Divorce, Grieving Voices Guest, Grieving Voices Podcast, Mental Health, Mind/Body Wellness, Podcast |
Phoebe Leona | I’m Only Grieving Fridays
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
Like many kids, Phoebe grew up in a broken home. Her parents split up when she was 7 and she would remain living with her father until she turned 14. With her own knowing and willpower, she left her father to go live with her grandmother until landing back with her mother.
What she experienced between ages 7 and 14 was a frightening relationship with her father, a Vietnam vet, who was struggling with PTSD along with alcohol and drug abuse. Despite loving her father, she knew wasn’t safe in his care. And, life wasn’t done throwing curveballs Phoebe’s way either. It would be a long journey for her to find her own radiance.
Fast forward to adulthood, she reconnected with her father when he called her one Father’s Day out of the blue, after having been rehabilitated and desiring to build a connection again with his daughter. Only, this newfound connection wouldn’t last; four years later, Phoebe’s father died suddenly of a heart attack in his sleep.
Struggling to cope with the death of her father in that first year, Phoebe made a commitment to herself to only grieve on Fridays. And, this seemed to be working for her a time in her mind until one bright, sunshiny day, after feeling like the fog was lifting, her husband sat her down and said he wanted a divorce.
She would find herself living in Costa Rica, looking for a life reset and to reclaim what she wanted for life as Phoebe 2.0 after grief came like a steamroller, leaving heartbreak in its wake. What followed were a lot of lessons, healing, and a re-discovery process of who Phoebe was before her life fell apart and everything went downhill as a child.
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Victoria Volk 0:00
Hi this is Victoria of the Unleashed heart.com and you’re listening to grieving voices, a podcast for hurting hearts who desire to be heard. Or anyone who wants to learn how to better support loved ones experiencing loss as a 30 plus year graver in advanced Grief Recovery methods specialist. I know how badly the conversation around grief needs to change. Through this podcast, I aim to educate gravers and non gravers like spread hope and inspire compassion towards those hurting. Lastly, by providing my heart with yours and this platform, Grievers had the opportunity to share their wisdom and stories of loss and resiliency. How about we talk about grief, like we talked about the weather? Let’s get started. Thanks. Thank you for tuning in to grieving voices. If this is your first time welcome, and if you’ve listened before, thank you. Today, my guest is Phoebe Leona. She is a dancer, yoga teacher and transformational guide who helps men and women feel more embodied through somatic movement and expanded awareness practices to become more empowered in who they are, who they’re becoming, and have a greater sense of belonging. She has been a teacher and a guide for most of her life, but it was after a year of extreme loss in 2013, when she found herself in the vast open space in between her old life and a new life that she dove deeply into our practices, and began her company Nomad to help others through their own transitions and spaces in between. Throughout that time, Phoebe has developed her own movement, somatic practice movement 109 for students to fully embrace the freedom of moving in their bodies, transform old unhealed patterns and reclaim the vibrations and stories they want to bring to life. Baby also finds joy in sharing her story to help others in their own healing. You can learn more about Phoebe’s story on her TED Talk, her podcast the space in between. And there are two upcoming books due to launch in 2021. Ah, no more a multi author book and embodied radiants for solo book by Grace point publishing. Thank you so much for bringing your story and your background to my listeners today.
Phoebe Leona 2:23
Oh, you’re so welcome. Thank you so much for inviting me here today. Victoria, such a joy to be able to be with you
Victoria Volk 2:29
Talking about the vibration and energy and finding a movement practice that we enjoy isn’t can be a struggle for many people and raising my hand right now. I’ve often struggled with trying to find something I enjoy. And yet I don’t get bored with and yet serves me wants to be in pain when they’re moving. You know, I really want to dig into that at some point. But what led you to this work you mentioned in the bio losses in 2013. So let’s start there.
Phoebe Leona 3:05
Sure, yeah. So 2013. I’ll go back a little bit prior to that. So my childhood, I was primarily raised by my father, my parents split up when I was seven. And when my parents split up, I lived with my father until I was about 14 years old. Now, my father had done two tours of Vietnam. And at that point, they didn’t really know anything about PTSD. So he had been going to the VA many times in the early 80s, mid 80s, and basically saying, you know, something’s wrong with me. Now. During that time, he decided to basically take care of himself with hard, very hard drugs. And so he was in and out of rehab for the better part of my like late teens, or late, like pre pubescent years. And I made the choice because it’s getting so bad with his relapsed with the rage with the flashbacks. And we didn’t have all of those words. At that time. We didn’t know what a flashback was, he was just not there. So there was nothing that made sense. And it was becoming very, very unsafe for me. So I decided to leave when I was 1414, almost 15 And I went to live with my grandmother, I moved back into live with my mom, fast forward, you know, he was no longer in my life at that time. And he had disappeared, not knowing if he was dead or alive or homeless or you know, in the hospital or in jail. So there was a grieving that was happening during that period of my life. But I didn’t. I didn’t know that.
Phoebe Leona 4:35
It wasn’t as you’re holding the space for people to empower them and leaning into that grief. I didn’t have that space. It was just okay, let’s grow up now. Right. Dad’s not in the picture. Let’s just, you know, put on our big girl pants and go out there and, you know, become the woman that I’m supposed to be. So there were no there weren’t a lot of conversations that were happening for me to understand that I was grieving. And then when I entered into early adulthood, I met someone in, in college and we ended up getting married at 20 at 28. And then when I was, I think like 32 years old, my father called me on Father’s Day. And he had been rehabilitated, he was actually arrested for drug possession and intent to sell. And it was actually the biggest gift because he was thrown into jail. And he started having conversations with, I’m not sure who but someone in there, and they said, Listen, you have a PTSD problem, and we need to send you to a VA. And so he went on his path of recovery, he became sober, I think he was sober for about 11 years before he entered my life again, he was heavily medicated. So he was that he was rehabilitated, he was sober, yet he was completely numbed out on life thing, another blessing happened for him was that he almost died of lithium poisoning. And basically, that was his 22nd time. So when he was in the hospital this second time, and basically on his deathbed, without me knowing any of this, he he got out of whatever that was, it came across and said, I don’t want this anymore. I don’t want any more, as he called them head drugs. And he just had a cloud lifted. And he remembered, remembered who I was, he remember that he had this beautiful daughter, and he wanted to reconnect. And a few months after, you know, he got out of the hospital, and he was getting healthier. He called me on Father’s Day in 2009. And it was really quite beautiful. I mean, there were a lot of layers to that, as you can imagine, there were a lot of questions that I had. And there was, again, a little bit of the grief of the loss time, right for both of us. But again, we didn’t really speak into that we didn’t speak into that piece, we really just started in the present moment, we had four really beautiful years together. I was, as I said, before I was married and we were living in New York City and my father was in Connecticut. So we decided to move a bit out of the city so that I could see him more we moved to the Hudson Valley. And it was sort of like everything’s clicking into place my Daddy’s back in my life, I’m you know, doing the thing that people usually do when they get a little bit older, move out of the city settled down, buy a house, you know, have a have a stable job, because I’d been a dancer kind of running around being in this chaotic city life for so many years. So everything sort of was just like click, click, click into place. So 2013 My on January 8, my father died, quite suddenly died in a sleep of heart attack. And it was it just it shook me it was it was all of the grief, not just in that time and space. But all of the grief that I hadn’t experienced when he had left the first time or when I had left that first time. And, and the conversations we didn’t have I was now grieving now why didn’t I say this or that or, and so that cracked me wide open, I probably had, you know, and your listeners who were here, they probably know that, you know that first month is just kind of putting together the funeral and getting, you know, taking care of the estate. It’s just that, you know, you’re going in that functional mode of just how do I survive, right. And then once that, that service happens, I think that’s when we can we drop down. And so that second month was really challenging. It was a really dark, dark time for me. And I had basically said to myself, because I had you know, I was running a yoga program. And I said, Okay, I’m going to grieve on Fridays
Phoebe Leona 8:47
With grief, and I said, listen, you’re getting in my way, you’re getting in the way of my marriage, you’re getting in the way of my job. And you know, I’m serving people here, I can’t just break down and cry in my yoga class in front of my students. I have to keep this together, you know, and is sort of that old story that I had told myself from, you know, previous loss. Basically, I don’t have anything to do my husband in the city, I can grieve whatever that wants to look like. So I might get my journals out and write for her. I might watch a movie that makes me laugh or makes me cry. I might look at pictures, I might tear them up. I might just sit and stare at the fire. I mean, it was just would that wildcard whatever needed to come out. I just let it come out. But then the cap had to come back on when the husband came home. And as you can imagine, that didn’t go so well. And so my I was noticing that my husband was coming home later and later on those Fridays. And so I think it was the first week of March where he came home rather late and I just I couldn’t put it together. I was just I sat on the couch I was crying hysterically. He was sitting on the other side of the room on another couch and basically staring at me. And I just kept saying to myself, Why isn’t he coming to me? Why isn’t he putting his arms around me? Why isn’t he? Why can’t he see my pain? Why can’t he be with me? And I somehow find that found my way upstairs into bed. And I will get up the next morning, and I woke up to the sun just beaming on my face. And it was almost like everything just lifted. For this time I woke up, I was like, oh, maybe this is it. Maybe I’m done. And I looked at my phone, the weather, and it said, abundant sunshine. And I was like, Yes, I’m going to choose that. So I got up by went off to work. And I came back thinking I was going to go for a hike with my husband, we’re going to start to make plans for our future, because I was done with this grief. And he sat me down and he said, I want to divorce. And so there was like this whole other layer of grief that that unfolded. So that was the beginning of the grief in 2013. And it’s really been this eight year journey of just making friends with grief. And I really appreciate it. I think you’ve spoken to your 30 year re I don’t remember how you worded it, but you’re a 30 year griever. Is that correct? Is that how you
Victoria Volk 11:20
30 30 plus your Griever? Yeah,
Phoebe Leona 11:22
Great. I agree. Very Yeah. And I think that that’s really important for everybody to understand that it isn’t just what I was saying, Oh, I’m done. Check that off the list. It is it comes in layers. And it’s not linear. It’s, there’s no, there’s no way of really saying, Oh, I’m done grieving. Now. We’re always in that recovery state in some way. And we’ll make it a little bit better some days. Right. So yeah, that’s kind of where it started. To answer your question.
Victoria Volk 11:52
Thank you for sharing. And that is, there’s a lot that’s a lot at one time. I imagine you had other micro losses in between them, because with divorce, you probably had to move. Yeah. All those sorts of things, too, right?
Phoebe Leona 12:07
Oh, yeah, it was. I mean, as I said, that was just the beginning of it. It was like a domino effects. Yes, I did move out of my house. We the divorce went like that. I mean, it was so fast. We had a mediator, it’s very quick in New York. So it happened within three months, we also had a dog that we had to put down, my health was deteriorating, I ended up leaving my job. And it was it was just an all of the other, you know, the micros stuff to go into my dad, I was still packing up his estate and still grieving, you know, the things that I was giving away to his friends are keeping. So there were there were those a lot that was happening. It basically came to a head in October, where that year where I just kept waking up in the morning. And I said and I’d been in the ER twice for for mysterious pain in my body. They thought that it was ovarian cyst, or it was a UTI, they just couldn’t identify exactly what it was. So I just kept waking up in the morning and looking in the mirror and saying, I don’t know who I am anymore. I don’t know who I am. I don’t recognize this person. And I texted my mom and I said, I need to come visit you. And she was about four and a half hours away from where I was living. And she said, Yeah, sure, come whenever and I said, I’ll come out this weekend when I’m not working. And then it just within five minutes. That was I’m getting in the car right now. I’m getting in the car right now. I can’t do this anymore. And I got in the car and I drove and I said What am I what am I doing here? And I basically arrived and they said, I have an idea. But you can also I know I’m not in the right state of mind. If if you want to commit me, that’s okay. Like it was to that point where I just thought every choice I’m making is not the quote unquote, right choice right now. But she actually this is where Nomad came out of it. The the business that you were speaking of in the intro, when I was driving, I said, What are the things that I love to do? I have to make a change here. I have to I have to embody my life again, I have to clean my life again. Because everything is just being taken away from me. And I said, Well, what are the things that I love? And I said, I love I love teaching. I still love teaching yoga. And I love I would love to travel more. And so by the time I got to mom’s and I had been sort of playing with these ideas for you know, over the years, but I said, I want to start my own business of a building yoga retreat, and I want to leave my job that was you know, a salary job that was secure and stable was probably I mean, from the outside looking at it was probably the only thing that was stable in my life at that time, but it really wasn’t there was like a lot of, you know, dynamics in that job that weren’t healthy. And she said, Yeah, do it. And they said Are you sure? I’m not crazy, right? And she said, Yeah, you know, do what you need to do, I’ll support you. And I had played with these ideas for a bit of time about what I what I wanted to create for myself, because I was in that place of wanting to empower and reclaim my life after everything was being taken away from me. And those two, those two things were yoga, and traveling. And by the time I got to the, to the other side of the, what I call the space in between drive between the old life and my new life, claiming my new life that she was really, really supportive. And, and that’s what I did. I think I arrived October 20, or 24th. And I gave my notice October 28, which was actually my dad’s birthday. And, and then a year later, is when I launched my business. So I took a bit of time, I went to Costa Rica, I dealt with a lot of shadows there. But it was my reset, you know, and I can talk more into that. But yeah, I had this kind of reset time. And then I came back to New York, and I started my business on his birthday, a year later, which was really quite special and beautiful.
Victoria Volk 16:13
What did it look like when you? First of all, I think here’s what I want listeners to hear is that you decided, you decided that you wanted more for your life, that you weren’t going to be a victim to grief, which it often makes us feel like we don’t have choices like we. And I often say to it, it puts a veil over our face. So when you said you looked in the mirror and you didn’t recognize yourself, that’s many Grievers. That’s, that’s what a lot of people say. But in a different way. Like everyone says the same thing. It’s just different language. But that’s what it does. We can’t we get disconnected from ourselves. Yeah. And so when we look in the mirror, we don’t see ourselves for who we are, who we really are. And we don’t see the potential of who we could be either, when we have all this emotional stuff, unsettled within us. And so what did that look like? What did Costa Rica look like? How did you because you said your health was deteriorating? Then they’re done that grief, it’s, this is what happens in grief. Right? And so what did that rebuild, and reset look like?
Phoebe Leona 17:24
Yeah, before I go there, when I just reflect back what you just said, too, because I think that really is important to highlight that we have those choices, even in the midst of grief. And to kind of tuck into what I said before about how I just, you know, pulled on my big girl pants, and just the grief is not gonna get me there is this there’s this play between both right? It’s this claiming your life, but it’s not. It’s not this avoidance of grief. It’s really what I think of as dancing with it. Like, okay, but I’m going to take the lead right now. And you might take the lead sometimes, but it’s not going to it’s not going to completely take over, like you said the veil. And so yeah, I just wanted to reflect that. So in terms of Costa Rica, so I gave my notice. In the end of October, and I, the next question was was okay, what do I need right now? What do I need right now, because staying in New York winter, and being depressed, I might slit my wrists, like, and I did, like, I just, I mean, I joke about that, but I, I, I didn’t know even though I knew what I wanted, I still wasn’t over that hump of, of recovery to a place that I felt stable enough. So I said, Okay, I need to go somewhere where it’s sunny. And there’s a lot of little logistical things I don’t need to go into but I landed somehow in Costa Rica, in January, like two days before the first anniversary when my father died. And I, I truly believe that he put me in that place. He he put me in that place. A year later, after he died. I just felt it in my bones that you know, there were so many signs and you probably have had this or your listeners have had this where you just you can feel the presence of your lost loved one is, you know, with, you know, interactions with people or, you know, animal totems, or, or, you know, just receiving dreams and, and I had all of that I had all of these signs that my dad was was putting in Costa Rica for a reason. So I had only gone there for the intention of, I think like two weeks, I had learned about this hostel that had yoga and surf and Spanish lessons and I thought, let’s go check out. Let’s go just be in the sun. Be in the ocean. That’ll be very healing for me. And within a week I had met the This man who I swear was brought to me by my father, an older man, he actually had very similar features as him. And it was just this night, he owned a restaurant in town. And we just started talking. And I told him everything. I told him this whole story that I told you, and your listeners, and he called me the next day, and he said, I have a job for you. And I have a place for you to live. And he, he basically, like orchestrated it that day, he took me to show me the place that he’s and he even told me, you know, he showed me two places, and he said, get this second bedroom, because you can rent it out. And it’s not that much more expensive. Is it? Okay, and so and then we had this hug at some point. And he said something like, Oh, it’s so good to feel you. And not like, in a weird, creepy way. It was just like, just like, Dad, I mean, the way that he said it, and the way that he hugged me, I was like, That was that was confirmation that this was my father. And so I ended up staying there for about nine months. And during that time, I had met people that were really loving. And were really allowing me to be me. And I had realized I had not been me for a very long time. I and I was really tracing it back. And I can’t tell you literally, if this is when it happened. But it’s been happening over the last eight years where I realized I had shut the the, you know, when when she walked out that door, when she was 14 years old, when she left her dad, I had left her behind. And and that was the period where I was starting to reclaim her again and check in with her what she loved to do you know what lit her up, but also the shadows that she hadn’t dealt with when she was living with a father who was dealing with, you know, PTSD and drug drug addictions. And so a lot of those shadows came back. And
Phoebe Leona 8:47
It was, it was a beautiful time. I don’t regret it. But it was a really, really hard time. There was a lot of crying. Crying on the beach, there was a lot of dancing though, too. I mean, there was everything. And that’s the, that’s the really interesting thing about grief is that it’s not just what we think about grief is just I sit there and I cry, right? There’s anger too. And I got really angry. I had had a short relationship there. And I was poor guy. I really took all of my anger out that I had for my father I had for my ex husband. And I took it out on this one person. And so I really danced in all of the shadows. But there was also this beautiful joy, like this pure joy that was there too. So I experienced it all.
Victoria Volk 22:40
How did you make that transition then back home? And where was home?
Phoebe Leona 22:46
Yeah, that’s a good question. I’m still kind of figuring that out. I think it was May I had decided, Oh, I’m gonna live in Costa Rica. This is my life. And I came home, I sold everything because I had been subletting my apartment. And I basically said, Okay, I’m doing this, I came back to Costa Rica. And I was like, This is it, this is my home. And immediately Costa Rica was like, Nope, you’re not here anymore. And all of these relationships that I had built, were just breaking. And all of these circumstances that used to flow easily just were like doors closing, Costa Rica is a beautiful, very magical, very spiritual, there’s a vortex that that was very healing for the time and space that I needed. But it was also like, Okay, now you need to go and live your life, it’s time to reintegrate and really claim who you said you were here and explored it, go back to your quote, unquote, full of life and claim it. So I was there for probably may think I came back in August, so a couple of months. And they said, Alright, this is it, you know, I was getting more messages that I needed to start the business in my, in my old community, because I already had a following there. And I was getting clear on what that was going to look like. So home at that time, came back to New York, in the Hudson Valley. And they started teaching at all the studios that I had made connections with over the years and and basically, that’s what happened was, I stepped into that. And then there was like a whole other layer right of that reintegration. So I feel like Costa Rica was another big gap, that big space in between where I was, like, sorting out the old stuff. And then I was bringing it back into this sort of new life that I was still in the old life and a lot of ways, you know, my still is kind of meeting up with my ex husband on a friend, you know, he had already moved on but like we were start trying to handle a friendship that we clearly figured out but that wasn’t healthy. So there was there was just this reintegration and and it probably took about three or four years to find my flooding again, to be really honest.
Victoria Volk 24:56
Yeah, and I think this is the first time I’m the first time I’m going to say this on this podcast of all the conversations I’ve had with people. That sounds really exhausting. I mean, really, it sounds really exhausting. And that’s what grief is. It’s exhausting. And as it is a progress of new chapter after new chapter after New Chapter, but we don’t get there. You don’t get there from from there, right? You don’t get to where you are, by staying where you don’t get where you want to go by staying where you are. Right. And so it is an exhausting, it can feel like an exhausting process along the way. But I think the more in tune, you become with your in with yourself and your energy in your vibration and in in get more aligned, it does flow more easily. It does come more easily. You can lean into that those days in that grief when when they come but they don’t debilitate you, right like they did before. And I think that’s what you mean with the in between it’s, it’s ugly, and it’s messy. But it’s necessary. It really is. I think it’s just part of part of the process. And it’s going to look differently for many people for everybody. And it’s not going to be how many years? 4,5,8, 8 years?
Phoebe Leona 26:32
Since 2013? Yeah, eight years.
Victoria Volk 26:35
Yeah for me, it was seven. You know, and it’s like, one day, I’m like, Oh, I’m sick of feeling this way. And yeah, you know, and then, yeah
Phoebe Leona 26:48
Yeah, um, yeah, and, you know, seven, and I feel like seven for me was the magic number two, and that’s, you know, there’s the idea that all of our cells have regenerated every seven years. So there’s something about that I knew that, that I had that knowledge. But there was this moment where I thought, I think I’m done. And actually, I changed my claim reclaimed my own last name, because I had changed it back to the, you know, my maiden name. And I felt like, I’m done with that part of me, you know, that. And I, we’ve made our mens and now I want to reclaim my own and actually stepped into my own last name at year seven. So
Victoria Volk 27:34
Well, just like there was a podcast episode was Siri, bernson. Medium. And she mentioned the site or life cycle is, yeah, they say seven years, the astrological cycles seven year cycle. So yeah, very fascinating. If you think about it. Yeah. 714. Yeah, pivotal times of my life, too. Right. So yeah,
Phoebe Leona 27:57
It’s chill. Yeah. I have chills thinking about that. Exactly. It’s, yeah, there’s something what I through this whole process, and I think I always was, you know, in tune in some level, but through this whole process of grief, it really, it really confirmed that there’s something bigger going on here. There’s something so much bigger going on here. And you know, what you were just saying about the seven there’s so many truths that we can’t explain how do we like really explain that, right? We have, we figure it out in our brain. So it’s, you know, our cells are regenerating? That’s what science. So there’s, you know, what series was talking about with, you know, the astrology. But yeah, there’s something else going on here. We might, we might have those, those things that tell us and in kind of quantify it and make it make sense of it, but really, we might not ever really know, right? That mystery. And grief is very mysterious.
Victoria Volk 28:57
Yes. Yes. But that’s kind of the beauty in it, too. Because you, you don’t know exactly where it’s going to lead you. Yeah. And you might have an idea in your mind of, you know, if I would have told you, you’re gonna have your own business, like when this first started. Yeah, I would have said to you, you’re gonna have your own business, you’re gonna be doing retreats, and you’re gonna be traveling and yeah. When you were like in the thick of it, you would have been like, Yeah, can we just fast forward to that, please?
Phoebe Leona 29:31
Well, and you know, as you say, that were laughing and I was, and I was thinking to if somebody had said, Oh, you’re gonna end up living in Costa Rica, and I’m like, oh, that sounds really fabulous. Yeah, sure. But it was also really crappy.
Victoria Volk 29:44
Beautiful place, but
Phoebe Leona 29:45
In a beautiful place. Yeah. So we don’t know. We really don’t know and to just, I don’t know it sounds silly, but to just keep going, you know, on those days, and it’s not, it’s not in a place to avoid cuz just to say, Okay, let’s just keep going, there’s something else pulling me forward, there’s something some reason why I’m going through this loss right now. And maybe it’s for a deeper healing within myself. And or maybe it’s, I have a purpose to help others like you, right? You’re holding space for us Grievers. And you know, whether we’re sitting in front of you speaking or someone’s listening, you might have had to go through that, so that you’re here holding the space for us. And, and, you know, I have, I’m writing my, as you said, in the introduction, I’m writing my book. And it’s, it’s a lot of my story. It’s a lot of the, you know, I write letters to different emotions, and one being, I have a big one on grief. And it’s, I got really angry when I started to get to the realization that I was going to share this story with people because I’m, you know, I’m sharing a lot with you here. But there’s also a lot more to the story that we can’t put in, you know, however long we’re here today. But I really opened my heart and soul up into this book and reveal things that I haven’t even revealed to people who are really close to me and my family are people that you know, my dear friends, and I got really angry, because I was like, Why did this have to happen to me, in order for me to help people, but when it comes down to it when I get to that really dark, deep place within me, and I get really sad and angry, and I go, okay, but there is a trust there is something bigger going on here. And and then I get a message from somebody, you know, Oh, I saw your poster. I heard you on this podcast, and you go, okay. This is an ego. This is like, this is truly. Okay. I have to keep going. So I just wanted to speak into that a little bit.
Victoria Volk 31:55
I use the Five Minute Journal and the quote, or the thing today is the secret of happiness is to find something more important than you are and dedicate your life do it. Oh, I got chills. Like Dan. Yes. The Dennett made me think of that and purpose through the pain you often hear sometimes. But in that process of unraveling. That’s what I like to call it for me an unraveling. What were some of the things that well, what’s one tip that you would give others that are going through that unraveling?
Phoebe Leona 32:37
Yeah, well, there’s so many. Well, you know, I’ll bring it to because you spoke You spoke earlier about your experience with movement and how you said you didn’t want to move with pain. I think that’s how you worded it right. And I, I’d like to use that tip to lean into the movement. Because I think that a lot of us are scared to be in our bodies. We’re scared to grieve. These are two different things in a way, but they’re really the same, right? Where we’re scared to grieve, we’re scared to really lean into all the shadows that sit in that space of grief. We’re also just in general, whether you consider yourself a Griever or not, we’re a lot of human beings are scared to be in their body. And so if we can start to make friends, because really our body and our breath are like partners, they’re with us. Good, bad, ugly, all of it. Right? It’s with us the whole time. And, and so if we can start to lean in to asking the body, what is the message here? Right? We can also ask, great, what is the message here? But if you can lean into your body and say, What is this like you call it pain? What is this pain here telling me. And so during that time that I was in the ER, I was having a lot of pain in my lower right side. And I have actually have two things that I want to share if that’s okay. But I was having a lot of pain there. And it was really like, my body was pissed, like literally pissed off. It was I was having these UTIs is a lot of heat in the system. You know, in Chinese medicine, they talk about heat, and there was so much heat in my body and I’m so pissed off about all the things that were being taken away from me. And that was my body actually reacting to that. I was literally like pissed off at the world. And so when I started to lean in and go, Okay, Bodhi, you’re mad. Okay, let’s, um, let’s figure out another way to to, you know, make friends with each other. And so I started to do very organic movement. And you know, I was a very active person prior to that I was I was presently at that time, a yoga teacher. I was a professional dancer before that. And so I was very connected to my body and love to move but I was realizing I wasn’t treating my body in a way A that was nurturing. And so that’s where I started to do a bit more organic movement and having these conversations and asking the questions like body, what do you have for me here today. One other thing that I want to share with that is to go back to 2012. I had, this was where everything was clicking into place, everything was clicking. And my my yoga program was just about to start. We just bought our house. And my husband and I went to a baseball game and I had like a little summer colds. At that time I was recovering from and we had gone to this baseball game. And one of his co workers who’s a woman came with her boyfriend we didn’t we just sort of bumped into them. And you know, we had a little bit of a conversation, everything. And there were fireworks afterwards. And the co workers boyfriend was actually in the fire department. So he was the one who like let the fire works off. So they had left and I started coughing, and I started to have like what I would think was an asthma attack. Now I never had had asthma before. I couldn’t I could not breathe. I was my face was turning purple. My husband said should I take you to the hospital. And it was just like squeaked out no, because I was scared of like all of that, you know, the anxiety of that on top of it. So at some point, it cleared, and then it turned into bronchitis. It turned into bronchitis for about four months. And to take you now, like a few months after that I had gotten to the acupuncturists after, you know, in the midst of the, in the midst of everything, and I checked everything off, and she said, Okay, when did you have this bronchitis? And I said, Oh, last summer, you know, and she said, she just put her hand on my hand cuz she knew what I was going through. And she looked into my eyes, and she said, Honey, you have been grieving your body knew that you were grieving. So lungs and Chinese medicine is grief. That person that we saw at the baseball game, is who my husband was having an affair. Now, I didn’t know that. I didn’t know that I had no reason to believe that at the time, but my body knew.
Phoebe Leona 37:19
And so my tip is if you feel something in your body, lean into it. Now I’m not saying it’s going to be something big like that. But just start to make friends with it start to listen and say, Okay, there’s this thing that I call, like you said, the sensation of pain, I tried to take that word pain away, and ask what are you really telling me? So instead of it being this label pain, because that’s already a story and unconscious story of oh, it was that time when I was skating outside and I twisted my knee or whatever it is, right? We always we already have that story playing out. But what is the sensation? Is it sharp? Is it in? Is it isolated? Is it local? So is it isolated and localized? Or is it just radiating out right from one place out to the entire body. So you start to get really curious about the sensation. And in there, there might be some stories that we didn’t know that we had. And we can start to peel away those layers. And we might not consciously ever say, oh, it’s because this uh, this, like the story that I just told you. It might not be that literal, but you can start to play with it. And I really promise as you lean into it, things will start to shift.
Victoria Volk 38:34
That’s a great, great tip. Great tip.
Phoebe Leona 38:38
It was a long winded tip. But I hope it was worth it for everyone out there.
Victoria Volk 38:43
No, but I you know, like you said these strange pains that you ended up in the emergency room with twice. I had fibromyalgia like symptoms like no, you know, overall just aches and pains. Like Overall, like I just felt like you’re getting the flu, achy, I had chronic bronchitis year after year as a teenager, I would get it frequently. So it’s totally Yes, totally. Your body speaks all the time, your body into in, in like these things that are happening outside yourself. They’re not just happening there. They’re like an expression of what, you know, if we just pay attention to these messages. They’re not it’s like synchronicities, you know, but it’s have to actually see them to know what to do with them to like, look at them and be curious, like you said, what were some of the ways that you know you’re doing all this inner work yourself, but what were some of the ways that others were supporting you that you found the most helpful?
Phoebe Leona 39:47
That’s a good question. Can I just say one thing before I move on because you said something really. I wanted to just highlight is I think this is the biggest shift that that happened for me too, with With all that we’ve been speaking of, of shifting from how, why is it happening to me? As that’s the victim mentality of how is this happening for me? So why is this grief that I’m experiencing happening for me? How is this pain that I’m feeling in my body happening for me? And just that shift? That was what to lead to continue into your second question. That was something that I had was, I have beautiful teachers, you know, I have family that I’m really grateful for on my mother’s side. And then I also have have had teachers that I learned from and trust. And that was one of my teachers, nuggets of wisdom was just shifting that from it’s happening to me, but for me, or even with me, so in terms of the support from people, you said for me, right, not good. I was supporting. Yeah, I was going to make sure I’m clear.
Victoria Volk 40:58
In what ways did others support you as you were doing all of your inner work? And
Phoebe Leona 41:03
Yeah, so this was an interesting journey to was specifically with my mother, because what I had realized, was that with all of the scraping that was happening, and there was still some stuff that my mom and I hadn’t dealt with. And so I really had this opportunity to because I didn’t trust her. There was a lot that happened in my childhood, where it’s like, why did you leave me with this person that, you know, was a drug addict? Why did you let me do this, and this, you know, so a lot of that started to unpack in the process of the grief. And I kind of got a bit mad at her and regret and resented her and a bit. So we started to have these conversations. And it really gave her an opportunity to, I don’t want to say step it up. That’s the better word, like for her to really open her arms. And let me let me see that she has been here, but maybe not in the way that I wanted her to be. But she was there the way I needed her to be. And so you know, just that that day where I drove, you know, that I spoke to earlier driving there, and she’s had her arms open. That’s what I gave her a hug. And I said, I’m sorry. And she said, Oh, no, I’ve been waiting for this. I’ve been actually waiting for you to break down. Because every time she would drive, she drove to see me that five hour drive like, I think it was like had to have been eight or nine times that year, just back and forth. Whether it was okay, now it’s dealing with dad’s estate. Now it’s the divorce now it’s putting the dog down. Now it’s you’re at the hospital. So she like had been driving back and forth for so many times, and just kind of waiting for me to say, I can’t do this anymore. So it really took that break for me to see that she’s been here this whole time. And she had been there, but I wasn’t letting her and so this period was me allowing to be held again. You know? Yeah, I think I’ll stay there for a moment.
Victoria Volk 43:02
That’s, that’s a powerful point. Yeah. Because, you know, you know, my podcast art for my podcast is me on an island with a megaphone because you feel like you’re on an island like no one gets you no one understands me. Yeah, there for me, I’m not supported. But if you carry the weight of the world of this grief on your shoulders, and you just want to scream, like just hear me and you feel like it’s going nowhere. And but it’s not falling on deaf ears, there are people that want to support you, there are people that are holding space for you or want to, but you got to find your your way to yourself so you can let them it’s it really truly starts with us the self love that we are wanting so badly from other people, we have to start giving it to ourselves. And that was that whole process of what you were doing that unraveling and and going to Costa Rica and working having really crappy days. That was part of it, you know it had that’s how it had to happen for you. And so what has your grief taught you?
Phoebe Leona 44:12
Grief has taught me a lot. Grief has told me that I can be friends with it. That I can be friends with grief. That you know I it really I’m going to repeat it again what you said I hadn’t really put it in those words before when you said the 30 plus year graver that’s not a bad thing. I think grief really makes us more humble, more compassionate, more empathetic. It really what you were just saying of being on the island with the megaphone it it drops us down that that place where we can really be human and vulnerable with each other. That’s probably you know, I’m speaking but and I’m getting deeper and deeper into it. That’s the word that keeps coming through is vulnerability. allowing myself to be vulnerable with others. And that gives me this deeper connection within myself but with other people that I’m grateful for, I don’t think I would have gotten there. If I hadn’t done all of the hadn’t gone through all this loss.
Victoria Volk 45:14
I have an intuition. And I’m going to ask you if you consider yourself this type of person, but do you consider yourself a highly sensitive person and path person? Okay, yeah. Yeah. Because I get you
Phoebe Leona 45:31
Know, I get Yeah, girl.
Victoria Volk 45:33
Yes. Because that’s, I think this is something else I want to dive deeper into with grief is that it can be especially especially hard for highly sensitive empathic people. Because you definitely tend to isolate, and then you take on, not just you’re trying to, you’re not handling your own stuff, well, but then you also take on everybody else’s stuff. And you have no boundaries. And you don’t know how to make those boundaries. You don’t know, what is a boundary? Because you probably weren’t raised with boundaries, right? So it’s like, it’s you. Literally, I feel like with grief in childhood, especially, it’s almost like you have to learn to walk again. Yeah, you almost have to learn how to fund that. And I often say I raised myself, I still feel like I’m raising myself. But really, whose responsibility is it once we’re an adult to raise us? It’s our own responsibility. My kids are helping raise me in a way they don’t realize, but I’m still raising, you know what I mean? Like I’m growing with my kids, because, as a, as a mother, who is empathic and highly sensitive. With grief. Yeah. Okay, that’s a whole nother podcast episode. I’m gonna write that down.
Phoebe Leona 46:56
I love it. When you were just speaking, I was I had this image that I had earlier this year when I was speaking to one of my teachers. And I think that this will really resonate with you, and probably people out there. So I can’t remember what she asked me. But as we were speaking, we were talking about my inner child. And I had this, I had this vision of my child, my inner child, and of standing in the middle of this ring of fire. And I was like, me as like, present adult Phoebe was just going around, you know, with my back to her to protect her from whatever was outside. And my tea and I was telling my teacher, like, this is what I’m seeing right now. She said, Phoebe just turn inward. And I turned to my inner child, and she just like, jumped into my lap. And, and I was, and I clicked for me, that I was in such protective protection mode of her, she, she’s just still solid, she didn’t see the protection, she just saw back to her. And so when I turned to her and helped her, that was she didn’t need any protection. She just wanted herself to be healthy. And I think that sometimes when we feel like we’re on that island with a megaphone, we’re going through grief, and we’re in this, you know, nobody else gets me. We’re actually not giving it to ourselves to get to turn inward and hold that, that experience of that, whether it was in your childhood or in your adulthood that that child’s the I’m just going to call child’s Yeah, that wounded self just needs to be held and needs to be loved. So that just came through that I needed to share.
Victoria Volk 48:42
No, I’m actually in Grief Recovery. I’m a grief recovery specialist. And through the method, you can apply it to all kinds of relationships and the one I also applied it to my inner child. So that was a really healing experience. For me, it’s all it’s so important to bring attention to who we were before grief. And really start there. And where we want to be, live into who we really are right, throughout your grief experience, what has given you the most joy and hope for the future?
Phoebe Leona 49:21
Oh that’s a good question. What has brought me the most joy and hope for the future? I think you know, what I was just speaking into about my mom, I have really healed and still in the process of healing the mother wound with being with my mother and my grandmother. Because what happened was, I came to realize that they had gone through something similar, different stories but similar grief that they didn’t really get to hold space for for themselves. And I started to you know, have more time with them. And actually the pandemic I moved down here to be a I lived with grandma for five months. And now it’s still in the area close to my mom and my grandmother. So that has been the biggest joy is to heal this, this wound that I didn’t even know that we really needed healing. And what was there was another part, you have the biggest hope. And I think that what I was talking about before with the book, I have realized, again, this realization that what I just have experienced and what I will continue to experience, because I’m still in my emotional recovery and grieving, you know, grieving is that I really, truly can be of service to people, and be able to hold space for them, because I have felt that so deeply before. And I can come from that place of just being in that authentic space for them. And I, and I think that right now, we’re still in that grieving of our old life. Yeah, the pandemic was that space in between, that we’re all collectively in of that old life previous, and that there’s something on the other side, but we still don’t know it yet, because we’re still in the middle of it. And I have hope, because of what I’ve experienced, and what you’ve experienced, of grieving individually, I have hoped for all of us to get to the other side, to get through this grief of the old life. And we’ll be able to find a new life together. And I am hopeful for that. But I’m also hopeful that I get to be a part of, of other people’s paths as well as my own in that process.
Victoria Volk 51:36
I think it’s in the contrast that we learn truly what matters and what’s important to us and what we value and and start there in the building the rebuilding of a life that does bring us joy. Yeah, and it is possible. I do want to ask quickly, too, because you kind of mentioned it. And I think it’s important. And I think it’s another good tip. Maybe in there. And so you had mentioned also briefly about connecting with your father, like you, you’ve had these moments of synchronicities kind of these messages. And I first of all, like I said, we have to kind of be open to those, receive them truly receive them. But what were some of the ways that you found and maybe still do that you do connect with your father and have connected with him. And I think I think that’s another tip that I think needs to be added here in this episode. So would you mind sharing?
Phoebe Leona 52:36
Yeah. And so just to be clear, so you’re asking, you know, what were the things that I came witness of after he passed? And so for people you want to kind of invite for other people to look at for themselves in their bigger picture. Is that correct?
Victoria Volk 52:52
Yeah. Like how, like, okay, so like, deer can cross your path. Yeah, like, Oh, that’s a nice deer. Or, oh, oh, nice, double rainbow. There’s a butterfly, like right on my shoulder, you know, like these things that maybe these animals, right, or, like, I think I just talked about this. Actually, my last episode of the takeaways episode I talked about a streetlight would go out. Middle of the, you know, I’m walking at night and a streetlight would go out, I’d be driving, the streetlight would go out. And that would happen several times. You know, it’s like, it’s like, what did my brain connected me to? Well, yeah, it’s something much. Right. So it’s something if it gets your attention, right? Yeah. Is that the tip here? Maybe I’m just answering my own question.
Phoebe Leona 53:44
Yeah, cuz yeah. Because I was gonna say, could give you very specifics, which, you know, even just today, I had this experience, where I was having this big revelation. I won’t go down that rabbit hole right now. But I was journaling as somebody came in, like one of my friends sent me an Abraham Hicks message and and then all of a sudden, I looked at my window and there was just all these blackbirds just like, massive amount of blackbirds just like flying by my window and landed on my, in my yard. And I was just like, Okay, there’s something here, all of this right now. It’s happening. Now. There’s something here now, I can’t go deeper into it, because I’m still unpacking it. But another example is, right after my father died, a friend’s a friend who actually wasn’t my friend. She was just a student at that time. She came to my class right after he passed away. And she called me to lunch a couple of days later, and she’s like, listen, I know, I don’t know you. But I feel like I need to tell you something. She said, I was in your yoga class, and your dad was in the back of the room, just hanging out. Like I saw him. And she had never, maybe she saw a picture of him on, you know, social media or something. But like, I just know it was him and he did here. Have a lizard. And I was like, What are you talking about? She said he was see he had this lizard sitting on his lap. And I was like, I don’t know, he was not a reptilian man, like, he liked other animals that I’d never remembered could have been, you know, it’s just, it was kind of like, very odd. And she’s like, and she even felt like this is weird, because she would have visions, she wasn’t considered, she didn’t claim to be a medium at the time, but she would just have these visions. And so we both sort of were like, That’s interesting. Fast forward to when I was in Costa Rica. This is one of the messages that I knew I was there for him was on the day that you know, hit that first anniversary of his death. I went in, there are lizards everywhere. But I went to this little fruit daddy guy, which is like a fruit stand. And I was sitting there, and all of a sudden, like, a massive amount of lizards just ran up to me. And I looked at them, and I took a picture. And I sent it to cat. She’s like, that was it. That was the kind of lizard that I saw was like, Oh, my God. So those messages, like you said, they’re everywhere. It could, it’s just something that gets your attention. And it could be really subtle. It could be like what, you know, cat saw my friend cat saw months before and we don’t quite get it. And then it clicks later. It could be like you said, Why do I keep seeing this, like go off, you might not never know. But just to lean into it. That’s the tip, I guess if we’re going to put it in a tip. Just be open to the possibilities of receiving the messages and not know, not necessarily know what they need. Sometimes you may get that confirmation, but sometimes it might just be like university like I gotcha. You know, it might be a big profound development.
Victoria Volk 56:44
Yeah. And it’s okay to ask. It’s okay to ask for these signs, right. That’s sort of Siri talked about. Exactly. Well, I feel like this was a really rich conversation. And is there anything else you would like to share?
Phoebe Leona 56:59
Oh we went a lot of places and some places that I haven’t shared with other people before, in this for this kind of way. So thank you for holding that space, Victorian and letting me feel safe to share. I think that’s really important. When we do dive into topics such as grief, that we do feel, you know, safe to be vulnerable. So I just want to acknowledge you for that. Yeah. And I think we said what we needed to say the day.
Victoria Volk 57:29
And where can people find you and your work?
Phoebe Leona 57:33
Good question. So they can find me at my my website, the Nomadcollective.org We’re actually shifting, donating, but if you have the old one that too, that’s fine, you’ll find me. You can just Google my name to even be on social media. I’m on Facebook and and Instagram. I’m gonna dive more into medium and Insight Timer in the next month or so to share my writing and also my meditations. And then my book will be out. I don’t know when this will go live. But my book will be out. And actually you Did did you said a book title that were actually changed the changing the title, but that’s okay. We’ll get a title. It is called variably. Cloudy with abundant sunshine. And that goes back to that day that I woke up and saw my weather app. abundant sunshine. Nice. Yeah, I forgot to give you that update.
Victoria Volk 58:28
What’s your launch date?
Phoebe Leona 58:29
In January actually, if all goes well, January 8, which is the day that my father passed away?
Victoria Volk 58:35
Well, thank you so much for sharing your story your time and I have no doubts. There’s something in there for someone listening. And remember, when you unleash your heart you unleash your life. Much love.
From my heart to yours, thank you for listening. If you liked this episode, please share it because sharing is caring. And until next time, give and share compassion by being hurt with yours. And if you’re hurting know that what you’re feeling is normal and natural. Much love my friend
Grieving Voices Podcast, Podcast, Takeaways and Reflections |
Takeaways & Reflections | You Take You Wherever You Go
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
This episode is a quick and dirty one about how we don’t heal in isolation and that support is an important piece of the grief puzzle.
In all of the conversations I’ve had with grievers of all kinds over the past several years, none of them wished they would be alone in their grief. Every single one had a desire to be heard and held in their sorrow.
Grief is alienating. And, society doesn’t help by perpetuating the 6 Myths of Grief:
- Don’t Feel Bad
- Replace the Loss
- Be Strong
- Keep Busy
- Grieve Alone
- Time Heals [All Wounds]
This episode is a love note of encouragement if you find yourself living the myths listed above.
Allow yourself to be heard and held, my friend.
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I’m Only Grieving Fridays
Hey there, and welcome to grieving voices. Thank you for tuning in today, tonight, this morning whatever time it is where you are. Today’s episode is takeaways and reflections episode from Episode 92 with Phoebe Leona, I’m only grieving Fridays. And I really contemplated that title for that episode. Only because it’s not a main focus of what we talked about. It doesn’t fully embody the areas of grief that we talked about. But I found it interesting that she had created this pact for herself. And it was one of those little pieces of our conversation that struck me. And so that’s why I decided to title that episode. I’m only grieving Fridays. Because imagine if we could just pick a day of the week where we would just allow ourselves to grieve. Is it possible? I don’t know. It didn’t go too well for Phoebe, as she shared in that episode. So if you haven’t listened and want some context, go back to that and listen. But the idea is that it took her some time to really figure out that we don’t heal on our own, that it’s okay to ask for help. And it’s okay to be held. But before she allowed that to happen, she had decided I’m only grieving on Fridays. It’s almost like this stance of defiance against grief, that I think so many of us when we’re grieving, and we’re feeling sick and tired of being sick and tired, unsure of really what to do about it, often finding ourselves downward spiraling and thoughts.
You Take Yourself Wherever You Go
And sometimes feeling like, instead of it coming in waves, it just feels like this consistent freight train that’s dragging you along, whichever you’re feeling today. Like you’re being dragged by a freight train, or you’re riding the wave, expecting to feel the calm again, is another novel thought to think. If only I could just choose one day of the week, to not feel so miserable. It doesn’t work, my friends, because you take yourself everywhere you go. And all of the unprocessed and undealt with emotions and incomplete feelings towards your loved one or whether they’re dead or alive, whether they’re still in your life or not. Whether it was less than loving relationship, all of that stuff, the emotion, the sorrow, the pain. It goes wherever you go. Because you take you everywhere. It’s like we can’t just dump our luggage on one day of the week and just let it all come out. Although we can, but not and then package it all up back in the suitcase and not think that we’re not carrying that with us the rest of the week. Again, it just doesn’t work. So today is going to be short and sweet. Because what I’m feeling called to share with you today is that we can’t choose to just grieve one day out of the week. I mean, we can you can choose that. Who am I to say you can’t. But don’t be fooled to think that it’s not infiltrating all the little nooks and crannies of your heart. It’s not impacting the language you use in the quiet of your own mind or to others. It’s that voice in your head that never goes away.
I would just challenge you to consider rather than trying to choose one day a week to grieve, and essentially setting yourself up for failure, why not seek somebody where you can be held, seek somebody who can be your heart with yours to truly listen without criticism, analysis or judgment. And maybe that means it’s three days a week, you’re meeting with that person. The big difference between that and choosing only one day a week to allow yourself to feel is that those three days you’re taking action. And that’s the difference.
So I hope this quickie takeaways and reflections episode was helpful. I just feel like that is the message that needed to be shared. And know that I am here as a heart with yours whenever you’re ready. And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.
Grieving Voices Podcast, Podcast, Takeaways and Reflections |
Takeaways & Reflections | The Judgment of Grief
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
What is it costing you by looking to others for permission to grieve your way?
What is it costing you, to not address the child within you and the grief you’ve carried with you into adulthood from your childhood?
Grief isn’t about death alone. So, don’t be mistaken that because someone did not die in your childhood that you don’t have grief or, that you aren’t holding on to the energy of grief.
The loss of hopes, dreams, expectations – for relationships, your life, career, health, finances…
Anything you wish would’ve been different, better…this is grief.
We so quickly judge our grief; thinking we’re not doing it “right” or, doing it badly or not quickly enough, etc. We also judge other grievers and how they’re “dealing with” their grief. Which is ironic, isn’t it? Since the vast majority of the population has no idea how to “deal with” their own grief, right?
We break this vicious cycle of judgment when we know better, learn new tools and information, and stop having these crazy expectations of others and ourselves.
Every relationship is unique, therefore, we cannot begin to know or understand the grief of another on the level the griever themselves knows it. It’s impossible. We can relate to their story or their loss, but we can’t truly know what their grief is like for them. This is why judgment is hurtful and can even be harmful.
I get on a bit of a soapbox in this episode, but this information matters to me. And, I want it to matter to you, too. THIS is how we change the conversation around grief – new knowledge, new information, and new tools. Let’s end the judgment!
RESOURCES:
______
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 or anyone you know is struggling with grief due to any of the 40+ losses, there are free resources available HERE.
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CONNECT WITH VICTORIA:
What is Grief and How Complex It Is
And today is the takeaways and reflections episode from Episode 90 with Jill Johnson young rebellious widow times two. And today I’m just going to dive deeper into a few topics that Jill and I talked about which were many. We discussed boundaries, we talked about online support groups and how those have changed since COVID. And much of her conversation was also obviously her story of being a widow, not once but twice. And the judgment and criticism that she often felt that she wasn’t grieving, right, or she was doing something wrong, which is often the case that many people feel judged or criticized that they’re not moving beyond their grief fast enough, or they’re not handling it well. Or maybe they’re handling it too well. And maybe you’ve been one of those people that kind of looks at someone and thanks, gosh, they’re not even really crying. Why aren’t they more sad? Or someone’s on vacation, and they’re laughing. And it’s maybe been only three months since their loved one passed? And you might be asking yourself, gee, how can they go on vacation so soon and be laughing and having a good time. And if that were me, I’d be in my bed and sobbing. And this is what we do. We criticize, and we judge each other in our grief. And although it’s not surprising to me, it can be hurtful, and very harmful to people. And I think this behavior starts to change.
And maybe even altogether stop, once we learn, really what grief is and how complex it is, and how individual it also is. Because here’s the thing, you can be an outsider looking in, but you’re never going to understand that person in their grief. You never will, you can relate to it. But because the person they’re grieving, had a unique relationship with them. All of our relationships are unique. This is why when children are grieving, who, like siblings, let’s say who loses parent, each one of those children will grieve in their own way. They may have experienced the same loss. But the relationships are very different that each of the child had with their parent. There can be on loving relationships that can cause a great deal of pain. And so if you are thinking of someone right now who may have lost a parent, let’s say they’re an adult, and they lost a parent, and they’re not the least bit sad, or appearing that way. You just don’t know what the story was. Maybe that person was deeply wounded by their parent, maybe even abused in some way. You just don’t know. I always try to say or think to myself, I don’t know what I don’t know. So if you are finding yourself questioning someone’s the process, someone is grieving. Just say that to yourself. I don’t know what I don’t know. And what I know for sure that you don’t know is the uniqueness of that relationship. So that’s my spiel on that.
Taking About the 5 Stages of Grief
But one of the things that was also mentioned in our in that episode was the five stages. And this has actually come up. The last several, actually, the last three recordings I’ve done with guests, the five stages and, and I feel like I have to, in some ways defend Elisabeth Kubler Ross and her work because, you know, even in my training as a certified Grief Recovery specialist when I was in my training, the five stages are definitely mentioned. But really, it wasn’t about what I was told at that time when I certified was that her work wasn’t about her initially, the five stages were not about people who are just grieving a loved one. Overall, it was, you know, she was working with those who had been diagnosed with a terminal illness. But that being said, I’ve since talked to her son, Kenneth Ross, and he really opened my eyes to her work. And really, that the five stages, that’s not where it ended. There’s, and they’re not linear either. And so I he said, he gets frustrated, too, he had shared his frustration that, you know, pop culture, and society has put these five stages on this pedestal and people just can’t let it go. Just they can’t let the five stages go. It’s everywhere. It’s in The Simpsons. It’s in books, it’s in movies. It’s it’s everywhere. Elisabeth Kubler Ross is a pop culture icon. Because five stages of grief has been coined. And it was from her work. But again, there’s more than just five, nonlinear, I say that in air quotes, nonlinear stages. They’re just emotions. They’re they’re phases of grief that you go through. And you come back to again, it’s like this wave I recorded with someone recently, and I just I thought this was the most beautiful description of grief. He had lost his mother as a child.
And many years later, 30 plus years later, he’s been confronted with some of her belongings, and seeing them for the first time, and he said, it feels like a shipwreck. And there’s these artifacts and these things that I’m having to look at. And for the first time, and, and that’s grief, it can feel like a shipwreck. But over and over and over again, through the years, as maybe new information comes to light, or new memory surface, or a relationship that your loved one had with someone and they share something with you that you didn’t know, this is why grief is so complicated. In our hearts, it feels so complicated and difficult to navigate. Because we always will have it in our lives is this undercurrent. It’s always there. And why is it always there? Because you take yourself everywhere, right? Like, you can’t run away from yourself. And you can’t run away from your grief. It’s always there. That being said, I know from my own experience, and in working with Grievers and the many people that I’ve talked to for my podcast, that it is possible to feel joy again, it’s possible to feel purpose in your life. And like Gil Johnson, Jung said, you can still go to Disneyland and be a Griever Right? You can still smile, you can laugh, and you can feel joy again. And it’s what you choose to do with those complicated and complex feelings in your heart. Whether it was a loving relationship or not. How you want to move forward. Do you want that to be your the end of your story? That suffering is just what you’re meant to meant to do? Because that’s what I believed for a long time. I guess I’m just here to suffer. And I’m telling you that’s not true. It doesn’t have to be true for you.
We’re Just Big Versions Of Ourselves
What’s come to my mind as I’ve been having recent conversations and as I was editing Jill’s web podcasts Episode was that we are all just like all of us as adults, we’re all just big kids and diapers. Again, learning how to deal with life, deal with grief, address the incomplete feelings we have about relationships long gone, or relationships still in our lives, we are adult versions of our childselves. And so whatever pains and sorrows, in hurts and anxieties, or fears, we bring those with us to adulthood. And, you know, when children lose a loved one, or they’ve gone through something traumatic, children know how to grieve, the youngest of youngest know how to grieve. But they often need permission by others to do so. And adults often shut children down to grieving. Because it makes them uncomfortable. They don’t know what to do, they don’t know what to say they don’t know how to handle it. Because like I said, as adults, We’re just big children. We’re just big versions of ourselves. Kind of in training pants, like one of the one of my guests said that someone he knows developed a program of how to be, oh, gosh, how was it? How to not be emotionally constipated. Which is true, I mean, right? We become emotionally constipated as adults.
Because we don’t know what to do with our emotions. We don’t know how to let them flow through us, we just hold on to them. And we fight to hold on, we fight to hold on to our grief, we fight to hold on to our anger. And we fight to hold on to our suffering, thinking it’s bringing some sort of honor to the memory of this person we lost. Or it’s making us feel better to hold on to the anger of someone who wronged us. But really, you’re the one suffering. I was the one suffering. And so this is why as adults, it’s in our hands, to allow children to grieve. We need to give them permission to grieve. And isn’t it ironic that as adults, the person that needs permission is ourselves like, as adults grieving, we need to give ourselves permission. And we look to other adults. If we’re unsure, am I doing this right? Should I be over this already, and then we look to other adults to give us permission. We’re always looking elsewhere for permission. You don’t need permission, feel how you’re gonna feel. And really let yourself feel it. Because like I’ve said, on my website, and I say it several times and podcast, various podcasts, you got to feel it to heal it. You got to feel it, to heal it. Because as long as we’re bigger versions of ourselves, and we haven’t really felt what was in our childhoods or we’re feeling it in adulthood. But what is the cost of that? What are you trading in the process for not giving yourself permission? And for looking for looking to others for permission? There is a cost to not feeling it to heal it. What is yours? I think there is so much more I could say but that feels really complete today. Of what what I feel like needed to be said and shared. So I’m going to end there.
And I really recommend listening to Episode 90 with Jill Johnson young because it really is a rich conversation. We talked about so many different aspects of grief. She gives really great information to about with children, which I love because I was a child Griever maybe I could stay still on right because I’m I’m just a bigger version of my child’s self right. This is why I think is as adults we often end up parenting ourselves. Like we have to learn how to parent ourselves. Because so many of us didn’t receive that guidance, especially when it comes to grief. But I’ll tell him you can break the cycle. You can learn new tools, you can learn new information and this podcast is a great start. So soak in every episode or as many as you can learn some new information, learn through people’s stories and break the cycle. Be a different source of support for Grievers that you know, be the heart with yours For a child, or for a loved one, or for a friend, or for a colleague, is there’s a very good chance that they don’t have someone in their life that can just sit with them. Thank you so much for listening today. I look forward to sharing more rich conversations with you. There are so many more to come!
Right now I have episodes lined up into November. That’s a fantastic problem to have. I thought when I first started this podcast, I would have a really difficult time finding people who wanted to share about their grief. But really, that’s been the easiest part. And it’s really enriched my life, to sit with people and their stories and really go deep with them. This podcast has been one of the greatest things I’ve ever done. And I thank you so much for your time and listening. If you find this podcast helpful, even if one episode has chipped shifted your perspective about grief for your own grief or the grief of a loved one or, or child you know or love, please leave a review, if you would five stars, if you felt it was worthy of that, and a few lines to share how it helped you. That would be so fantastic. And I’d be so appreciative. I don’t get paid for this. I’m not there’s no ads, there’s, this is purely out of my mission, to shift the conversation, change a conversation around grief, and how we view it, how we look at it, how we talk about it. So thank you so much.
If you are a Griever, and you’re just not sure where to turn or what to do, or you’ve been doing something that hasn’t been helping you, when we do the same thing, we’re always going to get the same result. It’s when we do something different if we’re open to a new new method or a new method, or methodology or what are you missing out on in your life by not addressing your grief. And so there’s a program that I have, it’s called do grief differently. It’s working with me one on one for 12 weeks. And we dive deep in your grief and in your story. And we shift your perspective around that story and help you to get complete, emotionally complete with a relationship that has been truly painful. Or maybe it was very loving. Right? It could be very loving and just really making it difficult for you to move on in your life and move forward. But we don’t just work on one we actually work on two. And often it is a relationship with a parent, because those are the most influential relationships we have. These they take up so much that they’re it’s embedded in who we are those beliefs that we grow up with those stories that get that take root right in our lives and that we carry forward into adulthood. So check that out on my website. There’s more information there. Theunleashedheart.com and and thank you again for listening. And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.
Childhood Grief, Grieving Voices Guest, Grieving Voices Podcast, Mental Health, Parenting, Podcast |
Jill Johnson-Young | Rebellious Widow x2
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY
I asked this week’s guest, Jill Johnson-Young, the following question:
“How are you still upright?”
@RebelliousWidow experienced the loss of Linda, her first love, after 23 years. Linda had survived breast cancer but later succumbed to pulmonary fibrosis which was due to the chemo she received to beat the breast cancer.
Jill would find herself, what she calls, a “rebellious widow” once more after her love, Casper, died of Lewy Body Dementia after 3 1/2 years.
The capacity to love is plentiful in Jill’s heart, along with Linda and Casper, who were also co-parents in their own time, to at-risk children who needed it most; children who had experienced grief and trauma, too. Jill weaves in stories of being an adoptive parent throughout this episode, providing tips and guidance in supporting grieving children.
We are all “built” differently. Our environments, family unit, generational beliefs passed down, personal experience, our own uniqueness, and more all add to the tapestry of our lives. And, altogether greatly influence how we respond to grief and trauma.
Growing up within a family unit that openly talked about death, dying, and grief at the kitchen table, Jill learned valuable lessons that would shape her path forward as a clinical social worker and set her up to embrace the grief that was to come rather than run from it.
We talk about so many areas of grief and loss, as it pertains to children, death and dying, hospice/palliative care, boundaries, and the how of getting through it all.
We are taught how to acquire things/people, not what to do when we lose them. Let this episode bring hope to your sorrowful heart if you are grieving today.
As Jill states, “You can still go to Disney if you’re grieving!”
RESOURCES:
CONTACT:
______
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
Free grief resources are HERE.
Are you enjoying the podcast? Check out my bi-weekly newsletter, The Unleashed Letters.
💛 FREE Energy Type Quiz ➡️ HERE ⬅️
SUPPORT THE SHOW:
Victoria Volk 0:08
This is Victoria of theunleashedheart.com, and you’re listening to grieving voices, a podcast for hurting hearts who desire to be heard. Or anyone who wants to learn how to better support loved ones experiencing loss. As a 30 plus year griever and advanced Grief Recovery methods specialist, I know how badly the conversation around grief needs to change. Through this podcast, I aim to educate gravers and non Grievers alike, spread hope and inspire compassion toward those hurting. Lastly, by providing my heart with yours in this platform, Grievers had the opportunity to share their wisdom and stories of loss and resiliency. How about we talk about grief like we talked about the weather? Let’s get started. Thank you for tuning in to grieving voices. This week. I have Jill Johnson young she is a licensed clinical social worker, former hospice social worker and administrator and co founded a large group private practice in Riverside in Marietta, California. She also teaches courses for therapists and allied health professionals on grief and loss and dementia and is the author of five books for adults and children on grief. She also provides a free monthly dementia support group online, and does a Facebook group chat with Deborah Joy Hart every Friday at 10am. Pacific Time, chills, all grief and loss and dementia with a smile and a positive outlook after being widowed twice and finding your own new life twice. She is now married to a funeral home Director. Thank you so much for being here. And for for having me. Yeah, you have a book though. You’re the rebellious widow all the time. Yeah. And it’s a practical guide to love and life after loss. And so let’s I imagine that’s what brings you to grieving voices. And
Jill Johnson 2:05
Is indeed I reached out because I saw and heard your podcast. And I love having a chance to share the story. And the idea that grief is something you can come out of and come on come out on the other side and make really good positive changes as a result of it. And still keep your loved one with you.
Victoria Volk 2:26
Yeah, it doesn’t have to be a death sentence for the ones still living, right?
Jill Johnson 2:31
It doesn’t it’s not Rose Kennedy that quote that she has is just mash. Is that me every time I hear it.
Victoria Volk 2:38
And what is that? Again?
Jill Johnson 2:39
She has a quote this says something about love. His grief is the measure of your love. And you will grieve forever if you love them. And that’s just not true. I mean, it can be if you choose to, but it doesn’t have to be true.
Victoria Volk 2:56
Well, the thing about that quote is, is that not all relationships are loving. But that doesn’t mean you don’t experience grief in less than loving relationships. In fact, they’re the ones that artists Yes, absolutely. That is a true testament to loving those that are hard to love. Right?
Jill Johnson 3:18
Right. Or he didn’t ever love us in the way that we needed them to.
Victoria Volk 3:22
Exactly. Yeah, right. I think we’re on the same page there for sure. Let’s dig into it. What’s what is your story?
Jill Johnson 3:30
Well, I was married to Linda for 23 years, and she had breast cancer in the first 10 years. We were told in an honor July morning after a routine mammogram. Ladies don’t forget your mammogram routine mammogram, something the size of a piece sitting on her chest wall was stage three with 14 positive notes. She had a mammogram they did an ultrasound they called in a surgeon right that in their care that you don’t get anymore. And within a month she’d had a mastectomy. She’d asked for bilateral the surgeon refused. She asked for a port in that surgery because she knew I worked for hospice at the time I took her scans to our doc. We knew it was serious. The surgeon wouldn’t do it. So she had to have two surgeries in the space of five days. We would see the oncologist behind his back because he wouldn’t release her oncology because he said she’s not going to need chemo. Yet 14 positive notes folks, you need chemo. And the oncologist looked at us and said, Yeah, I’m gonna throw everything at this but you’re gonna be dead by December. And you sort of feel like the floor pulls out from under you that date of diagnosis is a real thing. There’s two DL DS in our world. The date you get the diagnosis and the date they die. And so we went to work they did throw everything at her she had to work all the way through chemo. because we lived in Florida at the time, and we didn’t have benefits that we could cover each other. She went back to work two days after that mastectomy with the drains in place, and she was a warrior. And she beat the cancer, she died cancer free. What she didn’t do, right, and she was so proud of that. So proud of it. What you didn’t do was beat the pulmonary fibrosis, which was brought on by the chemotherapy, which was absolutely necessary and gave us 10 more years we would have been, and time to adopt our kids. And you know, time to have another full half of our life together. But ultimately, one of the medicines that she was given causes loss of heart and lung function. And she died of pulmonary fibrosis, fibrosis and heart failure. After 20, close to 23 years, we were just shy of that. She was 58 years old. And while she was dying, she was on hospice, because I was a hospice social worker. And of course, we’re going to have hospice, and we’re gonna have it sooner than later. Because I’m a hospice social worker. And I asked for hospice, one of her nurses was very unique. She walked up to our door the first day, and she had a very deep southern drawl. And she said, my name is Casper. I’m your hospice nurse. I thought oh my god, the Friendly Ghost is now the hospice nurse and this crazy house with two kids a third, we were in the process of adopting at 16. You know, I don’t know how many cats and dogs and other creatures we had in the house. Okay, now we’ve got the Friendly Ghost this fits. They turned out to be good friends. They hung out together. Casper came over while I was at work. I didn’t even know about it. They had the same background. They drank the same icky, horrible chocolate sodas. They were two peas in a pod. And ultimately, before Linda died, she told everybody who would listen that she wanted me to marry Casper after death. And I kept saying, Yeah, Fantasy Island was canceled. Except now it’s back. Did you know that there’s a new fantasy island? Yes. And
Jill Johnson 7:14
We’ve all said no, she died a very peaceful death, which I’m very grateful for. And Casper was there attending at the time she died. And I broke all the widow rules. We went out for coffee. It turned out when there was right. We ended up married. I lost some people because every time someone dies, you lose people. You don’t just lose the person who dies, you lose other people that either disappeared during the illness because terminal illness is scary. Or they disappear and vote with their feet because they don’t like a grief. You’re not doing you’re doing it too fast, too slow to this not enough of that. They disappear. They vote with their feet. But when you’re a widow when you remarry, yeah, they really vote with their feet. And Casper and I were married and we had a wonderful time together. And then six months in, we were on a Lanai in Hawaii, and she threw her coffee cup. And she’d had weird dreams that night. And coffee time in our house is sacrosanct. Right? You don’t interrupt it. You don’t speak for the first cup, and there goes the coffee cup. And I said what was that? And she said, I don’t know. My hand did that by itself. And that was Lily by dementia announcing itself. So she was having psychotic episodes immediately. She was having memory loss. She lost her ability to smile almost immediately. Lewy body comes on like gangbusters, especially early onset. And so she she and I spent almost three years looking for doctors looking for the right diagnosis. I finally suggested the diagnosis to the doctor. And he agreed that it was Lewy body. We looked at the scans, you could see the Lewy bodies on the brainstem. And she died within three and a half years. And her death was not peaceful. And part of the people who stuck in there with me to help take care of her. And who took care of Linda, she met with Linda and me to make her final arrangements came in took Linda from our home after she died. She also made arrangements for Casper was Stacy, a funeral director. And she also saw my posts I wrote blogs the whole time they were sick and dying. Because I didn’t have time to talk to people. Right? I’m a therapist as social worker. I don’t know any therapists who talk on the phone voluntarily after hours anyway. I won’t. Unless it’s my mom or my kids. The phone is not going to get answered. So Stacy started seeing how hard things were sort of coming by in the evenings so I could take a nap. We had Casper his brother Jay staying with us and he was helping and then I would stay up all night with her because she wasn’t safe and ultimately after caspers death, Stacy and I married. And so it makes me rebellious, but sometimes to wow, wow, we do grief and loss all the time. Some of our date nights were in the prep room. So yeah,
Victoria Volk 10:16
You know, interesting life, we here have I, first of all, to love once and lose that person as one thing. But to love twice and lose both, that’s an entirely different experience that I don’t know anything about. And so it stinks. But you know, what I can’t imagine,
Jill Johnson 10:39
To have been loved that intensely twice. And then a third time, I mean, very few people find the kind of love that I had with either one of them. And I’ve had three i no complaints, and each one of them set me off into my next life. Literally,
Victoria Volk 10:58
That’s what I was gonna. That’s what I was gonna say. It’s like, you hear stories and like, the choices and decisions we make often lead to the next thing that we can’t even often see the future. We don’t even anticipate or expect it, but, but I’ve never heard it with relationships like that kind of happening in that way. And so that’s pretty remarkable and stars aligned.
Jill Johnson 11:24
They did. They did I, neither one of them would have wanted me to be alone, as Linda was especially adamant. Because she just did, I had three teenage girls, they were a year apart. I was in the middle of adopting a 16 year old. So yeah, she knew that that help was needed. And she knew the kids like Casper,
Victoria Volk 11:46
And how did you manage their emotions and your emotions in Linda’s emotions as she knew what was coming in caspers emotions? Because, you know, obviously, I’m sure that the children were very familiar with Casper and a part of her life as well. And so it’s not just your loss twice.
Jill Johnson 12:07
Oh no, there were multiple losses for all of us. Yeah. And the reason I was adopted my 16 year old is, she’s the half sibling to my youngest. And their birth mother had died in the fall before. And we discovered she was back in foster care in LA. And so we took placement of her. And then the very much wanted to adopt her, she was on the bucket list. So she was placed with for placed with us for adoption, before Linda’s death. And then I adopted her as a single parent. So there were lots of emotions. And in our house, we talked really openly when it comes to death and dying. The kids had already lost grandparents, my 16 year old had lost both of her parents, she was an orphan, when she was placed with me. So it was a no secrets, no holds barred. We did have some behavior from a couple of them. But the behavior preceded all of this.
Victoria Volk 13:04
I mean, can you imagine? I mean, yeah, you know, you kind of got to give some grace there. It’s like, you know, pain and anger and, and hurt and all of that you expect that there’s going to be some sort of way to channel all of that.
Jill Johnson 13:18
The weird part was after Linda died, before the kids knew that Casper and I were secretly dating, I would go to work, and I taught classes in the evening. So I get home at like 10 o’clock at night. And her car would be out front. And I didn’t even know she was there. And I’d walk in and she had this funny smirk on her face. And she said, yeah, they called so there was a medical emergency. And the medical emergencies were a tummy ache. Or a friend had a medical crisis. And they needed Casper to come over and counsel the friend. And what they were doing was testing her because she’d said openly to Linda, I am not promising anything other than I will stand by your family after your death. And so they tested and tested and tested. And they were pretty secure with her before they realized we were dating. They knew they could count on her. And that was a huge blessing that they did it on their own.
Victoria Volk 14:22
Right. And I think no children often do that to you. They do and they’ll test to feel to see well. How are you going to match your words with your actions? Right.
Jill Johnson 14:35
Right. And then the acting out ones would would truly act out and she would put on that very southern bush. You know, you did what? Right, and give them the look. And yeah, there was a whole new behavior pattern of okay, I need to change this up. Because there’s somebody else watching too. She has more energy than mom does right now. Just so yeah, it was it worked out. And they were my oldest child still uses caspers name in a lot of places and online because she was very, very loyal to her. And it wasn’t that she wasn’t loyal to her first mom. Right. And then they all lost their birth parents, of course. So my kiddos know how to do grief and loss, but they do it with grace.
Victoria Volk 15:28
And probably better than most adults, way better than most adults. The funny part is my and I and I don’t want to say better, I want to say healthier, maybe in a healthier way.
Jill Johnson 15:40
They’re able to talk about death, they’re able to talk about grief. They’re able to support people who’ve had losses. My little one now lives in Kansas, and will text me and say, Mom, so and so has something going on. Can Can you give me some things to say to her? And I told her about you? And can she call you and they’re not afraid to jump in? My middle one just finished her Master’s. So she’s working on her LMFT license now. And she took the grief and loss class in her school and didn’t tell me. I said no. Why didn’t you tell me? She said because I knew what you’d say. I said, Let me guess they did five stages. And she said, That’s all they did, mom. And I said, What did you say? She said, I realized I could talk back and not graduate. Or I could absorb it and then tell my friends what was real outside of class. And so that is what she settled on. Right? So she’s gonna be a really terrific therapist, hopefully for foster kids. Just her goal, which is working with another kind of loss. Right?
Victoria Volk 16:46
Right. Yeah, I was even gonna ask you if any of them are have goals of following in your footsteps. But there you go.
Jill Johnson 16:52
Charity hit that goal before she arrived. She she’d been in group home care and foster care. She wants to make a difference in that way. A little one is going to be a nurse hopefully, and Linda steps, Casper steps. And our eldest is a super helper at home, and works first part time in my office and helps care for my elderly mom.
Victoria Volk 17:16
Which is another
Jill Johnson 17:17
Caregiving 101. Well and brief. Yeah.
Victoria Volk 17:22
So how are you still sitting upright?
Jill Johnson 17:26
I have a great sense of humor. And I have an outlook that is probably more positive than most. But I really see grief and loss as a place of growth. You know, I don’t want anyone to sit in grief. I don’t It’s not healthy. It causes premature death. Yep, it causes illness. It’s it’s not good for us. And it doesn’t. In the way I see the world do much for maintaining the memory of the person who died in a positive way. I get to talk about Linda and Casper, you know, frequently, their pictures or in the classes that I teach. When I talk about approaching death. Their stories are in my books. The poodles are to for that matter, and they get to stay with me in an active way, but in a healthy active way.
Victoria Volk 18:30
So for those listening, who weren’t set up, right, emotionally to endure all of this loss that you had, but you had this education and this background and this knowledge to support you. You had resources at your disposal, support, possibly that many people may not have. What do you say to those people listening?
Jill Johnson 18:57
You know, I get those questions all the time because of my presence on social media. And number one, if you were in the last process, ask for help raise that white flag, identify where those people are, because there’s usually one or two helpers lurking that we don’t even recognize, bring them into your circle and make them part of us. Wow, you know, lean on the people who were there. Do some journaling so that you have a place to put the emotions and where you can also start to reorganize your life. And in the loss process when you are grieving. Again, look for other people who have a positive outlook that you can not so much latch onto but partner up with someone who can just hear you talk about what happened. Look for someone who can help you understand what you’ve been through because frequently The End far more frequently these days, which I don’t understand. People are not being told their loved one is dying. They’re not being prepared. They’re not being taught with the dying process looks like. That’s a huge issue. It’s a letdown. It’s a secondary loss. And if ever, there’s a cause for anger that burns, that’s the one. And it doesn’t have to be there. Hospice referrals are being made two days or a day before death. In general. I just got my former brother in law into hospice last week. And it happened because I had places that I could pull, right, and I pulled out all the stops, called directors, one to one, I need this hospice for him, I need these things. Most people don’t have that. So find the helpers, and find the people in the same spaces, who are in a healthy grief process. I look at grief as giving you the the best card in the world to throw down which is I’m grieving, you don’t get to tell me what to do. I’m going to decide what my life is going to look like now. Because I just had a major loss. And it doesn’t have to be a spouse, it could be any loss. That could be your number one pet, especially if you’re a solo individual, that pet is your heart. And when that pet dies, you’ve lost the person who meets you when you come home at night. Right or the person you wake up to just like a spouse. So you get to throw that card down. And say it’s my turn to decide where I want to go with my life.
Victoria Volk 21:45
I’m going to put you on the spot, because I can I can put myself in the shoes of a new graver who’s listening to this. So I’m listening to you and you’re telling me not to stay in my grief. Right? It’s not healthy. It’s and then you’re telling me to seek help? And then you’re telling me to? And I going somewhere with this? I’m not? Yeah, yeah, cuz I’m on the same page as you keep. So I keep because I can just see the eye rolls. Someone who is listening, where it’s like, it’s not like we’re telling them what to do, but you’re not telling them what to do or how to grieve. And you can tell somebody, you don’t have to stay in that place. How do you help somebody see in themselves, like someone listening to this? That yes, you can grieve your grieve your own way. But how do you get to that point? Where Enough is enough? How do you see that? It’s just been this has been way too long. Like I’ve been feeling this way, way too long. Right? Because you and I are in the same space. Right? Right. Get to the other side of this. You don’t have to suffer
Jill Johnson 23:10
But not in a hurry and on your own schedule.
Victoria Volk 23:13
Right. But how much time because I was 30 plus your griever or before I woke up before I re-wave the white flag. I mean, I try I waved the white flag but you know, a few times and it didn’t work for me whatever I tried. So you know that kind of you give up then. Right? Right? Do you think this is just how it is? This is what I guess this is what life is like? And so you give up in a way? What do you say to someone to help them see that what they’re losing is more precious is just creating more suffering, because they’re losing their own time. They’re losing their own time. Like I lost a lot of time in my life.
Jill Johnson 24:00
In giving up all their energy to grief. Yeah, instead of being able to invest in others and themselves. And relationships. Yeah, right. And, and so we talk about where does your energy go? And is that really where you want it to be? If you’re seeking help, from me, that means that you have a change you want to make. And I also really am clear that when I talk about finishing grief, and it’s finishing that relationship with that person, it’s finishing all the undone stuff. And if you’ve waited 30 years to do it, or six months to do it. There’s stuff left. Right. I had a lot more stuff left with Casper because she had dementia. So we had some time to talk but we had a much shorter relationship. So there’s a lot more left to do. Linda and I had a full and complete relationship. And we had three years to get ready for our day. Death, so we could talk and we did all night, every night. She was a networker. So we had that time. So what I say is, let’s look at where your energy is going. Let’s look at what you really want for the rest of your life. And let’s look at how you want to honor your loved one. In your new life you didn’t ask for because you’re taking them with you. We don’t leave them behind us. They sit right with us. That’s why I reference Casper and Linda being in my books and in my education programs, because they go with they’re not my primary relationship, but they’re always there.
Victoria Volk 25:44
That original connection does
Jill Johnson 25:46
Is always going to be there. Yes. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And that’s not to dis stay. See. That’s to say, there’s space for everybody. You know, it’s not a pie. Everybody’s got space. Grievers want to hear that I’m not expecting and somebody else is not expecting them to stop loving, or caring or remembering the person who died. Because that’s the scary part in my experience. No, I don’t want to give them up. You’re not going to.
Victoria Volk 26:15
And it’s also not about condoning whatever it is that happened to them. That is creating the grief in their life of a less than loving relationship to it goes both ways. Yeah.
Jill Johnson 26:26
Right. Right. It’s it’s, I work with lots of people who’ve had desperate parents who weren’t even present. And that’s made it so conflictual for them because they’re losing the potential of ever having that relationship. And then certainly the ones who’ve had abusive relationships, or chronically awful relationships, those things are things that need to be worked through. Because otherwise they stay with that relationship. And you can’t finish.
Victoria Volk 26:57
So what do you say? Because I see this and I hear this a lot too, in the grief space online and things with Grievers is that I don’t need to dig up the past.
Jill Johnson 27:07
I look at what past is still there? Yeah, so we work on, make a list, make bubbles, make whatever you want, however, you want to construct it. Show me this relationship you had all the things that took place that are still in your head? All the good. Right? What’s the good? Even if it’s just they gave birth to me? And I eventually got to another family. Right? Tell me the good. And then tell me the conflict. Tell me the stuff that was bad. And let’s finish that stuff. Let’s work on figuring out what you wanted to say to them. And what apologies they owed you? Or are you conflicted because of the way they died? And you feel like you have some apologies to make yourself? Did you guys have a conflictual relationship and you had a fight? Just before they got into that car accident? There’s some stuff there too, that needs to be worked out.
Victoria Volk 28:09
I’m just curious, did you happen to go through the Grief Recovery method?
Jill Johnson 28:14
I went through the two and a half day intensive. I use some of their materials. I don’t agree with all of it. But I like a lot of it. But through with Russell.
Victoria Volk 28:23
Okay. So yeah.
Jill Johnson 28:25
But it’s it’s like a lot of it. Some of the stuff they talk about in terms of avoiding grief, or they still live by the rule of you need to wait a year before there’s a new relationship. And that’s not the experience that research bears out. For people who’ve lost a partner after long term illness. The research says the opposite of that.
Victoria Volk 28:52
Actually, I actually don’t know, that wasn’t in my trading.
Jill Johnson 28:56
That was what that was part of his training. So he and I had a go around on that one. So be about an hour over lunch one day. So yeah, these parts of it, don’t use parts of it. I use the companioning stuff. Mostly, I do a lot of news, a lot of research on what it is that Grievers say that they need and what helps them get to the other side. And so part of that is really excellent stuff. So what are some of those things? The finishing parts, that is part of their language, it’s also part of the companioning language. And I really like the you really don’t have to agree forever. Because so many grief leaders who are therapists won’t let go that language they still maintain it. And then they say they don’t and then you watch a video and there they are saying it again. And those are powerful words and they hurt people.
Victoria Volk 29:54
Yeah, I actually I had to put in my two cents on a post I saw once where the person who counsels people in grief had shared something to the effect, how they don’t use the words healing, or recovery or things like that. And I thought, wow, that’s really a disservice to people, because then they believe that how they’re feeling is really, that’s how just the how they’re always gonna feel like that it’s not, that’s forever for them. Yeah, you’re telling someone that it’s not possible. And I as a rebellious type of person to you, too, it’s like, don’t tell me what’s impossible.
Jill Johnson 30:36
Don’t tell me I’m gonna feel like this for the rest of my life. Right? Right. When I have a new client come in now, generally, they find me. And so they already know that I’m that rebellious widow. And they, you can see my writings and hear me on podcasts and things. So they find somebody that that matches where they want to be. But they’re still got people in their ear. Lots of them saying, Oh, no, if you stop grieving, it means you didn’t love them enough, you aren’t being loyal to them, you’re moving too fast. That means you didn’t care enough. It might mean that I’m just freaking exhausted. Right? Caregivers get tired. And if you’re one of those people who has been a caregiver, and you’re listening, I get that you are tired. And however you want to take care of you and regain your energy and your strength, you do that. And set the boundaries around the people who want to tell you what to do. Grief work is so much about boundaries,
Victoria Volk 31:35
Boundaries, oh my god, right.
Jill Johnson 31:37
It’s all the boundaries. And that’s kind of what’s missing wrestle kind of implies it. And John kind of applies it, but I’m all about the K rails, you put those K rails three Hi. And you don’t let other people tell you how you’re going to do this or what the outcome is going to be. It’s your choice.
Victoria Volk 31:54
I naturally found my boundaries and where I didn’t have them and how to do that. Because of Grief Recovery. You know, because of that. It Yeah, it was huge for me. I want to get your thoughts on this because the grief space. I’ll just say on Instagram particular. It’s really kind of heartbreaking for me.
Jill Johnson 32:15
Oh, try Pinterest. Really? Oh, oh. When I did that episode, I say go right this minute, pull your phones out. Go to go to Pinterest and tell me and put the word grief in it. Tell me what you see. And it’s Rose Kennedy all over the place. And grief is a measure of your love and you’re going to and then there’s these therapists who say you’re going to you’re going to grieve for half as long as that relationship well holy crap if we were married 50 years I had no hope. Wow, this there’s there isn’t a diagram and there’s no formula. Stop it. Yeah, they’re all horrible about that. So yeah, I’m sorry to interrupt but yeah, the two of them are like neck and neck with horrible.
Victoria Volk 33:00
Yeah, I’m not I’m not really on Pinterest. But yeah, I It’s so heartbreaking for me, because I see so many new Grievers are newer Grievers. And they’re on there and they start an account and they’re Yes, share, openly communicate how you’re feeling. I’m a huge proponent of community like getting it out there like having an outlet for that. But it’s what is it? Does that feed into like the response and the reaction? Does that feed into that? Perpetual Sorrow? Does, like how does that move you forward? You’re it’s almost as if I’ve said this before on other podcast episodes, it’s almost as if the with COVID, especially like the in person support groups that don’t have like an action plan or moving you forward have moved online.
Jill Johnson 33:54
And they’re so devastatingly awful for people?
Victoria Volk 33:58
Yes that’s what they are stuck.
Jill Johnson 34:01
I tell therapists that I’m training you need to lurk in the grief support groups. And you know, first ask permission, of course to get in, but follow them see which ones are healthy because they change personalities, like, weekly monthly, one that’s healthy now is completely unhealthy three weeks later, because somebody jumps in there and starts attacking everybody. And so they leave and the attacker stays. Yeah, it’s it can be a very unhealthy space.
Victoria Volk 34:30
So how can can you communicate then with listeners how to discern where is the healthy space to be online? Like how to discern that for themselves? What is What are the markers or what is that? What are the things to look for in a healthy green space online?
Jill Johnson 34:48
In general, if you’re going into general grief spaces, because there are those that are specific to specific losses, but in any of those spaces, you’re looking for one where if someone says I’m having a good day. Or I really want to feel better, or someone give me some ideas about how I can. Where they’re the healthy ones are people who support them in wanting to make change the unhealthy ones, they are all in on, what are you talking about, you’re not being loyal to your loved one, you’re, you’re not going to feel better. This is what grief is this is, this is how we hold on to their memory, you’re looking for the ones who won’t allow for growth. And then I want you to run from them. And go to another one where there is room for growth. And there are some, right, those groups split frequently, I, I get to be in all the groups because I’ve had so many losses. And so I’m in the parent loss support group, because I’ve lost my dad, and I’m in the widows and I’m in the lesbian widows, I’m in all the groups. There’s a lesbian widows group that just split into three groups. Because one group wants to stay in the unhealthy you have to grieve space. And one group wants to include more a more broad and more general group of people. And one group wants to keep it just this space. So it’s easy to lose groups. And that’s another loss. Look for the healthy ones.
Victoria Volk 36:24
Because you develop connections and with people and you know, it can be one comment that just right social media can be hard, brutal, and heartwarming. Yeah, I can. Yeah. I I’m a huge proponent to just like, really, I think too. And you can agree or disagree. But as you start working through the layers, like you really start to come back to your own intuition and your own sense of agency. Do you agree?
Jill Johnson 36:52
I absolutely agree.
Victoria Volk 36:54
Yeah I just what I found from you take you back. Yeah.
Jill Johnson 36:58
And you take the cube back. When you’re doing grief work, one of the things that I like to do with people, when I do groups is we spend that last day working on a where am I going now board? Not a vision board? Because those have, you know, those are usually money and big things? Who did you use to be before all of this? And what parts of that you do you want back? What did you want to do when you were five years old? I maybe went horseback riding as a kid and you haven’t done it since then. Do want to get back on a horse. You get to decide where you get to go, and what brings you joy now. And you get to go find that and do that and not listen to those who tell you you can’t have joy? Because you should be able to.
Victoria Volk 37:45
That’s one of my questions. And I’ll ask that at the end. But I want to kind of start at the beginning of your story. And as a child, because your grief didn’t just start with the passing of Linda and I’m sure of it. So no, no. What who was Jill before you became a licensed social worker and like, how did you come to be?
Jill Johnson 38:12
And I grew up. I grew up in a family where I had the oldest dad in the classroom. Right? Everyone sort of thought he was grandpa. He’s 10 years older than my mom. And so I had a lot of older relatives because everyone in his family had large spans between spouses. Right. And so with that, there were lots of people who died, and lots of deaths and illnesses. And in my family, it was the norm to attend those and to bring the children. My mom was a preacher’s kid from way back when my dad was a farm kid. Death was part of life. And so you did it together as a family. I am so I would I took a quarter off of college when my dad sister was dying. It was a beloved aunt, and was there at the hospital with her. And when my grandmother’s were dying. My grandfather’s you did that as a family. When a pet died, you had a funeral. Right? When a pet had a birthday, you had a birthday party. That was not farm kid. That was California kids, right? The state differences. There’s a picture of me when I was little conducting a funeral with the neighborhood kids for some creature that we’d apparently found dead on the sidewalk or something. We live on a hillside and that was part of life for us. So death wasn’t scary. Grief was normal. You You grieve people and then you reemerged from it. When my mom’s dad died, that my grandparents lived in a senior community with little patio homes. And about a month after my grandfather’s death She said, We got to change this up. So we went over there. We pulled her table outside, we took invitations to probably 50 people, the community, and we had tea, and desserts out on her patio and reintroduced grandma, to the community as Lily, Lily and Elmer because that was part of life. That’s really what shaped me, I became the first social worker for our local AIDS Project, way back in the day, I was there before we had a quilt. And before Ryan White, we used to take our, our clients from hospitals to a shelter because their families wouldn’t take them. And we would lose them within two weeks to four months. So it was constant loss. And you had to learn to surf the losses, and grieve together and laugh together and move into the next one. And from there, it just stuck. I did CPS, for what for a long time, which is in child welfare is all the losses. My kids are all adopted lots of losses there. And then hospice is where I where my heart lives. And that’s why I do grief and loss work. Because, you know, if I could still be on the road as a hospice social worker, I probably would. But I can’t. And I think I have a bigger impact with what I’m doing now.
Victoria Volk 41:23
Wow that’s Yeah, I think often our professions and where we find ourselves in life is a reflection of our childhoods, yes. Through what we’ve experienced and endured, and really to, like you said, what was normalized for us? You know, you found that that’s a gift that you can give others is to normalize it for other people, as much as it absolutely is.
Jill Johnson 41:51
Yeah. My mom was the caregiver for all the grandparents. She took care of every one of them, except for my grandfather, who died very suddenly, before I was born. And my grandmother on my mom’s side was a nurse. And my grandparents ran a nursing home for many years. So I think it’s probably genetic.
Victoria Volk 42:11
Do you think a lot of the issues we face today in Death and Dying is that there is this separatism that is created? You know, even just like you, okay, you’re married to a funeral director, right? Like, we are so separated from death, like we we hand it off to someone else to take care of the details. They die in the hospital or in the nursing home by themselves often, especially in COVID.
Jill Johnson 42:41
Now, that is not healthy.
Victoria Volk 42:42
Horrible. It’s horrible. It’s horrible. for everybody involved.
Jill Johnson 42:46
It absolutely is.
Victoria Volk 42:48
And so what’s the trade off here that we’re giving? Like, what is this? We are gonna I don’t believe we’re going to know really the true impact of this for probably another five to seven years? If, yeah, I, you know, and especially with hospice, which isn’t really a resource that is readily available. I’m very rural. I’m in North Dakota, very rural, it’s just not accessible. Where do we start in society to kind of get back to that? Make it a family? And can we write because if we’re so bogged down with our own grief, how can we support someone else? How can we, and I think that’s this is why I’m so passionate about changing the narrative around grief, right? Because if we, you are a better service to your loved ones, if you are healthy, right? Right body spirit.
Jill Johnson 43:42
Mm hmm and you can’t help someone else with a loss if you weren’t in a good space. Right. So it’s all of this separatism. It’s just kind of a product of that. We’ve so sanitized illness, and made an expectation that people don’t die, that we’re not comfortable with it anymore. You know, at our house growing up, we talked about death and illness at the dinner table. That was normal. Right, probably to an excessive degree because of my grandmother. But we, because she loved to talk about it. But that was normal. And when I sit down with you know, regular people who are not grief people, and you know, you make a joke about death, the look on their faces, oh my god, right? Because grief, people have a distinct sense of humor that probably shouldn’t be let out very often. That’s why I like grief conferences, because you’re with your people, right? Nurses and hospice. People are like that, too. But we talk about it and so many people don’t when I’m with Stacey and we’re out in public, and some for COVID Of course, and someone finds out she’s a funeral director. In general, they step back about three to five feet. Like she’s toxic, or death is catching. And they’ll say things like, Do you touch dead people? There’s a woman who has a Facebook space, called Life is a morticians wife, and she’s hysterically funny. You haven’t found her everybody should. And one of her memes that she, she replays frequently is, you know, Morty, her husband is the only mortician who works in a funeral home where there are no dead people. Of course, you touch dead people. Right? Because you’re giving them the gift of a good goodbye for their family. Those are people who work of service, but it scares people.
Victoria Volk 45:42
Yeah, right. It’s not the Grim Reaper.
Jill Johnson 45:45
How can you right there, they’re not picking out who’s gonna die they get the people have already died. But they take good care of them. And all people can see is too creepy. Yucky. I don’t think so. Mental sister is like that. Unless you go to a social worker conference, then Stacey is like the hot potato. Everyone wants to talk to the funeral director. Social workers are a little bit weird and proud of our weirdness. And she, I have a table at one of those meetings that everybody wants to meet Stacey. Right. Because they want to ask her about being a mortician. And half of them wanted to be morticians. So yeah, I think we’ve sanitized it too much. It saddens me that in North Dakota, that’s the experience because farm country used to be where death was normal. Right, and neighbors pulled together. And when there was an illness, it happened at home, and people came over. And you even involved at home? And and even if it’s even gone in farm country, then we’re way too sanitary? Because you should have that natural network.
Victoria Volk 46:53
Well, and what do we do when someone is can’t take care of themselves anymore? They go into a nursing home, right? They get segregated from the rest of the population. So it really comes down to how, how can we build support within communities, so that people can feel as a caregiver a that they’re supported, that they would even want to have their loved one with them at home? Right? You know, it’s it’s a multifaceted issue is know,
Jill Johnson 47:24
A huge problem. We don’t have financial support for caregivers in this country. No, you know, if you’re on in all the grief groups, and you’re talking to someone from England, or the Netherlands, they have grants for the family caregivers. So there’s resources, so they can stay home. They’re not huge. But it makes a difference here. In some states in California, we’re quite blessed with In Home supportive services, but you have to be poverty line or just above, in order for your family caregiver to be paid to take care of you. If your upper echelon, you can hire care if you’re Jill, and you’re having a spouse with an early onset illness, and you’re not retirement age yet, which is when we expect people somehow to all die, right? It’s not true. People die lots of times before they’re 65, then you really do have to scramble to create the network that keeps someone home. And I happen to be able to pull it together. And we also have some hospices that have inpatient units. But that’s not covered under Medicare, or insurance. So again, unless that hospice has a fabulous fundraising arm, you have to be able to afford it because they have to be able to pay their people. Right. The hospice I worked for in Florida has six residential units now. And they have a wonderful fundraising arm, so someone can’t afford it, they can still come and the couch pulls out into a bed, then their volunteer cooks who come in, take care of not only the patients, but also the patient family. So if the family patient choose to have the death there, they have an extended family supporting them visiting hours or 24/7. If we could replicate that everywhere. How much further would we be in making death a much less traumatic experience for everybody?
Victoria Volk 49:27
Yeah, I had gone through earlier this year I went through a death doula certification death doula program, and yeah, I mean, the process, are you. Yeah, it really changed my perspective on just the process of dying and how that can really be a beautiful experience. And it is beautiful. If the family feels like they’re a part of it.
Jill Johnson 49:49
And the family knows what they’re seeing and hearing. Yeah, that’s part of what I teach therapists every program literally every program I teach, what’s one hour of one’s life session is going to be, this is what dying looks like, from the very beginning to the very end. And this is what it feels like when the oxygen gets turned off. And the silence when that compressor is no longer going, we go through all of it. And we go from the death rattle, which I just hate that term too. That’s just fluid on a prone vocal cord. And the person dying isn’t hearing or feeling it. Right, because they have to know what, what really happened so they can unpack the trauma for the family who didn’t have anyone educating them.
Victoria Volk 50:37
Yeah. And you touched on that earlier to just about how so often people aren’t even told their loved one is dying. Right? I had Dr. Chris Kerr, who’s did the he was on surviving death and his hospice work is, you know, part of that. And now, Graham, yes. And that’s what he said, We medicalize death. We’ve met it. We’ve just gotten to the point where we medicalize death where you go to the hospital? Yep. It’s a last ditch effort is hospice? Well, I guess we’ve done what we can, you know,
Jill Johnson 51:09
I’ve had so many patients. And you know, especially young women, and they’ve gone into some research program. And they’ve said, repeatedly, I want to get home to say goodbye to my kids. And they end up being delivered comatose in an ambulance. And they die the next day, and they never could speak to their kids. Because the kids weren’t welcome in the hospital setting. We need to let people have the grace to be at home if that’s what they choose.
Victoria Volk 51:36
Well, the impact of that on the kids. Right? Well, yeah,
Jill Johnson 51:40
Right. It’s better for kids to be able to crawl up in the hospital bed and snuggle with mommy. Because if she’s gonna die, that’s the last snuggle they get. Let them have it.
Victoria Volk 51:51
My dad died nursing home. When I was eight, you know, oh, my goodness. You know, I’m, I’m in school, and he passed away in the nursing home. And there was just nothing that could there was no hospice. There just was no hospice.
Jill Johnson 52:07
And this should have been. Yeah, because Dame Cicely Saunders has been doing this for a long time. Right. We’ve had St. Christopher’s hospice, for forever. You know, and Hospice is a grassroots movement. So we should have a hospice in every county. And if there were more nonprofit hospices, we would be much further along. In Florida, go ahead. In Florida, you can only have one hospice per county. And if they need another one, the hospices are vetted, and they get voted on. And they have to demonstrate that they do all the things is required, and that they don’t spend their money marketing. They spend it in their families.
Victoria Volk 52:52
Yeah, I was gonna add to like the veteran community to the veterans. My dad was a veteran. And so he would receive His care at the VA hospital, which was a three hour drive for us. Almost right. And so I didn’t, we didn’t, I didn’t get to see him that often as he was getting his care. But only just this year, I believe they have broken or they’re raising money right now, to kind of build like a Ronald McDonald House, for the families of those veterans receiving care at the VA. And I’m thinking boy, that was like, that was in the 80s. Right. And it’s taken this long, for there to be a facility for the family to be there with their loved ones like, like things move. So slowly, it feels like and they do this space,
Jill Johnson 53:43
Especially looking at Family Support everyone’s about the patient, which they should be, but that the Paisley entire family part of the family’s dying, right?
Victoria Volk 53:53
You support the family is
Jill Johnson 53:55
Your family and the patient needs to know the family is going to be okay. That’s the greatest distress for a dying person is on my loved ones going to be okay. Yeah. And if they’re all stressed out, then the patient’s all stressed out.
Victoria Volk 54:08
Yeah, let’s say well, there’s there’s angst about dying then to write like, there’s no dine and peace or wait, any sense of inner peace when they’re just filled with worry and don’t want to go and they don’t have a choice and all the conflicting things, right. That’s
Jill Johnson 54:26
Got to die at home, got to do the grieving ahead of time we did the anticipatory grief. And then she actually picked the next wife. I mean, that’s, that’s should be. Yeah, there’s the standard, reduce the stress for the patient. All right.
Victoria Volk 54:40
Coming back to your story, what were some of the things that people I know you kind of sprinkled in a few here and there, but what are some of the things that people said to you that were unhelpful and hurtful?
Jill Johnson 54:52
Oh, my goodness. There were lots of things about how can I possibly support the children well enough, if I was in a new relationship, when Linda was dying, there were, you know, lots of suggestions about get the kids out of the house, so they’re not part of it, you’re going to traumatize them. I know. Well, Linda was dying, I arranged to have an adult assigned to each child. So that in those last days, if I needed to be all about Linda, or to take a break, they had eyes on them that I could trust, and that they were people who weren’t going to say the stupid things to them. Right? The kids heard a lot about this as part of a plan. You know, all the things that Grievers hear before someone’s died and afterward, that, aren’t they lucky to have another angel. My middle kiddo and younger kiddo, learned how to turn that one around like that, you know, we get enough angels, we need to keep this one here. God could have your angel, that’s okay. Why don’t you volunteer? Right. They are my children, you can tell. I heard a lot about I wasn’t grieving long enough, hard enough. I didn’t look sad enough. And then I look too happy. At a wedding, I was told that people were there because they felt like they were obligated to they disagreed with this. Like they got to vote, right? We already had property, nobody else got to vote. We were all done with voting. And I looked at those people so that you don’t have to be here. Right? This is not your people. This is my new life. And you don’t need to be part of it, if that’s how you’re looking at it. And that may sound harsh, but I needed my family to be supported as a family. However, my family was defined in that moment. And then, of course, also, when someone’s dying, you hear all the over, there’s this potion, and there’s that potion. And if you’d only done this, which tells that person you didn’t do enough to support them. And you didn’t stop this death. Yeah, all the things and I’ve got a five page list. No
Victoria Volk 57:07
imagine kids hearing that someone’s saying that to you? And then thinking then, well, did you do enough like you saved her like, you know, then looking at you like you failed them? Right? People just don’t realize what they’re saying. Right?
Jill Johnson 57:21
I can’t tell you how many times I heard pulmonary fibrosis is treatable with with a lung transplant? Well, partly that’s because the pulmonary fibrosis sociation keeps putting that out there. But lung transplant lists are long, right? And if you have pF, because of chemo, you don’t qualify for a lung transplant. Because you’ve already killed your immune system.
Victoria Volk 57:43
You don’t know what you don’t know. Right? You say that all the time? Like I don’t know what I don’t know. And that’s where people just jump to those judgments and those those things without asking yourself, I say to yourself, I don’t know what I don’t know, like people have their reasons. Right?
Jill Johnson 58:01
Right. I mean, little people, I’m okay with that. My my little niece, who adored Linda, call me one night, she said, I discovered there’s a secondary list for injured organs that they can still use for people who weren’t good candidates, we could get Atlanta use lungs. Right? That’s been a car accident might still work. And I appreciated how much love that has told you. She has hope. And she wanted to save her auntie. And I had to explain why that wouldn’t work. But she was looking, right? That kind of thing I totally get. I’ve all grown adults coming in and saying I have this laser thing that I can wave over her lungs. And if you’d let me do it last year, she’d be alive. Get out of my house. Just get out.
Victoria Volk 58:48
I think to like some it’s I think for the most part people are well meaning like they are well meaning it’s because I know I’ve been in that position, especially more so in the past. Like you just you just want to fix it. You just want to say something? Yeah, you want to just help you want to, or maybe this will be the one thing that will you know, change the situation or whatever. But yeah, and that’s where I’m that’s why I said I’m a huge proponent of intuition, your own intuition, your own discernment and your own sense of agency. And,
Jill Johnson 59:24
And if someone’s violating it, let them slip out to the outer circles for a while. Because what griefers really need is just someone to listen to them. Yeah. You know, some judge basis as a Manal analysis, someone they can call and say, can you believe so? And so just told me this, right. And usually someone outside the family they need to talk to because it’s the family saying the things and you freak out frequently, someone outside their house of faith if they have one, because that’s where a lot of those things get said. Yeah, right. They they need a space where they can just talk about it. All the things they’re hearing, and the things they’re considering without being judged for just a really safe, secure space.
Victoria Volk 1:00:09
So would that be your one tip?
Jill Johnson 1:00:11
Find the space, allow yourself to have a sense of humor. Allow yourself to laugh. Get some sunshine. They used to say that you can still go to Disney while you are grieving. You can still do that. Now. I can’t say that because COVID Even though it’s open, I wouldn’t say that because COVID Because I had COVID. Right. But I say you need to find some joy still, you’re allowed to let it die on Good Friday. quite inconvenient. Better than dying on Easter. That would have been the absolute wrong message. But I had to do Easter baskets that Saturday. And being our family, we told her she couldn’t die. She said on the second of April. That was where it fell that year. The 30th of March is my oldest daughter’s Adoption Day. So Linda was quite cognizant and aware and we’re like you can’t die that day. You just you can’t wreck her day. She said okay, I’m not gonna die that day, we’re gonna, I’m gonna hang on, I’m gonna make sure that doesn’t happen. And then we sit and you can’t do April Fool’s Day, because that would just nobody would believe us. Right? Because you have a sense of humor, and they’re gonna think we’re lying. So you have to make it past Easter, if you don’t choose Good Friday, and so Good Friday at noon, she was gone. That’s how our family works grief and loss. But you have to be able to have that sense of humor after loss, because otherwise you’re gonna sink. Yeah. So find someone you can laugh with and be disturbed with. Right? It’s in there.
Victoria Volk 1:01:43
So you gave a lot of advice for those who are deep in grief now, but as a child, what was I mean, I know your family, you talked openly and things like that. But was there ever any, you like your earliest memory of something that of a loss that you had that stuck with you? Anything that was said to you that stuck with you? advice or just phrase.
Jill Johnson 1:02:11
Remember my dad companioning. Right, we were at a funeral for someone, I don’t remember who it was, he had one suit, he never wore suits in one suit. And that was the funeral suit. And I can still feel it because it had a very distinct kind of a texture. And he would put his arms around us, standing behind us in the seats under the tent at every funeral. And I remember him saying, this is okay. They got their life and we’re gonna remember them. And it’s okay to cry. And then afterward, it’s okay to be happy, go get a cookie and go outside play with your friends. So it’s that kind of lesson that you can, you can get through this, it’s not going to be the interview. And you can still find happy. That’s a really strong memory. And I remember my mom saying, you know, sometimes doctors can’t fix everything. And we have to accept that there’s limits and find a way to say goodbye instead. So powerful messages. And that was when I was maybe five or six.
Victoria Volk 1:03:26
It is I mean, it’s it was emulated for you, then it was okay to grieve. Yeah. And the polarity of it’s okay to be happy too, in the same day, same time.
Jill Johnson 1:03:39
Exactly. And that’s the message that I if we as adults can do grief better, and make it normal. Then our kids will watch us because that’s how they learn.
Victoria Volk 1:03:50
Future generations. Yeah. And we can change it us. So I started this podcast, yeah. Freight waves did people support you that were most helpful to you?
Jill Johnson 1:04:02
The folks who showed up and were just there, both during the day and after the matzah ball soup delivery of the bringing Hawaiian flowers. So we could have some sense that reminded us of happy moments. The over the top decorations for holidays that brought back the memories, because they both died during the holiday periods. Right. And those who would call me and tell me I just defended you again. Don’t listen, if anyone’s after you. You get to do this your way. Right? The ones I could call and say I need to get rid of these clothes today. I just can’t have them anymore. And they would come. Those were the things it was it was the doing and the Holding space
Victoria Volk 1:04:55
And all of the grief that you’ve experienced what What would you say that it has taught you, maybe about yourself, and also just maybe about the human spirit.
Jill Johnson 1:05:07
It has helped me find my resilience and a great big way. And I know we overuse that term. But it’s in there for everybody. And with Linda’s illnesses, plural. There were times that, you know, as the caregiver, I just felt so beat up, partly because the way the medical community spoke to us, there were some harsh moments. But I was able to discover that I could turn things around. And that we could find fun and happy enjoy. And that was, probably the biggest thing is I needed to know that I could still find joy in life. And that joy was possible even in the midst of loss in the midst of grief. That was hugely important. The month after Linda died, we had prom, and we had military ball. And we had a teen dance. And the one going to prom. The boyfriend dropped her the day before prom, because he said she’d be too sad, bro. You better believe I was a mad mama. Now they’re married. Oh, my. Whoa, and they can laugh about it. Yeah, yeah, we can find our resilience.
Victoria Volk 1:06:22
What do you say, this drives me nuts. So you already know now how I feel about it. But when people say that children are resilient,
Jill Johnson 1:06:31
I think children are able to heal in their own ways. And to grieve in the moments they need to grieve. Children don’t grieve like adults. And the biggest disservice we give them is to expect them to grieve like adults, teens to teens need to grieve with their teens, their friends, not with adults, they don’t want to grieve with mom won’t agree with their friends. And I think children are resilient. But I think we need to not count on that so much as to teach them what’s happening. And to give them space and permission to both cry and to laugh. And to remember, and to include the person who died in future. So in our house, everybody who’s died gets an ornament on the Christmas tree. And at this point, our Christmas tree is like the memorial Christmas tree. Because every dog and cat and rabbit is on there too right?
Victoria Volk 1:07:27
I love that. I love that little tip for keeping that memory alive. That’s right.
Jill Johnson 1:07:36
There’s some families that do like a holiday table Thanksgiving, where they do the handprint or something and you know, write the name and the date that they’re there. And then the year that somebody died, they put them in a cloud in the center of the table. And so this, we have to be careful not to bleach or wash it outside. But that tablecloth becomes a living memory. And it actually brings those people back into the holiday. Every year. As you talk about them, you’re reminded of them. And kids need that they don’t need to hear the name disappear. They need that name set.
Victoria Volk 1:08:11
Yeah when I think of resiliency, like as a child, for me personally, like, I feel like children don’t choose to be resilient, they’re put in positions that of having to have to having to be so that’s where that’s where it drives me nuts. It’s not that we are resilient, it’s that they don’t have a choice.
Jill Johnson 1:08:30
We need to give them space to do what they need to do to have the emotions that are theirs, just like we want for adults. When your grave sends out, sometimes you’re mad, sometimes you’re happy. Sometimes you’re blah, sometimes you’re empty. Sometimes your heads just gonna spin. Yeah, they’re little people, they have the same things, just the smaller amounts. They just don’t tell you because they’re watching you. Right? So if I’m talking to a child who’s just lost someone to COVID and that’s been frequent this year, have the parent on with them. And also so do you still have questions about what happened? And they’ll look at their parents as they just talked to me, it’s okay. They nod their head. And the parent looks like looks at them. Like I told you, you could ask me did you not ask because you were afraid to you were gonna make so and so sad or upset them? And they’d say yes. Right, because they’re watching the grownups. So don’t assume. Ask them what they’re feeling and give them space for it. And give them time for it and hear them.
Victoria Volk 1:09:41
I’ve actually had someone tell me that a mom told the child to not bring up grandpa’s name because it made her sad. That’s very common. Oh my gosh, it’s an i Yeah, I know. It is. I mean, I grew up in a home where I just didn’t talk about it because it would make my mom Sad right, you know, right? Yeah.
Jill Johnson 1:10:03
They’re still telling little boys be stronger the man of the family now? Yes. I thought that up in 1950 It’s not real. Yes, right. It was real, but I haven’t I doing genealogy. I have an ancestor whose entire family died of the black plague in the 1400s. Right. Wow, everybody died. All of the siblings, the parents, the grandparents, everybody in this house died, except her. For generations, every family had a child with that name. Okay, she was the person of the family. That is not true. In 2021. You don’t have to be the man of family. You don’t have to be strong. Stop it. Right. And you don’t have to be happy that you’ve got another angel. Because if they’re watching over you all the time, that means they’re watching go to the bathroom. It’s creepy.
Victoria Volk 1:10:53
Oh, you’d rather have them here. Right? They’re not
Jill Johnson 1:10:55
Exactly. And I give kids permission to say that. Yeah. When someone says that to you, what do you think? Kids speak? I wish they were here, then tell somebody that? Yeah. They won’t say it again. I guarantee it. Yep. guarantee it.
Victoria Volk 1:11:09
The best lesson they could ever teach that person to.
Jill Johnson 1:11:12
I spoke to a church recently on grief. And they, they asked for some things. And that was one of the things. Don’t tell people what to feel. And don’t tell them not to speak and give them space. And don’t say they’re in a better place. And the pastor put up this giant Amen across the entire street. I love doing church kings when they do that. Right. And they took the tips and put them in the front of the church and sent me a picture. Because they’re doing grief differently. Now. No more messages about this was a plan. This was an illness. It’s a virus we can’t stop. It’s not because somebody wanted them dead. But let’s let’s stop the messaging.
Victoria Volk 1:11:56
Right? Yes. Is a jackass. Yes, right. Do grief better? Mm hmm. So what gives you the most hope for the future. And the most joy,
Jill Johnson 1:12:10
The most joy is sometimes just waking up. But mostly it’s knowing that the work that I do is making a difference and that it gives me space for my family. Because I’m now grandma of two about to be grandma three. Congratulation, right. And I have my oodles at home. And so we you know, being able to watch the little faces is a lot of fun. And the most hope is that we’re doing more of these. And more people are talking and occupying the space and breaking into the conversations to talk about the fact that we can do grief in that make it forever. Yeah, that’s huge for me. And if we can, if we can stop that for, you know, one person, we’ve done our work
Victoria Volk 1:12:58
Well, and you break the cycle, too, I think if you recognize that there is more to life than being a Griever. And that grief is your life. Because just as you can emulate healing and being supportive, and all the positive things of grief, like you can emulate the story that this is how it’s always going to be in what story do you want to emulate to your children?
Jill Johnson 1:13:26
Right? And the more we talk about grief and loss, the better off all of us are? Exactly. Hmm.
Victoria Volk 1:13:34
Is there anything else you’d like to share?
Jill Johnson 1:13:37
I just really appreciate having been asked to be here and being able to say to share the space with you. Yeah, thank you for having me.
Victoria Volk 1:13:44
Thank you so much for being here. And where can people find you if they like to connect with you?
Jill Johnson 1:13:49
Oh, gosh, just Google Jill Johnson. But no, I have the rebellious widow.com that has the book. And you don’t have to buy the book there. You can buy it multiple places. It has free downloads however to go with the book. So if you’re a caregiver, it has an actual caregiver notebook you can download and create at home at no cost. And it has worksheets for doing the grief work. Also at no cost because I’m still a social worker. And then Gil Johnson young comm has resources for all kinds of losses. It’s got sibling loss and pet loss and all the things that are not usually included in loss. And it also has the courses that I teach, and podcasts are posted there. And then the Friday grief chat on Facebook. We’re there every Friday at 10am and it’s called humor, grace and grief. And we just talk about grief in the context of being able those also find humor in life and find the grace in what’s occurred. So that’s a good place to find me. Otherwise I’m on LinkedIn and all the things Pinterest all the if there’s a space still is there.
Victoria Volk 1:14:57
Yeah, the book if they purchase the book on Amazon Do they still get all of the the work?
Jill Johnson 1:15:03
The downloads are free? You don’t have to buy the book at all. And you get downloads. Oh, okay. Yeah, I created it that way. And they publish it was like, Are you serious? I’m a social worker. And I want people to be able to do this better. And so yes, everybody gets access. This is not a members only moment. Wonderful that should be.
Victoria Volk 1:15:21
And I will share all of that information in the show notes. Thank you. And again, thank you so much for sharing your story of hope, and doing grief differently. And thank you so much. You’re welcome. And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love, from my heart to yours. Thank you for listening. If you liked this episode, please share it because sharing is caring. And until next time, give and share compassion by being a heart with yours. And if you’re hurting know that what you’re feeling is normal and natural. Much love my friend
Grieving Voices Podcast, Podcast, Takeaways and Reflections |
Takeaways & Reflections | Child Grievers: Adult Victims in the Making?
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY
As a child, were you called a crybaby?
A child taught to grieve alone becomes an adult who also grieves alone. To break the cycle of learned behavior, we have to learn new information.
If you want to learn how to support children in their grief, this episode walks you through what not to do and what to do instead. Most of us grew up without a healthy demonstration of how to grieve healthily. When we are faced with challenges as adults, we resort to what we know and what we’ve been taught.
When someone does something hurtful to you, is your knee-jerk reaction to blame that person for “making” you angry or sad? First, that’s a lot of power to give the other person. And second, this is a learned behavior that is also what keeps us in a victim mindset well into adulthood.
Take twenty minutes out of your day today and learn a better way to support a grieving child you know or love.
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If you or anyone you know is struggling with grief due to any of the 40+ losses, there are free resources available HERE.
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There is No Hierarchy of Loss
Hello, thank you so much for listening to grieving voices today. I am your host Victoria Volk of the Unleashed heart. And today this is episode 89. A takeaways and reflections episode from episode 88, with Michele Benyo, a mother and daughter living forward after loss, and I’m going to just dive right into it because this one is going to be all about the children. And the child grievers out there, which I was one. And if you haven’t heard my story, just real briefly, my father was diagnosed with colon cancer stage four, when I was six years old, or so maybe about seven, that he was given three to four months to live at that time. But he made it almost 16 months. And so shortly after my eighth birthday, he had passed away. And so during that time, I was bounced around from house to house. During those 16 months while he was in and out of the hospital having surgeries. He had a colostomy bag. They kind of tried everything. I guess they could, but it wasn’t enough. And I really had to grow up fast. And as many children do, who experience a significant loss of a parent, or guardian or a caretaker, or someone who has greatly influenced their life doesn’t have to be a parent. And it can even be just the loss of a pet can be absolutely devastating and crushing for a child. There is no hierarchy of loss, because we all grieve at 100%. And every relationship that we have is unique to us. Therefore, our grief is also unique.
Creation of Adult Victims
What I’d like to talk about today is the creation of adult victims. What do I mean by that? Well, if you’ve listened to enough of my episodes, you will know and you’ve heard me say before that adulthood is childhood reenactments. And that’s what we say in Grief Recovery, and it’s absolutely the truth. Because as adults, when our backs are up against the wall, when we’re faced with challenges, when we find ourselves emotionally razzled challenged or struggling, we will always resort to the information and the experiences that we’ve had, but the information that we know, which is often based on our experiences, but it’s also information that has been passed down to us. It is the beliefs and those patterns that have probably continued on for generations within your family. And my family was no different. You know, there was no talk of grief, there really just wasn’t very much emotional intelligence in the home. And that’s like many homes, even back in the 80s. And even today, because again, these things are cyclic, this information that continues to get passed down and impacts the future generation. And this is how patterns and cycles continue. So unless we learn differently, and unless we learn how to address our grief, we will pass those lessons down to our children.
Children Are Very Imaginative
And so today is really about how you as a parent can set up your child for the best response to grief possible. Now, what does that mean? That means that for you to pass down those lessons, you need to understand your own as well, that I’m going to give you some information today that will hopefully cause some reflection and introspection. And it’s not to judge, it’s not to criticize it is to put the children first. And it is with love from my heart to yours, because as a grieving child, nobody really knew what to do with me. Nobody knew what to say. And so they said nothing. And I became the child that didn’t speak unless spoken to, I really became small. And the wallflower and I became a people pleaser too, children are the most vulnerable when they’re grieving, because they’re easily manipulated and taken advantage of and influenced, right, because unless they’re taught or unless it’s emulated for them, children don’t really know how to emotionally regulate themselves. And so when you have a devastating loss, or trauma, or in my case, both, that’s a lot for a child to understand and cope with. What children do is they make up their own stories, when the guidance isn’t there, or when there isn’t someone supporting their grief, in a healthy way. And so children have an imagination, right? Children are very imaginative. And so you can imagine the stories that children tell themselves when something bad happens to them. And you can see where this creates a lot of issues with self worth, into adulthood. And so this is where I’m going to start today. In childhood, it is very common to hear statements like don’t do that you’ll make your father angry, or you make mommy feel so proud. And if you listen closely to those phrases, you will notice that they suggest that someone else makes them feel a certain way. As a result, a victim foundation is laid with the idea that other people are the chief architects of our feelings. And because children are very, very smart, they quickly realize that if they have the power to make mom or dad feel something, then Mom or Dad can make them feel something. As the adults we often mistakenly say or imply that the words or actions of others are the primary cause of the child’s feelings.
Importance of 1%
And the underlying message is that others made the child feel a certain way. Say for example, you’re stuck in traffic or someone cuts you off, which that’s happened to probably anyone here listening and your responses is ‘Oh, they made me so mad. They cut me off in traffic. And I was then late for work. And because they drove so slow, but they cut me off. And this is a very generalized example. But if your child’s in the back seat, and they’re hearing this, they’re hearing that someone else made mommy angry. Someone cut mommy off in traffic, and that person made mommy angry. And I remember when my husband and I, I don’t know if it was in our parenting early on, or I’m not even sure when. But I remember it just made me so mad. Because I think deep down, I knew it was the truth. But he would say, Nobody makes you angry. You make yourself angry. And it really took me personally a long time to accept that, because I spent so much of my life. Being angry. I was an angry child. I was an angry teenager, and I became an angry adult. And it wasn’t until I learned the importance of 1% responsibility, which is what we talk about Grief Recovery, taking 1% responsibility, where it really clicked for me. And this is why I think so many adults who were victimized as children or grew up in the victim mindset, environment, into adulthood have such a difficult time with forgiveness. And I think that is a lot of the reason why forgiveness is so hard because even in the worst of circumstances, let’s say child abuse, it is possible to forgive. And not saying as a child who was abused that you have any ownership in what happened, but you always have ownership and responsibility for how you feel, and how you respond to others. And so that was a long process for me, not a long process because Grief Recovery is a time based, you can start it and know that you’re not going to be, going on a therapist couch for six months or a year. So I was able to quickly learn how to forgive and that was very transformative for me. Can you see through that example of being cut off in traffic or any other daily life example you can think of where you felt wronged, or where you believe someone else made you feel a certain way is dangerous for children, it really sets them up to believe the idea that they are responsible for the feelings of others, which automatically sets them up to believe that others can be responsible for their feelings. So where’s the ownership in all of that? So what do you do instead? Well, you learn how to communicate more accurately about emotions, which your children will then copy and learn. So in simplest terms, comments like you really make me angry need to be restructured. That statement makes the other person responsible for how you feel where it is more accurate to say, I am angry.
Identify Your Own Emotions
This can be one of the most powerful life lessons you teach your children, you must become aware of your use of the idea of others causing you to feel and as you change your language your children will change too, when we learn how to restructure how we feel into ‘I’ statements, we are first identifying our own emotions. But then we’re also taking there’s a sense of responsibility, in that when we say I am angry, and it’s more honest, it’s more authentic as well. And it serves us when it comes to grief. Most of us have been taught not to dwell on the past, to let bygones be bygones and to remember that what’s done is done. And in the wind children grieve book, it states that all of that well meaning advice is dangerous, because the human mind and heart operate in very specific ways. One of the things that happens naturally is that our brain reviews a relationship and discovers everything that it thinks could have ended differently, better or more. It is our nature to do this. And we’re much better advised to follow our nature than to fight it. The only thing we need to add is what to do with the discoveries after they have been made. And Through Grief Recovery. That’s where you learn how to do this. That’s what I learned. When I went through the process myself, I was able to discover and complete the thoughts and feelings that I had for all of the relationships that I’ve worked on Through Grief Recovery, because once you learn it, you have it for life. But you have to learn that misinformation first, such as taking the responsibility for your feelings for your emotions. And in Grief Recovery. Part of the foundation of the grief education is talking about the six myths, which I didn’t even mentioned. But grieving alone is a big one is often children are told to not be cry babies or things like that. And what happens then is when the adults who have experienced a loss, do not openly communicate how they’re feeling, children learn to hide their feelings as well. And so this is why the cycle repeats itself.
Better to Grieve as a Family
Personally, I’ve heard people say that, for example, someone had their parent die and their daughter really had a close relationship with the grandfather. But the daughter of the grandfather did not want the daughter to talk about her grandpa because it made her upset. And so the child essentially couldn’t even share happy memories of her grandfather because it would make her mother upset. So then she internalized that ‘I am making my mom upset’, right? And so it’s affirming just what I’ve said previously about how a child is taken responsibility for how the mother feels. But this is something that’s passed on to our kids. As parents we do this ourselves we do this teachers, mentors, coaches, Faculty of schools, or what have you. We do this to children because we don’t know any better because we don’t understand grief ourselves as adults. We haven’t processed our own grief. And I say this as someone who used to be that parent that passed on those lessons to my kids, I did the very same things that I’m talking about. And so this is information that sets up our children for the rest of their lives. And it’s why I’m so passionate too about the Grief Recovery method, the helping children with loss program. I can offer that program online in groups, but helping children with loss is prevention. But I also believe that the Grief Recovery method for parents to go through that is also prevention, because it breaks the cycle. And it breaks those patterns that are passed down generation to generation undelivered emotional communications are about the things we wish we had said or did, or about things we wish had not said or done. And they’re also about the things we wish the other person had said or done, or had not said or done. And so children are highly sensitive to the sorts of things that fall into those categories. It is our job as parents and caretakers and caregivers to help children discover undelivered emotional communications. But it’s equally imperative that as the adults, we understand our own, as well, because if we as a family suffer a great loss, wouldn’t it be better if you could grieve together as a family than each person isolating themselves or the children feeling like they can’t talk about it, because it’ll make someone else upset.
Take Ownership of Our Emotions
This is why understanding grief and caring to know about it is so important future generations hinge on this information, we can continue to have adults walking around like victims, or we can become adults, who are emotionally intelligent, who have learned how to process our emotions, how to healthily share our emotions, and to take ownership of them too and through Grief Recovery, learn the action steps so that when a loss does occur, we can let go of the pain, but hold on to the memories. And that’s what Grief Recovery does. And that’s what helping children with loss does it gives the parents and the caregivers and the caretakers, the tools to help children understand and acknowledge their undelivered communications. And there’s no better gift than that. Because I had someone who could have helped me navigate all of my emotions, and my pain and my trauma, and all of that, I don’t think my life would have, well, probably wouldn’t have turned out the way did, but I wouldn’t have suffered for as long as I did. And I think there are many adults walking around who felt just like I did, lost, alone, and fearful. I think we disconnect from ourselves, especially with trauma, but also that can happen with devastating loss and shut down a part of ourselves. And it really becomes an excavation and discovery process to find our selves again, I think there’s so much more I could say on this. Actually, I’ll add this. So I’ve been pondering lately too, how much personality plays a role in how we grieve. And I personally, I’m an INFP, if you’re familiar with Myers Briggs, and, and I’ll actually put the quiz for that link in the show notes. But I’m also a Pisces. And so it feels like a double whammy. But I’ve also had trauma in many losses throughout my life. And so growing up as a highly sensitive child, and experiencing the losses and trauma that I did, the world felt very heavy to me. And I truly felt like I was on a foreign planet or something, I often felt like I didn’t fit in, I didn’t know where I fit in, I felt awkward, you know, and I felt very different than other kids did, I think. I genuinely didn’t know how to be happy. I didn’t have a lot of happiness surrounding me. And so I’ve just been pondering on that lately about being a highly sensitive person, an empathic person that tends to take in other people’s energy and being very sensitive to other people’s energy. And so that’s what I want to highlight too, is being given these messages of, you know, let’s say I made my mom angry on top of feeling and taking in that energy of me making my mom angry. For example, boy, you just never feel like you’re ever good enough. You grew up feeling you’re just not good enough that nothing you can say or do is ever good enough very sensitive to criticism. I think, as highly sensitive children in absorbing other people’s emotions and feelings and taking responsibility for other people’s emotions and feelings, and then having loss on top of loss added on really, truly it is a wonder that I’m sitting here and talking to you through this podcast, to be honest, it’s shaped me for this work that I do today. I wouldn’t change it, I guess. But I have wondered what my life would have been like had my mother had these tools at her disposal. Thank you for tuning in today and remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.
P.S And I used to be very sensitive to criticism. I just think there’s a lot to that. And so if you’re a highly sensitive or empathic, adult today, I’d be curious to hear from you. If you’ve experienced grief, not if, but when, because we all experienced a loss of some kind, what your experience was being a highly sensitive child or empathic person who’s experienced also a grief loss or trauma, please reach out to me, I would love to know what your experience was, not that again, one loss is worse than another or because I’m a highly sensitive person, or I’m empathic that my grief hurts more than someone who’s not considered themselves highly sensitive. I just think there’s something to it, that it really feels like this dark pit. Well, I guess grief feels like that, doesn’t it? Regardless, I guess I can only speak from my experience in that it just felt really heavy life just felt really heavy. And I can tell you, when I went through Grief Recovery, it felt like a mountain had been taken off my shoulders. And so if there’s anything that you do today, as a parent, or caregiver or caretaker or guardian, please go to Amazon and pick up the book when children grieve. It’s for adults to help children deal with death, divorce, pet loss, moving and any other loss, and I will put the link in the show notes for that. If you want to reach out or listen to more episodes like this you can visit my website theunleashedheart.com or if you want to be connected with me you can visit me on social media like Facebook or Instagram.
Child Loss, Grieving Voices Guest, Grieving Voices Podcast, Podcast |
Michele Benyo | A Mother & Daughter Living Forward After Loss
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
The heartbreak of a parent losing a child is a pain like no other. But what about the sibling(s) left behind of the child who dies? When her son, David, was four years old, he was diagnosed with cancer. After a 2 1/2-year battle, he died when his younger sister was 3 years old. Michele shares her perspective of guiding her daughter through sibling loss while navigating her own.
Michele of @goodgriefparenting shares how grief is an unavoidable part of life that we will carry forward, and we can still live well and enjoy life. She adds her thoughts about appearing strong for others, which often leaves grievers feeling isolated because, although they may seem strong, that doesn’t mean support isn’t needed.
Michele’s work focuses on offering support for parents of child loss who also have other children navigating sibling loss. She offers three suggestions as well as many other helpful and supportive suggestions for parents who desire to be positive grief role models for their other child(ren) experiencing loss.
“Grief is in two parts. The first is loss. The second is remaking of life.” – Anne Roiphe
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Victoria Volk 0:08
This is Victoria of theunleashedheart.com, and you’re listening to grieving voices, a podcast for hurting hearts who desire to be heard. Or anyone who wants to learn how to better support loved ones experiencing loss as a 30 plus year Griever. In advanced Grief Recovery methods specialist, I know how badly the conversation around grief needs to change. Through this podcast, I aim to educate gravers and non gravers alike, spread hope and inspire compassion toward those hurting. Lastly, by providing my heart with yours and this platform, Grievers had the opportunity to share their wisdom and stories of loss and resiliency. How about we talk about grief like we talked about the weather? Let’s get started.
Victoria Volk 0:56
Welcome to grieving voices. Today, my guest is Miss Michelle Benigno. She is a certified Grief Recovery specialist parent, mentor and founder of good grief parenting, whose purpose is to support parents who are raising young bereaved siblings after child loss. Her mission is to be a voice for the youngest of Grievers and to help parents nurture and understand the unique needs of children who have lost a sibling in early childhood. When not helping parents, Michelle enjoys adventures with her daughter dinner with friends seeking out Keto Recipes to satisfy her sweet tooth, and hiking the woods and light country of beautiful Minnesota. Thank you so much for being here, Michelle, as well.
Michele Benyo 1:35
Thank you, Victoria. I’m glad to be here.
Victoria Volk 1:38
And what I’m excited to have you here too, because you are a fellow certified Grief Recovery specialist.
Michele Benyo 1:45
Yes, ye.
Victoria Volk 1:47
I know your backstory. But my listeners don’t. So would you please share what brings you to grieving voices today?
Michele Benyo 1:54
Well, I have always been in the field of children and families and had my own two children and was parent educator and early childhood family education, which is part of all the school districts in Minnesota, when my four and a half year old son was diagnosed with cancer, and my daughter was 15 months old. And we battled that that demon for two and a half years before my son died at the age of six. And his little sister was three and a half. And she said to me, mommy, half of me is gone. When her brother died, they were very close. They were best friends. It was her only sibling. And here I was in the field of early childhood parent education. And I was so aware of, you know, the needs of kids this age, but this was just parenting 101 all over again, it was just not the same thing. And I and this was, this was 20 years ago. So my daughter is now grown. And back then i i thought i had access to a lot of resources that a lot of people may not readily have. And yet I could not find anything that really helped me know what what she really needed and what to do for her. I mean, she said half of her was gone. That’s heartbreaking. And it’s just not okay. And what do you do with that as a parent, her whole lifetime was ahead of her. I really knew then that as a an early childhood educator, I needed to provide this resource. But I found over the years as I studied it, I found every book that I could and over the years, there were a few more resources that became available. And I just learned everything about sibling loss and early childhood loss that I could and now I am in the past few years since my daughter’s graduated and is now a young adult I’ve I’m starting to just really tried to reach out to all the families I can who have this little child who probably didn’t say to them, mommy, half of me is gone, but yet had that feeling of really having lost a sense of self when their sibling died. So that’s really what my what my mission is. I say that her her simple six words are what really defined my very specific purpose of working with families who’ve lost a child in early childhood, because that’s that formative time of life when not only are coping skills and social emotional skills being developed in kids, but just that whole sense of who they are going forward.
Victoria Volk 4:36
I’m a mom to three kids and I can’t even imagine I’ve interviewed several parents who have lost children and I that’s a loss. I can’t even wrap my head around and like a friend of mine shared a song with me the other day just kind of because I was recently reminiscing about how fast time flies and just you would never even the podcast recently recorded I was just think reflecting on it.
Victoria Volk 5:00
Even with a child loss, you would never take away that relationship or choose to not.
Michele Benyo 5:05
Right.
Victoria Volk 5:06
That relationship or yes, even though it hurts so badly when you lose in person, right? But right, it doesn’t make it any easier. So how did you first really make it through those early days without the resources you personally with your grief and in your marriage?
Michele Benyo 5:26
Mm hmm.
Victoria Volk 5:27
And then address with your daughter,
Michele Benyo 5:30
I knew right away that what I needed was or what I wanted was help for her, I really have to say that her loss so far overshadowed mine in my mind, but I also, we were connected with children’s hospitals in Minneapolis. And they at that time, had a wonderful bereavement program. And I really credit, I mean, that the person who was the bereavement coordinator at the time really was a lifeline for me. And so I had that support through what they offered. And one distinction that I, that I want to make with families is that when you have this tremendous loss, and it is so devastating, and parents never will get over it, they have to learn to assimilate this grief and this loss into your life going forward. And when you have young children, it’s like their life can never be quote, unquote, normal again, because it’s just, it’s got this presence of grief throughout the rest of their life. That doesn’t mean we can’t be happy and enjoy life, but it just really does change things. But what I want parents to know is that counseling and therapy is not the only way to get the support they need. I knew I didn’t need therapy, or a counselor, the the grief support group was really helpful to me, but then I was on to Okay, now how do I get my family? You know, how do we go? How do we live forward and be happy. And the grief support group didn’t help me do that. So that was the piece that was missing. And I will say that as a family, we had gone through my son’s law, my son’s cancer as a family. The four of us were together all the time, my daughter was 15 months old when her brother was diagnosed, and he spent much of the next two and a half years in the hospital. And when we were there, both of us, she was there. And a lot of families don’t do that, because they don’t want to, you know, expose their little kids to that. But the children’s hospital had such a good resource for the siblings. And I’m so grateful that we made that choice, because without that, my children wouldn’t have the chance to develop the relationship they that they did, and for her to have the time she did. And she grew up with an understanding of that of cancer and what it does, and life and death in her relationship with her brother that she never would have had if we had protected her from all of that. And so we went through it very well. But we did end up getting divorced soon after. And a lot of people jumped to the conclusion that we were you know that that’s what happens. And I, I don’t necessarily agree with that. And in our case, it was a matter of, well, it wasn’t because of what we had been through, we actually grieved together very well and mutually supported each other very well. And we still do to this day, but we did end up divorcing within a year after my son died. You know, I felt like I kind of had had the inner resources, I have a strong faith. And that was huge for me. And along the way in our son’s illness. I just got a lot of affirmation from my God, that he was in this and that he was upholding me and upholding our family. And so my focus very early on really became my daughter.
Victoria Volk 9:04
I had goosebumps when you shared about your daughter, being able to have the time to that relationship with her brother. I’m just I think back to my end of life doula certification training, where we talk about just positive impact that being with the dying has or the ill people, you know, people in hospice, what that does for the family members, if they can embrace that, and what it does for their healing.
Michele Benyo 9:33
One of the things I share with families that was what I took up early on, was the whole idea of making lemonade, and it’s not a new idea, but the way I look at it is you know, we got this lemon and Deanna got way more than her share of lemons at that at that tender age. And we can either bite the lemon and notice that it’s sour and hate that it’s sour. We can put it on the counter and say I’m not going to do deal with it and let it rot. Or we can slice it up and say, Okay, I’ve got this lemon, I’m going to add sugar, I’m going to add water, I’m going to stir it, I’m going to make the best lemonade I can. And that was the attitude that I had to have with her life because I was always looking at her life saying, This is not what I want for my daughter. And to this day, I still feel that way. You know, because I see all the years that she grew up through, without her brother, and we live next door to four siblings who are my children’s ages. So she’s grown up her whole life next door to four siblings without hers. And so that my message for parents, because this sounds, this probably sounds hopeless. And and it’s not, you know, it is I think the idea of the lemonade is this is what we have, and we don’t like it, but we’ll make the best of it. And then I think the important thing for families to know is that that sibling relationship really is important. What I did with Deanna was nurture her relationship with her brother continue the bonds, which is part of what families are so often told to let go of the child they lose, or the loved one that they lose, not to focus on that I had a woman tell me once that I focus too much on my son, and that probably upset my daughter, she didn’t have a clue, frankly, because nurturing, remembering my son and keeping him part of my daughter’s life as someone that had loved her and that she had loved and that she had this connection with was really one of the best things I could have done for her and is one of the best things that parents can do. So that’s something that parents struggle with. I know because they want to remember their child. And people tell them no, that’s not healthy. But on the contrary, it really is very healthy. And it’s a good way to allow their children to to maintain that relationship. One story I tell is when my daughter was going into first grade, I think, and she was going to a different school. And she said to me, mommy, how old would David be if he were alive now. And I told her and she said, Oh, good, then he’d be in school with me. And he wasn’t there. He wasn’t going to be there. But she took comfort in the fact of knowing that, that he would have been if he were alive. And that gave her comfort in some really odd way. Losing a child is so crushing and so devastating. And there’s no way we can ever replace that relationship. But there are ways that we can nurture it going forward. And that’s really part of my message for parents, thank you for sharing all of that. And one that that came to my mind as I was hearing you talk is this idea that that relationship does continue. And if we don’t allow children to give voice to that, we are shutting their them down their information down those those feelings that they those sensations are things that they feel with their loved one being there with them, like I feel them with me. But if they aren’t allowed to communicate that, or the parent gets upset when the child mentions the other child who’s who’s passed away, that really just keeps the child from grieving. Yes, yes. And research shows the the books that are out there now about early childhood are about sibling loss in childhood, really support the fact that the adults who have grown up bringing that sibling relationship forward, consider that to be such a good thing that it really has been a good thing for them. And we are afraid of grief. I mean, you’re doing this Victoria, you’re talking to people all the time about the ways that people in our lives don’t know how to support Grievers because we’re just as a society, so afraid of it. And it’s especially as true with children. And yet the best time to learn about grief and how to deal with grief and how to honor it is when you’re a child, because we all experience Well, it isn’t always the loss of a sibling or appearance. Sometimes it’s you know, moving or the death of a pet or divorce or something like that. But we all have those experiences in childhood. And those are the times for us to build our resilience skills and our coping skills and to understand that grief is part of loss of life that we will live with and that we can still live well with.
Victoria Volk 14:35
I love that last line and I love how you say living forward.
Michele Benyo 14:38
Mm hmm.
Victoria Volk 14:40
So what was your experience your personal experience as a child with grief?
Michele Benyo 14:45
Well, it’s interesting you asked that because I do have a story that I share. And part of what I also really feel is true about my being on this in this place that I’m in now is that it really did start in my childhood with the way that I was parented because I was quite a sensitive child who was called a crybaby, my feelings, my hurt feelings, my pains were were not things that the adults around me like when I talk to parents sometimes or adults ask them to think about when was the first time you experienced grief because I guarantee you it was way back in those early years. And the first instance that I remember was a time I grew up on Lake of the Woods in northern Minnesota where the lake is, you know, goes on, you can’t see the edge of it, it goes to the horizon, I was at the beach with a riding toy named Wally, the walrus of blow up walrus, and he got away from me and started to float away. And of course, I couldn’t get him. And some adults tried to get him and nobody could get him and I just had to helplessly watch him drift away. And to this day, I remember that feeling. And it’s something different than sadness, it’s that sense of loss of something that you’ll never get back. And that’s a very different feeling. And yes, he was just a riding toy. But I had to stand there and watch him float off into the sun, you know, into the horizon. And I felt so helpless. And of course, the adults around me, were trying to tell me all it’s just a riding toy, oh, we can get another one or Oh, go play without it. Or you know, all of those things that we kind of say to children when what they’re feeling is very real. Now, as an adult, I wouldn’t have that same feeling about Wally the walrus floating away. But then, you know, it was in my little life. It was quite a crisis. And that’s the first experience of grief that I just really vividly remember.
Victoria Volk 16:49
I love that story. Because, again, you make that distinction between our taught how to acquire things or people in our lives, but we’re never taught what to do. And we lose them.
Michele Benyo 17:00
Right.
Victoria Volk 17:00
Yeah, like we’re, you know, taught in Grief Recovery, right. But I’d like to kind of come back to child loss how your daughter throughout the years than how you helped her throughout the years and how she’s been shaped by this loss?
Michele Benyo 17:17
Yes, I had to do a lot of advocating for her and, uh, because I recognized that well, and I want to tell you one more thing about her as if the the word she told me at three and a half, because I really want people who are listening to your podcast to hear this. My daughter is, you know, precocious and articulate. But she’s not unique in what she feels. And the first night that my husband and my son were at the hospital the very first night when her brother was gone. And she was 15 months old. Then she wandered around the house, just wailing the sound she was making was terrifying to me. It was inhuman, and I could not comfort her, she I would go to her and she pushed me away and throw herself on the ground with every cell of her body. She was feeling that something was terribly wrong. Her dad and her brother were gone. And she knew from what had been going on around her that this was a bad thing. And so children really do feel this and they carry it forward. And I saw it in her in the friendships that she tried to make. She tried to find people to be hers friends, that would be her friend that she would be their friend that they would sort of be hers that wasn’t met very well by a lot of kids. Another piece of advice that that I would give parents and it was something I tried to do, that I believe would have made a huge difference for her is if you have a child who has had a loss, whether it’s especially I’d say if it’s a sibling, but any kind of loss like a parent, try to help them get connected with another child their age that has had the same experience. Because when they’re the only one going through this in their peer group, there’s so much about their responses to the world and to law, you know, to other relationships, like living next door to this family of four siblings, who had been friends with her brother as well as her and now had each other and she didn’t have anyone that was such a tremendous source of pain for her over the years. But if she could have had someone that understood what that feels like, I know that would have made a difference for her. So it is difficult. The flip side of that she is such a sensitive, She’s sensitive to other people’s feelings. She’s so smart and wise about other people’s pain and she is She has such uncanny ways of recognizing what people need and how to respond to that in really supportive ways and this is another thing that the that the research bears out is that a lot of times these kids grow up with these sensitivities. So she didn’t have necessarily the typical social skills. They had these other really amazing social sensibilities about what’s going on with people. So they are different children. She’s a different child. But you know, she is who she is. And she’s beautiful. And she was shaped by her losses, no doubt, and had a lot of challenges because of it.
Victoria Volk 20:32
I feel like you’re describing me in a low because I, I lost my dad when I was eight.
Michele Benyo 20:37
Okay.
Victoria Volk 20:38
But then I had some other things that happen in my life thereafter. But just like you, I was called The Cry Baby and couldn’t show my emotions, and I’m an empath. I know that now. Oh, my gosh, it took me like 30 plus years, 35 years to figure that out.
Michele Benyo 20:55
Yeah.
Victoria Volk 20:56
Sounds like your daughter is much, much the same. If she’s starting to step into those gifts, because it can feel like a curse.
Michele Benyo 21:05
She isn’t she’s not too long out of college, and is really feeling like she needs to not have obligations. I mean, she is working, but she’s not necessarily working in her career field, or in these areas where she really is so gifted, because she just kind of needs to be her and grow into herself now. And she’s really doing that and feeling much better about that. Because she’s out of the environments where there were there was so much comparison that she felt she didn’t always measure up to. So and I think what you bring up is, which is why another piece that I just think is important, and I don’t have any specific ways to do it. But if parents recognize, and I think one of the biggest things I did for Deanna was no matter what she was receiving outside, from me, she was receiving the understanding that I knew what was going on with her, and that I supported her and that she had these gifts, and that, you know, someday people would see these things in her but how tough it was to be surrounded by people who didn’t get her. So the one thing we can do as parents of children who have these experiences is just say, I understand that when you’re angry, you’re not being a bratty kid, necessarily, you know, there’s more going on here, and just advocate for them. So I hope she steps into it, I’m so glad that you are doing this and that you’re sharing your gifts, because it is so huge that you’re doing this and that you’re you know, shining a light on those things that you came to understand later in your life better, better late than never, you know,
Victoria Volk 22:50
Better late than never. And I think too as you know, the sooner I’m a mom, right to three kids, but it’s like I look at their younger years. And just think of how differently I would have parented them. Had I worked through a lot of the stuff that I’ve since worked through, oh, yeah, asked, yes, three years. And that’s the thing with addressing our own grief, as parents is the greatest, the greatest gift we can give our children is working on ourselves.
Michele Benyo 23:22
Yes, absolutely. That very first number one thing in my course, and in my working with parents is very first number one thing is you must take care of yourself. That’s not selfish. That is the best way to help your family. Because if you’re not taking care of your grief and taking care of your needs, you know you’re chilled. You are a role model for your children, first of all, and yes, absolutely. So what has your grief taught you? I mean, you’ve shared a lot. But is there anything that personally, your grief has taught you? It’s just It’s taught me that there are really heartbreaking things in life, but they are in life. They are part of life, nobody’s immune to it. And there are ways to just I mean, really make the lemonade. There are ways to just say, this doesn’t define me. I can live forward, walk forward, see my way forward through this. And it’s going to change everything, it changes everything. But it that doesn’t mean it’s bad. I of course I yearn for some of the things, you know, some of the care I would I yearn for a carefree childhood for my daughter that she never had. But this is good too. And so really, I think you’re part of your message and definitely a huge part of mine is that we we have it now. Just what grief has taught me is that there are gifts in it. Just like there are gifts in so many other things in life. Some of our greatest gifts come from the, from some of the hardest things and would I give up all the gifts to have my son back? Oh, you bet I would, I wouldn’t think twice. But yeah, grief has gifts in it. And that’s why my program is called Good grief parenting because grief is good. It is really how we heal. And people who refuse to face grief, or to deal with it are the ones who have the hardest time, not the people who who consent to and allow themselves to just feel the pain of it, because that is how we heal.
Victoria Volk 24:37
I want to bring up a point or a question. And then I have another point. I’m just gonna make a quick note here. So I circle back to it, you know, did people sometimes look at you and think you’re just Pollyanna, like, you’re just really pot like this is just to pot like you’re too positive about your greed? You know, because you had resources, and you had different trainings that other people didn’t consult, I can imagine that others would look at you and who are maybe grieving themselves at first, without really knowing you thinking, oh, yeah, that’s, that’s great. You know.
Michele Benyo 26:22
No, it was strong. It was strong. That’s the thing that people say. Because when people look at a family that’s lost a child, and you know, I’m sure and in other environments, if you’ve lost a spouse, it can be similar, no matter how you are, when people look at you, they’re they’re gonna see this, you know how awful that and devastating that is, because they can imagine and that’s, that’s why I champion the sibling too, because the parent child grief is so front and center for everybody that they don’t even think about the child. But what people would say to me was, you’re so strong. And I know a lot of us as Grievers, get that, that accolade, and it’s not that we’re strong, it’s like, what do you expect us to do be this heap on the on the ground, this puddle on the floor. And what people do when they say you’re strong, is they say, they think she doesn’t need any help, she doesn’t need support. So then you don’t I, you know, over the years, I felt like I just really didn’t get the support that I would have, would have loved to have had from other people who just wanted to come around me and be there for me, not that I needed any big specific thing from them. But for anyone listening, you know, really, please take that to heart that the Griever, who looks like they’re doing so well, still really needs for you to be able to say I’m missing that David isn’t here right now, if you’re the neighbor with all the kids or you know, whatever. So it that was really the piece that I experienced more. And I will say that I went back and was doing early childhood parent education again after my son died, and really got so much positive feedback from the parents in those classes, because I was able to talk with them about their children. And sometimes I’d tear up you know, we’re talking about little kids, my children’s ages and and I’d say this is just something I I do, don’t worry about me, I’m okay. But you know, and they just really felt like I was a good example for them. And so that was really heartwarming for me because I do feel like more people saw me as an example than a Pollyanna. I don’t remember anybody really looking at it that way.
Victoria Volk 28:52
You know, it’s like when people who are really in resistant to looking at their grass, you can look at people who have come on the other side of it, or who are working through it and have a positive attitude about it as being Pollyanna or like this, it’s great over here just come over here you know not that’s the heartbreaking thing for me is and maybe for you too and doing this work is that you see people just suffering.
Michele Benyo 29:21
Yes, that’s why I say it’s like Yeah 30 Suffering suffer and move your feet. Yes, you can do both and and move living forward doesn’t mean you don’t hurt anymore. I still to this day will have what I call my temper tantrum moments. I still have them. I’ll probably get off this podcast and sit there and say, Michelle, I don’t believe I sat there and just talked about this like it was nothing and I may cry for a while because I still I want my son back. I want my daughter to have her brothers still I still have my little temper tantrum moments, but we have a good life. We’re living forward, we can never have him. But I do hear what you’re saying. And I’m and I’m sensitive about it. Because the grief community kind of deals with it differently. There are there influencers out who really affirm those people who say, people try to tell you, it’s going to get better, it’s always going to hurt. I’m not saying that. I’m simply saying you can live forward. And that’s why I work with young families, because how heartbreaking if the parents can’t live forward, and they’ve got a three year old daughter who said, Who feels half of me is gone. And I have met, I have met some of those adults, I have met adults who were those three year old daughters who say, I wish you’d been there when my parents lost my sibling because they were absolutely crushed. And they never recovered. And that is heartbreaking to me, that doesn’t need to happen.
Victoria Volk 31:00
And for the child, it’s as if they’ve lost three people.
Michele Benyo 31:05
Yes. And they’ve lost their future too, because I’ll never be the same.
Victoria Volk 31:10
Yes, thank you for this conversation. Because I really feel like it’s an it’s part of loss, especially in young children that hasn’t been addressed on this podcast right yet. And I think it’s, I think it’s so important because I identify as a child Griever. And I understand what that feels like. Yeah, but I also and I was the youngest of four siblings, I was kind of an only child, my, my brother was 14, you know, when our father passed away, and so I was kind of left to my own devices. Really?
Michele Benyo 31:39
Did you get I mean, do you feel like any of you any of the children got much support out? Or not?
Victoria Volk 31:47
No, no. And again, it’s my mom had her own grief that she had, yeah, he was not dealing with it, she did not. She didn’t know how there was nobody, nobody, like when you were speaking about talking with, you know, pairing that child up with somebody else, there was nobody, right. Nobody knew what to do with me. And so they just didn’t do anything.
Michele Benyo 32:09
Exactly. And I live in a metropolitan area. And I still was not able to accomplish that for my daughter. And I will say that, you know, I’m doing what I’m doing because of my daughter. At the same time, I recognize that I do recognize that I had resources, and a mindset as an early childhood parent educator going into this that most parents don’t have. And so when I work with families, I start from the very beginning, I start with that self care, I start with those, I call them good grief beliefs, all that stuff, we learn in the Grief Recovery method about how we regard grief in ways that are not helpful. As adults, we need to learn that first so that we can look at what our children and our families really need. So even though My why is my daughter, what I’m doing now, really addresses what the parents need as well. And parents in those little towns like the one I grew up in, where there’s no grief sander, there aren’t a lot of you know, there aren’t probably grief therapists that are really trained in grief up there. I can be reached, you can be reached, those of us who are doing the online presence can be reached and be support for those families. Because it’s really a helpless place to be and we haven’t learned how to deal with it.
Victoria Volk 33:39
Yeah, and especially with COVID-19.
Michele Benyo 33:42
Yes.
Victoria Volk 33:42
They’re lost the families and everything have experienced on top of any other sibling loss that they’ve had or loss. As a parent, you lose a child and the child loses a sibling. What were some of the things that you saw? Now you you had the education and the tools but for a parent who may not how can they recognize if their child which we both know the child is going to be grieving, but I know for me personally, people probably thought I was doing okay, right. I wasn’t an outward I didn’t lash out. I wasn’t angry. You know, I didn’t I didn’t have outbursts. I was tardy a lot I had problems concentrating you know, these other things.
Michele Benyo 34:30
Yes.
Victoria Volk 34:30
Many people would probably say is ADHD or right you’re something like that, which is, in my personal opinion, sorely misdiagnosed for grief in a lot of cases. But what what are some of the things that you can points you can give to parents things to look for? Like?
Michele Benyo 34:50
I would just say that I want to say you say you wish you knew now what are knew then what you knew now when you started parenting your child and I feel the same way I have conversations with Deanna now and say, I wish I could go back and do this over again with you. Because I know so much more now. But one of the biggest things is yes, we don’t think we we don’t, they’re, they don’t show their grief in the same way. They show it a lot through play. If you pay attention, they’ll they’ll grieve, and then they’ll, and then they’ll just appear to be fine, because they can’t hold on to grief very long, it’s intense for them. And so kids don’t grieve continuously, they grieve in spurts. And a lot of times, they don’t look like they’re grieving, but you can be sure they are, because they, you know, they were aware of this person, they love this person, even if it was, you know, a really like a, even an infant sibling that they didn’t have there for a long time they know that presence is gone. So just as parents know, that whether they are telling you or not whether they appear or not, they are grieving. And you can initiate conversation in really simple ways. By acknowledging if they see you crying, you can say, Oh, I miss I miss your brother today, do you miss your brother sometimes, too, you know, just give them an offer. And they may or may not talk, and that’s okay. But you are telling them, it’s okay for them to talk about it. So the first thing I would say is don’t think about trying to protect the child from grief, because they’re they’re grieving, whether you see it or not. And the best thing you can do is invite conversation and open the door. You know, take care of yourself so that they can see, you know, Mommy is having a hard time right now. So I’m gonna just go, you know, sit, sit outside in the sun for a while, because I’m feeling really sad. And I need to take care of myself, and you can come out with me or, you know, let them know how you’re dealing with it in a positive way. Invite conversation. And the other thing, you know, that I as I mentioned earlier, is that idea of nurturing the relationship with their sibling, simply simply by speaking the person’s name by saying, oh, you know, if David were here, he’d love to play that game with you, or those kinds of things are normalizing. They’re not, you know, parents are afraid to bring it up. I mean, it’s just like my daughter saying, Oh, if her brother were here, good, he’d be in school with me. You know, they like the idea of the sibling, whether the siblings there or not. So just helping parents change that mindset. And so the conversation piece is huge. And they acknowledging their own grief. And the way that they’re taking care of it is huge. Honoring the child’s grief when they see it. This is that, you know, Grief Recovery method peace. And I include this in, in my little good grief guide that’s available on my website, some real specific ways to respond to children’s grief, instead of the, let’s get your mind off it response that we have so often. So those are some concrete things, any parent, if they just let go of their fear of saying the wrong thing, or making their child sad when they’re not sad? If you can just let go of that, and allow grief to be normal? Let your child know that you feel it. And yes, they feel it and it’s okay. That’s one of the hugest things you can do for your child is just not be afraid of that grief and just talk about it.
Victoria Volk 38:49
I love that. Now, does this change with age? Like how you respond anything? when? When is there? When is the line where they need more help? You know, what you’re seeing?
Michele Benyo 39:03
Well, this is this is my caveat, I guess, is that I’m an early childhood parent educator. And so my focus is on the early years and all of this formative stuff. And a lot of people who know that I do this work will say Oh, my friends, you know, teenager died and their 12 year old is suffering. And I don’t feel nearly as well equipped to deal with that, because I know it’s different number one, and because some of the things that are so helpful have have already gotten in place in that, you know, maybe the family doesn’t talk about tough things. So then it’s hard to suddenly start doing it. But I would say that with those with older children to opening the door, not allowing grief to be an elephant in the room. And sometimes the kid the the children will, you know, maybe not appear to be receptive, they won’t want to talk and if they don’t want to talk, don’t force it. But just make it always available. You have social workers in schools, people that you can talk to, if you feel there’s something going on. Just know too, that when you see kids who have experienced a loss, doing behaviors that you know, that are not typical for them anything that’s not typical for them, they’re not eating the same, they’re not doing the same activities. They’re not suddenly they’re not good in school anymore. Sometimes a child can start being a people pleaser, because they don’t want to upset the adults around them that are dealing with grief. So you know, anytime a child’s behavior kind of shifts in a way, where you’re not sure what it’s about, and they’ve experienced a loss, you know, it’s time maybe to take a look at that. And, and one of the first things I did also with my daughter, I did find her child counselor, therapist, even before her brother died, because I knew he was going to die, so that she just had someone to go and do play therapy with for those early years of her life. So yes, just giving them opportunities. And being mindful of something that’s that’s uncharacteristic would be my farangs. In the information that you filled out for us recording, there was one part that you said you that you’ve experienced miracles, and I’m curious, what miracles Oh, well, my faith is is such a huge part. And I experienced miracles in along David’s journey and some things that were better than, you know, the original diagnosis appeared to be one thing, and then it was like, we got a reprieve. And that wasn’t it at all. And we sort of got this reprieve, and I really felt that was miraculous. But it was more about some of the things that I personally got. And they’re, they’re not real short stories, but I’ll try to make them short. One was that before my son was ever diagnosed, I was in a Michaels store. It was He was God, his cancer. We found it in December. And there was this yarn Angel. And for some reason I wanted to buy it. I don’t typically buy stuff like that it was just this yarn Angel. And it was called the angel of peace. And when I went to buy it, I just thought, Oh, I wish it was the angel of joy, because that’s what Christmas is to me. A few days later, my son was diagnosed with cancer, and I was just really so aware that that angel of peace had been had been given to me for a purpose. You know, the fact that I saw you know, the fact that I even cared what it was called, was just really a message to me. The other thing that is truly a bona fide nobody can argue with it miracle is so when my in the midst of my son’s cancer, there was a weekend in the fall where my husband took our two children to visit his brother in another town, so I could have the weekend to myself. And one of the things I always do in the fall is make apple Chris and I had this family recipe that was the best no comparison, Apple Chris. But I had lost that recipe years ago. I knew I had it in the house we lived in but I had somehow misplaced it hadn’t been able to make it for a number of years. But every fall I would still rifle through everything in my kitchen and look for this recipe and I never found it. So this weekend when he was gone with the kids, I started to rifle through the kitchen again. And I stopped and I stood in the middle of the kitchen and I said God, you know where this recipe is and if I don’t find it, I’m going to go crazy. And I said that and I stepped aside and I bent down like this and I looked under the edge of the cabinet on the wall and from the back of the cabinet between the cabinet and the wall. There was a little corner piece of paper sticking down and I pulled it out with my thumbnail and it was my recipe card. No one I have that recipe card in an in a plastic bag now because it’s got God’s fingerprint on it. That is that’s a bonafide miracle.
Victoria Volk 44:31
I got goosebumps in that story too.
Michele Benyo 44:34
And I also heard my son talking when he his cancer came back. I heard him talking one night his has his dad and I both heard it on the intercom. And my son was saying, I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. And then he said, All right, I’ll come and so I knew you know, I know and that was a miracle. And that was a gift to because I knew. And when we talked to him in the morning, we kind of said, oh, you know, did you talk to anybody? You know, he didn’t remember it. But that night or that a couple days later, when we were in the hospital, he was talking about Jesus. And he was saying things we had not told him. So, yes, there were miracles, there were miracles.
Victoria Volk 45:33
Thank you for sharing that. And I think it speaks to the importance of our faith. Yeah, go through things like this. And, and just really understanding that just because our loved one passes, you know, and I don’t know, there’s all different kinds of listeners with all different systems and things. But I personally believe, which I didn’t always, because when my dad passed away, like for many, many years, probably the next 20 years, I thought when you die, you go on the ground, and that was it. Like there was no afterlife, there was no continuation of the, you know, the spirit. I’ve been woken up in a lot of different ways to them, but and especially with my end of life, doula certification training, it’s really helped me open my mind even more.
Michele Benyo 46:25
Yes, I can imagine.
Victoria Volk 46:27
And so I’m curious, was that always for you? This? You know, this belief?
Michele Benyo 46:32
Yes. Yes, it really was. From the time I was a young girl. And, and I do credit. I mean, like you that I recognize that, that not everyone shares the same beliefs, and so much of what I offer, you know, I just, I want parents to hear it and take value from it, no matter where they are in their own hearts with their beliefs. But as for me, I know that my relationship with God and Jesus and my being able to count on him, I mean, when people say, I’m strong, I say, that’s what it is. I’m just assured. And, and I do look back at my life, I, you know, I told you that I feel like this journey and this mission of helping parents understand, you know, this, the deep part of what children need from them to affirm these emotions that are really difficult, like grief, a started for me as a child, and because I didn’t feel like my parents were that way. And yet, I always had that relationship, and my sisters didn’t. So you know, I can see that difference and know what a difference it’s made for me. And that’s another piece that I’m so grateful for, because I always say, Why me? Why do I have this relationship when others in my family don’t? And I’m not sure why. But I have always had it. Yeah,
Victoria Volk 47:59
Well, and even for the relationship to continue after your son passed, right? If we have that take comfort in that knowing that we can still talk to them exactly. can still feel their presence, if we really just sit in, maybe ask Mm hmm. Being open to asking for that.
Michele Benyo 48:20
Yeah.
Victoria Volk 48:21
Message or whatever it is, or you know, that feeling that can bring us great comfort. I know you mentioned to there was an author and Roiphe? Roiphe.
Michele Benyo 48:32
I, you know, I’ve only ever seen her name in print. So I say Roiphe, I’m not sure if that’s how she pronounces it.
Victoria Volk 48:39
Before. She says there’s Yes, grief loss and the remaking of a life. Yes, love that.
Michele Benyo 48:44
I do, too. When I when I came across that early in my knowing that, you know, I wanted to help with families with this, I thought that’s how I make the distinction is, there are so many people that are there to help us deal with loss, and thankfully, so the grief groups of therapists, all of those, what I want to do is step in, you know, behind that or concurrently with that and say, yes, now we need to remake life, we still have life, but it’s not the same, it can ever be the same, but we can remake it and we can choose how to remake it. And yeah, I love that quote. It’s just very simple. A very simple but clear way of looking at loss and grief.
Victoria Volk 49:26
So what would you like to scream to the world and wish that people knew and understood about sibling loss about your grief? I mean, you’ve shared a lot of great wisdom, but is there anything else that you can think of?
Michele Benyo 49:43
The two things that I would scream, you know, the two things that are so well three things that are so important to me the first one is that we need to talk about grief and normalize it and not be afraid of it and support people in the midst of it. I mean, we just really need to be able to talk about it. And the other piece is for people to really understand that siblings hurt any sibling, any sibling that you talk to whether they lost their sibling when they were 50, or whether they lost them when they were five, you know, they, they will tell you the same thing that people really didn’t seem to, you know, take into account their grief. And it is, it is so identity shifting for every sibling to lose a sibling. And so that is something that if someone said you can just give one message to the world, Michelle, it would be know that siblings grieve and help them grieve and help them through it. I know I said, there were three things. I don’t remember what the third one was that popped into my head. But yeah, those are the two things really.
Victoria Volk 50:50
Do you see a lot more people coming to for support on when their child loses an only sibling, like when they only have just the one sibling that Pat like, like, if there’s just the two children and one passes away? Or do you know, because I think there can be this comfort as a parent that you would take, if one child passes and there’s two others, you know, have another they still have another sibling to support and, you know, walk through life with but I think it’s important to not take away though that the individual relationships are still individual.
Michele Benyo 51:25
Exactly. And and you’re right. And I thought about that a lot. Because of course i I’m doing what I’m doing. You know, I founded this on my one experience with my one daughter. And that’s not at all universal, you know, every child is going to experience it in their own way. I think the idea that the sibling bond is strong for all siblings, I think that’s universal, but it’s not going to be as painful for every sibling. And it’s not going to look the same way for every sibling. I have worked mostly with families that have, you know, just the single remaining sibling. And I yeah, I look forward to looking working more with families who have more children, because it is you may have one child who’s really really suffering, and one child who is adjusting better to so yes, you bring up such an important point. And it, it’s a good point to make any way which is not all kids are the same. Not all children are like my daughter. So I use my examples. But your child is totally different. And I recognize that. And if you’ve got more than one child, you’re not going to have a one size fits all way of helping those children through their grief because they’re going to do it differently.
Victoria Volk 52:40
Well not even just thought of when there’s multiples, you know, yeah, twin and your twin passes, but yet you have other siblings, and yet that was your twin. Yeah, yeah, or triplet, or whatever the case may be, or, or you lost one of your siblings at birth, as well. And there’s so many there are those right? Like there are, throughout your grief experience, what has given you the most joy and what gives you the most hope for the future.
Michele Benyo 53:10
You know, the most joy really has been, as I’ve started to do this work, and I’ve had parents for whom it’s made such a difference. That is, that is the greatest joy for me to know that someone is seeing, you know, the name of my my course that I offer is see your way forward after child loss. And that that is really what I want to help them do. And for a parent to come in and say I just didn’t know how to be a parent, I just didn’t know how I could do it. And just, you know, just six months later have a totally different view of seeing their way forward. And I do I use the word living forward because I don’t want to say moving forward, that’s not the right connotation. It’s we’re going to live and we’re going to go forward when we’re living forward. And we choose how to do that. And that gives me the greatest joy is just knowing that, that what I have offered has has worked has been a key for some other parents because as I said, you know, I knew I was working from my own experience. And if there’s anything we know in grief, you know this because you’ve talked to so many people, it’s, it’s different for everybody. I can’t tell you what I did and say now go out and do that and you’ll be happy. That’s not at all what I what I try to do or want to do or believe that I can do and so when what I offer does help someone make their own way. That’s the greatest joy. And what was the other question you asked?
Victoria Volk 54:47
Hope for the future, your hope for the future?
Michele Benyo 54:50
Well, that’s the same thing that gives me hope because the other piece as we know, those of us who have worked with the Grief Recovery method that is that whole mindset around grief that needs to shift. And if I can teach parents how to do emotion coaching and things that build really good coping skills and resilience in their young children, and help their children grow up with healthy attitudes about how to deal with grief when it comes, because it’s going to come again, then those children are going to grow up and be adults who know how to do it with their own children. And that that is hope. So I look at it as you know, it’s not just the families that I’m helping, it’s the legacy that they’re going to build that’s going to be carried on by their children. And that’s really, that’s really hopeful. And it’s intervention. Mm, yeah. I love that. It’s the ripples of the work that yeah, yes, exactly. Is there anything else you would like to share? No, I know that I’ve gone far and wide, it’s not hard to talk with you about these things, there’s just so much to say, and I just, I just really want to invite people anywhere to visit my website, www dot Good grief parenting.com. And I’m putting on there, I have a community page where I’m trying to just provide places for people to tap into what can serve them, you know, the things that I do the course that I offer, the coaching that I offer, and make them aware of the podcasts that I’m on, because there are so I’m just discovering, as things have changed so much in the 20 years that I’ve been on this journey, I just really encourage people to look for the resources that are out there and find the ones that speak to you and serve you, and read and be open to absorbing some different ways of looking at grief and recognizing that it really can be good. It’s not something to avoid, and protect our children from because it’s just a part of life. And, and it can be an in, it can be an enriching part of life, or a debilitating one it can choose, we choose Yes, and that is the whole point. And I like to, you know, encourage people. But yes, and and not choosing to live forward is a choice, as well a choice to stay stuck in a place that doesn’t feel good. So that’s why I just really do encourage anyone listening to your podcast to, you know, you’ve got so many examples of stories, and there’s so many good resources out there and be open, be open and you don’t have to let go of your loved one healing does not mean you leave your loved one behind. And that’s something I know a lot of parents struggle with. They don’t want to quit hurting over their child because then they’re forgetting their child and they don’t want to do that. And that’s that’s really not true. We can live forward with them.
Victoria Volk 58:05
I love that. And you mentioned your course, which is your way forward after child lost its weight program.
Michele Benyo 58:11
And all of that information is on my on my website.
Victoria Volk 58:16
And I will have the link to that in the show notes as well as where people can find you on social which is yes.
Michele Benyo 58:22
I prefer Instagram. I’m at Michelle banjo underscore Good grief. It’s Michelle Banya with one L, M I C H, E L E, B, E, N, Y.O. And there are two of us on Instagram. So I’m the one with underscore Good grief.
Victoria Volk 58:42
All right. Thank you for sharing that. And thank you for being my guest today is been my honor to have you and for sharing your story of cumulative loss, which is never have I had an interview with someone who has not had cumulative loss.
Michele Benyo 58:58
Yes, exactly. We don’t realize it until we start looking at it. Yes. So thank you Victoria for the opportunity. I’ve just really enjoyed talking with you and really enjoyed looking at your podcast as well. So thank you.
Victoria Volk 59:13
Thank you for listening. And remember when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love from my heart to yours. Thank you for listening. If you liked this episode, please share it because sharing is caring. And until next time, give and share compassion by being hurt with yours. And if you’re hurting know that what you’re feeling is normal and natural. Much love my friend.
