March 15, 2022 • 31 mins
Last week in Part One of our series about EMS responders during the pandemic, we heard from FDNY EMS Lieutenant Anthony Almojera about what it was like on the front lines fighting Covid-19 in New York City. In our roundtable this week, we reflect on Anthony’s story with grief expert and psychotherapist, Megan Devine. We’ll learn more about the impact of the pandemic on medical professionals and first responders as a whole and how we process and care for each other’s collective grief.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello everyone on Wilma eld Rama and I'm m r Riquel.
This is Essential Voices. So last week we had a
really lightening conversation with our essential voice Anthony al Moheda
and e M S first responder from New York City.
It is obering to think that the COVID related calls
he was responding to on the front line started almost
(00:22):
exactly two years ago. Wow. Yeah, that's right, it was
almost exactly two years ago. And it's bananas to think
that so many of the orders and COVID restrictions originally
intended for two weeks lasted for two years. In a
recent episode, we spoke about the various kinds of grief
and delayed grief simply living through this pandemic that that
(00:44):
stirred up for folks. And in our conversation with Maria
Manuos and Rev. Jen Bailey, and last week we heard
firsthand from Anthony that this grief has been exponential for
e M S responders. My heart continues to go out
to them since this fight is definitely not over. On that,
we wanted to keep the conversation going and here from
an expert on the pandemics tool on e MS first
(01:07):
responders will speak with grief experts in psychotherapists and host
of the podcast You're After Making Divine to hear her
reaction to Anthony's story and ideas of how we can
take care of our community members who have to witness
the toll of a COVID nineteen firsthand. And I know
tow listeners this episode deals with mentions of suicide to
keep that in mind in deciding where and when to listen.
(01:33):
First and foremost, I just want to say thank you
Megan for being here. This is one particularly one of
my most memorable and life changing conversations. You know, you
think about these essential workers as not just a life
saving guardian angel who shows up at a time where
you need them immediately. You know, it's it's tough because
that conversation touched me at such a level. It made
(01:55):
me out oftentimes happy to know that there were human
beings that existed like them, and then at the same time,
it made me angry about the misunderstanding of what they're
not just contribution, but the toll it takes for them
to do what they have signed up to do. You
think about these incredible individuals and these I call them
guardian angels, because they've shown up for us, and personally,
(02:16):
if shown up for my father. My father has suffered
two minor heart attacks and it's because of them I
still have him. And I come full circuit of this
conversation about how no human being is equipped to withheld
or endure so much trauma without the help of comprehension
and understanding and the most importantly and infrastructure. You know,
(02:38):
an environment in which understands what it takes and therefore
provides a support and safe places for them to continue
to prevail the process their trauma. So when I come
full circulit of the conversation, you know, and I'm happy
you're here. I would love to get your first initial
reactions from the conversation. What were your reactions to Anthony's story.
(02:59):
I love that guy. I love how clear and unafraid
to tell the truth he isn't in his storytelling. I
think a lot of people, when you put a microphone
in front of them and you asked them to tell
a story, they clean it up a lot. And we
don't need clean stories, we need real stories. Before you
heard this, his story and his story really touched you.
You didn't you weren't aware about, you know, E M
(03:21):
s and what they do. And it's like you you
don't know what you don't know until you know it,
and then you can't unknow it once you know. That's
a lot of nose to keep track of here, But
it really is that that these invisible networks, these invisible
webs of helpers and service providers, you don't think about
them until you need them. And then if you listen
to their stories, if you really pay attention, and you
(03:42):
start wondering how many calls like this do they do
every day? How do they carry this job? With him?
One of the things that as I was listening to
his story, if somebody was watching my face, they would think, like,
why is she laughing right there? That wasn't a funny thing,
he said. When I got into this work, I thought
that I had limitless compassion, and that was what made
me laugh. Because of the work that I do, I've
(04:02):
long thought that my capacity for witnessing other people's pain
was limitless, and it didn't take more than a couple
of years of the relentless nature of the work to
discover that it is vast, but it is not limitless.
So to hear him say that he reached the edge
of that container for himself and now he knows like
sort of what he can operate inside of. I think
(04:25):
that is kind of incredible insight and wisdom to share
with those people who see way more, like way more
than the average person. Right, bringing this back to what
you said, like, I had no idea until I heard
the story, And they're not just going to arrive on
your doorstep, even though the intersect with our intimate personal
lives all the time. I mean, even in this clip
(04:45):
we just shared with you, Anthony shared some staggering statistics
regarding the loss of life he's bared witness too. He
said he lost in one day thirteen folks to cardiac arrest,
and that suicide is very high in numbers among his coworkers,
and that even he himself had dealt with some, as
he said, suicidal ideations. So, given why Anthony shared in
(05:06):
all the losses that he's witnessed across the board while
on the job, and giving your expertise within grief work,
can you speak to the impact of this grief at
such a large scale. Yeah, so even before the pandemic,
those stats are true. Not the thirteen people in one day,
as he said, that was orders of magnitude larger than typical.
But those rates of suicidality also substance use in the
(05:27):
medical profession as a whole are much higher than the
non medical professions. And then there's different statistics for each
type of work. But if you think of what our
emergency response workers have to see regularly, they see way
more suffering than a lot of other people in the
medical industry. And seeing that over and over and over again,
(05:48):
that really messes with your worldview. Right, It's hard to
see the world as a safe and friendly place when
you see how unsafe the world can be every time
you show up for work. Right, and we blanketly dismiss
somebody's pain because that's easier than letting in the full
reality of how hard it is to do this work
(06:09):
and to show up and to survive. Right, you signed
up for it, air quotes that nobody can see except
for you know us here you signed up for it
is basically saying shut up, Right, it's saying I don't
want to hear this, don't tell me this. How dare you?
I think what happens not consciously is we don't know
how to deal with an expression of pain like that,
so we try to make that expression of pain go
(06:29):
away so we don't feel helpless. And the other thing is,
and I'm reasonably sure this one isn't conscious at all,
but it's like, if we start to accept the reality
that the people we call upon in times of emergency
are human and failable, maybe leaning on them an emergency
is not so safe, and then the world feels less
safe for us, right. I really don't think that that's
(06:50):
a conscious train of thought, but knowing how humans work
and that we need to believe in certain things like
hearing your emergency support people falter or seeing them express
the truth of their reality as faltering, that starts to
impact your understanding of how safe he would be if
you needed help. I think that's so true, And not
(07:12):
to get too off topic, but I recently got a
new therapist and I've been really really enjoying working with them.
But something that I think about all the time is
how one sided that relationship is. But for the exact
reason that you're calling upon right now, which is that
if we as the patients, were more dialed into the
lives of those we call upon for help, this one
sided relationship that's established for a reason begins to crumble.
(07:36):
On the one hand, of course, sometimes I'm curious about
my therapist life outside of our sessions, but that's really
besides the point, and the point is that I'm there
to work on myself and the therapist is there to
provide counsel. However, at the same time, these mental health
professionals and first responders like Anthony are human just like us.
Just because they're here for us in moments of crisis
(07:57):
and in celebratory moments doesn't mean aren't holding the same
things that we're holding within us at any given time.
But you're right that there is sort of a disconnect
in our processing or are wanting to acknowledge that these
are human beings with real feelings who are dealing with
their own traumas and their own joys, because in a way,
perhaps acknowledging this takes away from the very particular way
(08:20):
that these folks are interacting with us. So I'm really
glad that you brought that up. Yeah, and I love
what you said there, and this touches into something really
important here. Like the people we go to for help,
whether medical, emotional, relational, financial, the people we go to
for help. We don't want it to be a two
way street. One of the reasons we go to professionals
for help is one more borrowing their expertise, but also
(08:41):
because there's no personal ramification for that. When you go
to a therapist, you can talk about things, you leave
them there. If you want to have that same kind
of conversation with your partner or your friend, then it's
there in the room with you, and it's something we
have to talk about again. And you worry about if
I talk to my best friend about this, then how
that are going to affect them. You don't want to
(09:02):
worry about that with your therapist or your financial advisor
or your e M. S. Responder. But one of the
things that we hear I've certainly heard it before the pandemic,
but so much more now is reach out, get help.
Make sure you talk to somebody right. Well, everybody that
we would reach out to you for support has also
been living through this pandemic, and they've also had to
(09:22):
turn on a dime and adjust to this way of living.
They've also lost multiple family members. They've also had to
deal with a disruption in the home life. If we
just keep saying make sure you get help, but we
don't say how do we help the helpers? I mean,
we're putting extra stress, pressure demand on a system that
pre pandemic was already showing signs of stress and breakdown
(09:46):
and systemic failures. This calls back something that you noted earlier,
that you appreciated from Anthony's story, which was him describing
maybe his loss of limitless empathy and bringing it to
you and what you said earlier, to use your word,
you said you used to feel that you had a
limitless amount of compassion. But what happens when we're dipping
into these reserves of that empathy and that compassion, and
(10:09):
what about the loss of these reserves that Anthony is
describing for himself. Would you say that that's a common
response for first responders. I mean, you're describing this mass
exodus right now, So how do you see that playing out?
It's a really good question. I don't know how it
plays out. I know that telling the truth about all
of it is for me the most stable way forward.
(10:32):
Right We can't continue to pretend that everything is fine
when everything is not fine. We have to start talking
about the reality of this kind of service work. How
do we actually show up for the people that we
expect to take care of the world. Do we show
up for them or do we just give them the
lip service. I love that he said, you know, they're
going to have a parade for us, and that sort
(10:52):
of let them eat cake dismissive from up on high.
You know, these folks, they don't need us to lean
outside seven o'clock and clap. They need us to talk
about the ways that we show up for each other,
the ways that we expect people to be. Like that
terrible book, The Giving Trade, you just give and give
and give and give and give and give and give
until you die, and then we celebrate you as a martyr.
(11:13):
Like these systems, they don't work. We'll be right back
after this break. Welcome back to essential Voices. I really
think we can create an environment and our destination in
which they not only feel heard, understood, but I have
the resources to cope and process. Now we have to
(11:33):
dissect that statement, and we have to understand what are
the ingredients of that solution. So I think about that,
and I think about you know, my next question, which
is how can we protect our first responders from the
types of burnout that Anthony describes. I believe that that
puts a dent on the comprehension. I also believe that
if there were to multiply and had more than forty
(11:56):
plus hundred individuals answering New York cities call, you will
probably have enough time for them to have not only
family time which reminds them of why they get up
in the morning, time for themselves so they can you know,
get it done, and also real pay. You know that
that actually gives them less stressed. I mean, in some
of these conversations which you didn't really here in this
(12:17):
Anthony described some of these paramedics, some of these e
m AS workers have to work two or three jobs
in New York, so they get up at three in
the morning, they clock in, there out all morning, and
then as soon as they clock out, they go and
work at restaurant. I mean, like, why, Yeah, these are
big endemic systems that are tacked right because you start
(12:38):
talking about we underpay our e m S workers, We
underpay service workers of all kinds, and that also intersects
with race, gender, class, socioeconomic status and how well funded
the public education system is. Like you can't pull one
thread on this without the whole thing lighting up. And
I think this is what gets overwhelming right when we
start looking for solutions, because the solutions are not clear
(13:01):
and straightforward, they are not easily actionable. These problems involve
so much true community. It's so easy to see how overwhelming,
how complex, how complicated, how underresourced all of these issues are.
Whether you are somebody who works in one of these fields,
or is you're somebody who is like a compassionate witness
from the outside, it's easy to just collapse at the
(13:24):
weight of the catastrophe, and that just makes us kind
of shut down and retreat into a corner because the
problems are so vast. Community is the answer to all
of those things. A real community, a community that we
build with intimate knowledge, allowing people to tell the truth
of their own experience. I love the community movements that
(13:45):
have come out of the pandemic and also out of
other social imbalances that come to light before the pandemic
and alongside the pandemic. But community really is the way forward,
and we are wired for that. The story that he
told about like I I felt like my my compassion,
my empathy was limitless, Like we are designed to feel
with each other. And if we can allow those intense
(14:07):
emotions to just be there without trying to rush through them,
fix them, make them pretty, then we have a real
opportunity to talk about how can I come up alongside
you and support you through what you're living. So we
go to somebody like the E. M. S Worker in
our community and our circle, and we say, what can
I do that will come up alongside you and make
the impossibly hard work you have to do a tiny
(14:29):
bit easier to bear. It's not about how can we
make you more resilient, It's not about how can we
give you a gift basket so you feel better about
your job. If this really is a grassroots community response
to how can I love you best in this moment
to let you show up the ways that you want
to show up for yourself, for your others, for community,
and for me when I need to call emergency services.
(14:52):
When I think about the way I was taught specifically
culturally as a Laddin man, there was great things that
would talk to me about how you handle grief and
how you handle lots, and there was also things that
were counter productive, you know, buried those feelings, you know,
turned the music a little louder, But I also realized
that turning the musical or a ladder was also a
(15:12):
reminder of why we were alive. I also loved for
you to dive a little bit on your podcast and
tell us a little bit about how to discover the
voice that you have so fearlessly been able to provide.
I'm going to give a really abbreviated version because I
want to give some airspace in membrane and out my
mouth about the podcast because it's it's it's a really
beautiful thing. But I think this is a good a
good leading for that. So I've been a psychotherapist for
(15:33):
a very long time. I was in private practice, and
I saw a lot of trauma and hardship. In fact,
a lot of the clients that I worked with when
I was in private practice were physicians and other therapists
who were seeing a lot of pain and suffering and
felt like they didn't have anywhere to go with it.
So I worked in a lot of addiction work and
trauma work and and that sort of stuff. And I
actually wanted to take a break from that profession because
(15:56):
it's easy to feel like a talking head sitting there
in a chair listening all the time, And so I
talked about it with my partner, and my partner was
going to take over financial support of our family so
that I could step away from my practice and take
a break. I never got a chance to do that
because a couple of days after that conversation, Matt died
in an accident. I was not a stranger to grief,
(16:17):
not in myself and not in the world. The world
that I was thrown into after his death was orders
of magnitude different than anything else I'd understood, and I
actually quit working with humans for a long time after that.
I closed my practice and I went and volunteered on
dairy forms because I could not stand being around humans.
(16:38):
I just I needed to take care of something that
didn't need anything from me other than clean water and
fresh straw. But that experience, it's like turning on a
black light. Like we you know, when we started this conversation,
we were talking about these stories that you don't know
what you know until you experience it or hear it, right,
And as I said, I wasn't a stranger to grief,
(17:00):
but this was this was very, very different than the
things that I was used to and it really showed
me how unskilled we are and talking about grief in
this culture. So we have this idea that grief is
this problem to be solved, you have to get over
it really quickly. And everything we say when we think
we're being supportive serves that mission of cheer yourself up,
get over it, bounce back, be happy, be positive, as
(17:20):
though happiness is the same as health, and anything that
is not happy is kind of showing you that you're
doing it wrong. When I'm talking about grief, I'm not
talking about just grief related to death. I'm talking about
the reality of being human. We have to talk about
the way that we talk about pain because the ways
that we habitually speak about hard times are causing the
(17:43):
breakdowns that we see around us. You don't need drugs, alcohol,
other addictive behaviors if you have a community that understands
how to come to any kind of pain with skill
and grace. Right, But we don't, like we talk people
out of it. We tell them to look on the
right side, man up right. All of these things. So
our ways of habitually historically dealing with hardship of any
(18:05):
kind have created this world that we live in. And
so for me, the work is like, let's start having
conversations about the way we have conversations. So the podcast
is called here after. The growth edge for me is
in talking to our professionals, talking to our systems about
how are we supposed to be here for them after
when the systems that we inherited, the ways that we
(18:25):
learned how to help, are also broken. Like the tools
that we have inherited cannot meet this moment we're in,
So how are we going to talk about that? And
then we've also got what we started out our conversation
here today talking about all of our helpers, all of
the people we look to for help are also going
through this entire catastrophe. If we can't show up and
talk as professionals about how hard this work is, how
(18:48):
hard this life is, then is it just therapists all
the way down? Like make sure you go talk to somebody,
and then that person needs to make sure that they
go talk to somebody, and like we have to talk
about this, how hard it is to be here, how
hard it is to be human, how hard it is
to feel like we are helpless in the face of
the pain of the world. I mean, you asked me,
why did I choose a podcast? Well, because I'm exceptionally
(19:09):
wordy and I have a lot of their and you
want to stick a microphone in front of me and
I will say them, and I get to talk to
other people who are also wondering these same things. How
do we take this brokenness and support it breaking because
it does need to dissolve, and we do need to
build new things, and we do need to apply skill
(19:30):
to this because we don't just have that black and
white thing of like everything is great or everything is terrible. Well, yes,
everything is terrible, and we want to hear that so
that we can accurately prescribe the world that we want
to build. So those conversations are super important to me.
We'll be right back after this break. Welcome back to
(19:51):
Essential Voices. I want to take a second to acknowledge that,
like Anthony, you are also providing a service to your
community as a psycho therapist. You share that with him
in common. So I'd like to ask you personally, what's
your light at the end of the tunnel and how
do you find motivation to continue forward in this work?
(20:12):
It depends on the day, you know, when we when
we first heard his story and I said, I I
you know, I laughed a little bit when I heard
him say that he felt like his well of compassion
was limitless and learned that it was not. I have
had to do a lot of delegating because of the
work that I do. I mean hundreds of thousands of
stories right, and people usually show up at my social
media doorstep when something really, really horrific has happened in
(20:35):
their lives. I do have a really big capacity for
witnessing the pain of the world, but it is not limitless.
I was telling one of my teammates the other day that,
you know, they asked me why I wasn't more involved
in a certain project, that refuge in greefronts, and I
was like, you know, that program put me in the
hospital twice. Showing up for that kind of pain over
(20:56):
and over and over and trying to see everyone and
touch everyone and help everybody feel heard. You can't help
but be affected by that. And for me, like the
way that I can continue to show up and serve
is to very often step away from the personal story.
I remember a couple of years ago I had an
amazing massage therapist. Massage was one of the things that
(21:16):
I did to help myself continue to show up. And
I remember being there on the table and her drilling
into a knot and me just crying. I have too
many dead people in me. And you can hear that
and what Anthony said to write that there are just
thirteen deaths in one shift. There are too many dead
people in me. So I think when you are, when
(21:38):
you're in this work, when you're doing this work, you
have to know where your breaking point is and hopefully
be in a position where you can not have to
hit that breaking point over and over. For me, it
did mean stepping back from a lot of the daily
high touch stuff and training and supporting others to be
able to do that work. I mean, here's the thing.
This is also like why the bigger work that I
(21:59):
do training clinicians and talking to people in hospitals about
how we talk about pain. I can't do this by myself.
I can't hear the pain of the world by myself.
I can't validate and honor and normalize all of this
stuff for everybody. I need the community to learn the skills.
I need all of us learning what it takes to
show up for the heartbreak of the world without trying
(22:21):
to fix it. Like for me, that is how I
take care of myself is by teaching and speaking and
ranting on things and educating and helping people really understand
this skill and the kindness to self, the willingness to learn,
and to be awkward right, all of those things. Helping
people learn how to trust their awkwardness so that they
(22:41):
can show up and care for themselves and others in
the ways that they really want to, they just don't
know how yet. Right for me, that's how I take
care of myself because the more people know how to listen,
know how to show up and support in really truly
helpful ways instead of dismissing or talking people out of
their pain. I know it's not actually functionally true, but
for me, it feels like the more people learned that
(23:02):
in practice that the more people I get to see
in the world being awesome with each other, the less
pressure I feel to show up and to touch and
to witness more than I can hold. While we're talking
about really drives home for me that across all industries
we need to implement mental health training so that even
if it's just a short training, folks have some skills
(23:23):
and their tool belts on how to support others around
them and how to support themselves when these moments arise.
I used to work for this traveling oral history organization,
and over the year and a half or two years
that I was with them, I think I recorded around
four hundred stories and they were between two people, so
that was like eight hundred people I talked to. And
some of those stories were intense and vulnerable, and folks
(23:46):
made themselves vulnerable to each other and to me, a
stranger that they had just met. Mind you, I was
just there listening, sometimes asking questions, guiding the session, and
providing a safe space for these strangers to open up
themselves to each other. But I was in no a
offering counsel like a therapist does, even though sometimes the
recordings did feel therapeutic in nature, and I did receive
(24:07):
great on the job training from the organization, but nothing
really prepares you for what folks bring with them to
share on any given day. So during this time I
developed my own framework and approach to figure out what
my role was in these scenarios with folks and their
vulnerabilities and with my vulnerabilities as well. But on a
systemic level. I hope that we're moving towards organizations providing
(24:29):
these trainings for these moments. I feel like that these
conversations are being had at a corporate level right now.
I mean it's specifically to the pandemic. Everyone has been
pretty sober to what the needs are and a lot
of unions are putting a lot of pressured and what
are you doingto this? And and I feel, you know,
I feel in my line of work, you know, we
had to show up just like essential workers. People needed
(24:50):
content to be at home. You know, people forget that.
Entertainers and producers. We had to put ourselves in arms.
Were surrounded by three hundred people every single day that
go home, that hobbies, that how things. So I'm believe
in mask outside of the working place, So I'm believing
not so I don't want to get vaccinated some you know,
it's a mixture of individuals that are making personal choices
that eventually could put everyone else internally at arms way.
(25:14):
And we we were the first ones to be back
in production because we needed content, because people were told
to feed that hunger right like it's having it's turning
on that black light, right like if you need to
stay home and you need to consume content. Who's going
to create that content for you? And then who's going
to support the people who need to drive to work
(25:34):
to create your content? Okay, that means we need e ms.
That means we need the people who maintain the highways.
That means we need toll takers. That means we need
gas station attendance. So we're asking vast webs of people
to be involved in serving us content. And that's not good,
not bad, right, as a person who consumes content. But
there is this awareness of the web that is attached
(25:55):
to everything. I love. Ridiculous timism, right, foolish optimism is
how things get done. Right, what happens if we dream
up this world? What happens if we dream up this
And I think, because it's so ingrained in this culture
that telling the truth about hard things is quote unquote negative, right,
It's a failure of hope, it's a failure of optimism.
(26:16):
Like all of these things, like looking at the hard
realities sometimes of being human, pain, loss, suffering, naming those
things as dark emotions or negative emotions or things to
overcome has created the world that we have right now,
where there's so much suffering that goes on in silence,
and we have systems that are broken. For me, like,
grief isn't just about death, grief is part of everyday life.
(26:37):
This is also something that I think this experience of
the pandemic has shown to so many people. There really
hasn't been a time in very recent modern history where
people from all racist classes, cultures but where everybody lost something.
All of those losses are grief. How do we deal
with them? It's not about like listening to somebody's stories
(26:59):
as that you can cheer them up. It's about listening
to them so that we can talk about what are
the real systems and the real connection and the real
community that makes the person sitting in front of us
feel hurt and supported, and that when whatever they're living
through surviving through is wound up woven with other systemic issues,
(27:19):
how do we start rebuilding systems on a much kinder,
more inclusive, loving foundation that helps to soften, mitigate, or
erase these kinds of losses and pains and struggles in
the future. So, for me, telling the truth about grief,
as difficult as it is, is a relentlessly optimistic, hopeful act.
(27:39):
How are we going to build the world that we
want If we don't know what hurts, how are we
going to stitch together communities that can really listen to
the pain of the world and respond to it with
kindness and skill. If we refuse to listen to those
stories or we call them negative. We have an opportunity
right now where there is a lot of focus on
(28:00):
what's broken, which means a lot of people needing to
take some action in the service of building a world
that truly loves, cares, and supports for others. And I'm
so grateful to the time you have given us, and
also that so grateful to this conversation. So many of
the statements that were made here and I think are
going to be taking too hard and some really difficult
(28:20):
but hopefully healing conversations are going to be had after
this podcast. You know. I also want to bring a
full circle to our boy Anthony, because his vulnerability, his
willingness to stay open and keep it straight up just
like a New Yorker would, was important for this episode.
I want to pay tribute to every single one of
you who are listening right now who has either worn
the uniform or has gone along in one of these
(28:43):
ambulances and done your best to do what you could
for the family you answered. So this episode is a
tribute to you. I hope that we've done justice and
most importantly brought up, you know, conversations that maybe make
you feel heard and make you feel seen. And I
know that we're out of a community that is desperately
trying to figure out how can we be there for
(29:03):
you and how can we talk to local governing and
understanding that there is a conversation that has not been had,
and to all of those who have experienced grief due
to laws and specifically with this episode, have been triggered
into those emotions. Now that we do it with all
of our hearts open and with the most and humble
understanding that we could, and knowing that thoughtfully we have
(29:24):
to show up for each other and have these difficult
conversations and understanding how to heal from here as well
as there and show up for one another. So, Megan,
thank you. One last question for you. How can the
community support the work that you are doing currently? So
many ways? Okay, so first listen to the podcast It's
called Here After with Megan Divine. You can find it
(29:46):
wherever you get podcasts, new episodes out every Monday. You
can submit your questions for the show and find out
about trainings and consultants for any industry at Megan Divine
dot c o. The community for grievers you can find
on all of the social media platforms at Refuge in
Grief and refuge in Grief dot com is the website.
(30:08):
You know. A thing we keep coming back to on
Essential Voices is our common humanity and how easy it
is to forget someone's humanity and situations as mundane as
helping you find the right eye for the peanut butter,
or as dire as hauling an ambulance for a heart attack,
nobody sends up for for the grief and the trauma
(30:29):
that e MS workers have experienced this past few years,
and our communities need to recognize that as we work
together towards long term solutions. I'm so grateful for Anthony's
generosity and sharing history and for making Divine for helping
this process and contextualize. Join us next week when we'll
begin a two part series about the global supply chain
(30:50):
and first speak with Essential workers longshoreman Nicole Salima and
truck driver Armando Pacheco. The following week, we'll have a
round table conversation with Mayor Robert got Sea and journalist
Christopher Mims. We'll be back next week. Essential Voices with
Wilmer val Drama is produced by me m R. Raquel,
Alison Shano, and Kevin Rotkowski, with production support from Associate
(31:13):
producer Lillian Holman. Executive producers Wilmer val Drama, Adam Reynolds,
Leo Clem and Aaron Hilliard. This episode was edited by
m R. Raquel, Sean Tracy, and Justin Cho and features
original music by Will Risotti. This is a Clamor and
w V Entertainment production in partnership with I Heart Radio's
(31:33):
Michael Dura podcast Network. For more podcasts from I Heart,
visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Hello everyone on Wilma eld Rama and I'm m r Riquel.
This is Essential Voices. So last week we had a
really lightening conversation with our essential voice Anthony al Moheda
and e M S first responder from New York City.
It is obering to think that the COVID related calls
he was responding to on the front line started almost
(00:22):
exactly two years ago. Wow. Yeah, that's right, it was
almost exactly two years ago. And it's bananas to think
that so many of the orders and COVID restrictions originally
intended for two weeks lasted for two years. In a
recent episode, we spoke about the various kinds of grief
and delayed grief simply living through this pandemic that that
(00:44):
stirred up for folks. And in our conversation with Maria
Manuos and Rev. Jen Bailey, and last week we heard
firsthand from Anthony that this grief has been exponential for
e M S responders. My heart continues to go out
to them since this fight is definitely not over. On that,
we wanted to keep the conversation going and here from
an expert on the pandemics tool on e MS first
(01:07):
responders will speak with grief experts in psychotherapists and host
of the podcast You're After Making Divine to hear her
reaction to Anthony's story and ideas of how we can
take care of our community members who have to witness
the toll of a COVID nineteen firsthand. And I know
tow listeners this episode deals with mentions of suicide to
keep that in mind in deciding where and when to listen.
(01:33):
First and foremost, I just want to say thank you
Megan for being here. This is one particularly one of
my most memorable and life changing conversations. You know, you
think about these essential workers as not just a life
saving guardian angel who shows up at a time where
you need them immediately. You know, it's it's tough because
that conversation touched me at such a level. It made
(01:55):
me out oftentimes happy to know that there were human
beings that existed like them, and then at the same time,
it made me angry about the misunderstanding of what they're
not just contribution, but the toll it takes for them
to do what they have signed up to do. You
think about these incredible individuals and these I call them
guardian angels, because they've shown up for us, and personally,
(02:16):
if shown up for my father. My father has suffered
two minor heart attacks and it's because of them I
still have him. And I come full circuit of this
conversation about how no human being is equipped to withheld
or endure so much trauma without the help of comprehension
and understanding and the most importantly and infrastructure. You know,
(02:38):
an environment in which understands what it takes and therefore
provides a support and safe places for them to continue
to prevail the process their trauma. So when I come
full circulit of the conversation, you know, and I'm happy
you're here. I would love to get your first initial
reactions from the conversation. What were your reactions to Anthony's story.
(02:59):
I love that guy. I love how clear and unafraid
to tell the truth he isn't in his storytelling. I
think a lot of people, when you put a microphone
in front of them and you asked them to tell
a story, they clean it up a lot. And we
don't need clean stories, we need real stories. Before you
heard this, his story and his story really touched you.
You didn't you weren't aware about, you know, E M
(03:21):
s and what they do. And it's like you you
don't know what you don't know until you know it,
and then you can't unknow it once you know. That's
a lot of nose to keep track of here, But
it really is that that these invisible networks, these invisible
webs of helpers and service providers, you don't think about
them until you need them. And then if you listen
to their stories, if you really pay attention, and you
(03:42):
start wondering how many calls like this do they do
every day? How do they carry this job? With him?
One of the things that as I was listening to
his story, if somebody was watching my face, they would think, like,
why is she laughing right there? That wasn't a funny thing,
he said. When I got into this work, I thought
that I had limitless compassion, and that was what made
me laugh. Because of the work that I do, I've
(04:02):
long thought that my capacity for witnessing other people's pain
was limitless, and it didn't take more than a couple
of years of the relentless nature of the work to
discover that it is vast, but it is not limitless.
So to hear him say that he reached the edge
of that container for himself and now he knows like
sort of what he can operate inside of. I think
(04:25):
that is kind of incredible insight and wisdom to share
with those people who see way more, like way more
than the average person. Right, bringing this back to what
you said, like, I had no idea until I heard
the story, And they're not just going to arrive on
your doorstep, even though the intersect with our intimate personal
lives all the time. I mean, even in this clip
(04:45):
we just shared with you, Anthony shared some staggering statistics
regarding the loss of life he's bared witness too. He
said he lost in one day thirteen folks to cardiac arrest,
and that suicide is very high in numbers among his coworkers,
and that even he himself had dealt with some, as
he said, suicidal ideations. So, given why Anthony shared in
(05:06):
all the losses that he's witnessed across the board while
on the job, and giving your expertise within grief work,
can you speak to the impact of this grief at
such a large scale. Yeah, so even before the pandemic,
those stats are true. Not the thirteen people in one day,
as he said, that was orders of magnitude larger than typical.
But those rates of suicidality also substance use in the
(05:27):
medical profession as a whole are much higher than the
non medical professions. And then there's different statistics for each
type of work. But if you think of what our
emergency response workers have to see regularly, they see way
more suffering than a lot of other people in the
medical industry. And seeing that over and over and over again,
(05:48):
that really messes with your worldview. Right, It's hard to
see the world as a safe and friendly place when
you see how unsafe the world can be every time
you show up for work. Right, and we blanketly dismiss
somebody's pain because that's easier than letting in the full
reality of how hard it is to do this work
(06:09):
and to show up and to survive. Right, you signed
up for it, air quotes that nobody can see except
for you know us here you signed up for it
is basically saying shut up, Right, it's saying I don't
want to hear this, don't tell me this. How dare you?
I think what happens not consciously is we don't know
how to deal with an expression of pain like that,
so we try to make that expression of pain go
(06:29):
away so we don't feel helpless. And the other thing is,
and I'm reasonably sure this one isn't conscious at all,
but it's like, if we start to accept the reality
that the people we call upon in times of emergency
are human and failable, maybe leaning on them an emergency
is not so safe, and then the world feels less
safe for us, right. I really don't think that that's
(06:50):
a conscious train of thought, but knowing how humans work
and that we need to believe in certain things like
hearing your emergency support people falter or seeing them express
the truth of their reality as faltering, that starts to
impact your understanding of how safe he would be if
you needed help. I think that's so true, And not
(07:12):
to get too off topic, but I recently got a
new therapist and I've been really really enjoying working with them.
But something that I think about all the time is
how one sided that relationship is. But for the exact
reason that you're calling upon right now, which is that
if we as the patients, were more dialed into the
lives of those we call upon for help, this one
sided relationship that's established for a reason begins to crumble.
(07:36):
On the one hand, of course, sometimes I'm curious about
my therapist life outside of our sessions, but that's really
besides the point, and the point is that I'm there
to work on myself and the therapist is there to
provide counsel. However, at the same time, these mental health
professionals and first responders like Anthony are human just like us.
Just because they're here for us in moments of crisis
(07:57):
and in celebratory moments doesn't mean aren't holding the same
things that we're holding within us at any given time.
But you're right that there is sort of a disconnect
in our processing or are wanting to acknowledge that these
are human beings with real feelings who are dealing with
their own traumas and their own joys, because in a way,
perhaps acknowledging this takes away from the very particular way
(08:20):
that these folks are interacting with us. So I'm really
glad that you brought that up. Yeah, and I love
what you said there, and this touches into something really
important here. Like the people we go to for help,
whether medical, emotional, relational, financial, the people we go to
for help. We don't want it to be a two
way street. One of the reasons we go to professionals
for help is one more borrowing their expertise, but also
(08:41):
because there's no personal ramification for that. When you go
to a therapist, you can talk about things, you leave
them there. If you want to have that same kind
of conversation with your partner or your friend, then it's
there in the room with you, and it's something we
have to talk about again. And you worry about if
I talk to my best friend about this, then how
that are going to affect them. You don't want to
(09:02):
worry about that with your therapist or your financial advisor
or your e M. S. Responder. But one of the
things that we hear I've certainly heard it before the pandemic,
but so much more now is reach out, get help.
Make sure you talk to somebody right. Well, everybody that
we would reach out to you for support has also
been living through this pandemic, and they've also had to
(09:22):
turn on a dime and adjust to this way of living.
They've also lost multiple family members. They've also had to
deal with a disruption in the home life. If we
just keep saying make sure you get help, but we
don't say how do we help the helpers? I mean,
we're putting extra stress, pressure demand on a system that
pre pandemic was already showing signs of stress and breakdown
(09:46):
and systemic failures. This calls back something that you noted earlier,
that you appreciated from Anthony's story, which was him describing
maybe his loss of limitless empathy and bringing it to
you and what you said earlier, to use your word,
you said you used to feel that you had a
limitless amount of compassion. But what happens when we're dipping
into these reserves of that empathy and that compassion, and
(10:09):
what about the loss of these reserves that Anthony is
describing for himself. Would you say that that's a common
response for first responders. I mean, you're describing this mass
exodus right now, So how do you see that playing out?
It's a really good question. I don't know how it
plays out. I know that telling the truth about all
of it is for me the most stable way forward.
(10:32):
Right We can't continue to pretend that everything is fine
when everything is not fine. We have to start talking
about the reality of this kind of service work. How
do we actually show up for the people that we
expect to take care of the world. Do we show
up for them or do we just give them the
lip service. I love that he said, you know, they're
going to have a parade for us, and that sort
(10:52):
of let them eat cake dismissive from up on high.
You know, these folks, they don't need us to lean
outside seven o'clock and clap. They need us to talk
about the ways that we show up for each other,
the ways that we expect people to be. Like that
terrible book, The Giving Trade, you just give and give
and give and give and give and give and give
until you die, and then we celebrate you as a martyr.
(11:13):
Like these systems, they don't work. We'll be right back
after this break. Welcome back to essential Voices. I really
think we can create an environment and our destination in
which they not only feel heard, understood, but I have
the resources to cope and process. Now we have to
(11:33):
dissect that statement, and we have to understand what are
the ingredients of that solution. So I think about that,
and I think about you know, my next question, which
is how can we protect our first responders from the
types of burnout that Anthony describes. I believe that that
puts a dent on the comprehension. I also believe that
if there were to multiply and had more than forty
(11:56):
plus hundred individuals answering New York cities call, you will
probably have enough time for them to have not only
family time which reminds them of why they get up
in the morning, time for themselves so they can you know,
get it done, and also real pay. You know that
that actually gives them less stressed. I mean, in some
of these conversations which you didn't really here in this
(12:17):
Anthony described some of these paramedics, some of these e
m AS workers have to work two or three jobs
in New York, so they get up at three in
the morning, they clock in, there out all morning, and
then as soon as they clock out, they go and
work at restaurant. I mean, like, why, Yeah, these are
big endemic systems that are tacked right because you start
(12:38):
talking about we underpay our e m S workers, We
underpay service workers of all kinds, and that also intersects
with race, gender, class, socioeconomic status and how well funded
the public education system is. Like you can't pull one
thread on this without the whole thing lighting up. And
I think this is what gets overwhelming right when we
start looking for solutions, because the solutions are not clear
(13:01):
and straightforward, they are not easily actionable. These problems involve
so much true community. It's so easy to see how overwhelming,
how complex, how complicated, how underresourced all of these issues are.
Whether you are somebody who works in one of these fields,
or is you're somebody who is like a compassionate witness
from the outside, it's easy to just collapse at the
(13:24):
weight of the catastrophe, and that just makes us kind
of shut down and retreat into a corner because the
problems are so vast. Community is the answer to all
of those things. A real community, a community that we
build with intimate knowledge, allowing people to tell the truth
of their own experience. I love the community movements that
(13:45):
have come out of the pandemic and also out of
other social imbalances that come to light before the pandemic
and alongside the pandemic. But community really is the way forward,
and we are wired for that. The story that he
told about like I I felt like my my compassion,
my empathy was limitless, Like we are designed to feel
with each other. And if we can allow those intense
(14:07):
emotions to just be there without trying to rush through them,
fix them, make them pretty, then we have a real
opportunity to talk about how can I come up alongside
you and support you through what you're living. So we
go to somebody like the E. M. S Worker in
our community and our circle, and we say, what can
I do that will come up alongside you and make
the impossibly hard work you have to do a tiny
(14:29):
bit easier to bear. It's not about how can we
make you more resilient, It's not about how can we
give you a gift basket so you feel better about
your job. If this really is a grassroots community response
to how can I love you best in this moment
to let you show up the ways that you want
to show up for yourself, for your others, for community,
and for me when I need to call emergency services.
(14:52):
When I think about the way I was taught specifically
culturally as a Laddin man, there was great things that
would talk to me about how you handle grief and
how you handle lots, and there was also things that
were counter productive, you know, buried those feelings, you know,
turned the music a little louder, But I also realized
that turning the musical or a ladder was also a
(15:12):
reminder of why we were alive. I also loved for
you to dive a little bit on your podcast and
tell us a little bit about how to discover the
voice that you have so fearlessly been able to provide.
I'm going to give a really abbreviated version because I
want to give some airspace in membrane and out my
mouth about the podcast because it's it's it's a really
beautiful thing. But I think this is a good a
good leading for that. So I've been a psychotherapist for
(15:33):
a very long time. I was in private practice, and
I saw a lot of trauma and hardship. In fact,
a lot of the clients that I worked with when
I was in private practice were physicians and other therapists
who were seeing a lot of pain and suffering and
felt like they didn't have anywhere to go with it.
So I worked in a lot of addiction work and
trauma work and and that sort of stuff. And I
actually wanted to take a break from that profession because
(15:56):
it's easy to feel like a talking head sitting there
in a chair listening all the time, And so I
talked about it with my partner, and my partner was
going to take over financial support of our family so
that I could step away from my practice and take
a break. I never got a chance to do that
because a couple of days after that conversation, Matt died
in an accident. I was not a stranger to grief,
(16:17):
not in myself and not in the world. The world
that I was thrown into after his death was orders
of magnitude different than anything else I'd understood, and I
actually quit working with humans for a long time after that.
I closed my practice and I went and volunteered on
dairy forms because I could not stand being around humans.
(16:38):
I just I needed to take care of something that
didn't need anything from me other than clean water and
fresh straw. But that experience, it's like turning on a
black light. Like we you know, when we started this conversation,
we were talking about these stories that you don't know
what you know until you experience it or hear it, right,
And as I said, I wasn't a stranger to grief,
(17:00):
but this was this was very, very different than the
things that I was used to and it really showed
me how unskilled we are and talking about grief in
this culture. So we have this idea that grief is
this problem to be solved, you have to get over
it really quickly. And everything we say when we think
we're being supportive serves that mission of cheer yourself up,
get over it, bounce back, be happy, be positive, as
(17:20):
though happiness is the same as health, and anything that
is not happy is kind of showing you that you're
doing it wrong. When I'm talking about grief, I'm not
talking about just grief related to death. I'm talking about
the reality of being human. We have to talk about
the way that we talk about pain because the ways
that we habitually speak about hard times are causing the
(17:43):
breakdowns that we see around us. You don't need drugs, alcohol,
other addictive behaviors if you have a community that understands
how to come to any kind of pain with skill
and grace. Right, But we don't, like we talk people
out of it. We tell them to look on the
right side, man up right. All of these things. So
our ways of habitually historically dealing with hardship of any
(18:05):
kind have created this world that we live in. And
so for me, the work is like, let's start having
conversations about the way we have conversations. So the podcast
is called here after. The growth edge for me is
in talking to our professionals, talking to our systems about
how are we supposed to be here for them after
when the systems that we inherited, the ways that we
(18:25):
learned how to help, are also broken. Like the tools
that we have inherited cannot meet this moment we're in,
So how are we going to talk about that? And
then we've also got what we started out our conversation
here today talking about all of our helpers, all of
the people we look to for help are also going
through this entire catastrophe. If we can't show up and
talk as professionals about how hard this work is, how
(18:48):
hard this life is, then is it just therapists all
the way down? Like make sure you go talk to somebody,
and then that person needs to make sure that they
go talk to somebody, and like we have to talk
about this, how hard it is to be here, how
hard it is to be human, how hard it is
to feel like we are helpless in the face of
the pain of the world. I mean, you asked me,
why did I choose a podcast? Well, because I'm exceptionally
(19:09):
wordy and I have a lot of their and you
want to stick a microphone in front of me and
I will say them, and I get to talk to
other people who are also wondering these same things. How
do we take this brokenness and support it breaking because
it does need to dissolve, and we do need to
build new things, and we do need to apply skill
(19:30):
to this because we don't just have that black and
white thing of like everything is great or everything is terrible. Well, yes,
everything is terrible, and we want to hear that so
that we can accurately prescribe the world that we want
to build. So those conversations are super important to me.
We'll be right back after this break. Welcome back to
(19:51):
Essential Voices. I want to take a second to acknowledge that,
like Anthony, you are also providing a service to your
community as a psycho therapist. You share that with him
in common. So I'd like to ask you personally, what's
your light at the end of the tunnel and how
do you find motivation to continue forward in this work?
(20:12):
It depends on the day, you know, when we when
we first heard his story and I said, I I
you know, I laughed a little bit when I heard
him say that he felt like his well of compassion
was limitless and learned that it was not. I have
had to do a lot of delegating because of the
work that I do. I mean hundreds of thousands of
stories right, and people usually show up at my social
media doorstep when something really, really horrific has happened in
(20:35):
their lives. I do have a really big capacity for
witnessing the pain of the world, but it is not limitless.
I was telling one of my teammates the other day that,
you know, they asked me why I wasn't more involved
in a certain project, that refuge in greefronts, and I
was like, you know, that program put me in the
hospital twice. Showing up for that kind of pain over
(20:56):
and over and over and trying to see everyone and
touch everyone and help everybody feel heard. You can't help
but be affected by that. And for me, like the
way that I can continue to show up and serve
is to very often step away from the personal story.
I remember a couple of years ago I had an
amazing massage therapist. Massage was one of the things that
(21:16):
I did to help myself continue to show up. And
I remember being there on the table and her drilling
into a knot and me just crying. I have too
many dead people in me. And you can hear that
and what Anthony said to write that there are just
thirteen deaths in one shift. There are too many dead
people in me. So I think when you are, when
(21:38):
you're in this work, when you're doing this work, you
have to know where your breaking point is and hopefully
be in a position where you can not have to
hit that breaking point over and over. For me, it
did mean stepping back from a lot of the daily
high touch stuff and training and supporting others to be
able to do that work. I mean, here's the thing.
This is also like why the bigger work that I
(21:59):
do training clinicians and talking to people in hospitals about
how we talk about pain. I can't do this by myself.
I can't hear the pain of the world by myself.
I can't validate and honor and normalize all of this
stuff for everybody. I need the community to learn the skills.
I need all of us learning what it takes to
show up for the heartbreak of the world without trying
(22:21):
to fix it. Like for me, that is how I
take care of myself is by teaching and speaking and
ranting on things and educating and helping people really understand
this skill and the kindness to self, the willingness to learn,
and to be awkward right, all of those things. Helping
people learn how to trust their awkwardness so that they
(22:41):
can show up and care for themselves and others in
the ways that they really want to, they just don't
know how yet. Right for me, that's how I take
care of myself because the more people know how to listen,
know how to show up and support in really truly
helpful ways instead of dismissing or talking people out of
their pain. I know it's not actually functionally true, but
for me, it feels like the more people learned that
(23:02):
in practice that the more people I get to see
in the world being awesome with each other, the less
pressure I feel to show up and to touch and
to witness more than I can hold. While we're talking
about really drives home for me that across all industries
we need to implement mental health training so that even
if it's just a short training, folks have some skills
(23:23):
and their tool belts on how to support others around
them and how to support themselves when these moments arise.
I used to work for this traveling oral history organization,
and over the year and a half or two years
that I was with them, I think I recorded around
four hundred stories and they were between two people, so
that was like eight hundred people I talked to. And
some of those stories were intense and vulnerable, and folks
(23:46):
made themselves vulnerable to each other and to me, a
stranger that they had just met. Mind you, I was
just there listening, sometimes asking questions, guiding the session, and
providing a safe space for these strangers to open up
themselves to each other. But I was in no a
offering counsel like a therapist does, even though sometimes the
recordings did feel therapeutic in nature, and I did receive
(24:07):
great on the job training from the organization, but nothing
really prepares you for what folks bring with them to
share on any given day. So during this time I
developed my own framework and approach to figure out what
my role was in these scenarios with folks and their
vulnerabilities and with my vulnerabilities as well. But on a
systemic level. I hope that we're moving towards organizations providing
(24:29):
these trainings for these moments. I feel like that these
conversations are being had at a corporate level right now.
I mean it's specifically to the pandemic. Everyone has been
pretty sober to what the needs are and a lot
of unions are putting a lot of pressured and what
are you doingto this? And and I feel, you know,
I feel in my line of work, you know, we
had to show up just like essential workers. People needed
(24:50):
content to be at home. You know, people forget that.
Entertainers and producers. We had to put ourselves in arms.
Were surrounded by three hundred people every single day that
go home, that hobbies, that how things. So I'm believe
in mask outside of the working place, So I'm believing
not so I don't want to get vaccinated some you know,
it's a mixture of individuals that are making personal choices
that eventually could put everyone else internally at arms way.
(25:14):
And we we were the first ones to be back
in production because we needed content, because people were told
to feed that hunger right like it's having it's turning
on that black light, right like if you need to
stay home and you need to consume content. Who's going
to create that content for you? And then who's going
to support the people who need to drive to work
(25:34):
to create your content? Okay, that means we need e ms.
That means we need the people who maintain the highways.
That means we need toll takers. That means we need
gas station attendance. So we're asking vast webs of people
to be involved in serving us content. And that's not good,
not bad, right, as a person who consumes content. But
there is this awareness of the web that is attached
(25:55):
to everything. I love. Ridiculous timism, right, foolish optimism is
how things get done. Right, what happens if we dream
up this world? What happens if we dream up this
And I think, because it's so ingrained in this culture
that telling the truth about hard things is quote unquote negative, right,
It's a failure of hope, it's a failure of optimism.
(26:16):
Like all of these things, like looking at the hard
realities sometimes of being human, pain, loss, suffering, naming those
things as dark emotions or negative emotions or things to
overcome has created the world that we have right now,
where there's so much suffering that goes on in silence,
and we have systems that are broken. For me, like,
grief isn't just about death, grief is part of everyday life.
(26:37):
This is also something that I think this experience of
the pandemic has shown to so many people. There really
hasn't been a time in very recent modern history where
people from all racist classes, cultures but where everybody lost something.
All of those losses are grief. How do we deal
with them? It's not about like listening to somebody's stories
(26:59):
as that you can cheer them up. It's about listening
to them so that we can talk about what are
the real systems and the real connection and the real
community that makes the person sitting in front of us
feel hurt and supported, and that when whatever they're living
through surviving through is wound up woven with other systemic issues,
(27:19):
how do we start rebuilding systems on a much kinder,
more inclusive, loving foundation that helps to soften, mitigate, or
erase these kinds of losses and pains and struggles in
the future. So, for me, telling the truth about grief,
as difficult as it is, is a relentlessly optimistic, hopeful act.
(27:39):
How are we going to build the world that we
want If we don't know what hurts, how are we
going to stitch together communities that can really listen to
the pain of the world and respond to it with
kindness and skill. If we refuse to listen to those
stories or we call them negative. We have an opportunity
right now where there is a lot of focus on
(28:00):
what's broken, which means a lot of people needing to
take some action in the service of building a world
that truly loves, cares, and supports for others. And I'm
so grateful to the time you have given us, and
also that so grateful to this conversation. So many of
the statements that were made here and I think are
going to be taking too hard and some really difficult
(28:20):
but hopefully healing conversations are going to be had after
this podcast. You know. I also want to bring a
full circle to our boy Anthony, because his vulnerability, his
willingness to stay open and keep it straight up just
like a New Yorker would, was important for this episode.
I want to pay tribute to every single one of
you who are listening right now who has either worn
the uniform or has gone along in one of these
(28:43):
ambulances and done your best to do what you could
for the family you answered. So this episode is a
tribute to you. I hope that we've done justice and
most importantly brought up, you know, conversations that maybe make
you feel heard and make you feel seen. And I
know that we're out of a community that is desperately
trying to figure out how can we be there for
(29:03):
you and how can we talk to local governing and
understanding that there is a conversation that has not been had,
and to all of those who have experienced grief due
to laws and specifically with this episode, have been triggered
into those emotions. Now that we do it with all
of our hearts open and with the most and humble
understanding that we could, and knowing that thoughtfully we have
(29:24):
to show up for each other and have these difficult
conversations and understanding how to heal from here as well
as there and show up for one another. So, Megan,
thank you. One last question for you. How can the
community support the work that you are doing currently? So
many ways? Okay, so first listen to the podcast It's
called Here After with Megan Divine. You can find it
(29:46):
wherever you get podcasts, new episodes out every Monday. You
can submit your questions for the show and find out
about trainings and consultants for any industry at Megan Divine
dot c o. The community for grievers you can find
on all of the social media platforms at Refuge in
Grief and refuge in Grief dot com is the website.
(30:08):
You know. A thing we keep coming back to on
Essential Voices is our common humanity and how easy it
is to forget someone's humanity and situations as mundane as
helping you find the right eye for the peanut butter,
or as dire as hauling an ambulance for a heart attack,
nobody sends up for for the grief and the trauma
(30:29):
that e MS workers have experienced this past few years,
and our communities need to recognize that as we work
together towards long term solutions. I'm so grateful for Anthony's
generosity and sharing history and for making Divine for helping
this process and contextualize. Join us next week when we'll
begin a two part series about the global supply chain
(30:50):
and first speak with Essential workers longshoreman Nicole Salima and
truck driver Armando Pacheco. The following week, we'll have a
round table conversation with Mayor Robert got Sea and journalist
Christopher Mims. We'll be back next week. Essential Voices with
Wilmer val Drama is produced by me m R. Raquel,
Alison Shano, and Kevin Rotkowski, with production support from Associate
(31:13):
producer Lillian Holman. Executive producers Wilmer val Drama, Adam Reynolds,
Leo Clem and Aaron Hilliard. This episode was edited by
m R. Raquel, Sean Tracy, and Justin Cho and features
original music by Will Risotti. This is a Clamor and
w V Entertainment production in partnership with I Heart Radio's
(31:33):
Michael Dura podcast Network. For more podcasts from I Heart,
visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
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