Cancer, Chronic Illness, Grief Stories, Grieving Voices Guest, Grieving Voices Podcast, Podcast, Widowhood |
Rachel Engstrom | Life as a Cancer Wife, Widow, & Never a Mother-to-Be
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
Eight years following the death of her husband from acute lymphoblastic leukemia, Rachel reminisces on the love she lost and also the pain and lessons that came from his death as well.
Rachel found purpose through her pain in writing about her experience, which later became her book, and also through cancer advocacy.
In this episode, she shares the story of her husband’s diagnosis and death two years later, as well as how she found her way to feeling better.
On top of the loss of her spouse, she would later have to come to terms with the fact that she will never have biological children and, also experienced a health setback herself, later being diagnosed with a disease of the colon.
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Victoria Volk 00:00
Thank you for tuning in to grieving voices. This is your host Victoria Volk, and today I have Rachel Engstrom with me, she is has a masters of social work. She is a certified health education specialist and has written a groundbreaking memoir self help book on her experience as a young cancer wife than widow with the increasing number of young women and men becoming widows or widowers due to not only cancer and serious illnesses, but also now COVID-19. This resource is needed more than ever, Rachel shares her journey in a raw and honest way while providing step by step resources to help you navigate your own journey. Never before has there been a combination of the personal grit of the healthcare journey, along with steps and how to navigate treatment diagnosis, the ins and outs of hospital life, employment, finances, insurance, self care, grief and loss, and much more. You can find wife, widow now what how I navigated the cancer world and how you can too, on Amazon, which will be linked in the show notes. Thank you so much, Rachel, for being here.
Rachel Engstrom 01:12
Thank you for having me.
Victoria Volk 01:14
So let’s talk about the birth of your book. And really how this probably what started out as a passion project was which was your life unfolding? How? Where does your Where does your story begin?
Rachel Engstrom 01:29
I am about to be 39. And I moved here I’m in the Minneapolis St. Paul area I moved here in 2000. So almost 21 years ago, to go to the University of Minnesota. And in myself, I moved here not knowing one person, no family, anyone was here that I knew. And in my sophomore year, first semester, I went to a birthday party. And a friend of mine it was she was having a party for her boyfriend and his friend from work came. So this tall guy who’s six, two, who’s, you know, almost seven years older than me showed up. And I just thought that he was really cute and nice and you know inquired about him to the friends the next day. And he did the same about me. And we dated for three years. And then when I graduated from college, three months after that, I got my first job right away. And then I got married at 22. And he was about to be 28. And then so he worked nights the whole time we were together. So that was pretty cool. I mean, I missed him a lot. But that was pretty cool. And that I was able to become my own independent adult person within my 20s and still have that relationship and that consistency in my life of being with him. And then when I was 28, and he was about to be arxys. I was 28 and he was 35. He just really didn’t feel well one day and went to the doctors that turned in to go to the hospital for blood transfusions turned into go to this clinic. They didn’t tell us it was a cancer clinic that he was mis diagnosed with something and then the next day had a bone marrow biopsy and two days later, he’s diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. So at age 28, I’m already grappling with a few months before that learning that I have endometriosis cyst, whatnot that had ruptured on my reproductive organs. I’m grieving that I might not be able to have children, things like that. And then this couples with that, and I have to very, very quickly learn how to navigate the serious illness, world insurance, disability, all these things, which is why you list that all of that, along with having this cancer life become my norm. So I’m working eight hours running back home to let the dog out, then running the hospital for a few hours then running back home, you know, petting the animals trying to pay attention to them for 20 minutes before I you know, pass out, rinse and repeat the next day. So that was quite a lot. So that was my life. I did have a lot of support from my parents who are in a different state. They came and lived with us for 18 out of the 27 months that my husband was sick and he got a lot better and then relapsed, unfortunately, a year and a half after his initial diagnosis. So we had to hospitalized him after he relapsed on the day of our eighth wedding anniversary. And what was interesting is going back a year when he in so he got sick in January of 2011. He had a fever and had to be hospitalized in August of 2011. And one of the nurses said, Oh my gosh, you guys are still together. I can’t believe you’re together. This is amazing. And I was like what are you talking about? And she told me that during cancer and serious illnesses, that in her experience of 25 plus years she’d seen 70% of more people come back that needed medical care that their significant others left them, or the marriages didn’t work her out or things like that. And that just totally blew my mind because we had we knew very quickly on that this is scary, you know, of course we’re hoping he’s not going to die, but that we’re in this together we can’t afford to fight or you know, disagree that much or those types of things because this is such a serious thing. So in January of 2013, he had a bone marrow biopsy or excuse me, he had a bone marrow transplant. days after I had a surgery for endometriosis. And he had had a lot of chemo and radiation to prepare his body, when you have a bone marrow transplant, they have to wipe out your entire immune system. Like you’re a newborn baby to take these stem cells from umbilical cords, that was his donor. And just the chemo, the radiation, all those side effects ultimately ripped up and shredded his kidneys, his bladder, lungs, things like that. So he was in the ICU once, you know, it was preparing for him to die miraculously, within a two week turnaround, he was out of the ICU out of the hospital in a rehab, was learning to walk again, do all those kinds of things. And then he went for an appointment and things kind of went downhill. And then on April 17, I was told, I got a call early in the morning, and he said I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe. And he had been on regular like oxygen. But they needed to put them on high flow oxygen. He just he wasn’t breathing well through the night. And then they called me and said he needed to be integrated. And he got on the phone and he said I love you to each other three times. And then when I got to the hospital, he was kind of freaking out. And I asked them to give them a high dose of pain medicine. So it would just knock them out. And then once he was comfortable, I was sitting in this chair and I had three doctors come and tell me I’m sorry. And they said we’ll decide within 48 hours, you know, when’s the appropriate time basically to take them off life support. And two days later, when we’re going to do this is my 31st birthday. And two days after that, so then they said okay, well wait another 48 hours, but I just knew within that he was gone. It wasn’t even him anymore. You know, he’s just seeing him slip away. And what was amazing is what carried me through significantly was my my faith, my faith in God and all of those things. But I just had so much peace and so much grace within it, I was just very numb to all of it. And I believe that, you know, the biggest factor was my faith for feeling that way. But what I learned later learned later, when I was trying to be in learn more and being young widow groups and things like that. What I was seeing that I didn’t quite realize is I had I was given so much grace and that I was able to be with him as he was dying. So many people have their significant others die at war, or you know, a freak accident at work or those types of things, I was actually able to be with him. So on the 21st I signed the papers and everything. He was so amazing. He did extra bone marrow biopsies and spinal taps and things like that, for research at the University of Minnesota. So I signed the papers that morning for him to donate his body to the University of Minnesota, which is what he wanted to do. And then called our Mr. It’s Sunday’s of using church then we had to wait for him to come and then had the few family members that were there say bye. And that I had made a heaven playlist the night before because I knew that he was going to die the next day. And I had them unplug him, we cleaned up his face a little bit. And then I played a playlist and help my husband, my life. My best friend, everything that I knew is I waited for his heart to stop. So I was two days after I turned 31. And then I walked out of the room and I was Rachel 2.0 I was a widow. So I just I had to restart. And I had to reboot my life literally like a computer. Because I had been thinking I was going to have you know, little feet running around the house that are half me half him, I’m going to have someone help me pay for this house. We’re going to go on trips, we’re going to do all of these things. So I had to figure out how to navigate all of it. The cancer part was hard enough, but this was navigating all of it. And especially with being a 28 year old cancer wife is hard. But being a 31 year old widow is insanely hard because you don’t know anyone else in your circle of people going through that. So ultimately that led me to the idea of writing a book so my book wife widow now what is chronological order of my caringbridge Medical posts that got emailed out to everybody my Facebook post. And so it’s my narrative between all these real time posts. So when I’m figuring Insurance I walk you through bam bam bam This is how you do it this is diagnosis treatment work when people want to help these are tangible ways to tell them they can help getting counseling for yourself getting counseling for the patient ways to adapt to your house you know I had no idea I’d be 28 and be needing to get you know, a shower chair and all these things and so basically my book is a love story but the tips and the tricks of how I navigated all the illness part and then how I navigated all the widow part the anniversaries, the holidays, all those first all those feelings, and it’s very gritty in that I don’t it’s beautiful, but I don’t sugarcoat anything you know when I one day I may be like, oh Today’s a great day and the next day I’m like again so grueling. So it’s really unique and that this is the first of its kind memoir self help how to merge the narrative and the realness of the journey with the medical aspect of how you do both so I put all that together and it was very much a labor of love and a lot of PTSD but I’m really proud to have it out there’s there’s nothing like this to help people navigate it.
Victoria Volk 11:13
it’s a lot yeah thank you. So how many years ago was this now?
Rachel Engstrom 11:16
April 21st will be eight years
Victoria Volk 11:19
what is life been like since
Rachel Engstrom 11:22
so it was really hard. It was really hard at first just for fun just for kicks I took classes to get a certification and grief counseling because I wanted to know about grief the process all of those things learning about you know ambiguous loss of suicide and you know all the different kinds of grief what people go through my bachelor’s degree is in anthropology so just culturally, it was fascinating because I was part of this culture I knew nothing about it’s like literally being dropped out of an airplane into a foreign country you don’t speak the language you don’t know anybody you don’t know where you are you have to start over it was it was really really difficult working three part time jobs to try to pay for house like I said, I thought I’d have someone helped me with lost a lot of friends not because people didn’t care but I think they didn’t know how to adequately help and kind of like you have you know, when you have a job, you have your work family of friends there and then you leave and then you’re like, Oh, you know, I don’t really talk to them that much anymore. The really hard part is about going through something that’s catastrophic is your friendships, your relationships have been flow and change that way as well. I purposely with a lot of intent, stepped away from the cancer world, the illness world, all of that for years, because it was just too close too hard. You know, there were movies that came out like I remember like a fault in our stars, a couple different ones where people were like Rachel do not watch those do not even don’t even touch it. Those things are really difficult. My brother who’s 14 years older than Wayne told me in the very beginning when he came right before Grayson got sick or excuse me when he got sick, you know, you you can choose to be better or better. And I wasn’t always better. I have a chapter called bitter Betty. But within that I had I had to I didn’t have anyone else that I was responsible for besides my pets, besides me, so I had to know that Like it or not, I had to reboot This was my new life. And within that I chose to surround myself with positive people. I had a couple of very long term friendships that ended up not appropriately supporting me and being very judgmental and toxic that I had to cut out of my life. Just a lot of growing pains of being this new person this new role this not definitely not asked for a role. So navigating all that was really tough navigating just having enough money to afford the house and everything that was just insanely tiring I worked for a year and a half I worked three part time jobs to with autistic children, one with the lady with multiple sclerosis, running all across the Twin Cities and be like five or 600 miles a week navigating all of that I forgot to say six months after my husband died, I had had so much pain I could barely walk so I had a hysterectomy so then I gave up the ability to have kids which was another huge loss. But then you know later on victoriously I’m in target walking past like the tampon aisle and just like so excited. You know, it’s the little wins. But three months after he died I actually went to Alaska for almost three weeks by myself took a cruise was always like, you know, I’ve seen the Titanic. Tell me which well I well you know that they’re safe these days. I will never go on one. But I also didn’t think that I would be a widow at 31 either. So I gave myself space and time to see nature all these places you can only get to by boat plane Things like that. So it was a lot of a lot of trial and error. Over the years, I had met my husband when I was 19. So dating again in my 30s wasn’t sane, I got her, I got my heart broken, I was naive, I was stupid. I didn’t make the smartest choices sometimes. But I was I was just believing the whole time that God had a plan and like footprints, I wasn’t going to be dropped, you know, the second set of footprints in the sand. And that’s ultimately what carried me through and then also finding out surrounding myself not only with appropriate people, but you know, funny TV shows uplifting music, things like that, because there are a lot of really sad things out there. I didn’t always Excel taking care of myself. So those are some learning points. You know, when your spouse dies, you don’t want to sit around and eat salads, you want to eat cake, you want to eat pizza, you want to eat things that necessarily don’t fill you up with endorphins that make you more sluggish. But you do what you need to do. So in time, things got a lot better. And I don’t really speak about love life or anything except in my book. That’s my one disclaimer, you have to you have to read it because it’s at the end of the book, that’s kind of my happy ending. But what’s truly incredible to me is where I am in my life now. I’m, I have Besides, it’s hard to articulate this sometimes without feeling like offending people. But it’s true, like losing your parent, losing your sibling losing your grandparent, those things are so hard, they’re so hard. But the only thing I could equate with losing a spouse to would be how I can’t imagine losing a child. But losing a spouse is definitely not planned, especially as young as you know, I was 31 he was 37 so it’s very, very tricky to find adequate support and those types of things because when people say oh, my mom died or my my whoever died I I understand you don’t understand you really don’t understand it’s a different kind of grief. It’s more complicated. It’s the person that was in your house every day. You know, even a year after he died, I would look at the door and expect him to walk through it. All those types of things. So what’s incredible to me is that I went from being the saddest of the sad not able to get out of bed. You know, my reproductive organs are have been taken out of me my my hope of being, you know, a mom and all these different things and my husband’s gone and whatnot, that I went from there to writing a book, despite how painful it was writing a book and now speaking about the positive things I focused on the positive things you can focus on. It will be over by the time this is aired, but right now in the state of Minnesota, I am running for a woman of the year trying to raise $60,000 for blood cancer. leukemia Lymphoma Society did so much for me I did two half marathons walking them I’m not a runner, two half marathons walking that my dad won the year after he was diagnosed and one the year after he died, so in 2012 and 2014 and within that I found friends for life people that backed me people that supported me. And if I can get $50,000 I can get a grant and his name. And you know, I’m just I’m pumped to help people because as great as advancements are, every three minutes someone’s diagnosed with blood cancer every nine minutes someone dies from blood cancer, one in five people are going to get cancer in their lifetime. 80 It’s the number one childhood blood cancers, typically acute lymphoblastic leukemia, which is the type of leukemia my husband had, which usually children get or elderly people get 80% of childhood cancer survivors of this have catastrophic, like chronic health conditions, whether it be so my husband a year after he was diagnosed, he’s 36 looks great, you know, full head of hair, he’s super healthy. You know, no one knows he has cancer if you saw him, the steroids that he took for the first part of his treatment had rotted his hips to the point where there was a crack and it was the hip bone was falling out of the socket. So I have another friend that his son, or excuse me his that I met while my husband was actively dying. This person I met because he was he was so nice. It was a friend through a friend and he gave me money to stay in the hotel across the street because his wife had died five months before that, when his twins were three, and then three years ago when the twins were nine. I’m one of them got diagnosed with the kind of blood cancer. So this little he’s lost his wife. Now one of his two sons has cancer and he’s getting the little boy got really, really sick, his name’s Jake, he’s an insane warrior. Now he’s fine, his treatments are done, but he’s had to wear leg braces, because his legs are just his bones are you know, so there’s so much that’s amazing like the Leukemia Lymphoma Society has cutting edge research which actually informs other forms of cancer, their treatments and things are helping all forms of cancer. So it’s not just blood cancer and trying to get funds for. But the side effects are awful. We can acutely treat them when they’re happening and get you into remission, but the side effects are not quite there. So I feel really privileged and proud to be able to do this in honor of my late husband because he did these extra bone marrow biopsies donated his body to the University of Minnesota, he wanted to help people. So in a way I’m really proud to be able to have him live on through my story live on in this way. And this usually does not make me cry, but I’m just really excited. He would just be pumped to know that I’ve turned my life into advocacy in his honor. So that’s where I’m at today.
Victoria Volk 21:06
How about you tells us a little bit about him.
Rachel Engstrom 21:09
Oh, he was funny. So his name is Grayson and he was just like, gosh, golly, nice to the point where he’d say like, I’d hand them something and you’d say appreciate it. Maybe like what is so nice. He had he would ask the nurses like can I trouble you to get me something and they would like fall over laughing like it’s our job of course we’re going to help you. He loves New Order in the Pet Shop Boys and techno music and going with his best friend oh and for craft beers and discovering breweries and different things and from his best friend that I spent a lot of time with after that I was friends with anyway but spent a lot of time with after Grayson’s death he’s like he would just have any rolled his eyes when he told me he’s like he would just talk about you all the time. It was just all the time and you know, we really were the best of friends and we had what I call Space Age marriage where we rarely ever fought granted we didn’t really see each other Monday through Friday because he was working. But you know, when we did have arguments, it was over piddly stupid stuff and I was in my 20s having those growing pains and whatnot and as he works nights you know we didn’t have a dishwasher in our little apartment and I would want him to wash his dishes but he couldn’t wash them at night when he got home late at night because the kitchen was by the bedroom and it would have woken me up and then he was a serial procrastinator so he would be so tired he’d get up late you know work and then he’d get up at like one 130 then have to work at three so I just passively aggressively would stack those dishes on a cookie sheet because they were his but um he was just a joy he was a lot of fun everybody loved him the nurses told me they fought over him you know who that they had everybody’s index cards and patients in the room who had who when they would fight over who got to take care of him and you know I would bring blankets and a lamp and you know different things to make the hospital room like a little home and they would say oh lovebirds are in their apartment and you know things like that so we just made the most of it and despite him being sick we actually were given the gift of time you know that we hadn’t had our entire time together Monday through Sunday being able to spend time together and we’d have sleepovers and I’d be on my little hospital cot on the floor and he’s you know two feet above me and we’re holding hands you know watching movies and stuff like that but he was just a really good guy and I know that you know with from what I’ve learned, you know, different marriages, different things, different relationships. You don’t always get to have that nice story and closure where there’s a death You know, you’re left with you know, what was or I wish I would have said or I wish you know, I did have what it could have shut us but not in big ways. Not in big ways. You know, I felt guilty for a couple years because while he was sick, he would always want me to come snuggle with him on the couch and I’d be across the room on the other couch just insanely tired, exhausted on the couch and not wanting to move he’d be like come snuggle and I’m like a little while last thing I want to do I’m so tired. So I feel bad because I’m like he wanted that and I could have done that. But besides that I really don’t have any regrets. And you know, I asked him a couple days before he died. He was awake for a couple minutes just his eyes were barely open but you know, I knew it and we had a health care directive and everything but do you trust me? Do you understand what’s going on? Do you understand what’s going to have to happen and you know, he shook his head yes. And ultimately I was just prematurely obviously in my head I know that I’m you know, devastated. My world’s been thrown a grenade but While I was while my mom and I are waiting in the snow for my dad to pick us up, after I’ve left the body of my husband upstairs at the hospital, I just have these immense feelings of relief, because he’s not in this diabolical pain. He’s not going through horrific things anymore. That wasn’t really him anymore. Anyway, you know, it was just what was the it was unfortunately, like, you know, you change sounds like a really awful example. But you know, you when you get new carpet in your house, and you can go look at samples and there are those remnants, you know, he was remnants of who he was, that’s what was left the last few days he had given it his all he had fought so hard. I had confirmed with the doctors many times, especially the day he died, you know, there’s really nothing else they can do. And within that, I had the peace of knowing in the grand scheme of things. It didn’t make sense why he had to die. But biologically, his body just gave out. And, you know, God loved them. He did the he did the most that he could, and the love that I had for him and that he had for me, ultimately helped set me on the path of who I am today.
Victoria Volk 26:12
Was hospice care, never talked about?
Rachel Engstrom 26:16
No, because he was, um, so it wasn’t a necessary thing to have because he was in the hospital. So he left our house on January 21. He died on April 21. So it literally 90 days, because it took 60 days for his stem cell transplant to take for the bone marrow transplant, and things like that. He was like in the cancer ward. So he had that high level of oncology care specific for what he was going through. So I mean, I was assuming I was pricing like walkers and stuff like that, you know, I was thinking because he’d been to rehab and things like that I was thinking that he was going to come home and I had someone asked me a couple weeks ago, on a different show, like Did you really think that he was going to be fine and get better? And I was? I said, Yeah. And she said Why? And I was because he we were so young. You know, when you’re 31 and you’re 37 you assume you know you are unbreakable, unbeatable. You feel like you’re a superpower, you have the whole rest of your life in front of you. So I really did not I, when you’re the caregiver, or the spouse, or the main person caring for someone you don’t, at least in my opinion, you don’t get the luxury of believing that your person is going to be anything but fine, because you’re the cheerleader, you’re the you know, manager, the captain, the rah rah, we can do this of the ship. So I really until they told me I’m sorry, on the 17th I really thought that he would make it. And then at that point, because he was in the ICU, that was the adequate care he needed to take care of him.
Victoria Volk 27:55
I had Dr. Chris Kerr is the author of death is but a dream. It’s all about end of life experiences. And he has done extensive research on the subject. And he’s part of that docu series on Netflix called surviving death. And Episode Five. And you might find that episode interesting just because he talks a lot about the medicalization of dying. Hmm. So that’s why I was kind of curious on the hospice aspect of that. Sure. So what what are some of the things that I know you kind of spoke to like the some friendships fell away, which naturally, often happens with grief? But what are some of the things that were helpful to you, that people shared with you or said, and some of the hurtful things too?
Rachel Engstrom 28:46
Oh, yes. Well, I know how you feel is really hard. I had a lady that she was she was very sweet, very well intended. And she was a lady in her 60s, from church that helped do a fundraiser different things for me, but she would come and she, you know, I never let her in my house because I know she never really, she would stand on my porch and come and check on me and different things like that. And she kept telling me like, Oh, I know how it feels. I know what it is, you know, I’ve been there, done that. And she told me how she lost her mom. And she was saying she was a widow. And I’d be like, Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry, to the after like four or five of these visits. It turned out like she was like, Oh no, I’m married. It’s just my husband volunteers at church so much. I feel like a widow and I was like, Oh, just like I just wanted to slam the door on her face. I think the toughest thing. I had someone really close to me in my life. Tell me after about six months, just just decide to be happy. Just like pick a day decide to be happy. I think it’s really tough when people don’t realize that grief doesn’t have a start and end date. It’s on your own timeline, especially with me Every buddy’s grief journey is different. The circumstance of death is often very different. You know, you could put 10 people in a room and they all have different ways someone died. Mine, you know, being able to be there with him, like I said, For me made it a lot easier. And what was interesting is his, his pa is working, I think of it. What the acronym is, physician’s assistant, who was was like junior doctor. She was the one that after he was unplugged, and everything, you know, I lay down next to him and covered, she covered us up and I’m, you know, I laid there and we did an hour for his heart to stop. She said, Give me your phone. I said, Why? And she said, Let me take a picture. And I said, No. And she said, Yeah, you’re gonna want this. And she was right, because I wanted to look at these horrific pictures of what he looked like to really get and formulate, that’s not him. He had to go. But yeah, it’s, it was just really interesting to know and see what it was for me, versus what it was for other people. Being part of those widow widow groups online, different things like that. You know, it’s, it just sounds. I’m having a hard time articulating this because it just sounds very odd. But like, there was a woman in the group that her husband, apparently she was like, barely five feet tall. Her husband came home from Afghanistan. And one day, her 10 year old son found him hanging in the garage. And because she was so short, and he was already like five, three at like 10 G. They were trying to get him down. So she had her 10 year old son cut down dad. And it’s just there was someone else that it was her husband she knew he was really sad, but he she was like sitting on the front porch. And she’d been out there maybe like 510 minutes and her husband came out and said, Hey, come, you know, I’m going to take a nap come lay down with me on the bed, she found out. After laying down with him for like 20 minutes, she thought he was taking a nap underneath, like the pillow or something like that he had taken a whole bottle of pills. This is another soldier that came home. So he had died. And she had no warning and she knew nothing. So listening to those things, it made me feel better in people’s grief. And that sounds awful. But it’s like you compare your situations and those things that I just felt so extremely grateful to have been with him. And I mean, I had no words for these people. These are the most catastrophic, tragic, horrible things to happen. And when people are trying to tell you, you know, you need to be happier, you need to move on or you need to do this. There are a lot of people are really well intentioned, but they and they want to help and they don’t know how to help. And that’s what I’m trying to do with this book. Whether it’s you or your family, or a friend or a friend of a friend or whatever, I have ways to talk to people ways to help people ways just to be more sensitive, because grief is such a taboo thing that so many people don’t know how to talk about, I think the most helpful thing people did is just listen, be willing to listen. A few weeks after he died, I created a healing blog, which was like maybe 1/3 of the people that I had on Facebook where I would just kind of bleed on paper and write how I was feeling and be open and honest and I have all these posts as well in the book as they’re happening in real time. For me, it was just really helpful to feel like I was getting it out getting it out to the world I wasn’t holding on to it and just having people respond you know I’m here any time or you know, those types of things I initially thought of calling this book a few years ago and I thought of it how social media saved my life because it really is I mean even you know pre COVID we’re all very isolated we’re all very stuck to our phones and all of these different things but if you can feel that support those types of things, that was really helpful and it was really an eye write about this as well it was really hard for me to ask for help. You have a lot of pride and you know it’s really tough but you’re if you’re the spouse, you’re the you’re the caretaker you’re the team captain when your persons ill and you’re taking care of it and you are glad to be giving updates and asking for help because you know you can only do so much later when it’s you. I felt like a hamster that had lost my wheel but I was still running because I was so used to taking care of him and needed to know all these different things. So when it came to taking care of myself, it was a lot harder to ask for help and I ended up posting in this blog a few times like Will someone text me or call me or you know, someone came in took me for a walk? Yes, like a dog. Like she was like I left my dog inside and she was like Rachel, let’s go for a walk. You know, put on your shoes Come on. So I think the biggest thing I had to learn the hard way is just asking for help and knowing that it’s okay not to be able to do it all yourself. That’s the thing about being a caregiver is you, a lot of people show their needs. I say, I think I was about 5050, I would go to a concert every now and then or a friend would come for a cup of coffee to the hospital or whatever. But it’s really tough to realize, this is me now, nobody else is going to be able to do it. You know, you got to suck it up, you have to do it. And within doing that, ask for help. And like today, present day, I have alarms on my phone that I have set to check in with different people that are going through some tough things. So I don’t forget, in my busy life, checking in with them, like I had people check in with me. So those are, I would say the biggest takeaways and things that were said that were helpful and that were not.
Victoria Volk 35:43
I like that last tip. So what is one tip that you would give? Well, I think there’s a lot of tips actually rolled into that too, for other people hurting and going through something similar. What was the best piece of advice that someone? Well, you said your was your brother, like, right? Was your brother then told you to be better or better?
Rachel Engstrom 36:06
Mm hmm.That was a really good one. Um, what was really helpful to me is I had an aunt Tell me, like when I was like six months out, so I would have this countdown, count up, I guess you could say, so each month after his death, like the the day, to the you know, every month after he died, so it’s like may 21, June 21, I got more empowered and excited as the months would go by, because I would be just excited that I’m making it I’m surviving. And my aunt said something like, I was just like, Oh, you know, I wish I could speed this up to do that so hard. And she said, this is so fresh, you have to give yourself time. And I think people don’t realize. So I’m eight years out. And on his death anniversary, I used to have like, my sisters get together or I’d go to a friend’s house, like people that actually knew him, I would spend time, you know, go do something fun. This year. I’m just working. It’s been eight years. It’s, it’s I’m very displaced from him in that within writing about it so many times. But I’ve worked really hard to get here. Of course, he’s dear to my heart. The reason I’m doing all of these things, but I have successfully moved on. Of course, it’s taken a ton of work to get here. But I think that just knowing that, you know doing things on your own timeline, doing what works for you, is the best thing. Sir. I remember watching friends, and Everybody Loves Raymond and Frasier and things like that, and just belly laughing and being like, I can have joy, like really, really realizing these things about yourself, creating these new traditions creating these new things. That’s not, you know, the easiest thing to do, but, but doing that is great, because when you are six months, one year, two years, that’s still really fresh. And I think that having my aunt say that to me, let me know, every, every bit of laughter I had every like those were gems to put in my little bag of I’m making it I’m being successful, those things that it does take it’s like a staircase that takes and you don’t know where the top is, it’s going into the clouds. So I think that hearing that little bit of wisdom helped me rephrase my urgency because you just want to get it over with you want to feel better, you want to zoom into this place. And that’s not really a tangible thing.
Victoria Volk 38:41
I want to bring circle kind of circle back to like all these the different losses that you had mentioned earlier, and like the groups and stuff, and I think it’s easy for people on the outside to make assumptions to that. It was a you know, it’s a loving relationship, right? That Yeah, whomever you lost was a loving relationship, but I just want to feel the need to bring up that sometimes that’s not the case. And so especially if you’re someone that is going to say something like, let’s see, for example, they’re in a better place now. Yeah. I mean, just some of the things that people say it’s like, well, you know, you don’t even know, we don’t know what the intricacies of the relationships are like, right? We don’t know, behind closed doors, what how the relationship really truly was, we know people for the for what they show us, right? And so I just, I don’t know, I felt the need to bring that up that sometimes you can lose a spouse but it might not have been a loving relationship. They might be relieved, because they were being abused. Right. You know, so I just wanted to bring that to attention. I just felt like I had to I don’t know why. Yeah, no, it’s very true. So I mean, it sounds Like, grief has taught you a lot as it does for all of us. Even me, 30 years out 30 plus years out of my own losses, what gives you the most joy, though today?
Rachel Engstrom 40:16
That’s a loaded question. Well, my faith, my faith and knowing that I went through the toughest thing possible. And not that I want more, I’m hoping that, you know, like Sam about to be 39 I’m hoping that the bad stuff happened when I was younger, knock on wood on my fake wood dust here. But that, not that I want bad things to happen, but I’m like, Here I am, hear me roar. I’ve been through the worst thing ever. And since I’ve been through that, I know that I can get other through other things as well, you know, I had, I was eating like ice cream before bed, like, almost every night for a couple weeks, like a couple years ago. And I was sweating at night. And I didn’t know the correlation between like your sugar levels, and you know, then you cover up with covers that, that if you have that before you go to bed, it will make you sweat. And sweating at night is one of the signs of leukemia. So, you know, I’m panicking, like, oh, we’re going through cancer, and I’m going to the doctor, because it’s all these things that you know, from being there. And just knowing that you need to take everything, as it is, as the day, things totally changed. God says, you know, if you make plans, you laughs that those plans, you really can’t pre plan too far ahead. I think that that brings me a lot of joy of living in the moment, being there for what’s going on. You know, I’m a planner, but being able to step back and, you know, check myself on that. Five and a half years ago, I started a job but a new place that launched a new life for me. And two weeks after I started, I had dental surgery took antibiotics that ripped up my GI tract, and I had that I was diagnosed with IBS and a colon disease. Awful as that was because I was very sick for a couple years. I’ve become an amazing chef and Baker. I was good before. So that makes me really happy. Sometimes it’s really annoying because I have to make everything from scratch. But I really enjoy baking I really enjoyed cooking here in Minnesota was 80 of other day it’s been raining, but you know, I’m trying to get out and hike and do those things. And physically, I can’t do as much as I could with digestive things. And I still have endometriosis because I still kept one ovary. But you know, getting out, being outside, walking my dog, the same dog that she’s 10 she just turned 10 that’s been with me I talked about in my book since we got her as a rescue puppy. At four months old, my when my husband was first sick, all these little regular normal parts of life just make me really happy. And knowing that, you know, whatever happens, however, you know, I will gladly take IBS, Nicole and disease because I’ve seen the cancer world I’ve been in the hospital, I’ve seen it all. Being able to I feel like I just have this wealth of knowledge and experience of I’ve seen the worst, I’ve had the worst thing happen and knowing that whatever may come is as much as I hate the cliche, like it couldn’t be worse, it really could. And what brings me joy is to know that the experience that I have can truly connect me with people to tell them I am so sorry, it doesn’t make it easier, doesn’t make it prettier, doesn’t make it more fair, what you’re going through, it’s so tough. And I really I’ve been there. And you know, within this book, I just want to get it into millions of hands. Because when you’re in it, you really do you feel alone, you really do feel isolated. And you know, I’m just really proud of this book, by the grace of God to be able to give people some tips and tools on how to navigate it. And you can see, you know, I have this amazing love of my life and my life went Oh, and then it took a while but it went back up and now I’m I’m just excited to help advocate and tell people, I went through it, I’m okay. And you’ll be okay too.
Victoria Volk 44:21
Is that what you would like to scream to the world?
Rachel Engstrom 44:25
Yes.
Victoria Volk 44:26
That was what that’s you know, really the premise of my podcast and why I wanted to start it too is that the education piece that bring this topic to the forefront and talk about grief, like we talked about the weather make it just an open conversation that we feel we can have with each other and without criticism and analysis and judgment. And in that there’s hope and that’s why stories, you know, like yours and other guests that I have on my podcast. That’s the whole point is to show that there is hope Is there anything else you would like to share?
Rachel Engstrom 45:03
I don’t think so. I feel like I’ve put a lot. There’s a lot on the table for people to think about. There’s a lot on your buffet.
Victoria Volk 45:12
I think just their story people. That’s I mean, that’s how people see themselves is through other people’s stories. And, you know, we all agree that 100% there is no half Grievers. And it doesn’t matter what your losses it’s, it is hurtful to you, regardless of what it is and what caused it. And it doesn’t need to be a big t trauma loss to deeply impact you. And can we do can actually, can we speak to the whole because this isn’t the whole point of you being on but I do feel it’s a topic that actually as a topic has that has not been covered on my podcast, but knowing that you will not be a mother, how have you navigated that?
Rachel Engstrom 46:02
Yeah, um, so I actually looked into adoptions and different things like that. And it was just, I mean, it’s, I feel like it sounds stupid, but the expense of it was something that I couldn’t, I couldn’t afford. And I’m, you know, I’m an aunt, I have four nieces, one of them just turned 15 other day, they’re seven, almost 17 1511 and 11. And I actually was a professional nanny raising babies and things like that. You know, I see Gerber commercials, all that kind of stuff, it’s tough, I had to take some time off social media because I’d seen people with their happy couples and babies and things like that when I was grieving so I think abstaining from those things, it’s smart, because we all compare, you can’t not compare. I do still to this day, sometimes grieve it a little bit. But I also know that the amount of time and energy that I’m putting into advocacy to help other people I wouldn’t have that time if I had a child so this is my baby. Trying to help other people is is my baby so I’m okay with that.
Victoria Volk 47:13
And that’s a beautiful reminder too that the fastest way to help ourselves heal is to put that put our energy to others to feel better probably the quickest turnaround you’ll ever get to feeling better is to focus on others
Rachel Engstrom 47:31
yeah yeah
Victoria Volk 47:33
yeah. Thank you for sharing that.
Rachel Engstrom 47:36
Thank you
Victoria Volk 47:37
Sorry, I put you on the spot it just is something.
Rachel Engstrom 47:36
No no no it’s okay.
Victoria Volk 47:42
And I know I can imagine that people have said all kinds of things, well you can always adapt
Rachel Engstrom 47:49
you can adopt and it’s like I don’t think people realize it’s like minimum like $40,000 Yeah. And you know, I have several hundreds of dollars a month in student loans and you know, all these things it’s just it’s not easy and it’s very I mean the mental health aspect it’s very complicated as well with an adopted child and all of these things and I’ve already been through some really hard things so
Victoria Volk 48:15
Yeah, and I think to like people might assume if you don’t have kids if you’re of a certain age and you don’t have kids we can make these assumptions of well either you can’t or and if you choose not to whatever you know there’s there’s plenty of people out there that choose not to oh my gosh.
Rachel Engstrom 48:41
yeah, I’ve met a couple friends that don’t and it’s just it’s a choice.
Victoria Volk 48:45
and it almost seems more offensive to other people you know that you choose not to but yeah we project Don’t we? We project do Yeah, yes, we’re projecting society. But I hope that through just talking and having these conversations that we can just bring some compassion to and know and leave the assumptions at the door, right? Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing anything else you would like to share?
Rachel Engstrom 49:15
know so you can find wife widow now what? Victoria will have the links, but you can find it on Amazon and it’s in paperback you can actually write in the budget sheet finances all these different things. Or if you get the ebook version, you can actually click on the hyperlinks they will take you to all the different websites to navigate what you need to and then you can find me why footer well, Rachel, wife widow now on Facebook and Instagram and you can ask me questions, anything you want, I’m open.
Victoria Volk 49:43
Alright, and I will put those links in the show notes and you know, the organization that you are currently raising money for that will be over probably by the time this airs, but I will still put the link for that. If you want.
Rachel Engstrom 49:57
Yeah, you can still donate. I’m very Very needed.
Victoria Volk 50:01
All right. Well thank you so much for sharing your story
Rachel Engstrom 50:03
Thank you, thank you.
Victoria Volk 50:005
And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.
Death/Dying, Grief Stories, Grieving Voices Guest, Grieving Voices Podcast, Miscarriage, Pregnancy & Infant Loss, Widowhood |
Arielle Arbushites | Widowed By Suicide at 29 & 3x Not a Mother
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
Arielle wasn’t a newcomer to grief and loss by the time her husband decided to take his own life when she was only 29.
She shares the highs, lows, and fears of navigating all of the unknowns and changes that came with losing her beloved, Rick. She wondered if she would ever love again, and because she and Rick couldn’t have children together, she then had to face the possibility that she would never become a mother. Would she meet someone who would want to have children? Would she meet someone while she’s still young enough to begin the chapter of parenthood? So many unknowns and the loss of hopes, dreams, and expectations.
Spoiler alert! Arielle does eventually remarry but wedded bliss doesn’t last long. After three miscarriages, she and her new love wondered if their mutual dreams and desires to be parents would ever come true.
Every miscarriage was different, and she shares exactly how different they were in this episode and how she found her way to wellness. She also shares the one thing that helped her soothe her own soul, not to mention how she found her own way to share with others how she was feeling without the pressure of needing to have what are often uncomfortable conversations.
RESOURCES:
CONNECT WITH ARIELLE:
Victoria Volk 00:01
Thank you for tuning in to today’s episode of grieving voices. Today my lovely guest is Arielle Arbrushites, and she is a licensed master social worker specializing in the field of grief and loss. She’s also experienced her own grief and loss. And we will dig into all of that. Thank you for being here.
Arielle Arbrushites 00:25
Thanks for having me.
Victoria Volk 00:27
So, let’s start with how we connected and and the losses that bring you to the podcast.
Arielle Arbrushites 00:35
Sure, sure. Well, we connected on on Instagram, I was checking out your account and I, I believe you are checking out mine and I have started, I guess running with more circles of the grief and loss crowd on Instagram in the last couple of months. Um, I am a widow. And I’ve been widowed for almost seven years, it’ll be seven years this coming May. And I, I’m widowed because of suicide, my husband took his own life. And in addition to that, I’ve also experienced three miscarriages. And then I had that lovely diagnosis of recurrent pregnancy loss or multiple miscarriages, and you know, very grateful to have a baby son now, but it took quite some time for me to have a living child. So, between those two things, I sort of joke around that I’m a good poster child for disenfranchised grief because suicide loss and miscarriage are just types of losses that people don’t talk about, or at least they don’t talk about, in the same way as other losses are talked about. And I just feel as a social worker, that it’s very important to give voice to those losses because it normalizes it for people, it validates their grief and their feelings. And those things are very, very important to me. So, I’m a writer, I think first and foremost. And then second, I’m a social worker. And those two things, they just they melt together pretty well.
Victoria Volk 02:09
Yeah. And actually, I think I reached out to you. In fact, on Instagram, I think there was this immediate connection for both of us. And also, to like you work in the hospice arena.
Arielle Arbrushites 02:21
I do, I do. I started out as a hospice social worker, you know, as we say, in hospice in the field, meaning traveling from home to home, and taking care of hospice patients in their homes, whatever their home might be. So, whether it’s a house, an apartment, whether it’s a skilled nursing facility, and assisted living facility, whatever they would call their residents. I was doing that kind of work in hospice, and then just a little over two years ago, actually became a manager in hospice. So, my title now is manager of support services, which means I oversee all of the hospice, social workers in our hospice agency, all of the spiritual counselors, all of the bereavement counselors and the volunteer coordinator in that program. So that is really cool. And the way I explain it to people who aren’t familiar with Hospice is I’m basically in managing everything non nursing related. So, anything that’s that’s not nursing, it kind of falls under me, which is cool. And I don’t really like to consider myself a boss. I like the term leader a lot more. So, you know, in leadership, and in my job, we talk about that a lot. I really want to be a leader, not a boss, and I don’t micromanage, and I like to work with people not above them. And, you know, the the hierarchy is not important to me at all. And, of course, first and foremost by profession. I’m still a social worker, and I do still see patients in hospice. I just also happen to manage 25 people at the same time, so I don’t see as many patients as I used to.
Victoria Volk 03:49
So how did you get into this work? Was it those losses that you experience?
Arielle Arbrushites 03:55
It’s an interesting question, because I think people ask me that all the time. If they find out about the losses that I’ve had, and I actually my husband died before I was doing hospice work. However, I had interned for hospice, when I was getting my master’s in social work. One of my field placements was in hospice. And that’s how I knew that I was called to do that work, and I really wanted to my husband was still living at that point. And then, you know, of course, my husband dying by suicide, that has has nothing to do with hospice, you know, for the most part, but a loss is a loss and grief is grief and widowhood is widowhood. And, you know, what you experience in the aftermath, there’s so many similarities no matter what the loss or how someone died, so after my husband died, I worked at my previous job for about a year a little over a year before I made the jump, to go to hospice as a full time employee because I felt like in my first year of grief, it pretty probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do just for my own self care, I didn’t want to dive right into helping other people with death and dying and their grief and their losses when I really needed to take care of myself. But as more time went on, I thought, Okay, you know what, I’m still grieving, because I think you grieve forever. That’s, that’s, you know, my belief. I thought, well, I’m still grieving. But I know I really think that I’m healthy and well enough and healed enough that I could help other people. And I think my personal experience was really going to benefit what I could give to a job like that. So, I hopped back into hospice at that point. And I hadn’t had any miscarriages, I hadn’t had any baby losses. At that point, I wasn’t able to have children with my late husband. And that was always a personal struggle to where I really wanted to become a parent, but I couldn’t, and I couldn’t and years passed and I couldn’t and you know, all the trying anybody who’s been through this, you know, you know, you try and you try and years past, and it’s just it becomes so heavy. So then losing my husband, of course, was losing all that, too. So, if I really wanted to be a mom, now I have to find somebody who wants to also be a parent, and how am I ever going to find this perfect person, I have to start all over and you know, wasting more time. And that’s kind of the wheels in my head, were turning with that kind of a thing. But I am remarried, and I’ve been married for, it’ll be four years this summer. So about three and a half years right now that I’ve been married to my current husband, Jeff. And all of the losses that I’ve experienced with the babies were with him. So, we had a lot of struggles trying to become parents as well. And it was just loss after loss after loss with him. And those were really, really difficult in a completely different way. And as far as the hospice work, it was always really cool seems like the wrong word when I’m talking about loss like that. But it was always really cool to be working for a hospice agency, when I was going through those losses, because you can imagine, if you work in the field of death, and dying, and grief and loss, you’re going to be, I think, more compassionate to your colleagues that are going through something like that, even when it’s disenfranchised grief. And if I needed to, you know, obviously be off from work for a few days to recover, and, you know, go through a surgery and recover from that, I felt like everyone was very thoughtful and caring, and it was a really great place to be working when I had to go through something like that. And I know so many people don’t have that privilege. So that was always, you know, a blessing. I don’t think people were apt to talk about it with me so much, because it’s still like that hush hush kind of grief, even in the field of grief and loss, believe it or not, but I did feel a lot of compassion when I worked with with hospice during those time.
Victoria Volk 07:53
I can’t imagine the whispers it’s like, I heard she had a miscarriage. And you know, it’s like the people that feel so uncomfortable with what don’t know what to say, and don’t know how to behave around someone who has had a loss like that. And, you know, I just want for our listeners who may not be really as familiar with the term disenfranchised. It was actually coined by a professor in the 80s, when he had a student that talked about the death of her ex-husband, and how it wasn’t her loss wasn’t even really recognized. And even though they had been together for many, many years, and when in grief recovery, the label doesn’t help us. It doesn’t tell us how to move beyond loss. But I just wanted to explain the definition a little bit. So, when that happened with your first husband, what were some of the things that you experienced and went through in respect to feeling that it was disenfranchised? Like what can you elaborate more on that?
Arielle Arbrushites 09:01
Yeah, absolutely. And again, to your point, I guess I was lucky that I was actually truly married to him, so I was a recognized a widow by society versus if we had been in a partnership for a while or he was just my fiance, or you know, people just they like the society likes the labels, right? You know, it doesn’t help us grieve. But society recognizes that because this disenfranchised grief is grief that’s not recognized or acknowledged by society in the same way as other grief. So, um, you know, things that I experienced, by way of this disenfranchised grief terminology. I think, um, you know, my husband dying by suicide, it makes people uncomfortable, you know, and rightly so, because it is a trauma, you know, it was a traumatic experience for me, but, um, they, they rope you in to the story. So, the way I explain this is You know, people will say things like, you know, did you notice anything? Or what’s what’s the worst version of that question I always say is Didn’t you notice anything and, you know, like, that just kind of gets you. It kind of takes you into the story as though you were the bystander there. And you were you somehow have some responsibility to retell that story for people. People don’t tend to ask those questions when someone is dying of a medical event, a heart attack cancer, even, you know, if somebody is a soldier in the military, it we know, as society, it comes with that, you know, expectation that you might be on a dangerous assignment, you know, or war might be part of the equation, it doesn’t make the loss any easier for anyone who would lose a spouse or a person that way. And that’s not what I’m saying. It’s just that, you know, if you said, you know, my husband died in war, okay, you know, my husband died of cancer, or my husband had a heart attack, nobody asks you to that retail, how the heart attack went? Or what happened, or what was noticed, or what wasn’t noticed. And, you know, I think people sometimes they come from a place of like, morbid curiosity, where they actually want to know what happened with my husband. But for the most part, that’s not even why those questions are asked, people are just so caught up in that story that they pull the, you know, the breathed into it. And I think that was often really hard. And, you know, just the not talking about it, people will talk about folks who have had long battles with cancer, for example, and, you know, have have died in that way. Equally as awful, you know, there’s no hierarchy, again, with the grief, but people don’t necessarily want to talk about the fact that my husband took his own life and killed himself in our house. And I don’t necessarily always want to keep retelling that story over and over either, but it’s all very quiet, you know, not to mention his name, not to say, oh, you know, he was such a great person, or he was this or he was that or let me tell you a funny story. And, you know, that was that was kind of difficult too.
Victoria Volk 12:16
It’s a different honoring, in a way that the people who maybe not even you know, even if you don’t necessarily have a close relationship with someone, you can definitely find something that had some interaction, you can share something a memory, or an interaction or something with that person. But like you said, that’s a very good point you bring across is that maybe the griever just wants to hear something positive the impact that they had on you as a person while they were alive, right?
Arielle Arbrushites 12:50
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I mean, you know, I, I feel like when we’re talking about disenfranchised grief, I have to bring up the point that there are some people thankfully, nobody I was very close to, because I like to think I choose by my friends, well, but there are people out there who will say things, for example, like, Well, you know, he obviously went to hell, or, you know, God will never forgive him. It’s like, that’s that disenfranchised grief, right? Like, the way he quote unquote, chose to die was something that’s that some people will deem totally unacceptable. And then they’re not telling him that because he’s dead, they’re telling me, which then puts so much more sadness and heaviness and anger on me. And, you know, I think I think people who have lost anyone to suicide, it doesn’t matter if it was a spouse, you know, they probably have experienced some element of that.
Victoria Volk 13:46
That’s very isolating.
Arielle Arbrushites 13:48
Absolutely, and being a widow at 29, which is how old I was when it happened was isolating enough so to put that, on top of it was, was tough.
Victoria Volk 13:59
Which brings to mind things those unhelpful things that people can say, too, is like you’re only 29 there, you know, you have so much more opportunity to meet somebody. Did you hear things like that, too?
Arielle Arbrushites 14:11
Oh, my gosh, so my favorite story about this is I’m at Rick’s funeral I in the front of the funeral home, with the urn of ashes standing there and like the receiving line, you know, everyone comes through and gives you a hug or tells you, their story. And someone actually came up to me on the day of his funeral and said, you know, well, you’re still young, you’re cute, you’ll get married again, like he had been dead for three days. And I just thought that was absolutely horrific. Like the worst thing you could say as I’m standing there with tears streaming down my face grieving my husband, that someone could say that it seemed odd and I’ve always thought to myself, you know, even if people are thinking that and that makes them feel better, like she’ll be okay because you know, she’ll find someone again, if they need to think that there’s no need to say it out loud to me, especially that soon in the grieving process. So it makes me laugh. Now you can tell that I’m like chuckling over it. But you know, at the time, I was just kind of it, I was taken aback. And I, I didn’t really have a response that I can recall.
Victoria Volk 15:18
But all of these things that those comments like that they kind of stack up. And it’s like, and that’s why we isolate as Grievers because we’d rather just stay home then go out in public and hear these things, right?
Arielle Arbrushites 15:30
Absolutely, I couldn’t find really anybody at that point to understand exactly how I was feeling or close enough. I mean, I was 29, some of my friends were still, you know, planning their weddings and getting married. And I had had three weddings to go to my first year of widowhood, which was really, really hard as well. And, you know, no fault of anyone they were, they were celebrating a part of their life. And, you know, one, one part of my life had ended, but it was a, it was a very transitionary time. And it was, it was tough for me, because I felt like to find another 29-year-old widow, I would be hard pressed to find that person. And then even if I did to find someone who had been bereaved by suicide and had to grapple with the the trauma and the guilt, and the, you know, circumstances of that, that would be even more rare. And, you know, that was, that was really something.
Victoria Volk 16:24
So where did you find support?
Arielle Arbrushites 16:26
I think I found support, you know, through writing, because I’ve always turned to writing my entire life to help me process. And then my writing kind of became my outward grieving, it was like my morning. And what I did was I had a daily widow blog, where I would write every single night, and I would publish it every single night. And it really gained, you know, quite a readership. And so, this was back in 2014, I started the blog six days after Rick died, and I just one night decided, you know, I think I have something new to write about, and this will help me and if people read it, and it helps them really great, awesome, but it’s, I’m really gonna write it for me. And when I started out doing it, I was writing, not so much to help other people who had been bereaved, but to help everybody in my life and beyond know, what I might need at any given moment, or how to understand me, or how to see what I was going through. So, it was kind of my way of reaching out, like, you don’t even have to reach out to me, but if you read this blog nightly, you know, you’ll know where I’m at. Because I was all over the place for that whole first year plus, and I did write every single day, for over a year, Chronicle my whole grieving process in real time. And what ended up happening was my friends, my family, my acquaintances, my colleagues, everybody was reading this. And in turn, they knew how to support me, which was awesome, because I was asking for what I needed, or I was telling what I, what I needed. And it got bigger than that. And a lot of people that I didn’t even know were ended up reading it. And, you know, I think it’s still fairly widely read, because I do get messages from time to time, even though that blog has kind of stopped in time. And then I’ve started a new blog, where I’m not labeling myself as a widow so much anymore, but it’s, you know, it’s, it’s still there. And I think people find that they’re not as isolated because they have something to go to, and they see, okay, somebody went through something like this, and it’s there. And I know that I’m not I’m not crazy, I’m normal, because I can read these words. And, you know, that’s always been important to me,
Victoria Volk 18:38
You thought about turning that into a book?
Arielle Arbrushites 18:41
I have, I would really like to and it’s definitely, you know, the next thing on my list of things to publish it, um, it needs a little bit of editing because my, what I really dream of doing is kind of taking that blog, turning it into a book. But now you know, almost seven years later and later in retrospect, I can I have insight into all these little pieces and chapters that I can put in there now that wouldn’t have been there before. So I’d like to have you know, all the stuff from that first year, plus the me now giving her insights into things and I think that would be pretty cool. The good news is, you know, it’s basically all written, and it just needs to be tweaked and edited. So, it’s just a matter of getting it out there. But that’s, it’s actually one of my goals for 2021 to have it, have it be out there published.
Victoria Volk 19:36
I would love to support you in that I started my blog in 2014, my first blog to where I was blogging about personal development and growth spirituality when I felt like I was starting my personal growth journey, after loss and grief and all of that and ended up writing a book to self publishing it so I would love to see that come to fruition for you and went from We can definitely have side chats about that my future.
Arielle Arbrushites 20:03
It’s awesome. yeah, I mean, I applaud you for for your book as well. I mean, it’s just an awesome thing giving voice to this kind of grief, it’s so important, I can’t, I really can’t emphasize it enough. It’s not a self-serving thing. You know, and I’m sure you understand that too. You’re not you’re not publishing a book as this self-serving practice. And that’s not why I would choose to do either it’s just, you want to be a voice for these things.
Victoria Volk 20:26
Well, and it was very therapeutic. I mean, that was the one thing I didn’t expect from the experience was that it was very therapeutic.
Arielle Arbrushites 20:33
Absolutely.
Victoria Volk 20:34
So, I want to give you the opportunity, though, to share about Rick in a way that you maybe didn’t get the opportunity to to others during that time, and maybe in your blog, I’m sure you expressed it through your blog, but tell us about Rick.
Arielle Arbrushites 20:49
Rick was a complicated individual, for sure. As you can imagine, for somebody who did take his own life, but he loved the beach he loved to he he loved to look up at the sun and you know, you could find him on a 55 degree day laying out on a towel in the backyard just to catch the rays of the sun even though it would seem to me too cold to be laying in the sun. It was something that he would do and you know that I think about him the most when I see the ocean or the sea and the sun shining on it because I think that’s where he felt most at peace when he was so conflicted and you know, in emotional pain, I guess I would is how I would say it and you know, I really I believe in being real about people you know, so there are a lot of things that I can say that are really wonderful about him and that would be perfectly truthful but you know, I don’t want to talk him up either because you know, he obviously did have some struggles. And you know, I think it’s important for people to know you know, we can still grieve someone who was complicated and complicated grief is the thing to write so, um, you know, but but Rick was very thoughtful, he was a very thoughtful person, he would write me notes all the time I have stacks piles of handwritten notes from him still, it was a kind of a regular thing where I would come home from when I was I was married when I was in grad school, I’m getting my master’s in social work and I was working full time so I would go to school at night from like 630 to 930 I’d be getting home around 10pm and oftentimes he would be asleep already and he would leave me a note on the kitchen table or note on the counter and you know, that was kind of a regular thing and they were very sweet and sometimes they’re very funny. And most of the time he was funny without meaning to be funny. So um, that was very cute. I know that in his mind, he felt like he was doing me a favor by committing suicide because he wanted me to have a better life than what he thought that he could give me and he felt like he was giving me a gift which is just to me so sad and I know this because of a suicide note that he left for me not because I’m you know, creating some kind of story around it but based on what he wrote to me I know that that’s how he felt and I find that very heavy and sad but he also was thanking me in the note so I always like to think that you know, maybe the last emotions he was feeling before he died were of gratitude instead of despair and that’s kind of the story I tell myself so that it doesn’t become too traumatic and too heavy.
Victoria Volk 23:50
for a lot of conflicting feelings in that yeah, here that’s a lot of grief that’s what grief is it’s conflicting feelings.
Arielle Arbrushites 23:58
Yeah.
Victoria Volk 23:59
Thank you for sharing.
Arielle Arbrushites 24:00
Sure.
Victoria Volk 24:01
Moving on to losses you’ve experienced well, and you fall in love again.
Arielle Arbrushites 24:08
I did you did. I was not ready people always say How did you feel that you were finally ready? I was not ready. I did not say let’s go out and date again. No, Jeff just happened as most things in life do just like everything else that’s ever happened to me. He just happened and we became friends and then we became more than friends and now we are married, and you know, we have a beautiful family together. But um, it takes the right person to I think marry someone who has been widowed, especially someone who’s been widowed by suicide. And he happened to be that person and I am so so lucky to have found him early enough in life that I get to have a lot of years with him hopefully.
Victoria Volk 24:49
Beautiful. So, what is one thing that you would share with others who may have experienced a similar loss as you are maybe not either with Rick or the miscarriages?
Arielle Arbrushites 25:02
I think you know it’s important to find your army of support and you know I have to say that as a social worker and especially in the profession I mean you know, support is huge support doesn’t have to look like you know 400 people reading a blog every night it can be just your best friend just your mom or your dad you know, it could be your neighbor that you have a cup of tea with you know it, it can really be anybody that makes you feel a little bit lighter, a little bit less alone and you know, By the same token even though grief can feel so isolating and sometimes be so isolating you’re not alone. I felt alone so much of the time but but really I wasn’t you know, there’s so many other people that sadly have experienced a loss like mine and I feel that way especially when we talk about like the multiple miscarriages you know, it’s it’s not talked about it’s it’s we’re getting better at that I think but it’s not talked about to the level it should be in could be but it’s it’s so prevalent and nobody says anything and if you’re feeling some kind of way, somebody else out there hundreds of other somebodies 1000s of other somebodies are feeling that exact same way so it’s either just a matter of knowing that to make yourself feel supported or finding those people to make yourself feel supported and you know, thankfully we live in the age of technology where you can google things and you can find Facebook groups and Instagram groups and blogs and there’s just so many ways to do things virtually if you are isolated physically that you’re not able to go find things and of course you know we’re in a pandemic so we’re not doing these large group gatherings and clubs and things anyway but there’s so much out there there’s there’s tons of things out there.
Victoria Volk 26:57
Like this podcast.
Arielle Arbrushites 26:58
Exactly like this podcast perfect example.
Victoria Volk 27:03
Would you like to share about the losses of those babies?
Arielle Arbrushites 27:09
I’m sure sure. Um, I I felt a strong connection with all of them. And I think it was shocking to me how little support was given to me by the health system every time I had a loss and you know, that’s one of the things that professionally I’m trying to work on quite a bit in the field of grief and loss and I had some perinatal death and grief training recently so that I can try to help folks in the situation that I was in no matter what gestation and you know, there’s really again there’s no hierarchy with this grief but it was just so hard for people to know what to say or do in the health system in my own life. And you know, my husband Jeff was very very supportive and I used to write little notes to myself because I always go to writing and I used to write little notes to myself during those different losses just saying you know, whenever Jeff is annoying or you’re frustrated with him just remember this moment and how amazing he has been today doing this and this and this and this and I would lift every way that he was able to support me through those because especially when we got to the you know, the third miscarriage um, I was a mess. I mean, it was just so so traumatic. And it was just this roller coaster of happiness and devastation over and over again because unfortunately for us with the last two losses, you know, we had gone in and we had ultrasounds, everything was fine and perfect and healthy. We saw the heartbeat we started the baby moving. And, you know, so you kind of you breathe a sigh of relief, thinking Everything is fine, and then for weeks to pass and then to go in and for them to say that the baby had died, you know, shocking, awful. And then the third time around, you know, you think okay, well it’s, it’s finally it’s finally my tie, like it’s really going to happen this time. You know, this could not possibly happen again, and you hold your breath and you’re just so traumatized and you go in and you go to ultrasound after ultrasound, and they’re all fine, everything’s great, everybody gives you the thumbs up and you just keep breathing a little bit more a little bit more and then to go back and have them tell you you know, the heartbeat slowing down and we think the baby is going to die for the for the the last baby loss that I had. I actually left the doctor’s office knowing that the baby was still alive but going to die and I had to go home and essentially wait for the baby to die which it was totally different from my first miscarriage. Was miscarrying at home very painfully, and very different from my second miscarriage, which was finding out that the heartbeat had stopped, and the baby had already died, and then getting a DNC surgery to remove the baby that had died. So, this third time, it was like, Okay, well, it’s going to die. But we can’t do a surgery yet because it’s still alive. And there’s really nothing we can do. So go home and wait for it to die. So that was gut wrenching. And I think Jeff, and I just didn’t really know what to do or how to react and like, you know, what do you do? Do you go to work and just, like, know that the baby’s in there dying, and you can’t do anything as its mother. And it was, so all my losses were so incredibly different to, which is why I feel like, I can relate to different miscarriage stories, because, you know, they weren’t all the same. So, somebody had the first kind of loss that I had, I get that they had the second kind of loss, I get that the third kind, I get that, um, you know, did they all make me stronger, probably more resilient. Absolutely. But it was a really, really hard time for me and for us, and I really began to think that I was just not going to be a parent. Um, and I, I pretty much did not want to try to become a parent anymore, because the thought of having a fourth loss was almost worse than anything. Um, but like I said, at the beginning of this, you know, I do have a son, he’s 16 months old, and he is amazing. Um, but I was terrified for my entire pregnancy, that something was going to go horribly wrong, as you can understand, and I know, many moms have been in that in that place, too. So, you know, there. There, there is a story unfolding. And you know, we always only see the moment that we’re in, like the page that we’re on, and I was really stuck there on those particular pages of grief for a long time, not really understanding that, you know, the pages would continue to flip. And at some point, I’d be feeling differently, even if it meant that I didn’t have a beautiful son out of it. Because you know, what, let’s face it, you know, that won’t happen for everybody. And that’s really, really tough, too.
Victoria Volk 32:15
If I could hug you. I would give you a hug right now, I just got teary eyed because I can’t imagine what that felt like for you just can’t. So, my mom, my heart goes out to you. I had a conversation too, with another griever about miscarriage early on in my podcast, and she was talking about, you know, you go into the doctor’s office and see all these women with the big bellies and, you know, join on their faces, and it’s like you’re in the same waiting room, and how tortures that must feel your heart and something needs to be done about that.
Arielle Arbrushites 32:55
Absolutely. Oh, that was a bit it was very difficult. I almost think though what was worse was leaving not once, but twice for two of my miscarriages, leaving that room where I had had an ultrasound knowing my baby was either dead or for the other time that you know, was going to die and you leave and they say like, okay, your copay will be $30, like, nobody’s been briefed to that I just had a horrible, devastating conversation, they are making me essentially pay for the bad news that I just received, like, there was just no sense of decorum. And that’s always been, you know, a sticking point, there’s somewhere in a folder in my home office where I have all these notes of what I would like to do to educate people in those professions just because I have this unique background of the grief and loss piece. And, and it’s just it’s not in fertility clinics, and it’s not in, you know, ob gyn offices, to the level that it should be. And I’m sure there are practices that are really building that and boosting that up and are really great at it. The ones that I was part of, we’re not really great at it. And I think it was just a deficit, you know, nobody meant any harm, you know, certainly, but they just hadn’t been ever given education or training or anything like that. And not once was I ever given even a flyer for a support group or anything, even loss after loss after loss. So, I still find that incredibly shocking. It’s incredibly sad. It really is. And I’ve often said to Jeff, that I am the kind of person especially because of my profession where I know how to find resources and I know how to get what I need, if someone’s not giving it to me, and I could do that and I could take it upon myself. But there are so many other women out there who are not able to do that who are not going to do that who are not going to know to do that. And what a disservice we’re doing to those people. So well.
Victoria Volk 35:02
and because grief is cumulative, and as cumulatively negative, it’s very likely, highly likely that someone coming into that situation and having to leave knowing that their baby will die or has already passed. They’ve had grief before that. And so, it’s just more grief on to their lives. And it’s almost like, what can’t they just, like, create this separate unit of the facility that’s specially for holding the hearts of people, mothers, you know, like the families because it’s your husband to like, he, like how did he navigate that, too.
Arielle Arbrushites 35:52
We just we navigated it together as a team for each other, because you didn’t have anybody, you know, to talk to to support him, you know, they don’t support the dads, it just it’s not a thing. And, you know, to your point about, you know, can’t we have a separate unit or waiting room or area or something, you know, I work in healthcare, if that’s not possible, because I know, that’s not always possible. That’s a beautiful dream. And it involves, you know, money and space and all sorts of things. If that’s not possible, at least you let the people who’ve just received bad news said, sit in that room, as long as they need take the time that you need, I’m here for you when you’re ready to go. And then you assign someone to walk them out, you know, whether it’s an arm around them, or you walk them down a different hallway, so they can leave outside of a different door, you don’t have them just check out like everybody else, where everybody’s waiting with their big belly and they get charged a copay by a chipper, cheerful person, and they’re out in the elevator before they know it with no support, you know, there, there are ways to do it, I think, you know, there’s an ideal way, like what you were saying that would be the ideal, but they’re all there’s always ways to think outside of the box. And I think people are either just unwilling to go there, or they have not experienced a loss like that. So they don’t even know that that would feel good or different, or would be important. And I think that’s just where the education and training comes in.
Victoria Volk 37:15
I also seem to believe this is my own belief is that because it’s so common, like miscarriages become so common. That it’s just like, we’ve become desensitized to it. And, you know, when you work in that environment, I imagine, you’re like, probably number 13 that came in that day. And I’m wondering, too, like, who’s supporting the health care workers who are in those positions? And it’s like, almost like, are they just separating themselves? Are they disassociating from the situation? Because if they didn’t, to bring that home with them, and it kind of speaks to the work that you do in hospice, like, how do you separate yourself from that, so you don’t bring it home with you. So, I think, along with education, it’s also to recognizing that there is a problem. But then when you recognize there’s a problem, you have to do something about it.
Arielle Arbrushites 38:19
You’re so right, you’re so right, um, you know, who is supporting those health care workers? And how desensitized are they? And, you know, what do they know and not know about what that feels like? Or, you know, perhaps they’ve experienced their own losses, and then you’re faced with that every day. So they have to compartmentalize they can’t even go there, you know, and, you know, we can assume and, you know, we’ll never completely know everybody’s individual stories, but yeah, I mean, absolutely, there has to be a way to support the people in those professions and positions and your your right to I we tried to do that in, in hospice, because, you know, I have, I’ve sat with many people who have died, I’ve watched people die many, many, many times, there have been weeks where I’ve had multiple patients die. And, you know, it’s, it’s to be expected because I work in hospice and, you know, that’s, we know that’s what’s going to happen. And oftentimes, it’s really very beautiful and positive and as an experience, you know, much like birth it there, there can be a celebration for death, you know, it’s not always that way. But, you know, I really like to de stigmatize the death and dying stuff to because it’s not always this this awful, terrible experience, but um, it can be really heavy, it can be really tough. And certainly, you know, I come home and I think about patients that I’ve had, who have died, you know, and I still do you know, if I have had patients that have died five years ago, I still think about them from time to time and, you know, that’s part of the work to it, it touches you It teaches you things and I’ve learned so much from the people that I’ve met and from their family members. I think you know, it’s gonna sound kind of trite. But self care is really important. And I don’t mean like, you know, so you go home and you take a hot bath and you light the candles, you know, that’s not exactly what I mean. But you kind of have to know when you’re you like reached your, your point of being a little bit too filled with grief to know, okay, maybe I need a day off today. Or maybe I just need to take a weekend to go for a hike to clear my mind or, you know, whatever it is that would really speak to you and be helpful to you, I think we have to be good about tuning into that. And healthcare is the kind of profession where we tend to just go go go, and it’s about the patient and not about us. And it’s about the people that we’re serving and not about us. Because you know, that’s why we are called to those professions, but you’re not any good to anybody else. If you’re not taking care of yourself first, it’s like the whole oxygen mask analogy, you know, you got to put it on yourself, and then you take care of everybody else that you’re supposed to take care of, it’s a lot like being a parent, you know, got to take care of yourself first, to be a good parent, to your child or your children. I feel that way about my patients to feel that way about my team of employees. And, you know, we, we try to encourage things that will fill our cup, so that we have things to give to other people. And whether that’s resilience training, or retreats from time to time, or just, we do like a morning inspiration on our morning conference call every morning in hospice. And sometimes it’s a joke, and it’s funny, and sometimes it’s more inspiring, and reflective. And we try to do things here and there. It’s hard because, you know, again, we’re in a pandemic, and healthcare. very tricky right now and even heavier than usual, especially especially at hospice. But we try and I think the effort speaks volumes to people see that you’re trying to care for them and make sure that they have what they need. So, I think that’s important, too, that the effort.
Victoria Volk 42:02
wonderful points, I mean, this this podcast episode very much be for healthcare community, too.
Arielle Arbrushites 42:08
I’m very worried you have to tell me like, Okay, you’ve, you’ve said enough?
Victoria Volk 42:12
Oh, no, it’s all good. It’s all good. So, what has your grief taught you?
Arielle Arbrushites 42:17
So much, um, I, it’s really been a journey to learn myself, if I’m being honest, um, you know, I will never be the same. Because of Rick dying, I will also never be the same because of all the miscarriages that I’ve had. But they’ve shaped me, and they’ve molded me in ways that are allowing me to be the best version of myself, and I think, offer bits and pieces of that better self to others. And you know, I’m still a work in progress, you know, I would hope that I’m not the best that I can ever be. I want to keep improving until the day that I die. But I’ve just learned so much about myself as a person and what I really need and what I really want and about fear. When I lost Rick, I was very, very afraid. I was afraid of so many things, what life would hold I was afraid of the unknown. I was afraid of moving, I was afraid of staying, I was afraid of not finding somebody again. You know, as afraid of people not understanding I was afraid of financial burden. I mean, I could write you a list of 150 things. And I was afraid of so many other things that had nothing to do with the loss of Rick. But I think it made me so much braver because I thought, well, if the worst thing that could ever happen to me has happened to me, nothing could possibly be as bad as that day. So just live every day. Like it’s the best day that you’re going to have and do whatever it is you want to do. And you know, tell that person exactly what you want to say don’t keep it inside and you know, share this moment with this person because you’re you have that fleeting thought Don’t let it be just a passing thought go ahead and do it and kind of like actions speak louder than words. So, I just started doing all the things that scared me. And that was a very eye-opening experience. And I think it was very positive and it kind of added to my resiliency and I don’t know, you’re probably familiar with like the post traumatic growth. So, I feel like you know, I, I could be a poster child for that too. You have so many bad things happen to you, but I have a really a very happy person. And I think that that makes that weirds people out sometimes but um, it’s because I have learned so much about myself and I’ve tapped into so much resilience over the course of time that it has just served me so well in so many beautiful ways that can’t possibly be ignored. So, it’s really less of like a happy, cheerful, Sunny overly positive personality and more of like, I’ve learned from this, and now I can use it. And it’s made life so much better. And kind of like the, I guess it’s a famous quote, like, you know, shared joy is double joy and shared sorrow is half sorrow. So, you know, that’s, that’s kind of how I think of things, you know, that’s why I write so that I could double the joy and I can have the sorrow too.
Victoria Volk 45:30
I love that. So, I can relate to the post traumatic growth. And I can also relate to, well, let me get your take on this. Because when you’ve experience when you feel like you’ve lived three lifetimes, and you look back on your life, and you’ve recognized where, where you’ve grown, and how far you’ve come and things like that, I have found it really challenging to look at others and see them suffer. And knowing that they don’t have to, like, there, there is more to life than what you’re feeling right now in this moment. But it’s such a challenge for people to get out of that headspace. And, you know, we have to be in it for a time, it’s whatever time that is. But do you agree or disagree? Or what are what is your thoughts on this? Maybe like this idea of, in addicted to the suffering itself?
Arielle Arbrushites 46:35
you’re talking about other people, not you and I right? When you say that, right?
Victoria Volk 46:39
Right, because, you know, like, when you when you’ve come so far, it’s like you, you just want to pull everybody with you, you know, it’s like, Just come with me, just let’s come, you know, not so bad over it’s this, this is amazing over here. And yeah, it doesn’t feel good in the process. But no one ever said I had a post the other day. Healing feels amazing said no one ever. You know, the process sucks, it does. But it’s like getting on the other side of that.
Arielle Arbrushites 47:15
You have to feel everything to feel the good and the joy. And I think that is very hard for some people harder than for you and me. And, you know, we have most likely either been given the tools by others, or we have built and created our own tools and kind of adapted, whether it’s because of privilege, or whether it’s because, you know, we’ve had experiences earlier in life than some other people and that has taught us how to build resilience and, you know, use history as a as an educator. You know, not everybody is as lucky as we are where they feel that they have those tools and that strength and those experiences to build from. So that’s why my thinking is, you know, for you and for me, we have a greater responsibility then to do things like this podcast and be that voice so that we can share the narrative. And we can give guidance, really, I mean, I think really, that’s what this is, it’s your giving voice, but you’re also guiding other people, it can be different, it doesn’t have to be the way it is right now. And like I said earlier, I think we grieve forever, but our grief changes, you know, it morphs, and it changes, and you don’t get over grief, it will always be part of you. But certainly, you can heal and you know, certainly you can be joyful again. And everything can exist in the same space. So, you can feel pain, but you can also feel joy. It’s not one or the other. It isn’t black and white. And that’s something that I talk to people about all the time because there’s so much all or nothing black and white thinking out there. Just because it’s like in our culture, that’s just the way people are taught and they just they grow to believe it’s like well if I feel sad, then I’m just gonna feel sad Well, you can feel sad and you should feel sad because things sad things have happened to you and you have every right to feel sad, but you can also feel joy at the same time. And you know, you can feel other things to anger and comfort and contentment and worry and confusion, you know that everything can all exist in the same space, and we learn to navigate it. So, you know, those are my thoughts. We, you know, you and me we have we have a greater responsibility because we have learned things and we have found things that that work and help. And that’s why we’re doing what we do. That’s why you do what you do. And that’s why I do what I do. And it takes all kinds of people to make this beautiful world work. There are many jobs I would never want to do. Just like people would never want to do my job and they tell me all the time. But there are lots of things they do that I wouldn’t want to do either and that’s why it takes All kinds of people to make the world work, which is great.
Victoria Volk 50:03
Yes. 100% I agree. I just had a post come to me yesterday Actually, I haven’t written about this yet. But someone had reached out to me and asked me to questions along these lines. And, you know, like, someone doesn’t identify themselves as a griever. But I can see that it’s grief and notes past relationship that they haven’t, they’re not recognizing, like, I’m over that, like, I dealt with that. I don’t need to dig that up, right. And my, what came to my mind was that, if you can talk about it today, like you and I, like you talked about your experience, and you’re not laying on the floor, a pile of mess, right. And I can talk about my experiences, and I’m not on the floor, like a pile of mess, that’s when you know, you’ve done a lot of work when you can talk about it. Hear Your experience, when you can help others through story. And, and not like a ruminating in the story. But in a this is what helped me this is what’s possible. I don’t know about you, but for me, I found my potential when I shed all of that when I shed all the stories when I shed the anger when I shed all the resentment, the grief that had kept weighing on me the grief has not gone away I still grieve my father certain relationships that change because of that experience and the trauma that happened to me after those things still happen and that doesn’t change that experience but I can talk about it and it not take me back to that little girl that is scared and fearful and you know all those emotions that you talked about.
Arielle Arbrushites 51:52
You’re absolutely right and you know for we can also be those people that are okay now and thriving and and share that with others, but also say, no, we were on the floor a pile of mess, at one point, and now we’re not and you know, that’s possible for other people too, because we can be we can keep it real. We used to be a mess. And now we’re okay.
Victoria Volk 52:14
Oh, I was a train wreck. I was a train wreck. Yeah. And you know, I could laugh about it. My life was a mess. I was, you know, used alcohol and got myself in some really scary situations.
Arielle Arbrushites 52:29
And look at you now.
Victoria Volk 52:31
Greed was the root of it. And that’s where people don’t connect the dots of what is happening in their lives, these repetitive behaviors, these things that we’re seeking to feel better, don’t connect it to the grief in their lives. And I want to ask you something, because I have a sneaking suspicion, though, that that loss of Rick wasn’t your first grieving experience?
Arielle Arbrushites 52:55
No, it was not my first grieving experience. No, I lost my great aunt when I was a teenager. And she was much closer than a grandmother to me. She was my best friend, truly. We used to sleep over together, and she was very, very special to me. So, when I was 16, she died. I experienced that loss. And I had experienced the loss of both of my grandfather’s two. So, in I would say early adulthood, my very early 20s. So, I am lucky to have a 92 year old grandmother and an 85 year old grandmother still living but I had lost both of my grandfather’s as well. So, it was not my first rodeo with grief. But it was a very different grief and a very traumatic grief when when Rick died.
Victoria Volk 53:41
And that’s why I say grief is cumulative. And it’s cumulatively negative it stacks up, right? Yeah. Well, you kind of talked about ways that others supported you and how writing kind of became your way to express what you needed and how you want it to be supported. What would you suggest to people who aren’t writers? Need? Yeah, what? Oh, my God, I need to, like spit it out Victoria. So writing was a huge outlet for you and expressing on what you needed and how you needed to be supported. And it was for me too, but I don’t know if anybody read it, but I wasn’t very good about vocalizing either. And so I journaled I internalized a lot which was not healthy. It was good for me, but it wasn’t a healthy way to approach I was an isolated grater I that’s I mean I was in a pit me of an isolated graver I don’t need your help. I can do this, you know, because, and here’s the thing, it kind of ties back to when you said resiliency. You know, when you lose a parent, as a child, you don’t choose resiliency, you have to get resilient. So, I hate when people say that children are resilient and bounce back, eat that. Don’t say that people. Please don’t say that. If a child If you recognize a child as resilient, it’s not because they chose to even have a choice. Yeah. Anyway, I digress. What would you suggest to someone who isn’t a writer to how to communicate what they need and how to be supported?
Arielle Arbrushites 55:16
Maybe the easiest thing to do would be to take the pressure off and not think about grief and think about how to explain their huge grief to someone because that is you know, that’s a tall order trying to put that into words for yourself, let alone to other people to tell them what you need. Instead, I would encourage someone to think about what brings them comfort, you know, is it a special warm coffee drink? Is it watching funny movies with a person that you really care about and can laugh with because you feel safe with them? And you know, is it going for a walk in nature whatever the case might be, you know, but think about the things that will really make you feel comfort like is there a special comfort food like do you just love when you feel like crap you want to eat you know homemade macaroni and cheese you know, whatever it is for these these folks? Think about those things take the grief out of it just like what would make you feel better be really literal and then tell those people that that would be something that would be awesome like you know, could you make that mac and cheese that I love so much that we had last year at this picnic and like ask them for that? Or say you know I I’m feeling kind of low today I really want to watch friends on a marathon of friends you know Do you want to come over and hang out with me for a little while now it puts it on them to ask rather than someone offering it to them but you know to answer your questions that’s what I would suggest because that’s not really making them talk about the grief Enos it’s just you know, having them tap into like what do I need what’s going to make me feel better like it won’t cancel my grief out but it’s going to make me feel loved and warm and comforted and some people can give it to themselves like you know, I tend to do that and especially like in the pandemic you know, we’re very handicapped with what we can do but you know, I’ll think about you know, I just really need a cup of coffee and to sit with a blanket over me for 20 minutes by myself and I’ll feel better and rejuvenated like I can do that I don’t need to call a friend to give me that and some people you know, some people might and that’s perfectly fine but there are lots of things you can give to yourself too so I think recognizing what’s going to make you feel better and sometimes I tell people you know if they do journal or they don’t journal it doesn’t matter but maybe just get out a piece of paper and write down all the things that really make you feel good and comforted and happy and like really really small like the cup of coffee like the warm blanket like your mom’s macaroni and cheese whatever um for very random examples here but I think you know that’s that’s what I would encourage people to do, I think it works.
Victoria Volk 57:54
Radical self-love. My newsletter my newsletter, as right now we’re recording it’s February and this probably won’t go live until like may April I’m not sure exactly when but at this time I my monthly series for my newsletter is self love as well it’s February you know, Valentine’s love whatever, the greatest love we can give is to ourselves. so kindly percent highlighting that yeah, it’s like, we don’t necessarily need to get anything from anybody. And really, honestly, that was a message that took me well into my 30s to understand late like probably in the last five years to be honest, like I can give to myself I don’t need to get from other people, and I should give to myself first. I should Fill my cup first I should understand what I need first. Because that’s been an integrity it’s living in integrity with yourselves, and I think we sabotage and and minimize the importance of that in grief and when we tend to be people pleasers or we have no boundaries I mean there’s grief brings up everything that you need to heal within yourself.
Arielle Arbrushites 59:15
That’s what I was saying before lead by example you know, like you know, you’ve learned all these things with the self love and everything else like so there you go, you’re leading by example and I can lead by example if this is what we can do to make ourselves feel better and we’re teaching other people It seems very simple, but you know, we’re, we’re teaching other people we’re really doing it.
Victoria Volk 59:36
And on that note, is there anything else you would like to share?
Arielle Arbrushites 59:40
I don’t know the you know, I always joke with people that I am a an overshare You know, I’m not just to share I’m an oversharer and one of my physician friends once said to me, You know, there’s no such such thing as being an overshare as long as you are only sharing your own stories, you know, if you’re not sharing things about other people There’s really no such thing as over sharing. It’s just sharing. And I always think of that, um, but I’m an overshare. So, there will always be things that I have left to share. But today, I think we had an awesome conversation. And I feel like we shoved a lot into one hour, which was pretty cool. You can tell we’re both writers, like, I get the vibe, you know? So, But no, it’s it’s been a pleasure. I’m just very grateful that you know, you had invited me to be on the podcast, I think you’re doing amazing work. And I’m just so happy to be part of it.
Victoria Volk 1:00:35
Thank you, thank you so much for being here. And there is one final question. I didn’t ask directly that I like to end every podcast episode with sometimes I forget. But so, what brings you the most joy these days?
Arielle Arbrushites 1:00:50
I have to say, you know, besides the, the examples of my family, you know, my husband, my son, my beautiful bonus daughters, Jeff’s two daughters, my animals. Besides those things, it’s really still writing, it’s still writing with the intent to help other people. Because I feel like that is what gives me purpose. And having a purpose is very, very important to me. So, you know, my family, of course, gives me purpose, but writing to share to help to guide is so so very meaningful to me. So that gives me so much joy. You know, something as simple as being on Instagram and sharing different things with people that brings me joy. Blogging still brings me joy. Being on the podcast today, you know, brings me joy, writing books brings me joy. It’s kind of like breathing to me. It’s it’s self soothing. And it helps me connect with other people. You know, I’m a social worker. So, I like to connect with other people. And human connection is very important to me, and writing is how I do that first and foremost.
Victoria Volk 1:01:57
That’s beautiful, I can relate to much of that, I’m sure. Well, thank you so so much for being here. This was a jam-packed conversation. I absolutely loved it. So, thank you.
Arielle Arbrushites 1:02:12
Thank you.
Victoria Volk 1:02:13
All right. When you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.
Grief Stories, Grieving Voices Guest, Grieving Voices Podcast, Podcast, Widowhood |
Susan Ways: On the Loss of Her Spouse, Friendships, Transition, and Discovering Her Needs
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
We’re taught how to attain relationships, careers, things, etc.. However, we’re not taught what to do when we lose them.
When Susan lost her husband to a rare form of lung cancer, she was surrounded by grief. From her own pain, she created the Tendrils of Grief podcast, which showcases grief professionals who can help provide guidance and advice to those who might feel so alone in their journey.
Through her podcast, Susan also shines a light on the stories of those who have recently lost someone close to them. It’s a podcast to help you grieve and feel connected to a wider network of people in the same place as you are.
“You are not alone,” she says, “on this journey, and there is a path forward.”
Susan shares how she navigated the loss of her husband, the impact that loss had on other relationships, her daughter, her career, and what she learned, through working with an energy coach in how to discern what she needed for her well-being.
Also, if you know someone grieving, we also dig into the topic of how to show up for grievers, even if it means having a tough conversation.
Connect with Susan:
https://www.tendrilsofgrief.com / [email protected]
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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.
If you’d like to share your grieving voice on the show or want to share your thoughts about an episode, please send an email to [email protected].
Are you enjoying the podcast? Check out my bi-weekly newsletter, The Unleashed Letters.
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WAYS TO SUPPORT THE SHOW:
CONNECT WITH VICTORIA (@theunleashedheart):
Victoria Volk 0:00
Thank you for tuning in everyone. Today I bring you Susan Ways. When Susan lost her young husband to a rare form of lung cancer, she was surrounded by grief from her own pain. She created the tendrils of grief podcast which showcases grief professionals who can guide provide, who can provide guidance and advice to those who might feel alone in their journey and feel connected to a wider network of people in the same place. You are. You are not alone, she says on this journey. And there is a path forward. So I look forward to bringing you Susan and our conversation today. Susan, say hello, welcome. Welcome to the show.
Susan Ways 0:41
Hi, thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be a part of your show.
Victoria Volk 0:45
Yes. And I was actually on Susan’s podcast, the tendrils of grief that has not aired yet is that correct?
Susan Ways 0:52
It has not aired, it’s coming up.
Victoria Volk 0:54
And we had a really good conversation about the grief recovery work that I do and stuff, and I just really resonated with Susan’s story. Her early story of grief is really quite parallel to my own, as you’ll, as you’ll hear later in the show, but what brought you to starting the tendrils of grief?
Susan Ways 1:15
Well, it’s really an interesting story. Because when my husband was sick and diagnosed with cancer, he knows that I love to write and I had a very successful blog on HR, because that’s what I do professionally. And some of my blog entries have over 20,000 views. So was quite popular. And it was something I could do. And my heart just wasn’t with it. And in that at the time. And so he had asked me to write a book on his journey. And I journaled everything because I journal regularly and I journaled everything as he went through his journey. But I didn’t really feel led at that time. And things change, as you know, and you’re in a different place all the time. But I didn’t feel led to write a book. And I also didn’t have the attention span when I was grieving to really even read books. But what I did have the attention span to do was to listen to a podcast, providing that it wasn’t too long. And I started to look for podcasts on grief. And I just couldn’t find anything that was relatable. It was all very prescriptive and done from mental health professionals and talking about the stages of grief and the psychology of grief and the chemical brain reaction to grief. And I remember one time there was a podcast title, labeled social media and grief. And I was so excited about that. And I tuned into it, and it was want want long, boring. And so I was like, I’ve got to get a podcast out there that’s relatable because I can’t be the only person out here experiencing that the lack of attention, the lack of wanting to sit down and read and finish a book, but having little blocks of time where I could plug into something. And I felt like this would be a great opportunity for me to pay it forward. And it also became an incredible part of my healing process.
Victoria Volk 3:10
I love that. It’s it’s like you, you’re looking for something like what could be helpful to me. And when you didn’t find it, you jumped in. Right?
Susan Ways 3:19
Right and created it.
Victoria Volk 3:21
Yeah, exactly. That’s what we do in entrepreneurship. That’s what that’s what creation and creatives do. So I love that. So what did you find was helpful to you. During that time? I know you said it was you felt it was healing. But can you speak more? A little bit more to that, like, what was it? Was it just because what kind of guests do you have typically?
Susan Ways 3:44
There were a couple of things that were helpful to me. One was, first of all, it’s important to know that I was up at night, really afraid? How am I going to find gas to do a weekly podcast? How am I going to find topics, and I can’t keep guests from coming. And that’s a great problem to have. And I’m grateful for that. But I have so many guests and it’s I had to take a little bit of a step back because I was getting so far ahead of my recording schedule. So talking to all of these different people and hearing their stories and understanding that I’m not alone because you get stuck in shame and guilt, and all of those negative emotions because I have one podcast that’s been extremely popular where I talk about my transition back to work, and I felt like I had done something wrong and my grieving was wrong and that my grieving made me unprofessional and non productive and not worthy as an employee. And it was so incredibly hurtful to me. And it was almost it was shameful to talk about because as a professional, you want to be seen as a superstar. And so I left that job I had to leave that job because it was killing my soul. When I left it was so empowering. But there was a Wait, how do I share the story and then I started to talk to other people and they have the same story and I had Some difficult relations with other people in my family around my grief and conflicting grieving styles. Again, you feel like a bad person, and I should accept these people, and I should love them, and I should create space for them. But I just realized through this journey and talking to other people, no, I don’t have to do that. The one thing and I talked about the social media podcast that I listened to, and I was really excited because we log on to social media, sometimes first thing in the morning, and you see other people’s wonderful lives, and they have it showcased and lights and stars, I felt like my life was not wonderful, and it makes you feel really badly. And so I brought on a social media expert, who actually is a woman’s business social media expert, but she came on and delivered the podcast that I needed to hear personally about empowering yourself creating the social media community that feeds your soul, not one that sucks from it, I gave myself permission through her words, to create a really empowering social media community. And I no longer have that fear of logging on in the morning. But I if I do if I log on, and I see a post that doesn’t make me feel good, I can unfollow you, or I can unfriend you. And I’ve given myself permission to do that. So just a lot of stories, a lot of parallel stories from people from grief professionals from just other professionals, like she’s not a great professional, she’s a social media expert. And just having that empowerment and that permission to stand up for myself and create my own path forward was really just the most empowering thing I think I’ve gotten from all of this.
Victoria Volk 6:41
You bring up a good point in that cleaning up our social media is probably one of the first acts of self care that we can do as a griever. And when we’re grieving, because like you said, you can you can be wrapped up in your own story, but and that takes time and however much time it takes you to unravel all of that, and the feelings of with that. But what isn’t helpful, like you said, his people who will come on and say remarks like well, you should be over it by now, like all these myths of grief that were taught from childhood or not, and replace the loss, you know, you can marry again, you’re young yet you know, things like that. So that’s a very important message, I think to share with people today that they can take away is that you know, maybe look at your social media and clean up what what you’re putting into your brain, what is not helping you feel better, right? Also, too, can you speak to that transition a little bit?
Susan Ways 7:40
Sure. And I do want to say one quick thing, follow up to the social media piece is that we’re taught that if we unfriend someone or unfollow them, that it’s mature, or it’s petty, childish, and it’s really not, because just saying I don’t want to be connected with you on Facebook doesn’t mean I don’t value you as a person, it doesn’t mean that I don’t like you, it just means that it’s not part of that social media media community that I’m looking to build. And so I just kind of want to throw that out there. Because when we give ourselves permission to do things, we have changed the narrative around it too. And it’s you can have conversations with people or not. And I know some people were upset that I unfriended them on Facebook, but that’s okay. Because if you’re my friend, you’re going to pick up the phone and have a conversation with me about it. And those are some of the things that I learned. The transition for me moving into the podcast was really around, I have actually been working with a coach who is an energy coach, and not something that I ever believed in, and not something that I ever really liked. But I just like her style of coaching. And I like her. And she’s was working with me on the podcast and working on manifesting and really trying to visualize what it is that I want and then create that. And watch how I talk about it and watch how I position it. And it’s interesting because like I said, I just the guests were coming to me the shows were coming to me Everything was unfolding in this really beautiful organic way. And my listenership has been steadily increasing. And I don’t, success is a relative term. And people success might mean money and fame to some people. And it might just mean making a difference to someone else. And Success to me just meant that I was reaching people, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be 1000s and 1000s of people. I just want to be reaching people. So as I evolved through this process and got very clear on what it was that I wanted as an outcome and what I wanted my guests to walk away from. It’s just it’s been wonderful and I’ve had non Grievers reach out to me and say, thank you so much for this because I never know what to say when someone is grieving somebody actually reached out to me that I don’t even know now I’ve never met and they said, I just want to thank you because my best friend lost her mom two years ago. And after listening to your podcast, I realized I didn’t show up for her the way I should have. And I called her to apologize and keep doing this. So that stuff, just really, that transition has just been an evolution. And it’s been a very slow and natural evolution, which is what has kept me motivated to keep going.
Victoria Volk 10:26
And I think we share the same mission, right to reach as many people as we can. And that’s why we started podcasts about grief in our own experiences and things like that. I also want to bring circle back to the support you didn’t feel when you decided to leave your job and what you were experiencing there. Because I think that often is the case where employers, you know, I think the standard in the us right now is like you get four days of bereavement time. It’s like so even our employers are deciding how much time it takes you to grieve like, okay, you get four days, like that’s the standard, something like that three to four days, I’m not sure. Obviously, if you have paid time off, you can use that or sick leave. But that’s actual like set aside for bereavement time, which clearly is not like you’re not going to bury your loved one. And then Okay, I’m back. You know, that’s unrealistic. But yet people look to you to do that. society expects you to come back and be back as a whole person and to function as you did before. But grief changes us, you know that I know that it changes every cell changes you on a cellular level. I mean, kudos to you, though, for recognizing that it wasn’t a supportive environment and forgiving yourself permission like, Hey, I don’t need this. This isn’t serving me, this isn’t helping me. It’s draining me. It’s soul sucking, I think, too, it’s like, that’s where we need to, like you said, give ourselves permission to create those boundaries, whether it be on social media, whether it be in relationships, face to face with our employers, employees, co workers, family, I think that’s one to where we really discover at some point in grief, where we need to create boundaries, eventually, you know, you get to the point where you’re just kind of sick of what’s coming at you all the time, right? That’s unhelpful, and often hurtful, not necessarily intentional, but based on what we all learn. That’s just what we know, we resort to what we know, the one loss that brought you to starting the podcast was the loss of your husband, do you want to speak to that?
Susan Ways 12:34
Sure. The, and I want to double back a little bit just because it losing my I didn’t lose my job, I walked away from my job. But it was a very important part of this journey that brought me to wanting to do the podcast. And I think that one thing that’s important to mention when people go through this is something’s not all bad, or not all good. And it becomes a confusing space to be in. And there was a person that I worked with, at this company, who I think is one of the most amazing human beings that I ever met, and somebody who I just really valued their friendship. And she didn’t show up for me at a critical time in my life, the way I needed her to show up. And she didn’t, because she felt she couldn’t, because there were consequences to her and it becomes a self preservation type of situation. And so I’m not actively angry at her, I’ve chosen not to be in a relationship with her at this point, because I just one of my values has become my friend show up for me even when it’s tough for them. But likewise, I show up for my friends, even when it’s tough for me, and I’ve learned that so I want to definitely model that behavior. But there were some wonderful things that my employer did some very generous things, including they sponsor the wake the dinner at the wake for my husband’s so it became confusing, because there were these wonderful things that they did. And then these awful things. And as I was in a grieving state where you know, you’re not always thinking clearly, and you’re not always focused. And they, I just became extra confused. But what I knew is I became fearful. And when I feel like this is another one of my values that has come out of that, when I feel that I have to protect myself against you, we have a problem. And I’ve learned to pay attention to that and not make excuses for people because my analogy is if you have a dog, and you pet the dog 810 times and eight times the dog licks your hand and twice the dog bites you you’re always going to be afraid to pet the dog, even though the bites are less frequent exponentially than the licks. So that’s just human nature. So I want to make that really clear because I think that as people are grieving and they’re in, whether it’s a work relationship or just another personal relationship where you feel there’s this conflict of good and bad and carrots and sticks or whatever you want to call it licks and bytes. Whatever it is, you really need to pay attention to that. And you need to make sure that something is filling your soul and isn’t leaving you questioning yourself your own value, or what how you’re grieving what you’re going through. Because however you grieve is how you grieve. And there’s no right or wrong way to that. So I just want to highlight that, but that loss, my husband passing away, because we had a great marriage, we had a great life, we had a great family, we were grateful, we were happy. We just really, today is the start of football season. Technically, I think it started Thursday night, but today there’s games on. And this would be a time when football would be on the TV and I would be making dinner and we would be at home doing projects together. And I missed that. That’s something that I really appreciated in our life, and something that I don’t have now. So this loss really just seeped into every area of my life. And that’s how I came up with the title tendrils of grief because it’s not just the sadness. It’s not just the loss, there’s there’s things that people don’t realize, when there’s a noise in the middle of the night, I’m now the one that has to get up and go investigate it, it’s silly little things like that. Or if something needs repaired around the house, I’m YouTubing, how to repair things. I’ve repaired the dishwasher, I’ve repaired the garage door, I repaired the washing machine. I’ve done all these things I never thought I could do which is wonderful and empowering. But there’s a part of me that feels resentful to that it has to be me that it’s not him anymore. And I wanted to talk about those things, I wanted to talk about that magical one year anniversary, where everyone thinks that you have flipped the switch into moving forward. Or even if you’re dating that that means Oh, you’re over that now you’re over the last year over the grief, and you’re not, and things can live, they can coexist in the same space, you can have a life with someone else while still grieving the loss of somebody else. And it’s just there’s a lot of things that I just felt like were really important to talk about. And I think the one event that pushed me over the edge to knowing that I had to do this beyond a shadow of a doubt is I didn’t want to live after my husband died. And I wondered many times, if I didn’t have my daughter, would I have ever had the courage to commit suicide because I just I didn’t I wasn’t actively suicidal. But I knew I didn’t want to be here anymore. I really just wanted to go and be with my husband. And I was really shameful about that. And I didn’t want to tell anyone because I didn’t want to, I’m having all of these really catastrophic thoughts such as they’re gonna come and take my daughter away from me, because I’m suicidal, that they’re gonna come and put me in a mental institution, or they’re going to make me take medication. And I didn’t want any of that. So I didn’t talk about it. And finally, I said to one of my really good friends who lost her husband, I said, Do you ever feel like you don’t want to live anymore? And she said, Oh, yeah, every day. And I didn’t even want to Google search it because I was so afraid that somebody would find out that I had Google search this and they didn’t start to sound the alarm. So when I and then I started to talk about it more, I have a broader group of ladies, I know I’ve lost their husband and I talked to them about it. And every one of them was like, Yes, we feel like this all the time. And I thought, if I’m feeling shame, and fear around this, other people are too and I’ve got to start getting the message out there to people around all of these things, whatever it is that people want to talk about around their grief, someone else needs to hear that message.
Victoria Volk 18:42
That’s Yeah, absolutely powerful. Just everything you just said. Like you said, it seeps into every aspect of our lives. And I’m curious, though, what was the one aside from you finding inspiration or feeling that inspired, hit or however you want to say it to start the podcast? What was it in particular, that helped you flip that switch? Like, what was it? Had you been going to therapy? Had you just kind of through journaling? Had you had this awareness of what needed to change? Like, how did you turn around all of those thoughts and feelings? Like what was it for you?
Susan Ways 19:26
Well, I was going to, I was getting the coaching with the coach that the energy coach that I had been talking about, I was still in grief counseling at the time, as well. But the energy coach really did help me see that. But my friends started to come to Me too. And they started to say, you need to do this, we want you to do this, this will be great for you. And all of a sudden I had support from my community that I didn’t solicit because you know, when you go and we ask our friends and we say, Hey, I’m thinking about doing this, what do you think? And they’re thinking, Oh, yeah, That’s a great idea while they’re shaking their head, no. And I didn’t get that I got I wasn’t really going to them. I was talking about it and saying, I’m kind of thinking about doing this, but I don’t know I’m scared. And then they started to come back to me and say, You need to do this, you need to do this. And finally working with the coach. She said to me, and I trust this woman so much. She said to me, Susan, you need to do this. She said, I have goosebumps just listening to you talk about this podcast, and you need to do this. She said, you are going to help so many people. And that was really when I was like, Alright, dammit, I’m doing it. And I just jumped off the ledge and did it. And before that I had done all this investigation. All of this research, I contacted podcasting, hosting companies, I looked at different equipment. I was kind of window shopping everything. But when she said that, I was like, Okay, I’m in, because I wanted to do it. And again, it comes down to permission a lot for many of us, not just me, but I can only speak for me, it comes down to permission for me. And sometimes when I want to do something that’s scary and uncertain, I just need the permission of the right people around me. And I all of a sudden felt like I was getting that. And so I just went for it.
Victoria Volk 21:18
Support huge. Absolutely. I 100% agree. What does that quote something you’re you’re a some of the five people you surround yourself with, or something like that, right? So especially in grief, I absolutely agree. Support is huge. And it’s why like in grief recovery, we have the groups which are phenomenal for people who want to are ready to take action. I’m curious if you had tried like traditional, like church support groups, things like that. Had you tried that at all, prior, like early on,
Susan Ways 21:47
I went to a hospice support group. And it was not a good fit for me. And probably, Paul had passed maybe three between three and six months at that point. And I went in, and there were people there who were very stuck in grief. And I’m gonna say this with no judgement, because I’m talking about what I needed to feed my soul at that time. But there were people who just really were talking in a in a really depressive way they were, there was one conversation about what kind of medication are you on? And what kind of medication Are you on. And I thought I don’t want to take medication and not because there’s anything wrong with it. But I have a very bad reaction to any kind of like SSRI or any kind of medication in that class. So it’s hard for me to take medication, and that wasn’t a path I wanted to go down. And I there was one woman who couldn’t get out of bed. And she had lost her job because she couldn’t show up physically to work. And here I was slugging it out every day and getting kind of attacked at work. And then there was a woman who didn’t get out of bed and and I thought I don’t want to be that person. And you know, it’s just a, it’s just a twist of fate to not be that person, because you have to really well yourself many times to get up and get out of that. And there was another woman who had lost her husband, and then got engaged and lost her fiance. And it was just too much sad for me. And I needed hope. And that’s what I wanted. I didn’t want to sit in a room with people who didn’t appear to have hope, which was what that group ended up feeling like for me. And it was probably wonderful for all of them because maybe they needed to commiserate. And that was part of their grief process and part of their healing journey. But it was terrifying for me because I was like, I don’t want to be here in five years having this conversation. I don’t want to be not able to get out of bed. I don’t want to be just one woman was getting evicted from her house, which I know happens to a lot of people because they just can’t afford after they lose someone. And on my podcast, a young woman talks about how she her mom passed away while she was in college, and she got evicted from the apartment that they were living in together. I mean, that’s a very horrible reality. But I needed help. I needed somebody to say, I got through this. And here’s how. And I needed a lot of somebody to say that and not somebody that was a multimillionaire, you read about these people in the magazines, or you see them interviewed on TV, and to me they’re not real and I know they’re real, but their life is not relatable at all to my life. I needed people that I could relate to and again, becoming a part of what led me into wanting to do the podcast.
Victoria Volk 24:39
And that’s one of the distinctions too we make in grief recovery is those the difference between a grief recovery group and then a regular support group and that like you said, there’s there really isn’t action involved. And that’s the distinction I want to make too and that you recognize there was an action being taken. There was there wasn’t hope there. It That’s the distinction, I think, is that there wasn’t hold because there wasn’t action. So you come back week after week, and you share the same story, you’re in the same story week after week, where is the whole and even that is a choice. So that’s a choice we make, even in grief. And that is, the difficult part of it is that it’s not a judgement. But we have to have that awareness about ourselves. And I think oftentimes, too, it comes down to what you feel worthy of, you know, what I think so often to like, when people engage in this traditional support groups, it might feel like, I’m not worthy of more, I’m not worthy of healing, I’m not worthy of there’s better than this, I deserve better than this. And that’s a hard thing to come to, if you never felt worthy. And that’s where I suffered for over 30 years, because I didn’t feel worthy, you know, I’d worked self worth issues, like many of us do, but so I that’s where I commend you and saying, what you saw possibility you saw hope elsewhere, you know, and that’s the message to I want to get across to people listening is that hope isn’t gonna find us if we aren’t looking for it necessarily. Sometimes we’re, we’re kind of blinded to it, it can even hit us on the head. And we might not even see it the potential or the possibility, because we’re so we’re just so sad. We’re so down, we’re so consumed by our reality at the time. So what
Susan Ways 26:30
I love the term that somebody said to me once, that when you start complaining about something without any kind of actionable outcome, because how do I get out of this situation, we all have problems. And life is not perfect, or neat or pretty all the time. And when you have these issues that come up, you want to work them out with your friends, and so you have a conversation. But when you’re having that conversation over and over again, and this is what I really just walked away with from talking to this other person is that you’re now having a non versation. And conversation is when you’re talking to somebody about something you have no intention or action plan, as you said, on how to change it. And I didn’t want that I needed to know that there was hope. And I needed to start to attract people into my life because as you said, You have a choice. And I could have gone to that support group week after week. And I could have wallowed in my self pity, and not moved forward and commiserated with people in that same energy that I was in. Or I could begin to attract the people in my life that were going to show me that there was hope. And not only show me how there was hope, but show me how to get there. And how did they get there, and what tools did they use, because grieving is not a one size fits all. And you can talk to 20 people and get 20 different tools, and they’re all going to work for you at different times, or maybe not all are going to work for you. But some may not work at the time that you hear them, but may work later. And some might be able to be massaged into something that can work for you. So I think that’s really important is when you do make those choices, it’s about being clear on your vision and where you want to go. And then beginning to create that vision and surrounding yourself with those five people that you’ve talked about earlier.
Victoria Volk 28:15
I love the talk about energy too, because as an energy healer in Reiki, which I didn’t get opened up to until after I did my own grief recovery work with on myself, but we are energy. And every thought every feeling has energy behind it. And so when you’re in a room, and you’re trying to vibe, I guess you could say or, you know, come from a space of high vibes or just more elevated energy, where you want to attract that to you. It is harder when you’re surrounded by less hopeful energy, I guess you know, I think you know what I’m trying to say. But yeah, so it is the energy we bring.
Susan Ways 28:58
Sometimes you need to sit in that energy. Sometimes you need to be in that non helpful energy. And I’m a big believer that you go through your grief process in a way that’s meaningful to you. And trust me, I had many pity parties, and I had many non helpful days. And I finally got on my own nerves and was I just couldn’t, I didn’t want to be around myself. I couldn’t imagine how anyone else wanted to be around me. And so that’s really what inspired me to start searching for hope.
Victoria Volk 29:25
Same. Absolutely. 100% that’s I got tired of my own Bias, right? Really? So what would you like to screen to the world and the rich people knew about your grief.
Susan Ways 29:38
There’s two things that I would like people to know about my grief. One is and it’s really funny because I was having a conversation with a friend who lost his wife and they were married a little bit longer than Paul and I were married but I said you know that sideview mirror that says objects in the mirror are closer than they appear. I said I feel like I need a sign on me that says My life is not quite as put together as what it would appear, and I think that people judge you and treat you the way they perceive your life is going. And just because I’m smiling and well put together on the outside doesn’t mean that I’m not falling apart on the inside. And my grieving is not over. And I would like people to know that. And I would also like people to know that to show up with love, and show up with tenderness. And that’s been really important to me, and especially for those people who love me and who I’m friends with, or who I have in my inner circle. Even days when I may be behaving in an unlovable way, tell me that, but tell me in a lovable way, that I’m behaving that way. And I talk about this so often on my podcast, I had a friend who I thought was just a really, really good friend. And she just stopped talking to me. And in the process of stopping talking to me, she was pretty ugly about it. And I tried to talk to her and find out what was going on. And the only thing I can think of is that I was relying on her very heavily, too heavily during my grieving. And she made a couple of comments to me, but she never sat down and said, hey, look, I love you. And you matter to me, but I’ve got my own family and my own job and my own stuff going on. And this is really too heavy for me. So if you can start to look for other resources, I would really appreciate that she never did that. She just cut me off and did it in a really unloving and ugly way. And my daughter was actually very good friends with her daughter. And her daughter began to treat my daughter in the same exact way. So I’m sure there was some conversations, and I’m only assuming, and I don’t know, but I’m guessing there were some conversations in that household. Because her daughter didn’t like the way my daughter was grieving and became very ugly, and actually created an uncomfortable situation for my daughter and a sports not event but a sporting a sport that she was involved in. And this girl, as teenage girls will do allied up with other girls and was quite ugly. And Madison ended up having to pretty much walk away from the sport for the, again for what was good for her soul and what was best for her soul. And so I just treat people with love to speak kind that saying that you don’t know the battle that someone is fighting, you don’t have to like someone, you don’t have to be their best friend, but treat them with kindness. And if you do love someone sit down and have a conversation with them, because they deserve it, you deserve it, your relationship deserves it, and it’s going to make you a better person in the long run.
Victoria Volk 32:38
I relate to that story, too. I had lost a friendship kind of in the same sort of way where they just stopped talking to me and I didn’t understand what was going on. And really, it came down to me, like, kind of latching on and too much coming on too strong or feeling like maybe I was more invested in her than she wasn’t me, you know, and it was hurtful. And but that’s the ripples, right? The ripples of grief, how it just kind of makes its way outward. And like you explained, you know, with your daughter, the friendship, how that just kind of, you know, created ripples then in her life and impacted her then as well. I think that’s one thing too, we don’t realize is how one action that we take. And one thing that we say can just really have those ripples. And so I appreciate you bringing that up just the fact of having, looking at people with tender eyes, almost as if you have their heart in your hands like that. Yeah. I think Yeah, I’ll leave
Susan Ways 33:43
Is a great way to put that because it really just I’m a strong person, I don’t like to ask for help. And I think what happened now that I look back is that I found someone who I thought was safe to ask help from and I probably asked too much. Because in trying to keep myself comfortable, I made that person uncomfortable. And again, I can only guess because I’ve tried to have conversations and the person will not engage and I just walked away because it was not good for my soul, I would have been so fine if that person just like I said was loving and kind and said, Hey, this is just too much for me. Because people do have their own lives and they can’t hold my hand and they can’t be there for me and take the role of my late husband. But it was a big change for me. And he was the caretaker and he was the one he worked from home. And so he did all the transportation and he did a lot of the things during the day and now all of a sudden I had to do it all by myself. And I thought I had someone that could be a good partner in that and probably overstepped my boundaries and I’m sure that I did, but there’s a gentle and a loving way to communicate that to someone especially when they’re grieving. You should do it anyway. But when someone’s grieving, take that extra couple of steps to just be more loving and more gentle.
Victoria Volk 35:00
I love that. Yes, absolutely. I had another thought, but it escaped me. Actually, I want to go back to your grieving story doesn’t begin with your husband. When did first experience grief in your life,
Susan Ways 35:18
When my when I was young, I was 11 years old, and my father had a heart attack and passed away. And it was very sudden. And I won’t say that it was unexpected for me as a child, but not unexpected for the people around him because he had a heart condition. And back then heart surgery was just as risky is weighing out the odds of maybe having a heart attack. So he died. And shortly thereafter, within the next year, my mom started to go out a lot. And she started to date. So she wasn’t home. And I had have two older brothers, who are significantly older than me. And they were living their own life. And they were out and about doing their own thing. But within the next year, they started to, they moved out, both of them moved, and my mom was just almost she was gone. Every weekend, she was gone. Some nights during the week, she wasn’t there. When I came home from school, she had always been a stay at home mom. So I went from this very typical, stay at home kind of a Brady Bunch ish family, and not in the blended sense, but in the sense that we were the stay at home mom and the dad that was home at six o’clock every night, and the family dinners and all of that to being alone. And from 12 years old, on the heels of losing my dad and there was no therapy back then you didn’t you just got over it, you didn’t talk about it. It’s funny because the show Burn Notice, which I don’t watch. But I know the premise. It’s that’s how I felt about my dad, it was like he was a part of our life. And then he just wasn’t we didn’t talk about him anymore. And so all of this loss and a lot of loss in a short period of time during a formative time in my life. And I ended up really raising myself in many cases. And my mom married a man when I was 14, who was just awful, and awful to me during a really important time grieving and a teenager. And so when you talk about ending up with self worth issues there, there was just this compounded loss that came into my world. And I shared with you in the meeting that we had that I admired my husband so much because he was a wonderful father. And I even shared that with him right before he died, how much I enjoyed watching him with our daughter, because he was such a great father and I missed out on that part of being a child having a father and I got to watch it through him. And then two months later, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. And that was a punch in my soul.
Victoria Volk 37:48
And I we had talked earlier how my story is a little is parallel to yours, except I was a little bit younger, I was eight. But I what resonates with me and what what you shared when you got to witness your husband, and how he was with your daughter. That’s how I feel with my husband. And every time my children, I have three kids every time each of them turned eight years old. I imagine them being me. And if their father passed away, you know, it’s like that’s what was going through my mind when they turned eight, like what my experience was, and reflecting on what because when I was eight people looked at me like I didn’t know what was going on. In fact, someone even said that she doesn’t know what’s going on anyway. And that’s burned into my brain over 30 years later, you know, that’s one thing I remember. And which I remember everything. I saw my dad in the grave in his, you know, casket, it’s, you know, I was there, you know, and I watched him the decline over two years as well, you know, you died of cancer. And so when I looked at my kids, it was like, would they understand? Absolutely, they would understand? Absolutely, they would know what grieving is when you didn’t have that support. And I didn’t have that support. I understand that. I understand that. And it changes you. Right. It absolutely changes you. I’m sure it changed to how you were there for your daughter, right?
Susan Ways 39:14
Absolutely. It absolutely did. And we talk about her dad a lot. And actually today, four years ago was the day that he ended up in the hospital and I he subsequently had a cancer diagnosis, but he ended up in the ER, this day four years ago. So this was when our journey ended. And I posted on Facebook this morning that I woke up living my best life and went to bed in a nightmare. And so it’s she and I talk about a lot of that stuff and a lot of what her dad brought to her life and I really want to keep his memory alive and let her know that he’s still a part of my life. He’s still a part of her life and even though our lives are gonna move forward They’re going to move forward with his fingerprints all over them.
Victoria Volk 40:05
I love how you said that. I love I said that I actually just had an interview yesterday with a gal who has remarried and has a family now. But she had a first husband who had passed away unexpectedly. And she said, you know, yes, I’m happy. Yes, I’m remarried. Yes, I have, you know, child and one on the way. But I still grieve the first husband, you know, and I think that’s the thing that people really don’t understand either is you can have joy, you can be happy, and you can still grieve, right? It’s, you know, it’s not, or it’s and, you know, and they, we exist in, in that and space, it’s both happy and joyful, and happy and sad. And, you know, sadness doesn’t go away. But the distinction too, is that it’s what you do with it, you know, do you let it be the captain of your life? Or do you turn it for something positive and good, and to create ripples, positive ripples around you, and like you, and there is no timeline to that to how long that takes. But we, we each make that choice for ourselves. But I can tell you, if, if I would have discovered or had the knowledge I had a year and a half ago, I wouldn’t have spent 10 years of you know, my 20s and 30s, feeling how I was feeling, you know, it almost then I have grief around. If only I could have changed my life back then if only I would have known this back then if only if only if only, you know, and that’s just more grief. And that just adds to my suffering. So I’ve had to learn to release that and give myself that compassion, as I’m sure you have over the years as well just like, have that compassion for yourself. You know, it’s it’s as much as to give it to other people, but it’s often hardest to give it to ourselves.
Susan Ways 42:02
Right? It is, I think that is the absolute hardest because we are our own worst critic. And I love somebody had said once, if someone else said the stuff to you that you say to yourself in your head, would you be friends with them? And I think about that all the time, because I will stop myself now and be like, no, I would not tolerate that from anyone else. And I’m not going to do it to myself.
Victoria Volk 42:27
Exactly. Or would you tell it say that to a child, you know, and we all carry our own our inner child within us, you know, all the lessons and everything and learning and conditioning and all of that that we’ve grown up with? What is one tip that you would give another hurting heart today?
Susan Ways 42:47
To know that things will get better. And that doesn’t mean that the grief will go away. But the windows become further apart. And I still I’m coming up on three years now. And I still have bad days. And there might be two bad days in a row. But I know they’re just days. And I know that a good day is behind that. And a lot of days are just days. But there’s some days that are bad. There’s some days that are great. And I think just knowing that there is hope that there is a path forward, that there’s a lot of people out there that care and find them, surround yourself with them. And just make that your inner circle. And if it doesn’t feel good, let go of it. That’s a lot more than one tip. Sorry.
Victoria Volk 43:33
Well, amen. No. Amen. I love that. So if people want to reach out to you, where’s the best place they can do that?
Susan Ways 43:43
They can, depending on what it is that they’re looking for. I have the tendrils of grief website, which is www.tendrilsofgrief.com. And all the podcasts are listed there. And there’s a forum to connect with me there. They can email me at [email protected]. And that’s really the best way to reach me if you want to talk about grieving or the podcast.
Victoria Volk 44:10
Perfect. And I’ll put those that information also on the show notes. But I thank you Susan, is there anything else you want to add or share today?
Susan Ways 44:19
No I think covered a lot today. So this was really wonderful. Thank you for what you’re doing. I think it’s really I think what you do at the grief recovery Institute, refreshing approach to counseling and to moving forward with grief. And it is about recovery. It’s not just about talking about your feelings and sitting in your feelings. It’s really about finding that path forward. And I think it’s just really wonderful that there’s people out there who get that and who are providing that channel for grievers. So as I said on my pod podcast when you were on I hope people look you up and plug into that
Victoria Volk 44:53
And likewise I love that you bring on people of different areas like this. Social media thing. I mean, that’s a great avenue that I wouldn’t have thought of you know that. But it’s important. Like that’s what we ingest every day, right social media and it all impacts us. He does. Yeah, it’s important. Well, thank you so much, Susan for being here. I look forward to actually hearing our episode as well on tendrils of grief. Tune in next week for another podcast. Until then, everyone, take care much love.
