular book of the bible where there’s a high concentration of holy spirit and unclean spirit language. And I discovered to my great surprise nobody had done the research on that. In all of scholarship, from, you know, five hundred years out, did nothing in French, German, or English. And I wound up going to that school because I like the school, but the guy who was assigned to me was writing the very first book in human history on that topic. And I didn’t choose the guy It was doctor Gordon Fee who wrote this anthology on the holy spirit in the Pauline literature. And I am in that book, but again, I didn’t know who the guy was I was looking for a competent scholar in a good school. That’s all I was doing. And the next thing, you know, I’m with the world’s finest, Paul and spirit scholar, best one on the planet. He’s gone to his reward now, but I will tell you his works are groundbreaking. We wind up being the head of the new international commentary series of the new testament. He wound up writing a huge anithology and holy spirit and a smaller one, they became standard reading in every seminary across the earth. And but I I didn’t try to do that. It was it wasn’t my idea. You know, anyway, the point I’m making here is that in the realm of faith, the intangible is always around us.
Always. You can cooperate with god’s movement, or you can fight it. Now, actually, the the helium prayer book that I wrote, I didn’t make up plan to write a book on healing prayer. It wasn’t me. In fact, the way I wind up doing my first ever healing prayer wasn’t my idea either. And so let me I’d love to tell you that story. Can I can I tell you that story? Sure. Okay. Well, here’s what happened. So I was a seminary student in my tradition. And and and my tradition was a mixed bag of people. There’s some who are what they call supernaturalists and some who are our cessationists believe those gifts of the spirit of cease. And some who said, oh, by the way, that was a pre scientific culture. And they didn’t know how else to describe it. So they attributed to God what was, in fact, a natural phenomena, that kind of thing. Yeah, these three streams going into the school. And I remember going into and we’re a new cohort, you know, and there’s a whole bunch of us that are all excited about going into the ministry and training. About thirty five of us who were swapping notes. And then after about two weeks to figure out who’s in which camp. Right? So, anyway, I I go into the class, and one of the props says this thing about Jesus walking on the water. He said, oh, as a pre scientific coach, and we know that Jesus didn’t actually walk on the water. And I said, wait a minute. I wanna just take a moment here and tell you, I really do believe that he did. It’s it’s I know it defies science and logic. And I’m a science guy, my best marks for science and physics and math and biology and so on. But I believe in the miraculous. And there was a guy in the class who was a first class jokester that the guy was hilarious. All you’d have to do is look at your sideways and the whole room would explode and laughter. And if he told a joke, then it was, how do I describe it? It’s like throwing a humor grenade into the room, waiting for the explosion to happen, and everybody would laugh so hard, it would hurt. You know? So I I say this thing about the miracle being true. And this guy cracks a joke, and everybody in the room starts to laugh. But the joke was at my expense. He was making fun of my believing that Jesus walked in water. Right? So anyway, whether you believe in that or not, this is beside the point for the sake of the story. So here we go.
So I go into one class after the class after the class. And whenever there’s one of these moments where the scripture is being said, it’s it’s not really true or it’s not historically accurate or this is primitive culture or whatever. I would defend scripture and the guy would tell joke. And this went on. It’s been on for months. Right? And I I then there came a defining moment and I said to myself, Yep. I’m never gonna be his friend. It’s not gonna happen. And I had a great class three times when we had to cross the class and was held at a different school. And one day, I was walking across this plaza, and there was a lovely classmate. And I called her Susie in the book. I’ve lost touch with her, but I I grew up in in I don’t have a permission to use it really, but she stops me and she says, David, how are you doing? And she and I’ll just tell you about this girl. She was a very sweet kind, other centered person. You know, that phrase do what others should have them do what to you. That was her write down to the toe nails. Always always others centered, always kind, always consider it. Always well mannered, always, you know, how do I say this?warmly caring. That’s the best way to describe it. Anyway, I’m walking across this class and I said, hey, Susan. How you doing? Said, I’m fine. I’m going to my Hebrew. I said, I’m going to my Greek. And she said, oh, okay. Hey, you know the class committee. I said, oh, yeah. I know. And she said, well, you see that hospital? Six blocks down. And I said, yeah. She said, well, he’s in there. And actually, I I just have to say this victory. I didn’t feel bad for about two minutes. So I had to abandon my stinking Ozzie attitude. Right? Now she didn’t see that, but it was going on exactly. Anyway, Finally, I looked at her. I said, oh, listen, what’s up? And she said he has phlebitis. I said, what’s that? And then she described it. She said, he’s got a clot in his arm. It’s in his vein. If the clot breaks free, it’ll travel to one or three places, the brain, the heart, or the lung. If it gets to any of those, you’re dead ninety five times out of a hundred. And I thought, oh, man, that’s bad. I said, I’m so sorry. Is he getting good care? You know, in Canada, healthcare is free. So I said, is he getting good care? He said, yeah, he’s in the hospital, now it’s university hospital. It’s a good one. I said, oh, okay. And I said, well, okay. Thanks for telling me. And she said, wait, I have something to say to you from him. Yeah. I went to see him and he asked me to ask you something. I said, oh, what do you ask? She said, he wants you to come and pray for it. I said, what? What kind of craziness is that? And so you know, and I said, I’m not going. And she said, why aren’t you going? I said, you have seen it. He’s been cruel. He’s mocked me in front of our peers on a regular basis. Every time I just say anything about the scripture being historically accurate, you know. And so and so she said, you know, he has been cruel. I said, yeah. Said, okay, I’ll talk to him. I said, well, I’m not going that way, I went to my class. And the next day, I see her in the coffee lounge in school.
Right? And we’re shooting a braze about this type of thing. And she said, well, listen, I I went see the Canadian in the hospital. And he’s terribly sorry that he did what he did to you. Would you go and see him? I said, I’m not going. Because now, There were three reasons why I wasn’t going. Number one was the one I’ve made to you. He mocked me in front of our peers, and it it it hurt. It really did hurt. The second was that I had never met anybody healed by what the Bible calls the prayer faith. I didn’t know anybody. I’d seen the crazies on television, slapped people on the forehead, screaming. And throwing hankies in the air. But I think that was a helpful model. Now the third thing is, I did I had not been trained in this. I didn’t I received no training. I didn’t know and I didn’t know if it was for today or not. I just didn’t know. But, you know, so I I I just told her I’m not going. And the next day, I’m walking across the same three times a week Plaza. And there she is going to her class. And she said, oh, by the way, did you go and see our friend in the hospital? I said, I’m not going. Now, Victoria, have you ever been told off by your mother? This is what the girl looked like. You know what I’m saying that you you get the fire in your eyes and you get the anger. Coming out of your pores and, you know, this girl outside in front of a crowd of people who are walking by, yelled at me at the top of your life. So he stopped her foot. The fire came out of her, you know, her visits, you know, and she gave that meeting. She used my middle initial. She knew a middle initial. She said David, our shotgun. Aren’t you gonna no. Aren’t you going around this school saying that the Bible is the word of God that’s supposed to be obeyed? I said, yes. She said, well, how about this? I was sick and you visited me. That’s what the Bible says. That’s what Jesus says and I thought, oh, No. We’re gonna have to go and see the guy. I’ve fell below eleven in my center. And I thought, okay. I’ll go. But it says sick and visit.
It doesn’t say sick and prayed. She said, whether it’s visitor, whether it’s prayed, he asked for you to go. So go. So I finished my class. Then I walked to six blocks.
I got to the hospital many times. And he was in a bad way, just, you know, he had monitors on him and, you know, the the tubes were going into his arms and and the sound the beeping sounds of the monitors were happening every couple of, you know, couple of minutes and The nurse chargers walked in drop, so medication watched him take it, you know, in the short time I was there. Anyway, he’s why does it go? He’s obviously terrified. And, you know, he and he told me that the clot had not shrunk.
It was still large. And I so I talked to him about the weather. Because I didn’t know what to do. I’d never done it before. Greer than your average rookie, you know, just just did not a clue. So I did the visit thing. I I talked about the weather. Then I asked him about his coursework and he was keeping up. And I said, well, I visited you now. I can go.
And he stopped and he looked at me and he said, wait. Aren’t you? Aren’t you gonna pray? And I said before I even consider that question, I have to ask you one of my own, why? Every single time I’ve said anything about the miracles of Jesus and healing or about the Lord’s miraculous life or about the cross being serious about the resurrection or anything to do with the faith. You have made me a laughing stock. Why? Do you want me to pray for you? And he burst into tears and he began to weep and he said, I’m twenty seven years old, the clock is big in my arm. If that clock breaks free, I’m dead.
That I don’t want to die. Won’t you please pray? Let your god heal me. And I mean, what are you gonna do? I mean, it was obvious the guy really didn’t mean it. But I still had not a sweet clue. What to do? I’ve never been dragged. It’s only way. What I then I remember, oh, the Bible says Jesus put his hand on people. Right? They did that. So I said, well, look, can I come or can I put my hand over you? He said, yeah, you could do that. I said, which arm is it? He said left arm above the elbow. So I went around to his side, and I put my hand over his left arm. Right where that embolism was he said was located. And I put my other hand on his yet. And then I don’t know, honestly, to this day, I can’t remember what I prayed, Victoria. And I’m sure it was an honest prayer. But it was pretty pathetic. Oh, God helped something like that. And I but here’s what happened in the middle of that prayer. Well, I don’t remember the words, but I remember the defining moment. The room filled with presence That’s the only way I can describe it. It was like compassion, filled the air, married together with love and fire. And both of us looked because something had happened, you know. It’s it’s one thing to just have a little prayer and lead the robot. We both locked eyes and we knew something was happening. And then that fire filled my soul and I cried a hot tear in the corner of my right eye. And I felt this energy rising inside of me and focus. The only way I can describe this, total complete focus on him and on God’s love freedom and how the Lord wanted him to receive a miraculous healing. And so then I said, oh, God healed this, something like this. God healed this man, and while I had my hand on his arm, that energy float down my arm and went into his. He looked at me and he said, what is that fiery presence? I said, spirit of Jesus, he’s making you well. And I ran out of the room right after that. For a lot of reasons, never one and never my life felt anything like that. Never.
Secondly, I didn’t know if I was even supposed to pray that way. Because I’ve not resolved the issue theologically. I I just didn’t know. And thirdly, I was terrified he was gonna make be. And I didn’t know if he’s gonna be. I mean, all these reasons are floating in my head to run out of the room. The next day, I’m in the school. And so is he? I said, you’re here? He said, I am. I said, what happened? And and then he he he it it was a nineteenth century stone building and he shoved me in one of these stone corners behind the column, and he looked in every direction, you know. Therese the floor hard everything. And then he said, that prayer. Changed my life. I said, thank you, and I ran away because I still I I I had the time to process it, you know? And then I went to my next class that he was in, we had three classes in common. And I said something that defended the scripture and he stood up to tell the joke. And he made fun of not believing. And the whole class exploded in laughter but the laughter was at the expense of unbelief, not faith. And he did that in rig class. I was with him, and then I heard from classmates that he was doing that in other classes where I was not present. And I didn’t know. So that story that I just told you, that’s in the healing prayer book that that prompted the conversation between you and I get on the the podcast here. So anyway, we had the summerfield thing and he I had to go away for four months and he walks up to me, he passes me a piece of paper with his phone number on it. And he says, if you’re in trouble, you’re trouble. You call me. You call me. I said, whoa. Okay. So I went to wait to wait to interview. Had a marvelous time, because it’s one of those times where you’re you’re looking at the new thing and you’re learning all kinds of marvelous things. And I learned how to preach a sermon, I learned how to visit people. I did I participated in a wedding, you know. Then I had four funerals. I had those four funerals. But the pastor wasn’t there and I learned how to do that. And then, of course, he came back from vacation way unpacked all the learning I discovered how to do various things. Anyway, I get back to school. And he walks up to me and he says, you didn’t call me. I said, I didn’t have any trouble. And he said, if you’re in trouble, you call me, you know, it’s always a little okay. Anyway, a couple months in, there’s a party for the students. Right? And we’re all gathered together, and we’re talking this and that. We’re just shooting a breeze. About nothing because if you do it apart, you have a little laugh, you know what? I was standing with him and his wife and this girl who had asked me in the first place. Because that girl and this man’s wife were great bunnies. Anyway, the two girls look at him and begin to get me elbow. You know, you’re you’re gonna have to tell Chuck what happened. Tell Chuck. Tell Chuck. Tell Chuck. He said, oh, I don’t wanna tell Chuck to what happened. And then eventually, he did. And he said, right after you left, the charters walked in. And I said, I can go home now. My friend from the bible’s book, he’s come here. He’s prayed in Jesus’ hand. And the charge nurse says, we don’t do things like that around here. We gotta run tests. He said, well, run the test then. And so they did because it was it was actually due for them. Every trace of phlebotis was gone from his body. And it had been big the day before every trace was gone. His wife picked him up. He was discharged from the hospital after all the tests confirmed that he was well. He went home and, of course, he’s thankful. Right? I mean, we’re we’re talking and he could have died and he’s well. And he kneels down beside his bed and he thanks the Lord. They go to bed and he prays before he sleeps. And he has a dream and in the dream, he hears a voice. And the voice says, my servant David defends the integrity of my word, and no one defends him. I’m gonna cry when I tell you this, when he defends the integrity of my word. You defend him. And he did for three years, all through that theological education. Thirty years later, thirty years after that event, he we changed I changed the nominations. He’s still in the scene over, but he contacted me.
I lost touch with him. And he said thirty years ago, he prayed for Jesus to heal my arre. Thank you that you did. I’m well. Three kids. Happily married. Finish she enters now retirement. He finishes ministry. Anyway, I I just asked you. Healing prayer was not my idea. It was a kiss so the reason the book is called God’s idea because it wasn’t my idea. It wasn’t this is not something that I decided that I wanted to learn how to do. It was something that I tripped into together with every other major thing that I’ve ever done in life. And actually learning how to breathe for the die. Wasn’t my idea? That the four funerals were of the late first one with the lady who was supposed to organize this, you know. So mean, it’s hilarious when you stop and think about it, but it’s it’s to deal with what you call pathos, this kind of strange emotion where you know you’re in the middle of something bigger than you. Much bigger than you. So, yeah, that’s and so the design appointment a day is an extension of that same principle. I want to be in something that I have not ordained, not established, not built toward. I mean, I want to do that too. I want to have a successful trajectory in what doing, etcetera, terror. That’s just ordinary life. But I want to know God’s involved in something. And so I ask him for those divine appointments each day. And he sends them. So I do believe in the power of faith to heal the breathing heart. I do. And the way that I describe the way God speaks is that he speaks nonverbally by presence. And that heals the broken heart. Let me tell you what I mean by that. There’s a text in the book of Romans. That’s, by the way, that’s the famous book from the from the apostle Paul, everybody who’s any kind of Christian reads Romans. It’s the if they call it the capital, that’s what because it’s the one that everybody refers to for all kinds of teaching. That is standard procedure in every branch of the Lord’s Church, whether you’re protestant or orthodox or evangelical or charismatic. They all say the capital of Pittsburgh’s Romans fourteen says this. Kingdom of God is not eating and drinking. Because they were arguing about eating and drinking. The kingdom of God is righteousness and peace and joy. In the holy spirit. And so the experience of knowing the lord through an encounter with the spirit produces three identity murders. Righteousness is a sweet walk with God, and peace is internal serenity despite external circumstance. And joy is internal celebration even when the world is flying apart. And when those three things wax large, and you find yourself in something you have not expected. That’s God talking. When you are praying find yourself in when those three things wacklired, and suddenly a stream of consciousness comes into your brain. To go and see so and so down the street. And you go when you discover there in a crisis moment. That’s God talking. When those three things diminish, that’s the hand of warning. Pay attention. And when they’re jarred, get out of the room. You’re about them correct. You’re about to walk into a disastrous business meeting. Get out of the room. This is God talking saying, this is big trouble right here. And I teach people how to pay attention to those three markers. And actually, to do more than just say, isn’t that a nice little coincidence? But to attribute that to God’s direct involvement in her lives. Because healing prayer is God’s idea. It’s not ours. Buraculous intervention is God’s idea, not ours. And it’s this is how scripture works. So, I mean, Can you imagine what it was like for Peter James and John and Xevity when they got called? I mean, they’re working in the boat. Jesus of Nazareth shows up there’s a miraculous catch of fish. You know, and let us I just wanna put I wanna illustrate that right in the sketch for you. They have found boats from that era owned by fishermen. That on average, they’re twenty seven feet long, they’re eight feet across and they’re four feet high. And two of those boats were sinking with the fish because they were filled to the brim. And so imagine you’re out there. You’ve worked hard all night. You’ve got nothing. You know you gotta pay your bills. You haven’t got enough money to pay the bills. And you’re washing your nets, repairing them because, you know, you gotta pay the bills. This is just not helpful. I know. So anyway, This guy shows up and says, throw your nets over there. Right? So they do and that they didn’t want to do that, but they did. And there were so many wrinkling tilapia in those two boats, then it touched their toes, it touched their ankles, it touched their knees, it touched it went up to four feet. I mean, I’m here. That much, and the boat is right at water level, and the other boat over there is doing the same thing. And then Jesus says, I want you to follow me. I mean, That was the Simon Peter’s idea. It actually says he throws himself down, but actually this is a tale of people who don’t know this. He has to throw himself down in the fish not on the shore because the boat had not yet come to shore. He throws himself down into a massive wriggling tilapia and he says to Jesus of Nazareth. I am not worthy of this. You are God, and I am not. And Jesus said to him, don’t be afraid you’re not gonna catch fish. You’re gonna haul in humans. That’s what you’re gonna do. Wasn’t his idea. Thank you very much. So that’s how that’s how I understand. Ministry. That’s how I understand care for people in grief.
Victoria Volk: I had a moment quite a few years ago there was a gentleman that died in my community. Okay. I think he was, I don’t know, late eighties, maybe even early nineties. A plumber by trade, new everybody, right, in the community.
David Chotka: Yep.
Victoria Volk: And I remember sometime before I passed away, we were sitting outside the bar.
David Chotka: I was
Victoria Volk: just sitting outside. It was a nice summer night evening or whatever, and I never really had a conversation with the guy before that.
David Chotka: Mhmm.
Victoria Volk: And he told me, I’m not even sure why, but he told me that the best thing he ever did was choosing to adopt his wife’s children as his
David Chotka: own. Okay.
Victoria Volk: Fast forward, I’m not sure how long after that, he passed away. Mhmm. But when he passed away, they had a celebration of life in the bar just, you know, everybody got together and things like that. And I just had this poll to go to the bar. I didn’t know who his kids were, didn’t know what they look like, to tell them what he said.
David Chotka: It changed their life. Right?
Victoria Volk: I don’t know. In the moment, I you know, I I did go and I did share what he shared with me.
David Chotka: Yeah. I
Victoria Volk: don’t know if they reflected on it after the fact or whatnot, but, you know, it was one of those things, like, it wouldn’t leave me alone. You know, like, I came home and
David Chotka: That’s him. That’s good. Yeah. Yeah. The fact that he should tell you in a happenstance, and that you that you should pass away shortly thereafter Mhmm.
And that you get commanded to go to that place, to say this, to a bunch of people you do not know.
Victoria Volk: Mhmm.
David Chotka: That’s him. Yeah. That’s hearing the voice. So you have heard the voice of Jesus. You’ve heard it.
Victoria Volk: I have several there I’ve had a lot of moments in my life. Even my marriage with my husband, like, we were friends for seven years. I was heartbroken and And I I’ve asked him, like, what made you, like, decide to pursue me? He really can’t answer that. Kind of funny because we hadn’t looked at each other, like, that way, you know, in a, like, in a the romantic way.
You know, we were friends for seven years.
David Chotka: Yep.
Victoria Volk: And and then all of a sudden, he was like this relentless consumer night and shining armor, you know. And I’d I’d I’d said one prayer. I just bring someone into my life who is good for me.
David Chotka: And the Lord heard you prayer.
Victoria Volk: And he heard my prayer. Yeah. Twenty plus years later, here we are. Three kids.
David Chotka: Well, so listen, though, the whole point of this podcast is to bring comfort to people who are distressed or in trouble. That’s the whole point of your podcast. I will say that the most important thing you can do is to straight up, some people have stroke trouble with faith, some people may break
Victoria Volk: down church. I did myself.
David Chotka: Yeah. Some people who had a bad experience in that catheter, some priest abused them or or maybe they’ve heard about that priest abusing their best friend and or they they were turned off by some bitter bibles number, you know, showing up pro bar in somebody. So nothing worse than that. Oh my heavens. Anyway, That the the point is it doesn’t matter where you are. The point is that don’t let a bad experience of some idiot. Get in the way of your accessing what is freely available to anyone who asks for it. One of my favorite scriptures is is found in the psalms. It says this God is near to the broken heart. So if you’re broken hearted, pray this very simple prayer. Okay? Your word says, so please send it. Please please come here. I’m Broken Heart. And the way that he shows up by presence is to manifest himself within, with this velvety smooth assurance of war, and behind your physical estate.
And I’ve I’ve tried to put words around this. And if you can say this better than can’t I will lift your quote. I’ll give you credit, but I’ll tell I’ll use it. This is so the way that I feel to mind presence, there’s this cognitive thing where you choose it and you say, oh, yes. Is fine and you make the decision that isn’t that nice, but that’s not that doesn’t cover the ground. There comes this moment inside where the believer knows inside their door. That’s the only way to describe this. Mhmm. There’s this awareness and it is other than you And it is something that is separate and distinct from you, but intrinsic to who you are because you said yes to him. And you sense this rising sense of fiery gentle presence and it’s a velvety smooth It’s assurance, it’s grace, it’s love, it’s yearning for more of him, and it’s settled contentness in who he is. Even if your circumstances are terrible. With the peace of God, which passes understanding, keep guard over your hearts and minds, In the knowledge and love of Christ, Jesus, so says the apostle Paul in the book of Philippians when he was in jail of all things. He was in jail when he wrote that he had a Roman guard chained to his wrist while he’s writing this stuff. I wonder what that Roman guard thought about the fact that the Apostle was writing this of just this. And he didn’t know he’s an apartment. He thought he was some guy who was upfront charges, you know, that kind of thing. And he writes about this experience of the internal presence with peace Staying like like a guard keeping watch over your door of faith. It’s like a soldier, a century standing at your door, walking back and forth. Making sure that the prisoner inside that space is content. That’s what I would ask people to consider doing to. Open their hearts up to that. Now, if there’s an atheist out there, my dad was an atheist. He became an agnostic, and then he became a Christian believer. He became a Christian believer because Jesus of Nazareth appeared to him. It was the most amazing kind of thing. And he’d suffered much. He had he’d lost a lot of his eyesight because of the childhood thing. He had scoped cold bottles in glasses. He then was treated by friends and family. And he didn’t believe that it was possible that people out there were actually kind of a gentleman’s suite. And then I became a believer. I was the first one in my family. Again, that wasn’t my idea. That wasn’t my dad’s idea either. Right? It was my mom’s idea. And when it was all set and done, my face impacted his existence course because that’s your kid. You got what he can do with this. You know, what school of the ministry is. What’s this crazy kind of thing? Be a dentist, be a doctor mix a month, you know? Be a lawyer. That’s that’s the immigrant story. So what there’s a Jewish joke or what’s the difference between a tailor and psychiatrist? One generation.
Anyway, getting back to this. He he couldn’t believe. And I remember praying for him three years. And then there was one critical moment where suddenly this whole thing changed. And he banging his head on a on a on a beam in one of our storerooms area and east war to jeez, his name to date. And the Lord behind him said, yes. And he turned around and he was eyes to eyes with the risen Lord. In the doorway of that storeroom, And my dad had agreed three education. And since because his eyes were bad when he was a little kid, but as they locked his eyes together, I he’s telling me the story is towards what is she and hardly speak and said, dad, What was that like? He said it was like I was looking into wells of love. He never talked that way. Grade three education, you don’t read Edison for fun. You’re not a Shakespeare fixinato. You’re not reading, you know, lawn failure. You’re not reading the wallwood or anything.
You’re you’re not you’re
Victoria Volk: I mean, he was an atheist.
David Chotka: Yes. Well, at that point, probably an agnostic. At that point, he kinda thought because of growing things regardless. Didn’t believe in that. And So apparently, he was looking at the Lord and I I’m he’s telling me the story about a week after it happened, trying to give words to this. Physically shaking. And then he I said, dad, what did you say? So if I told Jesus that I loved my son and he met me because I was the pastor, you know. And then Jesus said, I know this. And then he said to the Lord, I’m a sinner. And Jesus said, I forgive you. And he vanished. That’s how my dad came to faith. Wasn’t his idea. He banged his head on a beam. Took the Lord’s name in vain and the Lord appeared to him. I haven’t had a crazy kind of thing. So I’m a supernatural I believe from the power of the Lord to intervene in the flow of history, but I’m also a horse stance guy. I don’t believe that everybody you pray for sealed. I do believe that people die young. I do believe that sometimes people make bad bad bad mistakes and do terrible things they shouldn’t do. I do believe that crazy people kill others and so on and so forth. And there’s this thing where I do believe in the scientific enterprise and I do believe in the power of God in your v. And they flow in different channels. And some some faith traditions say you can never put these two channels together, and I completely disagree with that. Science works inside the framework of a world that is created, and God established those rules of creation. And so we, scientific enterprise, is only uncovering what lies fallow under the surface of the soil, and they endeavor to discover a trajectory of a particular sickness or affliction they find a cure or they find an adaptive therapy, you should take the gift. And every now and then there’s a miraculous intervention. And sometimes the two of them overlap like this beautifully. And sometimes they separate out and run-in different pathways, but regardless of this.
What I teach in the book and the reason I wrote the book, it’s a co write by the way. Co writer is a million selling author by the name of Dr. Maxi Dunnham. Have I got his yeah. Here’s his book. This book is the one that trained me in Huddl. Ford quicker living prayer. Maxi wrote this. It’s a million seller. And it gives it the the structure of this book is inspired. It’s the structure is the thing that that was amazing. He would give a little bit of teaching, a little bit of scripture, a little bit of reflecting, recording, a little bit of a challenge. You do that for seven days in the week. He learned how to pray. It’s just this and you do it by praying, not just by reading about prayer. Well, I met him and he and I wrote wrote together this book called healing prayer, and then I’ve that I’m on your podcast to talk about. And, of course, it includes stories of people dying before their time and grieving. It includes stories of people who who who prayed one way and who ended up getting something else. And it includes miraculous accounts of divine intervention. So there’s five pathways made in this book. The first one is the instant heal, and I’ve told you a couple of those stories now, and rackets integrations. The second is a pathway to a remedy. Somebody does research, well, and you wind up meeting the person who’s got an adaptive therapy for what you’re discovering you need. Well, take it. They spent thirty years because their kids’ sister died in leukemia and they’ve studied cancer. Well, why would you resist taking the fruit of someone’s labor when their intention was to make this this cure possible. Take it. That’s from God too. Third is an ordinary healing. Now, I will tell you something about this. My wife was miraculously cured of muscular dystrophy. That stories in this in this book about halfway through. It was incredible to watch. Before she was cured. If she damaged a muscle, the muscle was damaged forever. After she was cured, if she damaged a muscle, the muscle healed. So natural healing is also part of the equation. Then there is suffering that we don’t understand. And for some reason, it’s there. We wait through it. We don’t understand it. Sometimes somebody dies young. And last is the miraculous crossing in the end of your life. All of us have a purpose and all of us completed. And all of us have to face our maker. All five of those are legitimate means by which God leads us in this journey called healing prayer. That’s God’s idea.
Victoria Volk: So what about that with your wife and your daughter? The polarity of
David Chotka: Yeah. I live between the two. Like, I I do. I live between the two. Now, before I go any further, I I do have a two o’clock coming up.
And it’s it’s one fifty one.
Victoria Volk: Well, would you briefly share that how because your daughter has
David Chotka: Yes. So the way I say it is this. My daughter has my tonic dystrophy. My wife was cured of curing FSH. She’s adopted.
My wife was was hesitant in her family life. Mhmm.
Victoria Volk: And
David Chotka: we’ve when we adopted the girl, we didn’t know. And so part of the miracle of providence. Is that she was adopted into a family that could accommodate her and muscular dystrophy, and we knew it. Now I hope that in my mind, that’s not enough. I want the rest. Thank you very much. And so for about twenty years, we would pray for her to be well. And now we pray for her to be a peace. That’s how we pray because the the answer hasn’t come. So the way I describe it in the book is God initiates and we respond. Not we initiate and God responds. It doesn’t work that way. Thank you very much. So I teach people how to pay attention to the mind leading in that. Howard Bauchner:
Victoria Volk: What I kind of want to touch on now then is what you kinda said was how people can feel like their prayers are not being heard. Like, prayers are not being answered and
David Chotka: Yes.
Victoria Volk: And I have this thought or belief within myself that yes, pray, but you also have to move your feet.
David Chotka: Actually, the bet I heard heard of this bet this way. If you pray for potatoes, put your hands in plow. Yeah. I’m listening to this little kid. Right?
And it’s actually really that’s an important principle. And when it’s all said and done, The the principle behind that is not what it called passively. You don’t sit in your button with for God to take care of everything. You are born to work. And the reason why Adam was given the assignment of the garden was because he wasn’t just supposed to sit there and watch the animals. He was supposed to tend soil. You are created in the image of God in order to be creative and to do enter into the acts that God would have you do. Now, what do you do with unanswered prayer? There is this I have a chapter in the book where I talk about medicine, miracle, and mystery. And how all three of them intertwine. And the thrust of the book is to say, we are not god. We are those who are in submission to the movement of God’s spirit. And we cannot manipulate the Lord to accomplish all that we want because we we only have a little three pound brain. And the best that you and I can do is to use the three pounds and train it. But you can’t tell it’s around the corner. In fact, this lady that I was just gonna see just canceled and I wasn’t expecting that. Alright? So I didn’t know that. I had organized my time since I’d be done according to your timetable and then pick up my coal. So I I can’t tell that, but now we have more time to be able to to navigate this because we’re in the middle of an important cover that isn’t completed. You can break this up into two episodes if you want to do that, which is what you might do. But regardless of that, God initiates and he leads us in paths that we do not understand or know. And when it is all said and done, we’re always left with holding history. There are seasons where we see miraculous breakthrough, and there are seasons where we see partial breakthrough. And there are scenes where we see no breakthrough at all. This one came to a head when I had a buddy who was in his fifties. And I was pastor in church forty five minutes from here. I was serving in Chad and Ontario, now serving in Windsor. But it’s but that church was a really solid place. My very first ever visit was to this guy. So I arrive in my office, and the secretary walks in and says to me, you gotta go on see Bob. He wants the new passenger to come and see him. So we’re talking The books are not out of the boxes yet. I mean, I put the books in the office. The bookshelves are being constructed. And I said, well, I guess I can go down the road and see this guy, so I get in the car and I do my first ever pass through a call in that church. I walk into this house. He’s on an oxygen oxygen mask. And he’s carrying this tube with him and he’s full of cancer. And his godly wife is caring for him and they’re sweet people, but I know his skin is the wrong color.
His eyes are the wrong color. And I have been around the block enough to know when somebody’s tied days your number. So I pray a prayer of comfort with him. That’s the way I prayed. And I get back in my car and I drive home, but it was the end of the day.
I said to my wife, look, I think I got a funeral coming up. It’s a guy named Bob. Apparently, he’s a godly fellow. I just met him. I was in his home. And I think I’m gonna do here. What I didn’t know was that the elders of the church had already booked in to see him that night and he didn’t tell me that. And the elders went to pray for him, obeying James chapter five where it says that the elders of the church and like the with the royal prayer phase, etcetera. And he went into a miraculous recovery. And three days later, he’s down in South Carolina at Myrtle Beach. Gulfy. Exactly. He’s had this astonishing recovery in the board chair, Hal Norton, and him, Bob Roberts, they’re out there down there. Galtham, because he had this amazing recovery, happened instantly in front of those elders. And so I had witnessed amazing. This is incredible. In the in the course of time, Bob became a friend. Bob and Marlene and and was one of a a group of four couples and we all got together and we should reason laugh. He was one of the fun he was a delightful guy and there was a guy named Bill and Bill and Bob would do these back and forth kind of hilarious things. And if you were in the middle of that that rep r t, you’d laugh until you were done. It was just this marvelous fun and whenever I wanted to blow off steam always with Bob. He became one of my elders, and I remembered having significant prayer times with him. There was one that happened just before he became my friend. He said, I wanna go to a a church in Toronto that has a reputation of of being one of these healing places. I said, that’s a three and a half hour drive, Bob.
You wanna go? He said, yeah. I wanna go. I booked my associate in preaching because that was my sermon prep day. And he and I together with our two wives drove down the highway and it took us four hours because the highway was busy. We pull up at this place, and we show up at this place, and nobody prays for him, nobody prays for me. It doesn’t happen. You know? And we’re at the door of the place. And I said, this is crazy, Bob. We’ve gone four hours. One way, we gotta go four hours back. You wanna pray now, but he said, well, we better. So I put my hand on him. His wife and my wife put their hand on hand. We started to pray. Bob started to laugh. Heart filled joyful laughter. It just bubbling from inside of him. It was it was honest joyful laughter. Hilarious. And so he didn’t stop laughing. What what we got in the car to drive back home. And for the four hour drive from Toronto to Chatham, he kept laughing. And I had you know, then he gets in his car and his wife, Marlene, had the drive home because he was still laughing. And from that point forward, the man that I knew was full of laugh the laughter subsided when he finally went to sleep. But he started to have a crazy hilarious sense of humor, and it became part of this for some couple of things where we’d always have fun. And he became an elder in my church and we did all kinds of amazing things together and he was what I called bible from where Bob. He was the guy who called the elders to account when they were being a pack of idiots. When they were when they weren’t gonna do something that was the right thing to do because it caused too much.
He pulled the bible out, and he’d tell us off. You know, and then he make a joke and everybody in the room would crack up laughing. And then we’d we’d adopt the expensive decision and do the right thing and the money would come. And he was that kind of a guy. And then the cancer returned. And four years later, I was in the hospital room when he died. His daughter was with him. I was in the room. It was two o’clock in the morning. I got called up because it was pretty, you know, severe, and I was holding his hand. And his daughter was holding his other hand. And he breathed his last. I did the funeral. And when I was doing this funeral, I did my very best to put best foot forward, but this was not just a parishioner. This was a very good friend and this was someone who had seen healing and it ended and he died. And I remember so I did this service. I don’t know. I did my best to present a positive take on this. I watched his body descend to the ground. I went back to the office. I closed the door. I put a cover over the window. I sat in the corner and I cried like a baby, because that was my friend. Three weeks later, I was with the other three couples plus the widow. And they were thanking me for doing a beautiful service. And I said, okay, thank you. I appreciate that. And they said, yeah, it was so amazing to see Bob healed. I said, healed. I just buried and he was fifty five. He died. What are you talking about? And they looked at me and they said, you didn’t know him before. Did you? I said, no. I moved here. My first visit was him. He was on an oxygen tank, and there was this amazing recovery, and and they said, well, He was clinically depressed for a dozen years. He hadn’t laughed in a dozen years. And you drove him to that church in Toronto and nobody prayed for him. And then you and Elizabeth and Marlene prayed for him and he started to laugh. And the clinical depression vanished. And they were given three and a half years of blissful married life. Before he died of the cancer in the last six months. Jesus healed them of clinical depression. Even though he died at fifty five young. So what I say in the book is there’s this thing called already, not yet. We’re already participants in the powers of the next age. We are not yet as we should be. And those two realities overlap just like that in every life, in every family. And so I saw my wife healed. I’ve actually been physically healed. I had a paralyzed face. I was told I’d never speak again when I was fifty three. And the Lord healed me, and that’s a long story as well. I don’t want to tell a long story. It was so remarkable. It got recorded by the Christian Broadcast Network and there’s been a hundred and twenty thousand views of that story. I had a face that the doctor told me would never heal, and I was completely healed in a process that was just absolutely filled and wonder. And my daughter’s not. So I’ve been healed. My wife’s been healed. My daughter’s not. And I live between two ages that overlap, the age of life and the age of death. And the victory is partial until Jesus returns at the end of time.
Than what God would have us do. It’s live between the times and celebrate his presence in this fallen and broken world. Do we people who extend love and grace to those who have none? And to walk with them through all their struggles and all their difficulties, trusting that God will intervene in their lives.
Victoria Volk: Amen. That is a beautiful place to end this podcast, actually.
David Chotka: Well, thank you. That’s it. Yeah. There’s a scripture that has both of those in it. I’ll I’ll just say it to you. I think that’s a good way for me to close the sentences. The loved now We are children of God. It does not yet appear we should be. But when he appears, we shall be like him. For we shall see him as he is. Now, not yet. First John chapter three verse two. That’s where the believer lives.
Victoria Volk: Thank you so much. For all of your stories, for making what you shared relatable to people who may be struggling with their faith. I know I did personally for many years
David Chotka: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: And, you know, you you some people go many years blaming God for their circumstances and I think he lies in wait. Just waiting for us to awaken to his love for us, I suppose.
David Chotka: Yeah. Now the love’s unmerited. We don’t deserve it. Absolutely don’t deserve it. It comes because it comes. And it isn’t our idea. It isn’t our idea. It’s it’s God’s idea to love us. We just got the your guy. He woke up and he pursued you.
Yeah. Yeah. That’s it. Wasn’t your idea? Wasn’t it? Yeah. Look, that’s why. Why did she do that? Oh, because I love you. I just he just did that. And you So it’s the same with with the love of God toward us. We don’t deserve it. They even know why he wants to bother, but he does. So if you can awaken to that, it becomes something beautiful. And that’s where we live.
Victoria Volk: I love that. Where can people find you?
David Chotka: I have a website that’s the easiest way spirit equip dot com. And I think you’ll I think I sent the links to you, if I’m not mistaken, I believe. Yeah. Anyway, it’s the the word spirit is the same as holy spirit, s p I r I t, and a word equip is the same as the beginning of equipment, EQU IP. Put the two things together, spiritequip.com.
That’s my website. And it has links to all my social media, so my Instagram thing is there, my YouTube channels there, my blogs are there, my Facebook page is there, and so on and so forth.
Victoria Volk: And my In your books?
David Chotka: My books are there too. And, yes, all the things that the the ability to book me, I do three day events in churches. And if people want me to come to their church, I’m more than able to do that. You just have to give me some lead time. Pay my hair fair and take up offerings. That’s what we do. It’s it’s not expensive to do. Find me a place to stay as long as it’s not some scsi dive. You know, find me a private room with Matthew. And then I’m more than happy to come into churches. I teach principles. I’ll tell you why I the the organization is called Spirit Equipment. Because nobody equipped me in the spiritual disciplines. I had to learn the hard way. And my goal is to make spiritual disciplines one small step at a time, simple for people so that they know what steps they can take, so that they can learn to enter into the things that God would have us learn. And so I have five books out. All of them are books that teach spiritual disciplines one small step at a time. And so spirit clip dot com is named after the activity that’s involved in my ministry. And and I do it all cross denominational line. I’m gonna be speaking to a bunch of methodists in a few months. I’m gonna speak to a pentecostal group after that. I’m I’m working with the Christian missionary alliance. I have preached him back to churches and men and night churches. I have spoken trans denominationally to Catholics and Africans and Baptist and Presbyterian and many Knights. You name it, they’re all there. Either my own denomination, sometimes they’ll let me speak in my own too. Anyway, I am an orthodox believer. I believe in, you know, the classic statements, the creed of the church, and so on. And I’m looking for really three things when I’m going into a church. I know that I can work with you. And number one, you have a high view of the bible as final. That you believe that Jesus is in fact God the sun and that you believe that that the new birth is essential. If those three things are there, I don’t care which background is I can work with you. And that those are the groups that I go to.
Victoria Volk: And so I will put your website in the show notes, and anything else you would like to pass along with me to add?
David Chotka: You know, right now, I’m trying to figure out some way to get the first chapter of the book and audiobook. Available. So I’m talking to my publisher. So God willing, I think it’s really important that you actually it’s it’s in my voice and in the voice of the other co writer. And so both of our voices are in the first chapter. And we both tell a story or two. And it’ll be I’m trying to get that done. So If I don’t get it done from my publisher, I’m gonna rerecord it myself and send it to you. I’d like to make that available to anybody who’d like to receive that.
Victoria Volk: Sounds good. And anything else you’d like to share that you don’t feel and you got to?
David Chotka: Oh, listen. We covered the ground here. We went long. We waxed long so that we could cover all the ground. So I think we did. There’s lots I could teach and talk about. I’ve written five books. I have a book on hearing the voice of Jesus. I have a book on dealing with the key phrases and words of the Lord’s prayer. I have this one on healing prayer. I’m writing I’m rewriting the Lord’s prayer book, and I have a book where I am where I’m teaching on the Holy Spirit, how Holy Spirit works. I’m a I’m a sessional lecturer in the Pathways School for Ministry on the Holy Spirit’s baptismal, what it looks like, how it works. So these are the areas of my expertise. And I’m more than happy to to talk. In this case, I believe with your podcast, your audience, the Healing Cray book was the best book to to put forward. It was the one that speaks to the constituency that you’re in.
Victoria Volk: I would agree. Yeah. And thank you so much for everything that you shared today and to my listeners and I enjoyed our conversation.
David Chotka: And likewise, it was been it’s been easy to have the conversation with you. Thank you, Victoria.
Victoria Volk: And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life, much love.
Divorce, Grieving Voices Guest, Pespective, Podcast |
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
In a world where life’s transitions often have heavy financial implications, Leah Hadley is a beacon of guidance and support. On this episode of Grieving Voices, Leah—founder of Intentional Wealth Partners and Intentional Divorce Solutions—shared her journey from investment analyst to empowering individuals through some of their most challenging moments, including divorce, of which she brings her personal experiences into her work with others.
Leah navigated personal upheavals such as adoption and divorce while building her career in finance for over fifteen years. Her transition to entrepreneurship was not just about professional growth but also about creating flexibility to address the nuanced needs of her own family and those facing significant life changes like divorce.
Key Points Discussed:
- Leah’s transition from an investment analyst to starting her own business to accommodate her role as an adoptive mother and her experience through divorce.
- The challenges faced during divorce include co-parenting dynamics, emotional turmoil, and financial restructuring.
- The importance of understanding one’s finances when heading into a divorce.
- The importance of support systems.
- Working as both an advocate for one spouse or neutrally for couples to optimize marital estate division fairly.
One core message from our conversation was the critical need for financial clarity amidst the emotional storm of separation. Leah underscored how even experts can feel overwhelmed when emotions cloud judgment—a powerful reminder that during times of distress, having expert advice isn’t just helpful; it’s essential.
For anyone facing the daunting path of divorce, Leah advises taking measured steps toward thoroughly understanding their finances before making any decisions. This approach minimizes costly mistakes and ensures today’s choices positively shape the future.
RESOURCES:
CONNECT:
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If you are struggling with grief due to any of the 40+ losses, free resources are available HERE.
CONNECT WITH VICTORIA:
Navigating Life’s Transitions with Financial Empowerment: Insights from Leah Hadley
Life is a journey marked by transitions, and while some are joyous, others can be incredibly challenging. One of the most tumultuous changes many face is divorce—a process that not only signifies the end of a relationship but also brings about profound financial implications. In this blog post, we dive into the insights shared by Leah Hadley on Grieving Voices, where she offers invaluable advice drawn from her personal experiences and professional expertise as a financial empowerment expert.
From Analyst to Advocate
Leah’s career trajectory took her from being an investment analyst to becoming a trusted financial adviser. Her decision to launch Intentional Wealth Partners and Intentional Divorce Solutions stemmed from her desire for flexibility and dedication to addressing the specific needs of individuals undergoing significant life shifts such as divorce or adoption.
Her own path wasn’t just shaped by professional growth; it was deeply personal too. Having navigated through adoption processes and her own divorce, Leah understands firsthand how emotional distress can cloud one’s judgment—especially regarding finances.
The Crucial Role of Financial Clarity in Divorce
Divorce isn’t just about legally parting ways with your spouse; it involves dissecting intertwined lives—and finances play a huge role in that separation. As Leah points out, achieving financial clarity is paramount during this time:
1. **Understanding Your Finances**: It begins with grasping the full picture—your income streams, monthly expenses, assets you own jointly or individually, debts owed together or separately.
2. **Consulting Experts**: Engaging with financial neutrals who provide unbiased guidance can be critical alongside at least consulting lawyers for legal aspects.
3. **Taking Measured Steps**: For those embarking on this daunting path, taking it one step at a time helps manage overwhelming emotions tied to these decisions.
Communication & Respect: Pillars During Transition
When children are involved in a divorce scenario—or any family transition—the stakes rise significantly concerning communication dynamics:
– Effective Communication: This means managing challenges without letting past baggage interfere with present conversations (e.g., discussions around children’s education).
– Mutual Respect: Treating each other respectfully ensures that co-parenting decisions remain consistent and child-focused despite differences between parents.
Facing Fear Through Preparation
Fear is an inherent part of any major life change—be it retiring or coping with loss—but preparation diminishes its grip over us:
– By utilizing tools like comprehensive financial planning ahead of transitions like buying houses or retirement planning.
– Recognizing fear as natural yet addressable through informed support systems.
Avoid DIY Pitfalls & Embrace Expertise
Common missteps during divorces include attempting to DIY complex legal procedures without adequate knowledge—a risky endeavor leading potentially towards bankruptcy among other issues:
1. Seeking early consultation minimizes risks associated with uninformed decision-making.
2. Tapping into community resources provides practical assistance along with familial understanding during trying times.
Furthermore, resources such as “divorce toolkits” aid in organizing your finances meticulously which could translate into reduced legal costs down the line—an aspect where services offered by professionals like Leah come into play offering tailored solutions based on case complexity.
Finally—and perhaps most importantly—Leah encourages viewing divorce not merely as an end but also as an opportunity for self-realignment and growth despite challenges faced throughout this period.
In conclusion, whether you’re facing upheaval due to personal relationships ending or other significant life events triggering fear and uncertainty—it’s essential not only to seek clarity within yourself but also reach out for expert guidance when needed. Remember: You don’t have to navigate these waters alone; there are compassionate professionals ready to steer you toward calmer seas equipped with intentionality every step of the way.
Episode Transcription:
Victoria Volk: Thank you for tuning in to this episode of grieving voices. Today, I am happy to welcome Leah Hadley, She is a nationally recognized financial empowerment expert is committed to providing personalized compassionate financial guidance through life transitions. She will tell you she’s had many challenging financial times in her adult life, becoming a parent of three overnight, getting divorced, and building a business from the ground up to name a few. These have been times when her ability to hunt down appropriate resources and careful financial planning was critical to her peace of mind. A former investment analyst sought after speaker an award winning financial planner Lea is the founder of intentional wealth partners and intentional divorce solutions. Leah uses her knowledge of more than fifteen years of experience to help our clients make intentional, financial decisions. Thank you so much for being here, my being my guest, and for sharing a topic, I think, specifically for divorce, but because of your background experience of and your personal experience of divorce and just briefly before we started to record of adoption, I think that we can go into two of these big life transitions pretty deeply on this podcast.
Leah Hadley: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate the opportunity.
Victoria Volk: So let’s start with how you got from investment analyst to building your own business.
Leah Hadley: Yeah. It was not planned, Avianis. It was an equity research analyst. And so for equity research, you travel quite a bit to the companies that you cover and to the portfolio managers that are your clients and that kind of a thing. And my ex husband and I had decided that we were going to adopt and we were adapting through the foster care system. And at that time, it was very difficult to get through all of the requirements with the travel that I had for my job. And so I decided that, you know what, just to be the mom that I wanted to be, that job was not gonna be very conducive to what I wanted for my life. And so I decided that I would take my skills and start helping individuals and families, and I became a financial advisor with a large broker dealer at the time. And we were blessed with three amazing children while I was there. And then I found that there was only one way to do business there. They had kind of a structure in place that didn’t allow a lot of flexibility. And honestly, people have different needs especially people who are going through life transitions. So I decided to leave there and go to another firm that I thought was gonna allow me to do more work helping people through these transitions and also found a lot of red tape at that particular firm. Ultimately, I found that if I really wanted deserve people in a way that I felt like people needed support. And I wanted the lifestyle that I wanted for my kids, so I wanted a lot of flexibility to be able to be there to take them to their therapy user to, you know, participate in the PTA and all of these things that I needed to do it on my own. I needed to create the, you know, way of serving people, create the hours, create the time, that’s gonna work for me and my life. And so, ultimately, that’s how I ended up struggling my own business.
Victoria Volk: I have two questions, and I’m gonna ask them so I don’t forget.
Leah Hadley: Okay.
Victoria Volk: Had you had you always wanted to be an adopted mom, first of all? And then the second question is, can you make a distinction between and maybe that if things are different today, I imagine, in firms and that process. But can you make a distinction for people for, like, the financial planners and the firms, Edward Jones, or whoever they may go to, versus these transitions that require maybe a little bit a different approach. Can you make that distinction for people? So two questions for you.
Leah Hadley: Absolutely. So I had not thought that I would become an adaptive mom. That wasn’t something that I had, you know, grown up thinking about or anything like that. And my ex husband and I came to that decision after a lot of conversation and We had a wonderful couple who introduced us to many adoption resources. We went to some different workshops and things to learn more about what the options were.
So it was a long road to deciding that that was gonna be the right option for us. And as far as the different kinds of firms in the way that they serve people. They each have like, especially a larger firm, has a certain way of doing things because there are so many rules in the industry. There just are. There are today, there were then, there are a lot of rules in the industry. And so they create ways of doing business to make sure that everybody is in compliance with all of those rules. But what happens is then you have somebody that doesn’t quite fitthe mold, what they need, doesn’t necessarily fit the way that they do business, And suddenly, that firm is not gonna be the best one to serve that person. Okay? And so for example, if you think about a divorce, every divorce is different. There are no two divorces that are the same. Financial planning for divorce is like financial planning on steroids. You know, you’re looking at every single thing and you’re knowing that everything’s gonna change. Right? And so there are so many different scenarios that it can be really hard for a very large firm to make sure that if they have a lot of advisors working in the space, that they are always in compliance. If they’re not going through that advisers, you know, all their communications and all their reports and things like that. And so I think that’s where it’s really tricky. I don’t think, you know, they’re set out to not help people. But I think there are are very real reasons why it can be difficult for them to have the flexibility to support people in different transitions in their lives. Does that make sense?
Victoria Volk: Yes. And so when you found yourself, going through your divorce, where were you at in your career at that point? And with the kids,
Leah Hadley: Yeah. I was working as a financial adviser, and I was on my husband’s health insurance at the time. And so I was not going to have health insurance through my employer when we divorced, which was a big issue. And I really wasn’t making enough to work myself and the kids as a single mom either. And so that was a big issue for me as well. So there was a lot going on there as far as, you know, when I was going through this transition and figuring out how can I continue, what does my job need to look like how can I be available for these kids in a way that I need to be available for them? So that’s kind of where I was and what was going on.
Victoria Volk: What were some of the things that you did then to navigate that divorce in what worked for you, what didn’t work for you? If you could go back in time, what you can’t, what would you have what would you have done differently, things like that?
Leah Hadley: Yeah. You know, one of the things that we did really, really well Victoria, we spent a lot of time talking about the conversation we were gonna have with our children and letting them know that this is what we had decided to do. And we had really prepared well for that conversation. We sat down together and had that conversation with all three children. My youngest was still a toddler, so I think it was very difficult for him to really understand what was going on. But the other two were old enough to understand at the time. And we had a great conversation with them and answered questions and it went really well. What we didn’t plan for is everything that comes after that. And so one, my ex husband moved out and the kids would go between our homes, especially my youngest. He was still a toddler. He would scream and, you know, fuss because he had to go between our homes. And, you know, toddlers don’t like change. And, you know, it didn’t matter which way the kids were going. It was always very volatile, stressful situations when we were going through these transitions. And he lived close to me. So it’s not like we live as far apart. We really tried to make this as easy on the kids as we could, but those transistors were really, really difficult. And, you know, you still have the hurt and the anger and all of that that goes along with the divorce itself. And so we’re struggling as adults with our own feelings but then also didn’t necessarily have the communication in place to deal with what does co parenting look like going beyond this initial conversation. So that first year, that first year was very, very hard. I was, you know, changing jobs, starting my own business, we’re dealing with, kind of with a schedule that was working for our family. There were just so many changes that we were experiencing at that time. And I think it was just really hard on everybody. What could I have done differently? Absolutely sat down and had a conversation with my ex husband very early on about how we wanted to handle communication, how we wanted to handle transitions. Now we actually have dinner as a family about one a month. I talked to him every single week, you know, we really prioritize making sure that we’re staying on the same page when it comes to raising our children So that way, you know, we’re both there. We’re we’re still a united front even though we’re both remarried to other people, you know. And just really prioritizing what co parenting looks like for us. But it took us a while to get there.
We had to get past some of that, our own hurt and our own anger, to really be able to get to a place of being able to have these comfortable communications and prioritizing the children’s needs.
Victoria Volk: What resources and or people you bring in to your divorce experience that helped you at that time?
Leah Hadley: I have to tell you, I am so fortunate because so many people’s families really struggle when people get divorced and have a hard time kind of finding their space within this new family structure. But my mom has always been my rock. She had gone through two divorces of her own many years ago. And so I think she really understood. I mean, she raised my brother and I as a single parent. I think she really understood what I was going through. And, you know, she was there for both me and my ex husband. It’s not like she was just there for me. So when we needed childcare, we needed you know, one of the kids to get a ride somewhere or something, she was always willing to step in as much as she could. And that was so beneficial. She never said anything negative. About my ex husband, especially nothing in front of her children. And she was really a huge, huge, huge support. Another big support was my church community, and I also know that everybody’s not that fortunate in that respect either. But I wasn’t a church community that was very supportive in helping me figure out you know, what is this role for me? How do I balance these things? How do I take the kids to certain activities and whatnot? And still be able to participate as an adult. So I was very lucky in a lot of ways. I didn’t feel a tremendous amount of judgment, which I know so many people do. And I think my heart just breaks for them when I hear some of their stories. But I I was very fortunate in that I had a community that really surrounded me and lifted me up and helped me figure out what I needed. And even when I didn’t know what I needed, Victoria, somebody would say, hey, let me take your kids for for an afternoon and and give you a break or, you know, something like that. And it was just so valuable
Victoria Volk: in terms of what you do today, intentional divorce solutions. And I imagine that much of your experience or much of the work that you do is based on your personal experience, and you bring that to the work with that you do with clients. So aside from family support, community support, how about in terms of maybe you see a lot of people making different mistakes, you know, as they go through that divorce process. Not I’m talking the financial stuff now. Like, the financial advice, the what do you do next?
Like, how do you create the separation of assets and all of that? What did you bring into your divorce that helped you at that time? And is that what’s really, I guess, informed the work that you do today.
Leah Hadley: It is a big part of why I do what I do because one of the things I saw, you know, I had been a financial professional for years before I went through my own divorce. And it was still, financially, these changes were incredibly overwhelming today. And I a a a budgeter. I go through and create an annual budget every year and then update it throughout the year. And that skill of being able to do that and knowing how to adjust that budget in order to deal with these huge changes I was experiencing. Was so, so important to my peace of mind. Like, I just don’t know how I could have gotten through it without being able to do that. But there were times when I was just so emotionally overwhelmed, I couldn’t I couldn’t sit there and look at the budget and figure it out because I couldn’t get myself to be clear headed enough to really take those skills and use them. Right? And so for somebody who had that much experience and was still struggling, And I’ll tell you, even today, I work with a lot of accounts who are going through a divorce. I work with other financial planners who are going through a divorce. It doesn’t matter what your background is, when you’re going through this huge change impacting every area of your life, can just cloud your, you know, anything that you’re trying to think about objectively. So I did not use a CDFA when I wasgoing through my divorce. Quite frankly, we didn’t have that much of a complex financial situation. But I did definitely lean on the tools that I had already created in my life in terms of budgeting and looking at our assets and looking at our debts and figure out how’s all of this going to work out. But again, my mom was incredibly supportive. My mom does have a financial background. And so when I couldn’t see through the trees, you know. She could really help me kinda clear my way and and say you’re out, okay, this is what we need to prioritize right now. You know. So for example, when we first got divorced, I needed to make sure I got health insurance right away. I was responsible for the mortgage on the home because I stayed in the marital home. So there were all of a sudden big expenses that really increased on me very quickly, and I knew that my income at that time was not going to support that. And so I had to make a change.
Victoria Volk: And what did that look like?
Leah Hadley: So that’s how I ultimately ended up starting my business. First, I went back to equity research because I thought, okay, if I just need to make more money, this is a place where I could make more money. Right? And I could get good benefits. But it came back to right where I was before we ever had the children in that that is just not a career that’s very conducive to prioritize in motherhood. And so I started my own business, and I was really serious about looking at how am I going to support us, and it took some time but I was able to build, you know, two thriving businesses at this point. And and it it ended up working out, but I’ll tell you what. It was not an easy road those first couple of years.
Victoria Volk: I’ve built two businesses too over the over the years and it’s a grind. It’s definitely a grind at first, you know, up all day with the kids and then up all night because they’re sleeping and then you can actually sit and focus and do what you need to do. And so, you know, I love entrepreneurs in that way just because I understand that, you know, sometimes you live your life a certain way that most people wouldn’t so that you can live the rest of your life how you want. Right? Right. What are the baby steps people can take as they’re listening to you and find themselves. Maybe maybe they got served papers or they’re thinking about serving papers to their spouse and, you know, just embarking on this. Journey. What are some baby steps people can take?
Leah Hadley: Yeah. It’s really important that people get very clear on their financial situation. How are you gonna make any decisions if you’re not clear on your current financial situation? And I recognize that this can be very, very difficult for a spouse that may not be involved in the family finances. I work with lots of people who weren’t involved in the family finances during the marriage. Suddenly you’re going through this huge life change and you’re just learning about your own financial situation. So if that is you, you’re absolutely not alone. But that makes it even more important to really prioritize figuring out what is income, where is it coming from, when am I receiving it, What are expenses? What are my fixed expenses that are the same every single month? What are my variable expenses that change from month to month? And if you find that your income is barely covering your six expenses, money is going to feel tight. It’s going to. Especially if you have attorney fees on top of that or other professional services that you may be utilizing through the divorce process. So starting with a very clear sense of cash flow, income, fixed expenses, variable expenses is really important. Under standing what your assets are, what you own, and your liabilities are, what you owe. And so getting clear on what is the value of my home you may need to get an appraisal in order to get a good number on that. Right? Where are the retirement accounts? You know, whose retirement account is in, whose name. If you’re not quite sure you are not alone, so many times people will say, well, we have a joint retirement account. Well, there are no joint retirement accounts. So retirement account is an individual account. And so that’s, to me, a red flag that, like, okay. We’re not clear on the financial situation here. And so really knowing if you are a joint user on a credit card, if you’re an authorized user on a credit card, if it’s your own credit card, that can be very confusing for people. So really getting very clear on your financial situation, is a very important start because until you know what your whole picture looks like, how can you even start to think about dividing things? How can you even start to think about can I afford to stay in the house or what can I afford in terms of whether it’s a rental or another home if you don’t know what your financial situation looks like? So that may not feel like baby steps for a lot of people. I know that that can feel like a very, very big task start with one thing. Getting clear on where income is coming from, when income is coming in, how much.
Right? And then move on to the next thing. Look at, okay, what are my expenses that come every single month? And if you’re not sure, think about how they get paid. Can you go through a bank statement? Can you go through a credit card statement? Review, you know, the last several months and just make a list? It doesn’t have to be overly complicated. But the idea is just to give you some clarity around those numbers. Okay?
But just take it one step at a time. Now a lot of people will tell me, well, I don’t know what our assets are. I don’t know where the retirement accounts are. I don’t know where the investment accounts are. Okay. But if you know they exist, write them down. Just write down that you know there is an investment account. Maybe you know it’s held at Fidelity or something like that. So that way, Ultimately, you can gather that information. You may not have all the information at your fingertips. That is normal, unfortunately. But through the divorce process, you’ll be able to gather the additional information needed to really clarify that financial picture.
Victoria Volk: Do you generally work with one spouse? Or are you finding that you’re working with the couple? And then you’re an advocate for the couple? Going through that transition.
Leah Hadley: I do both. So sometimes I work as an advocate for one spouse and sometimes I work as a neutral for the couple. I think we do our most productive work when we can work as a neutral because then we’re looking at everybody’s financial situation. Trying to optimize the marital state for everybody involved. Everybody’s getting the same financial information at the same time. And that really helps people to stay on the same page. Everybody is looking at the same projections. So if if you’re looking at like a spousal support scenario and finding, okay, you know, I’m I’m thinking I need this much spouse to support, but my my spouse can really only afford that much spouse to support. How do we get to the numbers that are gonna work for everybody? So I really think it’s important to work as a financial neutral as much as possible. I realize that sometimes it’s just not possible. And we do actually more financial advocacy work for one spouse than we do neutral work, but that neutral work is so valuable.
Victoria Volk: I could see where that would be the best case scenario for, I think, both people going through that process just because for like you said, everyone’s on the same page, there isn’t this my divorce lawyer versus your divorce lawyer? And do people still have a lawyer on either side as they work with you generally?
Leah Hadley: So that varies. Sometimes we’re hired by the client directly. Sometimes we’re actually hired by the attorney. One people work in the financial neutral scenario. I like for them each to have a lawyer that they at least consult with. I think it’s important that you feel like you have the knowledge to make decisions for yourself through the process. There are options. It’s good to have the legal background. And I’m not an attorney. I don’t provide legal advice at all. I look at everything through that financial lens. And so for people to really consult and understand what the legal context is in your local area is really important.
Victoria Volk: Who do you think needs to seek support or counsel from someone with your expertise? Like, what are the most pressing scenarios? Or what do you say that.
Leah Hadley: So I find it fascinating who seeks out our services. It tends to be either the spouse who has limited financial knowledge and absolutely knows that they have no idea how they’re gonna work through this financial piece, and they know they need the support. But I’ve mentioned earlier that we work with fair amount of accountants, financial planners, attorneys. And so those folks know what they don’t know. And for whatever reason, we don’t get a lot in between. So we tend to get those who have limited financial knowledge and absolutely need that support. And those who know exactly what they don’t know, and that’s why they want to fill in that gap and they know they need to fill in that gap. But I think, you know, it’s really important that you do understand the financial decisions that you’re making through the divorce process because these decisions don’t just impact you in that moment in time. These are financial decisions that are going to impact your lifetime. They it’s a weird way to think about it, but for most people, the work is the largest financial transaction they will ever experience. And so not having good financial guidance to make sure you fully understand what are the tax implications of that decision. How are you going to support your cash flow, whatever the, you know, issues may be. You know, you’re really selling yourself short. If you’re not allowing yourself to have that person who can really help you to navigate these things. There are some very costly mistakes that people make. Because they just don’t know any better. And so having that applicant on your side can be really, really powerful. But I would say the people who really have limited financial knowledge it’s critical that they have somebody on their team who’s helping them understand and helping them to prepare for their next chapter.
Victoria Volk: Excellent advice. It’s like we, you know, we have a realtor when we buy a home and we go through all this paperwork and all this processes to do so, and that’s a huge financial investment and commitment as well. But like you said, this a divorce can that’s a lifetime impact. You know, I know some people that they end up filing for bankruptcy, did they even need to file bankruptcy?
Leah Hadley: Right.
Victoria Volk: You know, but you feel like you’re so overwhelmed with the pro I’m just gonna do this and be done with it and move on. And I think that’s a lot of what how people maybe approach it and probably one of the approaches that isn’t maybe in their best interest for the long term.
Leah Hadley: Yeah. And that is very true. A lot of people just wanna get it done. They just don’t wanna take the time to think it through. They just wanna be done with it. It feels difficult, that messy middle where you, you know, know you’re getting divorced, but you’re not divorced yet. And there’s a lot of ambiguity around finances during that period of time. We just wanna get past it. But, yeah, some of those mistakes can be so costly that you’re right. They can absolutely lead to bankruptcy or other issues.
Victoria Volk: You talked a lot about communication with your ex husband in that process. And I found on your website that you have a blog post about communication with an ex spouse and navigating all of those conversations that you especially if you have children. Right? You’re going to have this ongoing relationship with this person. And it sounds like you and your ex have done a beautiful job of making it not this, you know, pitting one against the other experience for the kids and just making it a family experience that can be as positive as it can be. So what are some recommendations that you have for the communication piece?
Leah Hadley: Well, I think one of the biggest recommendations I have is to be very real with yourself about where you are at personally at this moment in time. Because wherever you are, if you’re hurting, if you’re angry, and you’re not really paying attention to it, it’s going to come out in your communication. And so really acknowledging that, like, this is a difficult thing. This is really challenging. And it’s okay to have the feelings that you’re having. And then we can we can look at this communication as something that is important, something that I need to prioritize. And that I need to set these feelings aside for the moment in order to be able to have clear concise communication. And that is focused on, you know, whatever the outcome needs to be. Right? So if it’s related to the children and something going along going on at school, we’re not bringing all this baggage that has everything, you know, all these years of arguments and whatever led to the divorce ultimately. Into this conversation about what’s going on at school that we’re really focused on. Okay. This is what we’re communicating about in this moment. And I’m gonna acknowledge that, yes, I have all these other feelings, but I’m gonna set them aside for right now and really focus on what needs to be dealt with. But if you don’t acknowledge that, that’s where a lot of times we get those, you know, quick responses, especially angry responses, that have nothing to do with what you’re actually communicating about in that particular moment. And that’s where we were that first year, you know, that first year where we had not kind of cracked this communication code yet. You know, we were very irritable with one another. We were always assuming the worst in one another. Whereas now, we treat each other with a tremendous amount of respect, which, you know, that’s the kind of relationship I want my kids to see. Between their parents. I think that’s really critical. And we support one another, especially with the kids and making sure that they know that, hey, at the top of the dad’s house, you know, I’m gonna there’s still gonna be consequences in mom’s house because it’s not okay. Right? So really truly staying on the same page and and backing each other up in that life.
Victoria Volk: I think that’s huge even just when you’re married. Hate. I mean, I saw him for it when you’re married to pack each other up and be on the same page and know that, you know, the kids can’t pick one parent against the other. And well, mom said yes. And, you know, and then especially, it’s especially more important when they’re in separate. You know, homes of, you know, when the parents are separated or divorced. How much of it do you when you were talking about the anger and stuff. I one thing that came up for me or what I think I especially people that don’t have that background knowledge, I imagine that it would be a lot of fear that people are coming into your office with or just fear in general as you go through a divorce, like, how are you gonna support yourself? Like, everything that you’ve said, I’ve heard fear in everything that you’ve said. And so I think just bringing someone in like you who has that background expertise can help to diffuse that fear. Like, okay, I don’t know this, but she does. She’s the expert. And, you know, feel empowered by that. Having you as that you know, supports you are a support system for somebody going through this. And so I think it’s important that people recognize that it’s fear really that is probably driving the anger and the emotion and, you know, now you have this huge life transition and what do you do about it? And so let’s talk about some other life transitions that you assist people through that may be filled with fear.
Leah Hadley: You know, I assist people with really exciting things, like buying their first house or retiring or having a baby. They all do. These changes. Changes in our life, you are absolutely right. Do bring bring about fear. And so regardless of whether it’s something that you really look at as like a positive, I’m excited. This is what I’ve been working toward. You know, there are a lot of people who go through a very difficult transition when they retire. It can be really hard on somebody, especially if they had much of their identity tied into their work. And now it’s like, well, who who am I now that I don’t have this this part of me. Right? So certainly, loss of a loved one. You know, that is a huge area where people are so much like, what does life look like? And it’s in an instant in some cases. Right? In some cases, there can be more planning, but not in all cases. And so you know, what does this change mean for me? I had a woman one time come into my office and she had lost her husband. He had actually been sick for a while, so I wish he had come in sooner because we could have done some planning, but she hadn’t have her name on anything. She didn’t have her name on the credit card. She was just an authorized user. She didn’t have her name on bank accounts. And, you know, everything wasn’t set up to easily transfer over to her. So she goes, Leah, I feel like a two million dollars bag lady. Like, I don’t know what to do, and it was just unfortunate because there’s so much could have been done that could have made that transition easier. And then when you do have that that kind of a transition, there’s so much paperwork involved. And for some people, on a good day paperwork, it’s overwhelming. Right? So when you’re really going through all these these emotions, paperwork can absolutely just feel like the thing that’s gonna take you over. And so walking people through what are the steps that need to happen now? That’s a big part of what we do in any transition. Getting really clear on a, b, c, d, e, and knowing that these are the things that need to happen, and this needs to happen before that happens, and that sort of thing. But when people have that concrete guide, that can just be so beneficial because it takes some of this year away. And it’s like, alright. Let me just follow follow with the directions here and kinda work through it. But the other big thing when it comes to fear and finances is a lot of people just don’t necessarily understand the power of financial planning. You know, when you have a financial plan, it really truly is like your financial guide book. And it makes it very clear, will I have enough money to retire or a wall tie? And if I won’t, what changes do I need to make in order to make sure that I do. Right? When people have the financial plan and then they’re going through our divorce, you have that plan as that basis. So now you know, this is where we’re at. We need to make some adjustments here because obviously there’s some big changes but it’s so much easier for them to see what those changes mean for them when they had the plan to begin with. Right? They didn’t have the plan to begin with. Having that plan especially post a worse to know, hey, what can I really afford to spend? What can I really afford to invest for my future? And those kinds of questions, to make sure that I have that strong financial foundation that I’m building wealth and I’m working toward goals is really so critical for so many people’s peace of mind.
Victoria Volk: And what I heard you saying, there’s two things. It’s not enough to just have a retirement account and just letting it build and letting it do its thing.
Leah Hadley: Right? Right.
Victoria Volk: K. That’s that’s me. I’ll be I’ll be the first to admit. I got retirement accounts and they’re just doing their thing. So that’s mistake number one.
Right? And mistake number two that I heard that I figured out for myself as I heard you was that it’s not enough to have just an authorized user on a credit card. Yeah. I did not know that.
Leah Hadley: Mhmm. Yeah. So if you are an authorized user on somebody’s credit card and that card is closed. First of all, they can remove you as an authorized user at any time. They have complete and full control over doing that. But let’s say that person passes away or something and the account gets closed, you don’t have that credit history on your credit report because that wasn’t your your account. To begin with. And so you really need to have a credit card in your own name to be building your credit history.
Victoria Volk: Okay. So I’m so in the event of okay. Well, then it to it’s my it’s to my benefit. Right? Like, if I so for my credit card business credit cards and things like that, husband is an authorized user, but he’s not on the accounts.
So in the event of my passing, he’s not responsible for the debt that’s on those cards. Correct?
Leah Hadley: Not necessarily. Yeah. That’s that’s not necessarily the case. You know, it it can reconsider the marital debt. Oh. And, yeah, the the state can have to pay off those cards. So that’s kind of a gray area.
Victoria Volk: So even if there’s cash back, my husband wouldn’t be able to get that cash back.
Leah Hadley: That’s true.
Victoria Volk: See, it’s like, we can still stick them with the debt, but we weren’t gonna give them a give them a cash back. Okay. Well, good to know. What are some of the consequences you’ve seen in working with those who’ve tried other means or to DIY their way through divorce or other transitions. You know, they come to you maybe desperate. Right? Like, I’ve tried this and this and this and that didn’t work? Like, what are some scenarios that you’ve seen walk through your door?
Leah Hadley: You know, the biggest thing I see people is not wanting to deal with it. They literally just want to put their head in the sand and not have to deal with any of it. As far as the DIY stuff goes, I see some very big mistakes. Sometimes people kind of DIY through the divorce, and then they may come to me afterwards for support for financial planning or portfolio management, and I look at the agreement that they made and there may be tremendous amount of financial risk in that agreement that they hadn’t even thought about. So, for example, you know, spousal support is a big one where if it’s not protecting in some way and the payer of spouse’s support passes away, all of a sudden there goes your income. Right? So we look at how do you protect these things, whether it’s for life insurance policy or or something else. Sometimes people will withdraw funds from retirement accounts, not recognizing that there are other ways to deal with those transfers without having a huge tax burden or penalty associated with it. So I see all kinds of things that people are doing. When they’re when they’re not necessarily informed in doing things on their own, things that they just don’t know any better. Right? But the sooner that you can consult with somebody, the better, and the sooner you can pay attention to this stuff, the better. Like, just don’t keep your head in sand because a lot of times when that happens, people are just accruing debt as it relates to paying their lawyers and that kind of a thing. And it’s like, well, I’m just gonna kick that can down the road and deal with it later, but you can create a real financial burden for yourself if you’re not paid attention.
Victoria Volk: What I see what the dots I’m connecting here is that what you do in one area of life is how you do everything. And so if you are a person who wants to avoid conflict at all cost and confront confronting the things that you don’t want to deal with in life and throughout, like, So for example, if there’s trouble in your marriage and you just wanna put your head in the sand, you don’t wanna talk about it. Right? There’s in marriages, there’s many things you don’t wanna talk about money being one of the big ones. Right? So if you find yourself in your marriage, not talking about money. And I I have people in my life or they don’t have those conversations. There’s one person like you said in charge of everything and they don’t sit down and talk about you know, purchases even. Like, you know, you’re gonna see that reflected in a divorce if that’s where that relationship goes down the road. Like, So if you’re putting your head in the sand now and you’re married and you think everything’s hunky dory but you’re putting your head in the sand eventually that you know, that’s how you’ll respond when you get faced with challenges too, I think.
Leah Hadley: Well, that’s one of the reasons why I see a lot of divorces becoming real contentious is because the one person didn’t know necessarily about the financial situation. Now they’re learning about it through the divorce process, and they don’t trust anything. Because they’re just to that point where trust has been completely broken down. And that other spouse may very well be forthcoming with that information and maybe sharing exactly what’s going on, they may not be. But how do you know? Right? I mean, we certainly can do analysis to figure out what might be missing, what’s not being disclosed, things like that. But just kind of between the two, you know, it can be really difficult to know whether or not that person that can be trusted. So if you come into the divorce process, both being very clear on the current financial situation, you can avoid that whole issue.
Victoria Volk: That is the big takeaway, I think, in this episode today is communication. It comes down to communication. Being open and honest and communicating makes your life a whole lot easier. Alright? Yeah. We’re kinda nearing the end of our time together. And I just wanna touch back, though, on what you experienced in your divorce and personally. And what were some of the helpful and unhelpful things that you experience throughout that time. And maybe things that people said to you.
Leah Hadley: You know, one of the things that I think about when I think about divorce it’s one of these, it’s a huge life change. Right? But through all of the other life changes, there are some kinds of ritual celebration, something that happens. Right? Like, you know, you’re having a baby, you have a baby chatter, you’re getting married, there’s, you know, the whole ceremony reception, what have you. You’re going through a divorce, a lot of times it feels like you have to, like, close the curtains and hide and not necessarily say anything about what’s going on. And for some people had a divorce goes on for years. I was fortunate that, you know, ours was probably six months or something in that range, so it wasn’t, you know, real long. But It’s a period of time where it’s hard to talk about what’s going on. You know, I think a lot of people struggle with feelings of failure you’re grieving all of the loss of all of what you’ve dreamed about together. Right? You know, you have this image of what you thought your life was going to be. Not to mention this person who, you know, thought was going to be your life partner. So there’s a lot going on during that period of time For me, the most important thing was somebody just being there, just listening. I didn’t want anybody saying anything bad about my ex husband. That’s not I wasn’t in that space of wanting to hear that. I just wanted to know that I wasn’t alone that even though I felt like I had to shut the the curtains and kinda hide out, that that there was somebody else in there with me, so to speak. Right? That was really, really important to me. There are things that were awkward, like when I first got divorced, I had kept my ex husband’s name. When I remarried, I changed my name. But his his last name is one that people asked about a lot. And so every time I had this conversation with somebody, I had to beep, like, awkward and, oh, that’s my ex husband’s last name. And I didn’t necessarily want somebody I had just met and I didn’t wanna be talking about my ex husband. Right? And so divorce was really very normal. It is very it happens a lot. And so I think normalizing it is really, really important. I’ve said before, I was so fortunate in that I was supported by my community. I didn’t feel a lot of rejection around the divorce itself. I was just struggling with the changes in my life, but I know for a lot of people there is this whole other element that makes it even more complicated and more difficult. Right? And so just you know, having people who are there can take some of the pressure off you even, you know, for me, my kids were young, taking them for a little bit of time. So I would have a break, you know, my mom taking them overnight sometimes. So I would have space, you know, just being able to have time to spend with friends and not have to worry about what’s going on with the kids. I could not afford babysitters when I was first going through my divorce and, you know, had all those expenses right away, but people were also so generous in, like, giving me clothes that their kids set out brown or you know, giving us toys or, you know, things like that that are just let me just make your life a little bit easier. I know you’re going through a difficult time Let me just do something. Right? All of that stuff was so so meaningful to me and just helped that transition so much.
Victoria Volk: Do you see more women coming to you or particularly maybe men that I think there’s this I think there’s this idea that men should know what to do financially and things like that, but that’s always that’s not always the case where they’re the ones that who were in charge of the finances or were involved with the finances. So is it kind of a mixed bag, or do you see one more versus the other?
Leah Hadley: I definitely see more women. But I also have men who reach out as well. You know, a lot of times in relationships nowadays, one of the spouse’s teachers responsibility for the finances, but it’s not always the man. Sometimes it is the woman who takes responsibility for the finances. But it’s also not always the person who wasn’t involved in the finances that reaches out. You know, I mentioned before a lot of times it really is that person who knows that their knowledge is limited. So they have enough knowledge to know that they need support. But it’s it’s both genders. I see more men reaching out for financial neutral service than I do, women, but that’s just kind of how our practice is. I don’t know if that’s overall.
Victoria Volk: I was looking at your website and I saw that you have some resource is on there, and you have a resource resource toolkit. Can you speak a little bit about what that includes and what someone can find coming to your website and maybe that’s their baby step.
Leah Hadley: Yeah. There’s a lot in the toolkit. It’s a really valuable bundle of resources There’s everything from ebooks around parenting and negotiation skills to a financial clarity kit, which is a series of videos that walks you through the steps that I was talking about before where you really get clear on your income, get clear on your expenses, your assets, and your liability. It’s So there are a variety of resources that are really all about helping you to get super organized and prepared for the divorce process. The more organized you are, the more you will save on legal expenses. One of the reasons that legal bills go up is just because of that lack of organization and people don’t even think about it. But going back and forth with attorneys about documents and things like that, it’s just unnecessary in a lot of cases. You get everything organized, provide it to them all at once, make sure they have everything they need. That can actually save you quite a bit
Victoria Volk: of money. Wow. I actually know of some people I’m going to share that resource with that are going through a divorce and You also have the podcast intentional divorce insights as well, and that’s weekly. Correct.
Leah Hadley: Yeah. Yeah. We just launched that this year. We’ve had some wonderful wonderful guests on the podcast, and I definitely encourage anybody who really wants to be empowered through the divorce process, not to feel like I’m just a victim of the process or I’m giving my power away to my attorney. But people who really want to be educated and empowered through the process to check out that podcast and great resources on there.
Victoria Volk: Howard Bauchner: And you say the word empowered, and I mentioned that earlier, that I think just having you in in someone’s corner is empowering. Right? Yeah. Because you don’t know what you don’t know. Right.
So even if you don’t know, you have someone that does.
Leah Hadley: That’s right. That’s right.
Victoria Volk: That’s empowering. Is there anything else that you would like to share that you didn’t feel you got to mention,
Leah Hadley: just that you get through it. You know, it’s a difficult time. There’s a lot of emotion. There’s a lot of financial change. But the beauty of the work that I do is I often am working with people on ongoing financial planning and investment management post divorce. And I get to see you know, how their life changes. In a lot of cases, you know, they’re meeting their next person or, you know, starting a job or a business that they love or whatever that next chapter looks like for them, I just get to see so many wonderful things taking place. And if you allow yourself to really look at it, as like being your time to really take ownership over your life and, you know, really be in alignment with what’s important to you and your values. It can really be a beautiful next chapter. It’s just getting through that messy middle.
Victoria Volk: About how long do you generally work with a person, an individual, or a couple through the process?
Leah Hadley: So through the divorce, it just depends on the divorce itself. You know, it could be anywhere from three months to three years, really. But ongoing, you know, we work with people through their lifetime. So
Victoria Volk: And do you is it chart, like, a charge, like, per session? Or do you have packages? Like, how do you set up that that work environment for people.
Leah Hadley: Yeah. So on the divorce side of the business, we try to do as much as we can on a flat fee basis. Based on financial complexity. That’s because, you know, we want people to ask us questions. A lot of times, people won’t faster or surety questions because they’re worried about the bill. And so we really try to structure it that way. In terms of the investment management financial planning that we do ongoing basis. That is also on a flat fee for financial planning or a percentage of the assets that we manage, for portfolio manage.
Victoria Volk: Awesome. Well, I have learned a lot today, and I thank you for your time and your personal story and experience of what brought you to the work you’re doing today. And I I I always say this, but I think ninety nine point nine percent of the guests I have in my podcast, they’re doing what they do today because of their past experience. It’s, you know, we find our purpose through our pain often. And so I’m glad that you have phoned yourself in this situation to be of service to others in this way. I’m, you know, unfortunately, you had to go through some difficult times to get there, but I think I think anybody who’s been through a challenging time or a really hard transition eventually. We look back and like, oh, man, that sucked, but it sure really helped build my resilience and empower me to be who I am today. And I think that’s the message I want people to take away from today’s podcast is, one, plan ahead. Two, you’re not a failure. It’s it’s learning. Right? You’re always learning. And three, it’s this is temporary. Right? There’s hope. Absolutely. And your corner.
Leah Hadley: Well, thank you so much for the opportunity to be here with you. It was really my pleasure.
Victoria Volk: Thank you. And I will put links to your resources in the show notes. Again, divorce resource toolkit. Get your hands on it. Share it with someone you love who’s going through this that really could use some empowering information, you know, some baby steps. Information at least. So thank you again. And when remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.
