Navigating Loss: Finding New Connection with Brii Renee and Shanti Das

Could the stories we share on grief and trauma become the balm to soothe a collective heartache? Join me as I, alongside TV and radio personality Brii Renee & CEO and Founder of Silence the Shame Shanti Das, unravel the threads of sorrow that bind us all, especially within the Black community. In a series of candid conversations, we traverse personal tales of unexpected loss, from the death of my father, the loss of Shanti Das’ sister, to Brii's sudden bereavement and miscarriage. Our narratives weave through the complexities of carrying on traditions in the face of an empty seat at the holiday table, grappling with the loneliness that often shadows grief, and understanding the potency of specific, actionable support from our circles.

Witness with us the double-edged sword of social media, where the rawness of Black pain is both amplified and trivialized. We dissect how repeated exposure to violence against our kin stirs a vicarious trauma that we carry in our scroll, even as these platforms offer a haven for dialogue on mental health. By sharing our struggles and interventions, like the transformative act of travel and immersion in new surroundings to lighten grief's load, we chart a roadmap for those seeking solace amidst loss. Together, we honor the resilience that pulses within our stories — the kind that fosters healing through the acknowledgment of our most profound wounds.

In this heart-stirring symphony of sorrow and strength, we salute the courage to confront generational trauma head-on and welcome the painstaking journey toward joy after profound loss. We reflect on the tender process of healing after personal tragedies, like my father's suicide, and the evolution of grief that continues to shape us. As we close, we emphasize the value of asking, "How are you feeling?" recognizing that each shared experience of pain, each offered empathy, weaves a stronger fabric of community support. So, tune in and let's navigate this path of mourning and mending, together.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
Everybody. It's Tiffany Cross. I'm the host of a Cross Generations.
It's brought to you by iHeart Podcasts and will Packer Media.
You can catch new episodes of Across Generations wherever you
get your podcasts. And I'm sitting here right now going
through all of your reviews and I cannot thank you
all enough for taking the time to rate and review
the show on Apple Podcasts. When I read these reviews,

(00:29):
I'm really overwhelmed because when you do that, it helps
grow the platform. So I want to shout out a
few of you all who have already reviewed the show.
Colo one, I love that handle. Cola one says, I'm
your sister in your head, You're my sister in real life.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
Cola.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
I appreciate you for taking the time to drop a
review and rate the show. I really appreciate it. And
I hope you're continuing to listen with your friends and family,
and if you are, tell them to drop a review
for the show. Rate the show, and I drop us
in love. We'd love to hear from the folks you're
listening to Pearl nineteen. Oh ay, I'm gonna assume you're
a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Authrority Incorporated. I want

(01:04):
to thank you for listening. You say you're a forever fan,
so I appreciate you for being a forever fan. Tell
your Sore Wars to pull up and listen to this
podcast for me. Please. We get into a lot of
subject matter that I am certain that you all will
appreciate and would love to hear from your Sore Wars
as well, because we look at these reviews and we
look for guests to tap from the reviews. So thank

(01:24):
you so much for weighing in. I also want to
shout out I'm going to have some trouble with this one,
but it's l CRIFTI fan, el Crifty Fan. I want
to thank you for dropping us a review. You said
this show sounds like a winner, and I hope that
you are right because we will not be winners without
you all. So please, if you haven't already rated the

(01:45):
show dropped the review, drop in your group chat and
have your friends take a listen to a Cross Generations.
They can catch new episodes every Tuesday. We drop new
episodes every Tuesday. You can catch us anywhere you get
your podcasts. We are brought to you by iHeart Podcast
and we'll pack our media and I'm going to tell
you what a trio like this, we only need you.

(02:08):
You are the missing piece. When you rate and review
the show, you help us grow, you help us stick
around longer. And we look at these reviews. Like I said,
we're constantly looking for guests, so we read these reviews
and we read your testimonies looking for it. So spread
the word, drop a review, spread the love, and be
sure to tune in every single Tuesday. I'm Tiffany Cross,

(02:28):
your host of across generations, and thank you so much
for tuning in. So before we dive in, I want
to have a heartfelt chat. This content touches on some
pretty heavy topics, things like suicide and miscarriage, and I
know just how much that can weigh on the heart.
So if you're feeling overwhelmed, please know you're not alone.
There's light even in the darkest of moments. We've all

(02:51):
been there and I understand. So if you're struggling, please
consider reaching out. You matter more than you know. Ational
suicide Prevention hotline is one eight hundred two seventy three
Talk again. That's one eight hundred two seven three eight
two five five. Welcome to a cross generations where the

(03:12):
voices of black women unite. I'm your host, Tiffany Cross.
Tiffany Cross. Tiffany. We gather a season elder myself as
the middle generation, and a vibrant young soul for engaging
intergenerational conversations, prepared to engage or hear perspections that no
one else is having.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
You know how we do.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
We create magic, create magic. Okay, So I'm gonna be
honest you guys. I don't know any Black woman who
is not endured some sort of trauma. There is not
only the trauma in our lives, but also the generational
and ancestral trauma we carry such that we can in
real time be frozen in it. And of course there's

(03:55):
the collective trauma that we all endured living in this
here country, seeing blood spattered across screens and state sanctioned violence. Now,
when that trauma is lost, the pain can be palpable
and the tears can be guttural. Like many of you,
I obviously experienced loss. I was for sure a daddy's girl,

(04:16):
and I lost my father as a preteen. And one
of the things that was really interesting that I remember
feeling is the shock of it all, the shock as
the world continued to turn because it had completely stopped
for me, yet everything around me kept moving, TV shows
kept airing, people went about their lives. I couldn't really

(04:37):
wrap my young mind around it, and losing a parent,
I felt truly just disconnected from the world. I anchored
so much of myself and how to manage that grief
in my father's mother. Incidentally my grandmother, and if you've
watched Across Generations before, I've spoken at length about her
death being the very reason I launched this show. I

(05:00):
lost her in twenty fourteen, and I grieve her sage
council and sound wisdom in my life almost every day
in such a way that I wanted to bring that
same energy to the growing audience that tunes in with
us here each week. So when it comes to trauma
and loss, I know it's something that we've all dealt with.
Some of you are likely in the throes of grief

(05:22):
right now, be it the loss of a parent, a friend,
a spouse, the unimaginable loss of a child. Death has
a way of confronting us, confronting us with our own
mortality and gripping us in the life we live as
we figure out how to get through our day to day,
so I really hope this conversation helps someone get through today.

(05:46):
I'm joined by Shanti dash She's a fifty three year
old former music executive who was responsible for the marketing
and career launches of Outcasts, Usher, TLC Prints, and many more.
At a young age, she experienced trauma the passing of
her father due to suicide, and later experienced the same
trauma with her best friend taking her life, having a

(06:07):
strong impact on her views of death and navigating grief
and stressed herself. She is now the host of Mibo
podcast that focuses on physical and mental health. Then on
the other side, we have Three Renee She's a thirty
three year old TV and radio personality and is the
host of Black Girls Stuff on Revolt and her podcast

(06:27):
Mommy and Me. She is also a studio owner residing
in Atlanta, Georgia. In just the last year, she has
experienced trauma from the untimely loss of her uncle, a
best friend, and a child. These deaths have had a
stronghold on her mental health and she currently serves as
an advocate for grief counseling and therapy ladies, this is

(06:50):
a heavy conversation, and I thank you all for being
brave enough and vulnerable enough to share with us what
you're going through and how I don't like to say
how we overcome, because I don't believe you overcome, but how.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
We are all working our way.

Speaker 1 (07:07):
Through this journey of grief that we all have. I'll
start with you free and work my way around. Tell
me about the loss that's hunting you still.

Speaker 4 (07:20):
At first, I lost my uncle, which was so like
you said, untimely.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
We had no idea.

Speaker 4 (07:27):
He had been struggling with being sick for probably like
a year or two, going back and forth to the hospital,
couldn't hold food down, didn't know no one, the doctors
didn't know. They would just be like, oh, it's a
stomach ache and send them home.

Speaker 1 (07:39):
Well.

Speaker 4 (07:39):
I actually walked into Emory downtown Atlanta with him. I
believe it was May twentieth, and within ten days he
had passed. I walked into the hospital with this man.
We're laughing and joking as we're waiting in the emergency
room to see a doctor because he said his heart
was just feeling weird, he felt like it was being

(08:00):
normally and from that they admitted him into the hospital.
Within a matter of ten days, he was diagnosed with cancer,
lung cancer that had the cancer cells had been spread
and moved to his heart. He had several surgeries within
those days. And I literally he was like a father
to me, being that my mother is an LGBTQ member.

(08:22):
She had me through artificial insemination, so growing up, my
uncle was my dad, and so to be there day
in and day out watching him revert so quickly back
to like a baby, you know, it was just seeing
that I had never seen anyone pass and especially like

(08:43):
you think it would take months or years, not almost
less than two weeks, Like that was crazy. So that happened.
And then, like you said, within that was my first
major loss. So that took me by star. I'm like, dang,
I didn't really realize I could lose people. I know
people lose people and I send my condolences all the time,
but it just that was my first time it hit

(09:04):
closes when you're.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
Attached from it. Ye did happen until it happened to me.

Speaker 4 (09:09):
And then shortly after, less than a year later, I
lost one of my good good friends, miss Jackie O,
who was young.

Speaker 2 (09:19):
She was a mother.

Speaker 4 (09:20):
She had just had her her last child, which wasn't
even he wasn't Prince wasn't even a year yet.

Speaker 2 (09:27):
So oh was she?

Speaker 4 (09:29):
Jackie was thirty two at the time. Yeah, so we
lost her last May, so she was thirty two. She
would have been thirty three this year. But yeah, we
lost her untimely. She went in to have surgery and
within hours after her surgery, just a route I won't
say routine, but a cosmetic surgery.

Speaker 2 (09:49):
That I mean.

Speaker 4 (09:51):
Being in Atlanta and being young, you hear hundreds of
people get this surgery, Like like, I would have never
thought that that would be my friend Faith, you know,
and with her having children and her being my age
and us being young under thirty five, and she was
a vegan and she was like light and she was fun.

Speaker 2 (10:13):
It was just like you were healthy. Why would that?

Speaker 4 (10:16):
It made me question God so so much because I
didn't understand why, and I still struggle with it, and
I didn't I haven't talked about it a lot, but
I actually, like, not acted on it, but contemplated suicide
because I felt like, why would you take her?

Speaker 2 (10:36):
When she had children and she had a family that
was depending on her, and here I am that don't
have kids, So why.

Speaker 4 (10:43):
Wasn't it me like I felt guilty for still being
a lot So that I think I've that's been the
one that I've been like kind of struggling with the hardest.
Because at least when my uncle, I was like, Okay,
he was older, he lived a life, he smoked cigarette,
so what did we think he was eventually going to
get cancer, you know what I mean? But with Jackie,

(11:05):
with someone who was young, a mom, vibrant, like I said,
going through something that people do every day, people are
having surgeries, and for it to be her fate, that
really really struck me.

Speaker 2 (11:17):
I would say the last last year, the last six months.

Speaker 4 (11:21):
Of the year was really really dark for me because
I was I feel like I was trying to find
joy again or find my reason to live.

Speaker 2 (11:29):
I'm like, well, she had a reason, she had kids.

Speaker 4 (11:32):
And God to her, what's to say, you won't just
take me any roman or why am I here?

Speaker 2 (11:37):
You know?

Speaker 4 (11:38):
So that's been the biggest one that's been struggling. And
then to experience a miscarriage, it was just kind of
like no, for at that point, it was like, all right,
I don't want to get excited about anything.

Speaker 1 (11:51):
Yeah, I understand that that was a lot for you
to go through. I want to come back to you
on that. I just want to hear from Shanti as
well to set the stage on what loss that you're
carrying with you.

Speaker 2 (12:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (12:03):
Absolutely, And I honor both of you all with your
feelings and what you've experienced with this collective grief that
we're sharing right now. So my first experience with grief
was with my father. I was only seven months old.
I had a sister who was six, and my brother
was I think no, my sister was nine and my
brother was like six at the time, and my dad

(12:23):
took his own life. And we grew up in Southwest Atlanta.
My dad was actually of Indian descent, my mom's black,
but growing up in African American culture one, we didn't
talk about suicide, right, So the trauma from that end
of itself was a lot.

Speaker 3 (12:37):
We were shamed, we were embarrassed.

Speaker 5 (12:39):
We didn't you know, once I got older, we didn't
want to tell people how dad died. But I remember
being in the kindergarten. You know how you get in
a circle and you say what you're going to do
for the weekend, and you know, right before your parents
pick you up, And I said, my dad's gonna come
see me and we're gonna hang out. So in my
mind I didn't really I couldn't grasp the concept of
death because I hadn't really I didn't understand it, and

(13:01):
so my teacher, my mom sat me down and explained it.
And then so I went into one of the stages
of anger. I didn't want to talk about my dad.
I didn't want my mom to bring him up. She
was like, but he loved you. You all had a
special bond, and so fast forward. It took me time
to be able to talk about it, and I was
a happy kid for the most part, but once I

(13:22):
got older, the next time I experienced grief was my
uncle's who helped to raise me. They passed away over
probably a ten year period. And then fast forward to
twenty fourteen. One of my best friends from the sixth
grade called me one day and she was like, I'm
having a worst day of my life. Have you left
for your trip yet? And I was at the airport
about going vacation and I was like, no, but I'll

(13:43):
talk to you. Let's see what's going on. So I
knew she was dealing with some physical health issues to
had some neurological problems, but it was causing her to
be stressed out. So I said, let's figure this out.
I'm going to help you get new doctors. We'll find
you a new doctor, I'll find your therapist. I get
on the plane headed to Switzerland and I land in
three hours late, I got a call.

Speaker 3 (14:00):
That she had shot herself in the head.

Speaker 5 (14:02):
Wow, same way that my dad took his own life.

Speaker 3 (14:06):
So that really sent me.

Speaker 5 (14:09):
In a dowur spiral, and I blamed myself for it.
It was really tough for all of our girlfriends, but
because I was the last one that talked to her,
it just took a toll on me. And so I
had a really great career in the music business too,
but I walked away in twenty ten due to mental
and physical health challenges, and so that just sent me

(14:31):
on a spiral period, and so I came really close
to taking my own life from the trauma of it
all in twenty fifteen, and then I started this organization
called Silence to Shame around mental health and wellness, and
things were going okay, and then in twenty nineteen, my

(14:51):
sister was on spring break with her daughter and really
close to my sister because I'm never married, never had kids,
and she died suddenly in Cancun from a blood clock.
I felt like the world had stopped. I tell people,
it doesn't matter if you've lost a parent, a child,

(15:12):
a spouse, you know, and everybody grieves differently, right, it's
your individual grief journey, But whoever's that number one person
in your life. I had never experienced that type of
pain in my life. It was as if time stood still,
and I just remember saying, I don't know how I'm
going to be able to go for it without my sister.

(15:32):
It was unbearable pain, and I didn't go to counseling initially.
I finally probably did grief therapy about four or five
years later, and then I became my mom's sole caregiver
who had Alzheimer's. And grief comes in a lot of forms, right,
We're talking about, you know, grieving the loss of a
loved one, but you can grieve, you know, the loss
of a job or different things. And so I felt

(15:53):
like I was grieving the loss of my mother over
a twelve thirteen year period because of her Alzheimer's, and
then Mom passed away two years ago, and here I
am right back in the throes of it. And I
coined this new term for grief. It means going right
into extreme faith. And that's what happened for me. And
it wasn't that I wasn't going to go to therapy.

(16:14):
I wasn't going to use any other tools to cope.
But I had to stand on my faith. Even though
I questioned God, I had to trust him that he
would allow me to get through that process.

Speaker 1 (16:23):
Yeah, how are you getting through that process?

Speaker 3 (16:29):
Like? What are you through day to day life?

Speaker 5 (16:31):
It's hard from day to day, you know, the ugly
crises come and go. I'm coming up on the fifth
year anniversary of my sister's death. I remember having conversations
with my sister just about my mom and how we
would plan her funeral and she was like, well, you
never know, I might go before Mom. And I'm like, girl, whatever,

(16:52):
that will never happen. And she was like, you just
never know what life is going to.

Speaker 3 (16:56):
Throw your way.

Speaker 5 (16:57):
And here I am having life without my sister or
I never thought I would be in this world without her.
So the ways I cope is leaning on friends and family.
I'm the girl that will cry at the red light
if I feel it, because I feel like grief comes
in waves and you can't stop it. It's an individual journey.
I try to tell people, you know, don't try to

(17:19):
tell me how to feel or how to grieve, Like,
please honor how I'm feeling today, And I think people
may well. But when folks pass away, you just don't
know what to say to your if you've never experienced it,
and sometimes that makes it worse. And so I also
I write a lot, and it helps me feel better.
I get out into nature. I feel like I see

(17:40):
my mom and my sister through red cardinals, through rainbows
in the sky. I look for them through the blowing wind.
I look for them for kinds. I look to them
for them from smiles of kind strangers, just anything that
can like warm my heart. Yeah, I feel like, you know,

(18:00):
they are with me spiritually. But it's a really difficult journey.
And I tell people you never get over losing someone.
You just find pathways for it, right And I literally
just this past December, I wrote a book called Have
Yourself a Merry Little Grief Miss and it's twenty tips
on navigating grief through the holidays. So my way is

(18:20):
pouring into other people that are grieving. I talked very
openly about my grief journey on social media, and I
think that was God's way of allowing me to be
a vessel to help others as they're navigating their process,
because I'm not telling them what to do. I'm just
sharing a little bit of how I get through it
and hopes that it touches them in a way that
they feel like they can live again, they can smile again,

(18:44):
you know again, you have the weight of the world
on your heart, but healing is possible.

Speaker 2 (18:49):
I like, I'm sorry.

Speaker 4 (18:50):
I like that you mentioned the you wrote a book,
because to me, that was the hardest time, like those
sports holidays, yeah, with doctor and I'm like, like my
uncle was the party person, Like he was the one
that made sure we all felt good, and it just
felt like somebody popped the balloom at the party, like

(19:10):
we just didn't have it. And so going through that
and even like the Greeks that I feel for my
friend's children their first Christmas and when you know me
and we had a pretty good or big friend group,
so we tried to come around them during that time,
so they would feel loved and you know, know that
their mother would have celebrated because she was a big

(19:31):
party and theme person.

Speaker 2 (19:32):
But it was really really hard, Like the holidays seemed
like the hardest time.

Speaker 3 (19:37):
Absolutely.

Speaker 5 (19:38):
My first holiday without my sister, I went to London
for a week. I just got away. Yeah, because I
knew that if I was paying for that trip, then
I would get out of the hotel and do something.
But because I suffered from depression, the isolation can be
debilitating at times. And so that's one thing I do
encourage listeners that if you suffer from anxiety or depression,
or if it's a really tough loss for you, to

(20:00):
let others in. You know that notion of just another
lonely Christmas, the song that Prince did like you know, yeah,
you got to like cancel that notion. You have to
try to lean in on friends and family when you
can and surround yourself with others because the isolation can
be really hard.

Speaker 1 (20:13):
See I struggle with that. You struggle with being alone.

Speaker 2 (20:16):
No, I struggle with letting them in.

Speaker 3 (20:18):
And that's okay.

Speaker 2 (20:19):
That depression is comforting because.

Speaker 4 (20:22):
I don't want to be let down by like you
said a lot of times people don't know what to say.
And it's not that you I'm looking for you to
say anything, but I just feel more comfort being alone.
When I'm in those moments, I feel like you won't
get it, or or like I have to put on
like I'm okay because you're there, like oh, I'm good,

(20:44):
I'm good, but I'm really not good. I feel like
I'm the only person who will allow me to not
be good.

Speaker 1 (20:49):
Yes, right, yeah.

Speaker 4 (20:50):
And I think that as women, as Black women, we
show up in spaces and we're often looked at like
you have to be you know, come to work and
be happy and bubbly, and you have.

Speaker 2 (21:00):
To be strong, you have to be likable. You have
to be likable all times.

Speaker 4 (21:04):
And I feel like when I'm alone, I can just
take that off and feel how I really feel and
not judge myself for what I feel.

Speaker 5 (21:12):
Absolutely because and I love that. I just wish I
can't do that. That's why I'm seeing grief as an
individual journey. Yeah, so it's healing for you, you know,
to be alone. That's one of my tips too, is
sometimes you don't have to do what everybody else is doing.

Speaker 3 (21:24):
You have to go to the parties.

Speaker 5 (21:25):
You don't have to be everywhere and show up to
the holiday function and family function if that doesn't.

Speaker 3 (21:30):
Work for you.

Speaker 1 (21:30):
It's interesting that we keep touching on holidays and Christmas
because I remember after I lost my father, the first
Christmas felt like not Christmas, you know, like whatever magic
of the holidays it was gone. It was like that
was a big leap from childhood to the next iteration
of life. It wasn't adulthood, but it was definitely the
next iteration of whatever life was. I imagine there are

(21:52):
people watching us or listening to us right now who
are suffering through loss and trauma. And I imagine there's
a bit people out there who are wondering what do
I say? What is the right thing to say? I
think that's such an individual thing, you know, like there's
no right answer. But the one thing I would offer
is I've never found this to be helpful. Let me

(22:15):
know if you need anything, No, because I don't know
what I need right like you are giving me an
assignment to come right, It's like, anticipate the need and
just do it, you know, just send the thing.

Speaker 4 (22:29):
You know.

Speaker 1 (22:29):
For a lot of black communities, considering the wealth gap.
In this country, money is often needed because we don't
have our affairs in order sometimes, and you know, after
the repass is over, everybody goes home and it's like,
well big Mama, Bile's got to get paid or my sister,
you know, kids got to go to school.

Speaker 3 (22:46):
Light.

Speaker 1 (22:47):
So money is always a safe thing.

Speaker 2 (22:50):
Food.

Speaker 1 (22:50):
You know, we feed each other. That's our love language.
It's like, yes, let us feed you. When all that
goes away, people still need to eat, you know, they
still need groceries. Sometimes people need to out the house
and go somewhere, you know. So that's the only piece
of advice I can offer. Let me know if you
need anything sounds like something that makes you feel better,
not the person you're saying it too. It's like, I'm
so uncomfortable being confronted with your grief. The first thing

(23:14):
I want to do is say, well, let me know
if you need anything, and then I can feel good
about myself that.

Speaker 2 (23:17):
I yourself back right.

Speaker 1 (23:22):
So it never feels sincere to me when people, even
though they may be sincere, it just it doesn't feel
it doesn't land in the way that they may wanted
to bree How are you you lost a friend, your uncle,
and then you miscarried a child? What was the thing?
Or are you let me rephrase that. Are you getting

(23:42):
through your day to day?

Speaker 4 (23:43):
And if so, how I feel like as recently I
am and if I can be honest, part of it
is numbing myself out. Sometimes I feel like I disassociate
from myself.

Speaker 1 (23:59):
How doing what?

Speaker 3 (24:01):
So?

Speaker 1 (24:01):
I used to say, I just want to run away.

Speaker 2 (24:03):
I just want to run away.

Speaker 4 (24:04):
I would go on vacation by myself and as long
as I'm by the beach, I'll feel fine. Right until
I realized that I'm trying to disassociate from myself. Because
these past two weeks I was in Saint Thomas filming
a movie which Jackie would have been a part of.
She was a part of Part one. We self produced

(24:25):
and started in our own movie myself, Jackie, oo Bi Simone,
and Ernestine Morrison, and we filmed obviously the first one
and released it while Jackie was still alive. But when
we went to Saint Thomas this past two weeks and
we were there filming Part two, I was like, I
felt the same feeling I said, I just want to

(24:46):
run away. Once I started to miss her and I
was like, but you are away. So what are you
really trying to run from? Yeah, like you trying to
just you're I think I run away from the pain.
I think I'm trying to away from my feelings. I
don't want to address them, So that's what I mean
when I try to numb them out. Like I was

(25:08):
sad sitting on the beach. I literally was crying at
the end of day one, like, Wow, if Jackie was here,
she would have loved this or this. I'm glad they
were doing this and we're honoring her with this film,
but it's sad because she deserved to be here too.
And so that's when I realized, like, oh, by you
saying you want to run away, you're really trying to

(25:28):
run away from feeling it, from actually addressing how you feel.
And so through therapy, I feel like I am giving
myself a space to actually and like being intentional sitting
down and talking about how you feel and not being judged.

Speaker 2 (25:44):
Because when I was going.

Speaker 4 (25:46):
Through the thick of it, I would have people come
over and when I would express how I felt, even
when you know the shame and the guilt I felt
of after Jackie passed, and I was like I told
someone I feel like it should have been me. They
got me angry at me, like why would you say
that this? You don't see how this affected everybody, this
would affect us. And it's like I get that you

(26:07):
want me to value my life, but I feel guilty
now for telling you how I feel.

Speaker 2 (26:14):
Yeah, so I started a safe space. It's not a
safe space.

Speaker 4 (26:17):
So I think I started to like not even address
how I feel personally, but going through therapy, and like
I said, being now that I'm mindful of it, I'm like, no,
this is how you feel and that's okay. Like whatever
that feeling is, don't judge it. You don't have to
act on it. You don't have to, but let's feel
it and release it and let it go. Because I think,
I think that's a black woman thing. I think we

(26:37):
just suppress things and just keep going because I always
say I got shit to do.

Speaker 2 (26:42):
I can't I got job.

Speaker 1 (26:44):
Well, it's generational too, I mean when you take it
back to the plantation, even you know, as the enslaved,
I mean we we nursed and took care of white
babies while they ripped our children away from me, and
we didn't have a chance to grieve that we had
to get right back out there and be raped the

(27:05):
beating right, yes, right back.

Speaker 2 (27:08):
Out there tomorrow today, right.

Speaker 1 (27:11):
Or even because it wasn't no picnic in the big House.
If you were in the big House, you had to
be subjected to the you know, White, the mistress of
the homes and her cruelty. And so we bottled it up,
and we passed that along to our daughters and told
our daughters, bottle it up and in our own unique way,
keep going, just keep going, or stop crying, or I'll

(27:32):
give you something to cry about.

Speaker 5 (27:33):
Oh but see, I'm the exact opposite. I find strength
in my weakness. I find strength in those tears. I
find the tears therapeutic. Like when I lost my sister,
Like I cried on Ig a lot, and you know,
my family was like, why are you publicly grieving and
showing it? But I just felt in my spirit that
that's what God wanted me to do, to be able
to show people, to put a face on grief. This

(27:57):
is what real traumatic grief looks like. Yeah, And it
was therapeutic for me, you know, so I leaned all
the way in. Is there a difference between like the
grief you feel when, like with your mother, you were
her caretaker as you cared for her and you anticipated

(28:19):
her death. Sure, partially because she had Alzheimer's, but partially
because that is a natural order of things.

Speaker 3 (28:25):
My mother was ninety two.

Speaker 2 (28:27):
We will all lose our.

Speaker 1 (28:28):
Parents versus your sister who you lost suddenly. Does that
grief look different?

Speaker 5 (28:34):
So for me, again, because someone else who might have
lost a parent or sibling would say something different. Again,
it's an individual journey, but the grief definitely looked different
from me losing my mom because I was anticipating. My
mother was ninety two. She had Alzheimer's for thirteen years.
I knew that day was going to come. My sister

(28:55):
was just on vacation. I talked to her eight nine
times a day. We were connected at the hip. She
was my best friend, she was my confidante. It was
the worst thing that I've ever experienced in my life.
I felt like a dump truck literally ran into me
and that my chest was caving in. So it's really

(29:16):
difficult navigating through sudden loss. I don't wish that on
my worst enemy. Yeah, it's something I don't think I'll
ever get over.

Speaker 1 (29:26):
But that's why I never use the word closure, you know,
like there is no closure. It is a wound that
stays open. My mother lost her mother, and we all
lost my grandmother. But my mother she never came back
from it fully she I mean, it was so traumatized

(29:47):
her spirits that she never returned to who she was
before that. I don't think. I mean she you know,
lives the life and goes by to read. My grandmother,
as I talked about in the open, lost her youngest child,
her oldest, and her youngest, but her youngest was my father.

Speaker 3 (30:03):
She never came back from them.

Speaker 1 (30:05):
Like she aged ten years in a year, and we
could be in the kitchen, we could be it could
be a year later, five years later, we could be
in the kitchen and she would just be crying. And
the thing is that that's the thing about tears. No
one was like, oh, got y'all mama cry and everybody,
you know, everybody would just keep going about their day
and she would just be sitting there weeping, wiping down

(30:27):
the counters, cooking, folding, long whatever she was doing. It's
like everybody kind of understood, this is all you have
to give right now, you know, Like it's like there
was no comfort for losing a child, Can.

Speaker 5 (30:40):
I say something else too? So I'm coming up on
five years of losing my sister, and I have been
doing better. I'm working, I'm traveling, but I'm also afraid
that like I'm forgetting how she sounds, I'm forgetting like
all the memories are kind of ating a little bit

(31:01):
slowly every day, and I try really hard to be
intentional on watching videos, and some people are like, you're
re traumatizing yourself, but like, I have this fear inside
of me that, like I will forget some of my
sister's favorite things and the joy that we share. And
it's terrifying at times. And so I'm trying to figure

(31:22):
out how to navigate through that of how do I
keep her memorialized, you know, still going through the grief process,
but not letting it overtake me.

Speaker 3 (31:31):
So that's a struggle for.

Speaker 1 (31:32):
Me right now, because that's a delicate balance to strike
you feel guilty for right life going yea on or
making new memories without those people that.

Speaker 4 (31:42):
You know would have been there or been involved, or
like you said, like that's exactly it, That's what it is.
And like you said, when life everybody keeps going and
you're stuck in the grief. That's where my anger came from, too, Like,
how is everybody like the world just gonna keep going,
like you didn't just this, but you're the only one
who feel that immense loss.

Speaker 1 (32:04):
Yeah, Well, I want to ask you, Bree this. I
asked this of someone, and I realized what an insensitive
question it is to ask. So I prefaced this with that,
and I braced both of us for it. A friend
of mine suffered a miscarriage, and I asked her, this
was a baby you never met, you know, this was

(32:27):
you didn't carry this child the full term. She was,
you know, it was very early on and she miscarried,
and I was asking her like, are you really like,
how do you feel like? Are you really sad about it?
And her answer really struck me because she said, Tiffany,
as a woman wants you feel life inside you, you
do not want to part from it. So I wonder

(32:47):
about the grief of a miscarriage because it's not something
that we talk about a lot. More people have been
talking about it, thankfully, but it really it was my
own ignorance that I did not connect it to oh,
you really grieve this loss? So if you will talk
a little bit about what that was, Like.

Speaker 4 (33:04):
I think, and I don't have children yet, but what
I've always heard mothers or women who are moms say
is like the moment you become pregnant, your life changes. Yeah,
And I think sometimes that's also the rift between moms
and dads because dads don't have that innate It doesn't
just kick in.

Speaker 1 (33:21):
You needn't become follows when they see them the baby. Yeah,
And so I felt that.

Speaker 4 (33:27):
I felt like it was like literally the day I
found out I was pregnant, my life was different, like
I just knew.

Speaker 2 (33:33):
I felt the immense drive.

Speaker 4 (33:35):
I felt an immense like responsibility, pride, I felt purpose.

Speaker 2 (33:42):
I like my eating and it's sad and I look
at it now and like that's sad that you have
to have.

Speaker 4 (33:48):
You have to be pregnant to go that hard or
to feel that way, Like why can't I channel that now?

Speaker 2 (33:54):
Because like I said, I was eating better.

Speaker 4 (33:56):
I was like to the point I was looking at
everything differently in the grocery store like cool, Like my
whole life changed in a day, And you feel it
and you start to get connected to it, and you
start to make a plan and I'm an ambitious woman,
so you know, when we got our mindset on something,
there's nothing you can tell us that it's going to

(34:18):
stop me from accomplishing this or bringing this plan to life.
And so it's like reading a plan that it's like
my whole life is different again. And I had to
really remind myself you can just go back to how
you were before. But it's like it fels wrong. No,
it feels so wrong. It feels impossible. It feels like, Okay, Well,

(34:40):
like I said, I still be feeling like why can't
I have that draw that I had? Then I'm still
ambitious and people on the outside will look at me
and be like, you still accomplish things.

Speaker 2 (34:49):
But it was just a feeling.

Speaker 4 (34:50):
I can't explain it, like even just the joy of
going to the doctor and learning that your baby's growing
and I was reading the books and learning that it
would from this seed to this As you know these things,
you know that life is inside of your body's changing
and you feel all of this and then you I
didn't realize until after I went through it. You go

(35:12):
through postpartum whether you have a child or not, really,
so your hormones are still having to reregulate going back,
like whether you gave birth to this child or not,
your whole body change or to carry this baby.

Speaker 2 (35:26):
So I think.

Speaker 4 (35:27):
Along with the postpartum chemical imbalances and everything is trying
to reregulate itself.

Speaker 2 (35:33):
That along with, like I said, just.

Speaker 4 (35:36):
Grieving the loss of the idea of what life was
going to be, Like, yeah, the plans that I had,
the Christmas that I was already planning right the baby
shower and the gender reveal and you know, all of
these things that you go through your life and the
family that you're planning out. It's grieving the loss of
plans that won't ever come to fruition.

Speaker 1 (35:55):
Well, it's a popular more increasingly popular phrase that grief
is love with no where to go. And you had
all this love to give this child and had nowhere
to go. So that makes complete sense. And the fear
of is something wrong with me? Yeah?

Speaker 4 (36:09):
I know, I spoke and thank god I have I love.
When we were just talking off camera about how growing
up in Atlanta or being in Atlanta, I'm privy to
so many black women that are doctors. My whole OBGYN
team is nothing but black women in that office. So
they've been incredibly sensitive and you know, nurturing with me
and speaking to me in a way. So I don't

(36:29):
think I would get that kind of care from anybody else,
but just having to be reassured that there's nothing wrong
with me, because they say that one.

Speaker 2 (36:37):
In three women will have a miscarriage. And we just
are in a generation now we're, like you said, we're
more open.

Speaker 4 (36:42):
We share our stories on social media, but it was
kind of taboo, and in previous generations they didn't even
really realize sometimes that they were having miscarriage. They just
would think, oh, I'm having a really heavier period. Yeah,
I didn't have a period for two months, so now
I'm having a heavier period. The whole time they were miscarried,
they just didn't have access to health care to really know,

(37:03):
or they didn't know they were pregnant the moment week
Like I knew I was pregnant.

Speaker 2 (37:07):
Two weeks really yeah, like I knew.

Speaker 4 (37:10):
I felt my body, I knew, and I think I'm
just really in tune with my body, so I knew.

Speaker 2 (37:15):
I knew I was pregnant.

Speaker 4 (37:16):
I knew things were different, and just to grieve that,
and it's like having to reassure myself that I am
okay that when the time is right, it'll happen.

Speaker 2 (37:25):
That God has a plan and you know it happens.
It happens, and it doesn't make you weird or it
doesn't make anything wrong with you.

Speaker 1 (37:33):
And not broken.

Speaker 2 (37:33):
They're not broken women.

Speaker 1 (37:35):
It's some part of.

Speaker 5 (37:37):
Yeah, yeah, my mom and sister had these cararriacters too.
Really it's very common for women. But it doesn't make
it any harder, you know, to deal with.

Speaker 1 (37:47):
But right well for you because you were so close
to your sister, Shantie, and when you said that we
talked eight nine times a day, I overstand that, Like
I have people in my life like that. What is
it like that first time you go to pick up
your phone to call your sister and you realize she's

(38:08):
not here.

Speaker 5 (38:09):
I can't call her? Or do you still do that?
I still do that? The first time it was very
traumatic for me. Again, like I said, I cried a lot,
and often I talked to her just kind of spiritually.
I didn't like going to the cemetery though. That was
triggering for me. It was just too much to go

(38:30):
back to because of the way that she passed away.
I remember when she first died. She was over in
Cancun with her husband and my niece, and they had
to ship her back to the States, and I was
so nervous that I couldn't drive, so I decided to
fly up to Charlotte. Well, I went up to Charlotte,

(38:50):
and I came back home and I had to go
back and so I was on the tarmac and got
a text that her body had also just arrived at
the airport. So we were on the tarmac at the
same time. All I could think about was why you
and not me? Like it was.

Speaker 3 (39:06):
Incredibly difficult for me.

Speaker 5 (39:08):
It still is, Like I said, I find myself thinking
about her all the time and wanting to talk to her.
But I just know that she would want me to
be happy, and I'm trying to implement all the things
that she taught me, because she had actually gone back
to school to become a therapist. So how about three

(39:28):
months before she passed away, she was on my Silence
to Shame podcasts and we talked.

Speaker 3 (39:32):
About grief and loss.

Speaker 5 (39:33):
While we talked about losing our dad and how traumatic
that was for her and how her life was so
different because my mom leaned on her when Dad took
its own life, and she had to help raise us.
And I cried on that episode, and I told her
that I wish I had been the older sister so
that I could have taken some other pressure off of
her and helped her to deal with the trauma because

(39:55):
she felt like she needed to be strong for all
of us, and she would. You know, we told each
other that that we loved each other and that we
would always be there for each other. This is just
a really terrible pain that never goes away. And sometimes
I feel like I compartmentalize my grief. So I'm the CEO,
I'm a podcast host, you know, I'm a community leader,

(40:17):
I'm volunteer, our mentor people. But it's always there. Yeah,
It's always there. You carry it everywhere you go, and
so I just try to find again pathways forward. I
am in therapy again. I stopped for a while, but
I realized, like there are a lot of triggers, like
National Sister's Day and everybody's posting on social media with

(40:40):
all of their siblings or you know, just so many things.
Thank you that my sister and I did. You know,
triggers are real, Yeah, and so I have to sometimes
remove myself from certain situations or you know, I'll go
and spend time with my friends and their siblings and
I've had to walk out of the room. I'm not
looking for them.

Speaker 4 (41:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (41:00):
I love that they have the love of a sibling,
but it's really difficult. That was my only sister. And
I have a brother and I love him, but the
love that my sister and I shared is something that's
a bond that will always be there and it never
goes away.

Speaker 1 (41:14):
Yeah, when you talk about therapy, and it's like when
you lost your father, that wasn't really I don't know
how prevalent therapy was.

Speaker 5 (41:20):
My mother didn't go to therapy. She turned in the eighties.

Speaker 1 (41:23):
That wasn't a thing.

Speaker 5 (41:25):
She turned to her faith and we saw my mom crying.
We knew my mother was depressed. We knew that because
she she and my sister found my dad on the
side of my sister's bed and he had taken him
the whole life. So you talk about trauma, yes, and
how my sister was like eight and a half nine
years old.

Speaker 1 (41:43):
Wow.

Speaker 5 (41:44):
And so she put herself into therapy. She went to
Georgia State as well, like you did. And but she
put herself into counseling in the Spressman year of college,
because she knew that she couldn't go forward unless she
finally dealt with the trauma of my dad's death, and
because my mom didn't push it and we didn't talk
about it in the black community back in the seventies
and eightes, but she knew she needed something to be

(42:06):
able to move forward.

Speaker 1 (42:08):
Listening to you all talk about grief, I have to
say it terrifies me because you know, I lost my father.
My grandmother was such an anchor in my life, and
so now I have my mother here with me, and
I just I think I don't know that I can
survive her death. I don't even know what life looks like,

(42:28):
as you know, just being kind of this person an orphan,
you know, a middle aged orphan, Like, what does that
look like? How do you function? I mean that literally,
I don't know if I will survived her death. I
just have no idea. Can I just this thing that's
waiting to happen that I know I'll have to face,
and I have no.

Speaker 3 (42:46):
Idea how to deal with it.

Speaker 5 (42:47):
So the interesting thing about life is we all have
a birth date and we have a death date.

Speaker 3 (42:53):
We don't know when, we don't know the time for
the hour.

Speaker 5 (42:56):
But what I can say to you is you absolutely
we survive that loss. I think now that I experienced
a loss with my sister, I can experience anything. Doesn't
mean that I won't be devastated when other family members
and friends pass away. But if you are a person
of faith, and whether you believe in the universe, you
gotta believe on a higher power or being. If it

(43:18):
wasn't for the grace of God, I wouldn't be able
to sit here. Technically, on paper, I should be a
basket case. Losing my father, losing my two uncles, losing
my grandmother. These are all the people that grew up
literally in my same household as a child. My mom's gone,
I'm an orphan now, Yeah, my sister's gone. It's really
just my brother and I.

Speaker 3 (43:36):
Now.

Speaker 5 (43:37):
Last year, my brother went through serious heart issues and
I thought it was just going to be me left
and I thought why, God, Like, why are you taking
all these people away from me? Yeah, it's the hardest
thing I've ever had to experience.

Speaker 1 (43:48):
How does it impact for this for both of y'all,
How does it impact your personal relationships? Because it's like,
once you experience that loss, it's like, I don't want
to be that open again.

Speaker 3 (43:57):
I don't want to love this much again.

Speaker 1 (43:59):
I remember what my mother being in the hospital one time,
and I was so angry at her, just for a
lot of reasons. But she was in the hospital. It
wasn't like she's been in the hospital for his direct
me to get a cancer. This was her in the
hospital for something else. And I remember just being so

(44:20):
terrified that she was going to die and being angry
because I felt such vulnerability. I was like nineteen twenty
years old, like I am too young to keep dealing
with this shit by myself. And I remember thinking, I
don't ever want to love anything this much again in life.
And I think it informed. I'm in my mid forties now,

(44:42):
I think I'm just now open to love and being vulnerable.
But for a long time it had me so gripped.
So I wonder, with both of you, how does it
impact I would say.

Speaker 2 (44:56):
It's done two different things.

Speaker 4 (44:57):
So for me, I feel like I was so bright
and bubbly and optimistic I had this, and I'm I'm
afraid that it's making me less optimistic in life, Like
it's taking that I don't want to be excited about anything.
We'll figure out when it happened, Like it's it's cold.

(45:17):
It's making me kind of heartily, and I cry about that.
I grieve that part of me because I'm like, I
don't want to lose my life. That's what that's who
I am. But when it comes to above, I feel
like it's the opposite.

Speaker 2 (45:31):
Like I'm holding on.

Speaker 4 (45:33):
So tight to people, even if it might not be
whether it's friendships or romantic you might not be what's
best for me, but I'm so afraid to lose anything else.
I'll hold on for dear life because I don't want
to go through that again.

Speaker 1 (45:49):
Yeah, you're anxious attachment. Yeah, Like I'm afraid of losing
like a tiger. I have to grip tight to.

Speaker 2 (45:55):
Hold on to don't.

Speaker 4 (45:56):
I don't want anything else in my life to change
drastically or immediately like these past two years of it. Yeah,
so for me, And I don't know. I don't think
that's healthy. I don't know that's the right way to
deal with things. But right now, in this stage, like
I said that, you're almost two years out, that's where
I'm at with it.

Speaker 2 (46:15):
Like I don't. I don't.

Speaker 4 (46:17):
I'm so afraid to lose anybody or anything or anything
that I'm like, I like every even jobs like losing
going through recent career changes, It's like, it's scary, it's terrifying.
It's just like, I don't want to lose nothing and
nothing else needs to change in my life. Can I
get my feet settled into something?

Speaker 2 (46:39):
Yeah? That is something, because you have so much life ahead.

Speaker 1 (46:43):
I'm you know, in the I guess the late summer
autumn of my years.

Speaker 2 (46:48):
You're in the autumn of their years.

Speaker 1 (46:50):
Yes, And so at this point in your life, I
wonder what impact it has on relationships for you, new relationships,
you know, are you building new relationships at this point?

Speaker 3 (46:59):
Are you holding the relationships you have tighter?

Speaker 5 (47:01):
So it's funny you asked that. So when my dad died.
Over the years, I had a really love hate relationship
with guys and wanting to date and the fear of
them leaving me the way my dad left me because
he took you know, I felt like he made a
choice and he chose to leave and take his own life,
even though I know now I believe now in my

(47:22):
heart that he wasn't in his right frame of mind,
and he didn't know what he was doing. But I've
always had a complicated life in terms of relationships. I've
never truly been in love. I've never been married, I
don't have kids, and here we are, fifty plus years
later that I'm just finding the light in my heart thinking,
you know what, maybe I do need somebody else to love.

(47:43):
And I'm gonna get emotional right here, because you know,
the holidays, like I said, I'm really hard without my sister.
I did everything with her. I spent all my time
with her. So now my brother's married with three kids,
and I also call my sister's husband. He is my brother.
He helped to raise me. They were together since I was six.
They were childhood sweethearts. He's now remarried. You know, my

(48:05):
nieces and nephews are They're all growing up, so they
have their family. They're my family, but they're not my
nuclear family. And for the first time this year, I said, girl,
you are alone.

Speaker 3 (48:19):
You need family, and.

Speaker 5 (48:22):
I can hear it was almost like I can't hear
my sister saying it's okay, you have permission.

Speaker 3 (48:27):
You can't be afraid.

Speaker 5 (48:29):
You cannot let this chokehold of grief slowly kill you
off because I felt like I was dying on the inside.
I feel losing my sister and my mother, and I'm
this woman of service and I'm trying to give back
to everybody, but like, where is the joy and where
is the light in my life? I can't just keep
rehashing this grief over and over and over again. I've

(48:53):
got a sign of joy and so I feel like
for the first time, I'm smiling again. I'm outside as
they say, did.

Speaker 1 (49:00):
You find joy?

Speaker 3 (49:00):
Where did it come from?

Speaker 5 (49:01):
And it was just it was going through the process,
going through the motions of grief. I had the ugly
days of not wanting to get out of the bed,
not wanting to open up the blinds, but you know,
learning about grief, going to grief counseling, going to a
regular counselor pouring back in the others days that I
felt like my lowest. If I had a friend that
lost someone, I'm going to send them a heart emoji.

(49:23):
I don't always say what do you want, I'll just
send them I love you, or send them, you know,
a smiley face or something. And that was letting them
know that I was there.

Speaker 3 (49:32):
And then that.

Speaker 5 (49:33):
Allowed me to open up the door of conversation if
they wanted it. So being able to pour back into
other people that your life helped me. It was my lifeline.
And of course the work that I do was silence
of shame and silencing the shame around mental health and wellness,
which you know, grief leads to mental health challenges, to anxiety,
to depression, PTSD and so many other things and so

(49:56):
and just the grace of God. It was his grace,
mercy and favor that you know. It puts me back
on track and I put my faith in him because
I don't want to keep living in fear of losing somebody.
I'm still I mean, you know, Auntie's fifty three, Yes,
but I still feel like there could be love in
my life there.

Speaker 2 (50:15):
And I just have Today, I think I've forgiven my father.

Speaker 3 (50:21):
You're for taking his own life.

Speaker 1 (50:22):
Now, that's interesting. You've forgiven your father for taking his
own life.

Speaker 3 (50:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (50:26):
I had to get to a point of forgiveness because
for twenty years when I worked in the entertainment industry
and I was suffering, it was because I had not
dealt with the trauma of my dad's suicide or I know,
like even when I watch a movie now and I
see someone with a gun, you know, even if they're
acting as if they're going to take their own life,
it's very traumatic for me and.

Speaker 3 (50:46):
People it's a similar question.

Speaker 5 (50:48):
Remember how you said, oh, you never met your daughter,
you know, when she had the miscarriagter or or your
son or your baby. For me, people would say, oh,
you're only seven months old, you never met your dad.
It shouldn't affect you that way. How dare they say that?

Speaker 1 (51:00):
Can I tell you? I kind of thought that. I
was like, what does that grief look like? You know,
like you don't remember your father the same way that
you know my own ignorance about miscarrying it was grief
I didn't understand.

Speaker 5 (51:12):
So when I was born, my mom said, for seven
months straight, my dad would come home from work and
I laid on his chest. So we had this really
great spiritual connection, Yeah, this inherent connection. And so my
mom said, I cried for two weeks as a baby,
almost three weeks NonStop, like nobody could help me, nobody
could make me happy, nobody could soothe me. And then

(51:35):
just growing up knowing that, you know, that trauma of
knowing what had happened, and knowing that left me like,
that's grief in and of itself.

Speaker 3 (51:44):
Isn't that traumatic experience?

Speaker 2 (51:45):
Were you questioning?

Speaker 3 (51:47):
I thought, was it because of Yeah?

Speaker 5 (51:49):
Because so it's funny you say that my mom had
me like late forties, I want to say a while,
and so I kind of was unexpected, And I did
blame myself. I was like, did dad not want to
take care of a third child?

Speaker 3 (52:03):
Was it me?

Speaker 5 (52:04):
I went through a lot of crap as a kid,
you know, and I should have been going to therapy
and we should have gone as a family.

Speaker 3 (52:10):
So I blame myself for a lot of that.

Speaker 5 (52:12):
Yeah, And I had to finally get to the point
where I forgave myself and dad for that suicide.

Speaker 3 (52:19):
It's nobody's fault.

Speaker 4 (52:20):
And I completely understand how you must agreed or how
it still affected you because Jackie's youngest was like six
seven months at the time, and we as friends saw
him change and greed, like you said, she was still nursing, yeah, wow,
And so for that to like he was irritable during that,

(52:43):
Like he didn't. He wasn't this happy, joyous baby as
much as he was while she was there. So I
kind of understand that, like he was in the same space.
And now as you talk, I'm like, how can we
show up at her village or the babies now as
they grow, because I don't want him to ever blame
himself or question his own word or things of that nature,

(53:06):
even though she didn't take her life. Like, what's some
kind of way that we could be of support to
grieving children?

Speaker 5 (53:14):
Really just showing up for them and listening to them,
Like we got to give people grace through this grief journey.
Because one thing I want to say is everybody presents differently.
A lot of our children, if they're greeving, they act out.
They say they got a stomach ache, or they may
say they have a headache. There's a really wonderful organization
called Kate's Club. It's here in Atlanta, but I think

(53:35):
they do some national virtual programs too, and they focus
on kids that have off loved ones or siblings and
they teach them healthy ways to cope. We have to
be able to listen to our kids. But if they're
acting out right, if their behavioral patterns change, they might
not tell you they're grieving now, but it's based on
their behavioral patterns and like.

Speaker 1 (53:54):
Just keeping his mother's memory alive. I would think, like,
you know, you can tailor make books now, and so
like books would pick of his mom or stories of
his mom, and you know, like can I take him
out if his father or Pentwood Guardian is okay? Like
can I take him out for a day, you know,
and just be present with him? I think that would
be helpful. But you know, we to the point of

(54:14):
losing a friend. I will say, you're young to have
lost a friend. I think I'm too young to be
losing friends. But I'm at that age now where like, oh,
my good friend has cancer, you know, or like my
good friend passed away, or my friend lost her husband,
which at one point that was like so bizarre, but
it's become a more prevalent. And then my mother has

(54:36):
like lost all of her friends, she's lost all of
her siblings, like they've all died, and you just become
more sensitive to those things because I don't know, when
you're young, it's like life is kind of abstract, yeah,
And I think that's what you were feeling before I
knew grief existed. I knew loss existed, but it was
kind of abstract. It was just kind of out there
wasn't tangible, so I had not gone through it. And
when you start going through it, it's like, oh no,

(54:59):
this is something that we all.

Speaker 3 (55:01):
And it has a faith after face.

Speaker 1 (55:02):
Yes, real, it's yeah there, it's hard to comprehend, like
this is just the end, and it confronts you with
your own mortality. And and I'll say, like, I'm fifty three,
I remember my mom losing her friends more like in
her seventies.

Speaker 2 (55:16):
Yes, it is.

Speaker 5 (55:17):
But now to your point, I've lost so many friends
over the years, you know, to different illnesses and to cancer,
and I'm like, what is going on right now? Yeah,
every time I turn on my feed, it's like praying hands, yes,
rest in peace and.

Speaker 3 (55:31):
People I don't even know.

Speaker 1 (55:32):
But it's like I'm seeing so much, yeah, so many people.

Speaker 4 (55:35):
And I'm glad you mentioned in social media because that
was like one of the hardest part of grieving her,
because we are all social media influencers and she was
like an actress, bubbling personality and television and so the
world freed her. And then that felt weird because you know,
while you have major networks like be Et shouting her

(55:57):
out at awards, which was beautiful, still had trolls on
social media, and I didn't like I didn't have to
deal with that when I lost my uncle because the
world didn't know him.

Speaker 2 (56:07):
But when I had to.

Speaker 4 (56:08):
Lose Jackie, it was like, how dare you speak on
someone you've never met? Yeah, and it can get That
made it so much harder, I feel, like me and
it elongated that period of anger because I felt anger first,
like I said, and it made it harder for me
to get out of that because every time I lived
on social media for months, it was somebody else a

(56:32):
blog or someone making a TikTok.

Speaker 2 (56:37):
Thread of how they feel like she was sacrificed.

Speaker 4 (56:42):
Like it was like crazy, far insane theories that people
really had convinced themselves enough of to put up a
phone and record themselves saying this.

Speaker 1 (56:52):
Crazy with the world.

Speaker 4 (56:54):
And it's like, you don't know these people, and how
dare you put this on the internet for her children
to one day see?

Speaker 1 (57:00):
Yeah, you're going to be traumatize. You got up social media.
So we're gonna take a really quick break. This has
been heavy conversation. We're going to take a quick break.
But on the other side of this, I do kind
of want to tap into social media. Out in x Okay,
y'all already know the streets are talking, talking, talking, So

(57:22):
you brought up social media.

Speaker 2 (57:25):
We talked a little bit about the collective trauma.

Speaker 1 (57:28):
That we experience as black people, as black women, and
so I think the last couple decades, I remember I
was in high school, junior high when Brodney King happened,
and witnessing this black man is being humbled by these

(57:49):
white police officers.

Speaker 2 (57:51):
It was the most violent, horrific thing I had seen.

Speaker 1 (57:54):
And who knew that decades later this would be a
normal occurrence, It would be something that we would see
right regularly. And so even for people who have not
lost someone personally, we all went through collective trauma watching
or seeing the images of Trayvon Martin, of Sandra Bland,
of Mike Brown, and of course George Floyd and all

(58:18):
the other Rishard Brooks, like all the other Breonna Taylor,
all the other nameless people who never became a hashtag
because there was no bodycam footage. But we just knew
these things happened. It was our birthright to go through this.
I just social media has a different impact on how
we grieve, how we process grief, and that was something

(58:40):
for me, weeping over strangers, and because I remember hearing
my grandmother's guttural cry. I remember my mother like just
laid out on the floor, like just overcome by grief.
And every day I thought about these people were dying,
their families, what they were going through, and how were
living through this and in that we were traumatized. I'm

(59:03):
so uiet. How did that impact you, guys? How did
you navigate seeing these things? And how how do you
carry it with you today?

Speaker 4 (59:14):
My first trauma that I witnessed on social media was
Trayvon Martin.

Speaker 2 (59:19):
I was probably a freshman sophomore in college.

Speaker 4 (59:22):
I marched, you know, and my mom used to be like, Okay,
Angela Davis is like I was. I was like determined
we were going to make a change and this was
never going to happen again. And then, like you said,
the list of names just kept growing in every especially
I feel like during the pandemic, it seemed like it
was back to back.

Speaker 1 (59:42):
To that was trauma. Yeah, pandemic, So the world shut
down and we were confined to our homes, and then
we saw death after death, violence after violence, protests. The
protests got violent, ugly, rhetoric. You know, when the first
time we had a racist in the White House, but
certainly during that time it was a pinnacle point in society.

(01:00:04):
It was overwhelming.

Speaker 4 (01:00:05):
I think that it happens on purpose, honestly, and that's
how I have taken it, because I look at how
villagent and how determined I was to make a difference
in our community, and how it numbed me out where
it's like, no matter whose hashtag it is or whether
it's Palestine, or there's nothing I can do about it.

(01:00:28):
That's what it kind of made me feel. And I
think that our generation has because it's so common. It's like, oh,
you just scrolling there might be a little sensory thing
on there, like ah, this is sensitive content, but you
might see someone get shot, like there's nothing I can do.
It made me feel helpless, like there's nothing I can

(01:00:48):
do about it, So why care? Why I get so invested?

Speaker 2 (01:00:52):
And I did? It used to be like that. Yeah,
it took my fight. I feel like, you know, that's interesting.
I felt less kind, I felt less willing.

Speaker 1 (01:01:05):
You know, it's hard to know who is an enemy
and who is an ally. And that was a period
of time where I just decided I don't have the
energy or effort to figure out who's an enemy or
who's an ally, so let me just rock with the
people who I know rock with me, right, Like, I
don't know this is our first time meeting. I don't
know either of you, ladies before today, but I knew

(01:01:27):
you before today, and when you walked in the room,
I knew you. We know each other. And it's an easier,
more relaxed state of being. Watching my brothers and sisters
get murdered repeatedly, and watching Black Lives Matter become a
controversial thing to say. Staying in my own life matters
was controversial, and watching the way people align themselves and

(01:01:48):
witnessing other people's silence who were not being traumatized, it
just made me really shrink. And to not shrink, I
don't going to say that, it made me retreat into
safer a spaces.

Speaker 5 (01:02:00):
So it made me numb, of course, seeing it over
and over again, and I think so many in our society,
and especially in the black community. You know, it's like
rehashing these images, right, It's like re traumatizing your brain
over and over and over again. And that's what happened.
That's what had happened in the social media cycle. And
I also feel like, you know, we all experienced this

(01:02:22):
collective anxiety within the pandemic, and it just made all
of us afraid. And I've heard of this notion of
vicarious trauma. It's like, or were you experienced trauma, but
you weren't necessarily there, right, It's like vicariously living through
somebody else's trauma. Yeah, And so I think we internalize
that stuff. And I'm an impath, I'm a pcey, I'm

(01:02:42):
sensitive by nature, and so I felt like I was
taking on everybody else's trauma and pain through that and
being a mental health advocate in the work that I did.
You know, we hosted a lot of virtual community conversations
within the black community, allowing people to talk about it
because we really truly had.

Speaker 3 (01:02:59):
To process as what we were talking about.

Speaker 5 (01:03:01):
A lot of major corporations, you know, brought me in
to do talks for their staff, especially when you know,
we saw what happened with George Floyd, and I mean
it was just such a I think a day of
shock and a week of shock for everybody, And it
was like the day that everything stood still for us,
and we were in our homes. We were isolated, we
couldn't go outside. We were within a pandemic. It was

(01:03:23):
like we were within a pandemic in our own mind
trauma of what we were seeing. Right, So it was
like a double pandemic, right, And so you know, we
had to lean heavily on our community, on our faith.
And then I had to start establishing boundaries, like I
could not look at social media constantly every single day.

(01:03:44):
I had to stop looking at the local news so
much because I had to protect my own mental health
because it was easy to go down that rabbit hole
every single day, and you felt depleted as a lack American.
You felt defeated, depleted, you know, and you felt helpless.

Speaker 2 (01:04:00):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (01:04:02):
So another thing about death, I think people have become
so insensitive to it that they post it. You know,
it's like if something there's a dead body there, it's
no moment of empathy. It's like just a picture of
it and it's posted out there, and it's become sensationalized,
and to be honest, it always has. I worked in
news for a long time and the old news or

(01:04:24):
matter is if it leads, it leads, Like people wanted
to see that, and so now that you know individuals,
social media is democratized who has a voice out there,
and it feels like we are disconnected from our humanity
sometimes where it's like they do not think that this
is somebody's child's uncle. Yes, yeah, So I wonder how

(01:04:47):
we can get compassionate again for each other, like do
not put if it's a car accident, Like, don't put
that on social media? Don't. I mean, one way that
I would challenge our audience is to not look at it,
don't don't like it, don't share it, don't do it,
don't look at it. But what do you think that
does to us? And we're all different ages and different

(01:05:10):
stages in life. And I think you grew up having
social media. Well was grown when.

Speaker 2 (01:05:16):
Instagram and Twitter came up, but you grew up with Facebook.

Speaker 1 (01:05:19):
I mean, this stuff has been around here late nineties.

Speaker 2 (01:05:21):
You're right, right, we watched.

Speaker 1 (01:05:23):
There was no there was no Internet for me, you know,
so it was a different experience, a different life experience.

Speaker 4 (01:05:28):
Yeah. I think that it changed something that for me
and I've watched it grow into something completely different, Like
it was initially meant to connect us, and now I
feel like We're more disconnected than I've ever been.

Speaker 2 (01:05:41):
And I think.

Speaker 4 (01:05:42):
About that all the time, like where how can we
misuse this technology so bad? Like it was created for
so much good and we just some kind of way
it's off. Like even when I look at the things
with the war now with Palestine and gossip, and I'm like,
I don't even feel like I have the energy to
have a dog in the fight.

Speaker 2 (01:06:02):
I don't have it.

Speaker 4 (01:06:03):
I don't have it any because, like you said, well one,
I feel scorned because I feel like when when there
were George Floyd's and when there were Breonna Taylor's, were
these other countries coming to our defense? Were they raising
money and they were blasting it on their news for us?

Speaker 1 (01:06:21):
They were?

Speaker 4 (01:06:21):
And see, that's what maybe social media is doing to
me and making me feel like the world is only
what is in my proximity, because I didn't even realize
feel like, well, nobody.

Speaker 1 (01:06:30):
I mean b all amost a global movement and Palestine
was definitely very supportive of it. So yeah, but I
think to the bigger point about the images that we
see coming out of Gaza, it's just I yes, yeah,
I mean over thirteen thousand children killed and that you
can become and when you're going through your own trauma,
your own loss, dealing with what's happening here in our country,

(01:06:54):
and then being confronted with not just Gaza, but Haiti,
not just Haiti but the Congo, you know, our brother
and sisters on the continent, what's happening there. It is
a painful process that can sometimes disconnect us.

Speaker 3 (01:07:06):
So, you know, I think it's a hard thing.

Speaker 5 (01:07:09):
It is extremely hard, and I just feel like, you know,
we already deal with so much, and especially our black youth, right,
we don't have healthy ways to cope. We don't understand
conflict resolution anymore. So we see these bodies and these images,
and again we become desensitized to it and we think, Okay,
taking someone's life isn't that big of a deal because
we see death all around us every single day. So

(01:07:30):
we have to leave by example, right, It's like modeling behavior.
You know, we as aunties and parents and grandparents, you know,
we have to show a better way for our children.
If we see something, let's call it out, right, We
got to really get back to community, build community. We
have to build empathy. We have to give people grace,
whether they're going through trauma, whether they've experienced the death,

(01:07:52):
a loss of a loved one. We got to listen
to one another, right, and instead of just saying how
you doing, ask people how they feeling?

Speaker 4 (01:07:59):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (01:08:00):
Right, That starts a very different dialogue and a different
process that I think together. You know, we have to
have this communal healing. We have to be able to
talk to one another. We need to bring the black
family back to what it used to be so that
we have the village raising us, the aunties, the uncles
like it should be collective healing. We should not have
to grieve alone, and we should not have to become

(01:08:22):
desensitized to all of these bodies dying around us.

Speaker 3 (01:08:25):
Let's talk about it.

Speaker 5 (01:08:26):
Let's speak up, let's speak out, and let's again give
each other grace.

Speaker 4 (01:08:31):
I want to commend both of y'all because I don't
feel like I'm in spaces where there are older generations
that are open to speaking about healing or they're me
or like my grandmother is a traditional Black grandma and
it's by girl.

Speaker 2 (01:08:45):
You just keep on going what youre talking about. We're
not talking about that, we're not even gonna address it.

Speaker 4 (01:08:50):
But I feel an I misresponsibility to heal myself because
I know by me healing, I am healing that on
the future, but the past generations. But to see women
like yourselves that are like, let's step up, let's have
these conversations, let's he will want to each other, or
let's dish it out. You might not have all the answers,
but at least we feel better because we're not holding

(01:09:13):
it in.

Speaker 5 (01:09:13):
Yeah, a breaking generational curses. Yes, we're breaking generational trauma,
and we're helping to erase stigma. We're silencing the shame
around all that plays our community.

Speaker 1 (01:09:22):
Yeah, and it's not us as we because people hear
you and they're gonna connect with you and identify with you.
So I am grateful to you for sharing your story
and you and both of you guys are being so vulnerable.
I think you gave really good assignments to our listeners,
our audience. Ask how you're feeling, not how you're doing.

(01:09:43):
I think that's something I want to try to employ.
Don't say let me know if you need anything that's
you know, not the most helpful, and just try to
connect with our humanity Again.

Speaker 4 (01:09:55):
I think we say, don't judge how they're feeling that
won't be my biggest thing.

Speaker 1 (01:09:59):
That's true because you talked about when you would tell people,
they would judge the response instead of meeting you where
you are.

Speaker 4 (01:10:04):
Oh, you're so beautiful, you're so blessed, you don't have anything,
you have your whole like that.

Speaker 2 (01:10:08):
But it's like, that doesn't change how I feel.

Speaker 3 (01:10:11):
Because you're presenting one way doesn't mean that's how.

Speaker 2 (01:10:13):
You're right, that's what I'm that's how I'm doing. That's
not how I'm feeling.

Speaker 3 (01:10:16):
Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 1 (01:10:17):
So ask how you're feeling, don't say let me know
if I can do anything, And don't judge someone when
they share with you how they're feeling. And listen, listen.

Speaker 5 (01:10:27):
That's sometimes when someone passes away, I just want to
get off my chest.

Speaker 2 (01:10:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:10:31):
The last thing I think is really important. We talk
about grief and loss. People mean, well, but don't tell
me about your experience right away when you lost somebody,
Just listen. I don't know your journey. All I know
is I'm in a tremendous amount of pain.

Speaker 3 (01:10:44):
I just want to.

Speaker 5 (01:10:45):
Talk about the loss that I just yeah, yeah, And
it doesn't mean that you don't honor their feelings. It's
just I got to get through this really tough lesson
of what just happened and get off your phone.

Speaker 3 (01:10:53):
So it doesn't make it anything.

Speaker 1 (01:10:54):
You can't listen and be punching in your phone and
be present and listen to folks that goes along. This
conversation was so great. I really it helped heal us.
I think on some level it helped getting through today easier.
And I really hope that anybody who's going through something
out there that it helps heal you. We don't say
closure because there is no closure on pathways for and

(01:11:17):
I hope this helps a smoother pathway forward today because
that's all you can do is one day at a time,
and as hard as it is to go on after
losing someone, life is for the living. Whoever you lost,
they want you to keep living. So thank you so
much for joining us for this episode of Across Generations.
I really hope you got something out of it. Be
sure to drop a review, rate the show, let us

(01:11:40):
know what you think, and thank you for being brave
enough to have this conversation with us, and I hope
it inspires you all to have conversations with your own community,
your own group chat your own sisters, your own family,
wherever you find community, Thanks again for joining us. Across
Generations is brought to you by Willpacker and will Packer
Media in partnership with iHeart Podcast I'm Your Host and

(01:12:01):
executive producer Tiffany d. Cross from Idea to Launch Productions
Executive producer Carla wilmeris produced by Mandy B and Angel Forte, editing,
sound design and mix by Gaza Forte. Original music by
Epidemic Sound Video editing by Kasin Alexander and Courtney Dane.